Cowboy Crazy

by Joanne Kennedy

  “I’m fine.”

  “No you’re not. Jeez, Sarah, let it go. What are you hanging onto all this stuff for? You have to forgive him.” Her tone softened. “You have to forgive yourself. What happened with Flash didn’t ruin our lives. It was just the way things went, okay? It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Sure.” Sarah tried to sound casual. “I know that.”

  Kelsey sighed. “So what did you call about?”

  “Nothing,” Sarah said. “Just letting you know where I am.”

  “Which is where?”

  Sarah looked out the window at the acres of sagebrush stretching from the car, the faint blue mountains in the distance. “The Carrigan Ranch,” she said. “Or the LT, or whatever. I think I might stay here a while.”

  She clicked the phone shut and eased down the road to the ranch, nursing the Malibu over the ruts and ridges. Going slow wasn’t such a bad thing anyway; it gave her time to think.

  By the time she reached the ranch, she’d thought, all right. She’d managed to wipe everything Kelsey said out of her mind and focus on the horse ahead of her. Horses had always been like that for her. When you worked with a horse, it was you and the animal. The rest of the world faded away.

  Today, that would be a good thing. She shut off the engine and stepped out of the car, breathing in the scent of old wood, hay, and sunshine as she stared out at the complex network of corrals.

  Which were empty.

  Not only was there no red dun stallion, there were no horses at all.

  She strode into the barn and was greeted with a chorus of impatient whinnies. The graceful heads of a dozen quarter horses hung over stall doors at regular intervals down the long wood alleyway, their soft eyes gazing expectantly at her. There was a dull thud as one of the more impatient critters kicked at his stall door.

  “Hey, babies, what’s wrong? Didn’t anybody let you out?” She stopped at the first stall, where a pretty sorrel mare was nosing at the sad remnants of yesterday’s grain. “Didn’t they feed you?”

  “I’m trying,” said a voice from the end of the alley. She squinted into the sunshine streaming in the doorway at the far end of the barn. She could barely make out the silhouette of a hunched figure in a wheelchair struggling to maneuver with a bucket of grain in his lap. Trevor was dragging a hose behind him, but as she approached, he dropped it. The handle on the nozzle struck the floor and squirted a column of water into the air, flipping away from him like a snake.

  “Dammit.”

  Sarah ducked and grabbed the hose, jerking the handle to shut off the water. She held it awkwardly in front of her, staring at Trevor. Should she give the hose back to him, or help him? She never knew how to behave with disabled people. Did he want assistance, or would he take her help as an insult?

  “If you want to give that mare some water, that would help,” he said. “She’s not going out with the others today. She got a good kick from somebody yesterday and her leg swole up.”

  Sarah hauled the hose over and looked in at the mare. She did indeed have a swelling on her right front cannon bone. Filling the bucket that hung next to the door, she turned to Trevor. “Does she get grain?”

  “Three scoops. Then a couple flakes of hay.”

  “What about the others?”

  He spun to a stop in front of the next stall, which held a grey gelding who was a little on the thin side. “Blue gets grain too, but only two scoops. And we mix in a cup of sweet feed. He’s a poor keeper, has trouble keeping weight on.”

  Sarah reached up to stroke a red dun nose that had poked out of the third stall on the right.

  “Cinn,” she said. “Good boy.”

  “That’s not Cinn. That’s Blue,” Trevor said. “Another son of Flash.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Just the two.” He angled her a hopeful glance. “You taking the job?”

  “No, but I won’t let the horses starve.” She cussed herself mentally even as the words flew out of her mouth. The guy was doing his best, and he clearly wasn’t neglecting the horses. He just couldn’t move fast enough to get the job done, and it seemed like he’d started kind of late.

  “We usually have help, but she called in at the last minute. Could you do it just for today?” He gave his legs a rueful glance. “I can do just about anything, but it takes a while and these guys don’t like waiting.”

  “Who would call in and let this happen?”

  “Somebody who likes their job at the diner better than working with horses.”

  Sarah remembered him mentioning a high school girl who’d come to clean the cabin. “Emmy?” she asked.

  “That’s her. She’s a good kid, really. She’s just young. Doesn’t think.”

  “She waited on me this morning.”

  He flashed her a smile. “You went back to Suze’s?”

  “Sure did.”

  “Always knew you had spunk. How’d it go?”

  “Better.”

  “Good. It’ll keep on getting better, too.” He sobered. “You ought to stay, Sarah. Quit that job with Carrigan and work for us. We’ve got to find somebody, and frankly, not everybody can handle Lane.”

  Apparently he didn’t know she’d been fired. “Yeah, well, I can’t handle Lane either.”

  “I heard different.” The grin was back. “But seriously, we need some help. Emmy won’t do it, because she doesn’t want to do ranch work. Only reason she took the part-time position was to make money. I think she’s kind of scared of the horses, and let me tell you, that girl is clumsy with a capital C. She manages to feed the horses a little grain, but mostly she spills it.”

  Sarah smiled.

  “It is kind of funny sometimes, but not today. I guess she thought Lane was still going to be here, because I can’t imagine she’d leave me to this on purpose.” He gestured toward the chair, the hose, the grain. “I thought he was going to be around too. He said he was getting off the road for a week or two, and then he left first thing this morning.”

  So Lane hadn’t planned on leaving. He’d done it for her, and now Trevor had to deal with the fallout.

  “Well, I’ll help for today,” she said, scooping grain into the gray’s feed bucket. “Where’s the sweet feed?”

  ***

  Sarah stabbed the manure fork into the ground and watched the horses milling in the corrals. The smile on her lips felt strained, as if she hadn’t used those muscles for a while, but she felt genuinely happy for the first time in weeks—maybe months. There were a few new foals in the pens, spring babies who’d just passed the gangly, wobbly stage and were gallivanting about while their mommas watched indulgently. An older mare stood in the shade next to the barn, one leg cocked, eyes closed as she simply enjoyed the sunshiny day. Sarah felt herself relax too, picking up on the mare’s calm. That feeling of peace hadn’t been there for a long time. Once in a while her conversation with Kelsey crept into the back of her mind, but she shook it off and kept working.

  She’d spent the morning feeding horses and turning them out, following Trevor’s directions as to what horse went where. Then she’d spent an hour mucking stalls, forking the leavings into a rusty old trailer that she’d hauled out to the manure pile with an ancient, wheezing tractor. She’d forked it all back out again until beads of sweat rolled down her back, prickling the skin between her shoulder blades, and she was pretty sure she’d streaked her face with grime from wiping off the sweat. Her hair hung lank and damp over her forehead. She hadn’t felt this good in years.

  She’d forgotten how therapeutic hard work could be. You didn’t have to think or strategize when you cleaned stalls; you could just shut down your mind and shovel.

  What if this was her job? What if she went to a place like this every day, instead of an office? She felt like herself here, not like an imposter. Maybe Lane was right, and she needed to find her old self again.

  But she couldn’t do it here, with the man who bought Flash. Could she?

  Maybe Kelsey ha
d a point. Maybe she should stop blaming “the buyer” for all that had happened to her family. Now that she’d put a face on the shadowy figure who’d haunted her all these years, he seemed a whole lot less demonic.

  But if she stopped blaming him, she’d have to blame herself. Because it wasn’t Roy’s mistake that had cost her family everything. It was her vanity that had cost Roy his life, and her failure that had lost Flash.

  She grabbed a halter from a nail on the wall and threaded her way through the corrals, following the path pounded in the dirt. Horses lifted their heads as she passed, watching her briefly, then returning to their grazing. When she reached the corner of the barn, she looked at the round pen and smiled.

  Cinnamon Chrome. He was two years old, barely started. And he was waiting for her.

  As she approached, the horse jerked his head up and snorted, seeming to react to something inside the pen. Maybe a leaf had flipped up in the breeze, or a shadow shifted and spooked him. He’d seemed like a calm boy yesterday, but something was definitely setting him off. As she watched, he broke into a trot and moved past the gate out of sight. She watched him circle past it two more times before she got close enough to see what was happening.

  The horse was loping in a circle around the pen, and at the center of the circle was Trevor. He spun his chair nimbly with one hand so he could keep the horse running. As Sarah stepped up to the gate, he gave her a grin.

  “Lane said you worked this guy a little yesterday. He seemed to have some doubts you’d keep it going, so I figured I’d come out and make sure he didn’t forget what he learned.” He edged the chair to the right and Flash broke into a lope. “Seems like he’s doing good. Must be somethin’ to see after what happened with Flash, huh?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” Hearing Trevor mention Flash again felt like being punched in the gut. She started to back out of the gate, but he turned the chair to face her.

  “You can pretend it didn’t happen if you want.” His tone was casual and conversational. Did he not know what he was doing to her? Even the horse had paused, one front foot in the air, stunned by the tension in the air.

  “I probably wouldn’t talk much about my issues either if I didn’t have to,” Trevor continued. Obviously, he knew—but he wasn’t going to stop. “Sometimes I think it’s lucky for me my scars are on the outside. People ask, I tell, and in the long run I feel a lot better for letting it out.” He smacked his chest twice with his fist. “You keep it in here, it’ll either eat you up or turn you hard.”

  She swung through the gate and closed it.

  “Hey, wait. Can you hold that for me?”

  She couldn’t say no. Cinn was still poised and ready to run at the slightest movement, but when Trevor wheeled through the gate the horse bent to crop a few strands of grass at the edge of the ring.

  “I’ve got some stuff to do in the house.” He nodded toward the halter. “See if you can get that on him and lunge him a little. But don’t work him too long. You know two twenty-minute sessions’ll get you a lot farther than one long one, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And when you’re done, go ride that chestnut if you want.” He nodded toward a muscular gelding in a nearby corral. “He’s got a big motor, needs to be loped out every day. When you’re done with that, stop up to the house for a bite of lunch and I’ll give you more. Work’s never-ending around here.”

  She eyed him a moment, thinking she’d say no. She’d planned to just visit Cinn and go. But there was a day’s honest work to be done, and in her heart she wanted to do it.

  She wasn’t sure she could. But she wanted to.

  She nodded, and he grinned. “Enjoy your second chance,” he said.

  Chapter 37

  Sarah tightened the cinch on the Western saddle she’d put on the chestnut gelding, then grabbed the horn and pulled it to one side, then the other. Solid. She’d been amazed at how swift and sure the process had felt, as if she’d been doing it for years.

  She had done it for years, but those years were a long time ago.

  Pulling out a stirrup, she measured it against the length of her arm. Yup, she had it right. There was no excuse to put off the next step.

  The horse turned and watched her as she fussed with the cinch again. He seemed to be wondering why she kept tugging and adjusting everything, why she didn’t just get on and ride already.

  She was wondering too. Sure, it had been a long time. She hadn’t really been lying when she’d told Lane she was afraid of horses. But after the session with Cinn, she’d hoped she might be over it.

  Lifting the reins from the horse’s neck, she looped them in one hand while she set her foot in the stirrup. Grabbing the saddle, she bounced on her right foot like she had so many times before. Before…

  Don’t think about it. Just ride.

  The horse turned his head slightly and rolled back an eye to watch her as she bounced again. Flash used to do that. He’d done that the last time she’d seen him, looked back at her with his eye rolling, and then…

  She took her toe out of the stirrup and held onto the saddle, resting her forehead on the sun-warmed leather. She could do this. She could. She remembered her sister’s words.

  Jeez, Sarah, let it go. What are you hanging onto all this stuff for?

  “Sorry, boy,” she said to the horse. He nodded once as if he understood, or maybe he was just trying to ease the pressure of the reins. She fed out a little more and prepared to mount again. As she shifted her weight to the stirrup, the horse stamped one hind hoof. Like Flash. He’d been impatient sometimes, antsy. She felt her heart rate amp up and knew she had to calm herself before she could ride.

  She pulled on the stirrup leather, opening the buckle so she’d have something to do if Trevor came out. She’d tell him she’d gotten the length wrong. She’d have to tell him something, because she couldn’t tell him she was unable to ride.

  Maybe if she walked the horse a while she could visualize the ride. Roy had taught her to do that over and over whenever she’d come up against a problem—a tendency to run at the barrels too hard, or a subconscious ill-timed tug on the reins. He’d make her walk the course, picturing herself on horseback, doing it right. It helped. When she’d mounted again, the problem would be gone.

  She lifted the reins over the horse’s head and led him along the fence. The horse moved at a level, easy pace. He was clearly a cooperative animal, a gentle soul. She pictured herself on his back, moving easily, her body in sync with his. The picture came easily and she wanted to mount up right there, but she forced herself to finish a full circuit of the arena.

  She stopped by the gate and set her foot in the stirrup.

  You can do it.

  The horse tossed his head, picking up on her tension, and lifted one front foot, then the other, rearing up slightly on his back legs. He settled but the image was stuck in her head, Flash dancing, rearing, almost pulling her arm off.

  She shook her head, bringing herself back to the present, and rested her head against the horse to take a few long breaths. Then she set about the work of unsaddling the horse just as she’d unsaddled Flash all those years ago. It was bright daylight now, not moonlight, but the feeling was the same.

  Defeat.

  She still couldn’t ride. In all the years that had passed since that dark night with Flash, she’d been right not to try. The fear was too strong, the memories too vivid. It was time to put the horse away and then go talk to Trevor. She’d had her second chance, and she couldn’t take it.

  She was heading for the house when a pickup pulled into the turnout in front of the barn. “Hemsworth Farriery,” it read. “Custom Shoeing, 20 years experience.”

  The guy who stepped out of the truck looked like he must have started shoeing horses at age ten in order to get that much experience under his worn leather belt. He was short but broad in the shoulders with impossibly muscular arms. The belt encircled a slim waist and almost bony hips, but his leg muscles sw
elled under his worn jeans. If she hadn’t known the kind of workout the art of farriery imposed on its practitioners, she would have thought he was some kind of obsessive gym rat.

  As he approached, she realized his dark hair was shot with gray and his face was lined from sun exposure, like Lane’s and so many other ranchers’. Men were lucky. Up to middle age, wrinkles only made them rugged, while the shoe-leather look just didn’t work for women.

  “Trevor finally hire a new hand?” The man stuck out his hand. “Dan Hemsworth,” he said. “Here to check a few feet.”

  “My name’s Sarah. Who do you need to work on?” Sarah decided she’d avoid the question about hiring. She’d just help the guy, and then she’d go talk to Trevor. Find out when Lane was coming back. She’d have to stay until he returned. She couldn’t leave Trevor dependent on Emmy. So in a way, she was a new hand—a temporary one. One who couldn’t ride, but hopefully nobody needed to know that. Nobody but Trevor. She knew he wouldn’t let it go.

  The farrier grabbed a clipboard from a toolbox in the back of the pickup. “I need Tally, Ollie, and Trip,” he said.

  She realized she had no idea of the names of most of the horses. She’d called all the geldings “boy” and “buddy” in her head while she’d worked, the mares “girl” and “baby.”

  He must have seen her confusion. “First day?”

  She nodded. For some reason, she was reluctant to explain that she was just a temp. Less than a temp, really. What did you call a stable hand who couldn’t ride?

  “Let’s go in and I’ll show you the ones I need,” he said.

  He pointed out the horses and she led them out one by one. He worked in the alley, cross-tying the horses back near the sliding doors. The late-afternoon sunlight slanted in and bathed man and horses in golden light as he bent over and held their feet upraised between his muscular thighs, shaping their hooves, adjusting their shoes, and hammering out new ones where needed.

  “I’d better take a look at Cinn too,” he said when he’d finished the third horse. “Gotta keep tabs on him. Guess they never did figure out what caused his sire’s problems, but I’m damn sure not going to let it happen to him.”