The Price of Honor

by Janis Reams Hudson

  They had compromised on Trey.

  Rachel, too, had been a compromise. Or rather, her name had. Most people didn’t know that the face cards of a deck of playing cards had names. The Queen of Spades was Palas. That wouldn’t do. Neither would Argine, the Queen of Clubs. King had pushed for Judith because he liked the idea of his daughter—if he had to have a daughter—being named after the Queen of Hearts.

  But Betty knew of three babies born in the county that very year who’d been named Judith, Jude, and Judy. She put her foot down again and held out for Rachel, the Queen of Diamonds.

  She’d won.

  Five years later, when King’s illegitimate son arrived, Betty had been devastated. But she’d known about her husband’s affair—she’d threatened to leave him at the time, but he swore it would never happen again. So she wasn’t completely surprised by the existence of a child. Devastated, but not surprised.

  As Rachel parked her car next to Belinda’s new station wagon, she remembered the sadness that never left her mother’s eyes after Jack came. It made her hurt for both of them, for none of what happened had been her mother’s fault, or Jack’s.

  Not that Ace and Trey had been willing to give their new brother a break when he’d arrived. They took their cue from their mother. They didn’t need or want another brother, and that was that. Until five-year-old Rachel had declared that Jack was just as much her brother as were Ace and Trey.

  Oh, the power of a five-year-old girl in a house full of males, Rachel thought now as she looked around the yard at her family. Especially a little girl who was spoiled rotten by her parents and brothers. No one had dared upset her by picking on Jack after she’d staked her claim on him. And she’d never been sorry.

  Three weeks later, when her father wanted to put down her pony, it was Jack who had defied him and called the vet. It was thanks to Jack that Rachel not only got to keep her precious pony, but that she met Dr. Ray, and found her mission in life.

  God bless Jack Wilder.

  Even Jack himself chuckled, albeit with sarcasm, at the wording of their father’s will, when instead of naming his remaining three children, he’d written that the other forty percent of the Flying Ace was to be divided equally among his “other children.”

  For weeks after the reading of the will, they all walked around waiting for another of King Wilder’s surprise offsprings to show up. No one would have been too shocked if one had.

  But no one showed up to make such a claim, so they remained four. And here they were, cooking hamburgers on the grill in the yard on a Sunday afternoon, all four siblings, plus Ace’s wife and three sons, along with Donna Harris, their housekeeper.

  Stoney Hamilton was there, too. He’d been foreman of the Flying Ace for more years than Rachel had been alive. He’d stepped down several years ago and let Jack take over, but he still had contributions to make, work he wanted to do. He was still needed on the Flying Ace and would always have a place there.

  Frank Thompson, Ace’s top horse trainer, could rarely be dragged away from his horses. But for a family get-together, not to mention a bowl of Donna’s banana pudding, he had not only left the stables, but had shined his boots.

  “Yes, sir,” he told Rachel, “it sure is great to have you back home for good, girl.”

  Frank was one of Rachel’s favorite people. She gave him a hug. “It’s good to finally be home,” she told him. “Even if home is in town now instead of out here.”

  “No matter where you live, girl,” Frank said, “the Flying Ace will always be your home.”

  “Aunt Rachel, Aunt Rachel!” Clay, her five-year-old nephew, raced up and tugged on her arm. “Aunt Rachel, Scooter gots a thorn in his paw. You gotta fix it. You gotta operate.”

  Frank winked at her. “Sounds like a job for Dr. Wilder.”

  “Who?” Clay wanted to know.

  “Never mind.” Rachel laughed and shook her head at Frank. To Clay she said, “Show me this alleged thorn.”

  “It’s not a ledgend thorn.” Clay took her by the hand and pulled her around to the side of the house where the boys were playing with their dog. “I think it’s just a plain ol’ thorn. You know, the kind that hurts? You might need your doctor bag.”

  “I might, huh?” Young Clay was fascinated with wounds of any type, be they on people or animals. Especially if they bled. Rachel figured he was going to grow up to be a trauma surgeon or a vampire, she wasn’t sure which. “Well, let’s have a look first.”

  She could tell at once how much so-called pain the dog was in. His tail was wagging so hard his entire body, about the size of a small sofa, was wagging with it, and his tongue lolled out in a happy doggy grin. He wanted to play so badly, it took all three boys to hold him still so Rachel could look at his paw. She was beginning to think she’d been had, and braced herself for the boys to launch themselves at her in a fit of giggles, but eventually she found what she was looking for.

  “There it is.” The small thorn came out easily in her fingers.

  “Golly, you didn’t have to do surgery or nothin?” Jason, at seven the oldest of the three, sounded disappointed.

  “Is there any blood?” Clay asked eagerly.

  “Blood?” Rachel cried. “You want Scooter to bleed?”

  Clay hung his head. “Gee, not if it’d hurt him.”

  Rachel took pity and ruffled Clay’s hair. “I know. You just like blood, you little vampire.”

  “He can’t be a vampire,” Jason said. “He already tried. But vampires have to stay up all night, and Mom and Dad won’t let him.”

  “Ah.” Rachel nodded soberly. “I see. Well, I guess he’ll just have to be a boy.”

  Clay held out his hands and shrugged. “That’s me. Just a boy.”

  Three-year-old Grant imitated Clay’s pose and mimicked, “Just a boy.”

  Rachel tweaked Grant’s nose. “If you don’t start speaking for yourself instead of repeating everything everyone else says, we’re going to start calling you Polly.” She reached out and tickled his ribs, and the free-for-all was on.

  Rachel and her three nephews rolled and shrieked and giggled across the side yard, while Scooter romped and barked and threw himself joyfully into the pile.

  Rachel was the first to cry uncle. Weak with laughter, she crawled on her hands and knees away from the melee.

  “Good grief, what’s all the ruckus?” Trey called as he rounded the corner of the house. “It sounds like a massacre is going on.”

  “It is,” Rachel said breathlessly to the youngest of her three brothers. “I lost.”

  By the time she caught her breath, Ace was calling everyone to eat. The first round of burgers was ready and waiting. Whooping and hollering, the boys untangled themselves and raced to get a spot at the picnic tables placed end to end to allow room for everyone.

  Rachel followed much more slowly, with Trey laughing at her, when Belinda called out to the boys, “Wash first!”

  Figuring she needed it as much as the boys, Rachel followed them into the kitchen and took her turn at the sink.

  Back outside a few minutes later, she joined her family—Donna, Stoney, and Frank were family, too—for a boisterous, fun-filled meal.

  “Boy, I sure wish Cody coulda come today,” Clay said.

  A quick glance around the table told Rachel that the sudden silence from the adults was not her imagination. To a person, they all looked at her, then down at their food.

  Rachel gave a mental shrug. There weren’t all that many little boys in Wyatt County. With few job opportunities, young people moved to the city—any city—to earn an income that would support their family. Few stayed and raised children here anymore. It seemed inevitable to her that a friendship would develop between the Wilder boys and Cody Lewis.

  “He had to go back to California with his dad,” Clay offered.

  “Is that so?” Ace asked slowly, his gaze centered on Rachel.

  Ace, indeed all her brothers, had been her bulwark when Grady had run off. T
hey’d been a solid rock of support when she’d needed it the most.

  “Yeah,” Jason added. “They’re gonna pack up all their stuff and move back here and live at Standing Elk. That’ll be cool. I like him. Even if he is just a five-year-old,” he added from his lofty two-year advantage.

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. “They’re moving back here?”

  “Yes,” Rachel confirmed. “I thought surely you’d all heard by now.”

  Trey cocked his head and eyed her sharply. “You all right with that?”

  Rachel shrugged. “It’s no big deal.” She would make sure of it.

  After Sunday with her family, Rachel came in Monday morning refreshed and ready to start a new week. She’d made it all the way through Sunday without any emergency calls. For Monday Louise had set up a string of office appointments that kept them both busy all day. Late in the morning on Tuesday she had to drive out to the Kettering place twenty miles east of town to worm their prize bull. Just after she started back to the clinic her cell phone rang. It was Louise.

  “Are you on your way back?” Louise wanted to know.

  “Yes. I’m about ten minutes east of town. I’ll be there in fifteen or twenty minutes. What’s up?”

  “Colicky horse, here at the ranch.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  As Rachel hit town and drove the four miles north to the ranch, she went over the information Louise had given her over the phone. Elevated temperature, pulse and respiration. Sweating. Obviously in pain. No fresh droppings in the past few hours. No gut sounds. The only good sign was that the capillary refill of the mucous membranes was still okay. When Joe had pressed his thumb to the stallion’s gum, the resultant white spot had turned pink again within three to four seconds. Not bad. Rachel would have been happier, though, with two to three seconds.

  She had seen colicky horses before, both at home when she was growing up, and later at veterinary school, as well as here in the county since she’d joined the Standing Elk Clinic. She knew pretty much what to expect.

  But she was not expecting the sight that greeted her when she turned off onto the ranch road and pulled up a moment later at the barn.

  Grady was back. She should have known. Somehow she should have been able to prepare herself for seeing him again.

  She had told herself a hundred times in the last week that seeing him would be no big deal, that she had her reactions under control.

  She’d been wrong. Her racing pulse was telling her that the sight of him, knowing she was going to have to talk with him, work with him to save the horse, was a very big deal.

  She should have known it was his horse that was in trouble. Standing Elk didn’t have a stallion. Or hadn’t, until now. The ranch’s new owner had trailered his in from California.

  He must have just arrived. His pickup was parked near the barn, with boxes and gear in the bed that reminded her yet again that he would be living in Wyatt County now. She would likely see him every day.

  She could handle it. She would handle it.

  His horse trailer was still hooked up to the bumper of his pickup. A pretty little steel-gray mare with black points stood inside the nearest corral. While Joe groomed the mare, the animal watched as Grady walked the black stallion with a white blaze along the drive between the barn and the house.

  And in the front yard of the house, Cody sat wide-eyed on the grass with a small duffel bag at his side. When he spotted her, he jumped up and waved. Rachel waved back, but then centered her attention on her patient.

  The stallion was one of the most beautiful she had ever seen. Or would have been, she corrected, if he wasn’t in pain. He didn’t want to walk with Grady, that much was obvious. He wanted to look back toward his flank and the pain in his gut. And Rachel knew that what he wanted most was to throw himself down and roll in an attempt to rid himself of the pain. Roll, and let his intestines twist up, which he didn’t understand would kill him.

  “Not while I’m around,” Rachel muttered.

  And not, she could tell, while a grim-faced Grady had a good hold on the lead line.

  “Miss Rachel,” Cody cried. “Sugarfoot’s sick. He’s got the colic. That means he can’t poop.”

  “So I heard.” She grabbed her bag and climbed out of the truck. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “You’re a vet? You gonna make him all better?”

  “Yes, I am a vet, and I’m going to do my best.”

  “Dad says I have to stay away from him and stay in the yard ’cause Sugarfoot might accidentally hurt me while he doesn’t feel good.”

  “Your dad’s a smart man,” Rachel told him. She’d wager a year’s earnings that Grady didn’t let Cody near the stallion without strict supervision, no matter how good the horse felt. Stallions weren’t docile creatures by nature.

  Rachel approached the horse, and Grady drew the animal to a halt. He gave her a nod. “Thanks for coming so quick.”

  “You’re welcome.” As she began her examination, she asked, “Any idea when this started? How’s his water intake?”

  “He won’t drink.”

  That was not a good sign, but it was what Rachel expected.

  “He was fine this morning, but a couple of hours ago when I stopped for gas he had stopped eating and there were no fresh droppings in his side of the trailer. I gave him a tranquilizer to relax him, but when I stopped to check on him an hour later he was worse, so I shot him full of pain killer. You can see for yourself that isn’t working either.”

  Listening to the horse’s stomach and hearing no gurgling, as there should have been if his digestive tract was working, Rachel stepped back and reached into her bag. Ordinarily she wouldn’t have recommended trailering an animal with signs of colic, but she knew that wherever Grady had been, if it was an hour from here, it was the middle of nowhere. He’d been right to drive on in and get to a vet.

  “What do you think?” Grady asked.

  “I’m going to give him a strong sedative that will put him down and out. He’ll be so relaxed he wouldn’t feel it if we cut off his legs. That relaxed, everything should loosen up in there.”

  Grady led the horse to a clean stall in the barn and Rachel administered the sedative. In moments the big stallion was on his side and out cold.

  “How long?” Grady asked.

  “We’ll give it about an hour to work.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then,” she said, “we take the next step.”

  Grady’s lips twitched. “Did you bring your long gloves?” he asked.

  Rachel pursed her lips but did not answer. They both knew that if there was no improvement in about an hour, she would have to reach up inside the horse and pull the compacted manure out by hand.

  “By the way,” Grady said. “I meant to congratulate you last week.”

  “For what?”

  “You did it. All your life you wanted to be a vet, and now you are one. I’m glad for you.”

  Rachel’s smile was bittersweet. “Thank you,” she told him. “You wanted the same thing for yourself. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

  Grady shook his head. “That was a dream. I’ve long since given up on dreams.”

  He said it so matter-of-factly that Rachel felt a little tear in her heart. She turned away and spotted Cody peeking around the edge of the barn door.

  “Is he gonna be all right?” Cody asked.

  Grady came to the stall door. “I hope so, pard. Aren’t you supposed to be in the yard?”

  Cody looked at his father anxiously. “Yes, sir.”

  Grady sighed. “You can come on in now. He’s asleep.”

  Rachel watched as Cody stepped tentatively up to Grady’s side at the open door of the stall.

  “Can I pet him?”

  “Yeah,” Grady said quietly. “For a minute. Then you need to start getting your things into the house.”

  Cody approached the stallion’s head with caution and slowly knelt. After petting the horse’s sweaty neck for
a minute, he got up and looked at his dad. “He’s gonna be okay, Dad. Miss Rachel will make him well. Won’t you?” he added, looking up at Rachel.

  The faith in the boy’s eyes, the sheer certainty that she could make the stallion well again, humbled her. She’d heard her fair share of wisecracks from a few of the area ranchers about a woman animal doctor. The look in Cody’s eyes made her feel as if she could cure any ailment in the world.

  “I’m going to do my best,” she said.

  “See, Dad?”

  “I see,” Grady said, placing his hand on his son’s head. “Now go get unpacked.”

  “Okay. That oughta earn me a couple of cookies, ya think?”

  “Not until you eat the lunch Alma’s fixing you.”

  Rachel watched Cody scamper out of the barn and off toward the house. He was so precious, it almost hurt to look at him.

  “That morning I got the call about his birth,” she said quietly, “I was so hurt—”

  “Rachel, don’t,” Grady said.

  “No, I’m not…I don’t mean to get into any of that. I just mean that when I heard you had a son, my first thought was that I was supposed to be the mother of your son, and because I wasn’t, he shouldn’t have been born.”

  Grady wanted to close his eyes against the pain her words brought, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t stop looking at her. Couldn’t stop hurting for both of them. All of them.

  “I actually thought that,” she admitted. “Just for a minute. Then I felt so sick for wishing an innocent little baby hadn’t been born just because I wanted him to be mine that I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror. He’s so beautiful, Grady. So much like you were at his age. No matter what else I thought about you or his mother, I never, after that one minute, wished anything but good for him.”

  Tell her, Grady thought. Tell her the truth. There would never be a more perfect time. She had just given him the opening he needed. There was no reason to keep the secret any longer. Not from her.

  Still, he hesitated, and he wasn’t sure why.

  No, that wasn’t true. He knew exactly why. First, the truth was something he’d never told aloud to anyone. He had guarded the secret so well that he wasn’t sure he had the words with which to reveal it now. In the beginning he’d kept quiet out of necessity. Later, out of habit.