The Clincher

by Lisa Preston

  Guy grinned. “Do you want more?”

  What I wanted was to be nice. So I really tried to make nice talk about his dream, this restaurant that will not be named Rainy’s.

  * * *

  There was a horse show that weekend, so in the afternoon, I went and found a spot to hang out with my forge fired up, waiting for work. I got to do three quick shoe fixes and hoped I might get future clients out of the deal. It was one of those mixed events, good for getting to know a wider range of horse folk. There were a few English style classes, kids’ gymkhana, western pleasure and roping, plus a practice endurance ride had headed out early in the morning, with the last of their forty-milers not due back ’til late afternoon.

  By then the calf-ropers were sponging off their sweaty horses as the team ropers started their final jackpot round. Sheriff Magoutsen moseyed my way, giving a nod.

  I wagged my noggin right back at Mr. Magoo, then thought cuss words over that teasing tag being in my brain. Luckily, I didn’t open my mouth, but I wondered if Deputy Paulden had told him I wasn’t the one who busted up the veterinarian’s office with a rounding hammer.

  “I didn’t,” I said.

  “You didn’t what?”

  Since I’m an idiot, I babbled on, telling him about not vandalizing the vet’s office, thinking all the while that if someone had wanted to make it look like I had done it, leaving shoer’s tools was smart.

  But it didn’t make sense that Dixon Talbot would break into Nichol’s office to get me in trouble, since he’s a shoer too.

  Unless he had a great alibi.

  A false one.

  “Rainy, didn’t you go over to that last deal over at the Rocking B?”

  I nodded, thinking hard enough to steam my brain. If I hadn’t accidentally hung on to the bute Weatherby wanted me to hand over to Schram, then I probably wouldn’t have even been asked to the Rocking B hootenanny. Dixon Talbot hadn’t been there, so he might not have known I was at Weatherby’s that night. Most evenings, I’m just home. Maybe Talbot had a fake alibi all ready, then went and beat up Nichol’s office and planted the hammer. I realized the sheriff was watching me and I didn’t want him to think he’d missed out on a swell party. “It was a great hootenanny provided you’d never been to one before.”

  He chuckled a nod and I swear—if I was the type to swear—watched me sideways as we both watched the next steer make fools of two horses and two grown men. Then it occurred to me Magoutsen knew clear as glass I’d been at Weatherby’s. He knew exactly who’d been there and who was missing.

  A new distraction kept him from torturing me. We both looked up to watch a group of endurance riders come in to practice vet-checking their horses. It was the first I’d noticed that Nichol was working beyond the main arena. He and a woman vet started checking pulses, listening to the sweaty horses’ chests and bellies with stethoscopes, pinching their skin and lifting their tails. Riders moved their mounts into shade. Crew started sponging over the blowing horses’ great blood vessels, along the horses’ necks and high up inside the legs. The riders grinned and joked with each other as they readied for another ten or twenty miles.

  Some of them were talking about how well conditioned the leaders—a couple riding with their teenager—were.

  “Drew and his family, they’ve been trotting the Forest Service roads this side of the Buckeye ranch, doing a lot of interval work the last couple months,” one fellow nodded, sponging his dancing, steaming horse. “They said they heard a lone horse out there.”

  “I heard it, too,” a young gal with soggy braids sticking out of her helmet said, all serious-like. “A horse was calling somewhere in Dry Valley but we never did meet up with another rider. Must have been trailered to the first spur road, other side of Stakes Ridge. Off Black Ridge. Don’t know anyone who rides there.”

  I was studying the horses’ feet, the hard-worn toes of the front shoes, breaking over their hooves nice and quick. Nice feet, nice shoeing. One of them interfered a bit though. The gelding had mild scars on the insides of his legs where he’d struck himself with his own hooves. I wondered who their shoer was, but couldn’t ask ’cause that kind of question can seem like I’m bidding for the job, a no-no among shoers.

  Okayed by the vets to keep going, the riders pulled out at a hardy trot. I figured it wouldn’t turn into a race with these folks until the last mile. Until then, they rode like friends.

  Sheriff Magoutsen walked on over to Nichol and they talked together, then Magoutsen came back and said something to me while I was thinking about how the backcountry riders use their horses like horses. By the time I paid the sheriff any mind, I reckon he’d already tried me one or two times. I gave him my Sorry face and he tried again.

  “This is a nice clean group of horse folk, don’t you think?”

  “Yessir.”

  “And this is your adopted state?”

  Gripping my elbows to keep myself from jumping out of my skin was about all I could do. I couldn’t talk.

  He could. “You’re still new in Oregon. You like it here in Cowdry? Getting a good client base, aren’t you?”

  I nodded.

  He did too and said, “It’s good to see young people settling here. You meet a lot of different horse owners.”

  Nodding was something I could still manage.

  “Rainy, you’ll let us know if you see or hear something that doesn’t sit right?”

  Breathing out while talking low, I could handle now. “Yessir. I’ll do that.”

  But I wasn’t doing it. I’d have to make myself come clean.

  Sheriff Magoutsen eyed across the grounds at all the horses and riders and trailers and other rigs. Buckets and dust and dogs, people talking, some hurrying, some not.

  Confession time. “At Patsy-Lynn Harper’s funeral, one of your men . . .”

  “Yes?” Magoutsen was a watcher.

  “He asked me about drugs.”

  “Go ahead,” the sheriff said.

  “The truth is, I was asked to carry some bute from one client to another.”

  “Bute.”

  “Yessir.”

  “You’re sure it was bute?”

  That question had never occurred to me. “Pretty sure. It was syringes of paste and tablets, he had both kinds. Do you want me to tell you all about that?”

  The sheriff smiled and put a hand on my shoulder. “If I do, I’ll let you know.”

  As I left for the day, I considered what Sheriff Magoutsen said, then thought more about the rider saying a horse was hollering in the first valley—that’d be Dry Valley—and distracting the long riders.

  All of the sudden I knew what had been bothering me, one thing, anyways.

  I’m a detective of horseshoeing, that’s what I am.

  Just how often did horse theft happen these days, in these parts? Was I the only one who perked up about the idea of a horse hollering in the backcountry? On the way home I detoured from the show grounds with fresh eyes, soon rattling Ol’ Blue over the cattle guard at the head of the Solquists’ driveway.

  Suppose the missing mare hadn’t wandered off, but really was stolen?

  To tow a trailer right up to the Solquist house, even if they were gone for the night, wouldn’t work well here ’cause what if the thief was spotted by a next-door neighbor, or a fence-line neighbor like the Langstons? Plus, the Solquists’ driveway was straight, no turn-around room for a trailer. Backing a rig took time, especially in the dark of night.

  The question on the table was how to steal the Solquists’ horse. I’d no idea who or why, but it seemed I could figure out how if I gave the situation a good looking-at and plenty of thought. Was she shod? Could she be ridden away?

  The Missus came out of the house then, gave me and Ol’ Blue a looking-at and a nod. “You shoe for the Langstons, right?”

  “That’s right. Rainy Dale.” I wondered who shod for her, why her gelding was overdue and if the missing mare was in the same shape.

  “Can I help y
ou with something?”

  Made me feel a little silly, the idea I was a horseshoeing detective, at the lady’s house just because I had that kind of time on my hands and loose ideas in my mind. “I heard about your mare gone missing. I guess curiosity made me come take a look-see.”

  Mrs. Solquist sighed. “Our daughter’s away in college and heartbroken to hear that Misty’s been stolen. It just doesn’t make any sense. Our gelding’s a bigger, better horse. We called the police but there’s not much they can do, apparently. We’re putting flyers up at the co-op and different trailheads, and we put it on out to the auctions. Why would someone want to take our little mare?”

  We were agreed that it was a shame and I left still scratching my skull about the how of it, never mind the who and the why. The only other clue I’d noticed was that the Solquists didn’t have a dog, at least not one who came out to woof at me. Leading the horse away might have been the quietest and quickest thing to do. If I’d wanted to liberate Liberty’s neighbor, it would have been easiest to just lead her by the house, drive away with her in a trailer that I left on the highway.

  But, no, there was a problem with that plan, the cattle guard, a grate over a ditch that hooved animals refuse to walk across, which is how cattle guards make sort-of gates that a vehicle can drive right over.

  My mind circled this puzzle all the way home, then it hit me. There’s exactly one good way to get a horse over a cattle guard, but it’s heavy and awkward—a four-foot by eight-foot piece of plywood. I’d found the evidence days ago, but I’d chopped it up to make my new shoeing tool box.

  * * *

  I don’t know what kind of trinket store he found it in, but Guy had a little tiny paperweight-sized anvil. It was kind of cute, if a girl was given to liking cute things, which of course I’m not.

  “What’s this?” I asked, wishing I could ask things that mattered.

  He was beaming. “A pocket anvil.”

  I made gentle and explained. “A Pocket Anvil is sort of like a rebar bender. It’s also called a Shoe Shaper. It’s a way to shape horseshoes without having to haul out the anvil stand and anvil and bang around making plenty of noise.”

  “Ah,” he said.

  I’m pretty sure I lost him at “rebar” but there’s no telling. We were saved from this alien conversation of no-understanding by the bell.

  Chapter 20

  THE EMERGENCY CALL WAS FROM NICHOL, an acute laminitis—inflammation of the sensitive laminae under the hoof wall. Chronic laminitis, a shoer treats, but in acute cases, especially if they’re extra gnarly, horses need both of us, vet and shoer. He was calling from the Flying Cross.

  Before I got Ol’ Blue properly stopped, I heard the screaming.

  Spartacus’s thick neck arched with rage and his little Quarter Horse nostrils flared like he’d gone Thoroughbred. Nichol was talking quiet-like to him from the safe side of the rails, a syringe in one hand. Beside him, Ted, the barn-help dude, wearing what looked like the same blue-checkered shirt and jeans he wore the last time I did shoeing for Patsy-Lynn, held a halter and a thick lead rope with a stud chain.

  “How was Spartacus landing before? Was he a level traveler?” Nichol asked.

  “He was straight and clean,” I said. “Just a little flare on the right hind that was getting better with time.”

  Ted opened the gate. I slid in a slow glide meant to not further upset the agitated horse, glad I could hear the guys coming in right behind me.

  The studhorse started to wheel in the paddock, making like he was going to try to scoop out our spleens and use them to decorate the walls of the big barn. He’s a cresty-necked hunk of horse with enough power to kill, but he decided kicking put too much weight on his front end. Spartacus tucked his hind legs back under himself, way under, and reconsidered any activity that involved slamming or even weighting his front feet. Those front hooves hurt and he wanted off of them.

  Nichol had to be careful about sedating because to deal with those hooves we needed Spartacus to still have a pain response, but we also needed him to quit trying to kill us. It took me and Nichol and Ted together, using a stud chain over Spartacus’s nose, a twitch, and two syringes, before we got the digital X-rays shot.

  “Have you read radiographs?” Nichol asked me.

  “X-rays, yeah,” I said. And I whistled at the pictures, looked back at Spartacus’s left front, and groaned. I was needed here. A partial resection of his toe, that’s what was called for. A very careful trim using the films as a guide, and a special-built shoe that would let him put more weight on his frog. His right front hoof was foundering too, but not as bad.

  By the time we were done, I had blood on my chaps.

  Anytime a shoer gets blood, someone screwed up. In this case, Nichol and Ted didn’t pay one hundred-plus percent attention when Spartacus didn’t cooperate, leaving me vulnerable.

  Back in shoeing school, they joked about blood, shoer’s or horse’s, meaning experience. This was an experience Spartacus would have been happier to live without. Unlike the last emergency horse Nichol and I had worked on together, there was no thanks from this big stallion. Not the grateful sort, him. Spartacus pinned his ears and swished his tail. Drugged as he was with sedatives and painkillers, the stud tried to strike with a hind leg, showing the scrape Patsy-Lynn had thought was from kicking out a fence board a week or so back. The minor injury was still red and ugly. Again, the hurting horse remembered he didn’t want extra weight on his front end. He snaked his head and neck, teeth bared at the man turning him loose.

  Ted avoided the assault and scurried back to safety out of the paddock.

  “I haven’t been around this stud all that much,” Nichol said, “but this sure is an ugly side of him to see.”

  Spartacus grabbed his water bucket and flung it, spooking when water splashed and the bucket tumbled.

  I said, “That horse has gone loony is about the size of it.”

  Nichol furrowed up his face toward me. “Have you been around him much?”

  “Shoeing him about a year. He’s usually a bit of a baby, one of those who rocks and sways and can hardly handle being corrected for it.”

  Nichol’s eyebrows hiked up. The stud before us would have hurt somebody for sport at this point. True, Spartacus never used to be such a nasty cuss, but pain is something that changes everyone.

  “No shoeing or significant hoof problems at all?”

  While Nichol frowned at Spartacus ahead of us, I shook my head and stepped back to speak low to Ted.

  “Hey, I’m curious. You hear anything about any of Patsy-Lynn’s tools going missing?”

  “You mean the leaf blower or hedge trimmer or whatever? She and Junior thought Manny swiped them.”

  “Manny?”

  “The Mexican she had doing some work here. Repainted this whole place for her, too. Doesn’t have a car. What, was he going to walk away carrying her trimmer?”

  I’d have thought Ted would have been happy to have someone other than himself suspected of wrongdoing at the Flying Cross, then I remembered that Ted might have a reason to protect Manuel Smith.

  Nichol turned to us. “Feed changes? Too much spring grass?”

  I nodded as Ted shook his head. Laminitis in the springtime is almost always caused by the excess sugars and starches in the rich new grass causing a colic, then the disturbed gut leaks toxins, which cause a laminitic episode. While Nichol grilled Ted on feed changes that Ted denied, I slipped down the barn aisle toward the tack room.

  When I heard the banging in the end stall, I remembered how Patsy-Lynn had hurried past this stall. Heart thumping, I opened the upper door. A lovely chestnut, like my Red, thrust her head out, ears pinned.

  “I don’t blame you,” I told the angry redhead. Horses weren’t meant to live in cells. She was no doubt here to be serviced by Spartacus and I could only hope her owners would come for her soon and she had a pasture at home.

  Patsy-Lynn never did get her new paneling up, but it was a love
ly tack room. The scent of leather met me. I looked past the bins of clean brushes, the well-oiled tack on hooks and racks, the shelves of medical supplies and fence repair gear. I looked for a little tool collection that some horse people keep. And I found it.

  There was no nailing hammer or rounding hammer, but there were a couple of rasps—of which one was new and one was very used, probably an old one I’d given to Patsy-Lynn, and a set of pull-offs. Common as straw, standard stuff to take off a loose shoe in a pinch. Sometimes horse owners buy quickie shoeing kits that come with cheapie tools, including driving and rounding hammers, even though no one needs a rounding hammer unless they’re going to shape shoes on an anvil. I tried to think about other clients who once had a rounding hammer they didn’t need.

  That day I shod for Schram, I hadn’t looked in his tack room. Back then, I hadn’t had my suspicion meter turned on, but now I wondered exactly when Felix women-like-it-rough Schram came and left the Rocking B get-together, and if he’d been to the vet’s office with a rounding hammer that same night.

  But I couldn’t think long on Felix Schram and his tools ’cause I was looking at a baggie of vials in the Harpers’ tack room. They must have fallen down from the medical shelf above. The vials’ labels were peeled away. I took the baggie over to the light at the doorway to get a better look, thinking that they should be in the fridge if’n they were vaccines.

  “You bet!” Junior’s booming voice echoed down the barn aisle with bootsteps on the way.

  I about scraped my spooked self off the ceiling and panicked to get out of the tack room, shoving the baggie into my jeans pocket on my way out.

  The three men were at the aisle’s edge, talking breeding. Junior wanted to go artificial insemination with Spartacus next season. Getting down to business, so to speak.

  “Absolutely. You bet,” he told Nichol again.

  With enough bookings and a hefty stud fee, a stallion can naturally cover enough mares to make a small mint, but with artificial insemination there’s no limit except demand, so at a couple thousand bucks a pop, AI can generate big bucks. But Spartacus . . . well, there’s money in breeding studs once they’ve got a reputation of producing good progeny, but he hadn’t been around too long and wasn’t proven.