Huckleberry Lake

by Catherine Anderson

  Erin felt frozen in place. Now she wasn’t sure what she should do.

  Wyatt held her gaze. “It all boils down to one question. Are you going to let your father win?”

  After saying that, he walked away.

  * * *

  * * *

  Wyatt was shaking after he spoke with Erin. Not a single word he’d said had come easily for him. He had bared his soul to her and told her things he’d never shared with anyone, not even members of his family. He went to the paddocks on the east side of the horse barn. Just before exiting the stable area, he’d haltered a mare and tied her to the fence. She shrieked and danced sideways when he stepped in close and put his hand on the rope that held her fast. Slade had only recently purchased her and suspected she might have been sedated when he examined her before making an offer. She was anything but calm now. People terrified her.

  Choosing not to pull on the lead, he hooked his arms over the top rail of the fence to watch her. She was a beauty, a sorrel with a white star on her forehead and four white stockings. She also had great potential, but her previous owner had apparently mistreated her, and now she had serious issues. In a strange way, she reminded him of Erin, not in looks, but in her behavior.

  Not allowing himself to turn around and look, he tried to imagine what Erin was doing. Was she putting even more stuff on the back seat of her car? Had his long rant done nothing to discourage her from leaving? He hadn’t noticed any dust billowing up from the tires of her vehicle yet, so he felt fairly confident she hadn’t left. But that didn’t mean she didn’t still have every intention of leaving.

  He forced himself to focus on the mare. She was head shy, which told Wyatt that someone had twisted her ears and might even have used a twitch on her or whipped her around the head. When she felt threatened, she reared and kicked out behind, telling Wyatt in horse speak that she could kill him in two seconds flat. Then she pranced around, showing off her muscle, her agility, and her speed. Oh, yeah. So very like Erin, trying to overcome her feelings of inadequacy and vulnerability by blustering and trying to impress everyone with her physical abilities.

  And suddenly the lady herself appeared beside him, making him jerk with a start. Wyatt was coming to accept there was something special about her that allowed her to sneak up on him. As she stepped onto the bottom rail to rest her arms over the top of the fence like he was, he noticed that she was wearing work gloves, which were way too large for her. For reasons beyond him, she hadn’t replaced them with ones that fit. Slade kept all different sizes. He wondered if she was sensitive about her hands being smaller than a man’s, guessed that she probably was, and knew he had his work cut out for him. That thought led him to ask himself why he thought it was his job to help her. He didn’t want to deal with that question right now.

  The answer ran too deep.

  Looking up at him, she asked, “Why are you just standing here, holding that horse’s lead, and why is it so spooked?”

  “Slade and I suspect that she’s been mistreated.” He searched her upturned face. “Well, don’t keep me in suspense. Are you still leaving?”

  Her mouth twisted tremulously. Then she swallowed and said, “I’ve decided to give it one more day.”

  Wyatt wanted to ask if she planned to go tomorrow, but he decided it wouldn’t be wise to press her right then. “That’s great, Erin. I’m really glad.”

  “Are you? Truly?”

  Wyatt couldn’t recall the last time he’d been quite so delighted about anything. “I truly am.” He didn’t want to analyze why he was glad. “I think you’ve made the right decision.”

  She went back to staring at the horse for a moment before turning to look up at him again. “So what work do you have lined out for me today?”

  “I think you should spend your last day here with this mare. She needs someone who can understand her, and I think you can. You need to figure out what her story is. What happened to her, what frightens her? She can’t talk, but she’ll eventually answer your questions with her behaviors. Once you understand her, maybe you can help her overcome her fears. For instance, I’ve noticed that she’s afraid whenever I raise a hand toward her head. If I were you, I’d work with her on that first.”

  Erin looked alarmed. “I’m the least experienced person with horses on the ranch. I’m not sure it’s a wise choice to have me work with her.”

  “I’ll be watching while you’re with her. I honestly don’t think she’ll hurt you. She acts all mean, but it’s mostly bluster. She’s been careful to miss me with her hooves when she acts up.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  Wyatt nearly smiled. The last thing he’d ever do was send Erin into a situation where he believed she might get hurt. “If I weren’t fairly certain, I wouldn’t send you in with her.”

  “How can I work with her to get her over being afraid to have her head touched?”

  He was sorely tempted to map out a plan for Erin, but that wasn’t going to help her. He truly believed animals were the best psychologists on earth. While trying to help the mare, Erin might come to understand herself in ways she had never imagined.

  “Just keep trying to touch her head. Think of ways to make it interesting for her. I normally use treats.”

  He handed Erin the lead and forced himself to walk away.

  * * *

  * * *

  Erin had no idea what to do with this horse. The only thing about equines that was clear in her brain was that she was pretty much scared to death of them. Well, not all of them, but the ones that pranced around and acted as if they wanted to kill her made her want to run. Yet here she was, attached by a lead rope to a mare that was showing the whites of her eyes and looking as terrified as Erin felt. Hello, Mr. Fitzgerald, I don’t even like horses all that much.

  She could have walked away. She wanted to, that was for sure. But being challenged to do something was one of her triggers, damn it, and the broken little girl inside of her couldn’t wimp out. The next time Jonas asked Erin who was running her show, she’d tell him a sad and frustrated child was in charge.

  Keeping a firm grip on the rope, Erin climbed over the fence and dropped to her feet inside the enclosure. Please, don’t kill me, she mentally pled. Nice horsey. Only the horse backed up as far as the length of lead allowed her to go. Erin took a step forward. The mare went sideways. Erin felt like a teenager trying to do a country line dance with an overlarge partner who didn’t understand the step pattern.

  “It’s okay, baby girl,” Erin said. Speaking was a mistake. The poor horse flinched as if a high-powered rifle had just gone off and reared up, striking the air within a foot of Erin’s face. It scared her so badly that she almost wet her pants. Then her common sense kicked in. If the mare had wanted to make contact, she could have. She was only frightened and trying to warn Erin away. “You’re so scared. It’s okay to be scared sometimes. All of us are. And if it’s any comfort, I’m as afraid of you as you are of me.”

  Erin had no treats for the horse, so she tied her off to the fence, vaulted over the barrier, and ran to the bunkhouse. Kennedy sat at the table, hunched over a textbook. He glanced up. “Where’s the fire?”

  Erin went to the cupboards and began opening them. “I need horse treats. Wyatt assigned me to that new horse, the one that’s afraid to be touched.”

  “Oh, fun. Good luck with that.” He closed his book. “They like carrots and apples. If you’re doing treat rewards, you just cut them up in small pieces and carry them around in sandwich bags.” He opened the fridge. “You’re in luck. Wyatt’s gone shopping.” He pulled out a large bag of carrots and tossed it on the counter. “We’ve got apples, too.”

  While he dug out apples from a vegetable drawer so stuffed it could have fed a third-world country, Erin began running water over one carrot and went to find the vegetable peeler. Kennedy studied her for a moment after putting four apples on
the Formica surface. “Um, Erin. It’s a horse.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I’d get at least six carrots, and it’s fine to rinse them and cut off the ends, but you don’t need to peel them. The skins have a heap of nutrients.”

  Erin wrinkled her nose. “The skins have ground-in dirt.”

  “Yep. Like I said, lots of nutrients.”

  She gave him a long study. “Please don’t tell me you cook with unpeeled carrots and ground-in dirt as a flavor enhancer.”

  Kennedy laughed. “I scrub them clean with a vegetable brush first. If a tiny bit of dirt gets past me, I don’t worry about it.”

  Following Kennedy’s advice, Erin trimmed the butts off the carrots, made sure they were well rinsed, and then began to dice one up.

  “Erin, it’s a horse.”

  Pausing with the knife poised in midair, Erin said, “If you remind me one more time that it’s a horse, I’m going to say, ‘No kidding. I thought it was a pig.’”

  “Yeah, well, horses don’t do diced stuff. They like big chunks. How would you feel if your treat for being good was the size of a BB?”

  “Around here, I’d be so surprised I might faint if someone gave me even a BB-size treat for doing well.”

  Kennedy’s smile faded. “Yeah, well, I’m sorry you’re having a rough time adjusting to ranch life.”

  “I think it’s more accurate that the ranch is having a rough time adjusting to me.”

  He laughed again and shook his head. As they finished cutting the treats, their conversation about her problems continued, with Erin venting and saying most of the things she’d told Jonas last night.

  Kennedy began filling sandwich bags with fruit and vegetables. “I know the rule about always letting a horse know you’re behind it may seem a little over the top, but after you’ve come to understand horses, you’ll no longer feel that way. I’m sure when you were a cop you took training to handle a variety of guns. If someone was checking the chamber for bullets in a rifle and had the barrel pointed straight at your chest, what would you do?”

  “I’d tell the person to point the barrel at the ground. Only an idiot points a loaded weapon at someone unless he intends to shoot him. And to be safe, one must consider every gun to be loaded and ready to fire.”

  “Yep. That’s one of the top rules of gun safety, and when you see somebody pointing a gun toward other people, all your alarm bells ring, because you know that person knows very little about guns. It’s the same for us guys when we see you around horses.”

  “I’m trying to learn.”

  “But you need to practice all the safety protocol until you’re more familiar with horses, just like someone who’s holding a gun for the first time. Point the gun at someone, and you’re bound to get yelled at. Same goes when someone does stupid shit around a horse.”

  Erin gathered the treats into a mound on the countertop. “I don’t know how I’ll carry all these bags.”

  “Make an apron pocket out of your front shirttails. That works for me. And be careful about the bags. I leave them outside an enclosure and load the goodies into my pockets when I’m working with a horse. The crinkling of the plastic can sound frightening.”

  “Really?” Erin found that bit of information mystifying. “Why?”

  “Nobody really knows, but the theory is that crinkly things, especially tinfoil, make a sound similar to a rattlesnake, and most horses are instinctively fearful of them.”

  Erin tied her shirttails at her waist to form a pouch and began loading up the bags. “I forgot to ask how your visit with Jen went yesterday.”

  Kennedy’s eyes filled with shadows. “She was glad to see me. Her face is all swollen and black and blue, but her blood pressure is remaining stable now, so she’s out of the woods. Lots of pain from the surgery on her arm, but the doctor says they got it repaired. She’ll have full range of motion and full use of her hand after a lot of physical therapy.”

  Erin was relieved to hear that. “She’s a very lucky girl. I think Rob Sorensen meant to end her life.”

  “Yeah,” Kennedy said in an oddly thick voice. “I hope he’s put away and never allowed to be loose again.”

  Erin knew better. The Rob Sorensens of the world plea-bargained and rarely served enough time in prison. But she didn’t need to disillusion Kennedy by sharing that. This was his time in life to believe that justice would always prevail.

  “Thanks for the talk about gun safety,” she told him. “That’s a great parallel. It helps me understand why everyone on this ranch is so quick to criticize me.”

  “Yep. To them, being unsafe around a horse is like pointing a loaded gun at someone. Only you’re pointing the barrel at yourself.”

  Erin paused long enough on the porch after leaving the bunkhouse to take a deep breath and release it. She wasn’t sure if she would leave in the morning or decide to stay another day. But one thing she was certain of: She would have a different perspective now and know men yammering at her about safety wasn’t necessarily evidence of a double standard.

  When Erin reentered the paddock, she was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of loggers wearing cork boots. The horse seemed just as nervous. Erin had dumped the contents of one vegetable bag into the pouch of her shirt. Holding tightly to the lead, she tried to reach up and touch the mare’s head. With a shrill whinny, the animal reared high onto her back legs and sliced the air around Erin with her front hooves. Again, Erin nearly wet her pants. But this time, she was quicker to note that the mare had avoided striking her. That made her feel less afraid and a little less nervous as well.

  “I get it,” she said softly.

  The mare snorted and swung her massive head.

  “Yes, I really do,” she said. “I’m scared, too. Not just of you, but a lot of other things.” She held out a chunk of carrot, hoping the mare might take it. But that wasn’t going to happen. Erin was the enemy, and any food she offered was suspect. “It’s only a carrot. You like carrots. Right? And this is a very tasty carrot. At the rate we’re making progress, I may have to eat them for lunch.”

  Erin remembered seeing Wyatt hunker in front of the frightened gelding last fall, how he’d just assumed a position and remained there, not moving a muscle until the horse grew curious and began sniffing his hat and shirt. She led the mare toward the only tree in the paddock, which was a feat in and of itself, because the animal really didn’t want to be led anywhere. But to the mare’s credit, she wasn’t completely ill-mannered in her protests. She neighed and balked and threw her head, but she didn’t wheel away and jerk the rope from Erin’s hand. Her behavior made Erin feel sad. When she rebelled against her father, she always tried to be polite about it, too.

  Erin sat with her back braced against the tree and rested her open hand holding the carrot on her knee, palm up. She relaxed her shoulders, which took concentration. With a gigantic animal standing over her, she felt vulnerable. And it would be just her luck that she was breaking yet another safety rule Wyatt would yammer at her about. He’d said he would be watching her.

  * * *

  * * *

  Wyatt stood just inside the new horse’s stall, resting his shoulder against the gate frame. Erin might see him if she looked. He would deal with that when it happened. For now, he couldn’t focus on other chores. He was too worried about her. What she knew about horses would fit into a thimble with room to spare.

  It wasn’t long before he was smiling, though. When Erin sat motionless under the tree, he recognized one of his own tactics for working with a frightened horse, and he was proud of Erin for remembering it. When an equine felt frightened, a motionless human quickly became a curiosity, and eventually the horse might step closer to figure out what in the heck was wrong. Equally important, though, was that Erin was trying to think of ways to make the horse connect with her. To succeed required understanding of what frig
htened the animal.

  The mare was getting an A in Psychology 101 as far as Wyatt was concerned. And Erin was following all the safety rules that he’d recited to her so far. He wasn’t particularly thrilled that she was sitting at the feet of an equine given to rearing and striking, but he couldn’t really scold her for that, because she’d learned that trick from him.

  Wyatt was still observing Erin when Kennedy entered the stall behind him. Sensing someone’s presence, Wyatt turned and then smiled at his brother. “You got home late last night. We didn’t get to talk.”

  “Jen didn’t want me to leave,” Kennedy told him. “The attack did some bad stuff to her.” He tapped his temple. “She knows Sorensen is still locked up, but the other three guys stood and watched. I think she’s afraid they’ll come find her. I tried to tell her they weren’t really responsible. I think it was more a case of being afraid of Rob and not having the guts to interfere. But Jen wouldn’t turn loose of my hand so I could go.”

  Wyatt sighed. “Ah. You saved her from them once. Now she feels afraid if you’re not around.”

  “I guess that’s it. I don’t think she’ll ever be the same after this.”

  Wyatt couldn’t hear the emotions in Kennedy’s voice, but he could see them on his face. His brother was starting to care deeply about Jen. “Nobody can ever be the same after living through something like that. But eventually she’ll move beyond it. If you decide to walk beside her as she makes that journey, you’ll need to be very patient.”