Carl wondered more and more every day about his new “Buddy.” The horse looked depressed to him. He wondered if animals had the ability to feel things like that. He wished the horse could talk to him and tell him the real story. His suspicion about the horse being stolen grew stronger and stronger every day. He woke up each morning trying to decide if he should drive down the mountain to the Sheriff’s Office and check, and every morning he put it off.
On Ali’s second Saturday evening in the mountains, Carl Nixon fed the two horses as usual and gave them fresh water. He forgot to latch the gate. Neither Max nor Ali noticed the oversight until much later that night. Max dozed off locking his knees and hocks to support his weight.
It was a windless night so Ali stood at the north end of the corral looking out over the high desert plateau and gazing up at the stars. About eleven, he walked over to the water trough for a drink and noticed the gate to the corral was standing open. A slight breeze must have blown it open.
“Max, come on, let’s go.” Ali whispered. Max snorted. Ali had startled him awake.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Max, the gate is open. Come on, let’s get out of here.” Ali insisted.
“Sonny Boy, let’s think about that first,” Max replied. “I know you want to get back to where ever you came from, but I’m an old horse. My legs aren’t as swift as yours and my heart is not as strong. If you really want to take the chance, I would only slow you down.”
“No, Max. We can do this together,” Ali encouraged. “Two heads are better than one any time.”
“Really, just think about it,” Max got serious. “We don’t know where we are and we don’t have any idea where you want to end up. It is night time in the mountains and there are plenty of dangers out there, some we don’t even know. I’m a pokey old horse and you are an inexperienced youngster. What kind of chance do you think we’d have leaving here like that? Who’s going to feed us? Who’s going to make sure we have fresh water? Who’s going to protect us from predators? The old man is kind. He feeds us and gives us fresh water. He would protect us. Sonny Boy, you might want to think about staying right where you are.”
“Max, if I don’t take this one chance, I’ll never see my Becky again. I understand what you are telling me and my head knows you are probably right. But my heart aches to be back with my family and I’ll never get there if I don’t leave now.”
“Okay, Sonny Boy. I wish you the best of luck. I hope you find what you seek.”
Ali walked through the gate into the unknown forest. He found the tracks of Carl Nixon’s truck and followed them several miles away from the camp before losing them in the darkness. It was pitch black all around him. He had no idea which way to turn. He heard rather than saw a stand of tall trees to his left. He listened. He didn’t hear anything rustling in the leaves or pine needles so he thought it might be a safe place to stop for the night. Carefully he walked over and stood beneath the tall Ponderosa pines shivering in the cold. He knew he would see better in daylight. He resigned himself to staying where he was until first light.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Connor McGrew and his assistant Darlene had a busy morning the Saturday after the parade. They did pregnancy checks on a small group of Angus beef cattle for a farmer, did horse vaccinations for another client, and ended up with three young horses to castrate for a third. All of the work was dirty, sweaty and difficult. Cows are unpredictable and don’t appreciate the invasion of privacy at all. Vaccinations were the easiest job they had to do and none of the horses were especially cooperative. Connor and Darlene had to change scrubs after their work was done at each ranch after hosing off as much as possible.
By the time they got to the last ranch for the day, the sun was almost at its highest point. Shade was nowhere to be found in the pasture where Connor sedated the young horses so he could do the surgery. Darlene stood over him holding up the rear leg of each horse and handing him tools as he worked. They only got a bit of relief from the bright spring sunshine while they watched the young horses to be sure they woke up and didn’t hurt themselves getting back on their feet.
As with every call they made that week, the topic of conversation rolled around to the horse missing from the parade in San Juan Capistrano. Darlene and Connor spent their time at the parade with Walter and Caroline Howard and liked them so their feelings about the theft were a lot more personal. The fact the horse had not been spotted or no ransom demands had been called to the Howards worried them all. The area around Ramona where Connor’s veterinary practice was located had suffered a few missing horses in recent memory. Those horses simply vanished as well. All the ranchers were nervous about it.
When the last of the three newly castrated young horses got to his feet, Connor checked his watch. “I just about have time to get to the soccer field and watch the last of my son’s game. Do you mind if I just drop you off at the office and head on over there?” he asked Darlene.
“Oh, no. You go ahead.”
“I’ll drop off the truck there too. Maybe you and I can get together sometime tomorrow morning and clean things up and get it restocked. The other vet is taking all the emergency calls for the rest of the weekend. I’d like to spend it with my family.”
“All I have is a stack of laundry waiting,” Darlene said as she climbed back into the truck.
One of the reasons Connor picked the office he rented was it came equipped with a shower. After Connor dropped her off, she decided to use the shower before getting into her own car and dragging all the stinky debris from the morning work into it. She still had another set of scrubs to change into.
Refreshed from a quick shower, Darlene decided to stop at the local watering hole for a cold drink before going on home. The Drop Inn was a good local hangout and she recognized most of the people who stopped in, at least by first name. After placing her order, she noticed a woman named Linda sitting at the end of the bar and smiled at her. Linda picked up her drink and sat down next to her.
“Hey, what are you doing this afternoon?” Linda asked.
“Just laundry,” quipped Darlene as she took a sip.
“How would you like to go with me to a birthday party for a really good looking guy I met in here a couple of months ago? He’s single and he’s really cute?”
Darlene pondered that for a couple of minutes while Linda offered up more and more reasons why she should accompany her.
“Okay. Guess I don’t have anything better to do.” She acquiesced.
“Great. Let’s take my car. You can leave yours here. We don’t need two cars.”
Darlene locked her car and climbed into the passenger seat of Linda’s car. Linda drove down the main road in town into the countryside. About a half mile outside of town she turned down a road Darlene had never noticed before. The road was paved just a short distance and then became an unpaved and bumpy track through the woods. Linda drove fast. Several bumps would have sent Darlene airborne had she not buckled her seat belt. She began getting a really bad feeling just a little way down the road.
Linda was excited. Parties were what she lived for. She had a boring job in a small town that offered almost no night life. She found herself a designated driver in Darlene. Everyone who knew Darlene even slightly knew she was a bit straight-laced, didn’t drink much and didn’t do anything else either. If this party got going the way Linda hoped, she would need that designated driver to get herself home later.
Six miles on a barely marked dirt road took forever! Linda continued driving much faster than Darlene liked. She became more and more alarmed as they bounced and jounced along. Darlene’s “this is not going to end well” feeling got stronger.
“Just exactly where is this party anyway?” she asked Linda in concern.
“Oh, we’re almost there,” Linda grinned and gunned the engine a little harder. She almost missed the driveway and the car went up on two wheels making a sharp turn suddenly. Darlene gasped and hung on. Linda slo
wed as she came to a clearing in the oak trees. There were lots of cars parked in front of an old falling-down cabin.
Getting out of the passenger side of Linda’s car, Darlene looked around. Besides the cars parked willy-nilly around, lots of people were milling around. One look was all it took for her to know this was not her kind of party at all. These were not her kind of people. She reached in her purse and found her cell phone missing. She remembered she left it in her car parked in front of the Drop Inn. Her heart sunk. She was stuck here! It was too far to walk back to town. She couldn’t call anyone else for a ride. Oh, what had she gotten herself into?
“Come on, I’ll introduce you to the hosts and the birthday boy,” Linda encouraged, grabbing Darlene’s arm and escorting her to the porch of the cabin. Several men were standing talking as they approached.
Darlene was a pretty woman with flawless skin and almost no makeup. Her glossy brown hair was pulled into a pony tail that hung nearly to her waist. Her figure showed through the scrubs with little animals printed on them. She stood out in this crowd. Darlene noticed a couple of men leering at her as the two women walked to the porch. “Keep your mouth shut and try to be invisible,” she admonished herself.
Darlene endured the introductions and accepted a coke from the birthday boy, Danny Hix. Linda spotted some other friends and wandered over to talk to them. Darlene looked around and saw an old barn a bit away from the cabin with a couple of oak trees near it. It offered some shade and distance from the other partygoers. She headed off and settled herself at the base of one tree so she could keep an eye out for Linda, hoping she would be ready to get out of there soon.
Every few minutes Calvin Hix would escort a couple of people into the barn. They would be inside with the doors shut for a few minutes and wander out again. Once or twice she saw Calvin stuffing what looked like a wad of cash into the pocket of his jeans as he followed his guests back to the cabin area. “Holy Cow,” she thought. “There must be something bad going on in there.”
She looked at the cars parked around. They were, for the most part, what she and her friends would call “junkers.” She also had time to observe the partygoers. She saw lots of messy clothes and hair, bad teeth, and body piercings. She heard lots of rough language. These people were definitely not the kind she associated with. She couldn’t wait to get out of this place.
After a while Darlene noticed the one called Danny walking toward her. She sat very still hoping he wouldn’t notice her at all. Unfortunately he did. He sat down beside her and leaned his back against the tree. “Darlene, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Yea.”
“Whatcha doing over here all by yourself ”
“Just people watching. I had a headache when I got off work. I just needed a few minutes to decompress,” she answered.
“Hey, I know what you mean,” he said. “I had a bad headache when I woke up this morning.” Danny laughed to himself. That’s when Danny started talking. Darlene wouldn’t have been able to squeeze a word in if she tried so she sat there and listened incredulously.
Danny talked about his parents being in jail and he and his brother in foster care. He talked about his first contact with “the law” as he called it. He talked about what he and Calvin did to get the money for this party. He talked about the little girl in the hospital trying to chase them off. He talked about the horse they stole. He talked about hearing the news on the radio. He talked about taking the horse to an old prospector in the mountains. He talked about the value of the gold he paid them for the horse. He talked and talked and talked. He finally ran down like a wind-up toy and just sat there for a few minutes. He saw someone in the distance he wanted to talk to and just got up and left Darlene sitting there in shock.
A few minutes later, gunshots rang out. Darlene jerked to attention and spotted several men on the cabin porch using a handgun to shoot at branches of the trees down the driveway. Either the men were impaired by something or they were horrible shots because they missed everything they aimed at. Every time someone missed, the group laughed like fools. One wild shot blew out the windshield of a car. Either the owner was the shooter at the time, or just didn’t notice. Calvin came out of the cabin with a long rifle and passed that gun around to his buddies. None of them did any better with the rifle than they did with the hand gun.
As dry as everything was in that area with the drought, Darlene was scared to death one of them would miss and set off a spark that could burn the whole area down around them. They were so far back in the woods she wondered how long it would take for the fire department to get a call on a fire out here. She was relieved when the shooting stopped.
Just before dark, Linda came staggering over to Darlene’s tree and asked if Darlene would drive her back to the Drop Inn. Darlene didn’t have to be asked twice. She hustled Linda over to her car and helped her buckle into the passenger seat. She grabbed Linda’s key and fired up the engine, backing out of the driveway as quickly as possible. She turned the car down the dirt road hoping she could remember the way back to town.
Darlene got to the paved road just as dusk fell. She turned the car toward town and drove straight to the Drop Inn. Linda was asleep. Darlene took the car keys to the bartender. “You can try bringing her a hot cup of coffee or call her a cab. I’m going home.”
Darlene picked up her cell phone after buckling her seat belt. Low battery! She’d forgotten to plug it in. She had just enough battery to make one call. As she pulled out of the Drop Inn parking lot, she dialed the number.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Johnny, it’s me,” Darlene almost shouted when her brother answered his phone. “I just got back to the Drop Inn from a party in the woods and you won’t believe what’s out there. I can’t believe I was stupid enough to go in the first place. Linda from the Drop Inn invited me. I don’t even know her last name. I didn’t know she was into that stuff either.” Darlene finally had to stop and catch her breath.
“Hold on sis, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
The words began tumbling out of Darlene in a rush she couldn’t have stopped had she wanted to. “Oh Johnny, there’s a place out in the woods just north of town with a run-down cabin that two men are living or probably squatting in…and they threw some crazy kind of birthday party for the youngest one…I think they are brothers… There were probably fifty or sixty people out there for that “party” doing all kinds of things….I knew they weren’t my kind of people the minute I got there but I didn’t have a way back to town and I forgot my cell phone in my car and I left my car at the Drop Inn and rode with that Linda woman…I mean to tell you those people were low-lifes…Some of them were trying target practice on the oak trees and were so high they couldn’t hit anything….I hid out away from the crowd until my ride was ready to leave but one of the brothers found me sitting under a tree and sat down and told me everything,” Darlene rambled until she had to stop to catch her breath again.
“Hey, slow down sis. What is everything? What were they doing out there that has you so upset?”
The rush of words from Darlene continued. “Oh, Johnny, there was drinking, of course, and I’m sure there was other stuff too….The older brother kept taking people into the barn and closing the door. I sure I saw him shoving a fistful of cash in his pocket several times when he left. They’re up to no good if you know what I mean. I couldn’t wait to get out of there but you’d have to see if it really is what I think it is…And the really horrible thing is he told me how they raised the money to have that “party” in the first place…. you remember that horse everyone’s been looking for since the parade last week?….Well, he told me they drugged it and stole it and planned to sell him to the kill buyer for fifty cents a pound….He was the one who hurt the little girl… That creep told me he felt a little bad about that…Can you imagine?...That beautiful creature going to be turned into dog food!…And that poor little girl…I think she’s still in a coma…I just can’t believe anyone would
do something like that…He told me they did that a few times before and just stole horses out of pasture to sell for slaughter…But their buyer told them that horse was too hot for him to take so they sold him for four hundred bucks to some old coot up in the mountains to use as a pack horse….Johnny, I sat at the parade with the owners of that horse and parents of that little girl….I just can’t imagine how they would feel if he’d been shipped off to a Mexican slaughter plant and ended up as dog food….And I can’t imagine that poor horse being a pack horse in the mountains…. He’s so beautiful and so talented…You have to do something so they can get him back, Johnny!”
Darlene had Deputy John McGrew’s rapt attention at the mention of low-lifes and a secluded barn out in the woods. His heart rate began to race when his sister mentioned the horse. “Hey, Darlene, are you sure you heard that right? Did he specifically mention the 2.5 million dollar stallion that was taken from the Swallows Day Parade?”
“Oh, yes! I did hear that very specifically.”
“Can I get you to hold on a minute while I find a pad and pencil? I want to go over this with you again so I can take some notes. I have to call my Watch Commander right away.”
Darlene slowed down and took several deep breaths, keeping her hands on the steering wheel of her car so tightly her knuckles turned white.
Deputy McGrew came back on the phone line and began asking questions as he scribbled down her answers.
He was shocked by what she told him. Law enforcement agencies across the whole state had been on the look-out for the horse thieves and that horse. Darlene, his own baby sister, just broke the case wide open. He couldn’t help but think how it would also help his career when he became the first law enforcement officer to get any kind of lead in this case.
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