One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02]

by Carolyn McSparren

  “Stop! Of course I’ll come. I do not want to be here when people start calling to hear what happened yesterday, and you have no business working Don Qui alone. Finding one body out there is enough.” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, Merry, what an awful thing to say.”

  “But true,” I said firmly. I would never be over my father’s murder out at the farm, but no way would I let Peggy see that. “Have you looked at the news?”

  “I’m avoiding it. If it’s gory, it’s a big story,” she said. “In other words, if it bleeds, it leads. Ghouls! Whoever invented the idea that the public deserves to know everything about everything and everyone all the time should have been drawn and quartered.”

  After a moment spent stirring her already stirred coffee, she said, “So far, the media has concentrated on the Raleighs and the sheriff, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see a couple of news vans out at the farm.”

  “If they drive onto my property, they’ll drive off with rumps loaded with rat shot.”

  “You will say ‘no comment’ and shut the stable door on them.”

  “You really don’t have to come,” I said, hoping that she’d hear the plea behind my words.

  “Nonsense. I work there too, remember?”

  “Has Marilou called?” Marilou is Peggy’s stuffy daughter who thinks her mother should sit by the fire and read mystery novels. I knew the minute she heard about Raleigh’s death she’d pounce on her mother to tell her she was in danger and to quit the farm at once. She’d been horrified when I’d hired Peggy to help me part-time. It’s turned into pretty much full time except for garden club days, but I think Peggy is happier working with the horses than she’s been since her husband died and abandoned her in Mossy Creek.

  “What do you think? Marilou called first thing this morning. Did she ask how well we did in the show? Noooo. She started to say something about ‘allowing me’ to drive, but she stopped herself in time.”

  Good thing.

  Trying to control the whole world must give Marilou ulcers. Poor thing, she can’t even control her mother. Now Josie, Peggy’s granddaughter, has fallen in love with the farm, the horses, and driving, in no particular order. She and her little friends were the reason I wanted to train our recalcitrant donkey, Don Qui, to pull a cart.

  I felt certain that with the proper training he could be safe to drive, but he wasn’t noted for behaving himself. Miniature donkeys are some of the kindest, hardworking equines in the world. Look at all the carts they pull, the huge loads they carry on their backs, the human hulks they haul up Santorini, the milk carts they take to market. Don Qui was, if anything, smarter than his equine cousins. There was no reason he should remain a psychopath all his life for lack of a little friendly discipline.

  In the meantime, the kids were driving Golden, my Halflinger, who was completely unflappable and loved children. The odd thing was that Don Qui took to them as well. He could be nasty around adults, but perhaps since children were more his size, he considered them allies.

  We generally took both our cars, and thank goodness, there were no TV trucks or reporters at the end of Peggy’s driveway waiting for us.

  I paid Peggy a pittance for fifteen to twenty hours work a week, but she often worked longer than that. The farm Daddy left me was too much work for one person, and Peggy was the only help I could afford, so I was darned glad for every minute she could spare me.

  When I was growing up, Daddy had plenty of help. He’d made an excellent living driving and training for wealthy sponsors who either had elegant training and stabling facilities of their own, or kept their horses in plush boarding barns with lots of staff. Daddy hadn’t been responsible for staff salaries, but in a sense they’d worked for him. As his kid, they’d let me hang around with them, taught me about the horse business, and usually kept me from doing anything too outrageous or dangerous.

  Until the day I’d driven a carriage over my mother’s leg and damned near killed her. That’s when I gave up horses. Then my mother divorced Daddy. After that, I’d seldom seen him.

  After Daddy retired from competition and moved to his new farm outside Mossy Creek, he divided his time among restoring carriages, working to get the farm on its feet, and training and driving horses sent him by a few old clients. I don’t know whether he felt lonely or relished the freedom.

  In the year I had been running the place, I had taken in enough young horses from clients and managed enough horse shows to keep the place solvent so long as I didn’t spend much money on frills. Peggy was not a frill—she was a necessity.

  My townhouse in Lexington, Kentucky, had taken six months to sell, but made a modest profit even in the recession. Since it had been mortgage free, it gave me enough money to build my log house at the farm.

  That was the good news.

  The bad news was that the building process was taking much longer than I had expected. However, now that the drive up to the site had been graded and regraveled at a cost that nearly gave me heart failure, and now that the spring mud had abated, I expected everything to go much faster. It had to.

  I wanted to be in my own place by Labor Day, because driving from Mossy Creek and up my father’s hill was hair-raising in the fog, ice, and occasional snow that hit North Georgia in the fall and winter. The rest of the year we dealt with sudden, humongous thunderstorms that knocked out power and made the roads impassable. I couldn’t afford to get stuck in Mossy Creek where I couldn’t look after the horses.

  Not that I wouldn’t miss Peggy, but having my pasture right outside my kitchen window would be a blessing. I also wanted my stuff that was stored in a rent-a-shed place in Bigelow. How do you live without your books?

  I had no one else to stay at the farm at night. When a horse colicked or needed care around the clock, I slept on a cot in the clients’ lounge. Lord knows I’ve done it often, but I’ve never gotten used to it.

  A stable at night can be one of the most peaceful places on earth. It can also be eerie. Sometimes in a dark stable at night I feel as though I am the last human being on earth. If Peggy was right and our near accident on the road back from the Tollivers’ had been a deliberate attack, might that person try again to hurt us? Or the horses?

  More likely they wanted to do me damage. If so, I’d avoid staying late by myself if possible. If it couldn’t be avoided, I’d be well armed.

  Chapter 13

  Monday morning

  Merry

  During the previous winter, I’d traded Hiram’s old tractor in on a slightly larger, newer model, so we could pile the manure into the front loader, drive it directly to the new manure pile, and dump it far enough away from our barns so we had neither odor nor flies.

  While I’d been still reeling from my daddy’s murder last year, Governor Bigelow had sent his aide de camp to harass me into selling Hiram’s farm, which abutted land the governor and his cronies owned. As I recall, that little weasel Whitehead said something about leaving my grief behind and making a fresh start somewhere else with my profit. Insensitive jerk. Wherever I am, I’ll carry my grief forever. How could I give up the place that had made my father happy?

  I’d been so mad at the governor, I moved the manure pile right over against his boundary line fence. If he and his cronies ever decided to build their fancy residential homes on that hill, they might have a few odors and horse flies to deal with.

  Then in early February, all the Mossy Creek garden club ladies had descended on us and carried off the whole pile to use in their gardens. You’d have thought I’d donated a million dollars to the Mossy Creek Garden club instead of a load of crap. If they won the annual Garden Club Feud-off with the Bigelow garden club, they’d promised me fresh vegetables all year and all the Mimosas I could drink. I’d taken them up on the vegetables, but nixed the Mimosas. Those sweet little ladies make an absolutely lethal Mimosa.

  Now Peggy and I were building up a new pile for them to use in the fall.

  While we mucked, Peggy worked on me to tell Geo
ff about our near miss on the way home from the Tollivers’.

  “The SUV didn’t even graze us,” I said.

  “It tried to make us kill ourselves,” Peggy argued, as she hefted a bucket of manure into the front loader. “Someone chased us.”

  “If we’d hit the SUV in the rear, they’d have gone off the road too and probably smashed worse than us. Dumb way to kill someone.” I dumped another full bucket. “There, that’s it. Clean stalls for one more day.”

  “Whoever was in the van took off before we could hit them. They weren’t in danger. We were.” She leaned her fork against the side of the stall. “Can I drive the tractor?”

  Peggy had become a tractor-driving fool since I’d shown her how the front loader dumped. She hauled herself aboard and turned the key. The tractor grumbled to life. She lifted the front loader and trundled out, dumped the manure and headed back.

  She parked the tractor behind the stable, climbed down, and took up the argument. “That driver stabbed his brakes just long enough to bring on his brake lights and force us to brake behind him. He had plenty of time to speed up before we connected with his rear end.”

  “We can’t identify the driver.” I counted off on my fingers. “Nor the color of the van. The glass was tinted. We don’t know how many people were inside. No license plate number. No make or model on the SUV. I’d feel better if we had more to give Geoff. But you’re right. He needs to know.”

  We spent the rest of the morning doing chores, then ate a scrappy picnic lunch. The day was glorious. Cool with a breeze but not a wind, clouds that ambled across the sky rather than scudded.

  After we put our feet up on some hay bales in the aisle for an hour or so, I stood up and said, “It’s time.”

  “Oh, Lord, are you sure?”

  “No time like the present.”

  “Shall we bring Heinzie up to keep him company?” Heinzie was Don Qui’s Friesian sidekick, a black giant with the soul of a kitten. While Don Qui no longer brayed non-stop whenever they were separated, he preferred to keep the big horse in sight. He’d finally accepted knowing Heinzie was in his stall or in pasture, but not for long.

  In the year I’d had him under my care—if not my command—I had taught Don Qui to wear a halter and a lead rope without fussing. I had even taught him to accept a driving bridle with a bit, so long as I gave him a sugar cube along with it, but he might get a tad antsy when I put the full driving harness I’d borrowed from the Tollivers on his back. He wouldn’t much enjoy having the crupper buckled under his tail either. I had to be extra careful not to get any tail hairs caught in it. Like getting a human pony tail caught in a scrunchie, catching tail hairs in the crupper hurt.

  Today Don Qui stood calmly cross-tied on the wash rack with Heinzie in his stall across the way. In the months we’d been working him, the little donkey had finally learned to enjoy being groomed and petted.

  The first step in training a horse to drive is to ground drive him. That is, to walk far enough behind him so that if he kicks he can’t connect with any portion of your anatomy, with the reins in your hands and the ends connected to the bit, and with another person to the side holding a long line snapped to his halter to stop him if he attempts to bolt. That would be Peggy’s job.

  In a driving harness the saddle lies across the horse’s back, buckles under his belly, and has loops that carry the carriage shafts along the horse’s sides. The saddle also attaches to the breeching, which goes over and down the horse’s rump to give his rear end something to push against while he’s in draft.

  The horse sits back against his breeching going down a hill, making a turn, or backing up. A horse doesn’t only pull with his shoulders. The harness allows him to use his whole body to spread the weight of carriage and passengers.

  The language of driving can run from complex to silly. For example. Driving people say the horse is being ‘put to.’ They assume you know put to what. When he’s in harness, they say he’s in draft, whether he’s a Welsh pony or a Clydesdale.

  Don Qui jerked awake when I tightened the girth around his middle. He turned his head as far as the cross-tie allowed, glared and me and let forth a resounding bray in my ear. He made as much noise as the steamboat Robert E. Lee announcing its arrival in port.

  “Keep feeding,” I whispered to Peggy as I continued to buckle the harness.

  “Should I bring Heinzie?” Peggy asked.

  “Leave him in his stall for the moment, until we see how Don Qui reacts. This may be the shortest lesson in history.”

  Amazing that such a little guy could be such a handful. Despite a ragged ear heroically gained in saving our lives, he was beautiful as miniature donkeys go. He had a sleek mouse-colored pelt with the cross of dark hair across his withers. Legend says that one of his ancestors carried Mary and the baby Jesus to Egypt, for which service his descendants have forever borne the sign of the cross.

  Don Qui’s ancestor may have been a saint. Somehow those genes got diluted through the generations before they got to him.

  He allowed Peggy to lead him into the enclosed dressage arena, although he looked around several times for Heinzie. I could already feel the tension in him. This was the first time we’d ground-driven him when Heinzie was out of sight.

  I gathered the reins and sauntered casually behind him as I stayed well out of range of his fast little hind hooves.

  “If he freaks, just let him go,” I said.

  “You sure?”

  “And get out of kicking and biting distance. Fast.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  “Walk on,” I said quietly. He didn’t move.

  “Don Qui, walk on.”

  If anything, he planted all four feet even deeper in the arena sand. No Heinzie, no forward movement.

  I shook the reins. “Walk on. Peggy, grab his halter and see if you can urge him forward.”

  She gave me an uncertain look, but she grasped the halter and tugged. He tugged back. Then he sat down.

  “Stand up!” she snapped.

  “Wiggle his bridle. Hold out a piece of carrot so that he has to reach for it,” I suggested.

  That ploy was met with pure donkey disdain. “Should I get Heinzie?” Peggy asked.

  “No way.”

  After ten minutes of cajoling, Peggy was losing her temper. I wasn’t. I’d handled worse. But once battle is joined with an equine, the human being is committed to win or to lose forever. So, even if we were still right here tomorrow morning, Don Qui would move forward before we quit. One or two steps would be plenty, but he would move.

  Non-drivers hear the word ‘whip’ and freak out. A driving whip is not for punishment, however. Horses don’t mind the slight touch—more of a tickle—of the whip on shoulder or croup. Sitting behind the horse, drivers don’t have the luxury of giving the horse signals with legs and seat the way a rider does. The whip acts as our means of communication. And Don Qui definitely needed to learn to speak carriage horse.

  “Bring me a dressage whip,” I told Peggy. Most of our whips were long enough to reach a much larger animal’s shoulder from a carriage. If I tried one of those on Don Qui, the end would land somewhere north of his nose.

  The look she gave me and the moan she made reminded me of Lurch, the butler in the Addams family television series. She did as I asked, however.

  “Now get outside the arena and shut the gate,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded. “I may join you in about thirty seconds.” I touched the soft lash of the whip to Don Qui’s fat little butt. “Don Qui, walk on.”

  His ears wiggled, but nothing else moved.

  “Okay, Don Qui, walk on.” And I popped him. Not hard, but enough to shock him out of his sulk.

  He levitated. In one movement he came off his rump and into the air with all four legs, then kicked out with his hind end higher than my head and took off.

  One would think that a woman as big and strong as I am could stop a little, bitty donkey. Don Q
ui, however, must have mastodon genes hidden somewhere inside his DNA. He did an excellent imitation of a ski boat at full throttle, and I skidded along behind him braced back at a forty-five degree angle like a skier.

  But I didn’t let go.

  He ran and bucked and snorted and kicked and ran some more. “Don Qui, whoa!” I shouted. I was running out of breath trying to stay on my feet.

  “Doggone it, whoa!”

  He had bucked in a relatively straight line down the center of the arena, and because his legs were so short, he didn’t cover any great distance. I knew that as he came up to the far end of the arena, he’d have to turn, or jump out of the arena and run straight into the fence beyond.

  Or stop. Which is what he did. I damned near ran into his rear end, not a wise thing to do under the circumstances. We stood there huffing and puffing. “Whoa. Good boy,” I wheezed, and put my hands on my knees, leaned over and dragged a few breaths into my lungs. “Stand.” He might not need to stand, but I sure did.

  I’d long since dropped the whip. It lay in the dirt somewhere along our line of travel. I tugged on his left rein to turn him, clucked to him, and asked him quietly to walk on.

  Amazingly enough, he did. He’d made his point.

  Peggy came into the ring, walked to his head, clipped on the lead line, and held his halter while I took the driving reins off. We petted him and loved on him, told him what a beautiful, intelligent boy he was, and fed him sugar cubes until he was on the edge of a sugar-induced coma, then walked him between us back to the barn. We were both dripping with sweat.

  “When are you joining Ringling Brothers?” Geoff Wheeler said from the shadows in the barn doorway. “I’d definitely pay to see that again.”

  “You want us to join you at Clown College?” I asked.