Maria
took her cell phone out of her blazer pocket and called Dixon
Wraithmire. She walked down the barn
runway toward the house which clicked her into voicemail after three rings. She dialed again as she stepped out of the
rear door. At the same time she noticed
another one-story building with a drive in door and shed roof that was completely hidden from the front
of the barn.
She heard a ring she recognized as a cell phone tune. Somebody had to be in that building. Maybe Dixon . She geared up to give him a piece of her
mind.
From the
continued fragrance of horse, this was a separated stall area, which could only
mean the stud barn. No breeder in the
world would keep breeding stallions in amongst mares. When mares came into heat, studs could lose
their minds and tear down walls. Could
hurt mares, damage themselves, waste their extremely valuable championship
sperm. Stud fees ran into thousands of
dollars. Sometimes hundreds of thousands
of dollars.
Maria slid
the drive-in door open enough to see an entirely black interior. A horse began thrashing, whinnying. She pulled the big doors wide open and
hurried to the noise.
A blue black sixteen hand Tennessee Walker in all his magnificence,
towered over her, his head thrown up, white scelera around his black eyes
exposed in panic. Or passion? He kicked the stall door, which had a two-by
six wooden lower half. The top was jail
bars. He snuffled toward her, neck
arched, ready for war, then snorted. Reared, kicked at the walls, which Maria noticed were padded with rubber cushions somebody had been nibbling on. "Mr. Ambling Man" was posted over his door.
She scanned
the barn for anything edible, hoping to calm him. Seeing the lightswitch, she hurried to flick
it up.
Donna
walked calmly into the barn with a huge handful of green grass. “I picked this just for you, my man,” she
said to the horse as she offered it over.
“I could hear the commotion from next door.”
Maria
breathed in, grateful somebody was there to help who knew what she was doing,
and proceeded to the next stalls. Two
doors down, another horse, “Silver Strutter,” posted over his stall door, was
hunched under a blanket at the back of a stall with his head stuck into the
corner, nose down. Horses always ran to
see what was going on when somebody entered a barn, so Maria dreaded whatever might be wrong with Silver
Strutter. She mashed her face up to the
bars to see better inside. The
edge of a human leg wearing a western boot and denim jeans was visible. She ran through the barn looking for a feed
room and found one locked. Another room
held tack and thankfully somebody had left a bag of oats in the corner with a
coffee can inside. She grabbed a beat up
wash tub and poured in some oats then hurried back to Silver Strutter’s stall
to attract his attention, hoping to not get killed when she stepped inside. “Donna, call 911, there’s a person down in
this stall.”
“God save
us,” Donna said and pulled out her cell phone as she patted the nose of
Mr. Ambling Man.
“There’s
some oats in the tack room,” Maria told Donna, who nodded her head as she
walked past Maria.
She
cautiously opened the stall door and shook the pan of oats toward the stallion. He finally turned his head to look at her and snuffled. He was not impressed, but moved around to
face her as he approached the pan. He
didn’t look like a killer horse when he stuck his head in and lipped the
oats. She counted herself lucky he wore
a halter so she didn’t have to put one on him.
“I don’t
think we should take him out of the stall,” she said to her new best friend
Donna as she neared after the tedious call to 911.
“It might
get a little crowded in there with a killer horse a hurt man and you. “Cause I’m not going inside with him.”
“Okay, then
we’ve got to take him out. We’ll move
him to the next stall down. That way
maybe if Mr. Ambling Man doesn’t see
him, he won’t get more upset. She
clipped a lead from the outside stall hook onto Silver Strutter’s halter and
opened the door the rest of the way.
Donna moved down to the next stall and opened the door after pouring
more oats into the pan Maria still held up to the horse.
When she had
lured the horse into the new stall, Maria ran back to the stall with the
man. Donna, already there, said, “looks
like Killer Strutter stomped this guy to death.”