Sun Kissed (11 page)

Jerome chuckled. When Samantha went up on her toes to hug his neck, he tightened his arms around her.

“Do you think I should call a vet tonight?” she asked against his gray shirt.

“Nah. It’s Sunday and getting late. It’d cost you double, and to what end? Tabasco will be fine until morning.”

Samantha gave the foreman a quick peck on the cheek. “Good night, then. I’ll see you again before the rooster crows.”

Jerome gave her a swat on the rump. “You just concentrate on getting some rest. You’ve put in a long day.”

As Samantha crossed the arena, she turned to walk backward. “If there’s any change, do you promise to call me?”

“Only if you’ll promise to call me when you get to the house.”

She laughed and threw up her hands. “What is it, a hundred yards to my door? Who’s going to get me, the bogeyman?”

“Just humor an old worrywart.”

“All right, all right.” She opened the door to step outside. “Jeesh! It’s not even fully dark yet.”

A few minutes later, after arriving home, locking up, and calling Jerome, Samantha answered the phone to reassure her father that she was safely inside the house with the alarm set. Instead of giving him her usual lip, she confided to him her concern for Tabasco.

“He’s still not perking back up?” Frank asked.

“No.” Samantha sighed. “I don’t know, Dad. Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. He’s eating fairly well, just not enthusiastically. I’ve taken his temp, and he’s never feverish. All indications are that he should be fine. But he just isn’t acting right.”

“Go with your gut,” her father told her. “Nobody knows your horses like you do.”

“So you don’t think I’m overreacting?”

“Nope. I had a mare once that looked fine to everybody but me. I had the vet out to look at her. He ran a few tests. Some of her blood counts were a little off, but nothing really alarmed him. Come to find out she had cancer.”

Samantha sank onto a chair. “Jeez, thanks, Dad. I feel so much better.”

He chuckled. “Tabasco doesn’t have cancer. My point is, you need to trust your instincts. Get the vet out there to look at him.”

“I will.” Samantha closed her eyes. “Washburn still isn’t back from Europe, though, and I wasn’t impressed with the fellow who’s handling his patient load.”

“Call Tucker Coulter.”

Samantha had known that was coming. “I don’t even know the name of his clinic.”

“I do. I got his card, remember?” A rustle of paper came over the line. “Got a pen and paper?”

Samantha rose to get both. “Okay, I’m ready.” Her stomach knotted with dread as she jotted down Tucker’s name and number. “If he’s a lousy vet, it’s on your head.”

“What is it about the man that you don’t like?” Frank asked.

“I didn’t say I don’t like him.” Just the opposite was true. She’d liked Tucker Coulter too well.

“Let me rephrase the question. What’s your problem with him, then?”

Samantha had lied to her father more times than she cared to recall during her marriage. She wasn’t about to resume that bad habit now by denying there was a problem. Instead she said, “I don’t really know. He just…I don’t know, Dad. He makes me uneasy.”

“You know what I think?”

Samantha had a feeling she was about to find out.

“I think he makes you uneasy because you can’t find anything about him to dislike. That’s what I think.”

Her dad knew her too well. “Maybe so,” she conceded. “Whatever the reason, I can’t help how I feel.”

“You can’t live the rest of your life running scared every time you meet a man you like, either.”

“Why not? It only seems smart to me. As you know, I’m a lousy judge of character.”

“One bad call doesn’t make you a lousy judge of character.”

“One
abysmally
bad call.” A dull throbbing took up
residence in Samantha’s temples. “Can we have this conversation later? I’m really bushed.”

“Sure.” Her father sighed. “I love you, honey.”

“I love you, too, Dad.” And Samantha did love him—so very much. It was just that he swallowed her, somehow, making her feel like Jonah trying to escape the belly of the whale.

“Keep that number where you’ll be able to find it in case Tabasco takes a bad turn during the night.”

“Done.” Samantha affixed the sheet of paper to the front of the fridge with a magnet that read,
NO HORSING AROUND IN MY KITCHEN
. “I’ll give you a ring tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll know something by then.”

“If Coulter’s as good a vet as Jim claims he is, you’ll know a good deal more by this time tomorrow,” her father assured her.

Samantha had just drifted off to sleep when the treble ring of the phone on her nightstand jarred her back to wakefulness. Her first thought was for Tabasco. She grabbed the portable unit from its base, punched the
TALK
button, and said, “This is Sam,” as she sat up in bed.

“We got trouble,” Jerome barked over the line. “Get a vet out here, ASAP.”

“Oh, God. Is it Tabasco?”

“Jesus, Lord, no. It’s Blue. He’s gone plumb loco.”

Samantha disconnected, dropped the phone, and scrambled into her clothes. Then she raced downstairs, slapped on the kitchen lights, and grabbed the paper she’d left on the front of the refrigerator. Her hands were shaking so badly that she misdialed the number twice.
When she finally got it right, an answering service took her call.

“This is Samantha Harrigan at the Sage Creek Ranch. I need Tucker Coulter out here on the double.”

“What seems to be the problem, ma’am?”

Samantha bunched a fist in her hair. “I don’t know what the problem is. I haven’t seen the horse myself. My foreman just called from the stable. He says my prize stallion has gone loco.”

“I’ll forward your message to the veterinarian on call,” the woman said pleasantly.

“No,
no
. I want Tucker Coulter, nobody else.”

“I’m sorry. It’s the other Dr. Coulter who’s on call this evening.”

The other Dr. Coulter? Samantha was so upset, the response made no sense to her. “I don’t care who’s on call. I want Tucker Coulter.”

“It’s the middle of the night. My instructions are to contact only the vet on call.”

Samantha could still hear the raw panic in Jerome’s voice. Normally the foreman had nerves of steel. “You listen to me, lady.” When the woman started to protest, Samantha raised her voice and said, “Shut up for a minute and just listen. This is a
very
valuable horse we’re talking about. He’s in a bad way. If you don’t call Tucker Coulter and that horse dies, I will have your job. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

“Yes. That’s clear. We do have a certain protocol we have to observe, though.”

“What’s your name?”

“Abigail Spence.”

“Screw the protocol, Ms. Spence. You get Tucker Coulter out here to this ranch on the double.”

Samantha disconnected, slammed the phone down on the counter, and took off for the stable at a dead run. Halfway there she could hear Blue’s screams. It seemed to her as if that last fifty yards to the building were a hundred miles, and she knew she would never forget those sounds for the rest of her life.

Inside the arena the noise was deafening. The stallion had indeed gone loco. He was rearing and thrashing the walls of his stall with his front hooves. His usually liquid brown eyes had a crazed look in them, and the irises were completely ringed with white. When Samantha reached the gate, Jerome grabbed her arm to keep her from going into the stall.

“No, honey. He’ll kill you.”

Samantha jerked her arm free. “Not Blue. Never!”

“Look at me!” Jerome yelled, pointing at his forehead.

Samantha finally focused on him, and when she did, her legs nearly buckled. One half of his face was covered with blood, the source a gash four inches long above his right eye. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

Jerome grasped her shoulder, his fingers digging in hard. “He can’t see you; he can’t hear you. He’s striking out in a blind fury. I know you love him, honey, but he’ll kill you, sure as the world. We have to wait for the vet, and pray to God he brings a sedative. But getting a needle into that horse is going to be tricky.”

Samantha looked over the gate at her stallion and could barely see him through her tears.
Blue
. Her beautiful,
gentle, amazing Blue had turned into a deadly killer. She couldn’t believe this was happening.

“What’s wrong with him?” she cried. “Oh,
God.
” She put her hands to her ears, unable to bear the sound of his screams. “Oh, Jerome. What’ll we do? I’m not even sure the answering service will send Tucker Coulter out. We may get someone else.”

Jerome stroked her arm. “We have to wait for a vet. That’s all I know. He damned near killed me.”

Samantha stared stupidly at her foreman’s forehead. “You need a doctor yourself. I’ll call Daddy. He can take you to the ER.”

“Like hell. I’m not going anywhere. But call your father all the same.” Just as Jerome spoke, Blue lashed out at the gate with such force that one of the hinges snapped. “Tell him to get over here, fast. If that horse escapes, we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

There were four phone stations within the arena. Samantha ran the twenty yards to the nearest one, frantically dialed her father’s number, and then paced until he answered.

“Daddy? Get over here fast. It’s Blue. He’s gone nuts.”

Her father said, “I’m on my way.”

That was all, just those four words, and then he broke the connection. Samantha stood there, clinging to the phone, Blue’s shrieks and the cacophony of his lashing hooves pummeling her eardrums. Her whole body was trembling.

“Get hold of yourself,” she told herself sternly. “Jerome’s all right. Blue’s only a horse. Get a grip.”

Only Blue wasn’t just a horse. Still clinging to the phone, Samantha turned to look at him. Her beautiful, wonderful Blue Blazes. She’d raised him from birth. She loved him almost as much as she might a child. He was her pride and her joy, her friend and her confidant. And he was also her future.

If Blue died, all her dreams would die with him.

T
ucker overshot the turn and slammed on the brakes. After shifting the Dodge into reverse, he backed up until the headlights washed over the archway again. A hand-carved wooden sign hung from the uppermost log that spanned the distance between the two side columns. It read,
SAGE CREEK QUARTER HORSE RANCH
.

This is it
, he thought, and silently thanked God that he’d spotted the entrance. In the darkness he might have driven several miles before realizing he’d missed the turn. According to the woman at the answering service, the life of a very expensive equine was in peril.

Tucker couldn’t be cavalier about this particular horse belonging to Samantha Harrigan. He’d almost given up hope of ever seeing her again, and now, out of the blue, she had called him out to her ranch on an emergency. Tucker wasn’t sure which possibilities he found most ex citing, the professional or personal ones.

He nosed the truck off the main road and onto the gravel lane. About a half mile up ahead, pine trees were etched in black against the moonlit sky, their graceful
branches underscored by rectangles of golden light. Pleased that the road was fairly smooth, he increased his speed. The private byways he usually encountered on farms and ranches were rough and pitted with chuckholes, forcing him to creep along to protect the equipment he carried under the truck’s canopy. The portable video endoscope alone had cost him a small fortune. He also leased a battery-powered ultrasound system and a portable EKG machine that would be costly to repair.

When he reached the cluster of buildings, he saw that they comprised the ranch proper. Porch lights illuminated the front of a two-story cedar home. About a hundred yards off to the left was a huge structure with plank siding that Tucker guessed to be a stable and indoor riding arena, a common setup around Crystal Falls because of the snow in winter.

Five pickups were parked willy-nilly in front of the immense building, their colors difficult to determine in the bluish white glow of a sodium-mercury yard light. He parked near the other vehicles, cut the engine, and grabbed his satchel before exiting the cab.

Almost before Tucker’s feet touched the ground, a man rushed from the building. Tucker momentarily mistook the fellow for Frank Harrigan. Only as they hurried toward each other did Tucker realize this man was much younger. One of Frank’s sons, possibly? Even in the eerie light, Tucker could see a strong resemblance.

“You Tucker Coulter?” the man asked, raising his voice to be heard over the screaming of a horse inside the building. “I’m Zach Harrigan, the one you called for directions. The horse is this way.”

Zach’s urgent manner told Tucker that the situation was dire indeed. Due to the cyclic nature of their professions, most ranchers and farmers developed a deceptively laid-back mien, the common motto being, “Why hurry up to wait?” It took a catastrophic event to make a cowboy shift out of slow gear into fast-forward.

Tucker followed Zack Harrigan into the building. Once they were inside, the noise level was deafening. At the far end of the huge riding arena, Tucker saw a knot of people, including Samantha Harrigan, gathered in front of a stall. Within the enclosure was a crazed blue roan. Tucker had never been particularly fond of roans, blues least of all. The best way he could think of to describe their color was salt-and-pepper. Even at a distance, though, he could tell that this blue roan was exceptional, its silvered body offset by a pitch-black face, mane, legs, and tail.

Tucker lengthened his stride, drawing slightly ahead of Zach Harrigan to close the distance more quickly. As he jogged, his attention became fixed on Samantha. Despite the tangled, pillow-tossed state of her hair, she was just as pretty as he remembered, her tidy figure temptingly round in all the right places, her delicately molded countenance slightly irregular in profile, yet absolutely lovely.

She turned at his approach. In that instant of eye con tact, Tucker registered her panic. Her oval face was deathly pale, and she held herself with an almost brittle rigidity that told him more than she could know. Her anguish was almost palpable. Tucker fleetingly wished he
could reassure her, but he’d learned never to make promises as a vet that he might not be able to keep.

Just then the horse screamed and pummeled the inside of his stall with such force that one of the boards snapped, the sound as loud as a rifle shot. Vaguely registering the presence of Frank Harrigan and five other men, Tucker pushed forward to look over the gate.

What Tucker saw made his blood run cold. Now he understood why Samantha looked so stricken. He had seen more than a few horses go berserk, but never anything to equal this. The animal had a blind, wild look in his eyes and had worked himself to a point beyond exhaustion, sides heaving, nostrils flared, and lather flecking his body like shaving foam.

Doing a quick visual exam, Tucker saw that the horse’s legs were already covered with lacerations, some deep, others superficial, but the cuts were nothing compared to the injuries the horse might sustain if he was allowed to continue on this course. Something had to be done, and quickly; otherwise this episode could very well end with a euthanasia injection. Just the thought made Tucker’s stomach roll.

“What brought this on?” Tucker yelled over his shoulder to no one in particular.

“No idea!” a man yelled back.

“Any other horses acting up?”

“Nope, only this one,” the same man yelled back. “It came on fast. At six, when I gave him his hay out in the paddock, he seemed just fine. It wasn’t until I let him into his stall around ten and gave him his nightly ration of grain that he started going crazy.”

“What kind of grain?” Tucker demanded.

“Wet cob, actually, not grain. It’s the same stuff he gets every night right before lights-out. After giving each horse a measure, I went upstairs. I wasn’t inside more than twenty or thirty minutes before I heard Blue screaming.”

Tucker’s brain had begun to race.
Wet cob
—ground corncobs with a little molasses mixed in. Horses and ruminants loved it. People in rural settings mixed wet cob with dry and fed it to herds of deer. It had a pleasurably sweet taste and was nourishing but harmless. Tucker felt certain wet cob had not caused this kind of behavior in the stallion.

Only what had? He needed to get in close to examine the horse.

“We’ll have to cross-rope him so I can sedate him,” he called out. “Two men out in the paddock and two in here.”

Tucker had to say no more. Zach raced for the tack room to get the ropes.

Frank Harrigan sauntered over to where Tucker crouched over his open satchel. “Even with lines to hold him, son, it won’t be easy to get a needle into that horse.”

Tucker glanced up. “I’ll have to do it intramuscularly. Normally we prefer to inject sedatives directly into a vein. They’re faster-acting that way. But it won’t be possible with him.”

“That’s for sure,” Frank agreed. “I’ve given a fair number of shots in my day, but never to a horse that loco.”

Neither had Tucker, and that made him wonder yet again what had brought this on. That was a question he
couldn’t possibly answer until he got a close look at the horse.
Damn.
He hated to administer a sedative before he knew what the problem was. He couldn’t be sure how it might affect the equine. But in this situation he had no choice.

Zach returned with four coils of rope on his shoulder. Without a word he began handing the lassos out to the other men.

Tucker bent back over his satchel to prepare the sedative. He estimated the stallion to be in the top weight bracket for his breed and decided to mix a xylazine-and-Dormosedan cocktail. Both drugs were fairly quick to take effect, even given intramuscularly, and the doses could be manipulated to have a short duration of action with few adverse side effects.

As Tucker filled a syringe, the other men set them selves to the task of cross-roping the stallion. Tucker heard a lasso sing above his head, the sound unmistakable and one that he’d often heard as a boy. The next instant, all hell broke loose.

“Son of a
bitch
!”

A jet-haired young man flew past Tucker as if he’d just sprouted wings. Fortunately the fellow had wrapped the rope around his wrist. When he collided with the stall gate in a jarring body slam, he lost only his hat, not his grip on the lasso.

Tucker half expected the man to crumple to the ground, holding his ribs, but this fellow was made of sturdy stuff. He bounced off the gate rails, regained his balance, and planted a boot against a cross-buck for
leverage, thus managing to hold the stallion by himself until Frank could leap forward to help.

“Get another loop over his head!” the younger man yelled to whoever had taken up position in the paddock. “Dad and I can’t hold him alone!”

Tucker blocked out all the confusion and concentrated on doing his part. After filling the syringe with the appropriate mixture of drugs, he would need to swing up onto the gate and be ready to jump inside the stall the instant the horse was anchored in one spot. The window of opportunity to give the injection might be brief, possibly only a matter of seconds, depending upon the men’s ability to hold the lines.

“I’ll do it,” a feminine voice said just as Tucker pushed to his feet.

He’d almost forgotten Samantha’s presence. When he turned and saw her drawn, pale face, his heart caught.

“Please,” she said tautly. “He’s my horse. As crazy as he is right now, I know he won’t hurt me.”

Tucker shook his head. “He’s beyond being able to differentiate between one person and another,” he informed her. “And it isn’t as easy as it looks to give an injection to an animal that won’t hold still.” When she parted her lips to protest, Tucker quickly added, “If you keep too firm a grip on the syringe, the needle can bend or break. The goal is to get the sedative into the horse on the first try. Right?”

For an instant she stared worriedly at the stallion. Then her lashes fluttered closed, and she nodded. “Right,” she murmured.

Tucker slipped the loaded syringe into his shirt pocket.
Showtime.
Ducking between the ropes, he sprinted to the gate, grasped the top rail, and swung up to straddle it. Once in position, he locked his knees to keep his seat and waited for all four lassos to be thrown.

The instant each of the loops snapped taut around the stallion’s muscular neck, Tucker pushed off into the stall. “Easy, boy, easy.” Taking care to avoid the horse’s back hooves, which could be lethal even with the animal un able to rear up and strike, Tucker moved in. “Easy, easy.” The stallion’s entire body jerked when Tucker touched his neck. “It’s nothing bad, just a little stick to make you feel better.”

For a fleeting instant Tucker thought giving the injection was going to be a piece of cake, after all. The horse responded to his voice and whickered plaintively, almost as if pleading for help. But then he went crazy again, kicking, jumping, and twisting in midair, frantically trying to escape the ropes. Tucker wasted no time. He picked his target, stepped in as close as he dared, and quickly inserted the needle. With one smooth push he depressed the plunger.

“Nice job,” Frank said as Tucker landed on his feet outside the stall gate again. “Damned nice. Couldn’t have done better myself.”

Tucker’s heart was pounding, and he was breathing as if he’d just run a mile. He put the capped syringe back in his pocket and wiped sweat from his brow. “He’ll calm down in a bit so I can have a look at him. Should work in about ten minutes.”

Frank didn’t look happy to hear that, and Tucker
understood why. Ten minutes of crazy horse were ten too many.

As it happened, though, the men were able to hold pressure on the ropes until the chemical restraint began to take effect. In those final seconds before Tucker could enter the stall, Frank took advantage of the lull to make hurried introductions.

“Tucker, this is my oldest boy, Clint.”

Tucker inclined his head at the fellow who’d collided with the gate. “Good to meet you, Clint.”

Clint, still holding tension on one of the lines, nodded and flashed a white-toothed grin. “Good to meet you, too!” he replied with undisguised enthusiasm. “Not many vets I know would’ve gone into that stall. Before you leave, be sure to give me one of your cards. I’ll definitely be in touch.”

Tucker returned the man’s friendly smile. “I’ll appreciate any business you bring my way.”

Zach, who was still holding the other rope, broke in with, “We can help with that.” He sent his father an amused look. “Dad isn’t merely a good contact; he’s
the
contact in quarter horse circles.”

Frank gestured to the three men in the paddock. “Out yonder’s my other two boys, Parker and Quincy, and Sammy’s ranch foreman, Jerome.”

Just as Tucker acknowledged the men outdoors with a wave, Samantha came to stand at his elbow. “What do you think’s wrong with my horse?” she asked shakily.

Tucker wished there were an easy answer, but in veterinary medicine there seldom was. “Hard to say until I examine him.”

Tucker watched the stallion closely. The moment the horse began to hang his head and look a little wobbly, he collected his satchel, opened the stall gate, and went inside.

When Tucker realized that Samantha was at his heels, he stopped dead in his tracks. “It might be safer if you stayed out of here,” he informed her. “The sedative will probably keep him calm, but there’s no guarantee.”