All God's Creatures

by Carolyn McSparren

  "Which he can't," I added.

  "He's got this Danish Warmblood two-year-old-stud colt. Been out in the pasture with nothing but a goat for a companion since it was weaned at six months. Not even good halter broke. Some crap about not wanting to break his spirit until he's older."

  "Better wait until he weighs fifteen hundred pounds, stands seventeen hands high and produces enough testosterone to grow beards on the Rockettes, then it's a real treat to drag him into the barn and toss a saddle on him."

  "Rodney said he saddled and bridled the colt in his indoor round pen last night, and tried to get on. He hit the dirt, and the colt spent the night in Rodney's round pen."

  "Good grief," I whispered. Inside the paddock gate, Rodney's shiny silver two horse trailer rocked to the rhythm of the horse's hooves as they kicked the inside of the back door.

  I pulled myself up onto the side of the trailer. "Eli, he's still got his saddle and bridle on. That's what Rodney meant by a saddle-ectomy. Damn!" I jumped down. "The little bastard tried to bite me. He's not even tied, and I can see about three feet of leather reins hanging down. He must have broken them in the round pen."

  "Rodney said he was afraid to tranquilize him for fear he'd fall down in the trailer, so they just herded him into the trailer and shut the door on him."

  The horse landed a solid blow with his hind hooves against the inside of the tailgate. The trailer rocked. "We have to get him out of there before he turns the thing over," Eli said. "God knows how we can do it safely." She pulled herself up on the side of the trailer to peer in the opening, but kept well out of biting range. "I can't believe even Rodney would leave a horse standing in a trailer unattached to a truck. It's a miracle he hasn't broken the front axle and fallen on his nose. Lordy, Maggie, he's the size of a bull moose! He must be over seventeen hands." She dropped to the ground. "Shut the paddock gate. That way if he gets away from us he can't get out of the paddock."

  I ran back into the clinic and came back with a pair of heavy cotton lead lines, each about ten feet long with snaps on one end. I closed the paddock gate on my way by. "We're going to have to clip these to the bit rings on his bridle. We'll never be able to halter him until we can get him out of that trailer and calmed down enough to get a shot of tranquilizer into him. Think we could inject him in the rump with some tranquilizer while he's still in the trailer?"

  Eli rolled her eyes. "I don't think I'd try it. We might hit a vein instead of muscle. The way he's jumping around I might miss his rump entirely and tranquilize the front window."

  "One of us is going to have to attach those lines to his bridle without being bitten. The other will have to drop the tailgate and stand by to grab the other line when he backs out."

  "Draw straws?"

  I grinned and handed the lines to Eli. "Eli, darlin', you took Rodney's call, so it's your stallion. You get to clip the lines to his bridle. I'll drop the tailgate when you give me the signal."

  I stood by the rear of the trailer.

  At the front, Eli shouted, "Horse, you bite me, you die! Damn it, settle down!"

  After an eternity, Eli turned from the front of the trailer. Her short gray hair stood in sweaty points around her head. "You're going to have to reach in and undo the butt chain before you open the tailgate," she said. For a moment her upper body disappeared inside the trailer. "And fast!"

  The instant the horse felt a human touch on its rear, he began to buck as well as kick. I managed to pull the pin that held the chain across the rear of the trailer in place, loosened the hasp on the trailer door and prepared to let it down slowly.

  Wham! Black hooves flashed within a foot of my forehead. The kick wrenched the tailgate from my hands.

  It hit the ground like dynamite.

  A millisecond later seventeen hands of angry stud colt exploded backwards.

  I dove into the azalea border.

  The colt spun past me with Eli clinging doggedly to one of the two lead lines.

  I struggled to my feet and grabbed for the second lead line.

  It was like playing'crack the whip' with Godzilla. Both of us landed back in the azaleas.

  "Shit!" Eli snapped. "Why didn't you hold him?"

  I gasped. "You're kidding, right?"

  The stallion reared and pranced and tossed his lead lines in triumph. Then he turned around and kicked the side of the trailer with both hind feet. The metal buckled in a pair of identical hoof-shaped depressions.

  "Rodney won't like that," Eli said.

  "Screw Rodney," I gasped.

  At that moment Tonesha opened the back door. "Uh-oh. Y'all hurt?"

  "Get the capture pistol," Eli said. "It's in my top desk drawer. Make sure it's loaded."

  From the neighboring azalea bush, I gasped, "I thoughtyou didn't want to shoot him with tranquilizer."

  "You got any better ideas?"

  "You're sure the dart's loaded with the correct dosage?"

  "At this point," Eli said, struggling to her feet and rubbing her bottom, "Ask me if I give a damn."

  We stood close by the gate ready to dive over if the colt came at us, but he had discovered the clover, and was contentedly munching, still wearing the head stall of his bridle, two lead lines and a saddle.

  Tonesha handed the pistol to Eli without taking her eyes off the colt. Eli checked the dosage in the tranquilizer dart, slammed shut the cylinder, and took aim on the colt's rump.

  "For all our sakes," I whispered, "Don't miss!"

  Chapter 30

  In which we meet a sensible stallion owner (with a very strange friend)

  When I walked into the clinic waiting room the following moming, Tonesha pulled me over to the reception desk and whispered, "We've got another one."

  "One what?"

  "Another weird guywith a stallion." She pointed over her shoulder. "He's out back."

  The truck in the parking lot was held together by rust, and the two-horse trailer had probably carried more cows than horses in its day, but both were as clean and dust free as though they had been washed that morning.

  A man sat in the passenger seat, but beyond him the man I assumed was my client had taken his colt into the paddock. The horse grazed quietly at the end of his lead rope. When he saw me, the man walked over. I realized instantly what the colt's problem was.

  Behind me, I heard the door of the truck open, and a man's deep voice said, "Gotta get me a R-uh-C Cola."

  I glanced over my shoulder. The passenger was very tall, cadaverously thin, with tanned leather skin and a few wisps of white hair. He might be as young as sixty or as old as ninety. He and his companion both wore bib overalls with no shirts. The passenger's were three or four inches too short for his long legs, revealing gigantic feet in aged tennis shoes. No socks. His bony shoulders and ropy arm muscles ended in hands the size of soup plates.

  "Ma'am," he said, ducked his head and wandered toward the back door to the clinic with his big hands thrust deep into the pockets of his coveralls. They too were old and frayed around the cuffs, but clean and pressed.

  "Now just you behave yourself, Eugene," the other man called. He picked up the lead line and brought his colt over to the fence. "Momin', ma'am," he said. "Can I please see the doctor?"

  "I'm the doctor."

  He ducked his head and sighed. "Oh, my. Don't y'all got no men doctors?"

  "No sir, I'm afraid I'm it at the moment." I hadn't met this kind of blatant chauvinism in a while.

  He was as small as his friend was tall, and his shoulders and arms were still muscled from years of hard work. He smiled up at me diffidently. "It's like this, ma'am. I don't rightly know just how to tell no lady about Sunny's problem."

  The colt had wandered up to stand beside his owner. He stood less than fifteen hands high, but was a superb specimen of a quarter horse, with a sorrel coat so brilliant it hurt the eyes. "I don't know if you done looked, but-oh, my-he's done been in some pain for two, three days now" The old man looked away, but pointed between the colt's rear
legs.

  "Yes," I said. "I see."

  The old man sighed deeply. "He's a fine stud colt, gonna sire him some extra good babies, so I don't want to cut him. I done throwed him out in the pasture with my mares the day he was weaned. Them mares'll teach a youngster manners right fast. He's been running with them until I being him up to the barn last week to start breaking him."

  He looked close to tears. "I been workin' him pretty hard, and he ain't had his mares. Then a couple of days ago, I looked back there and he is so swole up-well, it hurt me to see it. Hot compresses seemed to help some, but this morning he is swole up even worse, so me and Eugene brought him up here-'cause y'all got a good reputation when it comes to horses. See, what I think is, all that work I been doing with him, them balls o'his has just been a'jingling and a'jangling together, wham, barn, for a whole week. Done swole'em up." He made a back and forth motion with his hands.

  I gulped.

  "And then, him getting took off his mares-well, ma'am, he's been used to gittin' him some anytime he wanted it. Could it be that all that gizzum done backed up in there?"

  I cleared my throat and fought to keep a straight face. "How is he around people? Will he kick?"

  "No, ma'am, I gentle my horses when they're bomed. Why, a colt that acts up ain't worth nothin' but to be a yard dog. He ain't eatin' my grain, no ma'am."

  "I wish there were some other people who agreed with you," I whispered as I leaned down dose to the stallion's horribly swollen scrotum. I touched it gently. Hot. The stallion shifted his weight, but made no attempt to avoid my fingers. After a short examination, I came up smiling. "Mr. uh?"

  "Dockery, ma'am, B. K. Dockery. Farm's down this side of Pontotoc."

  "Mr. Dockery. It's not the-uh-friction or the celibacy that caused..." I glanced back at the colt.

  "Doc Juke's Sunny Mom, ma'am, call him 'Sunny. "

  "Yes, well, you've been doing the right thing with the compresses, although you need to alternate warm with cool-not hot and cold."

  "No, ma'am." He grinned at me. I was amazed to see his teeth were in excellent shape, and definitely his own. "Sunny's a good sort, but I wouldn't want to put no real hot nor yet no ice on them balls."

  "He's also going to need a course of antibiotics. Sunny has been bitten by a spider. I don't think it's a brown recluse or a black widow. There'd be more necrosis, dead tissue. It was a large spider, but probably only mildly poisonous."

  "Then how come..."

  "That spider must have been munching some really foul stuff and had infected pincers. Sunny has a nasty case of cellulitis. If you want to wait here, I'll give him a shot and a bottle of pills to take home, and you can load him up. I wouldn't work him until the swelling goes down."

  "Can I put him back with his mares? He's a sight happier."

  "Sure you can. I think his activities are going to be self-limiting for a while. He's not going to feel like breeding anything."

  "Yes, ma'am. That is a load off my mind." He patted the colt's neck. "Yessir, Sunny. I was afeared I'd done done it to him what with working him and all."

  "Uh, Mr. Dockery, we usually require payment for services from new clients. Will that be a problem?"

  "Shouldn't be. No, ma'am. How much?" He reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of bills the diameter of a quart of milk.

  I gave him a figure. He popped the rubber band off his wad and peeled off several twenties. So far as I could tell, the whole roll was comprised of twenties. So much for the poor country farmer.

  "If you want to load Sunny, I'll go get the shot and your medication, and bring your change. Do you need your Eugene to help you load?"

  "Shoot." Dockery led the colt to the back of the trailer. "Get on up there."

  The colt jumped instantly into the trailer. Dockery fixed the butt chain and started to close the door.

  "No, leave it open, please, Mr. Dockery. I'll give him his shot in his rump."

  "Yes, ma'am. Would you tell Eugene to come on out? I got thirty mares yet to feed and hay this morning."

  Whew, thirty mares. Id learned the first year in vet school that you couldn't tell from a Southern farmer's clothes whether he sharecropped or owned twenty thousand acres of black Delta dirt. Generally, our trucks gave away our status, but Mr. Dockery's truck should have belonged to a poor man, not a multi-multi-millionaire, which was probably what he was.

  Getting his business would be a nice chunk of change for the McLain-Scheibler clinic.

  As I started back toward the parking lot, Tonesha grabbed me.

  "I told you they were weird," I whispered. "Get that old man out of here before I call the cops."

  "What?"

  "Just look at him."

  I leaned around the doorjamb and smiled at Eugene. He sat propped between the back of his neck and his tailbone in one of the straight client's chairs. An empty Coke can sat on the table beside him. He smiled back.

  "What?" I hissed. "He's just sitting there quietly twiddling his thumbs."

  "Maggie! Are you blind? That is not his thumb he's twiddling."

  I looked again. I had heard that the size of a man's feet and hands could be a measure of his more private appendages, but had never before seen the equation so aptly demonstrated. Eugene was what my mother would call 'some lady's kind friend'

  As I tried to decide how to handle the situation, I heard steps behind me, as little Mr. Dockery walked up.

  "Eugene! You stop that right this minute and high-tail it out to the truck, you hear?"

  Eugene turned a beatific smile on the group huddled in the hall. Tonesha shrank back into the office as Eugene carefully rebuttoned his coveralls and sauntered out behind Mr. Dockery.

  By the time I had assembled the medication and my shot, Eugene was safely stowed inside the truck.

  "Sorry about that, ma'am," Mr. Dockery whispered with a shake of his head. "Eugene's a good boy, but he ain't never been quite right. Good with the stock. Don't mean no harm, wouldn't hurt a fly. Just forgets where he is sometimes."

  I tried to think of something-anything-to say.

  "Thanky'all," Mr. Dockery said as he took the medication. "Done been hearin' 'bout this clinic for years. Y'all willin' to drive down to my place?"

  "Of course."

  "Good. I'll holler at ya if I need ya."

  He climbed into the truck, waved and drove sedately out of the parking lot. --I walked back into the clinic.

  "I quit," Tonesha said.

  She threatened to quit regularly, but this was the first time I ever thought she might actually go through with it. Took me twenty minutes to convince her to stay. If I went to Mr. Dockery's place to work with his horses, I'd make certain Mr. Dockery kept a close eye on Eugene while I was there.

  Chapter 31

  In which Patsy asks a favor that turns into a disaster

  A week or ten days later, I had barely climbed out of the shower and gone downstairs to feed my current cats, Beer and Teasy, the Maine Coon cats, and Bok Choy, the sealpoint Siamese, when Tonesha called from the office.

  "Patsy Dalrymple needs to speak to you right this minute."

  "I'll be there in ten minutes."

  "She's on the phone."

  "Oh, Lord, Tonesha, can't Eli handle it?"

  "She's spaying a King Charles spaniel. Besides, Patsy asked specially to speak to you. You can tell that woman no. I am not about to." Tonesha clicked the line through.

  "Maggie! Thank God I got you! "

  "Hey, Patsy, what's the problem?"

  "I'm calling for a friend. She needs a really big favor."

  "Friend? That mean she's not a client at the clinic?"

  "She lives in the Garden District. One of those huge old mansions on Belvedere. She uses Lanier Polman."

  "So why call me? Don't tell me it's a horse."

  "No, actually-" Her voice faltered and dropped an octave. "It's a wolf."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  Now Patsy's words tumbled out as though she was afraid I w
ould hang up before she finished. "Don't ask me why, but eight months ago she bought this little wolf puppy someplace in Arkansas-cutest itsy bitsy ball of fluff you've ever seen. And so precious! Just a little sweetheart. Loved to cuddle up in Marion's lap. Great with her children too. The children were all for it, of course, but then they're both in college and only home for vacation. I really think she did it because she felt 'empty-nesty.'"

  "That's a dangerous way to fill it."

  "Her husband Humphreywas a little hesitant at first-Marion can go off half-cocked sometimes-but he got to be just as crazy about little Loba as she is."

  "Loba?"

  "That's the female of lobo. It means wolf"

  "I know what it means, Patsy. Couldn't she come up with anything better than that?"

  "Just hush and listen. They don't just have this huge house, they've got half an acre of back yard and trees that were there before the War of Northern Aggression. You just have to come see her garden, Maggie, you really do. In May..."

  "Patsy."

  "Oh, sorry. Anyway, they built Loba a palatial outside doghouseI swear you could get an F.H.A. loan on the thing-and an enclosed outside run big enough for a pack of wolfhounds, but of course Loba was a puppy. She stayed in the house at night. Slept right beside Marion and Humphrey's bed."

  "So she's now, what? Eight months old? That's nearly full grown for a she-wolf, certainly old enough so that she could start coming into sexual maturity."

  "I don't think Marion thought much beyond the cute little puppy stage, and I guess when you live with an animal day by day you don't notice so much, but I swear, Loba must weigh ninety pounds. She is absolutely the most beautiful thing you ever saw, but my word, she is enormous."

  "And less good natured?"

  "Oh, no, she's still a sweetie at least with Marion and Humphrey and the children. But she's protective. I guess she believes they're her pack. Marion started having to keep her on leash when she answered the door, and the maid swore she'd quit unless Marion put her in her outside kennel while she was working. Poor Loba wasn't too happy about that. She took to howling when they locked her outside."