Desert Rose

by Victoria Hardesty

  She went to her room when they got home and did just that. The phone rang four times and went to an answering machine. She left a detailed message on the machine and waited for someone to call her back. When she didn’t get a call that night, she tried the next morning again. She called several times a day for several days with no return phone call from the Hacienda Rancho.

  Maryann thought about the mystery. She knew from Brody that Mr. Garcia had taken all his horses home from Hartley Ranch and he loved his Cutter. He wouldn’t sell him. Becky got no answer at the Garcia home in San Juan Capistrano. She was getting no answer to the phone in Apple Valley. There should be some other horses in Apple Valley at the Hacienda Rancho. Brody said there were caretakers at the ranch. He knew them because they had worked for his Uncle Mike in the past and Uncle Mike recommended them to Mr. Garcia for his ranch. Someone should be there to answer the phone or return phone calls. She began to worry.

  If the Garcias were not around, the caretakers should be there to care for the horses. Something was very wrong. She felt it and it made her feel a little sick. She asked her grandfather to take a walk with her after dinner so she could talk with him about it. She explained the whole thing to him from the beginning. Neither she nor Becky could reach anyone at either the Garcia home or ranch. She had good reason to believe there were horses at the ranch. She had a very bad feeling about this.

  “Grandpa, would you please drive me to the Apple Valley ranch tomorrow morning? I have an awful feeling there may be horses there with no one to care for them. I need to see that they are okay. Would you mind?” she pleaded.

  “If what you say is all true, I agree it’s something we should look into,” he told her. “Let’s go tack shopping in the morning as far as anyone else is concerned. That way, if all is well at the ranch, we’ll come home and not have to say anything about it. There may be an explanation you haven’t thought of.”

  “Thank you, Grandpa,” she hugged him and kissed him on the cheek.

  CHAPTER | TEN

  John finally heard a distinctive click from Rhonda’s handcuff. He pried the cuff open. She was free! Tears formed in her eyes again and she rubbed her wrist with the other hand. Then they heard noises coming from the other part of the house. It sounded like someone was walking down the hallway toward the bedroom. She slipped the cuff back on and clipped it together. They didn’t want the men to find them trying to escape. The disappointment nearly crushed her.

  John did his best to comfort her. “If we did it once, we can do it again. Let’s try again when they settle down out there.” Rhonda just nodded her head in defeat. “I got it once, and I think I can remember what pressure I applied where. Once we get you free again, I’ll tell you how to manipulate the hairpin to get me loose too. You will have two hands to work with. Then we can get the heck out of this dump!” He smiled at her. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Rhonda wondered if they really would be able to get John free. He’d already tried the headboard of the bed. It was a cast iron headboard, and there was no weakness he could find. There was a large finial at the top that prevented the cuff from slipping over the top. The side rails were attached to the headboard below the mattress. They couldn’t slip the cuff down to the bottom. The headboard was too heavy for them to lift anyway. They’d never get the cuff off the bottom of the post either.

  The problem was the four men didn’t “settle down out there” until long after dark. There had been little light in the room at night since they’d gotten there. But the moon was rising to full. For a little while, it shined directly into the bedroom window. The window was filthy, but the light helped the couple as they struggled with the only hairpin they had. John was able to release the handcuff on Rhonda’s wrist. He helped her work on his handcuff. About midnight, as far as they could tell, they heard that final victorious click. He was free also!

  They heard the floor squeak every time one of the men came into the room. There were some spots in the flooring that squeaked more than others. John paid attention and managed to avoid the noisiest places on the floor as he crept toward the window on the side wall. The window frame was an old aluminum frame and very difficult to move. He struggled for quite a while before finally getting the window open an inch at a time without making noise. He threw one leg over the lower frame and pulled his other leg out the window so he was sitting on the bottom of the window frame. The moonlight helped. There was nothing below the window. He made his leap of faith and pushed himself out, landing squarely on his feet.

  The minute he was outside the mobile home, Rhonda pulled herself into a seated position on the bottom of the window frame. John held his arms up toward her and whispered, “Go ahead and jump. I’ll catch you.” Rhonda jumped. John steadied her to her feet.

  “Now what are we going to do?” she asked him.

  “There’s a small travel trailer hooked to another truck over there,” he said pointing to the opposite side of the mobile home. “Must be where they usually stay. Maybe there’s something in there we can use or maybe we can find the keys to one of these trucks.”

  The couple quietly walked to the travel trailer and found it locked. They did find a few full bottles of fresh water in the bed of the truck, which was also locked. They stuffed their pockets with as many bottles of water as they could carry and headed into the desert, giving thanks for a full moon that night. They didn’t have much time. It would be first light in a few hours. They needed to be far away from here before then.

  CHAPTER | ELEVEN

  Maryann was up early the next morning. Her sense of urgency about the horses at Hacienda Rancho grew by the minute. She played with her breakfast, showered and got into her clothes and sat in her room waiting for her grandfather. She didn’t want to say anything to her mother in case she was wrong. She was out of her room and down the hall toward the front door the minute she heard her grandfather’s Jeep in the driveway.

  “Grandpa is taking me shopping,” she told her mother. “I need a new girth for Quesa. The one we’ve been using is getting dirty. The spots aren’t coming off. I think I have to retire it for everyday use. I need a new one for show.”

  Rose kissed her daughter on the forehead. “Okay, but give me a call if you’re not going to make it back in time for lunch, will you?”

  “Sure, Mom. See you later,” Maryann said as she was rushing out the door.

  Maryann got into her grandfather’s Jeep and showed him the directions she’d printed out the previous evening. The Hacienda Rancho was way out in the desert with nothing around it for a couple of miles. Most of the way was on pavement, but they had to make the last mile or so on a well-maintained dirt road.

  Rosie saw the Jeep coming down the dirt road. It was the first vehicle they’d seen on the road since that awful night they were abandoned. She watched, begging the car to stop at this property. If she’d had fingers on her feet, she would have crossed them on all four feet.

  As soon as they saw the beautiful fencing along the front of the property and the gracious Spanish style Hacienda, she said, “This has to be it!” Her grandfather pulled up to the closed driveway gate. There was one truck in the driveway. No one seemed to be around on the property, at least not that they could see. Maryann led the way through the walk-in gate and knocked at the front door of the hacienda. There was no answer at the door. She and grandpa walked around the house toward the barn. They saw from a distance that one stall door was open. Maryann noticed the large turnout around behind the barn and walked over toward it.

  Rosie watched the girl walking toward the paddock fence. At last! Someone did come! She whinnied as loud as she could, then stood and shook the dust of the desert off her coat. She didn’t have the strength to gallop, but she began to trot toward the fence as fast as she was able to.

  Maryann was stunned at what she saw. There were five horses in the paddock, two of which were laying on the ground, not moving. The ones on their feet looked awful. Their ribs were showing, and their spines
were showing. Their hip bones were showing as well. All of them had their heads hanging except the chestnut mare trotting toward her. The others showed no interest in the visitors.

  Grandpa followed Maryann but stopped short when he noticed the door to the caretaker’s cottage was standing open. He saw a shotgun or rifle of some type standing against the door frame outside the cottage. It looked like two cell phones were sitting on the table on the patio in front of the cottage as well. Lights were on inside the cottage. His red flag went up when he thought about those items, the open stall door in the barn and the single vehicle sitting in the driveway.

  “Maryann, we need to call the sheriff. I think something is wrong here,” Grandpa said to her.

  “Grandpa, there’s absolutely something wrong here. Look at the horses! They look like they are dying. They need help bad, and they need it now. Can we call Uncle Mike and Aunt Ginny?”

  “Yes, you call Mike and Ginny now and have them bring a horse trailer. I’m going to call the sheriff’s office. Don’t touch anything except the water hose and the hay. You’d better get those poor horses something to eat.”

  Maryann called Hartley Ranch and reached Aunt Ginny. In a rush, she explained what was going on at the Hacienda Rancho. “Please Aunt Ginny, can you and Uncle Mike bring your large horse trailer here as soon as possible. There are five horses here in really bad shape. I don’t know how long they’ve gone without food. I haven’t checked their water yet but I will the minute I hang up the phone. We’re waiting for the sheriff to show up here too. Something bad happened here. We’ve got to save these horses!”

  Ginny ran out back to the paddock where Mike was working one of his reiners. She yelled at him. He rode over to the fence. She explained the call from Maryann. Mike climbed off his horse and handed the horse to one of his guys to put away. He rushed to get their large horse trailer hooked to their truck. Ginny jumped into the passenger side. They were off in a cloud of dust heading for Apple Valley as quickly as possible.

  Mike and Ginny arrived at the Hacienda Rancho minutes before the sheriff arrived. Ginny went with Maryann to the large paddock to see the horses in question. She was sickened by what she saw. The horses all needed help quickly. In the heat, they had gone without food for more than a week at least by her estimate, and they were all showing signs of starvation. Ginny suggested Maryann give each horse a quarter of a flake of hay for now. She pulled out her cell phone and talked to her vet. He would meet them at Hartley Ranch within two and a half hours. She helped Maryann fill water buckets with fresh water which the five horses drank eagerly. The two who were laying down when Maryann arrived got to their feet and slowly walked to the fence for fresh water. Maryann carefully doled out the hay as Ginny suggested while Ginny climbed over the rail and began checking each horse over gently. The only thing she found on any of them were rub marks where they’d rubbed the hair off hocks and hip bone areas because they’d been laying down a lot in the past several days.

  Mike and Grandpa talked with the deputy sheriff when he arrived. They showed him what caused their concern, the open door of the caretaker’s cottage, the shotgun leaning against the door on the outside, the cell phones and the truck in the driveway. Mike explained, “I know John and Rhonda very well. They worked for me. They are excellent horsemen and extremely reliable people. I was the one who recommended them for the caretaker position here. The owner is Esteban Garcia, a client, and a friend of ours. The one thing I need to bring up is one horse is missing. The horse that should have been in that open barn stall is Mr. Garcia’s prize stallion. That horse is worth a half a million dollars at least.”

  The deputy sheriff’s eyebrows raised at that comment. “Maybe that’s what happened here. Maybe somebody came in to steal the horse, and the caretakers got in the way. You didn’t see any signs of a struggle when you got here did you?”

  Grandpa Carnegie looked at him, “We didn’t see any blood if that’s what you mean. If we’d seen that, we would never have come on the property. We’d have called you first. We didn’t notice anything at first. The walk-in gate was closed. We came in through that and knocked at the main house. When we didn’t get an answer, we came around back here looking for anyone on the property. We didn’t see anyone. My granddaughter did see that the horses out back are not in good shape. They look starved like they’ve been without food for some time. That’s when I noticed the open door, the gun, and cell phones and decided it was best to call you.”

  “Did you enter the cottage or touch the gun or the phones?” the deputy asked.

  “No, as soon as I put two and two together, we stayed away so we wouldn’t contaminate anything for you and your people,” Grandpa Carnegie said. “Can we ask for your permission to remove the remaining five horses and get them the help they need?”

  “I need to call this in first. We should get a crime scene investigator out here. I’ll ask my watch commander about the horses. We don’t have facilities to take them to. If you two will give me your information, I can pass it on and suggest you are probably the best place for them right now. Mike, I know you by reputation, and my daughter has been bugging me to let her take lessons from your wife. We’ll be seeing you at your ranch soon anyway.”

  The deputy walked back to his patrol car and called his watch commander. He talked for a few minutes then walked back to where Mike and Grandpa Carnegie were waiting. He jotted down their names, phone numbers, and addresses for his records. “My watch commander said you could take the horses back to your ranch. Here’s my card. Please let me know how they do and if you can get an estimate of how long they’ve been without food from your vet. It will help us figure out when the caretakers disappeared from here,” he told the men. “I’ve got to wait here. He’s sending out some people to go over the crime scene. Thank goodness I don’t think there’s been a murder here. With the door open in this heat, we’d have known that right away from the smell.”

  Mike, Ginny, Maryann, and Grandpa began walking the horses out to the trailer for the ride to Hartley Ranch. Maryann recognized Rosie immediately from Brody’s description – Chestnut, beautiful blaze wide above the eyes tapering to the nose and four white socks. She was the first horse at the fence when they got there. Maryann walked her to the trailer herself and talked to her as they walked, “Rosie, you’re going to be okay. We’re taking you back to the ranch where you were born so we can help you.” Desert Rose was numb with relief. Her blind faith had worked. Someone did come for them! She knew Uncle Mike and Aunt Ginny. She was going to be okay, and so were the others, including her mother. She didn’t want to admit she was on the verge of truly giving up when Maryann and her grandfather arrived. Would her Brody be there when they got back to the ranch? Would he remember her? She was anxious to find out.

  CHAPTER | TWELVE

  John led Rhonda away from the mobile home for about a quarter of a mile before he felt it would be safe for them to talk louder than a whisper. He took stock of their situation as they walked. Rhonda had been a vet tech for a small animal hospital a few years ago. She liked the scrubs they wore to work and kept them. She usually wore them to bed at night. This night she was wearing a pair of light cotton scrub pants with a drawstring waist. She’d filled the pockets with water bottles from the truck bed at the camp and tightened the string at her waist so the pants didn’t pull off. Her top was a light cotton short-sleeved pullover covered with adorable little animals. It had pockets too that she stuffed with water bottles. She had a pair of thin rubber-soled slippers on her feet. He wore his usual cotton pajama bottoms. He pulled on a cotton tee shirt before opening the door that night. He also stuffed his pockets with water bottles, and he’d tightened the drawstring on his pajama bottoms to keep them up. He wore soft-soled moccasin-style slippers.

  The clothes they wore would give them almost no protection from anything. They were light, and that helped in the relative cool of the evening. Their feet were little better than bare. They carried as much water as they could. They ha
d no weapon, no food, and no way to protect themselves from the heat of the sun tomorrow. He picked up a long stick he found hoping it would be enough to scare off any critter that decided they might make a meal or a tasty snack. He realized they would have to find their way to a town or a road or highway before the next day was full on them. He hoped to find a highway with some traffic on it. He fervently hoped they could flag down a traveler on the highway that would take them to the nearest town. He’d never hitch-hiked in his life but had passed by many of them before. Could he get someone to stop for them? Maybe someone would take pity on them because his wife was with him and he wasn’t just a single male on the road.

  He stood on a small rise in the ground and peered into the darkness in all directions. He hoped to see a slight glimmer of light close to the ground that could give away the location of a town with streetlights on during the night hours. He listened in the still night hoping to hear the sound of wheels on pavement. He was disappointed. He neither saw a glow at the horizon nor heard anything but the whisper of a breeze through the low desert scrub and the yips of a coyote family. He picked a direction and held his wife’s hand as they began walking.

  Before long they came to another rise in the ground. John talked to Rhonda about making herself as small as possible and creeping as low to the ground as she could. “If they find us missing, they will probably start looking for us. We need to stay low in the high spots so we don’t make a perfect profile for them to find.”

  He and Rhonda squatted close to the ground and nearly crawled over the rise. They didn’t stand up again until they were below the highest spot. Rhonda tore the knee of her scrub pants on a rock when she stumbled. She didn’t feel blood. She did her best to ignore the stinging of her knee.