Hoofprints (Gail McCarthy series) (5 page)

On the way back to the truck Bret recounted his interview sketchily, dodging, in his adroit way, all my questions. Once again, his mind seemed to be elsewhere. When we got to my office, he said he had to "see some people about some work." It was all vague, but he wanted to come sleep at my house. I didn't argue; Bret had done this before for brief periods, and usually he was no trouble. He left with a quick wave, Big Red booming away in the distinctive fashion of a truck with a broken muffler. Bret was in a hurry.

I called Blue and got in my own truck slowly. Home would be empty and silent, and I felt the need of someone to talk to. Lonny Peterson, my boyfriend, steady date, main squeeze-whatever you want to call it-was out of town on business and wouldn't be back till tomorrow night. No use thinking of him.

All in all, it took me only a minute. He might not provide conversation exactly, but I wanted to see Gunner. I pointed the truck toward Soquel.

FOUR

Gunner and I both lived on Old San Jose Road, in an area south of Santa Cruz known as Soquel, a sheltered inland valley that is more rural and gets less fog than Santa Cruz itself-two of my principal reasons for choosing it. Old San Jose Road follows Soquel Creek up toward the distant blue ridgeline of the Santa Cruz Mountains, winding through narrow canyons full of redwoods and emerging into sunny meadows. Gunner lived at Kristin Griffith's place, in just such a meadow, at the end of a long driveway with a whiteboard fenced pasture running down one side of it. Kristin's horse, a dark brown gelding she called Rebby, raised his head to look at me as I drove in, then kicked up his heels and ran off across his field in an excess of joie de vivre.

I smiled as I watched him. Rebby was a "running" Quarter Horse, bred for the track; he had a lean, breedy head and the long, flat-muscled, rangy look of a Thoroughbred. He also had big, soft, friendly eyes like an overgrown retriever, and he loved to be petted. Rebby was another "people" horse.

Pulling into Kristin's barnyard, I parked my truck near the fence and Gunner came out of his shed and nickered. Gunner was my horse, a four-year-old Quarter Horse gelding by Mr. Gunsmoke out of an own daughter of King Fritz-breeding which, in the cow-horse world, made him royalty. Buying a horse like that would have been way beyond my means; Gunner had been given to me a year ago when he severed the suspensory tendons in his left front leg. His owner had been unwilling to wait out the yearlong period of enforced rest and inactivity that was necessary if the tendons were to have a chance of healing. I'd taken the colt, boarded him with Kristin Griffith, and waited.

Luck had favored me. Gunner was a sound horse today, completely recovered from his injury, and for the last month I'd been riding him as often as I could. The rides were short-twenty minutes or so of light walk-trot-lope exercise in Kris's arena-because the horse needed to be legged up slowly and because I never had any time.

Today, I thought, we'll go an hour. It was only four o'clock, and the summer afternoon and evening stretched well until eight. For once, I didn't need to be in a hurry.

I caught Gunner without any trouble; he was a friendly horse who met you at the corral gate, anxious to do something, anything. Leading him to the barn and tying him up, I brushed his shiny red coat and combed his long black mane and tail, savoring the warmth and the nice horsey smell of him.

A bay with three white socks, a big white blaze, and one blue eye and one brown one, Gunner had distinctive markings by anybody's standards. His blaze and two-colored eyes gave him a clownish look that fit his personality; Gunner, I'd discovered, was playful as a child.

He bumped my arm with his nose when I brushed his face, and I held out my hand, knowing what he wanted. Nosing and licking my palm, he begged for beer, his favorite treat.

"Sorry, buddy, no beer today," I told him as I slung the saddle pad up on his back. Next the saddle, a heavy roping saddle I'd borrowed from Lonny, who was a team roper. I was developing impressive biceps lifting it on and off.

I cinched the saddle up loosely, then slipped the halter off and held the bit up to Gunner's mouth, which he opened obligingly. Pulling the headstall over his ears, I fastened the throatlatch and patted him on the shoulder. "Ready, pal?"

Another bump with the nose was his only answer.

Taking it to be an affirmative, I led him down to the arena, tightened the cinch, and climbed on. The first time I'd done this I'd held my breath and taken a good grip of the saddle horn, prepared for anything. Gunner had had ninety days of professional training before he'd been hurt, so I knew he was ridable, but I hadn't really known how he would behave.

Lonny'd been with me and had offered to ride the colt himself, but I'd refused. Gunner was my horse, and I wanted to be the first one on him. Still, my knuckles were pretty white as I clutched the saddle horn and urged him to take his first few steps with me on his back.

As it turned out, there was no problem. Gunner was green but willing, and we'd gotten along just fine. Lonny watched our whole session, and when I'd put the colt up, he'd grinned at me. "That horse won't hurt you, at least not on purpose," he said. "He's got a real good eye. He'll do whatever you ask him to, if he knows how."

And so it was proving. As I hoisted myself up on Gunner's back this afternoon-I still hadn't developed a very graceful mounting style-I felt no fear, only pleasant anticipation of our interaction.

Letting him move out at an easy walk, I took in the late afternoon sunlight slanting between the redwoods down by the creek and heaved a deep sigh. Finally, for the first time since that awful moment when I'd seen the bodies, I felt a sense of peace.

I rode Gunner for the hour I'd intended, more or less, mostly at the walk and trot, with a couple of brief bouts of loping. I kept a hand on the saddle horn the whole time; on another horse, I wouldn't have-it's not considered good style-but Gunner had a quirk that made it necessary; he was a spook.

I'd discovered this on our third ride; a little piece of paper had blown into the arena, and you would have thought it was a horse-eating monster, judging by his reaction. He'd leapt away from this terrifying creature, clearing, I swear, thirty feet in a single bound. Only my grip on the saddle horn saved me; I'd clutched automatically and kept myself from landing on the ground by the skin of my teeth.

After his one enormous jump, Gunner had stood still, trembling and staring at the paper, his heart beating in great thudding thumps that moved my legs. I'd assembled my scattered wits, straightened myself in the saddle and urged him forward, and with some trepidation, he'd complied.

Since then I'd learned that this was his pattern. He'd see something he didn't like and make one jump-that was it. He never tried to run away or buck. If you could last through the initial leap, you were fine. The trouble was, his jumps were astounding-sudden, violent twenty-foot-plus swerves I could never get used to. Thus I rode with a hand on the horn.

Urging Gunner into a lope for a final couple of laps, I enjoyed the easy rocking motion of the horse underneath me. I'd had a horse for a few years when I was a teenager, and I rode well enough to exercise Gunner and get him legged up, but this was about the extent of what I was currently able to do. Gunner was bred to be a working cowhorse and I wanted him to achieve his potential; when he was fit and ready Lonny planned to take him and train him to be a rope horse.

The thought of Lonny made me smile, and I allowed myself to picture him as I cooled Gunner out at the walk. At forty-seven, Lonny was no one's idea of a handsome young stud; his sandy hair was thinning on top and the slight roll over his belt and the sag under his jaw revealed his age. But the long muscles down his back were strong, and eight months into a "relationship," I felt the same powerful sexual attraction to him as I had from the beginning.

Why, I asked myself, why this man?

It was his eyes that drew me originally, I decided. Kind eyes, framed by habitual smile lines, eyes that laughed easily. That and the affectionate rapport he seemed to have with his horses. And he was a big man, and I like big men. And his intelligence. And the way he respected my intelligence. And his sense of humor. And the very male aura he exuded. And, and, and. I laughed out loud.

There were dozens of reasons and I was finding more every day. Tomorrow night, I thought. Tomorrow night we'll be together.

Patting Gunner's neck, slightly damp with sweat, I swung off of him and told him, "You just wait. You've had it easy for a long while; pretty soon you'll have to work. Lonny's gonna turn you into a rope horse."

In another month he'd be ready. If I could get him ridden regularly in the meantime. Leading him to the barn, I unsaddled him and brushed him. I was just putting him in his corral when I heard a "Hi, Gail."

I turned with a smile and greeted Kristin Griffith, the owner of this barn, a client and a friend. She was in her mid-thirties, a slim, spare whip of a woman who trained and competed successfully in endurance riding-to my way of thinking, a very tough sport. Kris had won the Tevis Cup several years ago, a legendary hundred-mile race, and she was riding this weekend, I remembered, in a fifty-miler up on the north coast.

At the moment she looked elegant, her short, no-nonsense blond hair brushed high off her forehead and her slender frame shown off in a white silk blouse tucked into close-fitting black pants. Her face, bare of makeup and decorated only by attractively tinted glasses, was unremarkable except for the impression of force and intelligence that immediately caught your eye.

"Don't you look nice," I told her, feeling suddenly aware of my faded, dirt-smudged Wrangler jeans and crumpled chambray shirt-go-to-work clothes for me. Well, they'd started out clean, I reassured myself.

"Rick's taking me out to dinner." Kris grinned."How's Gunner?"

"He's doing fine. He's completely sound, as far as I can tell. "

"That's good." Kris gave me another wide smile. "I just wanted you to know, I won't forget his dinner. I'm feeding when I get back, so's not to get hay all over my good clothes."

"No problem."

Kris looked over her shoulder as the little gold Porsche in the driveway beeped authoritatively. "Rick's in a hurry; I'd better go."

She hustled off, and I watched her jump in the Porsche and zip off down the driveway, wondering where Rick was taking her to dinner. Somewhere expensive, no doubt, and upscale. Rick liked to show off the fact that he had bucks.

An engineer for a high-tech munitions firm in the Silicon Valley, Rick Griffith was handsome, self-assured, and polite, and I couldn't understand what Kris saw in him. He had a way of subtly flaunting his trappings of power-car, suit, briefcase-that got on my nerves, and I resented the sense I had that he expected to dominate any situation or conversation. Particularly with a woman. Come on, Gail, I chided myself, don't be so touchy. You're probably just jealous.

Well, was I? Kris had this five-acre ranchette I'd have given my eyeteeth for, a seven-year-old daughter who was one of the nicest kids in the world, the freedom not to work, and the money to pursue her sport to the limits. She had all this courtesy of Rick, a man with whom I wouldn't have lasted a day. To put it simply, I don't like men who assume they have the right to tell me what to think and how to live. Not at any price.

My mind pictured Lonny again, and I smiled, almost involuntarily. Lonny had no inclination to tell me what to do. Taking it all in all, I didn't really think I was jealous of Kris.

Gunner stretched his nose through the corral rails at me, and I leaned toward him and blew gently into his nostrils. He blew back, his breath warm and sweet. I'd watched horses greet each other this way many times, and I'd found that they would greet a human they were friendly with in the same fashion.

"See you later, fella," I told him as I straightened up to go. He watched me with his ears forward, the very picture of what a horse should be, and my heart warmed.

I called Blue and got back into the pickup, reflecting that horses are more than a sport to those of us who love them; they are a way of life. They seem to personify an elemental harmony, to provide a continual response to all that was ugly, sordid, and depressing in the modern world. I drove down Kris's driveway, feeling wiped clean of the dark taint of murder, free of the urge to retell my story as if it were some TV docudrama. Instead, I thought of Cindy and how much she'd loved Plumber, and slowly, the tears I hadn't shed filled my eyes.

FIVE

A mile down the road, I pulled into my own driveway. I lived on the edge of Soquel Creek, too, but my little cabin was a long ways from Kris Griffith's ranchette. Tiny, sided with half rounds so it looked like a miniature log cabin, my house was crowded onto a steep minuscule lot between the road and the creek, with lots of redwoods and firs towering up above. I had painted it reddish brown with dark green trim to match its surroundings, and filled the small flower bed in front with salmon-colored impatiens. It wasn't fancy, but it did look like a home.

Unlocking the front door, I followed Blue into the living room, which was in more or less original condition, though I had all kinds of plans for remodeling-someday. At the moment, just making the house payment was stretching me. I'd learned to live with phony wood paneling-dark and dingy-and old-fashioned floor tiles, speckled brown and white and cracked and chipped in a dozen places. A large wool dhurrie rug patterned in shades of brown and tan- my one extravagance-covered most of the ugly floor. I had a few pieces of antique furniture my parents had left me. The rest consisted of director's chairs, a battered couch, and some assorted, unwanted relics. Everything covered with a thin coat of Blue's hair.

At least there was cold chardonnay in the refrigerator. I poured myself a glass and settled on the couch, stepping carefully over Blue. He was half-asleep already, curled up next to the spot where he knew I would sit.

The wine tasted good. I put my feet up on a threadbare footstool and stared out the old casement window into the tangle of green branches and steep hillside that fringed Soquel Creek. My mind wandered, touching briefly on Gunner, going over the appointments I had missed, brushing once again on Lonny. I sipped the wine slowly, turning the wineglass in my hand and watching the evening sunlight on the pines and redwoods.