Tougher in Texas

by Kari Lynn Dell

  He fell in beside her as she led Butthead out of the arena. “If we find a supplement or medication that reduces his anxiety in the short term, it may enable the desensitization process.”

  “Yes, Professor Jacobs,” she drawled.

  He hunched a shoulder, his jaw going tight. “Words and phrases stick in my head, so I use them. I know it makes me sound weird.”

  “Smart,” she corrected.

  He shot her a surprised look.

  “Most people can’t remember stuff like that,” she clarified, avoiding his gaze. Hearing Cole put himself down irritated her. “Maybe it was weird when you were a kid. Now you sound smart.”

  “Oh.” His face relaxed into a slight smile. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t let it go to your head. I said you sounded smart.”

  Instead of going all stiff and offended, he laughed. Shit. She couldn’t even needle him anymore. When had she lost the edge?

  She veered off toward her trailer. “Better go swap horses.”

  “See you in the arena in fifteen.”

  And weren’t they ever so casual? Just good buddies, her and Cole. Until you scratched that paper-thin surface and saw what was threatening to come to a boil underneath.

  But she was in a strangely Zen mood for the rest of the day. Even Ace couldn’t get under her skin. For the most part he’d kept his distance, either afraid Cole would make good on the threat to ship him out or—more likely—just not all that interested in her as long as he had a place to sleep and three squares a day. And she didn’t have to feel guilty about dragging along a freeloader. He’d turned out to be a pretty good rodeo announcer, with his bottomless well of insider information and the quick wit that had kept him from being murdered in his sleep for decades. Maybe Ace had finally stumbled into a legitimate career. Lord knew, it would suit his need to be the center of attention.

  The sense of peace followed her to bed that night. She fell into a delicious, dreamless sleep so deep it took her a few moments to resurface when the pounding came at her door. Even then, she didn’t panic, just yawned, stretched, and combed her fingers through her hair in a useless attempt to untangle the mess as she padded to the door to see what new excuse Cole had come up with to harass her in the wee hours.

  She yanked the door open. “What do you—”

  The words died abruptly as her heart lurched into her throat. It wasn’t Cole. It was Hank. And he was covered in blood.

  Chapter 18

  The crash had launched Cole out of bed a few minutes before his usual two-fifteen patrol. He’d scrambled into jeans and boots, shoving his phone into his pocket and grabbing a T-shirt as he burst out the door. A quick scan of the bucking stock showed a lot of wide eyes and flared nostrils, all pointed in one direction.

  Toward the saddle horse pens.

  Cole broke into a run as he rounded the front of his trailer, fear clawing at his chest. The scene was like something out of a horror movie. Shawnee’s gray horse was groaning and thrashing in the dirt, blood streaming from a gash on top of his head where he must have slammed it into the fence.

  Son of a bitch.

  Cole didn’t hesitate, his mind scrolling through the necessary steps even as he paused long enough to beat his fist on the door of the nearest truck before yanking it open. Hank’s bleary face poked out from the sleeper. It was his weekend to stay on the grounds while both Leses took the motel room. Perfect.

  “Whaa… ?” Hank mumbled, scrubbing a hand over his eyes.

  “Shawnee’s gray horse is down.”

  Hank was instantly awake and fumbling for his clothes. Cole didn’t wait. He ran to his trailer to grab his vet kit.

  “Stay, Katie,” he ordered.

  The dog whined, but dropped onto her belly beside the door.

  Back at the pen, Butthead was wallowing on his side, kicking at his belly and banging his head against the ground. Blood streaked his face and jowls and spattered the ground around him, glistening black under the security lights. Cole dropped the vet kit and untied the halter that hung on the gate.

  Hank trotted up, still pulling on a T-shirt. “Jesus Christ. Colic?”

  “Looks like.” Cole opened the gate and eased inside. “We’ve got to get him up before he hurts himself anymore.”

  Hank slid in behind Cole, giving the thrashing hooves a wide berth. “How do we do that without getting killed?”

  Good question. The gray was unpredictable when he wasn’t in blind agony. Cole took a precious moment to study the situation. The horse was lying perpendicular to the fence, so they had some room to operate, but there was only one option that he could see. “I’ll pin him down. You put the halter on him.”

  “Be careful.”

  Cole wasn’t sure it was possible. He handed Hank the halter, then moved around behind the gray. The horse didn’t react to their presence, his eyes glazed, beyond seeing anything but the monster that tore at his guts. He flung his head back, nearly taking Cole out at the knees. Rather than jumping away, Cole dropped, splaying his legs and collapsing to pin the horse’s neck down with his chest.

  The horse squealed and thrashed, but didn’t have the strength or leverage to fight Cole off. Blood and sweat soaked through his T-shirt as Hank slid the halter on with swift, practiced motions. Thank God he was the one here tonight. The Leses didn’t have a ranch kid’s experience with doctoring large, uncooperative animals.

  “Got it,” Hank said, buckling the halter. He hopped over the horse’s head and to the end of the lead rope, then braced himself.

  Cole rolled off and well away before scrambling to his feet. Butthead gave a guttural groan and arched up, biting at his flank. Using the small amount of momentum, Hank hauled on the rope to rock the horse off his side. Cole bailed in, bracing his shoulder against the gray’s and shoving him upright. They got him as far as his haunches, sitting like a dog on his butt, his front legs locked and trembling.

  “Hold him there if you can.” Cole hustled to the vet box, grabbed a syringe and a brown glass bottle, and drew a dose of Banamine. Hank had the lead rope hitched behind his hip and was leaning his full weight into it to keep the horse from flopping over. Cole eased up beside Butthead and latched an arm around his neck. The gray threw up his head and caught Cole on the chin with his rock-hard skull. Stars burst behind Cole’s eyes and he felt blood spatter on his face. From the sharpness of the sting, he suspected some of it was his.

  Hank moved hand over hand up the rope, shortening his grip so he could pull the horse’s nose around and down, curving his neck around Cole’s body and exposing the vein. Cole palpated quickly, found the vessel, and slid the needle into place, depressing the plunger. Then he jumped back while he still had all his teeth.

  He took the halter rope from Hank with one hand as he retrieved his cell phone from the pocket of his jeans with the other. The first speed dial setting was always the official vet at the current rodeo, on twenty-four-hour call. “Go get Shawnee,” he told Hank.

  By the time they returned, Cole had managed to haul the gray up onto his feet where he stood, legs splayed, sides heaving.

  Shawnee’s first word was something not fit for polite company, but she didn’t flinch. One look at Hank would’ve been enough to prepare her for the worst. She’d taken the time to get fully dressed in jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved T-shirt, and she’d wadded most of her hair into a rubber band. She was carrying her own vet kit in one hand and a flashlight in the other.

  “Colic?” she asked.

  “Looks like it. Hank, if you’ll grab this—”

  “My horse.” Shawnee tossed the flashlight to Hank and strode through the gate to take the lead rope from Cole’s hand. There was no sense arguing that she’d ruin her clothes. As if she would care, at this moment.

  “Our on-call vet is clear down at the south end of the county doing a C-section on a cow, so it’s g
oing to take him at least an hour to get here. I’ll get my stethoscope.”

  Shawnee nodded and murmured soft, encouraging words to the gray, stroking his bloody forehead. His head drooped, his eyelids sagging to half-mast—all those hours in the arena paying off. The horse trusted her, latching on to her touch and the sound of her voice like a lifeline. Plus the Banamine seemed to be knocking the razor edge off the pain.

  A thought blinked into Cole’s head—there and gone—that if Shawnee whispered to him and touched him that way, he might not need pharmaceutical intervention for his anxiety attacks. Then he was back to business, pulling the stethoscope out of its leather pouch and clamping the rubber earpieces in his ears.

  “Hank, go get two buckets out of my trailer, and fill one of them with warm water,” he said as he settled a gentle hand on the horse’s shoulder.

  It didn’t move, mesmerized by Shawnee’s voice and rhythmic massage. She was oblivious to the blood that trickled down the bridge of its nose and dripped onto the front of her shirt. Cole pressed the disc of the stethoscope first to the horse’s chest, timing the heart rate on his cell phone. Sixty-three beats per minute. High, but not in the danger zone. Yet. He worked his way back, pausing to listen at various points along the rib cage and belly.

  When he straightened, Shawnee asked, “Well?”

  “I don’t hear any gut sounds.”

  She breathed another obscenity, well aware that it wasn’t good news. No gurgles or grumbles meant food wasn’t traveling through the intestines, and that most likely meant a blockage of some sort. With luck, it was an impaction—a lump of hay or bedding plugging up the works. But even that was an emergency. A horse was incapable of vomiting, and with the high volume of fluid secreted into their stomach to carry forage through their system, any blockage quickly became a critical condition that could result in a rupture.

  Hank came back with the two buckets, moving as fast as possible without sloshing the water.

  “Can you get him to move?” Cole asked Shawnee.

  She pulled on the halter rope, a firm, steady pressure, and Cole clapped a hand on the horse’s butt. He took a couple of staggering steps. Then a couple more, becoming less unsteady as he went. Shawnee was solid as a rock. Like a good soldier, or a medical professional, her emotions locked behind a wall of calm, cool necessity.

  “Good,” Cole said. “Let’s get him into the stripping chute.”

  With a combination of pulling and pushing, they were able to walk the gray to the narrow chute where riggings and saddles were pulled off the bucking horses after they exited the arena. With sliding gates front and back, it was a passable substitution for the stocks a veterinarian used to restrain a horse. Once Butthead was inside, Cole fetched his equipment.

  Shawnee’s eyes narrowed when she saw the nasogastric tube. “You know how to use that thing?”

  “Yes.” He handed her a roll of tape and one end of the flexible plastic tube, and set the empty bucket beside her. “I hang out with the vet in Dumas whenever I get the chance, and he’s taught me the basics in case we have an emergency on the road.”

  As Cole climbed up onto the side of the chute, Hank wrapped the lead rope around one of the metal rails and snugged it up tight, anchoring the gray’s head. He’d done this before, too. Shawnee angled the flashlight so it illuminated Cole’s workspace without getting in his eyes. The horse strained against the rope, but couldn’t budge as Cole eased the tube up one nostril.

  “Be ready to catch anything that comes out,” he told Shawnee. “The vet will want to see it.”

  Cole closed his eyes, his head filling with anatomical charts as he tried to feel each structure the tube encountered as he worked it in. That spongy resistance would be the esophagus. “Blow in the tube.”

  Shawnee blew, the force of the air opening the airway, and the tube moved past the obstruction. The horse swallowed, helping push the tube along its way.

  “We should be almost”—a greenish brown slurry shot through the clear tube and out of the end Shawnee jammed into the bucket— there,” Cole concluded.

  As the rancid contents of its overfull stomach gushed out, the horse heaved what sounded like a sigh of relief. When the fluid stopped draining, Cole took the tape from Shawnee’s hand, coiled the loose end of the tube and taped it up to the side of the halter, leaving the other end in place so it could be used again if necessary. “I’ll go find some rags to clean that cut.”

  “Don’t bother.” Hank stripped off his T-shirt, balled it up, and dunked it in the bucket of warm water before handing it to Shawnee. “It was wrecked anyway.”

  As she pressed the makeshift bandage to the cut, Cole checked his watch. Only ten minutes had passed. Even if the on-call vet came immediately, there was nothing more he could do here at the rodeo grounds. “If we can get him into my trailer, it’s about forty-five minutes from here to the equine hospital in Selma.”

  “We’ll get him loaded,” Shawnee said, grimly determined.

  While Hank rousted Cruz to help, Cole called ahead to the hospital and gave them as much information as he could. Then he rigged a sling that passed under the horse’s girth, and with Shawnee coaxing him forward and the three men putting every ounce of muscle into it, they hoisted him up, first front feet, then back. Unlike Tori’s trailer, Cole’s was also used for hauling bucking stock. The rear compartment was one large open space with no stall dividers to get in their way.

  The moment they slackened their hold, the gray’s legs buckled. Hank and Cruz just managed to avoid being pinned against the trailer wall as Butthead collapsed onto his side. Shawnee held firm to the lead rope. “I’ll ride back here with him.”

  The look on her face said there was no changing her mind—and no time to argue.

  “Cruz, go get the seat cushions from the table in my living quarters.” Cole strode around to grab a couple of saddle blankets from the tack room, tossing the pickup keys to Hank. “You drive.”

  When Cruz brought the cushions, Cole lifted the gray’s head to put one underneath and tucked the other against the wall, the best he could do to stop the horse from inflicting any further damage on himself. For now, he was quiet except for the heaving of his flanks and an occasional groan.

  “Stay here,” he told Cruz. “Let the others know what happened. I’ll give you a call when I have some idea what time we’ll be back.”

  Shawnee took one of the blankets and dropped it on the floor before sitting down, close enough to reach out and stroke the horse’s head but clear of the strike zone if he started to thrash. Cole took the second and settled in closer to the front of the trailer where he could lean back against the opposite wall and stretch out his legs. Katie jumped in and scampered up to hunker beside him as Hank shut and latched the door. Cole didn’t try to talk over the rumble and clatter of the trailer and roar of the wind through the side slats. What was there to say? He had no meaningless assurances to offer. Shawnee knew better than to believe them if he did.

  The drive blurred into a rush of sound and vibration increasingly punctuated by the bright slash of streetlights as they skirted the northern edge of San Antonio. Shawnee had brought the bucket of water along and gently dabbed blood from the horse’s face and jowls, soothing him with words Cole couldn’t make out. He could only see that it worked.

  Then they slowed, turned onto a gravel surface, circled around, and stopped. The pickup engine cut off and the trailer door swung open and they were overrun by brisk, efficient hospital staff. The techs bustled around, positioning a stretcher, while the veterinarian checked Butthead’s vital signs and peppered Cole and Shawnee with questions.

  They’d made it this far and the horse was still alive. It remained to be seen whether they’d be able to keep him that way.

  Chapter 19

  Beneath the harsh glare of fluorescent lights, Shawnee and Cole looked like escapees from a Texas Chainsaw Massacr
e movie. Hank looked slightly less gruesome in the clean T-shirt he’d grabbed to replace the one he’d given Shawnee to use as a bandage, but his hands, arms, and jeans were still streaked with blood.

  Butthead was upright, supported by a web of harnessing and a hydraulic lift while the techs drained his stomach again. The vet was standing in front of Shawnee and saying words, but she was having trouble connecting them. Impaction. Strangulation of the intestine. Not sure until we get inside…

  “How much is this going to cost?” she blurted, cutting him off midsentence.

  “It depends on what we find. If it’s a straightforward displacement with no complications during surgery, it could be as little as thirty-five hundred dollars. But if we find a segment with compromised circulation and we have to do a resection…”

  As little as thirty-five hundred. Shawnee had spent the drive over praying that for once in his life Butthead would catch a break. Maybe he’d just have a blockage they could flush out. She’d heard enough colic stories to have a pretty good idea what surgery would cost, but hearing the vet confirm it…that fucking band tightened around her chest, making it nearly impossible to breathe. If over three grand was chump change to this man, she shuddered to imagine what he considered expensive. He was droning on again about the risks, and chances of full recovery, and how the decision came down to the value of the horse, sentimental or otherwise.

  Shawnee wanted to turn away, but she forced herself to look directly at Butthead as she delivered the verdict. “I can’t afford it.”

  Not without taking a big bite out of the savings account that she considered untouchable. The sole safety net if the time came when it was her…when she couldn’t…

  Hands closed around her shoulders. Big, hard hands, warm in the air-conditioned chill of the clinic, that pulled her back from the edge. “Cost isn’t an issue,” Cole said. “The horse is included under the comprehensive policy that covers any stock that travels with Jacobs Rodeo.”