She headed toward the barn expecting to find her uncle there. Maybe one of the horses was sick. “Uncle Lou?” Her voice echoed through the breezeway. No Lou, but she did get a few whinnies as horses popped their heads out. None of them were eating. She looked at her watch. After eight. They hadn’t been fed? Lou always fed them. Even though he had hired help, it was something he’d done for years. “Lou? It’s me, Mickey.”
She heard Loco pawing the ground in the last stall. Uncle Lou kept his multichampion cutting stallion a few stalls away from the other animals. Although a good stallion, he was still a stud, and he did have a mind of his own. A gorgeous blue roan in color, Loco came from great bloodlines and had earned almost almost three hundred thousand dollars in winnings. The horse was truly her uncle’s joy in life.
“Hi, big guy,” she said as she approached the stall. He lifted his head and snorted, his eyes wild. “Hey. What’s wrong?” He was acting really off. His coat gleamed with sweat. And . . . what was that smell? Not horse sweat, but rather coppery. What the hell was that? She wrinkled up her nose. Was one of the mares in season? She doubted it. Lou knew better than to keep a mare in season in the same corridor as the stud. “Loco, what is . . .” Her voice faded as she peered into his stall. She stumbled back and grabbed hold of the stall’s bars to keep from falling. Bile burned her throat. She swallowed hard and blinked several times. “No, no, no!”
The latch on Loco’s door was undone; she whipped it open. The stallion bolted past her and out of the breezeway. She ran over to her uncle, who lay facedown in the straw— impaled on a broken pitchfork sticking through his back. She lifted his hand— cold. Her own hands shook uncontrollably as she dropped his to the ground. A scream caught in the back of her throat. She gasped and fell into the straw, pushing herself away from Lou. She brought her hands to her face, her voice catching up with her anguish as her horrified scream echoed through the breezeway.
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Saddled with Trouble
The Grey Tier Page 31