Candace Carrabus - Dreamhorse 01 - On the Buckle Read online

  Mr. Malcolm stood behind me. I hadn’t seen him move, but I knew he was there. He put his hand on the gray’s nose. Long fingers. Dirt under the nails. No wedding ring.

  “Okay Smitty, show’s over. Renee, why don’t you take Smitty around the back and hose him off? We’ll figure out what to do with his bridle later.”

  A tall black woman with short gray hair took Smitty.

  “He’ll need that kick hosed for a while to keep it from swelling,” I said to Mr. Malcolm. “And horses should always have their bridles removed and their halters put on before they get put in crossties.”

  He looked at me for a long moment, not smiling, not frowning, sandy brows ever-so-slightly drawn together, questioning maybe—maybe if I knew him better I could tell. I read horses better than I read people.

  “You’re the boss,” he said after a time.

  Real soft like. Like a caress, seductive as the velvety down on a horse’s muzzle.

  Then he turned toward those who remained. “Norman?”

  The man I took to be the instructor came forward, and Mr. Malcolm spoke quietly, but not at all the way he’d addressed me. Now, there were sharp nails in his voice.

  “Why are the horses cross tied to their bits? Please make sure their bridles are removed and their halters put on first.”

  Norman slouched off without acknowledging the order. Oh, Malcolm had said “please,” but it was an order, no doubt about it. Why hadn’t I paid closer attention when Penny described his background? All I knew was that he was a mostly absentee owner, which suited me fine.

  - 2 -

  He switched tone again. This time it came out neutral. “The rest of you, get your horses untacked. Trail ride’s canceled for tonight. You can make it up next week.”

  There was grumbling and shuffling, but the riders went to care for their mounts.

  Malcolm and the short guy waited while I unloaded Cali. Malcolm helped with the trailer—he had an efficient no-nonsense way about him that said he knew what he was doing. When he lowered the ramp, he didn’t drop it, and he waited to unhook the butt bar until I was ready.

  My horse stepped over her own pile of poop and backed with measured steps, calm and collected. I knew better. She stopped to look around, and the horses in the field caught her eye. They had gone back to grazing once Smitty had been led away. Cali whinnied, swished her tail and sprang out with a sideways hop, just missing my toes. Malcolm moved back and whistled.

  Yep, Cali’s a looker—a dark-bay mare with four white socks and a perfectly-centered blaze. Lots of chrome, as horse people say. Chocolate-colored dapples melted along her flanks making her irresistible. Malcolm reached out a hand—I knew he wanted to touch her. She had that affect on everyone—horsy and non-horsy alike. But I warned them away. Her temper was barbed as razor wire. She didn’t like being touched when her attention was taken by something else, like it was then, by the horses galloping across the pasture to say hello.

  “Don’t—” Too late. His hand grazed her ribs, and fast as a python strike, her right hind found its mark—Malcolm’s leg.

  Double crap.

  He grabbed his knee and swore.

  Shorty said, “Gotdamn! What a shot.”

  I led Cali forward fast, rattling her halter to keep her from nipping me. The mare didn’t mean anything by it—she didn’t even look at Malcolm—you just had to know how she was. Should have said something before I brought her out, I guess. She got me once. Just once. But seeing as how she was a thoroughbred I rescued off the racetrack, I explained she should be grateful she wasn’t on some Frenchman’s plate, and we came to an understanding. I was careful how I touched her, and she didn’t let me have it without good reason.

  “Where should I put her?” I called over my shoulder. I wanted to make sure Mr. Malcolm was all right, but I couldn’t just let my horse go.

  Shorty pointed to the first stall on the left. A caustic stench skidded out of the barn and stole tears from my eyes. This was bad. I had a lot of work in front of me.

  Pink camouflage lady led the palomino forward, cooing baby talk in the mare’s ear, and came straight up to us. “Wittle Fawny want to meet the big new guy—”

  “Don’t—” Too late again. The mare’s noses touched and both squealed. Wittle Fawny spun her fat ass into our faces and let loose with her signature double-barreled shot. Fortunately, she missed slamming Cali’s knees. Unfortunately, she caught me square in both thighs.

  “Shit. Fuck. Piss,” I swore through clenched teeth.

  I would have kicked both her and pink camouflage over the barn, but it was all I could do to suck in air.

  “Get. Away,” I gritted out.

  With a swirl of plaid skirt, Fawny walked off. I stood with my hands on my knees, eyes squeezed shut. The ringing in my ears prevented sounds from coming through and also, thankfully, coherent thought. I was no stranger to pain, knew the initial shock would wear off. The real pain would hit later, and the bruises, Jesus, I would be purple from crotch to knees. Good thing I didn’t plan to model bathing suits on the side.

  Noire whimpered and licked my hand, and Cali nudged my head. They were my truest friends, these two critters. Clearly, people were not to be trusted.

  I’m not sure how long I stayed like that, but a hand came to my shoulder, a voice asked if I was all right, if I needed anything. The short guy, I think, maybe Malcolm.

  I needed to get out of there, that’s what I needed. Barely ten minutes on the ground and multiple disasters. What did I have to look forward to? Nowhere to go but up? Pen’s mom swears you should never say it couldn’t get worse because the one time she said it, it got worse. But really, could this situation be worse? I think I shook my head, straightened, wiped my face on my shoulder. The aisle had cleared and quiet descended. Apparently Malcolm had hustled everyone out because I heard a car door slam, an engine sputtering down the drive.

  “Want me to take her?” Shorty asked.

  Good God. Hand my horse to one of these maniacs? I shook my head again, focused on the barn, moved. Cali’s steel shoes clopped on the concrete aisle before she stepped into a damp stall. I held my breath against the stink and removed her halter. The shipping boots could come off later. I knew she wanted to pee and roll at that moment. As if the place needed more pee. Stale and roll, as I learned to say in England. And head collar instead of halter, rug instead of blanket. I needed fresh air, and I could see why the horses were out in the field. The barn was uninhabitable.

  Oh yeah, and I got to live upstairs. Great.

  “Pretty,” Shorty said, then added, “I’m Hank.”

  We shook. He nodded and pointed his bristled chin toward the door. “The Laird’ll be p-oed.”

  The Laird? Now, the kilt made sense. I didn’t hear any Scottish accent when he spoke, and I’m sure Pen would have told me if he had one. As a faithful fan of Romance novels, she would have swooned if he had one. She’d want to visit when I told her the Laird sashayed around in a kilt.

  To Hank, I said, “She doesn’t usually kick. You just have to know how to be around her.” I was trying really hard to ignore the fact that I’d been kicked, too.

  “He means you,” Malcolm said as he came in.

  He had a purple welt across his shin, was working hard not to limp, but didn’t sound p-oed. I let out my breath, which meant I had to inhale the fetid smell of the barn. A wave of light-headedness swept over me, and I caught myself on the stall-door frame.

  “Are you all right?” Malcolm asked.

  “Shoot fire,” Shorty said, “she’s tough. Can’t you see that?”

  “Fine,” I answered. He’d have to be a complete idiot to believe that, and he didn’t strike me as an idiot of any stripe. He had the sense not to comment, just stood there with his arms crossed studying me in silence until I felt better. Weird. The feeling better part.

  “I’m not happy you were hurt,” he said after a bit, “or that Smitty got loose. We’ve made a bad impression. Come to the house. You
need ice, and I don’t think there’s any upstairs.”

  Hank said he’d see me around and headed out the other end of the barn whistling, leaving me with Malcolm.

  “I’m sorry,” I started, but he cut me off with a wave of his hand. What a man. So typical to act tough. Of course, I was trying to act tough too, so I guess it takes one to know one. And I didn’t hear him making any apologies.

  “My fault,” he said. “It was only a glancing blow.”

  Oh.

  I might have to reassess this guy. I do jump to conclusions about people.

  In the steadier light inside the barn, I could see his eyes were sparkling blue and full of humor. The crack about easterners walking on water must have been a joke.

  Cali’s stall had a bucket full of what looked like hay and green slime soup. I dumped it outside and Malcolm refilled it from a hose. She’d peed and rolled, and now had some other horse’s shit in her mane. She opted to stand with her head out the window and ignore everything else. Smart horse. She’d be all right for a bit.

  The worst of the pain had eased, but I was afraid to look at my thighs. Moving would be good, keep me from getting stiff, so I followed Malcolm up the drive that separated the horse pasture from the cow field.

  He sat me at a chrome-legged kitchen table and gave me two ice packs and a towel. The cold cut through my jeans, then I went numb. Numb was good.

  “Care for a drink?”

  He waved a bottle of scotch bottle at me, but liquor was the last thing I needed. I’d done that kind of numb, plenty, and I didn’t want to go there at the moment.

  I felt like when I’m galloping toward a five-foot jump on a horse that was trying to backpedal. I hate that feeling, like I’ve made a major mistake. Winterlight was a huge mistake, but I’d agreed to a one-year contract. Screw the trust fund—I keep my word.

  “Do you have any crackers?” I asked. The sure-fire cure for icky tummy, whether from a hangover, nerves, or morning sickness—that last from Penny, who was fast rising to the top of my I-hate-your-guts list.

  He rifled a cupboard, produced a box of Saltines, opened it, dumped a sleeve out on a plate and put it in front of me.

  “Iced tea?”

  Pen recommends tea and crackers. I guess iced counts. “Sure,” I said.

  I nibbled the stale crackers and sipped the too-sweet drink, and he leaned against his tomato-colored Formica countertop. By the looks of it, the kitchen had never been updated. But it was hard to tell what era it aspired to. The floor was a sheet of peeling vinyl made to look like river stones, probably intended not to show dirt tramped in from the farm. If it were a river, it’d be polluted. Okay, so I’m anal about cleanliness. I don’t give a rat’s ass whether cleanliness is next to Godliness, but it makes things run better. When I can, I strong-arm others to my way of thinking, but not now. This was his kitchen, or his wife’s. Her problem. God knows I had enough of my own. The cabinets were dark, distressed wood with hardware that emulated the heavy iron of an old barn. In here it just looked…heavy.

  Malcolm crossed his arms and watched me stuffing my face. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, the last of the apples Pen packed. The kilt brushed the tops of his knees, and it was hard to tear my eyes away, wondering what was underneath. Much as I hate to admit it, I guess I can understand why men stare at women. His legs looked strong, like the rest of him, and he had a head’s height over me, which put him around six feet. His shin had swelled and gone shiny.

  “You should put ice on that,” I said.

  He glanced down at his leg, but didn’t appear to really see the growing bruise.

  “After what just happened, I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to turn around and head right back where you came from,” he said.

  Well, that was getting right to the point. I gulped tea to wash down the crumbs, nearly gagged on the sugar, but he continued before I could comment, which was just as well. I would have agreed too readily.

  “Winterlight must be a comedown from what you’re used to back east.”

  I mustered my full repertoire of tact, and said, “It’s…different.”

  “All right. It’s a mess. I know better. I’m not here most of the time, and it’s hard to find someone willing to do what needs to be done.”

  That sounded ominous. “Why do it at all?” We might as well get our cards on the table. Why would he try to run this kind of business if he couldn’t be here? What did he get out of it?

  “A question I ask myself all too often. I keep thinking work will slow down and I’ll be here more. Look, I need your help. You don’t have to stay the year if you don’t want. Can you give me a month?”

  It would take a month just to get the ammonia fumes out of the barn, but I heard myself agree even though he hadn’t answered my question.

  He didn’t have to know I would stay the year whether I liked it or not.

  - 3 -

  “I’ll show you around, then leave you to get settled. I have to go out of town tomorrow, but if you’re up for an early ride, I can give you a tour of the farm in the morning. We’re closed to the public on Sundays.”

  “I’d like that,” I said, not sure what he meant by early. If it wasn’t a horse show, I didn’t do early.

  He led the way into the barn saying, “C’mon, it’s time to feed,” over his shoulder.

  Inside, the stink hit me again. The stalls were bedded deep, but something was not being done right. There were lots of windows and plenty of fresh air. If I was going to sleep upstairs the smell had to go. I wrinkled my nose and wondered who’d been mucking out.

  He looked at me. I didn’t know what was going through his mind, but I probably had disapproval written all over my face. Trying to rearrange my look to suit him might have made things worse, so I just stared back.

  “I know,” he said. “The help I’ve had—you met Norman. I needed help and he needed the job. The other guy…let’s just say he’s not a horse person.”

  My right eyebrow arched. I tried to cover it, pretending to swat a fly. I wondered why his wife wasn’t doing it, if she had a horse, which was what I remembered. The kid was old enough to help, too. But he kept saying “I,” not “we.”

  There’s no excuse for not keeping stalls clean. We ask a lot of our horses. Making them inhale pee vapor and sleep on poop is not how they should be rewarded. That, however, is not a universally shared notion.

  He gave a little nod, like he’d read my thoughts. “Do what you must to make it right. There’s plenty of straw in the loft with the hay. I’ve accounts at the elevator and MFA. If you need anything, get it.”

  I didn’t know what an elevator was, and MFA could have stood for More Freaking Assholes for all I knew. “Right.” There’s much more I would have said, normally, and my tongue was bleeding from my effort to hold it. But I would hold it.

  We measured grain. Horses banged the walls. Each stall had a Dutch door opening into the pasture and a sliding door leading to the aisle. It was a fairly new barn, built for horses. Nice. I’d been in too many converted cow barns. Maybe that’s why I didn’t like cows.

  But he didn’t bring the horses into the stalls. He scooped grain into two five-gallon pickle buckets and dumped them in a communal feeder in the field. That explained why some of the horses were fat, some not. Poor little Smitty couldn’t get his nose in to eat.

  Malcolm moved down the line, gently pushing Fawny aside to make room for a strawberry roan. He patted a blood-bay and murmured something in his ear.

  “This is Fergus.”

  Fergus was a gelding past his prime, with deep indentations above his soulful eyes, but those eyes still had a game gleam in them.

  “Thoroughbred?” I asked.

  He nodded. “My first horse. I don’t use him for fox hunting anymore, but he still likes to get out for a hack. He doesn’t need as much exercise as the others.” He took the horse’s muzzle and kissed his nose. “How would you like to go out for a spin in the morning, eh old boy?” He rubbed
Fergus’ ears and the horse leaned into him.

  This was a good sign. He talked to his horse. It brought a soft feeling to my belly. I’m a sucker for men who are kind to animals. I squelched the sensation by imagining him with a neon sign on his forehead that flashed, “Married.”

  Malcolm pointed out his new mount, Gaston, a chestnut Selle Français with a white star between his eyes. He was a tad long in the back, but had a great neck and nice, sloping shoulder.

  Next, he introduced another, darker chestnut, a compact Quarter horse, Ciqala, one of two boarders.

  “Ciq belongs to Dex One,” he said. At my look, he explained, “Hard to believe, but I know two Dexters, both hunt, and both keep their horses here. Dex One is Dexter Hamill, retired mounted cop, and sometime PI. He’s always gone by Dex.”

  He went to the next horse. “Little Miss Bong here belongs to Humphrey J. Dexter the third, who doesn’t like being called Humphrey, so he goes by Dex too—also. To keep them straight, I call them Dex One and Dex Two.”

  Little Miss Bong was anything but. She was a huge, raw-boned gray who must have been part draft to have the size she did.

  A liver chestnut mare flattened her ears at Smitty, and he shied away. The kick to his forearm was beginning to swell. I made a mental note to dig out my lineament for him. The chestnut was Mrs. Malcolm’s, Mr. Malcolm explained. A well-balanced, medium-sized mare with no white, Barbie was fat and out of shape, didn’t look like she’d just finished a season of hunting. He said nothing about her—the wife or the mare—except to mention Barbie didn’t need exercise. I took that to mean his wife—I couldn’t remember her name—rode enough herself.

  Last in line was the child’s pony, Mike. Mike was a cute black-and-white paint with a blue right eye where the white pigment spilled from his forehead.