Promise Canyon

Clay tipped his head back slightly, smiling, silent and tolerant.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve been told you’d rather not advertise that ability.”

“If I could count on it, I might. Some animals are more private than others. I’d hate to crush expectations. I have other skills.”

“As I’ve also been told. Best farrier in the business, complete with digital diagnostic equipment to use in examining gaits, alignment and sports performance. I can’t wait for a demonstration.”

His grin widened at that. “It’s the ONTRACKEQUINE software. I can’t wait to show you.”

“But I want to hear about the other skill.” She lowered her voice when she said, “The whispering.”

He tilted his head. “Do you garden?” he asked her.

“She’s a farmer’s daughter. She can grow anything,” Nathaniel answered for her.

Clay focused on Annie. “Do you talk to plants?” When she nodded he asked, “And do they respond by becoming tall and healthy? Robust?”

“Sometimes. I’ve heard it’s the oxygen you breathe on them,” she said.

He shook his head. “You emit more carbon dioxide than oxygen. Perhaps it’s the sound of your voice or your intention or it could be hypnosis,” he said with a shrug. “Whatever that is, it’s been working since the sun first warmed the ground. Sometimes it’s better not to question but just accept. And also accept that there are no guarantees on anything.”

She edged closer. “But if I promise not to advertise this magical thing that works sometimes, will you tell me a little about it? Some of your experiences? Friend to friend?”

“Yes, Annie. I’ll tell you training stories as long as you promise to remember no one knows if the horse and I communicated or if the horse just decided to stop screwing around and get with the program.”

“Promise,” she said with a laugh. “I’d better get in the shower,” Annie said. “I’ll have dinner ready in an hour and a half. Is there anything you need in the meantime?”

He shook his head. “I’ll grab my duffel. Nathaniel will show me where to park the truck and trailer and maybe I’ll get my own shower before dinner.”

So, Nathaniel was worried about the lack of amenities in the tech’s quarters, Clay mused. The biggest problem he could tell from checking the place out was the bed. He was a long-legged man for a regular-size double bed. And the showerhead was a little low. But there’d been times he’d slept in his truck or trailer, camped, borrowed cots or couches, made a nest in a stall, whatever worked. The best thing about Isabel’s big house was her extra-long king-size platform bed, good even when she wasn’t in it.

There had been no settlement in the divorce; he hadn’t wanted anything of hers and she couldn’t get away with asking a farrier for money when she had so much personal wealth. It was interesting that they hadn’t put together a prenup, that she trusted him in marriage and in divorce. He briefly wondered if he’d remembered to thank her for that. Trust was more valuable to Clay than money. But he regretted that he hadn’t asked for the bed. That was a good bed. Firm like the ground, not hard like asphalt, but with a little give like the earth. Spacious. Generous. Long.

Clay pulled clean jeans out of his duffel and a fresh denim shirt. He brushed off his boots and combed his long, damp hair back into its ponytail. With his bronze skin, high cheekbones and long, silky black ponytail, there was no need for him to drive the point home with Native American affectations, but his cowboy hat sported an eagle feather. Even when his hats got worn to death and he got new ones, he transferred the feather. Finding an eagle feather was good mojo.

He heard the grinding of an engine and distant barking of a dog. Of course his immediate thought was that it was a patient. He put the hat on his head and exited the stable in time to see an old Ford pickup back up to the barn’s double doors. It was full of hay and feed. As he watched, a young woman with black hair and tan skin jumped energetically out of the cab, ran around to the back, donned heavy work gloves, dropped the tailgate on the pickup and grabbed a fifty-pound bale. She was short and trim, maybe five foot four and a hundred and fifteen pounds, but she pulled that bale out of the truck, hefted it and carried it into the stable.

Clay backtracked into his new quarters and grabbed a pair of work gloves from his duffel. He joined her at the back of her truck when she returned.

She stopped in her tracks when she saw him. She looked more than surprised, her blue eyes wide with shock. It was almost as if she’d seen a ghost. “Nate didn’t mention he had a new hand,” she said, eyeing the work gloves.

“I’m Clay,” he said, introducing himself. “Let me give you a hand here.”

“I have it,” she said, moving past him to the truck. She jumped up on the tailgate and pulled another bale toward her.

Clay ignored her dismissal, but he smiled at the sight of her hefting that heavy bale and marching into the stable. She was wearing a denim jacket and he would bet that underneath it she had some shoulders and guns on her that other women would kill for. And that tight round butt in a pair of jeans was pretty sweet, too. But the kid didn’t make five and a half feet even in her cowboy boots. Tiny. Firm. Young.

He grabbed two bales and followed her into the stable. She actually jumped in surprise when she turned around and found him standing there behind her with a fifty-pound bale in each hand. She seemed to struggle for words for a second and finally settled on, “Thanks, but I can handle it just fine.”

“Me, too,” he said. “You do the feed delivery all the time?”

“Mondays and Thursdays,” she said, lowering her gaze and quickly walking around him, back to the truck. She reached in after another bale, leaving only a couple of feed bags in the back.

He followed her. “Do you have a name?” he bluntly asked.

“Lilly,” she said, pulling that bale toward her out of the truck bed. “Yazhi,” she added with a grunt.

“You’re Hopi?” he asked. His eyebrows rose. “A blue-eyed Hopi?”

She hesitated before answering. You had to have blue-eyed DNA on both sides to get more blue eyes. Lilly’s father was unknown to her, but she’d always been told her mother had always believed herself to be one hundred percent Native. “About half, yes,” she finally said, hefting the bale. “Where are you from?”

“Flagstaff,” he answered.

“Navajo?” she asked.

He smiled lazily. “Yes, ma’am.”

“We’re historic enemies.”

He smiled enthusiastically. “I’ve gotten over it,” he said. “You still mad?”

She rolled her eyes and turned away, carrying her bale. Little Indian girl didn’t want to play. Once again he couldn’t help but notice the strain in her shoulders, the firm muscles under those jeans. “I don’t pay attention to all that stuff,” she said as she went into the barn.

Clay chuckled. He grabbed the last two bags of feed, stacked one on top of the other and threw them up on a shoulder, following her. When he caught up with her he asked, “Where do you want the feed?”

“Feed room, with the hay. When did you start here?”

“Actually, today. Have you been delivering feed long?”

“Part-time, a few years. I do it for my grandfather. He owns the feed business. He’s an old Hopi man and doesn’t like his business out of the family. Trouble is, there’s not that much family.”

Clay understood all of that, the thing about her people and family. First off, most people preferred their tribal designation when referred to, and family was everything; they were slow to trust anyone outside the race, the tribe, the family.

“Couple of old grandfathers in my family, also,” he said by way of understanding. “You’re good to help him.”

“If I didn’t, I’d never hear the end of it.”

He began to notice pleasant things about her face. She wore her hair in a sleek, modern cut, short in the back and longer along her jaw. Her brows were beautifully shaped. Her blue eyes sparkled and her lips were glossy. She wasn’t wearing makeup and her skin looked like tan butter. Soft and tender. She was beautiful. He guessed she was in her early twenties at most.

“And when you’re not delivering feed on Tuesdays and Fridays?” he asked. “What do you do then?”

“Mondays and Thursdays,” she corrected. “Pay attention. I work in the feed store.”

“Bagging feed?” he asked, his eyebrows lifted curiously.

She put her hands on her hips. “I do the books. Accounts payable and receivable.”

“Ah. Married?”

“Listen—”

“Lilly! How’s it going?” Nate yelled out, approaching from the house, followed by three trotting border collies. “I didn’t hear you pull up. I see you met Clay, my new assistant.”

“Assistant?” she asked.

“Tech, farrier, jack of all horse trades,” Nate clarified. “While we’re getting business up, Clay can function in a lot of roles.”

“Has Virginia actually cleared out? Gone?” Lilly asked.

“Once Clay was en route, she made good on her threats and retired. She’s spending more time with her husband and the grandkids. I’ll be adding too many new requirements to the equine operation and she really wasn’t up for that. I’ve known Clay for a long time. He has a good reputation in the horse industry. We worked together years ago in Los Angeles County.”

“I just saw her a few days ago. I didn’t realize she was that close to her last day. Actually, I thought it would be months,” Lilly said.

“So did we, Virginia and I. But I was lucky enough to get Clay up here from L.A. in a matter of days. As soon as he said yes to the job, Virginia said, ‘Thank God,’ and headed for home. She offered to come back to help or do some job training if Clay needed it, but she’s ready for a little time on her own. She’s been talking retirement for at least a couple of years now but until I found Annie, she wouldn’t leave me alone on the property. She thought I’d mess up the practice.” Nate shook his head in silent laughter.

“You’ll miss her,” Lilly said.

“I know where to find her if I miss her, and so do you! Drop in on her sometime. She promises regular cookies for the clinic.”

“I’ll do that. I’ll make it a point. Let me get your vitamin supplements,” she said, turning to pull a very large plastic jar out of the truck bed. She handed it off to Nate and then fetched her clipboard from the cab so he could sign off on the feed.

“I’m taking delivery on a horse in a couple of days, Lilly. An Arabian. He’s coming for boarding and training, though I think the owner is going to need more training than the horse. Increase the feed for my next order, please. And tell your grandfather I said hello.”

“Absolutely. See you later,” she said, jumping in her truck to head out.

When the truck had cleared the drive, Clay asked, “Is she always in and out of here that fast?”

“She’s pretty efficient. She’s always on schedule. Her grandpa Yaz counts on her. I don’t know if there’s other family. As far as I know, Lilly is the only other Yahzi who works in the business.”

“There’s a new horse coming?” Clay asked. “What’s that about?”

“Last-minute deal,” Nathaniel said. “A woman who doesn’t know much about horses but has an unfortunate excess of money bought herself an expensive Arabian from a good line, learned about enough to keep him alive but can’t get near him. Her stable hand can barely get a halter on him and saddling him is out of the question. If they can get him in the trailer, the hand is going to bring him over here to board so we can work with him. The owner wants to ride him, but if that doesn’t work out she’s thinking of selling him to replace him with a gentler horse. She thinks the horse is defective.”

Clay lifted a brow. “Gelding?”

“Oh, no,” Nate said with a laugh. “Two-year-old stud colt from the national champion Magnum Psyche bloodlines. I had a look at him—he’d be too much horse for a lot of people.”

“She bought herself a young stallion? “ Clay asked, then whistled.

Nate slapped a hand on Clay’s shoulder. “Did I mention I’m glad you’re here?”

“I haven’t unpacked and you have a special project for me,” he said, trying to disguise his pleasure.

Nathaniel grinned. “You don’t fool me. You were a little afraid of being bored and now you’re relieved that there’s a difficult horse coming. It’s written all over your face. Come on—Annie made pot roast. You’ll think you’ve died and gone to heaven.”

Two

Lilly was a bit shaken as she drove away from the Jensen stable. The new assistant was drop-dead gorgeous and totally flirting with her. He didn’t have to carry two fifty-pound sacks of feed at a time into the feed room! A show-off, trying to impress her with his strength, his bulging arms, as if that would make her life worth living.

Well, he was in for a few surprises if he wanted to get a rise out of her. First of all, she’d grown up around a lot of Native males and had them all figured out. Many of them developed self-esteem issues in adolescence, stemming from the discrimination they faced, and it seemed one of the best ways they could feel better about themselves was by reeling in a girl. That pumped ‘em right up, got their testosterone flowing, kicked their confidence into gear. Well, she’d been reeled in, cruelly dumped and survived it; she wasn’t going there again!

And most of them, at least the ones she had known, had old-fashioned ideas about calling all the shots. From the time they glanced down and noticed they were males, they assumed the dominant role. Well, Lilly had enough on her plate with a grandfather who liked running things. That was one of many reasons she stayed away from other Native men. She was capable of taking care of herself and not at all afraid of being a woman on her own. In fact, she rather liked it.

Then there was that whole Hopi/Navajo thing; their tribal traditions and customs. Tons of it was ingrained in her as her grandfather never let it go. She never tried to deny her connection to the Native community, but she’d been trying to get some distance from all of that for a long time. She felt she could be a proud Hopi woman without being constantly steeped in all the old tribal stuff. After all she was also French, German, Polish and Irish—or so her mother had told her grandfather. She never did give Lilly’s father’s name, but she knew his heritage.

Lilly’s mother, only a teenager herself when Lilly was born, had left her to be raised by her grandparents. She ran off, no one knew where. Friends from the Hopi reservation had heard that Lilly’s mother died, but had no proof or details. But Lilly and her grandparents had never heard from her again, and neither of them had bothered trying to find any more information about her.

Her grandfather was a strong, formidable man. When her grandmother was alive, he’d treated her as if she were made of solid gold, but Grandma still let him make all the decisions. Lilly was not looking for one of those old-world tribal relationships either—one of the reasons that when she did date, which was rare, she stuck to the beige race and avoided those too-hot-to-handle Native men.

She’d been in love with a Navajo once. She had been a mere child of thirteen and he’d been eighteen. He’d pressed every button she had—he was a temptation so powerful she had defied her grandfather to be with him. But she’d gotten much more than she could handle. And when their relationship had met its tragic end, she swore she’d never be tempted by another like him. Never.

No doubt that was why the sudden appearance of Clay shook her. He was at least equal in handsomeness to that long-ago boy who had devastated her. No, not equal. Clay might have been the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. Huge. Powerful. Exotic.

Lilly drove the pickup around yet another curve en route back to the feed warehouse when she came upon something that caught her attention—a black mound in the grass on the other side of a poorly maintained barbed wire fence. A horse, lying on the ground. It was not an altogether unusual sight, but Lilly slowed. As she neared, she kept sensing that something was not right about this. Then she saw the horse thrashing on the ground.

When Lilly and her grandparents had lived back on the Hopi reservation, she’d been around her neighbor’s horses a great deal, and had done a lot of riding as a young girl. But since Lilly and her grandfather had moved to California when Lilly was thirteen she’d been around feed more often than the animals that ate it. Her grandfather had bought the feed and grain business, but he didn’t keep any livestock. She rode rarely now, and only in the last couple of years, but she still remembered a lot about horses.

She pulled onto the shoulder and watched the horse. The mare jolted suddenly, rolled a bit, then stood and attempted to stretch out, curling her lip and pawing at the ground with her front hooves and kicking with her hind. Then down she went again.

Shit, Lilly thought. That horse was sick. Very sick. The only house in sight was on the wrong side of the road, but maybe someone there could direct her to the owners of this pasture, this horse. She went to the house, and an unshaven man in a T-shirt answered the door. He didn’t know the name of the horse’s owner, but he knew where it came from. He gave her directions up the road to the next turnoff and another quarter mile to an old farmhouse and barn. She went quickly, and what she found there stunned and confused her.

She called Dr. Jensen’s cell phone at once. “Nathaniel, I found a sick mare by the side of the road and the owner’s property is deserted. It looks abandoned. No one in the house, all the furniture’s gone, a couple of real skinny dogs are hanging out around the barn, the feed bin’s half-full of grain and trough’s empty. The horse is rolling, kicking, curling, sweating …”

“Where are you, Lilly?”

“Off 36 and Bell Road at a crossroad called Mercury Pass, but there’s no road sign. A neighbor directed me to this old farmhouse. The horse is rolling around just off Bell near 36.”

“I know the property,” Nathaniel said. “That’s the Jeromes'. As far as I know, they just had the one horse—a twelve-year-old black mare. But I haven’t been out there in about a year … maybe longer.”

She was, in fact, a very pretty black mare with back stockings and a diamond on her forehead. “That’s her. She’s a beauty. And she’s in a bad way.”

“I’ll be there soon as I can,” he said, clicking off.

Lilly wanted to get back to the horse, but she couldn’t resist a quick check of the barn and around the outside to be sure there weren’t any other casualties—horses, goats, cows or chickens. The small corral was neglected and full of manure, the barn was a filthy mess, manure and trash littering the place. There was no gear for the horse in the barn that she could see, no bridle, saddle or grooming gear. Behind the barn she found a chicken coop, the door left open, a few broken shells on the ground and a lot of scattered feathers. Had the chickens been left as food for the pumas, coyotes and wild dogs?

She’d seen enough. She jumped in the truck and sped back to the roadside. The horse was up again, stretching out her legs and curling her lip. She was in abdominal pain—that was clear. She kicked at her midsection a little, unsuccessfully, and then she was on the ground again, rolling around before lying listless and sweating. Lilly jumped the fence and kneeled at the horse’s head, stroking her snout and murmuring that everything would be all right, though she wasn’t the least confident about that.

It seemed an eternity before she saw a truck pulling a horse trailer come into view. When it came closer she saw that Nathaniel had brought his new assistant with him. Just as they were getting out of the truck the horse was struggling to her feet again, going through all the same motions.

“What’s going on here, Lilly?” Nathaniel asked. He braced both hands on a fence post and leaped over the barbed wire while Clay went to the back of the horse trailer and opened it up, lowering the ramp.

“She’s acting like colic, Doc. And like she’s had it awhile.”

“You find anyone around the Jeromes'?”

“No. It’s like they ran off. There was a chicken coop behind the barn, door standing open, broken eggs and a lot of feathers. You don’t suppose …?”

“That they left the horse in the pasture, the henhouse door open, the dogs to fend for themselves?” Nathaniel pulled back the horse’s lips to look at her gums. He listened to her stomach for gut sounds and felt her tight belly, an action that made her prance a little. “This sort of thing hasn’t happened in such numbers since the Depression, or so my dad tells me. With unemployment so high and money so tight, folks are faced with hard choices. Sometimes they have to decide between feeding their kids or their animals. Some abandon their property, mortgages and animals and just look for shelter.”

“They took their furniture,” she said. “The house is empty. So is the grain bin and trough. Think it’s possible they put out the last of the feed and left some water for this horse and she gorged herself?”

“Anything is possible. A few weeks ago some folks from downriver found a dead seven-year-old gelding by the road, starved. I didn’t know the horse. Someone who couldn’t afford to keep it might’ve taken it to an empty pasture and left him, hoping it would be rescued.”

“They couldn’t've sold him?”

“In this economy? It’s tough.”

Clay joined them, a halter and lead rope in his hand. Nate took them from him and said, “You mind fetching my bag, Clay? And please, draw up 10cc of Banamine.”

“Got it,” he said.

“What can you do, Nate?” she asked him.

“I’ll get her temperature, make sure she’s not diseased. They could’ve poisoned her to put her down before leaving her, but I’d be surprised by that. Most folks who run into situations that force them to leave their animals behind hope for the best. If we have advanced colic, I’ll give her some Banamine for the pain, run a stomach tube into her and administer some mineral oil, see if that moves things along. If it’s an intestinal twist and she needs surgery… well, let’s hope it’s a blockage …”

Lilly bit her lip; she understood. Nathaniel couldn’t do surgery, hospitalize the equine patient and care for her while she was at great risk of expiring. She was an orphan. No vet could afford a lot of expensive charity cases.

When Clay returned with the bag and drug, Lilly stepped back out of their way and marveled at the way they worked together. Clay wasn’t flirting now; he was focused on the horse and assisting his vet. Over the course of about thirty minutes, the animal was agitated, stretching and kicking. Clay had the halter on her and held the lead rope so he could control her movements somewhat, keeping her upright so she wouldn’t twist her intestines, but he mainly stroked her and held her as motionless as possible while Nathaniel first completed his exam and then injected her with Banamine. That seemed to almost immediately quiet the animal. But she wasn’t real crazy about the stomach tube that was run down her throat.

It was amazing the way Clay and Nathaniel worked together, as if they’d been in this situation a hundred times before. When the mare was resisting the tubing, Lilly stepped forward to help in some way, but Clay’s hand came up, palm toward her. “No, Lilly. She’s in pain and when she’s thrashing, she could kick you. Stay back, please,” he said quietly, calmly.

After the mineral oil was infused and the tubing removed, the horse moved as though she’d go down again, but Nathaniel instructed Clay to try to keep her up, walking her slowly and quietly. If she continued rolling around on the ground, she increased the chances of twisting her intestines into a knot.

“Will you take her to your stable?” Lilly asked Nate.

“Not anytime soon,” he said. “Maybe later, if the oil works on loosening up a blockage. The truth? This horse is lucky if it’s a blockage and there’s a little movement because putting her in the trailer in her condition isn’t going to be good for me or her—she’s bound to kick it into tin cans or hurt herself as she struggles to ease the pain in her belly.”