Roped (Gail McCarthy Mysteries)

by Laura Crum

  By now, Lisa was upon us, and I tried to arrange my face in a welcoming smile. "Hi, Lisa, good to see you," I said.

  It was a wasted effort. Lisa didn't smile back. Her eyes were hidden by sunglasses, but her mouth and jaw were tense with strain. "Gail, I need help," she said.

  TWO

  Uh, what with?" I stared at Lisa in consternation, aware that my question was hardly graceful, but too nonplussed to care.

  Lisa looked different. In a sense this wasn't surprising; if you haven't seen someone in fifteen years, you expect them to look different. But Lisa didn't just look older, more adult. She looked different in some essential way I could never have imagined. She looked as if she'd been rode hard and put away wet, as the ranchers say. She looked older than the thirty-four we both were, she looked deeply tired, and she looked strung tight, as though the slightest extra strain would be too much. She looked the way I felt, I thought suddenly.

  She didn't answer my question, just stared at me from behind her sunglasses with unnerving intensity, or so I imagined. I couldn't really see her eyes.

  "The horse you just put down," she said finally, "that wasn't an accident."

  I stared back at her, thinking that she'd actually gone over the edge. "Lisa," I said slowly, "I saw that horse break his leg. It was an accident. It wasn't anybody's fault."

  Impatiently she whipped the sunglasses off her face, looking for a split second a lot more like the Lisa I'd known in high school. "I can prove it," she said.

  We stared at each other in the shade of the tree, no doubt both of us evaluating. What she thought of me I can't say. I'd gained a few pounds since high school, but essentially I look the same-tall, dark-haired, wide-shouldered, with strongly marked brows, a large nose. I still wore jeans and my hair in a ponytail. I must have been recognizably the same Gail McCarthy she'd known.

  Lisa was still blond, but her hair, once long and straight, was now short and curly; her figure, once curvy, was leaner and harder; and many fine lines rayed out from the corners of her eyes. These changes were minor, though, compared to the change in her expression. Lisa had been one of the friendliest, happiest people I'd ever known. The only word I could find for the present set of her jaw and the walking wounded look in her eyes was embittered.

  Rumor had it Lisa had just left her husband, Sonny Santos, an ex-world champion team roper, which would surely account somewhat for the embittered look. But it was still hard for me to believe that pretty, wealthy Lisa Bennett, the most popular girl in my senior class-head cheerleader, honor student, prom queen, you name it-looked so, well, trashed.

  I don't know what she read in my face, but after a minute she said in a softer tone, "It's true, Gail. I can prove it. And I really do need help. Will you stay after the roping and have dinner with me, let me tell you about it?"

  I was about to open my mouth to say no, that I was having dinner with Lonny, when I suddenly remembered. I wasn't having dinner with Lonny after all. That's what we'd been fighting about on the way to the roping. Lonny was having dinner with Sara. To try and get everything straightened out, he said. Yeah, right.

  No doubt sensing my hesitation, Lisa hurried on. "I've got to go back down there. I'm entered in the roping. Please, Gail, say you'll stay. I'll drive you home later, if you need a ride."

  "All right."

  Before the words were really out of my mouth, Lisa said, "Thank you," wheeled the little bay, and trotted off down the hill. I stayed where I was, wondering what in the hell I'd gotten myself into.

  Not an accident? That was ridiculous. I'd seen it happen. What else could it be but an accident? Still, I'd said I'd stay, so I'd stay.

  I'd have to tell Lonny, I thought. Automatically my eyes scanned the crowd below me, looking for his familiar form. When I found it, I was sorry. Lonny sat on his horse, Pistol, in the center of a group of men, all of them talking and laughing while they watched the roping. If Lonny was aware that I was sitting up here under this tree, he gave no sign of it. As far as I could tell, he'd forgotten the dead horse and my distress and was having a perfectly nice day. No doubt relieved at the removal of his currently touchy girlfriend.

  He had a point, I thought. I knew I was being a pain in the ass. I knew that, logically, it was neither right nor fair to expect him never to speak to Sara again. I understood that he'd spent his whole life acquiring the assets he currently had and that losing them, or even divvying them up, was going to be torture for him. I sympathized. But I had gone ballistic when I found out he'd accepted her invitation to dinner without telling me.

  There was probably right and wrong on both sides. There usually is. But it was too late to take back some of the bitter things Lonny and I had said on the way to the roping, and both of us were smarting.

  I hadn't refused to rope because I really thought Gunner was likely to break a leg and die. It could happen, but lightning could strike us, too. I hadn't refused just because I was upset at Lonny. It was a combination of all that and the pain I'd felt at putting the sorrel horse down that convinced me I was too stressed out to rope today. Team roping takes guts and quick reflexes; it happens fast and hard. Ropers need to be focused, or they put themselves, their partner, and their horse in danger. And I certainly didn't feel focused at the moment.

  I stared down at the pageant below me, seeing it with the eyes of an outsider. The roping arena full of horses and people, the field next to it crowded with trucks and trailers, the little holding pasture beyond dotted with cattle. As I watched, another team rode into the box to make a run. Glen and Lisa.

  Glen was on his blue roan stallion, a horse he called Smoke, the current focus of his breeding program. Lisa rode into the heeler's box on the willowy bay horse I'd seen her on earlier, which didn't surprise me. The bay hadn't looked big or thick enough to be a head horse.

  Smoke, on the other hand, was big enough to turn any steer in the pen. "A boxcar that can run," Glen had once called him.

  I watched Glen back Smoke into the header's box, a familiar sight. I'd spent many happy days in this arena as a high school kid, riding horseback with Lisa, watching Glen rope. When my parents had finally granted me permission to buy a horse of my own, it had been Glen I turned to for help, and when it became apparent that the $500 I'd saved was inadequate to buy a suitable mount, Glen had sold me one of his own horses, one, I later came to understand, who was worth a good deal more than $500. Lad was a gentle, well-broke, dark brown gelding who taught me whatever I know about horses and their ways and who was my friend. When my parents died in my eighteenth year, rendering me instantly alone and poor, Glen had bought Lad back from me and promised to retire him. I'd visited the old horse several times during the long years of college and veterinary school and always found him grazing peacefully in Glen's back pasture. Lad had died at the age of twenty-six, having had as good a life as any horse could ask for.

  That was the thing about Glen. There he sat in the header's box-crisp shirt, pressed jeans, a white straw cowboy hat on his head. In his expensive saddle, on his pretty-headed blue stallion, he looked heroic. And that's just what he'd been to me-a hero.

  When I'd taken up team roping several years ago at Lonny's instigation, I'd been delighted to run into Glen again. Unlike so many of my childhood memories, Glen Bennett seemed undiminished. And unlike the small apple farm that had been my family home and was now obliterated by an ugly housing tract, the Bennett Ranch appeared unchanged and secure, safe in Glen's capable hands.

  From my spot on the hill I could see Glen's head move up and down slightly as he nodded for the steer. Al Borba, Glen's foreman, flipped the lever that opened the chute gate, and a brown corriente steer burst out, going full tilt. Glen and Lisa thundered after him.

  Smoke caught up to the steer easily, and Glen roped the animal around the horns, dallied his rope around the saddle horn, and pulled the steer away. I saw Lisa come in for the heel shot, standing in the stirrups, swinging her rope aggressively. She roped like she meant to catch something.
She always had. Even in high school, when Lisa had been a pretty, silky blond that all the boys were in love with, she'd roped as tough as any man in the arena.

  The steer took a funny bounce as Lisa threw her rope, and she only caught one hind leg. She shook her head in disgust as she put slack in the rope to let the steer go. Lisa was accustomed to catching two feet. I noticed that her little bay horse worked well for her.

  As I watched Lisa and Glen lope down to the stripping chute at the far end of the arena to put the steer away, a strange motion caught my eye. Someone on the sidelines was waving a sign.

  For a moment I was confused-unlike fans of baseball and football, spectators at a roping do not wave placards. Or at least they never had, in my experience. The person holding the sign turned slightly, and I could read the message: "I protest cruelty to animals." My God. An animal rights protester.

  Two of them, in fact. I could see two sign wavers, a man and a woman, though I couldn't read the second sign. The woman wore a long skirt and the man wore shorts, and they would have stood out in the jeans-clad crowd even without the signs. I noticed everybody was giving them a wide berth.

  Another thought struck me. Had these people seen the sorrel horse break his leg? If so, Glen might be in real trouble.

  The animal rights movement has been gaining strength and momentum for the last few years. Its devotees protest such things as rodeo events, raising animals for slaughter, and, in some cases, keeping animals in any sort of confinement. It's hard to generalize about the movement, as its members range from those who are offended at cruelty to animals (count me in) to fanatics who don't believe that animals should be kept as pets and appear to think that all creatures should live completely free.

  That this is impractical and ridiculous doesn't seem to have occurred to these folks, and many animal rights activists appeared to me to have very little feeling for or understanding of the animals they were ostensibly trying to save. To kill helpless cattle rather than seeing them live in "slavery" (i.e., a fenced pasture) strikes me as craziness, as does turning domestic animals loose to starve on the already overgrazed open range. Not to mention burning down laboratories, including the animals in residence there, because said laboratories do medical tests on animals.

  On the other hand, I'm not one to condone putting animals through unnecessary suffering, and I more or less agreed with some of the intelligent animal rights people I knew. The real question is, What is unreasonable and unnecessary? What is cruelty and what isn't? In my opinion, the answer is a little more complicated than many people like to suppose.

  I wondered if the man and woman standing by the arena fence with their signs were on the lunatic fringe or if they were sensible, if perhaps misguided. I wondered if they knew anything at all about horses and cattle. If I had to bet, I'd lay odds they didn't.

  The next team rode into the box, and I realized with a pang that it was Lonny and Tim Bennett. I couldn't seem to look at Lonny without feeling that pang-a twinge of longing and fear mixed with the sharp bite of anger. Damn him, after all. Why in the world was he doing this to me?

  Oblivious to my tangled emotions, Lonny rode Pistol into the heeler's box, ready to make a run. Tim Bennett was heading on a big roan mare, no doubt one of Smoke's offspring. I saw Tim staring down at Al Borba as Al loaded the steer. Tim and Al didn't get along real well. But then, nobody got along with Al Borba. Except Glen.

  Tim nodded for the steer, and Al opened the gate; horses and steer came flashing out in the familiar pattern of team roping. From where I sat it looked almost like a ritual, a tribal dance, men and animals interacting in symbolic ways.

  Tim turned the steer and Lonny roped two feet cleanly, Pistol performing his part admirably, like the tried and true performer he was. But when Lonny kicked the horse forward to turn the steer loose, Pistol was dead lame.

  THREE

  Not Pistol. It couldn't be. I felt almost dizzy with fear. Pistol took another step and I saw that he was able to bear some weight on the injured leg. It wasn't broken. Thank God.

  Relief rushed through me like water; my hand shook as I lifted the reins and clucked to send Gunner forward down the hill. Pistol was off in the right front. I thought I could guess what was wrong.

  By the time I reached the arena, Lonny'd gotten off Pistol and was feeling the leg carefully. A group of people had gathered around him, including the animal rights protesters. Everybody looked worried and unhappy. Two accidents in one day was unusual and unnerving.

  I tied Gunner to the fence and approached the group. Lonny looked up at me and smiled in relief. "Come have a look, Gail."

  I bent down and picked up Pistol's right front, palpating the leg carefully and gently from the knee down to the ankle. Nothing obviously wrong that I could feel. Putting the foot down, I told Lonny, "Lead him forward a few steps."

  Lonny clucked to Pistol and the horse limped after him. He was plenty sore, but he could use his right front leg. Given Pistol's history, I was pretty sure I knew what had happened.

  "It's his ringbone, I think," I told Lonny. "He must have taken a bad step and tweaked that ankle. We'll have to x-ray him and see if he's got a bone chip in there. Either way, he's done for today. Lead him over to the barn and run some cold water on it. I'll get the vet kit, and we'll give him a shot of bute."

  Lonny started to lead Pistol off, and I looked at the group around me, meaning to say something reassuring. Glen and Tim were right at my shoulder; behind them stood the two animal rights protesters, and behind them was Lisa, down on her hands and knees, scrabbling in the dirt of the arena. She was right about where Pistol had pulled up lame.

  "Did he step on a rock?" I asked her.

  Lisa looked up abruptly from her task. To my amazement, her face seemed distorted with fear, eyes wide and staring, mouth clenched, skin colorless. She didn't answer me, just got quickly to her feet, aware that all of us were watching her.

  "They're aren't any rocks in this arena." Tim's lazy drawl.

  It was true. Glen had imported truckloads of sand to build the arena; it was beautifully groomed and rock-free.

  "I was looking to see if he stumbled in a hole or something." Lisa mumbled this almost to herself, looking at the ground.

  "Lisa, I drug this arena not two hours ago. There can't be any holes." Glen's voice. He sounded worried. But, again, I was sure he was right. A sand arena, properly watered and drug as this one had been, was not going to produce an unexpected hole.

  "Is he going to be all right?" Lisa again.

  "It depends what you mean by all right," I told her. "He has ringbone in that foot, and he's been lame on it off and on for a few years. Not bad lame, like he is now, just a little lame. But the calcification of the joint caused by the ringbone has been getting worse and worse, and I think he may have taken a bad step and possibly caused some of the calcified material to break loose. A bone chip," I added. "I'd guess that's why he went so suddenly and dramatically lame."

  "What do you think caused him to take a bad step?" Lisa was off on some track of her own.

  "I don't know. Just putting his foot down wrong maybe. Like a person can twist their ankle for no apparent reason."

  I could feel the ropers around me nodding; they were all familiar with the way horses could take bad steps and come up lame for no good reason. It was the stuff of everyday life.

  "Let's rope!" Al bellowed at us from the chutes.

  Lonny and Pistol were over by the barn. I turned to follow them and the group around me started to disperse when we were all frozen in place by the voice of the female protester.

  "Surely you're not going to go on with this abuse after you've already crippled two horses?" The question was addressed to Glen, and the woman's voice was loud and belligerent.

  Everyone looked at Glen. Face and voice calm, he replied, "It's unfortunate those two horses were hurt, but this is not abuse."

  "You should stop this roping right now." The woman had a high-pitched voice; something about
her shrill, strident tone was familiar.

  I stared, trying to place her. In a second, I had it. My God. Susan Slater. Disbelieving, I looked at Lisa. "It's Susan," I said.

  Lisa nodded "uh-huh" and the woman turned toward us at the sound of her name. "Well, Lisa and Gail. If this isn't a class reunion."

  Susan Slater had been in Lisa's and my high school class. I might have recognized her earlier if I'd been paying attention; she looked very much as she had when we were all seventeen. Fair Irish skin, a dusting of freckles that matched her long, curly mane of strawberry blond hair, a slim figure shown off now, as then, in a snug tank top and swirling ankle-length skirt. Susan had always been physically attractive enough. It was her ultra-combative personality that was the problem.

  In high school she had been the one vociferously pushing any cause going, handing out pamphlets to legalize marijuana, demonstrating against police brutality and the fascist state at the slightest provocation. Susan wasn't quiet about her beliefs. She was in your face if you so much as greeted her, pressing her cause in that shrill voice.

  She had her devotees, mostly male. The quiet, bespectacled, shorts-and-sandals-wearing man with her looked like a good example of the type. He seemed quite content to let her do all the talking.

  "This roping should be stopped," she announced again.

  Glen was losing patience. "Lady, what happened to those horses were accidents. Now clear out of here."

  I could have told him that was a mistake. Giving Susan an order was like waving a red flag at a bull. She was likely to dig her heels in now.

  Susan opened her mouth and was overrun by Lisa: "I think she's right, Dad. I think you should stop the roping."

  Dead silence. Susan's mouth stayed open. Everyone stared at Lisa. This was unheard of.

  "What are you talking about?" Now Glen sounded angry.

  Lisa looked miserable and desperate. "Dad, please. I'll explain later. Really. I mean it."