The Clincher

by Lisa Preston

  So I wasn’t impressed with him, but his looking like a genuine stud-quarterback and having a naked left ring finger, no bird band so to speak, meant a few gals in town were sniffing around as soon as he showed up. Cherry herself was likely a breeze shy of spreading her legs in front of New Vet the first time he stepped across the sidewalk last spring. He smacked of poster boy appeal and she’d gone panting over to see if she could be an assistant or some such at the clinic. She was still waiting around on that score, but I don’t know about any other scoring that might have gone on.

  When my daddy visited, he chanced to meet Nichol at the Cascade Kitchen. Well, of course daddy thought the new vet was a better act than most men. He figured being a vet is close enough to a doctor and he’s of the ilk that would like his daughter to marry such a man and make a family. Thrilled, my daddy isn’t, that I’m a horseshoer living in sin with a cook and he will never see a grandchild.

  I think it was a wise person who once said there’s men who are studying up to be a horse’s butt and those who are naturally gifted and kind of oversee others along to help them become hind ends of humanity. And I don’t mean any disrespect to my daddy but maybe he was both kinds—a horse’s butt and a teacher on how to be one.

  I say butt because it isn’t ladylike to say ass. What and all with me promising myself I’d Turn Over a New Leaf and I try not to talk like a sailor or a trucker or an otherwise trash-talker. I’ve also become regular as can be about things like birthday cards, Christmas cards, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Guy did a Valentine’s Day card some months back and that was one I hadn’t thought about. The chocolate mousse he made was incredible. It truly melted on the tongue and tasted of strong coffee at the same time. We ate it out back, where he’s got a picnic table that gets the southern sun. I could picture us there as I rode in through the back field and past the bench again.

  Guy didn’t build that picnic spot, of course. It came with the place, like the woodshed and a dog house he calls the future poultry palace. He’s not a man without plans, just a man without the kind of plans I’m used to.

  That little poultry house hatched an idea in Guy’s food-obsessed brain. He’s got the sterling notion of getting some goslings. I like a Christmas goose as well as the next person, but Guy can’t do something normal, no. He wanted to raise them up, then overfeed them corn mush for a couple weeks and then butcher them for their livers. I ask for mercy here, their livers. Just get your goose cooked and call it good, right? Why all the fuss of force-feeding and digging out some trendy organ?

  And then he came to admit he’s not going to be overfeeding or butchering anything, he’s too sentimental.

  Doesn’t have tools, couldn’t use them if he did. Can’t kill a bird and he’s a cook for a living. And he says he’s stuck on me, a gal he doesn’t really know, who’s just barely making it as a horseshoer.

  Red’s fine for letting me open and close gates off his back. I rode into the pasture, then stowed the mecate reins in Ol’ Blue’s cab. I need horse-handling gear in my truck for just in case. Some clients can’t seem to rustle up so much as a lead rope in a pinch.

  No sign of Guy outside or in. So much for a slow morning together. I wondered where he skedaddled to.

  His scooter was gone all right and there was a note for me on the kitchen counter, wishing me a nice “horseback” ride. Wherever he’d got off to, he wouldn’t have taken my truck even if it was raining. It’s mine. He understands Ol’ Blue’s my living. He doesn’t have keys to my truck. Besides, he’d never drive it ’cause he can’t drive a stick.

  I know, I know, what kind of guy can’t drive a stick shift?

  * * *

  “Ms. Dale?”

  I was glad I hadn’t gotten to the phone in time, ’cause I hate it when people call and don’t have the manners to use the phone properly. It’d be like knocking on someone’s door and asking the person inside for her name before telling who you are. Callers should say who they are, that’s my view. And this man on the phone was having to say it to the air, because I wasn’t moved to lift the phone from its cradle. Guess I’m not a big lifter-from-the-cradle type.

  “Ms. Dale? Are you there? This is the sheriff’s department.”

  Now, I doubt it was the actual sheriff’s department. A government entity can hardly dial a phone. Maybe it was a dude who worked for the sheriff’s department though, I’ll give him that.

  “Ms. Dale?” the deputy said again.

  I made out the condolence card to Mr. Harper and drank two glasses of water. The sheriff’s department didn’t say anything else, just hung up.

  Chapter 8

  THE PHONE RANG AGAIN ALMOST RIGHT away. I grabbed it to shut up the ringing but right away wished I hadn’t, in case it was the police again. I got a lot more comfortable when it turned out to be Owen Weatherby, who’d never been a client, but needed a shoer pronto. Said his roping horse had overreached and her shoe was hanging off. She was locked in her stall now and he wanted to use the horse tonight.

  “We usually use Talbot, Dixon Talbot,” Weatherby said.

  Talbot’s a shoer from way back in these parts. We’d about bumped chests in the co-op feed store once. He saw my cards posted on the bulletin board and felt called upon to comment on my inexperience to both the clerk and to some stranger buying chicken scratch. I’d let him know who I was. He let on he’d been shoeing since before I was born and I’d itched to ask when he was going to get any good at it. Anyways, Dixon Talbot hadn’t been available on short notice, so the new girl got the Weatherby job. This is a good reason to not schedule all mornings too heavy—leaves time for emergency calls.

  In twenty minutes, I pulled Ol’ Blue into Weatherby’s place, the Rocking B. I’ve heard he inherited it from his grand-daddy and he’s nigh grand-daddy-aged himself. He’s The Man for selling great old-style stock Quarter Horses in Butte County, and his old stud was the go-to around here for breeding until Patsy-Lynn started marketing Spartacus. Foundation types really don’t usually make great cutters and reiners. There’s a line in the arena sand between them and true old-style workers. As a breeder, Weatherby doesn’t cross the line, just selects dams carefully and makes good matches for his stud.

  Weatherby’s not a real cattleman, though. His steers are just for working horses on. His big outdoor arena is all set up with pipe chutes and pens at both ends. Every cowhorse challenge in the west end of the county gets done at the Rocking B, has for eighty years.

  Soon as I eyed the ground where I’d be working, I started hauling my gear. Anvil stand first, then anvil. Tool box. Swing out my beater forge and put on my shoeing chaps.

  Owen Weatherby eyed me with a heaping helping of something like disdain. His lower lip was pooched out over a load of chewing tobacco. There’d be a lot of spitting in my morning. “Dixon Talbot generally does the shoeing here.”

  “Heard that,” I said, because it was true and because I reckon Talbot’s lamed a few around here, so who needed this conversation?

  The clip-clop of hooves demanded my attention. A shoer like me listens to the stride before the horse is out of the barn and in view.

  “She scheduled sometime soon?” I asked, as soon as his barn boy brought the mare up. I hoped her feet weren’t overgrown because he was cheap. I hate that.

  Weatherby cleared his throat hard, brought a hand over his mouth as he looked away, talking on about everything but the business at hand, embarrassing as it was. He talked about his old stallion, people wanting more substance and falling for pretty muscles instead of working stock studhorses. He talked about his great dog and his operation in general. Then he fessed up.

  “Well, she’s overdue. We had to reschedule a couple times. Guess that’s part of why she was able to pull this shoe half off.” He pointed to her right front where old clinches had yanked off part of her hoof wall when she’d pinned her front heel with a hind toe.

  “It doesn’t look pretty,” I said, instead of going after him about her feet being ov
er-long and how he should have known better. “I’ll have this foot right to run in no time.” I patted her neck and brought her hoof between my knees as I doubled over beside her belly.

  The shoes on her other three feet were thin. Something should happen and I wondered if it might. The wind picked up, blowing in from somewhere chilly. The work helped warm me.

  Before I was done driving the first nail on the repair hoof, it happened.

  Owen Weatherby cleared his throat again. “You might as well give her a full shoeing.”

  “Yep.” And I kept working.

  But it was brisk, what with the wind and her being a little wet—mud in the pastures had helped unbalance her and let her rip that one shoe part way off in the first place. The sun hid behind clouds and we were in the shade of his barn’s north side anyways.

  Weatherby turned up his coat collar with gloved hands. I huffed warm breath hard onto my icy fingertips. I can’t use full gloves while shoeing because I need to feel and hold nails. A horseshoe nail only works—makes the right curve as it’s hammered—when the correct side of the nail is oriented to the correct side of the shoe. I’ve got to slide a finger along the side of the nail head. One side is flat, with smooth metal. The other side is shaped and has hash marks so shoers know where the angled side of the nail’s point is. When I feel the hash marks, my finger knows where the bevel is and I put that side in, toward the horse’s frog. That fine detail’s why I can only wear fingerless gloves. Gotta get me some.

  The barn phone rang and made the horse flinch. She yanked her foot to her belly and I swiveled my grip to her toe. Bending my wrist to avoid the wrung-off nail ends burring out, I guided her foot out a little so she didn’t slice the inside of her other leg with ragged metal.

  If there was a god of horse shoeing, the world would be a peaceful place during nailing. I’m not asking that horses never sway or jump or fuss at any time, just during nailing when it’s dangerous for me and the horse. I’ve never let a horse get hurt and I’ll hate the day when one I’m working on rips a nail through his belly or opposite leg. Or through me.

  This is the moment when clients should pay attention to me and the horse. Pretty please? It takes me fifty-five minutes or more—sometimes much more—to shoe and all I want is careful attention just four times for six or eight nails per hoof, tops. A couple minutes per hoof. But no, deathly important phone calls and such.

  “Yeah, Felix, sure. I got some I could loan you. I can be over in a little bit.” Weatherby listened, muttering and mm-hmming. This fascinating conversation left him flipping the end of the lead rope in a little circle meant to occupy his hand that wasn’t holding the phone. But it also boggled the Quarter Horse’s tiny mind. Her eyes and ears were in alert mode as she stared.

  “Got the shoer out right now,” Weatherby said. “No, the new girl.”

  Been here a year, but I’ll always be the New Girl to the folks who are living on their dead folks’ land.

  I got the mare’s foot positioned on my hoof stand, rasped the nail burrs smooth, and set to doing the clinches.

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s a girl. Doing the footsie.”

  Footsie. ’Cause I’m a girl, the hoof’s a footsie?

  He snorted. “Yeah, good worker. Oh, I don’t know, I’ll ask.”

  That was my cue to look up but, for mercy’s sake, I was busy. Didn’t I look busy? The pause went on while I worked instead of making eye contact with my client.

  Finally, Weatherby spoke directly to me. “You shoe reiners, right? Got sliding plates?”

  I nodded, doing my final rasping on that foot. Weatherby went back to the phone. I was about done paring her other front hoof by the time he hung up and said there was a job waiting for me twenty miles away.

  Huh. So all the sudden, arrogant horse owners realize they’re going nowhere without a shoer and I’m hot property.

  Work’s what I need, so as soon as I had the last footsie done on Weatherby’s mare, I told him I’d help his friend out. Weatherby even wrote down the number for me, which I took as a sign that this other fellow might become a repeat client. I mean, he could have just dialed it up and handed over the phone, but he put pen to paper and gave me a little yellow note. And he smiled.

  “You want to carry some bute over to him for me? Since you’re headed there anyway and I’ve promised it to him.” Weatherby turned to get the horse drug without waiting for my response.

  I’d have thought running bute to a buddy would be a good job for him or his barn-help. Being in the middle of clients passing phenylbutazone back and forth is not a good place for me. Bute is basically horse aspirin, but I didn’t really know Weatherby or the other guy, and I didn’t know if either was the sort who would short the other and try to blame me. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but I just didn’t know. I wanted to say “no” but he’d just gotten me another job and so, well, heckfire.

  Weatherby brought out a big baggie with two kinds of bute—tablets and a few fat syringes of paste—from his feed room. He handed the baggie to me, saying, “The owner’s name is Felix Schram. You’ll be fine there.”

  Of course I’d be fine. I can take care of myself.

  Chapter 9

  FELIX SCHRAM’S BARN WAS A GOOD little drive away for me and Ol’ Blue. This is where shoers take a beating, in their vehicles. Mileage, fuel.

  Schram had nice fencing, plenty of land, and lots and lots of horses. Another Quarter Horse man. Well, Cowdry still raises more’n its share of beef and rodeo’s a high school sport.

  Schram’s horses could silhouette for Red and my horse was a Texas-born boy. There are horses in Texas and those out of Texas. It’s the same with men and maybe everything else. Some of these hardcore working horses will cut a cow from the herd just for the need to work, moving loose livestock when the horse is pastured with cattle. Worrying livestock like that is naughty, but it’s also just plain admirable in spirit when a cowhorse or working dog like my Charley does it. It’s beautiful.

  Schram’s shoeing candidate was handsome, an old hero who’d had everything roped off his back and was making a hand as a power reiner now, even though he was in his late teens. A god, a horse like this is. But his metal was just too thin all around. And his owner was the kind of good old boy with a gut hanging way past his belt buckle, tipping it over. You’d think a fellow would notice when he starts to grow a stomach like that, but Schram clearly hadn’t caught sight of it or anything lower in some time, though he still seemed to think himself quite the he-man.

  Good ol’ boys got together at Schram’s place or Weatherby’s for roping and reining. They used their horses plenty, these he-men.

  This horse had about burned his shoes through in a few weeks of arena work. We need to come up with kryptonite shoes or something for these reiners. This old boy of Schram’s was apparently some kind of champ who liked nothing better than burying his hind end under his belly from a dead run, making sliding stops that drag half the arena.

  From the box in the back of my truck bed, I brought out a stronger shoe with a wider web and offered it up. Schram hefted it, frowning over the extra iron.

  “The Good Lord didn’t intend horses to have all this weight on their feet.”

  “It’s a heavier shoe,” I allowed, not adding that the Maker might not have planned on horses carrying Schram’s big belly around, or for the ropers to yank steers into the air.

  “You really think this’ll last him and not slow him down?”

  “I do.”

  Schram nodded. “We’ll give ’er a try.”

  Didn’t take me too long, with a pro patient like that old horse of Schram’s. My hammer made steel ring on my anvil. Shaping shoes for a gelding like this is a pleasure. I had Schram’s horse dressed in the new sliders in jig time and went to loading my tools.

  What is it about men that they find it sexy when a woman can power lift a hundred-and-twelve pound anvil up to her truck bed? I do wear my T-shirts tight, but it’s because I spend my working day bent over
. A loose shirt just hangs in your face, getting in the way. Shoers need a shirt snug in the belly. Maybe it was my hand-washing ritual, drying my palms on my back pockets that captured Schram’s interest. Anyways, I felt his eyes, the way guys bore into a gal they’re interested in, felt his stare the whole time I loaded my tools onto Ol’ Blue’s tailgate. As I turned around with my appointment book, just in case shoeing here was going to be a repeat thing, he made his move.

  Schram curved an arm out, making like he was going to settle a hand on my waist and let it slide down from there, no doubt. I butted my palm against his chest as he leaned in hard.

  Grinning and wiggling his eyebrows, he pushed back and said, “You another one of those women who likes it rough?”

  I brought up my right knee just high enough to let my right hand pull the hoof knife from its scabbard on the lower leg of my chaps. After all my shoeing time, the slightly rounded feel of its worn wooden handle is mighty natural in my palm. I tossed the knife up and caught it without looking after it made a three-sixty in the air.

  “Here’s a bargain,” I said. “You don’t put your hands on me and I don’t carve your nose off like it was excess frog.”

  Schram looked at a woman standing on his property ready to do him an injury if he didn’t keep his hands to himself, then he got both brain cells firing.

  “Deal,” he said.

  * * *

  Back on Vine Maple Lane after a good shoeing day, I scraped the soles of my Blundstones off on the bottom step and kicked the spur rests against the top step to get shed of the boots. Charley came over wagging and gave my boots a good sniff, reading the Cowdry horse news.

  No horse pucky in the house, that’s Guy’s rule. Do I dare say he’s a bit of a neat freak about horse manure? I like horses, everything about them, and that includes their scent. A whiff of horse is life at its best. Their sweat smells real and so do their turds. Still, it’s Guy’s house, so I pad around in my socks on days when my boot soles are full of grass that’s been run through a horse.