Chapter Six

Six

After twenty-four hours without a shower, Mel overcompensated and took two: one that night and one the next morning. There was an apartment above the barn that was accessed via a stairwell in the back of the office and though it needed updating and obviously hadn’t been used in a while – a thin layer of dust coating everything – it was comfortable. The ceiling was peaked, which she’d expected, and it was furnished with a dresser, on top of which sat a TV and DVD player, a small twin bed, café table and two chairs, fridge, a single kitchen cupboard, floating counter, fridge, sink and a bathroom that was, thankfully, walled off and sealed with its own door.

By the time she was content that her horses were comfortable for the night and Toto showed her to the apartment, it had taken all her remaining stores of energy to take a shower – not caring as she watched the water mix with the dust inside the tub and run in a brown cyclone around the drain – brush her teeth and fall into the lumpy bed with its scratchy sheets. She didn’t question whether the sheets were clean. Didn’t look inside the fridge. Didn’t call her parents though her guilty mind suggested she do so. She shut her eyes and in what felt like only moments, she was opening them again, a subtle lightening of the gray sky beyond the apartment’s one window signaling that she’d slept all night and dawn was here.

Not wanting to make a bad impression her first day, and suddenly full to bursting with apprehensive excitement, she rose, showered again, blow dried her hair and applied just enough makeup to serve as UV protection. She dressed in jeans, paddock boots and a favorite yellow tank top from her suitcase, pulled her hair up in a ponytail, and hurried down the stairs.

The door to the office was open and in the daylight, she could see that there was an organized chaos about the place. A desk was shoved into the corner so whoever was in the chair could peer through the window out into the barn aisle and it was stacked with file folders that bulged with paper. There was a mini fridge in one corner. A hair-covered dog bed with an indentation in the middle, a card table and chairs. The far wall was covered with framed photos and ribbons that she made a mental note to examine in detail later. But for the moment, she needed to see about her horses and whatever tasks her new employer set her to.

“Morning!” Toto – and she had a hard time calling him that in her head – was walking toward her down the aisle, a blue merle Australian cattle dog trotting along at his heels.

“Morning,” she echoed. And then, knowing nerves would set in if her hands weren’t busy; “what can I help you with?”

His smile made her think he was amused by her offer of help, but he kept walking and invited her along with a little wave. “I’m getting ready to feed. And I figure that big horse of yours might tear the front of his stall off is he doesn’t get his share first.”

Mel rolled her eyes since she was behind him: she was past used to the reactions and embellishments Roman seemed to draw out of people. At seventeen-two hands, he was not the largest horse she’d ever seen, definitely not the most imposing; he was neither frightening nor unpredictable…at least in her eyes. They’d reached an understanding and she loved him and all his quirks.

“Sure,” she said, following him into the large, concrete-floored feed room full of silver trash cans of various horse feeds. Her plastic garbage bins had been drug in the night before and looked very out of place. She made a mental note to pick up some metal ones – once she had money with which to pick some up, that was.

She fed her boys, who seemed to have survived the night, smeared fresh ointment on the slight wound on Roman’s leg, and watched, feeling useless, as Toto fed the rest of the twenty-some-odd horses and politely turned down her offer of assistance.

“These are mostly client horses in for training,” he was at least willing to provide information as the horses ate breakfast. As the dawn sky went from charcoal to periwinkle, then became tinged with soft blooms of yellow, he walked down the aisle, pointing at the horses. “That’s Dolly, she’s our retired broodmare,” he said of a blue roan with a low-hanging belly and protruding spine. “That’s her colt down on the end, the gray,” the dapple she’d seen the night before, “and then there’s the colts Danny’s gonna break. The McGill ropers that need a tune-up. Those two are green broke, here to get polished off.”

She met Larry’s wife’s horse Sunshine and Larry’s favorite mount Absinthe – “Abby” – noted Dan’s bay Pete and Eli’s sorrel Red. Most of the horses were, as Toto had said, in for training and would be returned to owners at a later date. By the end of the quick tour, she felt sure she wouldn’t remember all their names.

And then there were the stallions.

The three of them were down on the end, separated by strategically stalled geldings. All were beautifully muscled and alert, as quality stallions tended to be, their coats gleaming inside the dark barn. All three were of medium height and though their chiseled faces and round flanks marked them as Quarter Horses, they were the low-slung, athletic performance types needed for rodeo sport.

“Duke,” Toto introduced the bay with the star on his elegant forehead, his mane hanging in rippling waves to his shoulder. “Cinco,” a palomino with a wide blaze across his face, “and Champ.”

Mel smiled as she read the horses’ real names in the gold plates on the stall fronts. Royal Sir, Cinco’s Spanish Gold, and Ima Grand Damn Champion.

“You guys must have a big breeding program,” she said, fishing for more information.

Toto nodded. “The broodmare barn’s just over that way,” he pointed out the back of the barn and, now in the dawning daylight, Mel could see there was indeed a second barn. “They’re out for the summer with their colts now, though.”

“Out?”

“They stay outside full time till they’re weaned.”

Though that was not the norm for many of the English-riding farms – whether dressage, hunters or jumpers – Mel very much approved of babies being allowed to grow and run and stretch their legs. The thought of full time turnout raised another question, though. “How many acres is Dry Creek?”

Toto gave her a sideways smile. “Two-hundred.”

-O-

Sundays were not for riding. At least, that’s what Larry’s wife said. As a result, not only her husband, but all his hired hands and trainers had conformed to the holy day, content with chores only, no riding. It chafed at his borderline obsession with continuity and order, but today, like every Sunday, Dan went to feed the broodmares and let Toto handle all his training horses. Sometimes, he’d walk past one of the paddocks and see one of his charges trotting across the grass and remind himself of a new bit he wanted to try, or some new technique he thought might help the animal become more supple in its neck. He didn’t handle free time well.

As the feed pellets hit the bottoms of the rubber pans on the ground, the soft sound was as good as any dinner bell for the mares, and suddenly, the pasture echoed with the thunder of hooves as all ten mares and their colts came galloping up to the fence.

“Ginger’s filly sure is filling out,” Eli observed from his perch on top of the fence, the toes of his boots hooked behind the middle board. “She’s the biggest of the bunch.”

“That’s cause she’s the oldest,” Slim said, saving Dan the task of pointing out the obvious.

“Yeah, but she’s huge.”

Trained by habit, the mares pulled up to the feed pans in a cloud of kicked-up dust and managed to sort out who was going to eat where without too much fuss, their foals putting their little noses in alongside their mothers’. Ginger’s bay filly was indeed huge, but it was early to assume she’d mature larger than the rest.

“Howdy, girls,” Eli clambered down off the fence and began moving between the mares, petting the foals who nudged at him. He always had sugar cubes in his pockets.

“You’re gonna get your head kicked in,” Dan warned – like he warned routinely.

“Nah, they love me.”

“Yeah, well watch it, ‘cause Sawyer’s about to show you some love with her teeth,” Slim said with a chuckle. The black and white paint mare in question had her head turned, lips pulled back and ears pinned as she dared the dumb blonde cowboy to come any closer.

“We have a special connection,” Eli said with a laugh, side-stepping her. He didn’t, however, come back to the correct side of the fence.

Deciding there was no sense trying to save the stupid, Dan linked his arms over the top rail and began a visual sweep of the horses, checking for any obvious signs of injury. Later, when they’d finished eating, he and Slim would pick their hooves and do a more thorough search.

“Speaking of special connections,” Slim dropped his voice and sidled closer along the fence, his words obviously meant just for Dan and not Eli who was now scratching Ginger’s filly between her fuzzy ears. “Who did I see leavin’ your cabin this morning?”

There was a laugh to the old cowboy’s words and Dan bit back a smirk. “Didn’t catch her name.”

“Ah,” he chuckled. “Ladies never tell their secrets…even their names.”

“Not if they wanna come home with me they don’t.”

“Might as well get it out of your system,” Slim said. He sounded neither approving, nor censorious. A widower, he tended to encourage marriage and lasting relationships. He was also a nosy son of a bitch who couldn’t help looking out the window of his cabin and spying on his “neighbors”. Sometimes, Dan wished he’d just spring for a place that was truly his own rather than living on the property.

“Hey,” Eli called. He was being mobbed by two colts looking for sugar and seemed oblivious to the fact as he faced them, a bright smile on his face. “You think the boss is gonna have Mel working with us?”

“Who?” Dan pretended not to know, though his stomach took a turn for the sour at the thought of having not just one, but two incompetent blondes riding around in the truck with him on Sunday mornings.

“You know, Melanie,” Eli emphasized. “If she was at Carlton I bet she was a real good rider. You think he’ll have her train with us? You think -,”

“I think,” Dan interrupted, “he’ll let her keep Nora company and pay her way too much for it ‘cause he’s a sap.”

Slim grunted his disapproval of calling Larry a “sap”.

Eli frowned in that unaware, innocent way of his. “Hey…if she was at Carlton…wasn’t Hayley -,”

“Yeah. And if you’re smart, you won’t say it front of Larry.”

The kid’s frown deepened. “Why not?”

Dan sighed. He’d wanted to keep his suspicions to himself, but that didn’t appear possible. “Hayley’s been gone, what, a year? And she disappeared from Carlton.” He pulled up a mental picture of Larry’s nineteen-year-old, fresh-faced daughter, her red hair and sprinkling of freckles. He didn’t have much patience for the fairer sex, but she’d been a sweet kid. A talented rider. Had treated him like a big brother rather than fawning over him like so many stupid ditzes did.

He waited for Eli’s nod. “Now Larry goes and ‘hires’ some chick from Carlton? This has got jack to do with Melanie. This is about trying to find Hayley. So don’t go getting all attached and infatuated with this chick.”

Eli looked crestfallen and a little confused: not unusual.

Slim’s nod was reluctant. “He might be right, kid. But,” he shot Dan a sideways glance, “he doesn’t have to sound so damn happy about it.”

Dan shrugged. The mares had finished breakfast and were nibbling at the grass around their feed pans. “Whatever,” he dismissed, climbing over the fence and dropping to the other side. “Not my problem.”