by Home Fires
CHAPTER 11
“You look good up there,” Colt said and meant it. Linette Hartman might have been as slight as a june bug, but she had fire in her eye and steel in her spine. That much was clear even to him. “Just ease up on the reins some.” Stepping up beside his mare, he took the woman’s hands in his own and flexed her fingers a little. “That’s it. How do you feel?”
“Okay,” she said. It was early evening and they were in the Lazy’s newly built arena. It still smelled of fresh pine. Only the gate was missing. But there were probably a half dozen local men feverishly working on it at that very moment. Maybe Hedley was at the helm of that project, he realized, and did his best to contain the anger that thought incurred. “Still scared stiff, though.”
“That’s because you’re no idiot,” he said, focusing on his student again and wondering what the hell he was doing there. Casie didn’t want him on her property. That much was certain.
“There are a fair number of people who would disagree with that assessment,” she said.
“Yeah?” He squinted up at her. The sun was bright and warm on his face.
“It’s a documented fact.”
He chuckled, marginally more relaxed as the image of Hedley faded a little from his mind. “Go ahead and squeeze her into a walk.”
She did so, grinning as the pinto settled into a cadenced four-beat gait.
“Well, maybe they’re the idiots,” he said, studying her form. “Believe me, anyone who doesn’t have a little honest fear of a thousand pounds of opinionated equine doesn’t have all his ducks in a row.”
She didn’t respond. Her fingers looked stiff against the leather reins and her legs were clasped around the mare’s broad barrel like metal tongs.
“Breathe,” he suggested.
“I am breathing.”
“I meant more than once every ten minutes.”
She laughed a little, and with that he could see her shoulders loosen up some. Laughter did that. When Casie laughed, the world lit up like a Roman candle. And why the devil couldn’t he get her out of his mind? The kiss they’d shared had fired up a sparkler of hope in him, but that was before she’d spoken to Hedley.
“So, it’s not unusual to be afraid up here?” Linette asked. He watched her try to force herself to relax. It was a little like trying to make yourself fall in love. Impossible. He had found that out the hard way, and still mourned the truth of it.
“Maddy here outweighs you by ten times or more. You’d have to be dumber than a cob of corn not to be a little scared.”
“How long before the fear subsides?”
“That depends.”
“On what factors?” she asked, still circling him at a snail’s pace.
“Lots of things, I suppose. Mostly how many times you make unscheduled departures from your mount.”
She immediately clamped on again. “I’m hoping to avoid that,” she said, and he chuckled.
“Nobody wants to do it, Lin. But we all take a fall one time or another,” he said and thought riding a horse could maybe be a metaphor for life. He’d fallen hard. “Unless we chicken out first,” he added and glanced toward the house, where a few periwinkle blossoms still graced the front porch.
Linette gritted her teeth, drawing his attention back to her. He stifled a grin, impressed by her stubborn determination.
“Like I said, the most important thing is just to keep the horse between you and the ground.”
“I remember.”
“Well, remember it when you pick up a trot, too,” he said.
“A trot!” Her eyes widened in fear.
He stared at her for a second, then stepped forward and lifted a hand to Maddy’s reins, stopping the mare before motioning to his student with his free hand. “Come on down here.”
“What? Why?” She scowled, expression determined. “I’ll trot if you insist.”
He smiled at her fire. “Just come on down for a second.”
She did so, hauling her right leg carefully over the cantle before stepping stiffly to the ground.
Leaving the reins crossed over the mare’s crest, Colt touched a hand to the woman’s narrow back and steered her a few feet from Madeline.
Turning, he removed his Stetson, sat down on the ground, and lay back.
Horse and woman stared at him. “Lie down,” he said.
“Aren’t you supposed to be giving me lessons?”
“I am.”
“I already know how to lie down. I’ve had a fair amount of practice at it, lately, in fact.”
“Yeah?” he asked. “You been hospitalized or something?”
She stared at him, long and hard. “Retired,” she said.
It might have been a lie, he realized, but he let it go. Sometimes pride was all a person had to hold on to. “Well, then you should have learned how to relax by now. Come here.”
Scowling a little, she finally settled down beside him.
“Pretty sky, huh?” he asked.
She turned toward him, brows raised beneath the helmet Casie’s insurance company insisted she wear.
He chuckled. “I just wanted you to get used to the view from down here.”
She remained silent for a second, then, “Because this is where I’m going to land?”
He nodded. “Sooner or later.”
She exhaled slowly. He could feel her unwind. Sensed her turning toward him.
“How much is it going to hurt?”
“Like the devil.”
She turned back toward the sky. “I’m beginning to wonder if you’re the wrong person for this job.”
“I could sugarcoat it for you if you want me to.”
“I think that ship may have already sailed.”
He grinned, liking her. “Sometimes things hurt, but if you want them you still go after them, right?” he asked and refrained from glancing toward the house.
“I don’t have a lot of time.”
“I thought you were retired,” he said and watched her closely.
Their gazes met. “I have to be getting home eventually.”
“I suppose your family misses you.”
Emotion flitted across her eyes, but it was gone before he could identify it. “Elizabeth worries,” she said and winced a little as she turned back toward the sky.
“Well, let’s make this time count, then,” Colt said. “Get back up there.”
“All right.” She rose to her feet, determination replacing her uncertainty of moments before. “But if I’m incapacitated with fear from your pep talk, you’re culpable.”
“When I figure out what that means, I will consider myself duly warned,” he said.
“You know what that means,” she said and managed to mount the mare under her own considerable steam.
By the time they’d progressed to a shuffling trot, her face was alight with a mix of excitement and terror.
“Hands low and steady,” he said. “Heels down, seat firm.”
“I’m as old as the hills,” she said, attention strictly focused between Maddy’s ears. “My seat hasn’t been firm for decades.”
He couldn’t help but laugh.
Traversing the path between the cattle pasture and the kitchen garden, Ty gave him a disapproving glance as he passed by. A few seconds later, Casie headed in the same direction. Her cream and caramel hair was loose and swung against her shoulders in time to hips just wide enough to make a perfect target for his gaze. Her jeans were low cut. Her T-shirt barely met her belt.
“Colt!”
“Yeah.” He jerked toward his student’s voice with some chagrin.
Linette was staring down at him as if she’d been doing so for some time. “She’s being a little stubborn.”
“Yeah, well …” He snorted in frustration. “You should have known her in junior high.”
Her silvery brows jerked toward her hairline, but her tone was deadpan. “And here I thought horses rarely made it past fifth grade.”
There was nothing he c
ould do but grin at his own obsessive behavior. “Well, old Maddy here was a star student. I used to copy her geometry papers.”
“Really?”
“She could conjugate a rhombus like nobody’s business.”
“Conjugate a rhombus, you say.”
He grinned again. “It’s been a while since I’ve been in school, too,” he said, to which she shook her head.
“You’re in deep, aren’t you?”
He lowered his brows and decided now was neither the time nor the place to discuss the depth of the hole he had dug for himself. Instead, he would give the riding lessons he’d promised, then get the hell out of Dodge.
“Push your hands forward,” he suggested. “Don’t shake the reins. Don’t lean back. Just give her head some room and squeeze with your legs.”
She did so. Nothing happened.
“Give her a little boot,” he said.
Her legs moved the slightest degree. He grinned, placed his hand on her calf, and glanced up at her.
“Here’s the thing, Lin,” he said. “This here horse is sensitive enough to feel a mosquito land on her back and shake it off by moving nothing more than her skin.” In his peripheral vision, he saw Casie bend to pull a weed from the potato patch. He was pretty sure it wasn’t as fascinating as it seemed and forced himself to concentrate on his student. “But on the flip side, she’s out in the elements twenty-four seven. She’s tougher than nails and can be meaner than a rattlesnake. So if she wants to ignore a thing, she ignores it. Right now, she’s pretty serious about ignoring you.”
Linette scowled down at him. “You’re saying I’m going to have to be more forceful.”
“Can you do that?”
She tightened her jaw. “I’m not called heartless for nothing.”
“Heartless?” His memory niggled him a little, but the approach of a black Camaro drew his attention like a circling wasp. Turning into the driveway, it pulled up to the house and crunched to a stop on the sparse gravel where it regurgitated a man in carefully distressed blue jeans and a suit coat with pushed-up sleeves. He looked young and lean, unbent by bucking horses, disappointment, or a hundred myriad worries. Colt felt his molars grind as Casie shaded her eyes against the sun and headed toward him.
He couldn’t hear their voices as they spoke. But he could hear her laughter. His teeth were beginning to hurt.
“Everything going all right there?” Linette’s voice was soft but maybe held a hint of humor.
Colt didn’t feel quite so jocular. “Not if she gets into that car,” he rumbled. There didn’t seem to be much point in lying.
“Ever consider just telling her how you feel?”
“Doesn’t seem like a very good game plan,” he said and failed, yet again, to drag his gaze from the pair by the Camaro.
“Maybe it shouldn’t be a game.”
He drew a heavy breath and managed to turn toward his student. “There’s been a little water under the bridge between us.”
“Let me guess.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You liked the cheerleader type.”
He glanced at the pair by the car again. “I mighta had a little trouble seeing past their pom-poms.”
“Then later on you left her for the rodeo.”
He raised his brows in surprise.
“I know your type. And …” She shrugged. “Maybe I heard your conversation a couple nights ago.”
He couldn’t have been more surprised. “Linny Hartman, you’re an eavesdropper.”
“I’m an insomniac.”
The man by the car, little more than a boy really, laughed. The sound was deeper than it should have been. Colt felt the hairs at the back of his neck stand up. He turned toward them, fists forming without his permission.
“South Dakota still carries the death penalty for manslaughter,” Linny said.
“You sure?”
“Trust me on this.”
He drew a deep breath, fought his most basic instincts, lost, and shifted toward the Camaro, but in that instant Sophie Jaegar stepped out of the house. She wore a silky yellow sundress, strappy sandals, and a trio of bracelets on her right arm.
The breath stopped in Colt’s throat.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Linny said.
Sophie spoke. The boy answered. Casie stepped away. The young couple slipped seamlessly into the Camaro and rolled out of sight.
Colt swore again, and Linny grinned.
“You make love look awfully tiring, cowboy,” she said.
For a second he considered denying her words, but it hardly seemed worth the effort. “You wanna go for a ride?” he asked instead.
“I thought that’s what I was doing.”
“Give me a second,” he said. “I’ll throw a saddle on one of those broncs in the pasture.”
“Are you sure Casie won’t mind?”
“Yeah, well, if she gets pissed she’ll have to talk to me, won’t she?” he asked.
“I think I see a chink in that logic. I’m just not sure where it lies.”
“You’ll find it soon enough, I suspect. It’s probably fair sized,” he said and went to tack up one of Casie’s favorite horses.
CHAPTER 12
“Casie!” Ty’s voice sounded loud and squeaky-scared in the stillness of the kitchen.
She appeared in the doorway in an instant, eyes already frantic with worry. “What is it?”
“Something’s wrong with Angel.” His stomach, already knotted, knotted again.
“What do you mean? What—”
“She’s standing funny.”
They stared at each other, a dozen possible scenarios zinging through them in horrific tandem.
“They said she was okay when they released her,” she said. “It couldn’t be…. You don’t think she’s foundered, do you?”
“I don’t know. Can you come look?” he asked, but it was a foolish question. She was already shoving her arms into the sleeves of her father’s old Carhartt jacket.
The yard was dark as they stormed across it. Hell, it had been dark for hours already, and Sophie still wasn’t home. Not that he cared that she was with that city boy, but sometimes she was kind of handy in an emergency.
Inside the barn, Al bleated. The chickens roosted precariously on the goat’s nearly hairless back, bobbled, then flapped wildly as he pushed himself to his little split hooves.
But Angel remained exactly as she was as they approached her stall.
“Hey,” Casie said, opening the door and stepping inside. “What’s up, big girl?”
Behind her, Ty remained silent. Before them, Angel stood stretched out in a frightening impression of a sawhorse.
“When did she start this?” Casie asked. Her voice was soft, serious, scary.
“I don’t know.” Ty shuffled his feet, feeling sick. “She seemed okay when I come out earlier tonight, but maybe I just didn’t notice.”
She turned toward him, scowling a little. “What do you mean?”
He shrugged, trying to look casual, trying to look as though he wasn’t sure this was his fault. “There was a lot going on. Colt was givin’ that lady lessons, the lambs needed feeding, and Em wanted some help with the taters.”
“So you fed her like usual?” she asked and turned back toward Angel.
“Didn’t have no reason not to.”
“And you gave her her meds?”
“Yeah.”
“The Bute, too.”
“ ’Course I did.” His voice had gone sharp.
She glanced at him in surprise. He caught her gaze for an instant, then shifted his eyes miserably toward the floor.
“I just … I should have checked her earlier,” he said. “Soon as I got here.”
“You’re doing everything you can,” she said, but she was like that … always saying things to make a guy feel better.
“You think it’s founder, don’t you?” he asked.
She tried to look tough, but he could see the worry in her eyes. “Her feet se
em tender.”
Founder, he knew, affected the sensitive lamina of the interior of the horse’s hooves, causing tremendous pressure, enough pressure, sometimes, to make them lose their hooves entirely.
He swallowed his bile. “Should we give her more stuff for the pain?”
She shook her head once, uncertainty stamped on her face. “Anti-inflammatories can be hard on the stomach. The last thing we need is for her to colic again.”
“I’ve been giving her that ulcer prevention stuff pretty regular.”
“All right.” Her voice was uncertain, but she made a decision. “Then let’s give her more painkiller.”
“She don’t like it much. It’s awful bitter.”
She raised her brows at him, momentarily distracted. “You tried it?”
He shuffled his feet again, feeling foolish. “Ain’t right to ask a man to ride no horse you ain’t willing to break yourself.”
She stared at him a second, then shook her head. “Let’s bed her down deeper. Give her a little more cushion. I’ll call Dr. Sarah, then mix some Bute into Em’s applesauce and load it into a big syringe.”
He nodded, then broke open a new bale and scattered additional oat straw around the old mare’s feet. They were neatly rasped, carefully shod, and somehow the sight of them brought tears to his eyes. They’d been so ragged in the past, long and untrimmed and broken, but at least then her very survival hadn’t been threatened. At least … He wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
She was just a horse. He knew that. Old and lug-headed. But…
Angel turned toward him. Expressive wrinkles folded above her dark eyes as she shifted her attention to him. His throat constricted, tight with emotions he shouldn’t be feeling. Just a worthless horse, he reminded himself, but when he slipped a hand onto her face, he could feel her pain like a knife between his own ribs.
“Don’t you give up,” he whispered. “Don’t you never give up.”
“How’s she doing?”
Ty jumped. Caught red-handed with his heart on his sleeve, he cleared his throat and glanced behind him. Colt Dickenson was leading the palomino called Evie toward him. As far as Ty knew, the mare hadn’t been ridden more than a half dozen times, but everything seemed to be okay. The lady guest followed them, looking particularly small so near the beefy pinto she led.