by Lisa Preston
But then Sabino Arriaga told me, “You may keep the dog for my uncle.”
“I’ll do that. I’ll honor them both.”
Yeah, it was some time before the police escorted us back to the ranch with a tow truck that it turned out we didn’t need, because Hollis Nunn is a sharper tack than most.
At the ranch, where my indignant and glorious mama was making all kinds of friends with all kinds of police, Hollis Nunn crawled under Ol’ Blue and spent just a few minutes cussing in the dirt. When he slid out, his back and legs were all dirty from crawling under Ol’ Blue without a creeper.
“The connector to the CPS was unplugged,” Hollis said. “Hard to find, and hard to get to.”
I dusted him off with both hands, happy that my truck was fine. It had been Gabe who poisoned the hot food Eliana made for Vicente. Gabe who made Oscar deliver the meal. Gabe who dug up Vicente’s summit cache of money and buried Fire there. Gabe who stranded me by tampering with Ol’ Blue, Gabe who dug the grave on Reese Trenton’s land. I still wondered if he planned it for me or for Stuckey or Oscar. I was just glad that his half-formed notion of how to pin his crime on someone else had collapsed into the idea of running for the border.
“How’d you know about the Beaumonts and drugs, Mama?”
“Everybody in Hollywood knows. That, and I got a role in the western I was trying to tell you about, based on some work I did on a guest spot and the fact that I’m a cowgirl’s mother.”
I laughed, hugged her, and congratulated her all to goodness. At some point, Ivy had heard from Milt about Dara Dale. Who knew? The police had tried to sting Ivy through Solar, but still had enough to charge possession and distribution, which Ivy had been doing through her dog supplements ever since the Beaumonts bought a chunk of Reese Trenton’s family ranch.
***
Dragoon sold, so I had an empty trailer to haul back up to Cowdry, but I had a couple things to tend before I could leave. First, I talked to Sabino about Eliana then crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. She needed someone in her corner. She needed work with someone who wouldn’t just use her like Ivy did. It would take her a good while to re-earn Vicente’s wages, but I was sure Sabino could take the long view.
Then I went back to the Beaumont ranch to see about the mule. It was Oscar who stood up and said I should be allowed to take Shoeless Joe away, if Sabino Arriaga was all right with the arrangement. Stuckey was of course fine with the suggestion, and Gabe wasn’t there to vote, wearing a jailbird’s jumpsuit as a guest of the state.
The flock wasn’t too far from the barn at the time, and the donkey jack watched it all when we approached his big son. Guy hung onto the lead rope while Shoeless Joe played kite. Mules don’t cotton to being bullied.
“Steady there, Joe. Guy, ease up on that line.”
“There’s someone I’d like you to meet,” I told Joe when I got Guy to lighten up tension to the halter. The mule relaxed, and I led him away from his father’s flock.
At the back of Hollis Nunn’s stock trailer, hitched to Ol’ Blue, the shoeless mule swiveled his tremendous ears, considered my request, then stepped in like a boss.
“She’s a good person,” I promised Joe as I latched the trailer doors. “We’ll have you at your new home by the end of the week. Got fences to build.”
The men were all waiting for me, Stuckey, Oscar, and Reese Trenton. They had a chunk of cargo on the back of a four-wheeler.
“What’s this?” I asked though I could see what it was. It was a Whisper Momma forge, used but in real nice condition. Stuckey and Duffy had found a relined forge and added a new regulator and propane cylinder. “What’s going on?”
Stuckey was all shy smiles. “This is a forge party.”
“A what?” I asked.
They were laughing at me, not with me.
“We buy you a forge,” Oscar explained.
Trenton said, “Stuckey paid for most of it. Said he owed you an apology. The prosecutor likes it when restitution is made.”
Come to find out, Stuckey had used advance wages he would earn from Reese Trenton. Stuckey had done his level best to find my keys, too—he’d thrown them after he drove Ol’ Blue onto through the east gate—but ended up promising to pay for new keys to be made.
“A man ought to be able to live down his mistakes if he tries hard enough,” Trenton said. He’d hired both Oscar and Stuckey. He was going to keep mentoring Stuckey at shoeing too. Good thing. It’s a job for a younger person’s back.
***
On Wednesday afternoon, at the edge of our home pasture, under an arbor Hollis and Donna had built and brought, Guy and I said, “I do.”
The preacher waved around and pointed at my left hand, in the buff for one more moment. My ring finger’s never had so much attention. Months back, when I proposed, which was some time after he proposed, I’d told Guy I didn’t need an engagement ring. We’d picked out our titanium wedding bands together, and I’d handed his over to Melinda for safekeeping. Guy had fussed about where to put mine before his folks got to town. He’d long settled on his buddy Biff as his best man, but given that Biff is a poker player, Guy hadn’t felt like ring-keeping made a good extra chore for the man.
Never met these new in-laws before today. His father is the one Guy picked to watch over my ring until we were all assembled under the arbor. And then Guy’s folks made noise about taking time at a B&B they’d booked in Gris Loup, not too far from Cowdry. We ate clams and scallops and shrimp. There was beef and pulled pork plus side dishes and every kind of noodle and green salad. Bowls of Guy’s salsa and guacamole that shames the supposed Tex-Mex offered on the West Coast, especially what’s found in the Pacific Northwest. We’d been eating enough to feed an army when my daddy said something about fruit on sticks being served.
Guy grinned. “Dessert kebabs.”
My daddy said, “You mean, like, marshmallows? S’mores?”
I’ve logged some hard time hearing cooking school stories and I’m sure I’ll only do more, being married to Guy. Like he’ll hear my shoeing stories. We’re for keeps. I sort of tried to calm my daddy down. But after all, he hadn’t hesitated to block an interstate when Guy asked him to.
Grilled fruit kebobs, drizzled in dark chocolate sauce, turn out to be the bee’s knees.
***
Time to get back to work. I’d calls from clients, a new client who wanted shoes tapped for removeable studs, a reschedule, and a thrown shoe to deal with, plus next day, I was to bring Joe the mule john out to Melinda. He’d spent the night with my herd like he was born to it. Melinda’s only got a half-acre, but her neighbor has more land. She’s going to make a go of becoming a backcountry rider. I let the mule bid goodbye to Guy’s little half-Arab colt, Pinto Bean, while I rubbed the Kid’s giant draft horse nose and took in the warmth when Red held his chestnut face against my body. I rubbed noggins with both hands for as long as it took for all of us to feel like we were together again.
“He’s barefoot,” Melinda said when I opened the stock trailer.
Shoeless Joe stepped out of the trailer like a mail-order bride, and I properly introduced him to his future person. “Melinda, Joe. Joe, Melinda.” Then I stepped away to give them the personal time such an encounter deserves. I took a lap around her pasture checking the new fencing. We still needed to string some lower strands of electric tape. I took my time before coming back to check on the new couple.
“He doesn’t look like a Joe to me,” Melinda said. “Maybe a Louie?”
I considered the mule’s face, a great mix of future wisdom, goofy, and stern.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Louie fits.”
In a few hours, we finished the fencing for Louie’s pasture.
TAP AND DIE
THE FOURTH
HORSESHOER MYSTERY
A sample from the next Rainy Dale horseshoer mystery …
TAP and DIE
Chapter 1
BANG! CRACK!
This part of central Orego
n doesn’t get too much fire in the sky, but today’s was enough to make my good old dog Charley hunker into the footwell on Ol’ Blue’s passenger side. Near the gravel driveway’s entrance, my client had a spanking-new barn under construction, and the framing gun blasting away up there was another reason Charley gave me that fearful, disapproving gaze when we’d parked in the mud down by this converted storage shed that was never meant to house a horse.
The big gray Thoroughbred now wore half of the four special shoes I’d tapped the night before. The cracking rainstorm was the only reason I was shoeing inside Quicksilver’s makeshift ten-by-twelve stall. Poor guy.
My mind strayed to Guy, my Guy, my husband—wow, that h-word feels funny still. Made my left thumb touch the wedding ring.
Wish we hadn’t had that blowup last night.
Three months married, and we’ve hit a dealbreaker.
Bang! The construction project up Buddy Holmes’s driveway added more disruptive noise to the mix. The horse owner, Shannon, bent and kissed Quicksilver right between the nostrils. “You have many horses that stand like this? Especially off-track Thoroughbreds?”
I shook my head and drove another nail into his left hind. “He’s awesome.” Red, my horse, wasn’t too fond of environmental percussion, but he’d have stood just as well.
Shannon was all goo-goo eyes at her big boy. “And he jumps like a gazelle. We’re going to kill it at Bend.”
Yeah, the High Desert Classics, always the last two weeks in July, were coming up fast. I’d be thrilled if a client of mine finished high in the ribbons. I don’t have many jumper clients here in Cowdry, which is as cattle-oriented as it sounds. Of all my tools, my tap-and-die set is one that gets the least use. I keep the set in Ol’ Blue, but generally use it at home, prepping the night before a job since so few clients need the threaded holes drilled and tapped into shoe heels.
I plugged the stud holes in Quicksilver’s new shoes with little rubber stoppers. Just before a big competition, Shannon would remove the stoppers and screw-in stud caulks to help her giant jumper get traction.
She’s a new client, and new to our little town, another transplant from California, with dreams of flipping the jumper world on its head. Going to have to do some traveling to compete her gentle gray Thoroughbred over the big sticks, as she calls grand prix jumping.
As if we needed more noise, her boyfriend Buddy chose that moment to rumble up in his crew cab truck, jacked up with an overloud tranny and exhaust, plus a sound system bumping a beat that vibrated my chest.
“Darling,” he hollered through the half-down driver’s window, “I’m headed to town. You be safe, you hear?”
She crooked her index finger at him. He grinned and climbed out, braving the rain to come stick his face in the shed with us. She leaned toward him for a kiss then stroked a finger along his jaw. “Mmmm. I like it. Don’t listen to Darren. That was canned wine talking anyway.”
Laughing, Buddy reddened and rubbed his chin. “I kind of miss it.”
Bang!
They both looked up the curving driveway where the building project was under way. At least the next time I shod Quicksilver, we’d be in the aisle of that new four-horse barn, dry and roomy, not cramped into an old converted storage shed.
“I’m going to hire on with their construction crew.” Buddy beamed as he stepped back into the rain and headed for his truck. “They’re going to have a lot of work coming up.”
Shannon rolled her eyes and muttered to me or her horse, “He’s been saying that for weeks. Like, why wait ’til after the big Phipps deal goes through? Why not hire on with regular hours now?”
I figured Buddy didn’t hear her last comment on account of his truck’s boom-beat, which was still threatening to make my ears bleed.
More bangs echoed from up the driveway as Buddy escaped the pelting rain by climbing back into his monster truck. “Can’t believe they didn’t cancel construction today on account of the weather,” he hollered. “That little gal is so cool.”
He cranked on his steering wheel. The tires dug into the mud, splattering through a U-turn. Quicksilver peaceably ignored it all as the truck motored up the hill.
Shannon exhaled a long, put-upon sigh, and spoke to the shed’s low ceiling. “Not cool, Buddy, going on and on to your girlfriend about how cool another woman is. Not cool at all.”
Keeping my head down, staying tucked under Quicksilver was a safe place to be. I let finishing that hoof absorb my attention, while my client went on about her fella owning a piece of the planet, single-wide trailer included, for taking care of old man Phipps and his hundred-acre hill. Shannon puffed an annoyed little snort through her teeth as she muttered her final assessment. “Margo Plicatus is not oh so cool.”
I paused, turning my head to consider her lie, breathing in the horsey scent of Quicksilver’s belly. I didn’t know the person up there framing the new barn, but I knew for sure and for certain that the builder’s name wasn’t Margo Plicatus. Time for me to tune out everything but the hoof in my face.
After a spell, Shannon roused herself. “Hey, Rainy, he stands great. Let me just tie him to the stall chain for a minute, all right? I’ve got to pee. Left my checkbook up at the house anyway, so I’ll bring it down.” She shimmied out of the too-small stall before I could say a word.
I pulled my hoof stand from underneath Quicksilver’s belly and plunked it a yard in front of his right shoulder. “Just drop his lead rope. I’m ready to clinch this hoof.”
She ducked her head against the rain as she walked up the hill, disappearing around the driveway’s curve.
Bang, bang!
The construction work near their trailer house up there punched on, but Quicksilver stood like a gem while I finished that hoof and the next one. Thunder and downpour and man-made noises weren’t worth a yawn from this sensible fellow, even his pasture mate—a grade horse whinnying and pawing for feed or attention in the clearing behind the shed—didn’t swivel his ears. I worked in peace for a good spell, glancing once or twice at the soaked, shelterless horse, unhappy behind a single strand of electric webbing propped up on temp posts. The rain was pouring so bad, I wasn’t surprised when Shannon drove down in her little red Mustang fifteen minutes later.
As I finished the last shoe and straightened out my back, I told her, “I hope you clean up at the Classics.”
“Thanks. I’m going to need him reshod in five weeks flat.” She rubbed her hands together complaining about the weak water heater in Buddy’s trailer house.
We scheduled the appointment into my book, I gave her a card with the date and time noted, then gave thanks as I took her check, which showed a more impressive number than my regular straight shoeing fee on account of the eight tapped holes for screws I’d carved into the metal.
She checked her cell, gave me a grin and a wave. “I’m late. Going to beat you out of here.”
I was still getting rained on, hefting my tools back into Ol’ Blue, when the sound of her little Mustang powering away on the paved road beyond Buddy’s gravel driveway faded. Dandy, ’cause Shannon beating me out of there let me feel free to get Charley out for a pee.
“Come on. You know you need to.”
My good old yellow Aussie checked the sky as if he could determine whether any more thunderclaps were due in the minute he’d need, then hopped out, handled his business, and reloaded himself in Ol’ Blue. The rain kicked up like someone cranked the faucet wide open, uncountable big drops drenching all that stood ready to rust. As we rumbled by the half-framed barn near Buddy’s old single-wide trailer, I told Charley we’d be in a dry aisle next time. Couldn’t help glancing at the half-framed walls, ladder leaning against the north side, open rafters not yet holding any roofing above the future stalls that edged the concrete center aisle.
That’s when I saw the person laying on the aisle, Vibram soles facing me, boot toes pointing to the sky through the unsheeted rafters.
I started to roll Ol’ Blue’s driver’s
window down for a better look, then just put it in neutral and stomped on the emergency brake, glad this upper part of Buddy’s driveway was on the flat.
Opening my driver’s door, I hollered, “You okay?” but I was already dismounting my truck, striding toward the sight, then jog-scuttling toward the gal in the aisle.
“Whoa!” The word came out as I saw rain splatter in the blood pooled around her head.
A bare wisp of her breath frosted up as her lips moved in a soundless word or two. I reached, gently touched her chin on my way to her neck with my left fingertips. She was cool, though she wore a thick wool sweater and rain pants over jeans—the cuffs soaked to a dark blue above her boots.
“I’ll get you an ambulance.”
My cell phone is a pay-as-you-go type, which I’ve learned means I’m considered a second- or third-tier customer and actually have poorer coverage than those smartphone people with a gajillion hours and data plans and the like. Out here at the base of Fly Hill is a no coverage place for me.
Standing in the rain, I looked where two trucks sat stupid: near the southwest corner of the new barn was a navy crew cab marked PISTORUS CONSTRUCTION above the driver’s door, and on the driveway was Ol’ Blue with DALE’S HORSESHOEING and our house number on the door. Charley cocked his head at me from the front seat, obviously considering bailing out as I’d left the driver’s door open. In the other direction was Buddy’s trailer, and I ran for it.
Buddy’s front door was locked. I gave less than a second’s thought to running around the place trying all the windows and doors. The window on the right side of the door showed the kitchenette with, bless him, a real telephone. So many folks don’t have landlines these days. I took one step back and swung my right Blundstone boot forward, kicking the doorknob with all my power.
Hard enough that the interior molding crashed into the living room with the thin aluminum door.
At the kitchen wall phone, I hit the three digits.
