2
The Kandinskys’ horse ranch lay a half hour’s drive from the Blazing B. It seemed to belong in the rolling hills of Kentucky or New York, not to these simple plains. The white fences and ornamental gates were out of place in this land of wood posts and steel rails. The Rolls Royces parked in house-sized garages were entirely impractical, too good to drive down the two-lane highways. But the family members, though a bit standoffish, were nationally respected breeders of Fox Trotters and Morgans. They made good money in this valley acquiring reliable working stock for the ranchers. It seemed reasonable that Mr. Kandinsky’s brother-in-law, a Thoroughbred breeder transferring some of his livelihood to a new ranch in California, would pick this place for a rest stop along the way.
Phil had given Beth directions to the horse breeder’s secondary stables, a barn reserved for the workhorses rather than the studs. She parked near the sliding door that opened onto the stable alley.
Beth kept a first-aid kit for animals behind the driver’s seat. She withdrew it, not sure if the ointments and disinfectants and dressings and poultices would be at all relevant. But the weight of the bag felt good in her hands, like confidence.
She entered the barn. Hay scattered across the ground silenced her footsteps. The entire facility, which boasted twelve stalls, was lined with fresh wheat straw and thick rubber mats and shining pine tongue-and-groove siding. If these quarters were for the lowly workers, the studs must have been housed in a crystal palace. Several of the stalls were occupied, but Phil leaned out of the box at the far end and motioned her to come.
She hoped that the horse’s condition was not as bad as he had made it out to be over the phone.
Beth kept her voice low so as not to startle the animals. “Hey, Phil. Fiona,” she said to his teenage sister who, judging by her sleeping bag, intended to spend the night with poor Marigold. Both Phil and Fiona had willowy statures and fine brown hair that fell into their eyes. Fiona sat on the ground, hugging her knees. Beth looked at the horse. “How’s she doing?”
Fiona shook her head and bit her lip. She rocked herself gently.
“You tell us,” Phil said. “It’s her left eye.” His tone was hopeful. For Fiona’s sake, Beth thought.
Marigold lay on her side on a bank of straw, her eyes closed, and Beth took heart in the mare’s peaceful appearance. There was no indication that the eyelid had been damaged. Her eyelashes were horizontal, as they ought to be. The contour of Marigold’s head was smooth and free of swelling. Quite possibly, Phil and Fiona’s inexperience had overstated the trouble.
Beth made a gentle clucking noise to alert Marigold to her presence before kneeling and stroking the mare’s shoulder. The horse allowed it, approving with a deep sigh as Beth’s fingers moved upward on the neck, caressing the jaw in the comforting way that Hastings liked so much.
When her hands approached the mare’s eye, intending to lift the lid for a closer look, Marigold tossed her head away from Beth’s probing. She nickered a warning and shot an open-eyed glare that caused Beth’s hope to drop. The protective tissue over Marigold’s eye, which should have been water clear, was a white cloud so dense that the pupil and iris were nearly invisible. And toward the rear corner of the eye, the surface was uneven and waxy, like the dribbles of a melting candle.
“Her cornea has an ulcer,” Beth began.
“Is that bad?” Phil asked.
“Not normally.” Corneal ulcers were one of the more common injuries a horse might receive in its lifetime. Hastings had suffered his share. “I’m sorry, girl,” she said to the mare. “How long has she been like this?”
“The cloudiness—two weeks?” Phil said.
“Sixteen days,” Fiona said. Beth groaned inwardly.
“But that oozing, it just started yesterday.”
“Day before,” Fiona corrected.
Beth shook her head at Phil’s optimism. “Sixteen days ago we could have turned this around with topical antibiotics. She might have improved in a few days. But this—this is called a melting ulcer. They’re wicked. Somewhere along the line that plain vanilla ulcer picked up some bacteria or a fungus. The infection is only going to get worse.”
Her first-aid kit sat in the straw beside her, worthless.
Phil glanced at Fiona. “What do we do?”
“You get a vet on this right now. A licensed vet. Tonight. I can call someone for you.”
“What’s he going to tell us?”
“That you waited too long to call him. That Marigold might need surgery to reverse this, depending on how deep it’s gone. Two weeks is a long time, you guys.”
“She just didn’t give any sign that it really bothered her,” Fiona said.
Beth was sure the horse had. It was more likely that Phil and Fiona didn’t recognize what they were seeing. “I don’t mean to be cruel, but you need to understand how serious this is. She could lose her eye if you don’t treat it aggressively.”
Fiona dropped her head onto her knees. Phil paled. He didn’t have to say what Beth knew was running through his mind. The cost of an equine surgery on a grocer’s salary would hurt. Even if surgery wasn’t part of the equation, the antibiotics, the anti-inflammatories, the medications to control the enzymes that were destroying the eye tissues would all add up.
Beth placed a hand on Phil’s arm. “Come with me for a second. I brought something that might help.”
Over the next several minutes, Beth focused on restoring hope to the siblings. She took them out to her truck and showed them the saddle’s silver.
“You can remove it from the leather,” she explained. “Sell it for cash. I’m sure there’s enough here to cover whatever Marigold needs.” It took some effort, but she eventually coaxed them into accepting the gift for Marigold’s sake. Then Beth called the Blazing B’s own vet and asked his phone service to rouse him from his sleep. While the threesome waited for Dr. O’Connor’s return call, she sang his praises. By the time he agreed to come out in spite of the hour, Phil and Fiona had regained some of their optimism.
“We thought of the perfect way to thank you,” Fiona said as Beth closed her cell phone. There was excitement in the light touch she placed on Beth’s arm. “Wait here. It’ll just take a few minutes.”
“You don’t need to do anything. Really.”
“We do, we do. Give us five.”
Five minutes was nothing to ask. The vet wouldn’t arrive for forty-five at least.
Beth opened the tailgate and sat under the bright moon while she waited. Phil had carried the silver-clad saddle back through the stables to his own truck on the other side, and already she was having second thoughts about whether offering that up had been the right thing to do. She was disappointed in herself for not bringing it up to Jacob. And she could think of a dozen things that silver might have paid for at her very own ranch. Why hadn’t she considered any of them in the hour between Phil’s concerned phone call and her brilliant idea to foot Marigold’s bill?
Because her idea had been inspired. Two hours ago she had no doubt that it was exactly what she ought to do. Beth sent her memory in search of that certainty so that she could hold on to it more firmly this time.
“It’s not your right to do it,” Jacob said, loud and close, and Beth jerked out of her reverie, expecting to see him standing beside the truck. Instead she found Fiona. The girl seized Beth’s wrist and yanked her right off the tailgate, then tugged her back into the bright stables.
Phil was grinning at her, standing in the alley next to the tallest, glossiest, most beautiful Thoroughbred horse Beth had ever seen. She felt her lips form an O as admiration filled her next breath.
“What d’ya think?” he said.
Beth’s sigh was awed and contented at the same time. “He’s amazing,” she breathed.
“Beth, meet Java Java Go Joe. Joe, meet Beth.”
The horse’s name was appropriate, considering the sheen of his coat, an oily dark-roasted coffee bean. The stud’s track record at the races and in siring winners had lived up to the moniker too.
“Your reputation precedes you, sire,” Beth said. The stallion before her, the Kandinskys’ guest, was more than seventeen hands high and glistening, majestic. His lean legs made up most of the size difference between him and the ranch horses. Her father’s geldings, including Hastings, averaged fourteen to fifteen hands. Those sturdy beasts saved many a cowboy’s head while driving cattle through the forested mountains, where low-hanging tree limbs could steal hats and dent foreheads.
Her father objected to Thoroughbreds on the ranch. “They’re too tall, too fast, and they don’t have good cow sense,” he always said. Beth knew a couple of ranchers who didn’t seem to mind these shortcomings in their own horses, but her father was immovable.
It took Beth a long time to notice that Joe was saddled and ready to ride.
“No,” her mouth said, while her heart cried yes.
Phil gestured to the blocks at Joe’s side. “A small gesture of our appreciation,” he said.
Beth stroked the animal’s neck, and his muscles flickered under the skin. He seemed peaceful, easygoing, as if getting dressed out at this hour were an everyday thing.
“I shouldn’t. I can’t.”
“Sure you can,” Phil said.
“He’s not even Mr. Kandinsky’s.”
“He’s still family.”
Beth shook her head. “It’s wrong.”
“What’s wrong with giving a champion like him any excuse to relive the glory days? He’s retired, you know. He resents that they only love him for his stud fees anymore. He told me so. But I said you’d love him for all the right reasons.”
Beth laughed and found herself standing on the blocks.
“I guessed at your stirrup length,” he said.
“Then we should see how good at guesswork you are,” she said, and she was astride Joe’s strong back before she could decide not to be. Her adrenaline kicked in. Beth felt him shift, evaluating her size and weight. She inserted her feet in the stirrups. Phil’s estimate was perfect.
“Ten minutes,” Phil urged. “No harm, no foul. In the three days he’s been here he’s blazed a trail all his own around the center pasture. Let him show you around. I guarantee you’ve never been on anything like him.”
“I’ve never been thanked for terrible news quite like this before.”
“It’s not for that. It’s for the saddle. Duh,” Fiona said kindly.
On her perch, Beth towered over the pair. Taking the horse out to the pasture at this hour was a risky and maybe even stupid idea. And yet their upturned faces held so much expectancy. It seemed wrong to deny them. And she had often dreamed of riding a horse like this.
“He’s not too old to have forgotten his top speeds, is he?”
“You’re a good rider,” Phil said, “but you’ll be better off if he’s forgotten at least a little bit.”
“Are you saying he’s too much horse for me?”
“Did I say that? I didn’t say that.” He whispered to Joe, “Go easy on her, old man.”
The horse snorted as if even Phil didn’t have the inside track on whatever joke he planned to pull.
“Here.” Phil handed her a helmet.
“I don’t need one of those for a little canter.”
“Yeah yeah. I know how these things start.”
She snatched up the helmet and strapped it under her chin.
“I hope you don’t lose your job over this,” she whispered to him so Fiona wouldn’t hear.
“I won’t. This is you: Princess Borzoi, Her Majesty the animal whisperer. I’m not worried about a thing. Let Joe lead the way.”
That would be the easiest thing she’d done all night. Her understanding of an animal’s spirit was what would make her a great veterinarian some day, her father often said to her. She could sense, in the light dance of Joe’s feet as she leaned forward in the saddle, that the creature was happy to go for a ride this evening. She could sense, in the patient way he waited for her to attend to the details, that he was pleased to share the adventure.
With a gentle heel, she nudged Joe toward the fresh air. He needed no other prompt. They passed through the wide doors and then navigated a few gates, and Joe told her with his confident stride that his heart would be a reliable compass on this sky-lit night.
In the Thoroughbreds, God had married strength and grace and created a magnificent breed that few people could appreciate firsthand. Let’s go for a ride. Beth closed her eyes. There was little for her to see, and her efforts to guide the horse might lead him into dangers worse than mere shadows cast by the moon.
She did as Phil suggested, gave Joe the reins, and trusted the animal’s instincts. In seconds his walk shifted to a trot and then to a canter, and then to a gallop as pleasant as a swiftly flowing creek. Joe was an eagle born to glide above water. The surface of the pastures fell away. She leaned into the horse’s neck and tucked her head and couldn’t remember any sensation as wild and reckless as this.
If she gave in to her urge to grin, the bugs would hit her teeth. The thought of it, the sheer joy of this rush, brought a laugh out of her throat, and then a gasp that invited some witless insect to ride the stiff air straight back down.
The shock jolted her eyes open. Phil should have given her goggles and a mask along with the helmet, she thought. But Joe took no note of her comic sputtering, and after recovering from her coughing fit, she laughed some more. His neck stretched out and so did his stride. Together they picked up speed.
I’ll love you always, Hastings, she thought, but you’re an old British butler compared to this rock star.
She wondered how much faster than this Joe had gone in his youth, on a refined racetrack, with the jockey he trusted most. Next on her list of dreams would be to find someone who might make that experience a reality. Maybe she could arrange some kind of reality-TV career swap with a jockey for a week, or however that worked.
She envisioned a short jockey in all his pink and yellow silks, up to his armpit in the backside of a cow, testing by hand as was traditionally done to see if the bovine was pregnant or open. The image buoyed her good mood.
The horse had reached a pace that Beth understood was beyond her ability to contain. Joe was in charge of her fate now. A flicker of fear passed over her but then flew away from her mind like a rooftop in a high wind. She surrendered to Joe’s confidence, and to the thrill of being out of control.
But Joe’s mood shifted.
Beth noticed it first in a sudden deviation from his course, a quick and not-so-graceful dig into the earth that thrust his weight off center. The angle of his ears changed as he moved off the perimeter of the fence; they stood erect now and resisted the rushing air. And though Beth hadn’t thought it possible on this unrefined terrain, the Thoroughbred accelerated, fueled by an energy that came off his back like fear.
The muscles on the inside of her thighs began to burn as she held her weight off the saddle. She took back the reins, but Joe did not respond to them. Her fingers, entwined in the leather, found the saddle horn. Her eyes, squinting and dry and unexpectedly disoriented, looked for the light of the stables. She thought they might be behind her.
Joe changed course again, zigging to the previous zag. Beth slipped an inch before she recovered her center.
“Whoa,” she instructed. She didn’t share his fear yet. He might respond to her steady calm. “Settle down, boy.”
She attuned her own ears to the surroundings, trying to get a clue for what had upset Joe. Excitement no longer energized the horse. It was replaced by panic, frantic and panting. Beth couldn’t imagine what, on this secure and sheltered land, would be so terrifying. She uttered the soothing tongue clicks and hums that Hastings liked. The sounds were trampled by the pummeling of hooves tearing up the ground, thumping like helicopter blades. Wind whistling over her ears.
A ghost-gray form floated into the periphery of Beth’s vision. She glanced twice, and then a third time. The hulking spirit hovered just above the ground, gliding with a swift and otherworldly intention toward Joe’s flank.
That rooftop of fear crashed back down on Beth’s mind, knocking the breath out of her. She felt Joe’s terror as if it were her own. His foaming sweat flew off his neck and spattered her arms, and into the vacancy of her imagination rushed Wally’s wolf.
It can’t be a wolf, she told herself.
Whatever it was dashed behind Joe, there and gone like the memory of a dream.
She tried to twist in the saddle, wanting to see what it really was and where it was going, but the power of the horse’s speed forced her to stay forward, low above the Thoroughbred’s back. All she could do was hold on, with weakening thighs and floppy ankles and fingers soft as cooked spaghetti.
Joe’s desperate footwork jerked Beth awry again. Clods of dirt were flying up from behind his hooves, smacking her in the back.
Then the ghost she had lost sight of snarled, and the noise pierced all the other sounds bouncing around her ears. This sound, this primal shriek, declared that this wild dog was neither a phantom nor a fiction dreamed up by a Blazing B associate. It was physical, and it was robust, and it had performed the astonishing feat of predicting how the horse would move to evade the hunt.
The wolf had overtaken them and now came from the front, head-on. It was lunging for Joe’s neck, taking an impossible leap.
The wolf’s weight struck her in the face. One second Joe was solid under Beth and the next she was plunging, gasping, choking on a mouthful of fur. The leather rein caught hold of her wrist and snapped taut, shocked by the weight of her falling body as she left Joe’s back. She felt the joints in her arm and wrist popping as her insignificant mass yanked against Joe’s, which was a bullet train moving in the opposite direction.
She stayed connected to him by that stubborn strap. And the wild animal stayed connected to her, its claws curled into her collarbone.
Beth and beast hit the ground and bounced. She heard rocks connecting with the helmet Phil had insisted she wear. Her body flipped over onto the dog as they rolled, her distended arm still tangled in the reins, and then the animal emerged on top, teeth snapping so close to her face.
Joe might have dragged her to her death if the sudden impact hadn’t jerked his neck sideways and led his hooves into a terrible misstep.
His mountainous body toppled inches from hers, but by now she was deafened by firecrackers in her skull, and she didn’t hear Joe’s collapse. Instead she felt the vibrations of his fall, and his heaving body pulsed atop her forearm, the one roped and pinned under Joe’s shoulder like a calf tossed by a cowboy.
Beth’s mind piled up sandbags against the rising flood of pain. She couldn’t move.
She expected the wolf to tear into her, to finish her off. And it was a wolf. The weight, the coat, the claws—it could be nothing else. It stood on her chest, its padded feet the size of her own hands, but the animal didn’t rip into her jugular or try to dig out her heart, if that was normal wolf behavior. Beth had no point of reference. If she’d been asked before this moment, she would have said no wolf could unseat a rider from a fully extended horse.
His concentrated weight bore down on her ribs so that she couldn’t take a full breath. Beth prayed. God have mercy.
The beasty breath, full of heat and moisture and the scent of blood, caressed her chin and floated over her lips and rose through her nose into the panic centers of her mind.
She heard a voice within her ringing head say, I will show you mercy.
She decided the voice belonged to God.
She thought it would be a mercy to die.