Chapter 16

A GIANT TRUCK WITH TANKS OF propane and oil backed up to the cinder-block section on the far side of the barn, and a bearded man, clean-shaven in the mustache area, began unloading sacks of coal coke. I imagined Ivy had paid extra to motivate a Sunday delivery. After she let me off the four-wheeler and headed for the house, I went for the barn and saw Stuckey. Charley pushed himself hard into the back of my leg. Stuckey dusted himself from the dirt four-wheeling had coated him in, then paid the delivery-man in cash. Delivery Man didn’t tarry, just got in his truck and roared out.

Stuckey and I dumped plenty of coke in the forge and lit her up. We’d need to wait for the heat to build, but Charley pushed himself into the far corner of the room while Stuckey fetched Ivy’s big Appaloosa mare.

In order to shoe as close to the forge as possible, I had Stuckey bring the horse down the barn aisle, at the end that opened into the cinder-block add-on. Logistically, it was a shorter carry to bring my gear in from Ol’ Blue through what they called the smoke-house, rather than carry it all the way down the long barn aisle, so I went through the anteroom where the slaughtered pig had been hanging the day before and wondered who had dealt with the carcass and when. It was gone. The dark room had the scent of damp concrete. It had been hosed clean. I brought my anvil stand, hoof stand, and chaps in, placing the stand between the forge and the doorway to the barn aisle.

The barn wall by the doorway to the forge room had a tie ring, plus there were cross-ties hanging on each side of the aisle, but Stuckey just dropped the Appy’s thick cotton lead rope. The mare was the kind who would reliably ground tie. She had wise eyes, full of kindness and reserve. I stroked her neck respectfully and enjoyed her good scent. While I put my chaps on, I considered her hoof angles and wear.

My work chaps—some call it an apron but the rest of us call them chaps, because who wants their work clothes to sound like a cook’s?—are homemade, Utah-style. Each leg is shaped like the state of Utah, then stitched together at the flap. According to the road map behind Ol’ Blue’s seat back, the flap covers everything north of Salt Lake City when talking the state and everything east, west, and over the jeans’ zipper when talking my shoeing chaps. And I’d stitched them right onto a good back support, with my four-dollar awl.

Stuckey hadn’t put any leg protection on. Apparently, he just shod in his jeans. And he had no propane forge, yet they’d never used this wonderful old coke-burning forge.

“Horseshoers can make good money,” he said.

“Stuckey, this job isn’t going to please your folks, and it isn’t going to get you a lot of prestige with a whole lot of people. And you won’t get any better at anything they ever tried to teach you in regular school.”

“Like what?”

“You know, like when they taught you the three Rs.”

“If I could spell and use grammar, I might not become a shoer,” Stuckey admitted, “but then I wouldn’t get to learn horseshoeing neither.”

A fella with logic like that has potential. As a shoer.

I pointed at the microscope on the counter by the big sink in the forge room’s corner. “Where’d that come from?”

Stuckey scratched his head. “Something to do with worming horses.”

I nodded, happy, realizing I liked it when one person confirmed something someone else said. Then I frowned. Nobody goes around confirming what one person said with another unless there’s a basic lack of trust.

“Is Ivy good to work for?” I asked, trying to make my voice sound conversational.

Stuckey’s head bobbed up and down immediately. “She’s real good to us. On my vacation, she paid the tuition for me to go to shoeing school.”

That information made my eyebrows take a quick hike up my forehead. My shoeing school had taken two years. Just how long a vacation did ranch hands get around here?

I knocked the Appy’s left front shoe off in a few seconds of work with the cheapie rasp and third-class pull-offs Stuckey produced from the plastic bucket where he kept his tool collection. Then I waited and waited while Stuckey worked on removing the right front while he talked to me about both weeks of his shoeing school.

A two-week wonder, Stuckey was.

Two weeks of training does not a horseshoer make. I stepped through to the forge room, fetched my good hand tools and four fresh shoes, leaving a pair at the edge of the fire on my way to depositing my toolbox by the horse. I was away again in an instant for my last trip, hefting my 112-pound anvil from Ol’ Blue through the back of the smokehouse to my anvil stand, when a one-ton truck pulled up at the open end of the barn aisle.

The Appaloosa tilted her head to look but didn’t so much as shift a hoof while she checked behind herself. However, the distraction proved more than my shoeing mentee could resist while I jumped in and removed both hind shoes, which are a little more dangerous than the fronts.

“I’ll go see,” Stuckey strode down the barn aisle with interest while I got to work like a shoeing demon, trimming the mare as I shed her old shoes, slipping a shoe back into the fire in between balancing the fronts, banging on hot metal and even getting the left fore nailed on.

I was burning on the second hot shoe when Stuckey returned from his visiting with the male voices mumbling down at the open end of the barn in between grunting and hefting bales of hay, pausing only long enough to pass some smokes between them. Didn’t they know the taboo about smoking in a barn?

“It’s the hay delivery,” Stuckey reported, now wearing a cigarette behind one ear. “They’ll stack it. Hey, you’re almost half-done.”

“Yessir,” I said, releasing the hoof between my knees.

“The last person I called ‘sir,’” Stuckey said, with an enormous grin, “was that big gal bucking hay. And it made her mad when I did it.”

At my water bucket, I gave the shoe a good dunking. After I set the first two nails on the last shoe, Stuckey tapped the final nails in. I looked and considered the burly woman at the other end of the barn, slamming her hay hooks into big bales along with the man working beside her. She paid me no never mind, neither of the hay stackers did, but it looked like they had quite a bit of work in front of them. Ivy had ordered tons of sweet-smelling alfalfa-mix.

Stuckey and I finished the mare together. It was clear he’d never done hot shoeing, and certainly never worked fast enough to earn any money at this. After he led the Appy away, Stuckey fetched Decker, the bay I’d ridden that morning and the day before.

“Decker’s not due,” I said. I’d checked the horse’s feet as a matter of course before I ever mounted up yesterday. “What about that chromey colt in the end stall on the other side of the aisle?”

Stuckey fetched another halter and brought back the flashy chestnut with a flaxen mane and tail, and long, chipped hooves. He whoa’d it where the Appy had been, within a stride of my tool-box. I left the forge and considered the straight legs in front of me, the strong, but untended hooves.

“Good-looking horse,” I said. The colt was nicely proportioned, perfect angles in the geometry that creates a good hip and shoulder, with straight legs, but it was his white face and four white stockings that stretched up well above his knees that most people would have noticed. I thought of the fourth horse I’d seen on this ranch. “Does that buckskin belong to Gabe?”

Stuckey gave a vigorous shake of his head. “It’s Ivy’s. Everything is.”

Ivy liked flash. That bright blood bay Decker was the plainest horse on the property. It had taken me too long to notice.

“Who put those last shoes on the buckskin?” It was a good job, those clipped shoes, egg bars on the front, making me think someone thought the horse had a little navicular.

“He came that way. He’s new.” Then Stuckey asked, real bright-like, “You got horses?”

It would have taken me four heats to get that buckskin’s shoes shaped, then forge welded. Jeez, I’ve got to get a new forge. Sometimes, I’m embarrassed by my beater hotbox, especially now that I’m a much better established shoer than when I first became a real journeyman. Now I buy better rasps that last a good forty horses and have Cadillac-quality nippers. But, oh, my forge. Slow to heat, slow to cool, inconsistent, and clumsy to boot. I’d relined it with new fire brick, but it didn’t help enough. I’d bought it used, and it’s plainly been used hard and was never that great a forge to begin with. For next-level work like building egg bars and heart bars and needing to pull clips, my forge does an only okay job. I long for an ass-kicking—oops, fanny-frying, is what I mean—super good, fast-heating, efficient, larger-capacity professional forge. Doesn’t everybody?

Horse folk can understand a conversation drawn out over a forge, and I answered about my horses after working metal. “A good Quarter Horse. A young Quarab. Plus, we’re letting a Belgian rehab at our place.”

“What was that middle one you said?”

“Quarab. Half Quarter Horse, half Arab.”

“An Arab?” Stuckey pronounced the breed “AY-rab,” like a dirty word, the way some folks say EYE-talian.

“Truth is, he’s not my horse anyways, he’s my fiancé’s.”

A burly male voice hollered down the barn aisle, making several horses snort and whirl in their stalls and the run-out paddocks. “Yo, Stuckey? Yo!”

“Smokehouse,” Stuckey hollered back, his voice echoing a bit in the cinder-block cell encasing us.

A black cowboy hat poked through the top of the doorway, followed by a young man’s friendly, unshaven face. He looked barely able to legally buy alcohol. “Hey Stuckey, when’d you get out of jail?”

Stuckey shot me a look. “He’s joshing. I ain’t been in jail. Not really. Just the weekend.”

Black Hat grinned, eyed the fire in the open forge, and tipped his hat at me. “Robbie Duffman. Folks call me Duffy.”

I offered my right paw. “Rainy Dale.” I made myself act all casual as I waited to see his tools. If he’d been the one to attack me at the bull sale, and if he’d seen Ol’ Blue when he pulled up to Ivy’s barn, he might be smart enough to not pull out my stolen track nippers, crease nail pullers, or nail cutters. Rasps are more generic, but mine are a top-of-the-line brand. I’d wait this out.

Duffy said, “Gabe called. Said you guys were going to light up the forge.”

Hard to describe the scent a good coke fire makes, and maybe only a horseshoer would understand that heat can have a scent, but all of us who like to move metal and outfit a hoof just exactly right are drawn to lighting up an open forge.

Stuckey poked the fire with my tongs. “Duffy went to the same shoeing school as me.”

“At the same time?” I pulled the tongs out of the coals. Tongs are meant for grabbing a horseshoe. No tool should just cook in a coke fire. I can’t cotton to tools being mistreated or misused.

Duffy waved the idea away like a buzzing fly. “I went last year. Been working on my own ever since. Me and Stuckey were going to be partners.”

When he said “partners” I wondered for a split second if he meant, well, like wink-wink partners. Good for them. I didn’t need to be distracted and yet something else he said drug my mind from what I ought to have been paying attention to. “You got out of school last year?”

With a nod, this Duffy character owned up to my accusation.

“Got good tools?” I asked.

“Some.”

With a good metallic clunk, he dropped the foot-and-a-half chunk of railroad track he’d had tucked under his left arm. I realized it was what he used for an anvil. I’d been precious low on tools myself when I first started. This new punk was a lot like me a scant few years back, but maybe nicer. Not that I’m so mean, but managing not to say anything smart-alecky about Duffy’s worldly experience took some effort. For sure, I’d need to bide my time to get a glimpse of his hardware. I cleared my throat and dealt with the other problem.

“I don’t want to step on your toes,” I said. “I owed Ivy a favor ’cause she let me stay here last night and fed me, too. If my shoeing for her means taking food off your table, then I’ll step aside.”

Duffy’s head shake made it plain he took no offense to another shoer being there. “Nah, it’s not like that. We can all pitch in.”

Chromey threw a fit about having his feet handled. Not kicking, but dancing away, shuffling, and yanking his hooves from our hands no matter who tried which hoof.

The colt was spoiled, not standing politely when vehicles came and went beyond the barn aisle, taking little nips like no one had ever taught him enough manners to stand with patience while his feet were worked on. The second time he made to put his teeth on me, I growled like a truly put-out demon and popped him with my hand cupped against his shoulder to make a good loud clap. We had no more of that nipping business, but still had a dancing horse. It was bad enough for me leave the barn to get my secret weapon from Ol’ Blue. When I brought my roll of duct tape back through the smokehouse, I made a ten-inch strip mostly doubled up and pressed the short sticky end to Chromey’s nose, letting the long chunk of tape dangle over his muzzle. He found his manners and stood like a champ. After I cleaned Chromey’s left front, Stuckey set to cleaning out the other hooves. I’d have rather trimmed that first foot as long as I had it between my knees.

“What the hell’s that all about?” Duffy pointed at the duct tape strip dangling off the now-placid Chromey’s velvet nose.

“No one knows,” I admitted. “But sometimes it just works.”

Duffy moved to the colt’s hind end, waiting for a turn.

This was going to take a while.

I’d about decided that Chromey was bored, too, as the employees here seemed to use four-wheelers a lot more than horses for their ranch work. Duffy didn’t have crease nail pullers or nail cutters handy to remove a shoe, but then, we weren’t pulling old shoes off Chromey. The rasp he used was second rate, though.

“You have to get it flat,” Duffy reminded Stuckey while he took uneven chunks out of Chromey’s toe with a pair of Diamond nippers he brought from his truck.

“You’re young enough to know everything,” I told him. The oldtimey ranch shoer I had worked with for a year had said it to me, and I’d been itching to use it on someone ever since. So, I dished it out. But I was supposed to be mentoring, so I talked aloud about medial-lateral balance and bringing the heels back and debriding the seat of the corn. Though these boys were smarter and more experienced than a box of nails, it took some work to notice the fact.

“Saw the cop cars,” Duffy said. “Gabe said someone like found a body or something out on the ranch somewhere.”

“Yeah,” Stuckey said.

“That’s kind of cool.” Duffy’s judgment came with another grin. “They figure out who it is?”

Stuckey wiped his forehead as his words burst out. “Man, this morning when I heard a body got dug up, I thought …” He stopped himself and frowned. “Gabe said they think it’s a guy who used to work here. Vincent.”

I paused in trimming and balancing Chromey’s left front hoof. “Wasn’t his name Vicen—”

“I know,” Stuckey said. “I ain’t stupid.”

Duffy honked a laugh. “We putting that to a vote?” He dropped the horse’s leg when he was done with it, nothing gentle to the motion, and Chromey threw his head up in response.

“I’m not dumb,” Stuckey said, defensiveness rising in his voice. “It’s just a joke, calling him Vincent.” He lifted his chin to Duffy and pointed at me. “She’s marrying a guy who’s got an Ay-rab.”

“Bah, Arabs,” Duffy said. “They’re so narrow-chested, both front legs come out the same hole up.”

“What you got for horses?” I figured he’d say he owned Quarter Horses, but the answer surprised me.

“None. They’re hay burners.”

I’ve heard this weird thing in some people’s voices before, that they don’t like horses. I heard it now.

“Why’re you a shoer?” I’d wanted to ask why he was trying to be a shoer, but a little diplomacy might make the middle of my day smooth out.

“Why’re you?” Duffy asked.

“I get a kick out of it.” Getting quizzed on why I’m a shoer is pretty common, but it’s a bit weird from a baby-shoer who doesn’t like horses. And wit like mine is mighty sad to waste, but I fear it was unrecognized in the present circumstances. I turned and asked Stuckey, “You got a Shod Wand we could bonk this Chromey colt on the head with?”

He frowned and answered slowly, “I don’t think we have one of those.”

Speedy on the uptake, Stuckey wasn’t.

Duffy laughed. “Stuckey’s so green he hardly knows which end of a hammer to hold.”

I tried again. “Fellas, the shoe fairy ain’t going to show up and finish this horse for us. You want to gab or shoe something?”

“Oh, um, shoe something.” Stuckey gave a game smile that showed he knew he’d been ribbed hard and was used to taking it. “Yeah, let’s shoe.”

And I felt like a bully, probably ’cause I’d been acting like one. I got nicer, talked about getting efficient with motion to go faster, when to put a shoe in the fire, when to get it out and fit it.

Now and again, we could hear someone—Gabe, I figured—pushing a wheelbarrow from one paddock to another, apparently picking up manure, but we stayed on task.

“The anvil is a heat sucker,” I told Stuckey. “Keep that shoe off it ’til you’re ready to shape it.”

I gave them all the time we needed to get Chromey shod. It was good for the horse and the humans.

“I’ll finish him,” Duffy said when the second shoe was needing just one more nail to be ready to finish the clinches.

Duffy’s clinching was ugly—too long and unevenly folded.

He noticed the difference, too, eyeing the foot I’d finished. “Maybe yours come out better because of how you squint or bite your lip or something.”

“That’s probably it,” I agreed.

There was no way Robbie Duffman was making a living as a shoer.

***

By the time we finished Chromey, Duffy said he was going to blow off. That wasn’t a speedy process—male voices did a good deal of loud jaw-jacking and revved engine sounds at the open end of the barn aisle while I hauled my gear out to Ol’ Blue through the cinder-block end of the barn.

The police vehicles were mostly gone, and the beater green Ford Bronco was back, pulled up beside Ol’ Blue. When I brought my anvil to my tailgate, I paid enough attention to hear the Bronco’s engine crackling with the sound of cooling metal. It hadn’t been there long. I looked around after I pushed the anvil in.

Gabe was striding across the bunkhouse porch. I hurried after him. The back of his shirt and jeans were dirty, like he’d been rolling around in the barn aisle or some such. Maybe he’d been around a while and he’d helped unload the hay delivery. Or maybe not.

“You and Stuckey go at it again?” I asked, just loud enough, right behind his dirty back and butt.

“Beg pardon?” Gabe turned, took in how I’d been looking at the dirt on the back of his clothes, and brushed at it with one leather-gloved hand.

I stood a good ten feet from him and didn’t come any closer. “I know you hit Stuckey this morning.”

And I knew the police were watching this place for drugs and someone had put Vicente Arriaga in the ground and Stuckey didn’t seem like the brains of whatever underhanded business was going on at this outfit.

Gabe looked me square in the eye without flinching. “And I know he hit you the morning before.”

My jaw dropped. “You think Stuckey’s the one who went after me at the Black Bluff bull sale yesterday?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Gabe tugged on the front of his hat and gave me a nod. “I’m sure of it. Stuckey jumped you.”