A grulla, her dark gray coat accentuated by an extraordinarily long, ragged black mane and tail, Sage was the dominant mare of the band. She was also his favorite of the entire herd. Though some would disagree, Oscar thought she was the most beautiful horse he'd ever vetted.
Craftily taking advantage of his affection for her, Sage pushed at his chest with her nose and lipped the buttons of his shirt. Dark eyes gleaming, she whickered softly. What a flirt! With a big sigh, Oscar caved in and gave her another handful before getting down to business.
At least the mares' temperatures seemed to be under control and their appetites had picked up. Unfortunately, a few of the little ladies still coughed sporadically, making him wonder about another round of antibiotics to suppress any secondary bacterial infection. He was still trying to figure out where that danged virus had come from, considering the isolation of the herd and all.
Only one in a series of peculiar incidents that had plagued the refuge over the past several weeks.
Late evening wrapped the high plateau with its sooty cloak and sheet lightning sizzled across the open indigo sky before he was done with the band. Sniffing the air, he registered the rain that would soon fall. He sure was running late. Normally by now he'd be home eating supper, looking forward to watching some television in the company of Wrangler, not merely a faithful four-footed companion, but his best buddy.
A howl resounded from the vicinity of the buttes. Then an echoing answer from some distance away. Coyotes. Though ranchers thought of them as pests, Oscar was as fond of the dog-cousins as he was of all God's creatures.
"See you tomorrow, Ladies," he told the mares, easing out of the infirmary corral.
That's when he heard the other engine.
"What the heck?"
Frowning, he fumbled with the gate latch and hitched his bag and the empty bucket into the back of his pickup. High beams announced the oncoming vehicles' approach on the rutted dirt road. Staying on his side of the pasture fence, Oscar limped into the open. Behind him, the mares whinnied, their collective shrill sending his neck hair to attention.
No one came this far back into the sanctuary except to mend fence or check on the herd occasionally. And certainly not after dark.
The agitated voices of other horses somewhere along the ravine to the south drew his attention for a moment, long enough for the truck to stop and the driver to alight. Senses attuned to possible trouble, he turned toward the person on the other side of the fence and squinted. He could make out no more than a hazy silhouette between the truck's high beams and the hot white broken lines of lightning in the distance.
"Who's there?" he demanded.
In answer, a bright ray in the driver's hand flicked on and blinded him.
A bad feeling in his gut, Oscar shaded his eyes. The mares he'd treated complained loudly. Unshod hooves met fence planking, as if the wild mustangs were starting to panic. He realized why when out of the dark, a horse and rider appeared and practically ran him down. The mount danced tightly around him.
"Shit, Doc, what're you doing here?"
Startled by the rider's identity, Oscar had trouble finding his voice. "I-I guess I could ask you the same."
Though bits and pieces of suspicions that had been growing over the past weeks knitted together in a hurry. His heart raced and his gut knotted. His arthritic joints screamed with tension. The truth was crystallizing in his still-sharp mind as brilliantly as the lightning surrounding them.
A very ugly truth.
One Oscar knew he would never tell.
Chapter One
KATE FARRELL CHOKED BACK the threat of tears as she watched the coffin lowered into the grave. She felt as if a part of her were being buried under the glaring South Dakota sun. Sweat made her silk blouse stick to her. Frizzy strands of her bright red hair had slipped from her ponytail and clung to her neck. A horrid day all around.
"I still can't believe I'll never see Doc again," she murmured to her parents and brother, who surrounded her with their support.
Oscar Weber had been like a second father to her. He'd befriended her when she was a pesky kid demanding he show her how to heal the injured animals and birds she found. When she'd decided to go to vet school, he'd become her mentor. After her marriage to Jake Nash had ended, he'd offered her a partnership. She'd accepted, moving back to Bitter Creek for his sake as well as hers – vetting livestock could be too physically demanding for an aging man with arthritis.
The partnership had been a clever hoax, however, Doc using the lure so he could retire within weeks of her return. All along, he'd planned on turning over his veterinary practice to her, no strings attached. Kate had agreed, figuring she'd find a way to pay him back for his generosity. And now she would never be able to do so.
Her mother slipped an arm around her back. Though smaller than Kate both in height and build, she was solid and steady and comforting as always.
"We're never prepared for death, Kathleen."
"But, Mom, it's not like Doc was sick."
"A person can up and die at any time without doing the things she meant to." Her green eyes went all watery and her soft lilt became more pronounced. "You cannot be making up for things left undone... unsaid... once you're gone."
"You've nothing to make up for, Rose," Kate's father insisted gruffly.
"It's been thirty-five years, Charlie."
Kate didn't miss the sadness that swept through her mother. A sadness beyond saying good-bye to an old friend. She met the amber gaze of her younger brother. Neil was a carbon copy of their father, from his whipcord build and solid good looks to his too-serious approach to life. A man who normally had control of any situation, he looked as helpless as she felt.
"Too bad Quin's not here," he whispered.
Struck with wanderlust, their younger brother Quinlan was always off seeking whatever lay over the next horizon.
"He always knows how to cheer Mom up," she agreed, feeling a little lost herself.
The minister said a final prayer over the grave, the mourners standing with bowed heads, holding hands, wiping away tears.
Not Kate, though, despite her stinging eyes. Unwilling to let anyone see her cry, she distracted herself with her mother's emotional state. The poor woman was homesick for her native Ireland and the McKenna clan she'd turned her back on more than three decades before.
She was thinking about encouraging Mom to follow her heart and contact her siblings, when a late arrival made her mind blank.
A man she hadn't seen in nearly two decades.
Dressed in black jeans and a polished cotton shirt buttoned to the throat, he stood behind the crowd, enough apart from the good citizens of Bitter Creek so it was noticeable. A loner, more comfortable with animals than with people. Always had been. And he had reason to stay away from some of those present, she admitted.
Though his dark eyes were hidden by his hat's wide brim, Kate could feel them fixed on her. The skin along her neck crawled. She tried to ignore the sensation that quickly overcame her, but she couldn't.
Her world suddenly narrowed to a tunnel with her at one end, Chase Brody at the other.
Two decades felt like yesterday.
He was taller, topping six feet. More muscular. More male.
Two decades and he still made her pulse thrum...
"Kate?"
Neil was frowning at her. "It's time."
Flushing, she forced her mind from past to present. This was a funeral, not a reunion. She approached the grave and picked up a clot of earth.
"Bye, Doc." She forced the words past the lump in her throat. "I'll never forget you."
Eyes stinging more fiercely than before, she flung her handful of soil atop the coffin, only with great difficulty keeping her tears to herself. They could wait until later, when she could mourn alone.
Only after she had a chance to join Ellen Weber, Doc's daughter, a lab technician who lived in Rapid City, after she herself had accepted the condolences of myriad people
who respected her special relationship to the deceased, did she remember Chase Brody.
She looked around for him, wondering if he would make a point of speaking to her.
But he was gone. He'd slipped away unnoticed.
Just as he had the last time.
AFTER LEAVING THE CEMETERY, the mourners crowded Doc's rambling old house and filled the dining room table with casseroles, fried chicken, salads, jello molds and homemade cakes and pies until the old wood groaned under the weight. Kate had no appetite, but she forced herself to eat a few bites.
When she set down her half-empty plate, Doc's daughter took her aside and suggested she might like to move into the house, at least temporarily, so that the place wouldn't sit empty until she could see to her father's effects. Ellen had to get back to her job in Rapid City as soon as possible.
A whole house instead of the two rooms behind the practice?
A chance to feel close to Doc a while longer...
Kate accepted the offer and volunteered to help go through Doc's things.
Afterward, wandering through the study alone, Kate considered the shelves loaded with books, walls in-between crowded with photographs of animals Doc had cared for, and every available horizontal surface stacked with literature – some of which featured the places he always meant to visit after he retired but never had.
Kate noticed the silly-looking patchwork mutt who lay in a corner like a Sad Sack, bushy tail curled under his body, long nose on his paws. He'd been sick and starving when Doc had found him. He was mourning, too.
Moving closer to the dog, Kate crouched to give him a quick scratch behind the ears. "Hey, boy, you and me are going to be roomies. What do you think of that?"
Wrangler merely gave her a melancholy expression and whistled softly through his nose.
And Kate straightened, her gaze alighting on the nearest framed photograph – wild horses on the Bitter Creek Mustang Refuge. The sanctuary founded and run by Chase Brody. The place where Doc had died in a stampede.
She could hardly give the incident credence, not after everything Doc had told her about the way he'd gotten the mustangs to accept him in the few short months he'd been working with them. But the facts were irrefutable. Something had spooked the recuperating horses – the sheriff had put it to that crazy storm – and they'd broken out of their corral. His arthritis hadn't allowed Doc to move too fast. He'd probably fallen and had landed right in their path.
Nobody's fault.
So why keep questioning the circumstances?
"The place could use you with Doc gone."
Kate whirled to face Nathan Lantero. He was nearly six foot now, his medium build tight with muscle. A striking if not handsome man with long black hair, black eyes and a straight blade of a nose.
"Do you ever not sneak up on a person?"
"Only when I'm trying to do the unexpected."
She rolled her eyes at Nathan's sly humor. More Lakota than white, having lived on the rez much of his life, he made light of his heritage when it suited him.
"You're not sucking me into this one."
"No guts, huh?"
"I learned my lesson. I can't win with you."
"Your trying was always interesting."
Nathan's father Delbert had worked for the Farrell
Ranch until his death a few years back. When the mood had struck him, Nathan would sneak off the reservation, even ditching school, to hang out at the ranch. He'd been jealous of her. Competing for Delbert's attention, they'd been at each other's throats from the first. Kate had often gotten into both verbal and physical scraps with the boy who was older if not bigger. And he'd always had a way of winning.
Too aware of their uneasy adult truce, she said, "That was ages ago."
"So was Brody." Nathan lifted a dark brow and waited for a response he didn't get. Finally he asked, "So what about it? You gonna take over where Doc left off?"
She knew he was currently working at the refuge as were a few other people she knew who'd attended the funeral.
"I'm sure he can hire some other vet."
"Not without money."
She started. "What about the BLM?"
Doc had told her the haven had come into being only with the backing of the Bureau of Land Management, the government agency responsible for the wild horses.
"Their funding ended a coupla years ago now, as agreed. The place would be closed down if not for the volunteers. Only a few of us draw a paycheck – me and Merle and Buck. Brody stinks at fundraising. He's a long way from making that place independent like he figured he could."
"Like that should matter to me," she muttered.
Nathan's penetrating black eyes held understanding. "The horses matter. They need you."
Guilt wormed its way into her resolve, but she tried to ignore the unwelcome sentiment. Doc had told her about the money crunch, and about Chase's plans to renovate some log structures on the property so he could rent rooms to vacationers.
"When you finish working on those old buildings there'll be enough cash from tourists to pay a vet."
"Don't see it, not with the way things have been going lately. Besides, tourists won't be staying on the property till next spring. What about now?"
"Did Chase put you up to this?"
Nathan shook his head. "Hasn't mentioned you since you got back."
No big surprise, though she'd been living in Bitter Creek for several months now. In all that time, she'd never run into Chase once. Not that she'd asked, Doc had told her he didn't come into town unless he had to. Remembering how badly he'd been treated by the townspeople as a kid, Kate guessed she didn't blame him.
Only... why had he returned?
Not wanting to be pressed any further, she said, "Look, I'll give the suggestion some thought. Just don't go making any promises to anyone."
Nathan's full lips pulled into a grimace resembling a smile. "Don't worry, I won't say a thing to Brody."
With that, he left her alone.
EXHAUSTED BY THE TIME SHE entered the paneled room that served as her general living quarters – a single bed was crammed in a much smaller space that must have been meant as a supply closet – Kate was tempted to crash. The clack-clack of Wrangler's nails on the linoleum behind her was a reminder that she couldn't only think of herself.
"Hungry?" she asked the dog.
Legs spread, tail drooping, Wrangler focused his sorrowful gaze on her. She pulled out two plastic bowls and filled one with water.
"C'mon, you must be thirsty."
She patted the dog on the side when he came for the water. Then she left the room and entered the combination surgery and infirmary where she kept food for the occasional stay-over patient. But Wrangler merely sniffed at the bowl of chow she put out for him and walked away, groaning and throwing himself at the base of the couch.
Kate joined him on the floor, where she sat cross-legged. She smooched the air and patted her thigh. "I could use someone to hug."
Wrangler crawled into her lap. Arms wrapped around his compact body, she pressed her cheek to his fuzzy forehead. He whimpered.
"That's all right. You cry if you want to," she urged the dog, uncensored tears gathering in her own eyes. "Nobody here to laugh at you."
Remembering Chase had liked that about her – a girl who didn't cry – made her feel worse.
Whistling through his nose, Wrangler freed his head enough to lick the salty tears from her cheeks. Kate closed her eyes and ran her hands along the dog's face. She concentrated on the animal... touching... focusing... sensing his grief for his master.
As she'd been able to do ever since she could remember, she became one with the animal, his emotions merging with hers.
A hazy and somewhat distorted image formed in her mind.
Doc, paunchy and balding, bending over with arthritic hands outstretched. He was mouthing words she couldn't hear, but she could feel the love in his heart for the dog whose life he'd saved.
Suddenly she was i
n Doc's face, making him laugh. He was happy...
Opening her eyes so that tears streamed down both cheeks, Kate remembered how deeply Doc had felt about all animals. How much caring for the wild horses had meant to him in the last months of his life.
She could spare some time here and there.
The question was... did she want to?
Doc would expect it of her, at least until some other arrangements could be made. Not that he'd ever prodded her to step foot on the sanctuary. He knew what had gone down between her and Chase and respected her feelings.
She may have avoided the reality of Bitter Creek Mustang Refuge since returning home, but she hadn't managed to avoid thinking about the man who ran it. Chase Brody had invaded her thoughts plenty over the months, and now that she'd seen him, had felt the old spark, she sensed it would be in her best interests to stay away.
But she could imagine how saddened Doc would be if anything terrible happened to what he'd thought of as his wild horses because they were deprived of the proper medical care. And she owed him, had always meant to pay him back if not in money. Certain he was watching over his old domain from his place above, she was torn.
How could she deny someone who'd done so much for her?
That Chase could make her consider disappointing Doc angered her.
So much so, Kate knew she had to at least check out the refuge before deciding.
ANNIE SABIN STEPPED OUT of the refuge office onto the screened porch, a teenage couple in tow. "Head for that truck down the hill," she said, pointing. "Buck's due to take off with the next tour in about three minutes."
Watching from the table, Chase felt his late breakfast lump in his stomach. Not that Annie's cooking wasn't a hell of a lot better than his own.
But nerves chewed at him, and a growing uncertainty about the fate of the place that had become his life had him tied in knots more often than not. And he couldn't help but notice that nearly half of the second-hand theater seats lining both sides of the old pick-up remained empty... and this during the height of the tourist season.
The McKenna Legacy Trilogy Page 41