Dead Blow

by Lisa Preston

  “That’s where the police asked us to go. Biff and I bushwhacked circles around it, but never saw a sign of her.”

  Biff is one of Guy’s rugby and poker pals. I twisted my ponytail, whipped tired and still hungry. This was all someone else’s sad business, not mine.

  “You had a couple messages,” Guy said as we went back to the kitchen.

  Apparently, a found human hand had trumped talk of messages earlier.

  Guy whisked our plates away for warming. I’d have been happy to finish dinner cold, but kept that unsaid. I glanced at the message machine, which was not flashing, so he’d already played the messages. One or two cell towers would not go amiss in Butte County. As is, coverage is just not good enough at a lot of my clients’ barns, and it’s next to worthless here at the end of Vine Maple road. Guy’s cell works at the Cascade, and the app he uses to track his runs works off GPS.

  “What messages?” I racked my socked feet on his chair.

  “One from the Delmonts, with a lame horse.”

  I frowned. I’d shod for Earl Delmont recently—using the hooey out of my hoof stand because holding up draft horses’ feet is not my back’s idea of an afternoon’s fun—so his horses shouldn’t be needing my care. If the problem was a pulled shoe, he’d have probably said as much in his message.

  “Who else?” I asked.

  He twisted his mouth and spoke from the kitchen with his back to me. “That vet.”

  Guy needs to get over his thing about the vet. Neil Nichol is not a bad guy, even though he’s good looking, arrogant, and gets under my skin sometimes. There was a time when I considered my options with Neil, but that, too, is another story.

  But no one living with Guy wants him in a bad mood for dinnertime, ’cause it could be a long time ’til the roast chicken pasta comes back to the table.

  “I’m shoeing for our little helper tomorrow afternoon,” I said, by way of distraction. Abby Langston’s Arabian needs new shoes every six weeks, the girl rides so much. She lives with her daddy, who’s a good guy, but works eight-to-five weekday hours, so Guy and I enjoy kind of putting her to work.

  My mention of Abby failed to lighten Guy’s mood, so he was still sour about Nichol calling me. I shrugged off Guy’s attitude and got my appointment book so I could get Earl Delmont’s phone number out of the address section. Spooky helped me dial by playing with the phone cord. I hate that. Makes me want to hit him with a rock and scissors then wrap him in paper.

  “Mr. Delmont?” I said, holding the phone with one hand and swinging the cord at the cat with the other. “It’s Rainy Dale. Tell me about your horses. Which one’s lame?”

  The Delmonts are the last loggers hereabouts using horses and they favor Belgians, though they do have a three-year-old by their stud out of a Clydesdale mare. He’s a perfect white-socked bay. Just like his mama, a looker, is what I heard about her, though I’ve never seen her. The Delmonts took the baby in trade some time back and are bringing the colt on as a new hauler.

  The youngster’s the cutest thing, and I generally don’t cotton to cute. But he’s a hoot, always asking questions in his horse-way about my tools and whether or not I’d like to play and if I thought a leaf blowing across the yard was likely to try killing him.

  Why’d it have to be him, this yet unnamed boy, the one they just called The Kid?

  I leaned down to stroke Charley’s fur for the comfort the touch brings.

  “Seems like it’s in his shoulder.” Earl Delmont paused and sounded a little embarrassed for both of us, a tone like an apology. “The vet asked when he’d last been shod and I did mention that you’d shod him real recent.”

  “Right,” I said, flipping back through my date book. I remembered he’d wanted to take the boy out to try him at a real logging job. “When’d he come up lame?”

  “It was noticeable this morning and it’s getting worse. Not real sure exactly when it started, you know. Doc Nichol is coming out late tomorrow afternoon.”

  So, Neil Nichol would want me at the Delmonts’ place at the same time. And I’d thought I was going to have a short day for the first time in a long while. But making sure a hurt horse was, first of all, done right by, and B, not my fault, was more important than knocking off work early, so I promised to get there as soon as I finished Abby Langston’s horse the next afternoon. Right now, I didn’t know if the vet was helping or hurting me in his attitude about wanting me there. Nichol and I have had our ups and downs and it seems he got a little frosty with me after Guy and I went official.

  Chapter 4

  WATCHING TWO PEOPLE HAVE A RIP-ROARING fight is an unpleasant occupation. I especially don’t care to witness a girl giving her daddy such a mouthful as my second-to-last client of the day, Abby Langston, was doing. They were too far away for me to comprehend the words or the reason for her rage. I’ve seen her pretty upset before, but she’d generally been one to keep it together. There was, after all, that felony she committed, a theft thing, that resulted in her mare getting with foal, but that got sorted out without the law needing to be involved. Oh, I’d been involved though. To hear Abby tell it, I’d been the inspiration of it all, but that’s a story for another day.

  Bringing Ol’ Blue to rest near the barn, I dismounted, surprised that Abby’s mare wasn’t tied, ready to be shod. Abby’s usually a pretty conscientious customer who doesn’t keep her shoer waiting. And this shoer happens to be her boss too, as I let Abby ride with me on weekend work and slip her a few dollars.

  Abby ranted in the pasture, holding the lead rope to Liberty’s halter but not making any progress to the little barn, just arguing with her daddy instead. I’d never known Keith Langston to even be in the field—it’s his daughter’s domain. The whole horse thing was just for Abby. Her daddy’s just for her, too. He’s divorced and the mama isn’t around.

  But now I could make out Abby’s rough talk.

  “It would kill me,” she shrieked as Keith Langston made calming motions with his hands. “You want to kill me?”

  Never had I heard Abby giving such lip to her daddy and I’d never expected him to take it in the face like he did. He’s a good firm kid-raiser who doesn’t take trash off a kid.

  Whatever he said back to his put-out daughter was low and gentle, almost pleading from my view.

  “No!” Abby was screaming now. “You can’t make me. I won’t do it.”

  My little client-helper hopped on her due-for-shoeing mare and loped away with only a halter and lead rope for guidance. At the pasture’s end, she manhandled an old gate without dismounting, then cut through the back neighbor’s place to ride away for parts unknown.

  Liberty’s hoofbeats on the neighbor’s dirt road reported Abby was still riding fast.

  Plenty of times I shoe Liberty on Saturday morning, then Abby comes with me to work a rodeo or a horse show. She’s my horse-holder, shoe-cleaner-upper, and tool-fetcher. I’d be working weekends alone if Abby didn’t straighten up. A little help really does help, but also, I like playing like she’s my baby sister or something. When I want to piss her off, I call her Doodle-bug and it works every time. Getting used to Abby’s company on Saturdays came easy. There wasn’t an event on our end of the county this weekend, which was why I’d had Abby’s horse scheduled for my last shoeing tonight. I hated to see Abby turn into a teenage demon and she wasn’t even due, age-wise.

  Abby’s daddy looked at me, then studied my truck. He sighed and dropped his shoulders some more. Wouldn’t be right to pry, but it didn’t seem neighborly to just mount up Ol’ Blue and drive off.

  “Her, uh, mother has moved back to the States for a job in Portland, the green energy business. She’s asked for a change in our custody arrangement. The judge ordered that Abby is to go spend some time with her, think about going to a charter school in Portland.”

  My jaw dropped while he rubbed his. All the sudden, I didn’t much care for this nameless, greenie mother of Abby’s. Hadn’t I heard something about wind farming lately?
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br />   “We’re working out the details,” Langston said.

  Being a country girl at heart, I’m thankful that my daddy got me back from my mama for a while after she took me to California, but then I got stuck with my mama again when daddy hit the road driving truck. When he’d try it as a ranch hand again, I’d get to go live with him for another spell.

  Please let Abby not mess up her teen years as bad as I trashed mine.

  Langston blinked and looked away. “I’m sorry she’s run off on you like this. It wasn’t right but she’s pretty upset. We both are.”

  I nodded.

  “Shouldn’t you be paid for coming out, for the missed appointment?”

  I shook my head.

  “Are you sure? I thought you charged when people stood you up.”

  “The second time, I do,” I said.

  “Abby’s never done this to you before, right?”

  I shook my head, still getting used to the idea that Abby was going to be yanked from her daddy, home, horse, and happiness because some judge thought it’d be fine. And here Langston was, not wanting the girl to get away with stiffing me by no-showing on a shoeing. It made me smile in the saddest way.

  He swallowed and kept up his good work. “You’ll charge her for it if she does this again? Promise me you will.”

  I knew his meaning. He’s raising a winner. I promised, “I will.”

  * * *

  On my last call, I pulled in behind Nichol, who, as usual, took the parking spot worthy of his paycheck. The number of digits in our fees and the number of letters after our names, him being a DVM, me being a high school drop-out, is what seems to determine how good our parking is. Leaving me to hump my anvil in from a distance, while he waltzes into a barn, stethoscope swinging.

  I do have a like-hate relationship with the only veterinarian in town who sees large animals as well as small. Neil Nichol sometimes acts like he’s the end-all-be-all of horse soundness, but we both know he needs my skills. We don’t cut each other a bunch of slack. Maybe it’s because we once dabbled too close to being interested in each other.

  I headed to join the Delmonts at their fence while donning my chaps. The shoestring I’d put on as a temporary patch for the torn leg strap reminded me to buy a piece of leather soon as I could.

  But as I approached, I could see there’d be no fixing The Kid.

  Some sore horses can be spotted across a field and that’s how it was with this sweet big boy.

  Earl Delmont had both thumbs hooked into the bib of his Carhartt overalls. The knees of the canvas were so faded, they’d have been white if not for the dirt stains. Only in the bib did the yellow-brown color last. A logger is as hard on clothes as a horseshoer. Earl shucked his hands from the bib, whipped off his baseball cap and rubbed a palm over his balding head. “The limp started a few days after the shoeing, I think.”

  “Showed as a shoulder lameness right away?” I asked.

  “I guess.”

  Nichol frowned, his gaze on the over-three-quarter ton patient. Interested as always, The Kid came across the field toward us. Dragging his toe as he hobbled, he was wearing away my fitting of the front of his shoe as well as his own hoof.

  Wincing, Earl said, “It’s much worse this morning than it was yesterday.”

  Nichol was over the fence, in the field, running his hands over The Kid’s body, talking quietly to the huge young half-breed. He asked questions that needed asking but irked. Yeah, I’d shod the horse, ’cause yeah, he’d needed shoes to handle the work.

  Delmont boggled back and forth as Nichol and I got each other up to speed on The Kid.

  “What have you been doing with him?” I asked.

  “Had him hitched with Buster, doing light logging. He worked good, shaping up to be a good hauler.”

  We could see and hear that Earl Delmont didn’t want to lose this young pulling horse. The Kid was a piece of the past and part of their special future.

  “What was the land like where you worked him?” I asked, wondering about real wet grass or mud. We’d had a bone-dry summer, but maybe there were some wet spots left alive in the dark hollows.

  “Nice piece of property halfway across the county,” he said and then shook his head. “Lot of construction going on over there.”

  True, the building up over on the more populated Gris Loup side of Butte county—people say the name like ‘gree-lew’ unless they’re dummies or new or new dummies, then they say something more like ‘grease loop’—is a scary thing. Too much growing is just unsettling.

  “But this was a nice piece of land,” Delmont went on. “Pond and a pasture, pretty view where I’m sure these folks will build a fine house. Had us thin out the woods enough to pay for their construction to start.”

  “So,” I asked, “it was good footing where the horses worked?”

  “Not too rocky or steep.”

  “And dry?” Nichol asked.

  Again Earl Delmont nodded, sure he’d not overworked his horse. “Good ground, just one boggy spot where The Kid slipped but Buster helped him out.”

  Nichol looked my way at this last bit of commentary. We met eyes, then he went back to the horse, though his hands now stroked the bay’s neck in consolation instead of prodding that droopy foreleg in a quest for answers.

  Delmont cleared his throat and sounded defensive, insistent. “I didn’t push him too hard. That logging was good learning for The Kid.”

  Still, it was some minutes before Nichol came clean and exited the horse’s field. Then he turned to me.

  “Well, Rainy Dale, what do you think?”

  “Sweeney.”

  Nichol nodded and glanced behind us. Earl’s wife came to join in, wearing sneakers and a housedress. Her hand slid automatically onto her husband’s shoulder as the vet put the situation in words that would warrant his bill.

  “It’s the motor nerve of the supraspinatus muscle. He’s injured it and it’s paralyzing him. This will get worse before it gets better, if it gets better. In another day or two, he’ll be dragging that toe worse. We can’t help that nerve. Only time will tell but he’ll probably never be normal again.”

  “The super . . .?” Earl’s voice trailed off, no doubt his mind parked on the part about the horse not recovering.

  “The supraspinatus,” I said, since I did go to shoeing school, after all. It was a ways after that horrible two-year half-try I did for high school. I was better studying something I loved. And it was a super good shoeing school. Supraspinatus was a name I’d have gotten right on a multiple choice test, but not a fill-in-the-blank. The closer to earth—the farther down the leg—things go, the more solid my anatomy is. I’m happiest in the hoof.

  But I wouldn’t be able to fix The Kid. His hoof wasn’t the problem.

  He’d have still been okay for breeding, but of course, the Delmonts gelded colts young, plus The Kid was a crossbreed, so a stud’s career was already not an option for him. He was about out of options and uses. Shit. Oops, I mean crap. Sort of.

  Delmont had an unhappy face pulled across the front of his skull. “You mean you don’t think he’ll recover to heavy haul?” He scratched his head as he stared at The Kid.

  Never, I knew. As it stood, the sweet young fellow would need at least six months, maybe a year, of being a pasture ornament.

  “He’s paralyzed,” Nichol said again. “The suprascapular nerve might repair to a significant extent, and the—”

  “But hauling?”

  Nichol shook his head and I closed my eyes, fearing what Earl Delmont was going to do with what he was about to hear.

  “He will never heavy haul again,” Nichol said. “I’m sorry, but he won’t.”

  I’ll give him this, Nichol spoke more like a people-doctor, like a vet who cares, than many. Some would sound like a mechanic telling a guy his engine’s header was cracked.

  Becky Delmont stepped forward, a good woman whose wide face showed its wear in the way of ranch wives. She could probably buck hay bal
es all day long. Clear enough, she’d try to make things work. “Hitched up with another horse, maybe he could haul?”

  I shook my head with Nichol this time. Recovered Sweeney horses can sometimes become light duty horses, pull light loads, but they can just about never be hard workers again.

  Muttering out loud the stinking thought that clogged everything up, Earl said, “Can’t keep a horse what can’t haul. I just can’t.” He had his hands on his hips and went to shuffling and pacing to work himself all through the bad news he’d been fed.

  Nichol turned to me, giving the family a minute to grab on to this sorry deal with both hands. “The Chevigny woman called me this morning about getting some vaccines and she mentioned you were coming out to her place later. You’re her shoer?”

  I nodded. Earl gave us some frowns. I wondered how much doctoring Nichol was doing for Donna Chevigny or if he was just letting her buy stuff through his office to do her own doctoring. I hoped he was cutting her some deals. She didn’t need to be paying fees for simple things like giving vaccines when almost any idiot can poke a needle in a horse’s muscle or under the skin, whichever’s called for. I bet the Delmonts gave their own shots, too.

  Nichol touched my shoulder. “Would you be willing to be a delivery girl?”

  Such is not my favorite job, but I’d be looking pretty churlish to refuse to carry vaccines to the Buckeye ranch, since I did have the second appointment scheduled. I nodded again. “I’ll be at the Buckeye all day next Monday.”

  Earl Delmont glared over with as ugly a scowl I’d ever seen on his mug and muttered, “Chevigny got what he deserved,” then got back to looking at his boot toes.

  Becky waved me over. I eased over to her elbow to commiserate about their promising young horse that was ruined for the logging life.

  With a nod toward her husband, Mrs. Delmont told me in a confiding whisper, “Little bit of bad feeling between my Earl and him.”

  I reckon my face showed my confusion. Again she gave me the conspiratorial whisper. “Cameron Chevigny once made a lady friend out of Earl’s sister.”