“Just name a price,” Donahue said coldly.
“Two hundred and fifty?”
“Get real.”
“Okay. One fifty then. Not a penny less.”
“I’ll give you fifty bucks to turn that truck around, with the donkey onboard.”
He was a mean donkey, Corrine reminded herself. He’d take her arm off at the elbow if she gave him the opportunity. And apparently he had an immense appetite for things other than grass. A mean, disgusting donkey.
Whose muzzle had felt like velvet against her fingers.
And whose eyes had been so unbearably sad.
“Wait,” she said, when she saw the money about to change hands. “Wait. I want him.”
Something pitiful flashed in the donkey man’s eyes as he saw his chance to make a quick fifty bucks disappearing.
Matt Donahue turned and looked at her. “You want who?”
Since only Donahue, Grimes and the donkey were in her yard, her answer was bound to be insulting. Yet it gave her great pleasure to say, “The donkey.”
He came toward her in long strides, his eyes flashing fire. “Do you have any idea what my brood stock is worth?”
She shook her head, having only the vaguest idea whatever stock he was talking about was probably not registered on the NASDAQ.
“One of my mares is worth more than this whole place. One mare.”
She felt herself stiffen under the slight. She turned to the other man. “Unload my donkey,” she ordered.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said glumly.
“Do you know anything about donkeys?” her neighbor asked her.
“No,” she said proudly. “But I bet they eat grass and I have plenty of that.”
“At the moment you don’t have a fence that could hold that beast.”
She resented her donkey being called a beast in that tone of voice. “Unload my donkey,” she said again, her teeth clenched.
The man gave Matt a look that begged for his help, but he was ignored. Apparently Mr. Donahue’s neighborliness did not extend to unloading unwanted donkeys.
Cautiously Grimes walked up the ramp and inched back the gate of his stock rack.
The donkey made a whuffling noise.
“Easy there,” Grimes said roughly.
She could hear the fear in his voice. What on earth was she doing? She was having a man unload a donkey in her yard that he was afraid of. It was obviously some kind of mistake that the donkey had been delivered here. Why make it worse by having him unloaded?
Was it the grim set of her neighbor’s jaw that kept her, stubbornly, from calling out to Grimes to never mind? To take the donkey and his fifty bucks and leave? Or was it the meanness in Grimes’s eyes that made her reluctant to leave the donkey’s fate up to him? Whatever the reason, she remained silent.
There was a loud scuffle, punctuated with swear words. And then, a shriek of pain, the sound of a heavy body falling, and the unmistakable thunder of hooves across the bed of the truck.
Matt leapt forward as the donkey burst from the truck and hurled himself down the ramp, kicking up his heels at his delighted and unexpected freedom.
It was short-lived. Matt grabbed the trailing rope and was dragged halfway across the yard skidding on his chest before he managed to get his legs back underneath him, and dig in his heels. His every muscle taut, he braced himself and used his entire body to force the donkey, fighting and kicking, around.
They moved in a circle, Donahue at the center of it, the heels of his boots planted in the ground, the muscles in his well-honed body rippling with the effort of trying to control the donkey who tore at the rope in his hands.
And then, just like that, the donkey quit, and stood there, his head sagging, his ribs heaving, his belly oddly huge in light of his pathetically thin body.
Even she, with no knowledge of any kind of livestock, could read a terrible story in that donkey’s condition. His fur was matted. In places, there was no fur, only welts. He looked thin to the point of starvation, his hip bones sticking out. His mane and tail were barely visible for the burrs imbedded in them.
Grimes had pulled himself up from the truck deck. He had a club in his hand, and a look in his eye, and Corrine yelped with wordless dismay as he moved toward the donkey.
Matt turned toward her sound, and saw the man coming toward him.
“You touch this animal,” he said, his voice a low growl like a bear about to charge, “and I’ll take that club to you.”
She shivered at the pure menace Matt managed to exude without even raising his voice.
Grimes stopped, and eyed Donahue warily.
“Look at this poor dumb beast,” Matt said, “He’s been beaten. He’s starving. His feet haven’t been looked after. He’s got worm belly.” There was barely leashed fury in each carefully bitten out word.
Grimes was beating a hasty retreat to his truck. “He weren’t never mine,” he called over his shoulder as he climbed in his truck and slammed the door. “I just got paid to deliver him.”
After two or three desperate grinding tries on the starter, the truck finally sputtered to life. It bounced back down the driveway at least twice as fast as it had come in.
Donahue did not turn and look back at her. “The kindest thing to do,” he said, “would be to put him down.”
The ice edge was gone from his voice, but it didn’t make the message any less brutal.
“Kill him?” she breathed. A shudder went through her at the thought of the donkey being murdered. She didn’t even want to think how one murdered a donkey, let alone the kind of person who could suggest such a thing. “No.”
“He isn’t trained,” His voice was soft, almost gentle, a voice one might use on a stubborn child. “He doesn’t look healthy. He seems to have a mean streak. The kindest thing to do—”
“Somehow kindness and cold-blooded murder don’t go together in my world.”
He sighed. The sigh whispered with the exasperation of a country man facing a city girl, a man used to dealing with the hard cold realities of livestock coming face-to-face with a woman whose unrealistic love of all creatures great and small was probably based on a solid dose of Disney movies.
And even if she knew it was unrealistic, she wasn’t letting him kill her donkey for the flimsy reason that the animal wasn’t perfect.
After a long time, he spoke again. “Don’t you have any idea where he came from? Or why he came to you?”
“No.”
He glanced over his shoulder at her again, and sighed, the sigh even more heartfelt than his first one, if that were possible. “Then where do you want him, Ms. Parsons? And don’t say your pasture until you’ve got your fences fixed, because you’re legally libel for anything that happens to my mares.”
Aha. The real reason he wanted her donkey dead.
“There’s a stall in the barn.”
“I’ll put him in there for now. Tomorrow, I’ll come look after the fences.”
“I can look after my own fences.”
“Humor me.”
The donkey chose that moment to lunge at him, his teeth bared. Donahue