Third-Time Lucky

by Jenny Oldfield

  “Uh-huh.” Hadley picked up his own battered white hat from the table.

  Spotting a possible ally, Kirstie rushed in with her point of view. “This imprinting stuff looks over-the-top to me. For instance, you have to press down on the foal’s back as soon as it can stand. It’s supposed to get it ready to accept a saddle later in life. But I reckon a day-old foal deserves to be left in peace!”

  “So you’ve been giving Matt a hard time?” Hadley strode out onto the porch to look for Charlie.

  “Me?” She jumped the step into the yard, turned and spread her arms wide. How could the old man possibly think that?

  “Yeah, you.” Hadley gave her to understand she should lay off Matt. “Your brother don’t act cruel to horses as a general rule, does he? So I’d say give the boy a chance to try what he learned in school.”

  “How about you, Charlie?” Kirstie turned to him for help as he emerged from the bunkhouse.

  “Come again?” Hadley’s junior ran the tap outside the door and splashed his face with cold water.

  “Charlie’s got work to do!” Hadley insisted, dragging him off to Red Fox Meadow without so much as a cup of coffee to start the day.

  Defeated, Kirstie kicked a stone across the yard and headed for the barn. She remembered she’d left Lucky’s tack in there after yesterday’s barrel race, instead of hanging it up in the tack room as usual. And while she was there, she thought she might as well take a look at Matt and Moonshine, not that she would ever agree with imprinting, habituation, desensitizing and all that fancy vet school stuff.

  She swung through the door into the barn and walked along the row of stalls until she came to Moonshine’s. But instead of finding her brother hard at work training the tiny palomino foal to get used to ropes and the feel of his hands, she saw him standing a few feet away from Moonshine, studying him with a puzzled frown.

  “Hey, Kirstie.” Hands in pockets, he glanced up.

  “Something wrong?” She, too, looked hard at the foal. His head was down and he blinked back at her with dull, lifeless eyes.

  “He didn’t eat his hay.” Matt jerked his thumb at the manger. “And you see the patches of sweat on his neck?”

  She nodded. “Could be a fever. Did you take his temperature?”

  “Yeah. It’s way up past a hundred and three.”

  “So what is it?” Easing her way into the stall, she realized that the foal was trembling all over and unsteady on his feet. She felt a small knot twist up in her stomach as she waited for Matt’s verdict.

  “Could be something he ate,” he suggested. “Or worms in his gut.”

  “You don’t sound like you think it’s that.” Kirstie could tell that Matt was turning things over in his mind. “What about colic?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. He’s not going down and trying to roll, see.”

  “What then?” The knot in Kirstie’s stomach was tightening. She wanted to go forward and reassure Moonshine, but something held her back. Instead, she looked hard into Matt’s eyes for an answer.

  A deep frown guarded his own feelings. He swallowed hard and spoke in a strained voice. “Equine influenza.”

  Horse flu. “You sure?”

  “No. We need Glen Woodford to take a look.” Matt sighed and started to walk away. “Pray that I’m wrong,” he told Kirstie. “But just in case I’m right, you’d best clear all the other foals and mares out of here fast as you can!”

  “How can it be horse flu?” Sandy Scott demanded. “Our vaccination schedule is up to date. TT, rhino, tetanus, influenza—Glen and Tommy came over and gave them their shots early last month.”

  Kirstie knew that her mom took pride in the ranch’s health program. The idea that an outbreak of influenza was possible at Half Moon Ranch seemed not to have sunk in yet. But Kirstie had immediately done what Matt had told her and taken the young horses out of the barn into the corral and started to heap the soiled bedding onto a cart. They would have to carry the straw outside and burn it to destroy any bugs it might contain.

  “Think about it,” Sandy insisted, waiting anxiously for the vet to arrive. She paced up and down the barn, glancing in every now and then at the sick foal. “Taco had her jabs along with the rest. If the mare was vaccinated one month prior to foaling, Moonshine should have passive transfer through the colostrum.”

  “That could be the problem here,” Matt admitted. He spoke slowly, as if reluctant to go on.

  Kirstie put down her rake and went closer. She knew that colostrum was the name given to the first feed the foal would take from the mother’s udder. It contained important protection against disease.

  “You know I was working with Moonshine from the start?” Matt reminded Sandy. “Well, I guess that could’ve gotten in the way of his first feed. He took the udder after I’d finished my first session, but I really can’t be sure that he took what he needed.”

  Sandy took a deep breath. “How do you mean?”

  “He didn’t feed for long, just didn’t seem interested. And Taco didn’t stick around. To tell you the truth, Mom, the mare hasn’t been a good mother. I’ve had to give the foal extra milk and now solids to keep up his weight.”

  “You’re saying they didn’t bond?” Sandy took it in gradually. “And that could be to do with your imprinting method? Oh, Matt, why didn’t you tell me?”

  Kirstie bit her lip to stop herself from exploding. See! she wanted to yell. What did I tell you? Instead, she walked quickly away from Matt and Sandy into the open. “And now Moonshine’s sick because of Matt and his stupid theory!” she muttered out loud when she was sure there was no one to hear.

  But that still didn’t explain everything. She understood now that Moonshine might not have the resistance all young foals needed against disease. But if it was horse flu and Glen confirmed it, where had the virus come from in the first place?

  Like her mom said, all Half Moon Ranch horses were up to date with their health program.

  Kirstie didn’t have time to work out the solution to the mystery, as she spotted Glen Woodford’s black jeep speeding down the hill toward the ranch. She ran across the yard to greet him and Tommy, almost falling over herself to tell them what had happened. “Matt says it could be equine flu!” she gasped.

  The vet listened and nodded, grabbing his bag from the back of the jeep and striding toward the barn. “You’d better hope he’s wrong,” he muttered.

  “How bad does this flu get?” she wanted to know, ignoring Tommy and running alongside Glen.

  “Pretty bad.” He paused at the door and gave it to her straight. “Equine influenza in an adult horse can cause long term damage to the internal organs and the nervous system.”

  Kirstie’s eyes widened. Damage to stuff like the heart and lungs, the whole of a horse’s nerve network and senses! The answer could hardly have been worse, but there was more to come. “And?”

  “And equine influenza in a foal under three months can be fatal,” he told her quietly, taking her arm and leading her out of the sun into the dark barn. “So, c’mon, honey, let’s get in there fast and see if we can save little Moonshine for you.”

  “You keep him warm; you bandage his legs,” the vet instructed. ‘“He needs a good bed of fresh straw, no drafts getting in during the night.”

  Sandy Scott listened quietly, head down. She wasn’t looking at Matt, who stood behind Glen, his face blank with misery. The diagnosis of equine influenza had just been confirmed.

  “If he’ll take milk from a bottle, give it little and often, OK?” The vet waited for Sandy to confirm that she was taking this in. “I’m gonna give you an electuary—a thick paste—for his cough. Matt, you can smooth it onto the back of his tongue with a spatula.”

  “You hear that?” Kirstie was kneeling in the straw beside the sick foal. “We’re gonna make you better.”

  Moonshine lay on his side, his legs folded, his head against the straw. Making an effort to raise his head, he licked her hand, then sank back.


  In spite of her promise, Kirstie knew that the foal was going downhill fast. “Can’t you give him a shot of something?” she pleaded with Glen.

  He took a deep breath and shook his head. “This is a virus. Antibiotics won’t work. And it’s highly infectious, so no other horse must come near, OK?”

  “What about the ones that have been in contact lately?” Kirstie thought back over twenty-four hours, her mind still reeling from the diagnosis and what it might mean. She kept one hand on Moonshine’s neck, feeling the cold clamminess of his soft golden coat.

  “Taco?” Glen asked.

  “Yes, and the other foals.”

  The vet turned to Tommy and asked him to run to the jeep and bring back the file where he kept records of the vaccination programs for all the ranches he looked after. When his son returned, Glen asked him to check the list.

  “Fine,” Tommy told Sandy. “Taco had her shots last month, so no problem there. All the foals over three months had their shots, too.”

  Kirstie’s mom gave a short sigh of relief. “We’ll keep Moonshine in quarantine in any case,” she decided. “Best not to take a risk of spreading the darned thing.”

  Still Matt hung back. Looking at his strained, tense face, even Kirstie began to feel sorry for him.

  “So how come the foal fell sick?” Glen went on to ask, packing his bag. His broad back bent over the foal for one final look seemed to Kirstie to offer a scrap of reassurance. “You don’t have any new arrivals on the ranch that haven’t been Coggins tested?”

  “No way!” Sandy replied quickly. “The last horse we bought was Snowflake, way back in early spring. And we ran all the tests before we let her loose with the remuda.”

  “No new arrivals,” Glen echoed with a shake of his head. “I don’t get it.”

  “Unless …” Matt spoke for the first time in ages. He flashed Kirstie then Sandy a quick look of alarm.

  A new arrival…a horse that hadn’t been vaccinated, coming into contact not necessarily with the main herd in Red Fox Meadow, but with the foals in the barn.

  … A horse from who knew where, whose owners might not have kept up with the booster shots.

  … The sort of owners who didn’t know much about health programs and cared even less about their pony.

  … The Gostins, for instance.

  “Whisper!” Kirstie breathed the name, remembering the strange coldness of her spotted coat, the trembling of her limbs. Not shock, after all. Not the trauma of being trapped between the rock and the tree, but equine influenza.

  Of course, it was the runaway appaloosa who had brought the killer virus to Half Moon Ranch!

  4

  “You count yourselves lucky that you only have the little palomino foal who’s at risk of catching the disease,” Glen Woodford told Sandy, Matt and Kirstie as they stood together in the yard. “I’ve seen equine influenza spread like wildfire through herds where the owners don’t have their program of inoculations up to date.”

  “I don’t feel lucky,” Kirstie told Tommy. She helped him load his dad’s kit into the back of the jeep. “What I feel is dumb. Like, I was the idiot who brought a seriously sick pony to Half Moon Ranch!”

  “So how were you to know?” The boy mumbled a reassurance. He was a serious, shy kid who didn’t push himself forward, but who was often around to help his dad do the straightforward ranch work.

  “I wasn’t. But I was dumb not to figure out that Whisper was sick. And maybe deep down I did know. She was in bad trouble when I brought her in, but I was stupid and put it down to shock. I didn’t give it enough thought.” Miserably determined to blame herself, Kirstie’s mind went over and over the events of the previous day.

  “You’re not the vet around here,” Tommy reminded her. “How come Matt or Sandy didn’t think of it either?”

  “Too busy, I guess.” Kirstie stood back as Tommy slammed the door of the jeep. “What I’m really saying is, none of this would’ve happened if I hadn’t stormed in and rescued the pony. That’s me; I don’t stop to think!”

  “Hey, honey!” Sandy had overheard and came to put an arm around Kirstie’s shoulder. “No one’s to blame here, you understand? Matt did what he’s been taught at school without seeing the downside. You did a good deed and that hasn’t worked out either. Now we all need to work together to help Moonshine pull through.”

  Kirstie nodded. “What about Whisper? Who’s gonna take care of her?”

  “The Gostins,” Sandy said firmly. “I’ll call Smiley and ask him to drive up Timberline Trail to their lodge. If they haven’t left for home already, he can warn them that they have a real sick pony on their hands.”

  “And if he’s too late?” she wanted to know. She pictured the uncaring family driving their trailer halfway across America without even realizing that Whisper needed medical care.

  Sandy sighed and shrugged. “Not our problem,” she murmured. “Tough, but that’s life.”

  Later that day, Lisa came to help Kirstie and Matt nurse the sick foal. She’d been planning to spend the day with her grandfather, Lennie Goodman, at Lone Elm Trailer Park, until the two of them had received a visit from the Forest Guard and Smiley Gilpin had told them the latest news: two cases of equine influenza in the neighborhood, one at Half Moon Ranch. Lisa had persuaded her grandpa to drive her over there as fast as he could.

  She arrived at midday, dressed in a blue T-shirt and denim shorts, her face hot and sticky from the drive.

  “Did Smiley get to the Gostins in time?” Kirstie asked. She knelt in the straw holding Moonshine steady while Matt took his temperature.

  “No way. Their house was shuttered and locked. A guy who lives up the trail said he thought they were from Texas. He heard them set off at dawn.”

  “Texas is a big state,” Matt said, shaking his head as he read the thermometer. “Still way too high,” he commented.

  Kirstie stroked the foal, then began to wipe his face with a clean, cool cloth. “He’s not taking milk,” she told Lisa, “which means he’s losing fluids fast. And Matt just took his pulse.”

  “How was that?” Lisa looked from one to the other, obviously upset by the foal’s condition. She crouched beside Kirstie, her eyes moist and glistening in the gloom of the darkened stall.

  “Fast and weak,” Matt reported. “His breathing’s not too good either.”

  Lisa put a hand on Moonshine’s frail ribcage to feel the uneven movement as his lungs struggled for breath.

  “It’s the respiratory problem that we have to watch,” Matt warned. “I can replace the fluids through a drip, but if the little guy can’t get enough oxygen, we’re in real trouble.”

  “C’mon!” Kirstie leaned over the foal to whisper encouragement. She let her fair hair fall forward to mask the tears that had sprung to her eyes. “Don’t give up.”

  Without taking her gaze off the patient, Lisa sat back on her heels. “How long since you took a break?” she asked Kirstie.

  “I don’t know. A few hours.” In truth, she hadn’t left off nursing Moonshine since Glen and Tommy Woodford had driven away. Since then she’d watched every tremble of the foal’s weak limbs, heard the catch in every congested breath. “Why?”

  “Why not let Matt take over?” Lisa suggested. “Come into the house and have a cool drink.”

  “I can’t.” A dread came over Kirstie at the mere thought of stepping away from Moonshine’s side.

  “Yes, you can,” Lisa insisted. “Matt will be here, won’t you?”

  He nodded without speaking, unable to meet Kirstie’s gaze as she looked up at him with tearful eyes.

  “Moonshine knows Matt better than anyone,” Lisa said, more gently than before. “He’ll be OK if Matt stays with him.”

  It was true. Kirstie had a sudden picture of the healthy little palomino trotting after her brother across the corral, shadowing his every step. His coat had shone gold in the sun. Matt had stopped and turned to stroke him, had called him a cute little guy, had grinned at th
e prancing, dancing steps the foal had taken. “Scoot!” he’d laughed, shooing him off, laughing again when Moonshine had ignored him and kept on trying to follow him into the tack room.

  That had been Friday, before this whole nightmare had begun.

  Slowly, letting her hand linger for a few more seconds on the foal’s neck, Kirstie stood up. “I’m going with Lisa,” she told her brother. “We’ll be at the house if you need us.”

  “Grandpa says he’s real sorry about Moonshine,” Lisa told Kirstie. She sat with her in the shade of the porch swing, sipping orange juice, looking out at the snowy summit of Eagle’s Peak in the far distance.

  Lost in a long series of regrets that came out as sighs, Kirstie didn’t respond. If only they hadn’t ridden Lucky and Snowflake up to Deer Lake. If only Dan Stewart had continued fishing instead of stopping to tell them about the runaway horse … Her gaze drifted down from the mountaintops, across the dark-forested slopes, along the green ribbon of flat pasture land in the valley bottom to the red roofs of the ranch buildings. Finally, she fixed her attention on two tiny brown hummingbirds who came to sip sugar water from the clear plastic dish hanging in the porch.

  Lisa talked on to fill the silence. “According to Grandpa, horse flu has been bad news as far back as he can recall. Way back, before they invented a vaccine, a horse would get real sick with it. You got so much as a cough out of one of the cutters or reiners used by the old cowboys and, boy, that horse was off the ranch quicker than you could blink.”

  Kirstie closed her eyes and sighed. Don’t give up, Moonshine!

  “Once a horse caught flu, he was no earthly use. A cowboy needs a strong, healthy horse he can rely on, not one with a breathing problem or a weak heart. And Grandpa said quarter horses didn’t cost a whole lot when he was young. A cowboy needed a good, well made saddle, but a horse could be bought and sold real cheap.”

  “What’s money got to do with it?” Kirstie murmured. Fight this, Moonshine! Prove them wrong!

  “Oh sure, I agree. And sometimes, even in those days, a cowboy would love his horse. I mean, really love him!” Lisa hurried on. “I remember Grandpa told me once about a guy he knew here at Half Moon when your grandpa ran it as a cattle ranch. The guy’s name was Red Mitchell and he owned a black-and-white paint named Bandit. Red worked Bandit on roundups, spring and fall, for ten years or more. Then the horse got sick.”