****
John talked to Mike Hartley on the phone. After a general description of what happened to him and Rhonda, John asked Mike about the five horses he’d picked up at the ranch. Mike let him know Doc Martin checked them over and pulled blood. He gave them a re-feeding diet for the next few weeks and would have blood results back in the morning.
“I also called Esteban Garcia as soon as I could. I had a cell phone number for him, so I tried that. He called me back pretty quickly. He and his son Stevie are on their way home now. Esteban told me it would take at least 26 hours to get here with the flight, customs inspections, drive to the airport in Madrid and the trip from Los Angeles back to San Juan Capistrano. I don’t expect to hear from him again until tomorrow,” Mike told John.
“That saves me a call, then,” John replied. “I was going to call you first and then call him with everything we know. I’ll wait until he gets back to the states and talk to him then. Rhonda and I will be out to your place in the morning to see the other five. I think we’re just going to turn in. We’ve not had a decent night’s sleep for days now, and we walked all night last night. We’re dead on our feet.”
“Come for breakfast then,” Mike suggested. “I’ll let Ginny know you’re coming. We can catch up over a decent meal and coffee.”
CHAPTER | TWENTY-TWO
Friday night at the rodeo in Prescott added up to another eighty bucks for the men. Pat had his first ride in the bronc division. He was good enough to hang in there long enough for points and got dumped pretty hard coming off the stallion. He bruised his right shoulder but it wouldn’t stop him from riding again on Saturday. His buddies met him at the gate, and they walked to the concession area for something cold to drink.
“If our luck holds like this,” Merle said cheerfully, “we’ll have enough to get back home with spare cash in our pockets for a change.”
Pat laughed. “That ground is hard out there guys. Watch yourselves. I’d love to get home with a few dollars left so I can take a day or two to heal up before we have to get to work again.
****
The detective working the case in Apple Valley got a call from the deputy who talked to the Arizona highway patrol officer. He got the highway patrol officer’s phone number and called him back right away. After he identified himself, he asked, “Are you sure the horse trailer was empty?”
The Arizona officer thought about it for a half a second, “I think it was empty. Usually, you see urine or horse poop coming out the back of those trailers if they’ve been on the road for a while. I’ve seen enough of them on Interstate 10. There was nothing like that on this trailer. I didn’t see any motion or hear anything from inside it either. Those stock trailers make a racket when livestock inside moves around. Why is this important?”
“To be honest with you, we have a half million dollar horse missing right now. If he is in that horse trailer, at least we know where he is. If he’s not in that trailer, he’s most likely been abandoned out here in the Mojave Desert. We’re going to have to find him very quickly, or we may not find him alive.”
“Oh, wow, I had no idea. Was the truck and horse trailer traveling with another vehicle of any kind? The one I saw at the rest stop was parked right next to another truck towing a travel trailer. Could this be your guys?”
“It sure could!” the detective said. “Is there any chance you got a license on film from your dash camera when you drove through that parking lot? We have the last four numbers of the truck plate for one of the trucks. We’re assuming they are both from Texas and our witnesses were not sure of the year for either of them. They confirmed they are both Dodge trucks made in the late 1990’s. One of the trucks was pale or very faded yellow. The other was a faded metallic green on the top with a gray bottom. The yellow truck had a smear of red paint on the driver’s door, both were extended cab trucks, and the yellow one hauled the horse trailer.
“That sounds like your trucks, alright,” the highway patrol officer confirmed. “Let me get with my supervisor and see if we can find the tags on my dash cam video. I may have been turned toward them when I drove into the parking area. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Give me your number. I’ll get back to you in a few minutes.”
Twenty minutes later the Arizona highway patrol officer called back. “We got a partial plate on the horse trailer. That plate is crunched in and we couldn’t read the first number. What we did get is a trailer plate with 331 C on it without the first number. The travel trailer plate was in better condition. It was definitely a Texas trailer plate 4786 H. We were able to confirm the approximate year and make on the trucks. The color did match what you gave me. We looked closely at the horse trailer in the video. We can’t see a horse in there.”
“Thank you very much. I will modify our all points bulletins with this information. Can you make the change in your department? These guys are still in the wind. We need to find them. By this time they could be almost anywhere. They stole a valuable horse and tried to ransom him. They took two people hostage that tried to stop them. They held them at gunpoint and chained up for eight or nine days. If they didn’t take the horse with them, they’ve left him out in the desert with no protection and possibly no food or water.”
“I’m a horse lover myself,” the Arizona officer admitted. “I hate horse abusers! What they did was plain horse abuse. We’ll find them if I have anything to say about it!”
CHAPTER | TWENTY-THREE
John and Rhonda got up in the morning at their usual time and had nothing to do at the ranch. Most of the horses were at Hartley Ranch, and they had an invitation for breakfast there. They showed up in time to sit at Ginny’s kitchen table with her, Mike and Brody for coffee and breakfast. They told the Hartleys all about what happened to them up until they got home last night. Their concern still was the location of Cutter. They were too far away from the highway to see if Cutter was in the horse trailer heading south the morning after their escape.
Mike was equally concerned about the horse. He’d spent a lot of time with that horse and built a great relationship with him. They were wildly successful together. He didn’t want anything bad to happen to him.
“Do you think you could pinpoint where they kept you?” Mike asked.
“It was dark when we got there, we were laying in the back of an open pick-up bed, and rushed into the house when we got there,” John explained. “When we finally got the handcuffs off, we jumped out the window and had no idea where we were. The only thing going for us that night was a full moon. We walked and listened hoping to hear the sound of traffic. I don’t even really know which direction we were going. We did see a cutoff from the main highway to a place called Trona when the officer drove us back to Apple Valley. We don’t know if we were held off that road or the main highway,” John admitted. “The trucker who picked us up said it was about 30 miles to Ridgecrest when he picked us up. That’s about as much as I know. But I would assume we were on the main highway since it was a long haul trucker that picked us up.”
Rhonda looked pensive for a minute then said, “We really couldn’t see that much until closer to dawn. It felt like we walked a hundred miles, but we know it couldn’t have been. We’re not sure what time we left the trailer. Neither of us had a watch or cell phone to check. It’s so hard to gauge time under those circumstances.”
The group finished breakfast and went to the barn. Rhonda and John wanted to see the five horses on the Hartley Ranch and see to their comfort. They were appalled at how thin the horses were but even more glad they were with Mike and Ginny after seeing them. Ginny filled them in on the part Maryann Wilcox and her grandfather played in getting them to safety.
“We need to meet those two and thank them. When we got back to the ranch last night, it was all we could do to shower and fall in bed. I’m so grateful they took the time to check on them,” Rhonda said.
“You’ll meet them soon enough,” Ginny told her. “Maryann comes over every day with her mom, her grandmother or her
grandfather. She used to come here to work off riding lessons but that all changed a couple of months ago. She never met her grandparents and they didn’t know she existed. She and her mother are being well cared for now. Maryann is a good friend of Brody’s. She’s quite an accomplished rider too. We’ll have to tell you about the Youth Nationals Show sometime, and the detour we made to Colorado afterward. That was quite an ordeal.”
Brody walked into Rosie’s stall and began scratching her withers gently. Rosie, if she could, would have been purring. Since she couldn’t purr, she was letting out little squeals like a baby horse, pressing her skin into his fingers as he worked on her.
“What in the world is that?” Rhonda asked when she heard the little squeals.
“That’s Rosie. Apparently, she and Brody had an attachment none of us knew about before she went home. She’s been like this since she spotted Brody when we took her off the trailer,” Ginny told her.
“Oh, my, I’ve never heard her act like that,” Rhonda whispered while looking in the stall. “She’s always been a favorite of mine, but I’ve never seen anything like this.” Rhonda stood and watched Brody and Rosie. Rosie’s eyes were closed and the little squealing sounds kept coming. Brody didn’t notice anyone there and was intent on rubbing her withers and neck, massaging her muscles as he went. He worked all down her spine to her tailbone and massaged the muscles down the back of her legs in turn.
Rhonda turned to Ginny, “Would you loan him to me? I’d love a massage like that myself! After walking all night and being tied up for days, my muscles are a bit knotted up too.” She giggled.
Ginny laughed under her breath. “I don’t know. I think this relationship began in babyhood sometime. You might have to get yourself a professional.”
Brody walked down the opposite side of Rosie, massaging her muscles on that side like he did the first and ended up stroking her cheek. Then he did something unexpected. He plopped two fingers into her mouth. She squealed a little, then began sucking on them loudly, making slurping noises.
Brody and Rosie were in their own little world and had not noticed the two women watching them through the top of the stall. He talked to Rosie in low tones, “Easy Rosie, don’t bite. Remember, I showed you how not to bite my fingers. It’s okay to suck on them if you want, just don’t bite me.”
Rhonda looked at Ginny with her eyes wide open and her mouth in a perfect “O”. Ginny looked just as surprised as she was. “Well, I’ve never seen that before either,” she admitted.
Brody suddenly saw the women out of the corner of his eye and pulled his fingers out of Rosie’s mouth. “Uh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were there,” he stammered. He patted Rosie on her neck and stepped out of the stall a bit red in the face.
“What in the world were you doing?” Ginny asked him.
“It’s just a game Rosie and I played when she was little. I read up on it and found out that baby horses suck on their mother 104 times a day on average. Her mother acted like she was a little tired of being sucked on sometimes and pushed Rosie away. I felt sorry for her and let her suck on my fingers. I wouldn’t want any baby sucking on a part of me 104 times a day either. It was okay until she grew teeth. I had to teach her not to bite me. She was always good about that. She remembered it too.” He was embarrassed at being caught in the act.
Brody, a little shamefaced, walked to the other end of the barn where Uncle Mike and John were talking about the other horses. The barn phone rang. Mike stepped into the office to answer it. He talked on the phone for a few minutes before hanging up and returning to the barn aisle.
“That was the detective from Apple Valley working this case. They think the men who stole Cutter and held you captive were in Arizona last night. The Arizona Highway patrol spotted their vehicles before they got the all points bulletin. They had no reason to search them at the time, so they didn’t. But the officer who spotted the trucks and trailers is pretty sure there was no horse in the horse trailer. They would have difficulty crossing the Arizona border with the horse and no paperwork. That leads the detective, and me, to believe they left the horse where he was. He’s going to be in trouble very soon if we can’t find him.”
“Oh, no!” John said. “We overheard them talking about leaving us handcuffed to the bed and leaving the horse there and just getting out of there. It sounds like they left Cutter when they found us gone. How are we going to tell Esteban Garcia that?”
CHAPTER | TWENTY-FOUR
Mike looked at his watch. “Ginny, what time did I get that call back from Esteban yesterday? Do you remember?”
She thought about it for a minute. “We’d already brought the horses here and unloaded them. You’d parked the trailer and came back to the barn. I’m guessing you called him close to 12:30 p.m. and he called you back within maybe 15 minutes, so 12:45 p.m. maybe?”
“He said he would be home in about 26 hours with the travel to and from airports, customs inspections at both ends, plus the flight time. That should put him back home in San Juan Capistrano by 3:00 p.m. today. If he’s flown all night long, he may need a rest before he gets in the car to drive another two hours to get here. Depending, we could see him this evening or early tomorrow morning. Guess we’ll have to wait to hear from him directly when he gets home.”
“This is not a call I’m looking forward to,” John muttered under his breath. “How are we going to tell him Cutter is out in the desert somewhere, maybe without shelter, food or water, and we don’t know where he is or how to get to him?”
“Let’s get the detective back on the phone and see what kind of help the sheriff’s people can give us. Do you have the phone number for the Kern County Sheriff’s Office or the people there you and Rhonda talked to? Maybe they can help us some,” Mike suggested. “This doesn’t sound good at all.”
John pulled a couple of business cards out of his wallet and showed them to Mike. “These are the numbers we got. Let’s get on the phone.”
John and Mike walked back into Ginny’s office in the barn and made calls to both sheriff’s offices. They explained their concerns and listened. They were not overly encouraged. It was a large desert and many square miles of land. The different counties had some cooperative skills and services they could offer but searching for a horse in such a vast area would be a challenge for either department with limited resources. They told their wives what they knew. They both felt hopeless in the situation, and neither of them wanted to give that news to Esteban Garcia.
Maryann and Charles Carnegie showed up at the ranch a few minutes later. Mike and Ginny introduced them to John and Rhonda Powell who were sincere in thanking them for what they’d done yesterday. “If you ever get that kind of “spidy-sense” again, I want you to promise me you’ll tell me about it too,” Ginny told Maryann.
“Aunt Ginny, it’s not “spidy-sense”. I just got worried about Desert Rose. I knew how much Brody loves that mare. When we couldn’t get anyone to call us back, I got worried and wanted to make sure she was okay,” Maryann explained.
“Your timing was excellent, young lady,” Rhonda told her. “I’m glad you checked. I’m very glad they are here and safe right now. Thank you, and thank you too, Charles, for looking in on our charges when we couldn’t.”
“We’re glad you two are okay. Things could have been so much worse,” Charles said. “It’s so nice to meet you two and see that you are okay. Anything could have happened out there in the desert as well. You could have disappeared forever.”
The adults adjourned from the barn area to the back patio for iced tea. Brody and Maryann stayed in the barn. Brody went back to work on Rosie again while Maryann pulled La Duquesa out of her stall to groom her and get her ready to ride. As she brushed Quesa down, Maryann said, “It’s a shame about Cutter. Do you think the sheriffs will be able to find him?”
“I’ve been out almost where they were taken going dirt biking with friends before. There’s a whole lot of nothing out there. Every once in a while you come a
cross a broken down property or an old mine shaft with an attempt to cover the hole, lots of rocks, lots of dirt, and not much else. I don’t know how they’re going to find Cutter. He’s such a sweet horse, and Uncle Mike likes him so much. Mr. Garcia is going to be upset. He thinks that horse walks on water. I don’t know if they will find him in time.”
“Can’t they take helicopters up and search from the air?” Maryann asked. “They do that for people don’t they?”
“Sometimes they do, but they do it for people, not for a horse,” Brody answered with a grim look. “They are not going to risk anyone else or put out a lot of money over a horse.”
“But if they went up in a helicopter, couldn’t they spot him so we could come pick him up?” she asked.
“Helicopters cost a lot of money. Fuel for helicopters costs a lot of money. I don’t know if they will want to use them to search miles and miles of desert for a horse,” Brody answered, frowning. “Most people think of a horse as just a horse. They don’t think of them the same as people you know.”
“How many batteries do you have for the whizzy drone you got for Christmas last year?” she asked him.
“What does that have to do with anything?” he questioned.
“If they won’t send up a helicopter, maybe we could pin the area down on a map based on where John and Rhonda got to the highway and search the area with your drone. If you can fly it and have it transmit the photos to your laptop, I can watch the laptop, and we could maybe get the GSP coordinates for where he is when we find him. What do you think?” she asked.
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