Hearth Stone

by Lois Greiman

Actually, that was exactly what she could have done, Sydney thought, and wondered how she would have reacted in the same situation. But she had more pressing things to worry about. “Do you think she’ll make it?”

  A muscle twitched in the other woman’s cheek. “Maybe if we can …” She paused, exhaled, tightened her fingers around the warmth of the mug she held in both hands. “It looks bad.”

  Sydney glanced away. “You think I’m naïve to try. A city girl, too pampered to know better.”

  Casie watched her, taking in her marred skin, scattered hair, and ruined blouse. “Too kind to know better,” she corrected softly.

  Sydney laughed. The sound was rough, sliding toward hysteria if she wasn’t careful. “You don’t know me at all.”

  “Maybe you don’t.”

  Their gazes met, clashed, softened.

  “Vet’s here,” Casie said at the sound of a vehicle pulling up outside. She rose to her feet. Sydney stood, too, winced, and levered herself upright. For a moment a dozen ridiculous excuses trembled on her lips, but none of them seemed worth the effort, not here, not now. “Please don’t pity me,” she said and made her way toward the door. Once outside, however, she stopped short. The man who dismounted from the four-wheel drive was small, bent, and as old as black pepper. She glanced toward the passenger side, hoping perhaps for some young behemoth with a full head of hair and popping biceps. Foiled again.

  Beside her, Casie chuckled. “He survived Pearl Harbor. He’ll make it through this,” she said and trotted down the sloping plywood.

  “Plus he’s the only vet currently available in a fifty-mile radius,” Colt added and rambled after her.

  “Thanks for coming, Doc,” Casie called.

  “So you found yourself a mustang?” The old man’s voice was coarse but steady in the evening stillness. Dusk had settled in.

  “We’re not sure what she is,” Casie said and shifted to widen the circle. “Sydney Wellesley, this is Doc Miller, best castrator in the tricounty area.”

  God save them, Sydney thought. But his handshake was strong, his eyes sharp as whispered secrets.

  “You the one bought this place, Cindy?” he asked.

  She didn’t bother to correct the name. “Yes, sir.”

  He nodded briskly at the old house. “We used to have us some swell parties here.” A quixotic blend of happiness and sorrow shone on his face, but in a moment it was gone, replaced by firm stoicism and old-world practicality. “Well …” He turned, strides short but quick as he headed toward the barn. “Let’s get at it.”

  Sydney had to hustle to keep up.

  The fact that two lightbulbs still worked in the high rafters of the ancient barn was nothing short of a miracle. Still, they did little to dissipate the falling darkness.

  The Lazy’s saddle horses had been tied close by in the hopes that their presence would calm the injured animal. And from between the mismatched boards, the dun looked almost tranquil … until she sensed their arrival. Then she tossed her tangled forelock and shuffled feet bloodied from a dozen awful wounds.

  Steadying himself on the crisscrossed lumber that covered the front of the stall, Doc peered through the chinks at the animal inside. When he turned back his brows were low, his eyes squinted. “Been a while since I worked any miracles.”

  “I know her injuries look severe.” Sydney realized with some surprise that she’d been holding her breath. She clasped her hands now, tattered nails clawing into scraped skin. “But she’s a fighter. If you had seen how difficult it was to get her here, you’d realize she’s not ready to give up. She wants …” She glanced through the boards, saw the tensed muscles, the jutting ribs, and felt the mare’s pain like a knife in her own aching flesh. “She wants very badly to live.”

  The old man simply glared at her from beneath hoarfrost brows.

  Sydney straightened her spine and raised her chin. “I don’t know what your usual fee is, but I assure you—”

  Doc flapped a gnarled hand as if shooing flies and glanced at Redhawk. “You a linebacker?”

  “Not recently.” The Hunkpapa’s voice was low and steady.

  Doc eyed him up, taking his time at his chest and arms. “Professional wrestler?”

  “It’s been a few years.”

  “You ever work with horses?”

  “Used to do some relay racing.”

  “Indian relay?” Casie asked, tone bright with interest. “Really?”

  Her fiancé raised his brows.

  “It was a while back,” Redhawk admitted.

  “Mugger or rider or what?” Casie asked.

  Something sparked in Colt Dickenson’s eyes. Jealousy, maybe. “Racing’s like patty-cake compared to bronc riding, you know.”

  Casie ignored him.

  Hunter snorted. “Done some of everything,” he said.

  The old man nodded. “All right, then, if you see that beast coming toward me …” He nodded toward the mustang. “You divert him. You hear?”

  It was Hunter’s turn to nod.

  Doc scanned the faces of the foursome around him. “Anybody who’s scared of blood, his own or that horse’s, should hightail it now.” No one vacated the premises, though honest to God, Sydney considered it. “Okie dokie.” He heaved a sigh. “We ain’t gonna try nothin’ heroic. No way we’re gettin’ an IV in right off the bat. So I’ll just give him something in the muscle to take off the edge. But we’re still gonna have to catch the bugger, and when I say ‘we’ I mean you all.” He lowered his bristly brows and glared at Colt. “How’s that leg you busted a couple years back?”

  The cowboy’s lips twisted into a sly grin. “If I say it hurts like a bear-cat, can I sit this one out?”

  “Not unless you wanna be called a sissy in front of your girl there. Seems to me it ain’t too late for her to run off with a fella could maybe bench-press you and that horse together,” Doc said and nodded toward Hunter.

  “Guess I’m in then.”

  “Good decision,” the old man said. “Okay. We’re gonna have to get a halter on him.”

  “We don’t have a halter,” Sydney said. “And it’s … it’s a mare.”

  “What?” He tilted his grizzled head at her.

  “Courage …” She said the name softly to see how it felt on her tongue. It seemed right, good, strong … maybe even hopeful. “She’s a mare.”

  “He’s a mess is what he is.” Doc Miller had never gotten the gender of a patient right in his fifty odd years of practice and he wasn’t about to start now. “What the devil are you doing with a horse if you don’t even have a halter?”

  She had no answer to that. What the devil was she doing with a horse at all? She had sworn off the equine species.

  “You got any in your trailer?” Doc asked.

  Casie shook her head. “We were in a rush. Just put the horses in there loose.”

  “The mare shook off the loop,” Colt said. “But I can get her lassoed again.”

  “Then what?” Doc asked.

  “Then I can maybe ear her down,” Hunter suggested.

  “No!” Sydney’s stomach lurched. She’d seen the practice done on spaghetti westerns. A cowboy would immobilize a rank horse by cranking on its ear.

  Every eye turned toward her.

  “I don’t want to hurt her,” she said. The words sounded silly even to herself. The mare was in far too much pain to worry about a twisted ear. But it was too late to retract her concerns.

  “Listen, Cindy,” Doc said, tone no-nonsense, gaze direct. “We’ll be lucky if that beast don’t kill each and every one of us before keeling over himself. But we gotta either treat ’im or put ’im out of his misery.”

  Sydney tightened her fingers around themselves. “We’re not putting her down.”

  The barn went silent. A glimmer shone in the old man’s eyes. He nodded once. Maybe in approval. Maybe to say she was city-slicker crazy. “All right. Well, we ain’t gonna get much done if he tears us limb from limb before we even get our sleev
es rolled up.”

  Her knuckles hurt where she squeezed them. “Okay.” She exhaled carefully. “Do what you have to.”

  The old man turned toward the others. “You folks got to hold him still.”

  “No room for all of us.” Hunter’s voice was barely a rumble.

  “What’s that?”

  “The more people we’ve got in there, the more’s going to get trampled.”

  “The Hunkpapa makes a fine point,” Colt said. “I should probably stay out of it. Maybe go fix us a little snack. You got any brownie mix, Syd?”

  Doc snorted. “You always was a dang comedian. Amazing your mama didn’t knock you on the head and throw you out with the bathwater. But the big Indian’s right.”

  No one mentioned the less-than-PC terminology. Perhaps when one was leaning heavily toward the hundred-year mark, such things didn’t matter. Doc curled knobby fingers around the scarred stall boards and glanced inside.

  Courage snorted and jittered, hooves scraping nervously against the far wall. The saddle horses twitched empathetically.

  Doc’s brows were low above seen-it-all eyes. “You two boys’ll have to handle that big devil yourselves.”

  Colt stroked a hand down Evie’s golden neck. “Well, if I’m not whipping up a batch of brownies, we might as well get at it. Listen, Case, why don’t you and Sydney take the horses back to the Lazy.”

  “Now?” Casie asked.

  “They’ll just get riled up with all this going on. You might as well—” Colt began, but Sydney interrupted.

  “You’re not going to get rid of me so you can put her down.”

  “I didn’t say anything about that,” Colt said, but there was a hint of guilt in his tone.

  “And you’re not going to,” Sydney cautioned.

  He blew out a breath, looking uncomfortable with being the voice of reason. “Things could go south pretty quick.”

  “Then I guess I’d better be here to push them north again.”

  Colt shook his head and Redhawk glowered, but no more was said on the subject.

  “All right then, let’s get ’er done,” Doc said and motioned toward the stall door.

  Chapter 15

  Sydney watched as Colt recoiled his lariat. She clenched her fists as he and Hunter stepped inside the stall, and held her breath as Doc closed the door behind them.

  One moment the barn was as silent as death and the next it sounded as if a bomb had been detonated. Something crashed. Someone gasped. A thousand pounds of wild struck the wall. The timbers shivered under the impact. Snorts and orders and curses sizzled in the air.

  “Okay.” It might have been Colt who wheezed out the single word or the sound might have been caused by a gusty flutter of wind. Whatever the case, the threesome in the aisle remained immobile.

  “You got ’im?” Doc called.

  Agonized, Sydney tried to peer past the old man’s whipcord form, but only a scant section of one blood-smeared wall could be seen in the dim light.

  “I think so,” Colt rasped.

  “Sooner’s better than later.” Even Redhawk’s voice sounded strained. “Let’s—”

  A crash interrupted his dialogue. There was a grunt, a curse.

  “Don’t let him—”

  “Hey!”

  Able to wait no longer, Sydney squeezed past Doc and lunged inside. The mare was staggering backward. Hunter had one hand behind the animal’s ears, one clasped over her nose. Colt was braced against the lariat, holding tight with leather-gloved hands. Both men were wide-eyed as they stumbled after the flailing mare, but adrenaline or something like it pitched Sydney into the fray. Grabbing the dun’s left ear, she bent it double and squeezed tight. The animal went momentarily still, subdued by that odd black magic older than time.

  “Okay! Hold ’im! Hold ’im!” Doc ordered and lurched forward, syringe at the ready. Raising his hand, he prepared to plunge the needle into the animal’s hindquarters. But Courage twisted and reared, slamming into the old man. The syringe leaped from his hand. Doc was spun away and thrown against the wall. Casie torpedoed inside, prepared to drag him to safety, but he shook her off. “The syringe! Get the syringe.”

  Squinting into the gloom, Casie snatched up the sedative. As the others wrestled the frantic animal to a standstill, Doc urged her on. “In the haunches. Now! While you got the chance.”

  For a moment the mare stood immobile, and in that instant, Casie shoved the needle into the animal’s muscle.

  Courage leaped, dragging her handlers across the stall, then reared, shaking Redhawk loose and tossing Sydney to the ground. For a moment Colt dangled from his lariat like stubborn autumn fruit, but then he was down. He hit his knees and scrambled for safety just as the others did the same.

  For one frantic moment there was a jam of bodies in the doorway, but finally they burst through and slammed the door shut behind them.

  Colt shoved the latch home, pressed his back to the timbers, and panted.

  “Whew!” His eyes were alight, his grin full bore. “Some fun, huh!”

  So he was crazy, Sydney thought dazedly. Sure, made sense. All the good ones were. She turned woodenly toward Casie, sick to her stomach, nerves cranked tight. “Did you get it in?”

  “Yeah.” The woman’s hands were shaking like wind socks, a strange juxtaposition against her fiancé’s apparent delight. But maybe it was to be expected for a rough-stock cowboy to get a punch of pleasure out of an adrenaline rush. “I think so. I just …” She shook her head and glanced at Hunter, drawing Sydney’s gaze with hers. His big body looked absolutely relaxed, his face all but expressionless. She blinked. “Are you okay?”

  “Ai,” he said.

  Colt snorted as he shifted away from the stall door. “This life-and-death stuff isn’t boring you, is it, big guy?”

  “You’re sure you got it in?” Sydney asked.

  Casie nodded. “I just hope I didn’t get it too deep or …”

  “It’s okay,” Doc said. “You done your best. All of you. Is everybody all right?”

  They glanced at one another. There was a rip in Redhawk’s flannel shirt, showing an inch of pale thermal underneath. It took Sydney a moment to realize the soft cotton was edged in blood. The others seemed to notice the injury at the same time.

  “You all right, Hunt?”

  The Indian glanced quizzically at Colt, noticed the direction of his gaze with mild surprise, and shifted his attention to the tear in his shirt. His nod was casual. “Just a scratch.” He tipped his head toward the stall. “How long before she goes down?”

  Doc shook his head. “Won’t go down. Don’t think so, anyway. Just gave him some Torb and a little Dormosedan. He’ll stay on his feet, but it should slow him down considerable.”

  Inside the stall, the mare tossed her dreadlocked mane and pawed frantically.

  “I hope,” the old man added.

  “Then how long do we have?” Sydney’s words sounded squeezed tight.

  “Once it takes effect?” Doc’s scraggly brows drew together over periwinkle eyes. “Impossible to say for sure, but we ain’t gonna want to dillydally.”

  “What do we need to get started?”

  “Hot water. I don’t have none in my truck.”

  “I’ll get that,” Sydney said.

  “You boys …” Doc spoke to the men as if they were barely out of swaddling. “Come fetch supplies with me. Case, you watch the horse. Yell soon as you see his nose drop to his knees.” He stormed away, old joints swinging like pendulums as he strode past the saddle horses.

  In a matter of minutes, they were all reassembled in the dusty aisle.

  “We ready?” If the old man was nervous, he didn’t show it.

  Hunter went in first. Courage raised her head and shuffled sideways, but her movements were slow, her eyes dull.

  “Good. That’s just dandy,” Doc said and sidled inside, but Sydney couldn’t help noticing he was using Redhawk’s body as a buffer. Proof, perhaps, of the old man�
��s intellect. “Loop the lariat around his nose. Hold this, Case.” He shoved a plastic bag of fluids into her hands. “Cindy …” He nodded sharply in Sydney’s direction. It seemed too late to correct him. “You bring that tray there.”

  Her hands shook a little as she lifted the cooler containing bottles and syringes and needles. Even drugged, the horse seemed bigger than life, but finally they had a makeshift bridle twisted over her nose and had backed her against the wall.

  “Hold his head up,” Doc ordered. “Turn him a little. Jumping jehosaphat, there ain’t no light in here at all.” He jabbed his thumb against the animal’s neck, eased a needle in, and tugged at the plunger. Nothing happened. “Where’s that blasted …” His voice trailed off as he tried another site. “Darn veins are drier than cockleburs. Can’t even …” he began, but finally blood flowed into the tube. He shook his head at the sight of it. “Thick as molasses and near as dark.” Twisting off the syringe, he stabbed the conduit from the IV bag onto the needle. “All right, Case, hold it up.” He nudged her hand. “Way up. We wanna get him as juiced up as possible in the time we got. Colt, rig up something in the middle of the ceiling to hang that from. Redhawk, hold him tight. I’m going to start him on antibiotics. Hang it all, it’s darker than hell in here.”

  “I could bring my car in,” Sydney said. “Shine the headlights through the door.”

  “Do what you gotta do. Then start cleaning up them legs. Can’t do nothing till we know what we’ve got.”

  Running to her rented BMW, Sydney crammed herself inside and roared toward the barn. In a minute she was bumping down the aisle. The saddle horses pricked up their ears at her arrival. The bay stallion jittered, but Evie and Angel remained as they were, watching while Sydney poked the right fender into the stall. Inside, the mare’s eyes went wide. She raised her head with a jerk, but remained otherwise unmoving, tattered legs braced wide.

  Sydney pulled her attention from those bloody limbs, jerked out of the car, and hurried around the bumper.

  “Out of the light now! Get out of the way.” Doc shooed her aside. “Better. Okay. Get to scrubbing. Don’t worry ’bout being gentle. Too late for that,” he said and turned back to the others, giving orders like a major general. But Sydney heard no more. In the Bimmer’s harsh lights, the animal’s injuries were fully exposed. She stood, bucket in one hand, rag in the other, staring at the swollen, bloody mess that had once been a leg. The hide had been stripped from the cannon bone. Flesh puckered around the coronary band, and the proud gaskin muscle that should have sent the animal flying across the plains was shredded like confetti.