Forging Fire

by Lisa Preston

  “I can’t believe it! It’s like seeing Fire, almost. Oh, I loved that dog like you can’t believe. He was so perfect, my heart dog, you know?”

  I pointed at Charley, fighting the sway that wanted to topple me to the dirt. “Flame?”

  “No,” Ivy said. “Fire. My dog, Fire.” She too pointed at my Charley dog now. “Flame was small, and I gave him to Vicente as a puppy. Fire was mammoth. It was a two-dog litter. Very unusual. But Vicente brought Flame along and he became a really good sheepdog.” Ivy turned toward the man on the four-wheeler. “Were you here then, Oscar?”

  Oscar removed his baseball cap, ran a hand through his black hair, and tugged the cap on hard. “Perhaps that was before my time.”

  “This girl …” Ivy turned to me again. “I’m sorry, what was your name again, honey?”

  “Rainy.”

  “Rainy? That’s pretty.” And boom, Ivy turned back to Oscar. “She’s a horseshoer, visiting. And somehow, she’s had Flame all this time.”

  That sure seemed to be the deal. My Charley used to be called Flame, used to live and work on this ranch where I was standing. I’d found my dog again, but I was afraid I could still lose him. My knees buckled, and I startled, trying to catch myself quick enough.

  Ivy hugged my shoulders. “Are you okay? You’re not okay, are you? I don’t think you should walk around anymore. You know, I think you’re concussed. I feel silly for not realizing it earlier. You shouldn’t have been driving. But, Flame!”

  “Charley,” I said.

  “I know, I know,” Ivy said. “But the other thing, you know I’ve heard about the concussion protocol with athletes. You’re not supposed to exert yourself. You’re not even supposed to read a magazine. You have to rest, like for a couple of days. And you’re not supposed to be alone. How about something to eat?”

  A meal sounded purely wonderful. I realized I hadn’t eaten a thing today, not once. And drunk not so much as a cup of coffee. I loosened my ponytail where the swelling was making the hairband dig into my scalp.

  “Come on.” Ivy steadied me with both hands. “And come on, Flame.”

  “Charley,” I said.

  “And shouldn’t you tell your family you got conked in the head? Isn’t there someone you want to talk to?”

  A gasp slipped through my lips and my ponytail bobbed as I nodded. I wanted to talk to Guy, my Guy, so bad.

  Oscar started the four-wheeler and headed around the back of the barn where a cinder-block building stub was attached.

  “Wear the helmet!” Ivy hollered at his back, but her voice was lost over the engine’s racket. They had some seriously beefy four-wheelers on this outfit.

  I recalled that Gabe fellow had gone to fetch me some water at the older house however long ago and turned toward the wiggly-looking building, one step then another.

  Ivy said, “There’s no landline in the bunkhouse, but come on up to the house—my house—and you can use the office phone. You look woozy. Can you walk okay?”

  The big house was some hundred feet away, beyond the farm-house. I faked steadiness and followed her across the flagstone entry. Charley stuck to me like a true shepherd, but when I started to tell him to wait for me, Ivy said, “Oh, you can bring him inside. Don’t worry about it.”

  Charley had stopped on the flagstone, knowing better than to walk into someone else’s house, but when I called him along, he obeyed, chin tucked, entering respectfully.

  Through the house’s double front doors, a hearty scent of a fantastic meal hit us. Sunlight shimmered over the ceramic-tiled great room beyond the foyer, the light reaching us through massive, glass-block walls on the other side of Ivy’s house. The white leather furniture making up a living room corner covered an area as big as Guy’s whole house. The other end had several of those really tall dining tables and chairs, all in black. Wide hallways stretched away from both ends of the great room.

  Ivy turned to me. “What would you like to drink?”

  The obvious thing about Ivy was that she had real money. And some of these Money People eat their young. They scare me. And they know I’m poor and not their type. But Ivy radiated kindness.

  “Well, I, uh, I—”

  “Eliana?” The split second Ivy called out, a beautiful bird of a woman in an orange flowered skirt stepped out, towel in one hand, spoon in the other, gleaming white smile framed by long, swinging black hair.

  “Some tea?” Eliana suggested.

  “Please,” Ivy said, “and a taste of that stew you’ve got going.” She turned to me, squeezing my arm like we were best friends, and led me to a ten-foot-wide hallway that ran from the dining side of the great room. “Eliana’s making boar and hominy stew. It’s got poblanos and tomatillos and juniper berries. She thickens it with masa. It’s from a Zuni recipe. To die for. Come on, you’ll love it. She says it’s best when it gets to simmer for hours—we’ll have it tonight—but I’m sure it’s already amazing.”

  Hungry didn’t quite describe how I felt, and a heaping plate would go a long way to help my mood.

  Ivy beckoned me down the wide hallway. The first door on the left was open to a giant office with plenty of windows, most of the available wall space decorated with dog photographs. I stood in the hall and stared. Ivy reached for the doorknob and started to pull the door shut.

  “My office is always a mess.” Then she paused and followed my gaze.

  The biggest photo showed a full-body profile of a bigger and youthful version of my Charley, only with a blockier head and more developed shoulders.

  The table under the framed two-foot photo held a bunch of hand-sized, identical packages of what I’d guess was some kind of food or supplement or beauty product with the same image under four words.

  Give Your Dog Fire!

  Ivy said, “It’s a supplement I developed. I’m a businesswoman. You know how people give their horses all kinds of supplements? Vitamins and minerals and things for their moods and hooves and digestion and everything else? But there’s less available for their dogs. I studied it and consulted researchers and veterinarians and nutritionists and created this line of supplements. Got a specialty store in town and we ship all over. Have you heard of my products?”

  I allowed as to how the Fire supplements for dogs hadn’t made it to little Cowdry, but we were rural central Oregon and maybe a good bit behind the front-runners in California.

  Ivy squared off to her picture of the big beautiful dog. “You never heard of Champion Firestarter of Beaumont Hill? He was a famous stud dog and a ranked competitive herder. I was breeding herders here. He was my foundation sire. Oh, I’m sorry, honey, listen to me just going on and on. That’s how I am. If it’s dogs, I can just talk and talk. Listen, there’s someone you want to call, right? Come this way. You can use Milt’s office. Sadly, he’s not here this weekend. Again.”

  I took the backward step necessary as she came forward, into the hall. After Ivy latched her office door, Charley and I followed her down and across to another nice room bigger than lots of barns I’ve been in. Ivy waved me toward a black leather desk chair behind a giant walnut desk. These people didn’t skimp on the furniture.

  Her man had not one dog or horse photo on his walls, it was red carpet shots at various Hollywood-looking fancy shindigs.

  Doing a double take, I saw Ivy in one photo on the arm of the big bearded fellow in a suit right behind some movie star who looked familiar, but like so many others. Blonde, bony California wives. Maybe my mama’s heard of Milt Beaumont, but he probably never heard of Dara Dale, whose last acting gig was being the mother of the neighbor of the sister of the star in a TV movie about what to do when intergalactic fighters move into your neighborhood.

  Eliana carried in a tray with two towering glasses of dark iced tea, lemon slices wedged onto the sides, straws and stirring spoons next to a little bowl of sugar, cloth napkin padding a silver spoon next to a big low bowl of lively stew.

  “Sit down, sit down,” Ivy said. “There’s somet
hing I want to talk to you about, but let’s get you taken care of first. Get this food inside you and make your calls.”

  I parked behind the big desk, totally out of place except for the way Charley curled up at my feet.

  Eliana lay the spread on Milt’s desk and made for the door. Ivy took a glass of tea and followed, saying, “I’ll give you some privacy.”

  She gave me the comforting smile of the big sister I never had.

  ***

  I’d hoped huge to hear Guy’s voice and wished it was his on our message for our home phone voice mail, not me going on to callers about what information they should leave regarding a horseshoeing appointment.

  Guy Kittredge can’t be the only man in captivity about to marry a woman who can’t cook, lets her dog on the bed, shoes horses for a living, and is not going to change her last name, but he’s a rare find, all the same. After dialing three alphabet letters with three numbers, I succeeded only in learning that we had no new messages. I called back, got our answering machine, and rattled away.

  “It’s me,” I told the machine, imagining Guy’s face as he played the call whenever he got back from his trip up to Washington. “I’ll call back. Charley got lost, and some of my stuff got ripped off, but I found him.” I stopped shy of saying I’d been attacked. Seemed wrong to worry him, and, besides, I wasn’t as clear as I wanted to be on a few things. “I’ll call again real soon. I sure wish you’d happened to be there, ’cause I want to—”

  “Shut up,” Melinda screamed on my house phone. “I’m here and I do not want to hear you phone-sexing Guy.”

  “Hey! What are you doing there?”

  “Feeding your cat, who seems to not exist.”

  Dishing kibble to Guy’s cat is not high on my list. We came up with a mouse problem this winter and if Spooky missed a meal now and again, perhaps he’d get motivated to honest work.

  “Did you feed Red and Bean and the Kid?”

  Melinda snorted. “’Course I did.” She knows how important horses are to me, especially my horses.

  “Spooky’s probably hiding from you. Maybe you’re being scary.”

  “I’m not scary!”

  Melinda’s hollering does not a convincing argument make. It seemed like there was more I could have talked to her about, but I was sort of on my back foot, so to speak. Hadn’t been thinking I’d be talking to my girlfriend when I tried to call my boyfriend.

  “Would you tell Guy that I—”

  “Damn it, why don’t you two just talk to each other? I just had to la-la-la with my fingers in my ears for a minute-plus because he called and left you a lovey-dovey about what he’s going to do to you to make up for not getting home tonight.”

  “Guy’s not getting home tonight?”

  “Apparently not. Still in Seattle. Something about a market he wants to hit in the morning for the best clams ever and then he’ll head home.”

  “Would you leave a note for Guy so he knows where I am in case he gets home before me?”

  “Yeah, I’ll scribble something down,” Melinda said, “and stick it on your fridge.”

  “Leave it on his computer screen.” I rambled about getting Dragoon to the sale, getting to exhibit Charley at herding, and then my day going severely downhill, losing my dog, and finding him again after returning to the ranch after the cop stopped and ordered me out at gunpoint.

  It was that last thing that Melinda made me run through twice. Then she said, “That was kind of a felony traffic stop. What else did you do?”

  “What did I do?” I echoed, full of defensive wonder. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Rainy, that cop had a reason for stopping you that way. He had information on you.”

  “On me?”

  Melinda sounded like she knew what she was talking about, like all police people have some kind of inside stream they fish from. “Maybe your truck matched a suspect description, maybe another agency requested you be stopped. But something gave him a high index of suspicion that you’d be trouble. What in the world are you in the middle of?”

  Chapter 8

  IVY’S OFFICE DOOR WAS SHUT, SO I didn’t get to see the picture on her wall of Charley’s magnificent brother, Fire, when I left Milt’s office.

  “I take that.” Eliana was suddenly with me in the hallway, reaching for my cleaned-up stew bowl and empty tea glass.

  I felt a blush creep across my face. Guy often serves me food at home, but I don’t expect him to adios my dirty dishes. I pull my own weight.

  Eliana saw my hesitation, my lingering glance at the empty bowl. I’d hardly tasted the stew, truth be told.

  “You like more?”

  I was no doubt crimson in the cheeks now. “I sure wouldn’t mind another bowlful,” I admitted.

  “I bring for you. Go sit.” She waved to one of the tall dining tables and I took a seat. My dog was my shadow, curled up by my left boot.

  “Do you remember Charley?” I asked Eliana when she came to me with another tall glass of tea and a full bowl—this time I smelled and tasted the softened, strong peppers, the perfectly braised game meat and spice. “Maybe you remember him being called Flame?”

  “Pretty dog.” She flashed her perfect smile.

  Bells sounded. It took me a few seconds to realize it was the doorbell, though Eliana turned away in an instant, making her flower-printed skirt swirl around her knees.

  “I had to close the store to come up here.” The gal who said this headed right for my table.

  She wore inch-long dark eyelashes and skin-tight, neon-colored yoga clothes, looked to be my age, and weighed about ninety cents. She drummed her fingernails—each with a different tiny decal of some sort: peace sign, yin-yang symbol, lightning bolt, whatnot—on the table and tossed her long, straight blonde hair while I wolfed my second bowl of stew.

  “You’re new,” she told me. She brought one tiny ankle up to her palm and stretched, extending the whole leg straight up, perpendicular to the ground until she was standing there with arm and leg pointing to the ceiling, like that was normal or something.

  “I’m Rainy.”

  “And you’re new.”

  She hadn’t even acknowledged Charley, who gave her a polite glance. We were not going to be best friends. When she ignored my dog, he set his head on my boot toe and got to work cleaning under his dewclaw. I smiled and leaned down to inspect Charley’s work. He grew the world’s longest dewclaw. A few months back, I’d cut off one front thumb hook after it reached a full curl. It makes a different-looking necklace. Guy said he wanted a matching charm to put on his keychain, so Charley’s growing one for him.

  “Oh, Solar,” Ivy’s office opened up down the hall and she burst forward with a green tote bag and a handful of samples. “Good. You made it. So, this to the private delivery and here are some freebies for giveaway.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” Ivy said, then gestured a mannerly palm toward me and added, “Did you meet Rainy Dale? She’s a horseshoer.”

  “A what?”

  Ivy laughed and waved Solar away. The girl gathered up the tote bag and dog supplement samples, then headed for the foyer.

  I picked up my empty bowl and drained my glass.

  “Oh, leave that,” Ivy told me, following Solar to the door.

  Eliana came for my empties again. I followed Ivy. Charley followed me.

  On the flagstone outside, Gabe was striding up from the right, and he tipped his hat to Solar. Charley swung around, plastered to my left leg in a heel.

  Ivy asked, “Did you find Stuckey?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Gabe said. “He’s checking the flock. Thinks they’re all down in the lower part now, but a few might have wandered the hill. I told him to get a count. It’s not looking like all the geldings are going to get ridden. Oscar’s butchering.”

  Ivy cast a glance to Solar as though Miss Yoga should grab on to the idea that there was more than horseshoeing that the girl didn’t get about life on this ran
ch.

  Solar shook her head and got into one of those super-quiet electric cars and turned around using more space than I’d need to one-eighty Ol’ Blue. Gifted as a driver, Solar wasn’t.

  “We wanted to get some exercise in all of them,” Ivy said.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Gabe sounded like it had been his idea, but now she was making it hers.

  Horses were needing riding? I perked up. Ivy had brought me into her home, let me use her phone. They’d fed me and rinsed me out with plenty of tea. I’d had the thought, of course, to offer to shoe for them—the Appy mare was close enough to due—and I’d been on and off their ranch for some bit of the day. I owed these people.

  “I can ride for you.”

  “Hmm,” Ivy said, starting to shake her head, then hesitating. “Okay, I’m going to ask you something, and please don’t feel insulted. You have no idea how many guests we get who say they can ride and what they mean is they have sat on a walking horse that needed no guidance in an arena. Riding out loose on the ranch is totally different. Things can spook a horse, and it’s hilly, and the horses can slip anytime. And you have to be careful of wire fences. And you have to duck when the horse goes under a low branch. If you can’t really ride—”

  “I can really ride.”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t think you should have been driving. I’d feel terrible if you got woozy again and fell off a horse.”

  “I’m not going to fall off. I’m feeling so much better.” It was true. “Really, I’d like to repay your hospitality, and if you have horses needing wet saddle blankets, that’d suit me fine as a way to help you out.”

  Ivy looked at me in silence then smiled. “Okay then.”

  ***

  Oh, stepping into a stirrup after checking the cinch, swinging aboard a fine horse, feeling all the power and goodness at the ready, it’s the best. With Ivy’s okay, Gabe directed me to a blood bay in the second stall, a gelding called Decker who told me he was more than ready to get out for a ride. The bay had good shoes, but I couldn’t help noticing a flashy chestnut gelding across the wide barn aisle was bare, overgrown, and needing a full set. Gabe took a burly buckskin—its shoes clipped all the way around—from down the aisle and we headed out with Charley holding point like the header of a herding dog he was born to be. It was a fine thing to ride out on the Beaumonts’ ranch. Halfway up the big hill, the sound of a sheep’s bell rang below us. I figured they had it hung on a ewe or a wether. Leaving a bellwether, a castrated ram, as a good-sized and noisy bachelor to help mind the ewes and lambs is one more piece of protection to afford a flock.