The Final Turn (Cajun Cowboys Book 2)

by Patricia Watters

  Ace brushed a knuckle along her jaw. "Does bein' a jockey mean that much to you, chère?"

  Piper held his gaze. "It means everything and I'll do whatever it takes to reach that goal."

  Ace dropped his hand. "Okay, I get the picture. Good luck then."

  When he turned to go, Piper called out, "Could we dance in the shed row again?"

  Ace paused and glanced over his shoulder. "Would you wear the dress?"

  "Why? I'd just be out here with the horses?"

  "The horses and me. And you looked real pretty in that dress."

  "It seems silly, but I'll think about it."

  Ace's roguish smile had Piper feeling a little giddy. "Come for the match race and you might find someone who needs a jockey. Five matches are planned and it's not unusual for a match to be cancelled when a rider doesn't show."

  "And you think they'd hire me?"

  "Sure. They saw you race. It's only a quarter mile run so it'll be over before you have time to figure out what happened, that is, if you're horsewoman enough to stay on a quarter horse when it shoots outta the startin' gate like a cannonball."

  Piper squared her shoulders and said in a snappish voice, "I can stay on. I'm not new to this."

  "I know, but maybe you're new to this." To her shock, Ace curved a finger beneath her chin and kissed her. "See you in the mornin', sweet pea." He turned and headed for the stock barn, leaving Piper feeling flighty and fickle as a school girl with her first kiss. It wasn't, of course, but the suddenness of it was. And the aftereffect.

  She licked her lips, surprised to find the lingering taste of anise, or maybe licorice, she couldn't decide. Then she reminded herself it made no difference because Ace wasn't a part of her long-range plan, other than as owner of the filly she intended to ride into the winner's circle, in spite of what Edgar Robichau threatened to do.

  CHAPTER 9

  It was past seven in the morning by the time Rags was ready for her workout, although Piper was aware that the filly had been up since dawn. Now that she was in training, Henri had her on a schedule to be followed religiously. He'd posted a timeline on the stable wall and Gator and Tee-Roy, the kid who mucked out the stalls, were given strict orders to follow it to the minute. Rags was to have breakfast when awakened at dawn, followed by grooming while her stall was being cleaned, followed by a workout, and lastly, gate training and a hose down, all the while she was to be praised and patted for her good behavior and ignored when she turned surly, which wouldn't last long because surliness was to be met by showering her with affection and carrots. Her afternoons would find her released into her pasture with Gumbo, where she could frolic and graze and be the full-of-fun, free-spirited horse she was born to be.

  Henri embraced the fact that Rags was a playful filly. Whether he'd come by it innately, or he'd learned through years of training, he understood the two-pronged approach to training that category of horse. First, get rid of the whip; constant admonishment gives a playful horse a negative attitude about racing. And second, when life was fun, racing was fun, and when the handlers praised a playful horse, the horse would give them all it had, a notion Piper had never seen put into effect because, to Mick, a playful horse was an undisciplined horse.

  The outcome of the next race would determine which trainer was right. Except Rags was full of surprises, and in the end maybe her father would be right, and Rags wasn't destined to be a racehorse because she'd been telling everyone in her own equine way that racing on a track with a rider on her back and a crowd yelling and screaming was pointless.

  After exercising the quarter horses, Piper joined Henri and Ace at the training track, where Gator had Rags tacked up and ready to go. Either her two-week respite was working, or Rags was pumped up after her free-for-all run the day before, because she wasn't her usual bad-tempered self when facing a morning workout. Instead, she danced in place, big ears straight up, eyes alert, as if eager to get on with things.

  While waiting for workout instructions from Henri, Piper tried to ignore the slight smile on Ace's face and the sparks in his eyes as he stared at her, like he'd scored a hit with his kiss the day before and was pleased. And he had no reason to believe otherwise because she hadn't called him down at the time or chastised him in any way that morning, mainly because she'd focused all her attention on working the quarter horses in an effort to ignore the little voice inside telling her she liked Ace's kiss and the closeness it brought, and wanted more.

  For now though, she had to clear her mind of everything but what was ahead. Rags was intuitive when it came to reading human emotions, and the female human in her life having thoughts of kissing the male human now prominent in her life would definitely send a garbled message at a time when Rags should be priming herself to run.

  Play. This workout with Rags was all about play, she reminded herself, and immediately turned her thoughts to her crazy dancing with Ace in the shed row, the two of them stomping around the floor like a couple of country bumpkins while kicking up a whirlwind of dust, and Rags joining in with the squeaky toy. She couldn't help smiling at Ace at that point, which had him grinning, like they'd made a connection, maybe an acknowledgement of his kiss…

  "Let's get started," Henri said to Piper. "Just lean on her neck, leave the reins loose so she can choose her own pace, and make sure all workouts end at the finish line where you'll give her a lotta praise, then jog another half mile to cool her down and end with gate trainin' after some of the steam's outta her. When she starts runnin' with a workmate, her competitive spirit'll kick in and she'll wanna get to that finish line first."

  "Will she be working with Jetstream?" Piper asked.

  "Maybe later, but she'll start out with Cricket, an older gelding we keep around here to calm the other horses. He's also lead pony for our racers. The filly made friends with him across the fence and we'll be movin' him into her stall."

  "You mean along with the goat?"

  Henri nodded. "We'll be takin' out a divider between stalls to make room for the crew."

  Piper felt a rush of adrenaline. Henri's training approach was so diametrically at odds with Mick's she could barely contain her excitement. Through the filly's actions and body language, she knew Rags was also excited about the workout, with her head alert, eyes bright and fixed on the straightaway, and her eagerness to head down the open road nearly palpable. Piper could almost hear a small equine voice, the voice of the foal she'd breathed life into, saying the way she did when frolicking in the pasture with the other weanlings, "Come on guys, let's make this fun today. Can we all just have fun?"

  Gator gave Piper a leg up and Piper urged Rags onto the track. As Henri instructed, she leaned over Rags, and holding the reins loose, said in an animated voice, "Okay girl, time to have some fun." With that, Rags took off, but unlike her out-of-control run with Edgar the day before, Rags moved to the inside rail and made a beeline down the track as the quarter poles whizzed by. Banking into the turn, Rags stayed almost on top of the rail the entire trip around, even picking up speed before she was out of the turn, then once on the straightaway she burned up the track while holding so tight to the rail Piper could feel it rushing by.

  The second time around the track Piper saw Henri waiting at the one-sixteenth pole, the marker just before the finish line, while motioning for her to bring Rags to a stop, which she did. Rags was barely winded, and as before the race, her ears were straight up, her eyes keen with eagerness. The entire workout had been a lark!

  Henri, on the other hand, looked concerned. "She always been worked along the inner rail?" he asked.

  Piper nodded. "Whenever anyone tries to steer her away she slows down."

  "Then tomorrow we'll start breakin' her of that. Tracks are banked in the turns and sloped toward the infield so even a little rain makes it muddy and slow goin' at the rail. It's also a place horses can get trapped in a traffic jam so a horse that refuses to swing wide's got two strikes against it from the start."

  "How do you get he
r to swing wide?" Piper asked. "Any attempt in the past to move her away from the rail had her fighting the bit and nearly coming to a stop."

  "We'll start her workin' with Cricket who'll be runnin' at the rail. If she's the dominant filly you claim, her mind'll be on challengin' her rival, not huggin' the rail. If we have to, we'll put her in blinkers and place saw horses along the rail until she gets the idea. She's smart. She'll understand. For now, jog her around once more to cool her down then meet Ace at the startin' gate and he'll take it from there." Henri waved her off and left.

  After her turn around the track, Piper found Ace waiting by the three-horse starting gate, an olive-green contraption on wheels that enabled it to be moved around with a tractor. Although it was an older gate, the stalls, doors and tailgates were padded, which was good as a lot can happen in a stall with an unruly horse. Rags was not necessarily unruly, but she was unpredictable at best. "I take it those gates are manually operated," she said.

  Ace nodded. "We won't be operating them though. All she'll be doin' is standin' in the gate with both doors open while munchin' on a carrot."

  "So you want me to walk her in there?"

  "No, dismount and I'll lead her in, give her a chance to sniff around and check out the place and be satisfied there's nothin' in there to attack her, and a carrot to chomp on will convince her it's a good place to be. After that you'll mount up and walk her in, have her stand awhile, walk her out the front and give her another carrot."

  "That's it?"

  "Yep. Tomorrow I'll close the front gate and lead her in and back her out, then you'll walk her in and back her out. You'll also be walkin' her through the gate before and after every workout. By the end of the week I'll start makin' a racket like it's race day and we'll work on opening the gate and walkin' her out, then gallopin' her out, then havin' her blast out like a cannonball when she hears the bell. By the time she gets to the racetrack she'll be convinced that goin' in a gate's a good thing because when the bell rings and the gate opens she'll get to run flat-out, and at the finish line, she'll get a carrot."

  "That's all well and good," Piper said, "but if on racing day she's miffed about the male jockey on her back since she equates them with whips, she'll let it be known how she feels when it comes time to load, including the racing stewards, who're apt to scratch her from the race and insist she be re-schooled and re-certified or ban her from racing altogether."

  "Then you've got two weeks to prove you're the right jockey."

  Piper eyed Ace with uncertainty. "Prove it to who? You or your grandfather?"

  "My grandfather has final say but he put me in charge of gate trainin' and I'll be passin' the progress on to him." Ace's diabolical smile that followed said it all.

  "In other words, if I jump through your hoops I might get to ride Rags in the race."

  Ace's brows gathered in puzzlement. "Jump through what hoops?"

  Piper shrugged. "Go to the fais do-do and wear the dress."

  Ace laughed. "Is that such a big hoop to jump through?"

  "I don't know you very well. It could just be the beginning of a series of hoops and little bribes. You know how much I want to ride Rags in this race."

  "Yeah, you've made it pretty clear. As for not knowin' me very well… We've lived next door to each other all our lives. Maybe it's time to get to know your neighbor. Maybe I'm a guy with a horse you want to race, and if you're nice to me you might get your way. Cajun men are suckers for pretty women."

  Piper felt her face flush. In breaking into a male-dominated profession that resented women challenging them, complements were rare, if at all. And the bottom line was, Ace had nothing to gain by giving her complements. She was the one with everything to gain. And he did seem to genuinely like the way she looked in the dress, silly as it was.

  "Okay, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're protecting your investment by looking for the best jockey you can find, but I can tell you right off. I might not have the experience Edgar Robichau has, and maybe on other horses I wouldn’t do so well, but I'm the best jockey for Rags because we've bonded and she'll run her heart out for me if I ask her to, and that should be reason enough."

  "Like I said, Cajun men are suckers for pretty women. I'll pass it on to my grandfather."

  ***

  At the end of the gate training session, Ace walked with Piper to the shed row, where she unsaddled Rags while he dragged the hose to where they cross-tied the horses to hose them down. Ace figured that while Piper held the hose he'd scrape off the water, mainly because it gave him a chance to spend time with her and pursue whatever was going on between them.

  After handing her the hose, he shrugged out of his shirt and tossed it aside, then grabbed the scraper and waited for the water to start flowing. When nothing happened, he looked at Piper to find her staring at his shoulder, brows drawn.

  Eyeing him with curiosity, she said, "I suppose there's a perfectly logical reason why you have a tattoo of a malamute and a pair of deer antlers on your shoulder instead of, I don't know, maybe a bull, or a quarter horse, or even an alligator?"

  Ace cocked his shoulder and looked down at the large tattoo. "It's actually a wolf and caribou antlers, and I had it done when I was in Alaska a few years back."

  Piper turned the nozzle on the hose, sending water flowing over Rags' back. "And you were in Alaska, because…?"

  "I was figurin' on makin' my fortune," Ace said, while passing the scraper over Rags. "I read an article about a guy who went there and made a bundle."

  "So you took off for the boondocks after reading an article," Piper mused, while moving the hose over Rags rump.

  "That's about the size of it. Sort of a, go west young man call," Ace said. "I'd spent my life herdin' cattle on this ranch and decided I wanted to see what was beyond Vermilion Parish, so I hopped a flight to Alaska. What wasn't in the article was, once you get off the plane you hitchhike to the worksite, live in tents or share an apartment with ten other guys, kill yourself workin' sixteen hour shifts doin' hard, boring, repetitive work, all the while you're swattin' mosquitoes the size of a Cessna."

  Piper chuckled. "So why a tattoo of a wolf and caribou antlers?" she asked, while giving Rags a chance to bite at the water bubbling out the end of the hose.

  Ace shrugged. "It took leavin' home to realize herdin' cattle on this ranch is where I want to be, and this—" his palm went to his shoulder "—is a reminder that I made the right choice."

  After he removed his hand, Piper stared at the tattoo for a moment before her gaze drifted slowly down his torso, then she looked up quickly and said, "You have a nice… umm… tattoo."

  "Thanks. Maybe someday I'll show you my other one."

  Piper's focus immediately went to his crotch.

  He laughed. "It's not there. It's on the bottom of my foot. It's a squashed cockroach, which I had tattooed there to remind my kids one day why they shouldn't sneak out of bed at night since that's when the roaches are out scouting crumbs."

  Piper chuckled and moved to the other side of Rags. Ace followed, and all the while Piper hosed and he scraped, Rags bobbed her head, and flicked her ears in animation, and danced in place, a playful filly enjoying her bath. But when her steps became yet livelier, Piper snickered and said, "Rags is two-stepping."

  "Yeah, she's tryin' to tell us she wants to jig around the floor again, aren't you girl." Ace reached around Piper from behind and scratched Rags neck, trapping Piper within the circle of his arm. When Piper made no move to duck away, he leaned close to her ear and said, "Gator's right. She is a muffinhead."

  Piper turned off the hose. "When did she stop being Beauty?"

  "When she started bein' a muffinhead."

  Piper craned her neck backwards to look at Ace. "But you're the one who said rags are throwaways and calling Rags beauty would change her attitude, and now she's a muffinhead."

  Ace felt Piper's warm breath against his face as she looked at him, and in her wide hazel eyes he saw a tiny
spark of desire. He was on the verge of turning her around and testing the budding relationship with a serious kiss, when Rags nudged Piper in the shoulder with her muzzle, bringing their cozy encounter to an abrupt halt.

  Piper ducked under Ace's arm and said to Rags, "I don't have that rubber thing you shake up and down so you'll have to find something else to amuse yourself with, you goofball."

  Ace chuckled. "Speaking of balls, grab old muffinhead and let's go out to the pasture where I have one for her to play with."

  "Are you serious?"

  "Sure. It's a two-foot exercise ball."

  "She's never had a ball before. She'll probably think it's another animal companion."

  Ace laughed. "We'll soon find out."

  On approaching the pasture, Rags gave a little whinny and kicked up her heels on passing through the gate that Piper held open for her. Piper stood with Ace just outside the fence while waiting to see what Rags would do.

  Spotting the big red ball, Rags cantered over to check it out, and finding in movable, started bumping it with her nose until she got the hang of how it moved. Before long she was sending it bouncing away while chasing after it, stopping periodically and looking over at them as if to say, "Hey guys, I'm playing ball. Watch me," then loping after it again, and dribbling it with her nose, sending it rolling around trees, and across the pasture, all the while seeming to have control of the direction of the ball as she hit it first with one side of her muzzle, then the other.

  The play session ended when Rags reared up and came down on the ball with both front feet, bursting it with a loud thwack. For a few moments she stared at the thing that was slowly deflating, then grabbing it in her teeth, she shook it up and down, but when it didn't squeak, she dropped it on the ground, pawed it with her front hoof, shoved it with her nose, then stared down at the crumpled thing, looking confused and sad.

  "I'll get her another ball, a smaller one with a handle on it," Ace said. "I saw it at the farm and ranch store and it's not supposed to pop."