Harvest at Mustang Ridge (20 page)

E
arly the next morning, with her system still humming from last night and a happy tune playing in her head—something along the lines of
Welcome to Mustang Ridge. There’s wine and cake in the fridge, dum diddly ump de dum
—Krista danced into the kitchen of the main house. And stopped dead, mouth dropping open. “What the . . . ?”

There were cupcakes
everywhere
.

Hundreds of the prettily frosted desserts were crammed onto every available flat surface and stacked in the cooling racks like rainbow-colored chicks in a brooder, wearing fluted paper cups and topped with sprinkles and saucy little decorations in every possible color, making it look like someone had blasted a bazooka full of Skittles into the normally neatly ordered space. The air was so sweet it made Krista’s molars ache; the ovens were going full blast, counting down six more batches, even though there wasn’t any place to put them; and the big mixers were running, their arms whirling in synchrony, like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice had taken up
baking rather than brooms. That, combined with the three overhead fans running at top speed, made the place look like a culinary funhouse gone mad.

Pulse bumping—what was going on here?—Krista stepped into the room, calling, “Gran?”

“In the pantry, sweetie,” came the muffled answer. “Could you help? I need more flour.”

Hastening in that direction, Krista found her grandmother climbing down from a step stool, lugging a ten-pound bag of King Arthur. “I would have gotten it for you!”

“Not this one. I need the other one, too. It’s toward the back, and I can’t quite reach it.” Which would make twenty pounds of flour to go along with the liter of vanilla, two bags of sugar, and three packages of chocolate chips that sat by the pantry door.

Looking from the pile to Gran and back again, Krista said, “Are you going for the Guinness Book record for the most cupcakes produced by a single human being in a twelve-hour period?”

“Poosh.” Gran waved her off. “The Helping Paws for Veterans bake sale is today.”

“Are they expecting an army?”

“Never mind. I’ll get it myself.” On a mission, Gran elbowed past and started up the stepladder, only then realizing she was still carrying the first bag. She stalled on the top step, wobbling.

Krista reached out. “Let me—”

“I’ve got it!” Drawing back, Gran heaved the bag into the kitchen . . . and it missed the counter entirely,
hit the floor, and detonated with a
whump
of powdery white. Krista’s jaw dropped as the cloud whirled in the updraft of the ceiling fans, coating everything in a twenty-foot radius, including most of the cupcakes.

Gran scrambled down off the step stool and charged into the kitchen, making sneaker prints in the white. “Quick! Turn off the fans.” She picked up one of the white-dusted cupcakes and shook it, sending more sprinkles flying than flour. “We can fix this, but we have to hurry.”

“Gran, you’ve got plenty.”

“Not of the pink ones,” she said, voice going panicky. “Oohhhh. How are we going to clean these off?”

“Garden hose?” Krista suggested. She didn’t know what was going on, but the Willy Wonka factor was increasing by the second. “Shop vac?”

“Krista May, be serious! This is—”

“Yes. What is it?”

“It’s . . .” Gran trailed off. Blinked. Then her shoulders sagged, and she said, “Ridiculous. That’s what it is. It’s ridiculous, just like your grandfather.”

Uh-oh. Amusement draining, Krista closed the distance between them, her boots slipping a little in the spilled flour. “What did he do?”

“He called me old.”

Krista smothered a wince.
Oh, Gramps. How could you?
“I’m sure he didn’t mean it the way it came out.”

“Yes, he did.” Gran jerked up her chin, eyes flashing. “I am, of course. I’m old, old, old. It doesn’t bother me to say it. But that’s not the same as hearing
him
say it.”

There was no arguing that one. To Big Skye,
old
was a curse word. “Oh, Gran.” Krista put her chin on her grandmother’s shoulder and wrapped her arms around her thin waist. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Not really. And don’t worry, I pinned his ears back for it.” She huffed. “I love the man, but when he gets in a mood, he’s enough to drive a sane woman to drink.”

“Or bake.”

That got a watery laugh out of Gran. “Or bake,” she agreed. “In my defense, there really is a charity thing today. I just got a little carried away.” She patted Krista’s hands where they linked across the front of her flour-dusted apron. “Don’t fret, sweetie. We’ll be fine. We always are, eventually.”

What would it be like to have that sort of confidence in a relationship? “Is there anything I can do?”

“Could you check on him? I know the doctor said he’s fine, but I worry.”

They all did, especially since he rode out alone every day. “Of course. If I don’t catch him at the barn, I’ll ride out after him. Want me to bring him a cupcake?”

“Ha! Stubborn old goat will be lucky if I don’t feed him sprouts and tofu for the rest of the week.”

*

When Krista reached the barn, she found Deke and a couple of the guys finishing up cleaning the stalls. “Morning,” she called as she came through the sliders. “Any drama to report?”

“Nothing yet.” Deke did the knock-on-wood thing with a nearby stall door. “You?”

“Not that you guys need to worry about. Is my grandfather around?”

“Haven’t seen him, but we cleaned the back barn first. He could’ve gone the long way around.”

“Thanks.” She tipped her hat. “Carry on.”

The short covered walkway that connected the new and old barns had been intended to make things easier in the winter, but got stuffy in the summer, especially since Big Skye kept the doors closed at each end, the
EMPLOYEES ONLY
signs prominent. When Krista pushed through, though, the air freshened back up, bringing the scents of horses, sawdust, and hay. The back barn was narrower, the ceiling lower, with six stalls on one side, tack, grain, and grooming areas on the other, and a trophy case on one wall that held a mix of silver buckles, trophy cups, and framed photos—her and Jenny mugging for the camera at the old Harvest Fair Rodeo; their parents riding hand in hand in a long-ago Summer’s End Parade; Big Skye making the eight-second buzzer on a saddle bronc back in the day.

“Gramps?” she called, but didn’t get any answer. The stalls were empty and a glance in the tack stall showed no sign of his favorite saddle. But as she turned back for the main barn, hoofbeats sounded outside the open double doors.

They didn’t sound good, though. The normal four-beat cadence of a flat-footed walk had taken on the syncopation that said the horse was hurting.

Krista hurried outside just as Bueno shambled through the back gate. The old mustang had his head
down and his back humped under the saddle, not because he was trying to buck, but because he was trying to keep his weight off his front feet. Which wasn’t easy when he was balancing a rider who sat square in the saddle, seeming oblivious.

“Gramps!” She rushed to Bueno’s head. “What happened? Are you okay?”

He scowled down at her. “Of course. What kind of a question is that?”

“But Bueno—”

“It’s a loose shoe, for Pete’s sake. I brought him back down rather than riding it off and busting up his foot, didn’t I?”

She gaped. “This is more than a loose shoe!”

“Arthritis, then. He hasn’t warmed all the way up yet.” He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Which made something else all too obvious.

“Oh, Gramps.” Her chest tightened and sudden tears prickled—at the horse’s pain, at her grandfather’s confusion, at the realization that everything was about to change, and not in a good way. “Get down.” Her voice broke.

He flushed. “Now you listen here—”

“Please!”
Something in her tone must have gotten through, because he grumbled and stepped stiffly down from the saddle, leaning hard on his stirrup and thudding to the ground.

Bueno swayed unsteadily, flinching as the weight forced him to balance on his front feet. But the tough mustang didn’t even flatten his ears. He just rocked
back onto his hind feet, like a dog stretching its spine, and looked at his longtime partner with stoic resignation, as if to say,
If this is what you want from me, you’ve got it.

Big Skye scowled as the horse’s discomfort finally seemed to register. “Nick must have quicked him when he reset that shoe. Serves me right for letting a vet set nails.” He patted the sweaty bay neck. “Sorry, hoss. I’ll pull that shoe for you. Set you back to rights.”

But when Krista crouched and ran her hands down the animal’s legs to his blazing-hot hooves, she knew it was far worse than a bad nail. Guilt stung—how long had this been going on? How had they all missed it? Rising, she bracketed her mouth with her hands, and bellowed, “Deke! I need you!”

Seconds later, his head popped out of a stall window in the main barn. “Yo!”

“Call Nick. Tell him to get here ASAP. Bueno is foundering, bad.”

Deke cursed—the horseman’s universal response to the word
founder
—and disappeared.

Big Skye spluttered. “What are you talking about, founder? That’s crazy talk. He’s just a little stiff, and we sure as blazes don’t need the vet!”

He didn’t see it. How did he not see it? She couldn’t swallow, could barely breathe, but she forced her voice level and met her grandfather’s faded, angry blue eyes as she said, very clearly and distinctly, “Bueno doesn’t have a hot nail, Gramps. He’s got laminitis.”

The condition was a bad one, with the hoof wall
separating and sloughing off while the bony structures of the front feet rotated and dropped, sometimes so badly that they came through the bottom of the horse’s soles. It was incredibly painful and often fatal. And the earlier it was treated, the better the horse’s chance.

Hoping to hell they weren’t already too late, Krista whipped out her phone. It didn’t have enough bars to call out, but it had enough juice to connect to the in-ranch network they had set up last summer. Gran picked up on the second ring. “Did you tell him about the sprouts and tofu?”

“We didn’t get that far. Bueno’s foundering.”

“
No!
How bad is it?”

“Bad. Can you fill two of those big tubs with ice and have Dad bring them down here in the cart? And keep the icemaker going. We’re going to need it.”

When she rang off, Big Skye put himself in front of Krista with his arms folded and his eyes blazing. “You’re getting mighty big for your britches these days, Missy, and I don’t like it one gosh-darned bit.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, even as her heart tore cleanly in two. “You don’t have to agree with me, or even like me, but I’m not letting you torture this horse for one more second. And, news flash? You’d better start being nicer to Gran, too.”

“Ahem.” Deke stood in a nearby doorway, looking like he wished he could retreat and do the whole
I just got here, didn’t overhear anything
routine. When Krista gave him a “go ahead” wave, he said, “Ruth is going to do her best to get someone out here ASAP, but she says
there are emergencies across the board this morning. Best case scenario, Nick will be here in two or three hours. Worst, case, late this afternoon.”

Damn, damn, damn.
But there was nothing they could do about it—Nick’s practice covered a huge area; the other large-animal vet was strictly a cow guy; and the nearest equine hospital was a long, hard drive away. “Okay. Let’s get some Banamine into him and some cold water on those feet. Clear the broodmare stall and bed it deep enough to swim in. If nothing else, we can get him more comfortable than he is right now.”

Bracing herself for a knockdown, drag-out, she turned back to Big Skye.

He was cradling Bueno’s head against his chest, with tears running down his weathered cheeks and a lost look in his eyes, like a cowboy who’d gotten launched off a bull and hit the dirt hard, and wasn’t sure how he’d gotten into the middle of a big arena with a scoreboard that had two-point-five seconds on the clock.

Except in this case, she was afraid it was more that the clock had gone past the eight-second mark and the buzzer had sounded. Or maybe it had been more gradual than that—a gentle slide, like when an old dog started to show its age and you didn’t consciously notice it until you came across a picture from years ago and saw the difference.

She didn’t want to give it a name, even in her mind. But, oh, the ache.

When their eyes met, he said, “Save him.” On the
surface it was an order, but there was grief and guilt in the way his big-knuckled hands stroked the grizzled muzzle, and Big Skye’s eyes held a shattered sort of understanding.

She wanted to wrap her arms around him like she had done with Gran, but she didn’t know how to anymore. So instead, she dialed another number, hoping it had the bars to go through.

Wyatt picked up on the fourth ring. “Hey! Sorry, I got caught up working in the shop.” Led Zeppelin was playing in the background, with Robert Plant singing about rambling on.

Heart tugging—that he was there, that he sounded happy—she said, “You’re not late. But we’ve got a situation up here, and I need your help.”

“Name it.”

“Bueno is foundering and Nick is tied up. Can you get his feet stabilized?”

“I’m on my way.”

*

It took Wyatt two sweaty, backbreaking hours to pull the ailing horse’s shoes and build makeshift stabilizers from the materials he had on hand, but by the time he killed the forge and stripped off his gloves, the gelding had a glimmer of life in his eyes as he picked at the hay Krista’s grandfather was holding up for him, a handful at a time.

That didn’t mean they were out of the woods, though.

“Thank you.” Krista tipped her head against his shoulder. “He looks much better.”

“Once we’ve got some X-rays to look at, we can see how much his coffin bones have rotated, and work on leveling them off. Or, at a minimum, keeping them from sinking any further.”

“Fingers crossed,” she said, because they both knew they might not need a treatment plan. “At least we should be able to move him into the main barn now.” A glance at her phone brought a wince. “And you and I have a ride to lead—there’s no way Junior can manage this week’s crowd by himself.” The twenty guests were all executives, friends from a big IT company who vacationed together every other year and seemed to exist solely to one-up one another with little regard for collateral damage.