With the needle and an alcohol wipe in one hand and the flashlight in the other, Clea pushed the door open with the toe of her sneaker, stepped down to the ground, went around back and shouldered the rear door aside. The trailer was still rocking.
“You have to settle down, Ari darlin’,” she said in as soothing a tone as she could muster. “Maybe take a little nap. We’ve gotta get on up the road.”
She kept on and on with the calm, slow words, trying to calm herself as much as the mare and Ariel did actually stand a bit more still when Clea reached her. Part of Clea screamed to hurry before the mare started pulling against the rope again; another part cautioned her to go slowly and do this right. That tension made her bite down on the little flashlight until she thought her teeth might break.
She found what she hoped was a good spot in a muscle—no way did she have the nerve to try for a vein—and tightened her lips around the torch in her mouth while she wiped her target clean. Through her nose she took in a long, deep breath to steady herself and slid the needle in with hands that felt stiff as wood.
Ariel squatted and pulled back but the needle was in. Clea hit the plunger and pushed it all the way.
She pulled the needle out and with a last pat on the butt, left the mare, closed up the back door, went to the dressing room and put things away. Deliberately. Efficiently. Quickly.
Heart hammering—she’d successfully managed her first emergency of the journey!—she jumped out, locked up and headed around the trailer to the truck. Ariel was looking at her through the bars on the window.
Clea felt a broad smile come over her face—victory and relief all mixed up together. She stopped in her tracks and looked at the mare, who was standing still at last. “You just hang on, my girl, and you’ll be a Montana horse before you know it.”
She couldn’t tell whether Ari’s reply expressed excitement or dismay. Whichever, it was a full-hearted whinny that reverberated thrillingly against the rocky walls of the Arbuckle Mountains and echoed up the road.
CHAPTER TWO
THE WIND whipped the stallion’s whinny of alarm up from the valley, a sound so wild and shrill that it rang Jake’s bones. The harem band fled ahead of the red stud snaking them away from the scent of the wildcat and Jake’s own horse danced beneath him. It spoiled his aim.
He used his legs to hold the gelding together and his voice to steady him while he lined up the sight again.
“Stand,” he said, surprised his voice could come out this calm with his chest so tight. “Whoa now.”
His jaw clamped down. He had one shot to save the foal. It had better be now.
The rhythm of the band’s drumming hooves matched the thunder of the blood in his arms. He steadied the rifle, drew his breath, made sure his crosshairs rested on the spot in the middle of the tawny shoulders that were folding into a crouch on the rocky ledge below and ahead of his horse.
For one split second, endless in time, he let the air out of his lungs and slowly squeezed the trigger. The back-and-forth threatening motion of the cougar’s long, black-tipped tail kept going. And going.
The shot went off at the start of the cat’s leap. At first he thought he’d missed, but its body crumpled in midair and dropped out of sight.
Jake dismounted and walked far enough to look over and down. The cougar lay within twenty yards of the foal, but neither its scent nor the sound of the shot had made the little orphan move more than a few inches away from the mare, who lay as dead as the mountain lion.
He guessed the foal at two or three weeks old. It was red like the stud, although the mare was a pale palomino. The mare must not have been dead too long or it wouldn’t still be alive to stand this dogged vigil. Its head was hanging. It wouldn’t last much longer.
What had he done?
The lion’s body would keep away any stallion that might snap the foal’s neck to put it out of its misery. Odds were slim that another mountain lion would come along. Therefore, it would have a slow death unless Jake did something.
If you have a grain of sense in your head, Hawthorne, you’ll jack in one more round and send the pathetic little bag of bones to the great grassy pasture in the sky. You’d be cruel not to do it.
True, but he’d already made the decision. He’d sacrificed the mountain lion’s beauty and wildness for the foal, so now he’d have to step up and take care of it, no matter how slim its chances. “Well, shit.”
He scanned both ways along the steep hillside for any sign of a trail that would take him down. “Come on, Stoney, my man. We’re in the nursery business now.”
He thought he could see a faint trail that the wild horses made to get down from this ridge, going to water at the small runoff lake at the bottom of the hill. He started down, leading his horse. A rock rolled out from under his feet and Stoney’s hind feet scrabbled in the gravel for purchase on the slope.
They’d have to find another way back to the road—that was for damn sure. This steep grade would be way too hard to negotiate while carrying the foal.
They finally got to the bottom and the baby turned its head to look at Jake. Weakly, it stumbled closer to the mare’s body, instinctively knowing that of the four enemies existing for wild horses—man, fire, drought and mountain lions—man was the most dangerous.
It was a filly, huddled here in a little brushy cove protected by the mountains surrounding it on three sides, where the mare had come with her. Maybe she was one of those wild mares that liked to change stallion bands every once in awhile. She’d been killed by a falling rock that rolled about a yard away after crushing half her head.
The foal’s knees buckled and she collapsed in a heap. Her spirit was what was strong about her; it showed in her eyes. But her body was dehydrated and weak. She might not even live until they got home.
Jake went back to Stoney and led him over to the baby, picked her up, and laid her, belly-down, over the big gray’s withers, feet hanging off on either side. He steadied her with his rein hand as he caught the horn with the other and the stirrup with his toe to swing up into the saddle.
Then he smooched to the gelding and started looking for a way out.
CLEA DROVE with both hands on the steering wheel as if that could make up for not keeping her eyes strictly on the two-lane road. The enormous land and sky overwhelmed her, just as they had that day during the ski trip when Brock had immersed himself in business as usual and she’d driven miles and miles alone in a rental car, exploring Montana.
Looking for something; she didn’t know what.
That day had been the beginning of the end.
She’d waked to hear Brock in the other room, dressing down somebody over the phone, cursing and demanding and then changing calls and becoming charming as he tried to make a deal. She lay there and listened to him. From what he said she knew that he’d be at it all day. The last day of the romantic vacation trip he’d given her for Valentine’s Day.
Which was the first romantic gesture he’d bothered to make in ages. Which was just as well because she could hardly stand him anymore.
She ran from the sound of his voice—into the shower, then into the dressing room where she tried to distract herself by choosing exactly the right items from her extensive new ski wardrobe. Her ski lessons were going well. She liked being out on the slopes in the crisp air and forgetting about everything except learning this new sport.
But as she slid the hangers along the rod, opened drawers and started putting pieces together, the hollow in the center of her body began to grow, inching its way into her veins, pushing her blood aside to make room for the empty tentacles stretching toward her heart with a cold efficiency that promised loneliness would soon own her. She dropped the ski clothes into a bright-colored