The Final Turn (Cajun Cowboys Book 2)

by Patricia Watters

  Piper gave a little shrug of indifference. "Possibly, but I've faced my father's wrath before and survived."

  Eyeing her with mounting perplexity, he said, "You can't win this race, you know. Jetstream's a force to reckon with when he shoots out of the starting gate, and Robichau's a pro."

  "I'm not sweating it," Piper clipped. "Jetstream's good for a quarter mile, but he'll start losing steam after that no matter who's on him. A quarter horse always does. In two of the most famous quarter horse-thoroughbred match races ever run, the race between Miss Fancy Patch and Little Miss Leader, and the one between Valiant Pete and Griswold, the thoroughbreds won both times because the quarter horses couldn't hold out for the longer stretch."

  "Which means nothing," Ace said. "Jetstream's three years old and in his prime, and that mare you'll be racin's got to be five or more."

  "If you're counting on age being a factor you'd better not put any money on it," Piper retorted. "Seabiscuit won the Santa Anita Handicap when he was seven and carrying 130 pounds, clocking the second fastest ten furlongs in American racing history, and he did it after returning from a serious injury, so Phantom Lady's age is irrelevant."

  "So back to my original question. What's in it for you, other than hangin' onto your trophy and money?"

  Piper gave him a cynical half-smile. "An adrenaline rush followed by a mind-boggling high after some pretty exciting equine hot-rodding."

  "That's it? A rush and a high? You'll be around the track in less than a minute, and if you lose you lose three-hundred bucks and your trophy, and in the meantime you're donating your workout services, which tells me you're in this for far more than an adrenaline rush."

  "Okay then, let's say I'm fledging the nest and spreading my wings and this is the first place I've landed."

  "And your first job is exercisin' Broussard horses for free. I'm not buyin' this."

  "Actually, I'm a cut above an exercise rider now that I have my jockey's license. I also carry insurance in case you're worried about my father appropriating this place if I get hurt during workouts. Any further gripes?"

  "Yeah. You still didn't answer my question."

  "Yes I did. Like I said, I'm in it for the sheer power and speed of a living, breathing, equine joyride. It beats bouncing on the back of a bronc for a belt buckle like you rodeo cowboys do, though I might give it a try, just to tick you off a little more."

  "What are you talkin' about? A little more than what?"

  "Than you are right now because I took the trophy at the tournament. But you can look at it this way. With Edgar Robichau jockeying the horse I just worked, I'll concede the odds of my losing the race are a little greater than earlier, but if that happens, the lot of you will have the glory of a Cajun taking the trophy and purse from a Harrison."

  "You've got that right." Ace couldn't help smiling at the prospect. He also knew Piper had been dancing around the real reason she'd set up this match race, but time, and a little patience on his part, which wasn't one of his strong suits, would eventually reveal her motive.

  "Meanwhile, I'd like to see Rags."

  "Then you'd better find a comfortable place to sit because she's sleepin' and can't be disturbed." Ace folded his arms and waited.

  "Piper frowned. "What do you mean, sleeping? Isn't she being worked?"

  "She will be when she wakes up, which isn't until mid-mornin'."

  Piper eyed him with uncertainty. "You're making me feel like a total idiot. I don't believe for a minute you'd let a horse decide when to work. If you let her set the rules how will you get her to race if the race is scheduled during her afternoon nap?"

  "She doesn't want to race at all right now and we aim to change that, which starts by lettin' her have her way."

  Piper braced her hands on her hips. "And you call this horse training?"

  Ace scanned the pintsized woman, who couldn't tip the scales much more than a hundred pounds, while thinking she reminded him of a fighting banty cock. Make that a banty hen. She seemed to be curved in all the right places.

  "Why are you looking at me like that?" she snapped.

  Ace realized he'd been assessing more than just her diminutive frame. Reprogramming his thinking process from female curves to the gist of their conversation, he said, "You remind me of the filly. She's bad-tempered when she's made to run early in the mornin'. You should know since you've been workin' her."

  Piper's eyes flashed with annoyance, then softened with awareness. "Okay, maybe she is a little crabby in the morning, but letting her have her way seems like she's running the show."

  "She is, and that's the point, but the next time she heads down the home stretch with a field of horses it'll be on her terms and she'll throw her heart into it because she'll understand the game and want to win."

  "What makes you so sure?"

  "My grandfather. He's been trainin' racin' quarter horses from as far back as I can remember, and if he said it once, he's said it a dozen times, if you've got a young horse that's racin' poorly you probably have a late developer. Take it out of training, put it on pasture so it can run free and get a lot of sunshine, and a once fat, lazy yearling will suddenly have runnin' on its mind." Although he'd repeated his grandfather's words with conviction, he still wasn't convinced the elder horseman was right in this approach with the filly, but time would tell.

  "I want to at least see where she's being stabled," Piper pressed.

  "Suit yourself." Ace led the way down the long shed row to the end stall where there was less commotion, and peered into the cubicle where he found Gumbo nibbling the bedding while Ragamuffin lay stretched out, blissfully snoozing.

  Piper peered into the stall and said in a whisper, "She's bedded down in a foot of straw."

  "Dust-free rice straw," Ace whispered back. "One of her favorite pastimes is eating, which includes her bedding."

  "And the stable companion?" Piper whispered in reference to seeing a goat sharing the stall with the stretched-out filly. "Whose idea was that?"

  "My grandfather's. The filly was restless when stalled and had some bad habits like cribbin' and pacin' in circles, and when Gumbo got loose and found his way here and made a friend over the stall door, my grandfather put him in there, thinkin' a goat companion would improve her disposition while breakin' those habits, and Gumbo decided beddin' down in straw's better than sleepin' on the hard ground under the stars, and now they're joined at the hip."

  "Good luck then. My father's trainer's against stable companions. Claims they make the horse dependent and anxious when they're separated, and he doesn't want the hassle of transporting other animals with the horses," Piper said, her voice rising with her zeal.

  The filly, hearing Piper, gave a little whinny and lifted her head. Piper held an outstretched hand over the stall door. "It's me, Rags."

  The filly's mule ears shot straight up. Rolling onto bent legs, she raised herself to a standing position, energetically shook off the straw, and went over to where Piper stood.

  Piper rubbed her face and blew into her nostrils, and said, "You want a peppermint?" She offered a red and white mint which she held between her thumb and forefinger.

  Rags's long tongue came out to touch the flat, round mint, then opening her mouth wide, she curved her lips around it and crunched with her teeth while bobbing her head. When she finished the mint, she raised her upper lip high, revealing a row of hay-stained teeth, and stuck out her tongue.

  Piper laughed. "So you want another. What do you have to do to get it?" Rags pawed the stall floor with her front hoof, to which Piper offered another mint. Again, Rags's tongue came out and she took the mint and crunched on it while bobbing her head. When she pawed the stall floor for another mint, Piper said, "Nope, that's all you get, sweetie, but Mommy has carrots and an apple for you out in the car."

  The endearment and maternal reference caught Ace off guard. Piper seemed far too tomboyish for that kind of sentiment. Addressing the issue of giving the filly carrots and an apple, he said
, "My grandfather's got her on a restricted diet and monitors what she eats when she's stabled, so you'd better run it past him first."

  "I already did and he's okay with it." Piper glanced around the stall, her forehead puckered with disapproval. "These are pretty tight quarters for a horse and a goat to move around in. Our stalls are twice as big."

  "Yeah, but your horses are stuck there all day, which is why you have to deal with problems like chewin' wood and walkin' around the stall in circles."

  "How would you know what goes on at our stable? You've never set foot on our place." Piper let out a little ironic laugh. "Wait, I forget. You're rubbing shoulders with all those anti-feminist jockeys, trainers and owners at the race track, now that you're one of them."

  Ace let that pass. He wasn't about to get into a row with Piper over the emergence of female jockeys because it was clear she was primed for battle. "I also own one of your father's rejects so I'm familiar with her bad habits. As for the size of this stall, the filly's only here at night. Days she's in a pasture where she runs alongside the fence with her ears up, challengin' the horses in the neighborin' pasture, so it's obvious she likes to race, but only on her own terms."

  "Which doesn't mean diddly-squat since you won't have trainers bringing their horses here to race Rags along the fence, so everything you're doing seems pointless," Piper said.

  "Not if she develops a passion to race and a will to win," Ace countered. "Horses are born to run fast, and in the wild, race to the front of the herd. They also spend about sixteen hours a day foragin', and stallin' a horse disrupts its grazin' patterns, leading to digestive problems."

  "Not if they're closely monitored," Piper argued. "Our trainer keeps the horses stabled to avoid injury, but they're turned out after workouts when they're not so active and the chance of injury is lessened. But being stabled, their food intake can be monitored."

  "Except there's a big difference between feeding cured hay and grazin' when it comes to getting' enough vitamins A and D."

  "No problem there. I was giving Rags a couple pounds of carrots a day."

  "And she hasn't yet won a race."

  "Okay, I'll concede she hasn't been handled right under my father's trainer, and I'll also grant that part-time pasturing is better than full-time stalling, but I also have a problem with the jockey our trainer uses. He doesn't handle Rags right. She's sensitive to the reins and hates the sight of a whip, and the jockey doesn't communicate to her the way he should. If he did, Rags would want to give everything she's got. The jockey also holds her back instead of driving her through narrow gaps between horses to get to the front, which costs time."

  "And I take it you're a pro at masterin' horse traffic while racin' forty miles an hour."

  "I've raced before," Piper said.

  "Where? Accordin' to Anne, you spent two years at a jockey school in Kentucky but as yet haven't run in a commercial race."

  For the space of several seconds, all that could be heard was the chomp, chomp, chomp of the goat, and the rustle of rice straw as Ragamuffin pawed the floor for another mint.

  At last seeming to have gathered her wits, Piper said, "The race was held during the running of the High Hope Steeplechase at The Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington. I raced against ten riders and came in first."

  Ace figured there was some thread of truth to what she'd said, but only a thread. From the little he knew of Piper, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out she was good at fabricating the truth. "Are we talking professional jockeys?"

  Another few seconds ticked by. "Not pros, apprentice jockeys, which is more challenging because you're running in a field with riders, some who'd never ridden a horse before starting the program, and about anything can happen when you're running full out with riders bumping into you and no place to go, so you learn quickly how to weave through openings to get to the front of the pack where you might not get killed if riders collide and tumble."

  "So, after two years of jockey school, why aren't you riding for your father's trainer?"

  "Because, like my inflexible, mulish father, he's against female jockeys."

  It finally hit Ace. The 'ah ha' moment. This whole match race, free exercising scheme, was Piper's strategy to launch her career by riding Ragamuffin in a race that would pit her against a field of male jockeys, and she was confident she'd win. After all, she'd trounced every knight in the jousting tournament, including him. Still, he was willing to offer her a challenge he was certain he couldn't lose. "How about we add another wager to the match."

  Piper's brows gathered in suspicion. "What kind of wager?"

  "You win and I'll hire you to ride Ragamuffin in her next race."

  "Are you serious?"

  "Yeah, but there's a downside if you lose."

  "Which is?"

  "You'll come to the fais do-do after the race and see what it's like dancin' the two step with a bunch of rowdy, boot-stompin' Cajuns."

  "Which I assume will include you."

  "Not necessarily. There's an old Cajun saying, if you feel grumpy it’s time to go out dancin', and you'll be grumpy after the race. Ga-run-teed. But it won't last. The music's lively. Makes you wanna move, and before long you’ll start tappin' your foot, and snappin' your fingers, and wigglin' your behind, and maybe I'll dance with you then."

  Piper eyed him with annoyance. "You're assuming I'd be willing to dance with you. And by the way, I am familiar with Cajun music. It's been blaring across the cane field from as far back as I can remember."

  "And you never once tapped your feet, or snapped your fingers, or wiggled your behind?"

  "No, I slammed the window shut. But it's a moot point because I won't be losing this match. The prospect of being trapped at one of your fais do-dos gives me added incentive to win."

  "You know what I think?"

  Piper waited, arms folded, fingers drumming against her biceps.

  "I think you're more bark than bite, and I aim to prove it at the fais do-do. See you at the match." Ace turned and headed back to the house thinking he'd just set himself up in a Catch-22.

  If Piper won the match he'd be stuck with an apprentice jockey who'd never raced on a commercial track, which could blow a hole in his investment. And if she lost, she'd be fighting mad, and having accused her of being more bark than bite she'd be intent on proving him wrong, a dangerous position to be in when dancing with a fighting banty hen at a fais do-do…

  Unless he could turn all that spunk and spitfire into desire. Maybe then she'd start to see more in him than just the coonass next door. This wasn't the first time he'd imagined that feisty little body in his arms. Like an obnoxious weed, that notion was beginning to take hold.

  CHAPTER 4

  Piper stood with Phantom Lady in preparation for saddling her, the tightness in her chest a reminder that she'd made several miscalculations, the least of them being that everyone there to watch the race would be hoping she'd lose. When she asked her sisters to come lend a little moral support, Anne couldn't come because she and Joe promised an elderly aunt they'd stop by and bring Joey, and Georgia was heading to New Iberia with friends for the World Champion Gumbo Cookoff. Which also meant, no one would be around to so much as give her a leg up when it was time to mount, so she'd dragged a bale of hay into the shed row to act as a step.

  But those two miscalculations palled in the face of the third—her grandmother remaining at home with a headache instead of accompanying the family to New Orleans, when normally she attended all races at the Fair Grounds, dressed to the nines, like she was at the Kentucky Derby.

  Nana hadn't arrived on the scene to voice her outrage on seeing the huge gathering of Cajuns lining the railing along the cane field, and since her bedroom was on the opposite side of the house, Piper assumed she didn't know what was going on… yet. She would soon because the clang of the starting gate along with the roar of the onlookers could rouse the dead.

  The upshot was, by the time everyone returned from New Orleans, Nana wo
uld've worked herself into such a state of righteous anger, the relatively small magnitude of a less than one minute race would be blown all out of proportion.

  In an effort to dismiss that troubling scenario, she contemplated the crowd waiting for the race to begin. On first seeing them, she'd been surprised at how many men had on suits and ties, and women wore dresses. Even the kids running around had on what she came to realize were Sunday-go-to-mass clothes. It seemed ironic that the people her family had denigrated for generations had enough respect to dress well for church, while those in the congregation of the church she'd been brought up in, and which the family attended sporadically, might arrive in anything from their best bib and tucker all the way down to sweats and flip flops.

  She shifted her attention to the gathering in the grassy infield near the starting gate. Even Ace wore a suit and tie, the sight having a peculiar effect on her. An unwanted effect. She didn't welcome the rush of adrenaline that Phantom Lady could pick up on. It also seemed bizarre that she should react to Ace at all. Nothing about the man attracted her, least of all the fact that he was wearing a suit. Her parent's world was filled with men in suits, though not for any reason as noble as wearing them out of respect for their place of worship.

  Ace, Alex, Gator, and Pike Broussard, who'd be acting as starting gate aides, stood in a circle surrounding Jetstream, who'd been brought in by van. Also in the gathering were Henri Broussard, Norman Rowe, who was Jetstream's owner, Edgar Robichau, and Edgar's teenage son, who was serving as Edgar's jockey's valet.

  Piper had spoken with Edgar briefly when he and Norman Rowe arrived pulling the horse van. A lean, muscular man in his mid-forties, Edgar had total confidence in winning the race. She hadn't drawn that conclusion from anything he'd said, but by the way he conducted himself, arriving dressed in the racing silks of Jetstream's owner, holding himself tall and straight, like a man over six feet instead of one whose mouth was about eye level to her, and now listening intently to Henri Broussard's pre-race instructions on how the colt was to be run.