Barnstorming (Gail Mccarthy Mysteries)

by Laura Crum

  As I’d expected, the mention of Jane nettled Sheryl. She tossed her blond braid over her shoulder and gave her horse a sharp jerk in the mouth, apparently unconsciously. At the same time, she obviously had no idea what to say to me. Her mare danced and fretted, and a look of sheer rage crossed Sheryl’s superficially pretty face. I suddenly wondered why I’d provoked her.

  In her thirties, blond and tan and slim, with lots of makeup and silver jewelry and a brittle, tinkly laugh, Sheryl was everything I wasn’t. She favored the party scene and went from one cowboy, or wannabe cowboy, to the next, with absolutely no scruples concerning their marital status. She spent most of her time hanging around the barn, flirting; I had never seen her out on a solo trail ride before. It amused me to note that she wore a fringed leather jacket and had matching saddlebags with an equal amount of fringe.

  “What a nice afternoon,” I said belatedly, “and I’d better get going,” I added, “if I want to be home before dark.”

  This wasn’t really true; I had plenty of time to get home before dark, even if I dawdled quite a bit. But I was sorry I had needled Sheryl, and I was also suddenly sure that I did not want to have a conversation with her.

  “Have a good ride,” I told her.

  Still quite obviously annoyed, Sheryl jerked her chin at me in reply and rode past on her prancing mare.

  I watched her heading down the trail in the same direction Jane had gone, and aimed Sunny up the hill to the Lookout.

  This last piece of trail was steep, ascending sharply through the redwoods to emerge in a grove of big, old madrones, their red branches twisting sinuously as they reached for the deep blue sky far above. The trail threaded between them into a small flat at the very top of the bluff. I could see the dark blue velvety folds of the coastal hills rolling and tossing away in the distance on all sides, and before me, aquamarine in the bittersweet brilliance of the autumn sunshine, bright on the horizon, lay the blue curve of the Monterey Bay. Beyond that—I squinted at the dazzle of white light—the rim of the world and the westering sun.

  I walked Sunny across the flat to the edge of the bluff and let him rest. I could feel his breath move my legs in and out as he got his wind back after the climb. We were both content to stand still.

  Staring out at the view, seeing it and not seeing it. One part of me registered the familiar drama with an equally familiar appreciative thrill. I came here often and never tired of it. The other part of my mind had gone back to puzzling over my current predicament. The busy inward chatter was both welcome and unwelcome. I longed for my mind to be quiet and able simply to take in the beauty around me, and at the same time my problem obsessed me; I needed to chew on it as a dog needs to chew on a bone.

  A red-tail hawk cut across the abyss of air before me, swimming through the sky level with my horse, as we stood at the edge of the Lookout bluff. Free as a bird, I thought distractedly. Free. And that was the point. Did I want to be free?

  The hawk disappeared into the distance. I watched him go, saw him become a tiny dot and then vanish. Going, gone. Like all of us. Like life itself.

  I sighed, and felt Sunny sigh underneath me. The horse cocked a hind leg, clearly prepared to rest awhile. Sunny knew me. He knew I wanted to sit here and think.

  I had a choice to make. And after weeks and months of mulling it over, I still couldn’t decide what I should do. Being free sounded simple; it even looked simple, watching a hawk soar across the sky. But in practice, not so simple.

  For I now had what most people claim to want. Financial freedom. The choice of working or not working. I only needed to please myself. After ten years of steadily making a living as a horse vet, and another ten years of raising my child while my husband worked hard to support us, I found myself facing the oddest problem I had yet encountered. My husband had inherited an almond orchard when his father died. The almond orchard brought in over a hundred thousand a year, without either Blue or I needing to do much of anything. We were both free to work or not. Blue had promptly retired.

  That was six months ago. In the ensuing time, Blue had built a small separate building to serve as an addition to our little house and taken up playing the bagpipes. He also tended his beloved vegetable garden and cooked dinner every evening. Blue was gloriously unconflicted, always busy, and quite happy. I was the one who was having problems.

  After ten years of raising my child, the last few as a homeschooling mom, I was finding that eleven-year-old Mac needed me less and less. He now went to school a couple of days a week, was able to be home alone, and had Blue for support when needed. I was free, in every way, to resume my interrupted career as a horse vet. And this career had meant a lot to me. I’d always intended to go back to it. I remained a partner in the veterinary firm.

  Free, free, free. I shook my head in aggravation, like a woman being plagued by gnats. I was free to work if I wanted to. And I was free not to work.

  And do what, a friend of mine had asked.

  That was the point, exactly. The wind blew a strand of my hair across my face. I brushed it away, and reached down to smooth Sunny’s cream-colored mane back in place on his neck. The freedom that I sometimes envisioned didn’t look like doing anything much. It wasn’t something that I could defend or explain. I only knew it drew me, as the wind and the hawk and the distance drew me. But could I stand it?

  All my life’s training had been to be busy, productive, independent. Even as a mother, giving up my career to stay home with my child, I had felt confident in the importance of what I was doing, affirmed in my belief that nurturing one’s child was a valid choice. Perhaps not glamorous, but nonetheless, realistically, important work.

  There was absolutely no support for the notion that staying home to watch hawks was important work. In our western society, such pointless sitting around qualified as pure laziness. Do-nothing people were bored, and boring. Couch potatoes watching TV.

  Never mind that I didn’t have a TV; I knew the stereotype. I could not entirely free myself of its stigma. At some deep level I thought that I ought to go back to work. But I could not figure out if that was what I truly wanted.

  I had turned fifty this year. At least half my life was almost certainly over. What did I want to do with the rest of it?

  I sighed again. I’d been sitting here awhile. Sunny’s breathing had returned to normal and he shifted his front feet. Sunny was a patient horse, but even he was ready to move on. I patted his neck.

  “You’re right,” I said aloud. “This isn’t getting me anywhere.”

  It never did. No matter how many times I mulled it over, no answer emerged. In an effort to break the stalemate, I’d made a plan to ride along with Lucy Conners, who was currently practicing as a vet for our firm. This would be happening on Monday.

  “Day after tomorrow, I’ll have a better idea,” I said finally.

  Somehow I had the notion that I would be able to tell if being back in the saddle at work, so to speak, felt stimulating or claustrophobic, simply by accompanying Lucy on her rounds. In any case, it was the best idea I could come up with.

  Laying the rein against Sunny’s neck, I said, “Okay, let’s go.”

  Sunny turned away from the view with alacrity. He knew my routines. Now we were headed home.

  The horse marched purposefully, but without hurrying, across the flat little meadow and took the trail that headed downhill between the madrones. I glanced briefly at the dirt logging road which also led down the hill, but allowed Sunny’s choice to stand. I would take the pretty trail home.

  Chapter 2

  The pretty trail wound down the hill gently, passing between broad-leafed trees, oaks, and redwoods, a swirling green kaleidoscope leading one to the heart of the forest. Mac and I had named it the “pretty trail” years ago, and the name had stuck. As I descended the branch trail from the Lookout headed for the junction to the pretty trail, I glanced automatically downhill at a hunter’s blind in an oak tree. This blind had been here for many years—ever
since I’d been riding these trails. I’d never seen anyone in it or near it. But I had the curious conviction that it was not deserted. My over-the-shoulder glance in its direction was, as always, uneasy. That blind made me uncomfortable.

  Now we were in a redwood grove; the blind was hidden behind trees. I couldn’t see much of anything. The woods were quiet; only the creak of my saddle and the crunch of Sunny’s footfalls reached my ears. I stared at the trail in front of me, seeing the usual mix of horse hoofprints, deer tracks, pawprints, and human footprints. Everything quiet and peaceful. I could smell the rich dusty scent of the redwood duff, loamy and evocative of summer. A jay squawked high in the branch of a nearby oak tree. I turned my head to catch the flash of blue as he skipped across the air.

  Crack! Loud and sharp, the distinct explosion of a gun, firing through the hills, not too far from us. Both Sunny and I flinched. I grabbed the saddle horn and got ready to stop Sunny if he bolted, but my little yellow horse didn’t even spook. Apparently he’d heard gunshots before. I pulled him up and listened as the echo died away.

  Nothing. No second shot. No voices. Nothing changed in the green world around me; nothing crashed, nothing moved. Deep in the forest as I was, I couldn’t see far. The silence seemed absolute, as if the little critters of the woods were listening, too. I waited, listening. A squirrel chattered on the limb of a pine tree above me. I looked up. Then I squinted down the trail. Still nothing. Moments passed. Taking a deep breath, I bumped Sunny’s sides with my heels, letting him step forward. My heart was pounding, but I didn’t see what else to do. That shot had not come from very far away.

  Sunny trooped down the hill, ears forward, shuffling his back feet a little, as he often did on descents. He didn’t seem perturbed by the shot. On we went. My heart gradually slowed down. I’d heard shots in the woods before, many times. Usually at dawn or dusk, usually when I was home, sitting on my own front porch. I had never, that I could remember, heard a shot as I rode through the hills on a Saturday afternoon. Perhaps a poacher. It was the season for it. I thought of the hunter’s blind. It was well behind me now, and I wasn’t going back.

  We were almost at the trail junction when Sunny’s head came up and he halted suddenly. I looked where he was looking and saw motion through the trees, which quickly became a horse and rider loping towards us up the pretty trail.

  The horse was a buckskin; the rider, I was quite surprised to see, was male. I rarely met men riding back here. Why, I wasn’t sure. But virtually all of the equestrians I encountered were female, mostly riding solo.

  In another second I’d recognized the guy. Jonah Wakefield, the resident trainer at Lazy Valley Stable. The fact that Jonah got to call himself a trainer had a lot to do with the fact that he was sleeping with the owner of Lazy Valley—Juli Barnes. Jonah had taken a six-week course with a well-known horse guru and now felt he was equal to anything when it came to breaking and training horses. Juli apparently liked him well enough to second this belief by calling him her trainer. The whole situation made a lot of us local horse folks roll our eyes.

  If there’d been a way to avoid talking to Jonah, I would have been glad to take it. But the man had spotted me and pulled his horse up. Tipping his black cowboy hat—of course he would wear a black felt Stetson—he invited me to pass by.

  I’d met Jonah before, but I could see by his face that he didn’t recognize me. This was just fine with me. I smiled a small smile in his general direction, and clucked to Sunny. Obligingly Sunny stepped forward quietly, ready to pass the other horse. But the buckskin danced and skittered sideways towards us, determined to greet this newcomer. Jonah, who was wearing a long duster that went perfectly with the black hat—that is, if you like an affected wannabe cowboy style—allowed his horse to sidle up to Sunny and sniff his nose.

  “He’s just a baby,” he said.

  Right. I kept my opinion that he should make his baby mind to myself. Sunny ignored the buckskin, except to tip his ears backward. I bumped Sunny’s face with my hand and his sides with my leg, and my steady little horse made to go on by.

  “I wouldn’t let him pin his ears like that,” Jonah said.

  Now this was a bit much. I had ignored his horse’s genuinely bad manners and he felt free to criticize me for my horse’s very mild response. Call me bad-tempered and hasty, but I couldn’t quite keep my mouth shut.

  “Is that right?” I said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t allow my colt to nuzzle strange horses. If they don’t happen to be as well broke as Sunny, your baby could get kicked.” I smiled sweetly.

  Jonah bared his teeth in a white flash that passed for a smile in return, but he didn’t look pleased. “I’m a horse trainer,” he said. Again he flashed the smile, no doubt sure that I would be both charmed and impressed. After all, he had a whole herd of middle-aged women who looked just like me and they all thought he was a big deal.

  Unfortunately his quite handsome face cut no ice with me. I’ve never been all that impressed with handsome men, and I wasn’t getting any more so in my old age.

  “You’re a trainer?” I said innocently. “I wouldn’t have guessed it. Do you mind keeping your colt under control while I ride by. I don’t need my good horse kicked.” And, once more, I asked Sunny to step by the buckskin.

  Sunny complied. Jonah didn’t seem to know what to say to this. Although obviously nettled, he reined the prancing buckskin to the side. Just as I cleared him and made to head off down the pretty trail, he called after me. “Do you know Ross Hart?”

  “Guy who trains at the Red Barn?” I said, pulling Sunny up once more.

  “Yeah. I saw him down below, running his horse at warp speed. Looked like he was headed this way. You might want to keep an eye out.”

  “Right,” I said. “Did you hear that shot?”

  “What shot?” Jonah Wakefield sounded puzzled.

  “I heard a shot. A minute or so ago. From down there somewhere.” I waved my hand in a downhill direction.

  “Nope. Didn’t hear a thing.” Jonah’s horse was dancing with impatience and he gave up trying to control it. “See ya,” and he flashed me a meant-to-be charming smile at the same moment that he let the buckskin whirl around and resume careering up the hill. I watched his retreating form and shrugged.

  Sunny and I continued down the pretty trail, with me quite earnestly hoping I was done encountering people for the day. But I’d only rounded one corner when an angry buzz in the distance made me flinch. I knew that buzz; I knew what it meant. And it was rapidly approaching.

  Somewhat desperately I searched the terrain around me, looking for a safe spot. I didn’t have much time. That slope up ahead next to the curve would have to do. I kicked Sunny up to the trot, reached the wide spot, and reined him up the hill and off the trail. Sunny complied calmly; the approaching mechanical snarl didn’t seem to bother him.

  In another second it was visible, engine roaring as it blasted up the hill, a little motorcycle of the type called a dirt bike. I recognized the bearded rider as the guy I’d seen before. I was clearly visible on my bright yellow horse, standing by the side of the trail, but the biker neither paused nor slowed. He came on full speed and blew by me in a rush of noise and wind. I caught a glimpse of some sort of elation on his face as he sped by.

  Resisting the strong urge I felt to flip the biker off, I patted Sunny’s neck in gratitude for his completely calm, unflustered demeanor, and stepped him back down on the trail in the wake of the disappearing motorbike.

  “This is it,” I said out loud. “I am absolutely not going out riding on the weekends ever again. I never see anybody up here during the week.”

  The sound of my own voice was reassuring, as was the sight of Sunny’s yellow ears, pricked forward as he paced steadily down the trail. I tried to refocus on the green world around me, but I could feel my jangled nerves jumping restlessly, alert for trouble. The shot and the dirt bike had definitely rattled me.

  As I passed the turnoff to the “swingset trail,
” so named because it led past an abandoned swingset in the woods, I caught the flash of a horse and rider disappearing through the trees in the distance, headed away from me, going uphill, toward the top of the ridge. Too far away and behind too many trees to have any idea who it was; the horse looked like a sorrel. Whoever it was, was going at the high lope, and would soon top the ridge, either aiming for Moon Valley or Tucker Pond. I peered curiously at the dust hanging in the air, but the rider was gone.

  On we trooped, steadily downhill. Redwoods and oaks made a leafy green wall of trees around me. Light slanted through, seeming to sparkle in brilliant flecks on the grass that fringed the trail. Soon we would reach the junction with the dirt logging road and the meadow full of pampas grass that I had looked down on from the ridge trail. This meadow was criss-crossed with the tracks of dirt bikes—I sincerely hoped that all would be quiet there today.

  Looking over my left shoulder, I saw the forked shape of the landmark tree silhouetted against the sky. Sunny and I were behind it now. I imagined how it looked from my front porch, solitary on the ridgeline. We were deep in the wild woods now, the heart of the green world.

  I glanced behind me. Nothing but trees and shafts of golden late afternoon light. But I had the sense that someone was watching me. I tried to shrug it off, reminding myself that I often had this feeling when I rode solo through the hills. Many times I had imagined the waiting, watchful eyes of a cougar fixed on us from some shadowy place. Once, long ago, I had met a mountain lion on these trails.

  But it wasn’t the wild critters who were worrying me now.

  Sunny walked out, eager to get home. We passed the junction with the logging road and I looked idly up its two ruts. Surely those were fresh tire tracks. Not a motorcycle. A truck or a car. The road was rough; it must have been a four-wheel-drive vehicle. I wondered who had driven up there.

  We were in the scrubby meadow full of clumps of rustling pampas grass. I remembered the day I had galloped across this meadow in the teeth of a blowing storm and reached down to stroke Sunny’s neck. “You got me through that one, didn’t you, boy?”