That Horse Whiskey!

by C. S. Adler

  Whiskey was rearing and bucking in front of the ramada. The man they’d called Marshall gave a mighty yank on the tight reins, forcing Whiskey’s head up. The horse’s mouth was open and foaming. He bellowed as Marshall cut into him with his spurs.

  Lainey wanted to scream in sympathy.

  Mr. Dodge stood on the ramada, pleading in his old-man’s quaver for Marshall to take the horse already saddled and tied to the rail outside the barn and leave Whiskey be, but Marshall wouldn’t stop. Suddenly Whiskey bolted and slammed sideways into the wall of the barn. The big man howled and fell off the horse.

  Lainey brought her clenched fists down on her thighs. “Good,” she said to herself. “You got what you deserved, Mister.”

  Whiskey was soaked in sweat and wild-eyed. He trotted to the corral fence and effortlessly jumped it. Safe inside, he trotted past the other horses feeding on the hay the cowboys had pulled from the bales stacked inside the feeding station’s protective fence. He stopped in front of the water barrel, shook himself, and began drinking.

  Mr. Dodge was bending over Marshall. “I knew this was going to happen,” the old man wailed. “I knew it. You hurt?” He offered Marshall an arthritic hand to help him up.

  “I think my leg’s broke,” Marshall moaned.

  Lainey slipped through the corral gate and walked toward Whiskey. He wasn’t a horse she’d ever ridden, but she had seen Lopez moving him around and saddling him without apparent difficulty. Some horses tried to nip you if you weren’t wary, but Whiskey didn’t bite or kick. He just didn’t choose to be ridden more than a quarter of a mile.

  “There,” she said, “you showed that big lunk who was really boss, didn’t you, Whiskey?” She stroked the animal’s damp, pulsing neck. He kept his nose in the water barrel, ignoring her, but his dark chocolate hide flicked with nervous tension. She kept talking and stroking anyway to calm him.

  “You’re not a bad actor, are you? You just don’t like bullies, right, Whiskey? I don’t blame you one bit. No, I don’t. He was gross, that man.”

  Whiskey twitched his ears. He lifted his nose from the water barrel, and a warm brown intelligent eye fixed on her under its curve of black lashes. She kept stroking and talking, and when he didn’t move away from her, she risked walking behind him to get to his other side where she could undo the cinch. Deftly, she slid his saddle and blanket off.

  “Come on,” she said, setting the saddle, horn end down, on the ground. “Let’s get that bit out of your mouth and you’ll feel better.”

  He let her remove the bridle. Then he blew out some air and walked away from her to the far side of the corral.

  Mr. Dodge’s Jeep was just pulling away from the ramada with Chick at the wheel and Marshall in the backseat. Chick saw Lainey and waved. The baby-faced wrangler with the long blond hair was Lopez’s opposite, young enough to be his son, for one thing, and puppy dog friendly where Lopez was dignified and cool. But the two worked well together.

  “Lainey!” Mr. Dodge called from the ramada. “What are you doing in there? That beast steps on you and I’ll have your dad suing me along with that Kansas City cowboy who just busted his leg.”

  “He’s not really going to sue, is he?”

  “Can’t say. We told him the horse was no good, told him even Lopez couldn’t make him go, but the fool wouldn’t listen,” Mr. Dodge said. “Chick’s taking him to the emergency room to get the leg set. Leaves me shorthanded, and I got another group going out this morning. Guess I’ll have to lead them myself.”

  Mr. Dodge lifted his cowboy hat with one finger, exposing a band of white freckled forehead above the tanned part of his wrinkled face. “Soon as I get a minute I’m going to put an ad in the paper and sell that fool animal for whatever I can get for him. Worst comes to worst, I’ll sell him for dog food.”

  “Whiskey’s too young and beautiful to be made into dog meat,” Lainey protested.

  “He’s a useless, no-good, ornery beast.”

  “He could be trained.”

  “Not likely. If Lopez can’t do anything with him, nobody can.” Mr. Dodge shook his head. “I got took when I bought that horse. Should have ridden him first instead of just looking him over. Serves me right for getting careless.… Did you want to ride this morning?”

  “What I really want is a job,” Lainey said quickly. “You’re shorthanded and here I am, ready to start.”

  Mr. Dodge’s milky blue eyes smiled at her kindly. “I wish I could hire you, Lainey. You’d be worth more for sure than that no-’count fellow who just quit on me. But you’re too young. Besides, you’re too small and female to do the heavy work around here.”

  “I can do anything that kid did for you,” she insisted, stung by the small-female label. Being young would change, she knew, but being small and female never would.

  “Lift heavy bales of hay and fifty-pound feed bags?” Mr. Dodge’s weathered face was split by a laugh. “Come on, honey. I know you’re game, but you don’t weigh more than eighty pounds yourself.”

  “I can move heavy things with a wheelbarrow. And I can saddle up any horse here, and I can groom and feed them and muck out the stalls when they need to stay inside. I could lead trail rides, too, if you’d let me.”

  “No, no, Lainey. Maybe when you’re grown, but now.… How did your birthday go? You get your horse?”

  Lainey ducked her head. “No, Dad can’t afford one right now.”

  “Times are tough. Yeah,” Mr. Dodge agreed. “Well, tell you what. I got a kid coming today. Raised by his mama in New York City. Real city boy, despite his dad grew up here in Tucson. Don’t know how I let myself in for this one.” Mr. Dodge shook his head in wonder at himself. “Except his dad helped me out once when I needed a hospital bed in a hurry. He’s director of the hospital. Anyway, I promised I’d teach this kid to be a cowboy in exchange for whatever work I can get out of him.”

  Lainey waited patiently for the old man to get to the point. “Boy’s late already. They sure don’t get up with the chickens in New York City. No sir.” Mr. Dodge laughed as if he’d made a joke.

  Lainey smiled politely. What did this boy have to do with her?

  “Or maybe the kid missed his plane,” Mr. Dodge said. “Supposed to get in last night. That could be why he’s not here yet.”

  Lainey hoisted Whiskey’s saddle and balanced it on her hip. “What were you going to tell me, Mr. Dodge?” she asked to remind him. “You said, ‘Tell you what.’”

  “Oh, so I did.… Well, Ryan. That’s his name. Ryan. Seeing as I’m short on wranglers to show him the ropes, how about you take him in hand, and I’ll pay you off in free riding? How’d that be?”

  Free riding wasn’t the cash payment Lainey had hoped for, but it was a step toward convincing Mr. Dodge he needed her. “Great,” she said. Then more cautiously she asked, “How old is Ryan?”

  “Somewheres near your age.” Mr. Dodge’s head jerked as a Range Rover pulled up to the ramada and a man with thick, curly, graying hair leaned out the window on the driver’s side.

  “Here he is, Dodge,” the man yelled. “Son of a gun overslept on me. Of course, it’s 5:00 A.M. back East, so you might give him a second chance to prove he’s not lazy.”

  A tall, husky boy got out of the passenger side of the car. He stood there, dark haired and serious as a carved totem, with his eyes fixed on the driver.

  “Pick you up after work, son,” the man said to him. “I know it’s not hospitable to dump you, but I’m late for a budget meeting that won’t go without me.”

  The boy held his stare without saying a word.

  “Yeah, you’ll be fine,” his father concluded. He gunned his engine, backed up, and roared off onto the highway toward town.

  “Ryan!” Mr. Dodge called. He held out his hand, and the boy shambled over reluctantly to shake it. “Welcome to Tucson. So you want to be a cowboy, do you?”

  “No way,” Ryan said. “I only came out here to get to know my father.”

  “That so
?” Mr. Dodge said. “Well, then, he must be the one wants you to be a cowboy.”

  “I’m satisfied being what I am.”

  Despite the resentment in Ryan’s eyes, Mr. Dodge kept his smile going. “You’re lucky,” he said. “Me, I’m not satisfied being so old, and Lainey here, Elaine Cobb—she’s going to show you what’s what today—she’s not satisfied being a girl.”

  Lainey’s jaw dropped. Could Mr. Dodge read her mind? She’d never admitted to anyone that she sometimes thought she’d have been better off if she’d been born a boy.

  Ryan’s wide hazel eyes focused on her. She hoped his anger was at his father and not at being assigned to her. He had to be at least fifteen or sixteen, and unless his bulky body was all flab, he wasn’t going to have any trouble heaving bales of hay and bags of feed around. Maybe he’d even get paid for working after she’d trained him. Probably would, she thought bitterly, even if he didn’t appear to appreciate his good fortune.

  “Well then, Lainey, for starters, why don’t you take Ryan along to the tack room and show him what goes with what?” Mr. Dodge said. He was obviously eager to be rid of his charge so he could get to work.

  Before Ryan could protest, Lainey turned and entered the barn, still hauling Whiskey’s saddle and bridle. She was glad to hear footsteps behind her. After all, if she could earn riding time, she could put her birthday money toward buying a horse. And who knew what other odd jobs she might pick up?

  She hoped Ryan turned out to be a slow learner. If Lopez and Chick were too busy to teach him much, she might earn a lot of riding time.

  Chapter 3

  The tack was kept in a small dark room beside the stalls where the lame or ill horses spent their sick time in the barn. It was a musty, coolish place. The wranglers liked to hang out there during the hottest hours of the afternoon while the horses rested outside in the shade of the shed roof. In the tack room, the men would busy themselves repairing and cleaning the leather bridles and saddles. Lainey sniffed the ripe, gamey perfume of oats, oiled leather, and horse dung, and then got down to business.

  “If you’re wondering about these coffee cans sticking out from the wall, Ryan,” she began, “they’re for hanging bridles over. And see these snaffle bits here? They’re used on easy horses like Lady and Shiloh, but horses with harder mouths get—” She looked back to see if she had Ryan’s attention.

  He was staring out the lone window, leaning against the frame with his arms folded across his chest. But the window was too dirty to see through, so what was he staring at?

  “Ryan?” she said. “Are you still asleep?”

  He shifted his eyes her way. “So what if my father’s a big shot? He could’ve taken a day off to spend with me—my first day here. It’s not like—I didn’t even recognize him at the airport, and he wouldn’t have recognized me if Mom hadn’t sent him one of my school pictures.”

  “You don’t even know your father?” She was shocked.

  Ryan shrugged. “Mom left him when I was born. I’ve never met the guy. Except he came to New York once when I was two or three. I don’t remember that, though.”

  Lainey didn’t know what to say. All of a sudden she understood Ryan’s anger and she felt for him, but she couldn’t imagine having a father and not knowing him.

  Ryan swallowed audibly. “I just want to talk to him,” he said. “Just talk. I’m not here to be turned into some stupid imitation cowboy.”

  She was afraid he was going to cry. “Did you tell him how you feel?” she asked.

  “No,” Ryan said. “He hasn’t let me tell him anything. When he picked me up at the airport last night, he went on about why my plane was so late—like it was my fault he had to wait so long. Then on the way to his house, he filled me in about his job and how he’s got to be at the hospital all hours just like the doctors.”

  A horse whinnied outside in the corral. Ryan glanced toward the window before going back to what he was saying. “Then he dumps me in a bedroom without a reading light.” He gave a half grin and added, “I guess that sounds stupid, huh? I mean to care about a reading light.”

  “No,” she said, wanting him to continue. “No.”

  “This morning he rolled me out of bed and handed me a mug of coffee and a doughnut to eat while we drove over here. On the way he gave me a lecture about how western kids grow up knowing how to handle a horse. Like growing up in New York City makes me an automatic wimp.”

  Lainey took a breath and launched into the kind of sensible, logical response her mother always offered to anything emotional. “Probably your father just doesn’t know how to talk to you. Probably he’s nervous about how the two of you’ll get along.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not going to get along with him if he’s not going to spend any time with me. He shouldn’t have invited me out here if he didn’t have the time. I did just fine without a father for thirteen years, and I don’t need one now.”

  “Thirteen? You’re just my age? You look so much older.” She meant to flatter him, but his answer was mocking.

  “I probably am older—light-years older mentally.”

  She drew herself up stiffly. “What gives you that idea?”

  “Because you’re a horse groupie. Girls that love horses are usually not big on world affairs or literature or—what do you read?”

  “I read,” she said.

  “Yeah, but what?”

  It was a test, and though she resented it, she guessed if she failed to answer, he wouldn’t accept her as his teacher. Taking a deep breath, she tried to remember the last book she’d read. “Umm, biographies. I’m reading a biography of Sally Ride right now. You know who she is?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’m familiar with American folk heroes, even female ones.” He smiled, a smile so appealing that she held off hating him even when he asked, “What else?” as if he expected to trap her on this one.

  “I’m not a big reader,” she admitted straight out. “I’m going to be an engineer when I grow up. I like math and science; I’m an okay student, but—and how about you?”

  “Well,” he said, “on summer vacation I look forward to going to the library, bringing home a stack of books, and holing up in our nice air-conditioned living room to wallow in literature. You think that’s weird, don’t you?”

  She couldn’t answer without insulting him, so she sidestepped the question. “Maybe your father’s afraid you’ll get bored while he’s at work. I mean, that could be why he wants you to learn about horses.”

  “If he’d asked, I could have told him I already know all I need to know about them.”

  “You do?” That was a direct hit to her hopes.

  “Sure, Mom sent me to summer camp and I rode there.”

  “English or western?”

  “You mean the saddle? It had a horn.”

  “Western,” she said. “Well, do you know how to saddle a horse?”

  “No. My mother paid a bundle so I wouldn’t have to do any dirty work.”

  “Out here people get respect for what they can do with their hands,” she advised him sternly.

  “Tell me,” he said, “what are you supposed to get out of showing me how to saddle a horse?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On how much you need to learn.” She didn’t know whether to trust him with the truth. He had a wicked tongue, and she couldn’t tell yet whether he was nasty or nice. “Why don’t you grab one of those saddles from the rail there?” she said. “Take a blanket and bridle, and we’ll saddle up some horses for the next trail ride. Mr. Dodge’s only got two wranglers left, and today one of them’s out with a party and the other’s gone on an emergency.”

  “For all I care, Dodge can saddle his own horses.” Ryan’s arms stayed folded.

  “Don’t you like horses?”

  “I don’t know any personally.” His lip twitched as if he were holding back a grin.

  “But you said you’d ridden.”

  “I didn�
�t say I liked the experience.”

  A dimple appeared in each cheek as his smile broke loose. He was good-looking in a dark, heavy way, Lainey decided, but she had nothing in common with this boy, nothing at all. “If you don’t want to learn and you won’t work, I guess I can’t make you,” she said, letting her disappointment show.

  He snorted. “No, you can’t.”

  So there went her free riding time! She jerked a lightweight saddle off the railing and lugged it to the corral, abandoning Ryan abruptly.

  Lady was in her usual place in the partial shade of the mesquite whose lower branches had been chewed off by the horses. The mare turned her mild brown eyes to watch Lainey approach. She took the bit without a fuss as Lainey told her, “You’re such a good girl, aren’t you, Lady? I hope they give you a gentle rider who treats you right today.”

  Saddling a cooperative horse like Lady took only a couple of minutes. Lainey went back to the stable for another saddle. Probably Shiloh, who was tall but well behaved, would go in this group, too.

  “Mr. Dodge,” Lainey called, catching sight of him coming out of the ranch house, “how many do you want saddled?”

  “Six. For a bunch of kids. See you already did Lady. We’ll send Andy and Buckaroo, Shiloh and Chester. Sugar, too, maybe. Where’s Ryan?”

  “In the barn. I don’t think he feels like working.”

  “That so?”

  “Ummm,” Lainey said. She figured it wasn’t her business to tell Mr. Dodge that Ryan wouldn’t cooperate.

  She went about saddling Buckaroo and then Sugar, the palomino that all the little girls wanted to ride. It didn’t seem to bother them that the horse spooked at every piece of litter on the road and was likely to throw them if they didn’t stay alert.

  Lainey was ready for her fourth horse when Mr. Dodge came out of the stable behind her with a saddle, a big heavy one, and the bridle with the high curved bit they used on Whiskey to try and make him behave.

  “Did you talk to Ryan?” she asked.

  “His dad oughta’ve known better than to start remaking a half-grown boy right off.” Mr. Dodge scrunched up his lips and nodded to himself. “Can’t blame the boy for being madder than a horse with a burr under his saddle. I told him he could work or not as he pleased. It’s up to him.”