by Terri Farley
“Ready?” Preston’s head lifted from the dirt as if he were doing a sit-up.
“Yeah,” Sam said.
Preston pointed, “Don’t let him slack off until we reach the water trough, okay?”
The water trough was about twenty yards away.
“Okay,” Sam agreed. “I’ll take it slow.”
“At a trot,” Preston instructed. “And don’t worry if I’m yelling and carrying on,” Preston warned, “that’s part of the training. Just keep going.”
At a trot? Wouldn’t friction skin the shirt right off the man? And after the shirt, maybe a layer of flesh?
Why, Sam wondered, couldn’t Ace pull Darrell or Jake or someone else? Anyone else.
Sam looked over to see Jen nervously twirling the ends of her braids. She met Sam’s questioning look with a shrug.
“Giddyup!” Preston yelled, as if Sam had stalled long enough.
She turned Ace so that he faced away from the retired policeman’s feet, leaned forward in the saddle, and urged him into a trot. Sensing that this was different, that something alive squirmed at the end of his rope, Ace quickened his walk.
But Preston had said a trot, so Sam tapped Ace’s sides with her heels and he finally picked up his hooves and moved faster.
If Preston thought his yodeling yell would make Ace spook, he was wrong. The mustang’s jog took them across the ranch yard until Sam lifted her rein hand for him to stop.
Ace’s forelegs were precisely even with the trough.
Sam looked over her shoulder. For a minute Preston didn’t move. Was he waiting for her to go on?
“Did you mean Ace was supposed to trot as far as the trough, or did you want us to pull you even with—”
“You’re good,” Preston grunted. “Stop.” He rolled onto his right side, used both arms to push upright, then stood. “Didn’t think he’d do it, first try.” Grimacing, he pulled the rope off over his head, then nodded in appreciation. “That little bay can pull some.”
“Thanks,” Sam said, but she wasn’t surprised when Preston called all the riders together.
“We’re going to break a little early for lunch, then take turns riding a gauntlet,” Preston said. He stood stiffly straight. “I’ll explain the gauntlet at”—he lifted his arm as if it were unjointed wood and peered at his watch—“twelve thirty. In the meantime, rest your horses, grab yourself some lunch, and be thinking of ways to bomb-proof your horse at home.”
Just as Preston started to move off, Mr. Martinez asked, “Can you give us an example of how to do that?”
Preston gave a pained smile, then explained, “The opportunities are all around. If you’ve got a river, make your horse an expert at water crossings. If you have a bagpipe or accordion you play badly, serenade your horse until he doesn’t hightail it out of earshot. Maybe you just bought a new tent for camping. Practice setting it up where the horse can learn that all that flapping won’t hurt him.”
“He did that all in one breath,” Sheriff Ballard commented.
Preston flashed him a frown, then said, “If there’s nothing else, eat up.”
Sam wondered if she was the only one who noticed that, instead of lining up for a brown bag, Preston limped to the camper he’d parked near the entrance to Mrs. Allen’s ranch.
“Guess we don’t get a turn dragging stuff,” Sheriff Ballard said, dismounting as he talked to Jinx. Hooking a stirrup over his saddle horn, the sheriff loosened the cinch so that it swung below the grulla’s sweaty belly.
Sam did the same. She slipped Ace’s bit, too, then glanced over her shoulder in time to see Preston heaving himself into his camper.
“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” she told the sheriff.
“Don’t think you did. Not much,” the sheriff said. “Besides, he asked for it.”
Great, Sam thought.
Then, as if he knew she was planning on sneaking away to check on the palomino mare, Sheriff Ballard walked beside her to pick up lunch.
Mrs. Allen had spread out blankets on the grass, and everyone sat close together, trying to fit in the patches of shade.
Jen and Sam staked their claim on half of a blanket, then rolled up their sleeves and opened their collars. Still hot, Sam would have tugged off her boots and socks and wiggled her toes in the grass, but she was afraid she’d want to stay barefoot all day and that just wouldn’t work for riding.
“Check this out,” Jen mumbled.
Sam looked up. Darrell swaggered over wearing Jake’s black Stetson. Then, though there was only a foot of blanket between the girls and Dr. Yung, he flung himself down full length. The hat shot off his head but Darrell snagged it, rolled flat on his back, plucked a blade of grass, and stuck it between his teeth.
Squinting sunward, he asked, “Do I look like a cowpoke?”
Jen’s and Sam’s eyes met. Trying not to laugh, they opened their lunch sacks without comment.
“Hey!” Darrell insisted, “I said, do I—”
“No, but you smell like a cow,” Jen said quietly. She unwrapped her sandwich and peered under a corner of bread. “Is that close enough?”
As Darrell snorted his appreciation for Jen’s wit, Dr. Yung watched openly. Head tilted to one side and brows raised, he seemed fascinated with the alien culture of teenagers.
Darrell kept his eyes closed as he fanned himself with Jake’s hat.
“Sam,” he said, “tell Jennifer that I can always tell when a woman’s hiding her true feelings with sarcasm.”
“If it happens all the time, it might not be sarcasm,” Jen pointed out.
Darrell gave an exaggerated sigh, then commented to anyone listening, “The sassiest ones are the most smitten.”
“Smitten?” Jen asked. She pushed her glasses up her nose and rearranged her braids to lie flat over each shoulder. Then, when she couldn’t come up with anything better, repeated, “Smitten?”
Sam couldn’t choke back her laughter any longer. Maybe Jen had finally met her sarcastic match.
Darrell opened his eyes, made a toy gun of his hand, and shot it into the air in celebration.
“Told ya,” he said, then pulled the Stetson down so that only his smug smile showed.
Sam was still giggling when Jen muttered, “I don’t know what you think is so funny.”
Gesturing toward her lips, Sam pretended she couldn’t talk with her mouth full.
It was a good thing Jen didn’t notice that Sam’s sandwich, apple, chips, and cake sat untouched before her. Then Jake came to retrieve his hat, Preston returned, and there was really too much going on to answer her friend.
As her laughter subsided, Sam’s face tightened once more with worry. Concern for the palomino mare settled over her again, hiding her appetite.
She watched Preston gulp down his sandwich as if he were making up for lost time.
Had he washed a scrape and applied some antiseptic while he was in his camper? Had he bandaged an Ace-induced abrasion? While she’d been laughing at Jen and Darrell, had he slipped into the barn, discovered the injured mustang, then called a federal marshal to come arrest her?
Sam took such a deep breath, and exhaled so loudly, that Jen frowned at her.
“What?” Jen asked.
“You know,” Sam responded, and Jen’s understanding nod said she did.
This nerve-racking day was going on way too long.
“Lieutenant Preston, can you—” Katie Sterling started to say.
“Just Preston,” he corrected her.
Katie nodded, but kept talking. “—tell us any more about the horse theft ring you’re trying to break up? As I mentioned, we have a commercial stable, so…”
“Trying is sort of the key word. Honey was stolen two years ago and—well, I’ve got to back up a bit for this all to make sense.” He looked around a bit awkwardly. “Sure you want to hear the whole story?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Allen said. Then, Barbara Ridge’s “You bet,” overlapped Jake’s “Sure.”
�
�Okay,” Preston said, satisfied. “The Fairfield Police Department had an agreement to use the university’s agriculture department corrals. Campus police patrolled a little extra for us in exchange for some in-service training a couple times a year. That only matters because whoever took Honey got past the campus police.”
“Did they get all the police horses?” Jen asked.
“No, they almost got Spanky. He was a big bay and there was a trick to loading him. We found him wandering near the freeway. The others were spooked, but still locked up. Honey’s stall was open and she was gone. She was always an easy loader,” he said wistfully.
“What did she look like?” Mrs. Allen interrupted.
The man clearly didn’t mind being sidetracked from his story.
“She was a beauty,” he said. “A Quarter Horse built for speed and endurance. She’d be about ten, now, in her prime. She was rare among police horses—being both a mare and a palomino—so she had to work harder to be taken seriously. But she did it.”
From nearby, Nightingale whinnied to the captive mustangs. A raspy neigh, probably Roman’s, answered, before Preston went on.
“If they’d gotten all six police horses, we probably could’ve hung in there a little longer, spent more time and money on our investigation, but we had nothin’ except the ransom note until—”
“They sent a ransom note to a police department?” Darrell yelped.
“Kinda ironic, isn’t it?” Preston asked. “I mean, we’re not gonna pay it, and it puts a piece of evidence in our hands.” He drew a deep breath. “Not that it helped until we got two breaks.”
Sam saw the volunteers lean forward as if they were listening to a ghost story around a campfire.
“A Fell driving pony was stolen from a Washington, D.C., horse trailer. A ransom note was sent on this one, too, but the owner just happened to be a congressman’s wife. The heat was pretty intense to solve that case. That’s why we heard about it out in California, and we thought, huh, another horse stolen, another ransom note sent. This could be our guy.
“The case got such publicity, a few other victims finally stepped up. We heard about an American Saddlebred stallion stolen in Providence, Rhode Island, and two Arabian mares from Scottsdale, Arizona.”
“Did the owners pay?” Mrs. Allen asked.
“All except the senator’s wife,” Preston said, nodding. “But the animals weren’t returned.”
Disappointed sighs came from all around. Sam knew one of them was hers.
“And the horses, were they ever found?” Dr. Yung asked gingerly.
“Actually,” Preston said, “some were.”
“Really?” Jen said solemnly. “I would have thought—”
“The Fell pony was found on the beach at Chincoteague Island, as if someone was trying to get him out to Assateague among the wild ponies, and the two Arab mares surfaced together at a breeders sale in London, Ohio, after they were found together in an urban park.”
“Does that mean”—Mr. Martinez seemed to pick through his own ideas—“that the thief wants the money, won’t risk returning the horses, and yet is too softhearted to destroy them?” He shook his head, as if his theory was absurd.
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Sheriff Ballard said. “It’s a mystery.”
It was a mystery, but something about the story was familiar to Sam. Did the thefts remind her of Hotspot’s disappearance? Not the ransom note, because there’d been no demand for money when Linc Slocum’s Appaloosa disappeared. Not the soft-hearted thief. Although Sam thought it had been Karl Mannix, and Shy Boots had been given to a petting zoo instead of being destroyed, some other clue was jiggling around in her brain, waiting to be recognized.
Sam looked up to see Jake watching her. Had he thought of something? His solemn brown eyes told her nothing.
“Our second break,” Preston went on, “came when we picked up an ex-jockey known as Bug Boy.”
“In his better days, he could get right up on a Thoroughbred’s neck and stick there like a flea,” Sheriff Ballard added, explaining the nickname.
“We only had him for outstanding traffic tickets, but there were sixteen of them, and he tried to dodge a thousand-dollar fine by telling us about a former partner in crime named Mucho Mudge.”
“Where do they come up with these names?” Mrs. Allen muttered.
Preston laughed outright at Mrs. Allen’s puzzlement.
Sheriff Ballard smiled and said, “I get a kick out of aliases. Sometimes they’re linked to the criminal’s real name, but not often enough. This guy we’re after has gone by Christopher Mudge, Kit Mudge, and Mucho Mudge and probably a few other names, since we haven’t caught him yet.”
“So Bug Boy told you Mucho was stealing the horses?” Katie Sterling prodded.
“Horses and other animals.”
Preston went on to explain that Mudge was part of an ongoing investigation nationwide.
The thefts had started on the East Coast. Pedigreed dogs and cats—not trophy winners, but beloved pets who were somewhat successful in show rings—began disappearing. By not snatching from big breeders, the thieves managed to operate for years without a single report to the police.
“It was blackmail,” Preston said. “People were promised their pets would get food, water, and vet care if they paid up. Since they didn’t want anything to happen to their beloved animals…”
“The thieves weren’t too greedy, either,” Sheriff Ballard added. “They kept the ransoms in the five- to twenty-five-thousand-dollar range—”
“But the animals were never seen again,” Preston finished.
“Until the horses,” Jen insisted.
“Right,” Sheriff Ballard agreed.
“When Mudge hooked up with Bug Boy, he thought he’d struck it rich. Being a jockey, Bug Boy could steal a horse and ride it away quicker than Mudge could stick a Chihuahua in a briefcase.”
While his audience laughed, Preston opened a new soft drink can.
“So now that you know who you’re after, the case is almost solved?” asked Mr. Martinez.
“It should be, but all this information is a year old, and though we have Bug Boy’s information linking him to all this, Mudge doesn’t have a record, at least not under any of the names we know. And Bug Boy only communicated with him over the phone.
“Without a physical description, and a department with the manpower to devote to the case,” Preston went on, “we were kind of spinning our wheels.”
“So when Preston won the lottery, he struck out on his own.” Sheriff Ballard pointed his thumb toward Preston.
“You won the lottery?” Barbara Ridge said and gasped, flattening her hand against her chest.
“A little one,” Preston said. His face turned crimson.
“Sorry ’bout that,” Sheriff Ballard muttered, but Preston was already talking over him.
“Cracking this case would’ve been easy if we’d nabbed Bug Boy earlier. All the agencies thought the horses were being killed, but it turned out that as soon as the ransom had been paid, the horses were just taken a few hundred miles from the kidnap scene and released in some open area. To quote Bug Boy, ‘None of us had the stomach for killin’ horses, even if they were prissy good-for-nothing’s.’”
The line should have been funny, but Preston’s voice was grim. As they waited to find out why, no one laughed.
“According to Bug Boy, a new rider, an ex-con they called Cowboy, elbowed his way into the operation. He announced he was the new mastermind and he was changing three things. First off, he’d replace Bug Boy. Second, all stolen horses were dead horses, whether the ransom was paid or not. Last thing was that any one with questions could come see him.”
Preston paused.
Then, though his glance swept over all of them, it stopped on Sam.
“I don’t mind telling you I’ve dealt with some pretty rough characters during my career,” Preston said. “And Bug Boy is no innocent, but his eyes were round an
d darn scared when he told me ‘Ain’t nobody wanted to ask Cowboy a thing.’”
Chapter Eleven
Why was he staring at her while he was talking about horse thieves?
Sam’s hands turned cold. Her arms felt like they’d frozen and then she shivered, even though the temperature must have reached ninety degrees.
She must have been giving off invisible icicles, because when Preston finished giving directions for the gauntlet and everyone else stood up to get ready, Jen reached over, grabbed Sam’s hand, and squeezed it with concern.
“Don’t panic,” Jen said quietly. “He looked at you because—”
“I wasn’t imagining it, then?” Sam said, wishing Preston’s stare had been produced by her paranoia.
“Definitely not,” Jen said. “But I’m convinced it’s because Sheriff Ballard told him about Hotspot’s disappearance and your role in it.”
“Wonderful,” Sam sighed. “Just because I tried to help your boyfriend—”
“Don’t go there,” Jen snapped, but she took Sam’s hands and pulled her to her feet with a sympathetic smile. “Go pick up those marachas and jitterbug ’til you’ve terrified every horse here.”
“Jitterbug?” Sam asked, but Jen gave her a shove between the shoulder blades, and she went.
Each horse ran the gauntlet alone, while the other riders lined up facing each other. Preston had explained that the point was for each horse to ignore the noise and visual distraction and listen to his rider, so those in the gauntlet used kazoos, plastic bags filled with aluminum cans, pom-poms, and other things to create chaotic rows for the horses to pass between.
Preston had gone to his truck cab and retrieved a bunch of helium-filled balloons he’d bought in Darton. When he gave them to Mrs. Allen and instructed her to stroll near the horses, she looked as pleased as if he’d handed her a bouquet of roses.
Though Sam started out feeling silly waving a pink pool noodle in one hand and a maraca in the other, it was fun. By the time her turn came, Ace had been watching for nearly an hour. He survived his trip through the gauntlet easily. When Preston dismissed the volunteer riders, Sam had managed not to think about the Phantom’s lead mare for at least fifteen minutes.