“I need to see Muddy,” David said as Galen pulled into the fairgrounds and parked. “I barely got a look at him yesterday.”
“They’ll be here at two. The boys practice on Monday and Wednesday afternoons.”
And they didn’t bother to ask if it was okay for Kylan to rope on Muddy? David beat down his anger, grasping at his rapidly diminishing patience. The kid needed time to accept that he had to let Muddy go. It had been less than twenty-four hours since David had sprung the truth on them. It only felt like an eternity.
“I’ll see you at two,” David said, and climbed out of Galen’s pickup. As he walked to his trailer, his phone rang. “Hey, Sis.”
“Why don’t Mom and Dad know about Muddy yet?” she demanded. “I just talked to them, and they have no idea.”
“It got complicated.” David explained the situation and then held the phone at arm’s length while she raged.
She finally sputtered into silence. Then she hissed out a breath. “You want me to call our lawyer?”
“Hiring him would cost more than the reward.”
“Better to pay out legal fees than let them blackmail you.”
David smiled because it was exactly what he’d expected her to say, and it felt good to know she was ready to kick ass and take names on his behalf. “There’s a shock. You, ready for a fight.”
“They started it.” She paused for a weighted moment. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna sit back and take this! Let them win?”
He climbed into the trailer and shut the door behind him. “It’s not a contest, and no matter what, the kid loses. Paying the reward might be worth it in the big picture.”
“The big…” Air exploded out of her like a punctured tire. “Oh, dear God. Not another one of your damn curses. For a reasonably intelligent human being…” She sucked in an audible breath before going on with her standard rant. “You know these things are self-fulfilling prophecies, right? You decide you’ve been hexed, and your subconscious trips you up and makes it come true.”
David took a slurp of his Coke, making his tone nonchalant because he knew it would wind her up even tighter. “My luck has been running cold for a month. There’s no way I’m gonna risk making it worse by screwing over a kid.”
“Geezus, David. You found Muddy. Don’t you think that’s one hellacious big sign your luck is changing?”
“Yep. And that’s exactly why I’m not taking any chances on messing it up again.”
She made a noise like she was choking on a really bad word. “Honest to God. Next time you’re home, I’m scheduling an exorcism, because I don’t know what the hell possesses you sometimes.” She took a deep breath and a moment to calm down, and her voice leveled out. “Do you need a loan?”
“Yeah, but I’m gonna start at the bank.”
“We can help—”
“No. Things are tight enough at the ranch as it is.”
“Don’t be stupid. This is Muddy. Once you’ve got him under you, you’ll win it back soon enough.”
“That’s what I thought before.”
“You weren’t riding Muddy then.”
“You said yourself there’s no guarantee.” David polished off the last french fry and wadded up the paper sleeve. “Muddy might not be what he was. And even if he is, anything could happen. He could get hurt or sick, or I could. Five grand buys a lot of hay, Sis, and you don’t know how much you’re gonna need, the way things are going.”
She was quiet long enough that he knew he’d won…for now. “That’s why you haven’t told Mom and Dad. Because you want to find the money first.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you’d better make it quick. Word’s gonna get out.”
“I know.”
“Call me if there’s any way I can help.”
“I will.”
He called the bank next and caught the manager just getting back from a late lunch. Byron was thrilled to hear the news about Muddy, but his enthusiasm faded when David explained what he needed.
“Well, sure, we could loan you the money if you put Muddy up for collateral, but we’ll need a vet inspection to be sure he’s sound, and proof that it is the same horse. And you’ll have to have him fully insured, with the bank named as a lien holder.”
Which meant he wouldn’t have the choice of saying no if there was ever another claim to be filed.
David swallowed hard. “Okay.”
Byron hesitated and then sighed. “You know if it was up to me, I’d write you a check right now, David. But with your credit scores, management won’t give me any wiggle room. I can’t approve the loan while Muddy is a thousand miles away. You’ll have to bring him home.”
And he couldn’t take Muddy until he had the money. So there went that plan.
“If your parents cosign—” Byron began.
“I was trying to avoid that. And I’d rather they didn’t know we’d talked about this.”
Byron sighed again. “I understand. I wish I could bend the rules, but things are really tight for us, too. The longer this drought goes on, the harder it is for people to make their loan payments.”
And some were losing the battle, which put a dent in the bank’s bottom line and made them less inclined to take even a small risk.
“Well, thanks anyway,” David said, his voice stiff with disappointment. “I’ll let you know if I figure something out.”
“Do that. Call me at home if you need to. I’ll push the paperwork through as fast as I can.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
David hung up and flopped back on his couch to stare glumly up at the ceiling. He was probably being stupid about the loan. In the great scheme of things, five thousand dollars wasn’t much money for his parents to borrow. It wouldn’t make or break the ranch. But the thought made cold dread curl in his gut, even as he told himself it wasn’t logical.
Borrowing against his future with Muddy felt like asking for trouble, daring fate to do its worst. And, yeah, his sister was probably right. He could be crossing the line from superstition to paranoia, but now was not the time to test the boundaries.
He nursed the last of his Coke and called Rusty Chapman but got the answering machine. He put in three other calls and got to talk to live bodies, but none of them knew of a horse that would fit both Kylan’s needs and his budget.
By the time David hung up on the last call, a motley collection of rigs had begun to straggle into the fairgrounds, starting with a rusty, open-sided stock trailer pulled by a mud-caked Dodge dually with one fender tied on with a rope. It backed up to the catch pens behind the roping chutes, and a man around Galen’s age bailed out to dump a dozen longhorn roping calves into the alley.
David studied every rig as it arrived, pacing circles in his living quarters, his nerves jumping. One after another, the pickups pulled into line, parked and unloaded, but none of the occupants was Mary or Kylan, and none of the horses was a mud-brown gelding with attitude to spare.
Finally, an older Ford dually pulling a bumper-tow trailer rolled in from west of town and turned into the driveway. David’s heart did a quick, hard knock when it got close enough for him to see the driver. Mary was at the wheel, and Kylan slouched so low in the passenger’s seat the top of his head was barely visible.
David tossed his Coke cup into the sink and headed outside. They weren’t putting him off any longer. He would get his hands on Muddy, and there wasn’t a damn thing they could do to stop him.
Mary met him twenty yards from the pickup, feet braced, shoulders squared, making it clear he’d have to go through her. She’d changed into a black-hooded sweatshirt with Browning Indians scrolled on the front in red. Paired with black jeans and the expression on her face, the outfit made her look like a very small, very determined ninja.
Hooves thudded on rubber, and David’s attention jumped to the trailer as Muddy ejected from the back, scrambling out like the rig was on fire. He flung his head up to survey the rodeo grounds, nostrils flared, his body language screaming, “Bring it on.”
David’s throat knotted at the familiar arrogance. He was just so…Muddy.
“I need to see my horse,” he said, the words coming out sharper, more demanding than he’d intended.
Mary’s jaw tightened. “You’re not gonna find a mark on him that wasn’t there when we bought him.”
“What do you mean? What was wrong with him when you got him?” David asked, alarm bells ringing in his head as he remembered the chaos of the night Muddy had escaped. Had he been cut? Injured?
“Nothing,” Mary said with an impatient glare. “He was fine. He’s still fine. Just that old scar on his shoulder.”
“He hasn’t been lame?”
“Not a step.”
Relief plastered a smile across his face. “Oh. Well, that’s good to hear.”
Mary stared at him for a beat, eyes narrowed. Then her posture softened and she stepped back, turning as Kylan led the horse around from behind the trailer. The kid was shorter than David had first thought, his skin almost the same shade as Muddy’s coat. His stick-straight, jet-black hair poked out from under his hat at odd angles, like a scarecrow’s straw wig. His shirt was half untucked again, his jeans hung too loose on his hips, his baseball cap was slightly crooked. Not enough to be a fashion statement, just like he hadn’t quite got it on straight. Even his movements were loose, as if someone had forgotten to tighten all the screws in his joints.
He stopped dead when he saw David. “What?”
“Could you hold him there for a minute?” Mary asked. “David wants to check him out.”
Kylan clenched his hands, his mouth quivering as if he wanted to shout no, but he ducked his head and stepped away to the end of the lead rope, refusing to look at David. “Whatever.”
David eased close, reality smacking him square in the chin, turning his knees to rubber now that Muddy was finally within reach. His voice had an embarrassing hitch when he said, “Hey, buddy.”
Muddy’s ears dropped back, and he narrowed his eyes like he was saying “Oh. It’s you.”
David choked out a laugh. “What, you didn’t miss me?”
He laid a hand on Muddy’s neck, savoring the warm, silky hide, laughing again when Muddy shook his head, annoyed. David slid his palm over Muddy’s withers, down his back, onto his hip. Muddy cocked his hind leg and gave a warning swipe, but David knew enough to keep his body angled well clear.
He smacked the horse lightly on the rump. “Still up to that old trick, I see.”
Muddy craned his head around to glare but let the foot drop. David bent to slide his hand down, fingers probing bone and tendon. After picking up the foot, studying the hoof and the steel shoe, he set it down and repeated the process with the other hind leg, then the nearest front.
Muddy let out a loud, aggravated sigh, making it clear he was only tolerating the inspection because it wasn’t worth his effort to fight it.
“Like I told you, he’s fine,” Mary said, a softness in her voice David hadn’t heard before.
“Unbelievable.” David gave a single shake of his head. “If you’d seen the way he tore out of that parking lot in Cody…”
“I can imagine. He doesn’t do anything half speed.” She smiled. David smiled back, and there was a sizzle and pop in the air between them, two live wires connecting. Mary flinched. David jerked his gaze away, back to Muddy. He picked up the second front hoof, tilting it to inspect the sole, the set of the shoe.
“His feet were pretty bad when he came,” Mary said. “Took a while to get them shaped up.”
“I’ll bet, if he ran barefoot for two years. He’s always been prone to quarter cracks.” David put the foot down and stepped back, frowning. “He’s set kinda low in the heels.”
“Our horseshoer thought it would help him slide more when he stops,” Mary said.
Slide? Muddy? What the hell? David scowled at her. “You’ve been messing with his stop?”
Mary bristled. “We wanted to free him up a little. He’s so quick… It’s hard on someone like Kylan who’s still learning.”
“I didn’t train him to be a kid horse,” David shot back.
Kylan made a choked noise, dropped the halter rope, and fled around the back of the trailer. Mary glared daggers at David as she grabbed the loose rope before Muddy could take advantage.
Shit. David gave himself a mental kick in the ass. He’d forgotten the kid was standing there. He glanced toward the arena, the curious faces watching, waiting to see how this little drama would play out.
“I suppose you want to ride him,” Mary said, her voice as rigid as her posture.
More than he wanted his next breath, but not here. Not now. If he got choked up just petting the damn horse, who knew how he’d react the first time he got back on Muddy. His luck, he’d start blubbering, and that would end up all over Facebook, too.
Plus, it would be one more kick in the teeth for Kylan in front of all his friends.
“Later,” David said. He turned, walked away fast, every fiber of his being screaming in protest at leaving Muddy in Mary’s hands. One more day, max. Whatever it took, he’d have his horse back tomorrow.