Montana Red. Genell Dellin

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      Clea wanted to grab the rope and try to pull Ari down but she didn’t want to make the contrariness worse. She could hardly bear to watch. Almost.

      The left hoof almost caught in the feeder.

      A broken leg and it would be all over.

      Wild thoughts raced each other through her head while she froze in horror. What would she do? She couldn’t shoot her own horse. She couldn’t pay for a surgery and a long recovery….

       Come on, Clea. Stop it.

      She set her jaw. She hadn’t gone through all this fear and effort to let it all end now, before the mare ever even saw Montana.

      Ari came down and stood, trembling. Clea stepped up to the mare’s head and took hold of the rope.

      “You’re working yourself into a fit,” she said in her most authoritative tone. “Ariel, settle down.”

      She stroked Ari’s nose and talked to her. She patted her neck and talked to her. Ari snorted, then pricked her ears and listened.

      “That’s my girl,” Clea murmured. “Now listen, sweetie…”

      Sweetie threw her weight as hard as she could from side to side, then kicked out behind and swayed again, harder still. She pinned her ears, jerked her head free and tried to rear again, reaching for the wall.

      No choice. No doubt. Clea would have to tranquilize the horse so they could get on down the road. They weren’t even started on this trip yet and Clea hadn’t gone through all her fear and trauma to let it all fall apart now.

      Now Ari’s eyes were rolling. She made little choking sounds.

      Break a leg or strangle. Great choices.

      Without wasting any more breath, Clea turned and moved toward the door.

      She jumped to the ground and fighting the urge to hurry—hurry that was beating harder in her veins with every sound that came from Ari—she punched in the numbers to open the door to the dressing room, letting its light come on automatically because it was on the side away from the road. She stepped up into it, closed the door almost all the way and took down the first-aid box.

      Stay calm. Be deliberate. Ari was excited enough without sensing more fear from Clea.

      She found the Ace tranquilizer and filled a syringe, despite her hands shaking a little. She forced herself to think positively.

      Thank God, she’d had sense enough to prepare for this. She’d worried about this very thing because Ari had been hard to haul at times, so she’d asked Sherilyn’s boyfriend, a veterinarian who didn’t know Brock, to sell her the medicine and teach her how to administer it.

      Sherilyn was Clea’s hairdresser and best human friend, the only person in whom Clea ever confided. The only person she trusted enough to tell about her plans for a new life, that was for sure.

      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.

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