All the King's Horses (6 page)

She insisted she knew what she was doing, but something about her still didn’t add up. It wasn’t that I expected farmhands to be well-versed in all things horses, or have a deep understanding of equine psychology, but people like her unnerved me. There was something inherently unsettling about someone who didn’t have the vaguest interest in one horse or another, especially when they expected to work around horses. People like her fell into the same category as those who could walk past a puppy without at least looking at it and smiling. There was something missing, and the void it left made me deeply uncomfortable.

It was getting on to feeding time, and Amy was bringing in horses around the same time I returned to the barn. Naturally, as they always were this time of day, the horses already in their stalls were extra interested in anyone coming down the aisle. Any one of us could come bearing food, as far as they were concerned. Even if we didn’t, most of the horses were fairly friendly and curious. And they were probably more than a little curious about why this person they didn’t recognize barely acknowledged them. If they weren’t, I sure was.

There was one horse who didn’t come to his door to see who the newcomer was, and I’d expected that. He cowered at the back of his stall like he always did. When he saw me, his ears went up, but he laid them back again when he heard her. He did that with everyone. Couldn’t say I blamed him this time.

I rested my elbow on his door and thought about the moment I’d introduced Amy to this one yesterday.

“This is Chip,” I‘d said, and I didn’t take my eyes off the chestnut gelding. More than any other horse, you didn’t turn your back on Chip. “You’ll want to be careful with him.”

“Oh?” She’d looked past me at the gelding, and, surprise, surprise, nothing registered in her expression beyond the most basic curiosity. Same as with every horse, from the babies to Ransom to the abuse cases. Like she was looking over farm equipment instead of horses.

“He’s another rescue,” I’d gone on. “From the same farm as Blue and Star, actually, but I’ve had him longer.” Just the thought of what he’d been through made me grimace. “He had a long, long show career, and the owners abused the hell out of him.”

“Poor thing,” she’d said flatly.

“No kidding. His feet and legs were a mess when the rescue group got hold of him.” I’d paused, watching the beautiful red gelding eye us warily from the other side of the stall with decidedly more interest than Amy watched him. “He’s doing a lot better now. Almost sound. Physically, anyway.”

“Not rideable?”

“Not even close.” I’d sighed. “Usually the ones who come from that farm are just timid and nervous. Comes with having the shit beat out of them. This one, I don’t know what switch they flipped in his head, but he gets scared, he gets aggressive. And it doesn’t take much to scare him.” I’d gestured at his hooves. “That’s why his feet are still such a goddamned mess.”

Amy craned her neck over the door and looked down. Her tone flat and her expression indifferent, she asked, “Afraid of the farrier?”

I nodded. “And the farrier’s scared to death of him. Takes a metric ton of sedatives to calm Chip enough, and no small amount of persuading to get the farrier near him. Ever seen a horse drugged out of his gourd still manage to take a chunk out of someone’s hide?”

Her eyebrows flicked up, which was the most expressive she’d been around a horse so far. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.” I pushed up my sleeve, revealing a scar just above my elbow. “He was twitched and so drugged up he was practically unconscious, but the farrier went to put a shoe on him, and he went nuts. Snapped at me, jerked his foot away from the farrier.” I pulled my sleeve down again. “We decided to keep him barefoot for a while.”

“Smart move,” she murmured. She watched him silently, and I watched her. I wondered what went on in her mind. A lot of my farmhands over the years had been inexperienced with horses but not completely uninterested and disconnected like she seemed to be.

Not that she seemed terribly interested in or connected to anything, really. The woman was like indifference personified, and she unnerved me. She’d been attractive at first sight, but I kept her at arm’s length now.

“You’ll want to avoid him,” I said finally. “Just let me turn him in and out, and you can clean his stall whenever he’s out to pasture. But”—I gestured at the door—“don’t mess with him.”

Irritation flickered across her face and tightened her lips—
oh,
now
you show emotion?
—but she just nodded, and I’d led her out of the barn after that.

I sighed as my thoughts returned to the present. I gave Chip one last look, then left Amy to feeding, and I headed toward the house. On my way across the parking area, my gaze drifted toward the pickup truck parked in front of her side of the house. It was dusty, and the front end was covered in the remains of a sizeable chunk of Eastern Washington’s insect population, but it was a nice truck. No rust in the paint. Diamond-plate running boards. Solid tread on the tires. Definitely manufactured within the last five years. It probably even had its oil changed on a regular basis.

Whether she’d bought it herself or Daddy had, that truck wasn’t cheap, and farmhands who drove onto the property in something like that didn’t stay long. Most people didn’t unless they had to.

I looked out at the pastures where Amy was going to bring horses in for the evening.

Her interactions with horses aside, Amy seemed nice enough. A little quiet, maybe a bit shy. And pretty, I’d give her that. Good God, I’d give her that and then some. But as with Blue, good looks didn’t change whatever was underneath. Blue’s gorgeous color and conformation didn’t make him rideable any more than Amy’s pretty face made her a person who should be working around horses. Or someone I could be around without grinding my teeth with frustration. She was friendly and polite toward my parents and me, as well as the clients who came and went throughout the day.

The way she interacted with the horses, though, that still bothered me. Or rather, the way she didn’t interact with them. They greeted her in the barn? No reaction. They nuzzled her in search of treats? No response. One of the babies did
anything
at all? Nothing.

Completely cold. It wasn’t right. Why the hell did she even want to be around the horses? She reminded me of those show-sour horses we got once in a while. The ones who’d won every title within a five-hundred-mile radius, but did it with their ears pinned and eyes completely cold. One too many trips around the show ring took all the life right out of them, and there was nothing for it but a few months of pasture living and trail riding.

Just as well I’d only hired her as a farmhand. I never would have hired a trainer sight unseen anyhow, but she wouldn’t have lasted five minutes if she was trying to convince me to let her handle my horses beyond taking them to and from their pastures.

Especially not Star and Blue,
I thought. It would take a careful hand and a world of patience to bring that pair back to any semblance of sanity. Star wasn’t broke to ride yet, so at least she hadn’t been traumatized under saddle. Once I made it past whatever ghosts she had on the ground, riding her wouldn’t be as difficult as it was with some rescues.

Like, say, Blue.

And after everything that horse had been through, he needed cold, casual indifference like he needed a hole in the head.

Which led me to wonder again what the hell someone who wasn’t remotely interested in horses was doing here.

Amy was good-looking. She didn’t complain about her work.

But I didn’t like her.

Or at least, I didn’t
want
to like her. On one hand, her apathy toward the horses was seriously off-putting. On the other, though, something drew me toward her. And it wasn’t just her good looks.

“So, what do you think?” Dad’s voice turned my head.

“Of?”

“The new hire.” He nodded toward the pasture.

I watched Amy walking between the fences toward the gate. A yearling walked beside her, nudging her playfully, as curious about her as she apparently
wasn’t
about him.

“She’s an interesting girl,” I said.

“Yep, she is.”

“Why did we hire her, again?”

“Because Larry quit.”

I scowled at Dad. “I mean why her?”

“Dustin, she answered the ad.” Dad put up his hands. “She could start right away and didn’t argue about the price.”

I looked out at the pasture again.

“You want to keep her on the payroll?” Dad asked. “You don’t think she’s what we need, fire her and hire another one.”

“No, she can still do her job.” I turned back toward him. “But leave the ad up. I doubt it’ll be long before she quits anyhow.”

Dad laughed and gestured past me. “You seen her truck too, then?”

“Yep.”

“All right, I’ll leave it up. Hopefully we’ll get another response before this one gets tired of getting her hands dirty.”

Or before I get tired of her.

Later that afternoon, after the horses had eaten, I wandered back down to the barn to check on my new horses. Some of them had a more difficult time than others adapting to the new farm, so I was constantly making sure they were okay. That, and now that they’d had a chance to eat and all the boarders and clients were gone for the day, I wanted to try working with Star or Blue. Maybe both.

Star was no worse for the wear. She came right up to the door to say hello when I came in, and though she was a little head shy, she didn’t mind me petting her. Well, at least until she finished chewing a mouthful of hay and pulled her head back so she could dive into her manger again. Since she was still eating, I let her be and walked across the aisle to Blue’s stall.

He didn’t approach, but I didn’t expect him to. He was still nervous about me and everyone else, so I just folded my arms on the door and rested my chin on top of them as I watched him eat. If not for the cut on his shoulder and the wary looks he occasionally threw from side to side, it was hard to believe he was the same horse who’d panicked his way into and out of the trailer so recently. He was calm and quiet now, inspecting his shavings with his nose, probably searching for a few stray crumbs of hay.

“What do you think, Blue?” I said as I picked up his halter off its hook. “Ready to come out and play for a bit?”

He raised his head, and though he tensed, didn’t freak out as I slipped the halter on. He hesitated before letting me lead him out of the stall, managed to clip my boot with his hoof a couple of times, but settled down as I attached the cross ties to either side of his halter.

Once the cross-ties were on, Blue stood in the middle of the aisle, and I just watched him for a moment. It always seemed so easy from this vantage point, when there was nothing to set off the horse and bring all the abuse to the surface. It was easy to imagine throwing a saddle on his back, getting on and riding off into the sunset when he was just standing here, eyes half-closed and a rear foot cocked, but I’d been down this trail too many times to believe that. Time and patience, that was the mantra of anyone in this line of work. With horses who’d been through the hell Blue, Star and Chip had been through, that mantra became a hell of a lot of time and an infinite well of patience.

I stroked Blue’s face. Whatever it took, I’d get this horse back into riding condition. I couldn’t afford the time it would take, especially now that McBride had given me a bigger project than I’d expected, but there was no going back. Blue deserved better than to keep bouncing from place to place until he found someone with the time and energy to reverse everything his original trainer had done to him.

This was going to be one long road, though. And truth be told, Blue needed someone who could spend a couple of hours a day with him. A couple of hours
every
day. As it was, thirty minutes every other day was the most I could commit to him or Star, and that was pushing it. It would also cut into what precious little time I had to work with Chip.

And boy, did all three of these horses need work. All because some jackasses wanted to win. Much as I wanted to make a living in this business, I would go to my grave wondering what possessed people to hurt animals in the name of making a buck.

Once I’d finished grooming him, I went into the tack room to get the weathered old surcingle and a long pair of ground-driving lines. I set the coiled lines on top of a tack box against the wall in the aisle and put the surcingle on his back. It rested behind his withers and buckled just like the girth on a saddle. When that was in place, I brought out a bridle with a snaffle bit.

As soon as I tried to put the bit in his mouth, Blue clamped his teeth shut. Big shock. I slipped my thumb into the corner of his mouth to the flat spot on his gums, that wide gap between his teeth where the bit would rest once he finally took it.

“Come on, Blue,” I said quietly. “Don’t argue about it. Just take it.”

Nope. Forget it. He wasn’t having it.

Time for Plan B.

Blue was hardly the first horse I’d worked with who wouldn’t take a bit, and there were some before him who were so stubborn I’d probably still be standing there to this day trying to get them to open their mouths if I hadn’t had a few tricks up my sleeve. I went into the tack room and pulled a small, lidded coffee can out of the cabinet. The outside of the can was dark and sticky, and as soon as I took off the lid, the rich, sweet scent filled my nostrils.