Hayburner (A Gail McCarthy Mystery) Read online

  Picking the saddle up, I held it next to his shoulder. Danny reached back and sniffed again. I swung the stirrups so they creaked, slapped the cinch up and down, shook the whole rig a little. Danny seemed profoundly unimpressed. He cocked one ear at me as if to say, What's next?

  "Set it on his back," Blue said. "Be ready to lift it off if he seems afraid."

  I swung the saddle gently onto Danny's back. For a second his eyes widened, then he stretched his muzzle back to sniff a stirrup, seemed to recognize it as familiar, and relaxed.

  Blue grinned. "Lift it off and put it on him again," he said.

  I swung the saddle on and lifted it off half a dozen times. The last time I did it, Danny cocked a hip and stood with his weight off one hind foot, in a horse's classic resting pose.

  "Looks pretty relaxed to me," Blue said.

  "So, what now?" I asked.

  "You could quit. He's done well, learned a lot. Or you could try cinching him."

  "What would you do?"

  "Cinch him. Nothing you've done so far has even ruffled his feathers."

  "All right."

  I lowered the cinch off the right-hand side of the saddle. After rubbing Danny's belly a few times, I drew the cinch underneath him and ran the latigo through the buckle. Working quietly, I pulled the cinch until it was gently snug, not so tight that it would be uncomfortable, not so loose that the saddle could slip under the horse's belly. Then I stepped back.

  Danny just looked at me.

  "Ask him to move," Blue said.

  I clucked to the colt. He took a step forward and his head came up as he felt the unfamiliar pressure around his heartgirth. Breaking into a trot, he moved around the pen, snorting and scooting forward when the swinging stirrups touched his sides. Blue and I watched him closely.

  Danny's eyes showed mild concern. Not alarm, nothing close to panic. He kept trotting, every once in a while jumping ahead when the feel of the saddle surprised him. After a few minutes, he started to flatten out. His eye grew calmer. In another minute he began making chewing motions with his mouth and his trot slowed.

  Blue pointed. "See that mouthing he's doing?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "That's a sign of acceptance. Actually, it's a sign of submission. When a horse makes that gesture, it means he's accepted what you're doing, or learned whatever lesson you're trying to teach him. It's the same signal baby colts give when they're relating to an adult horse. It means, 'You're dominant.' "

  I held my hand up and Danny coasted to a stop in front of me. I rubbed his forehead and he sighed.

  "Enough for today?" I asked Blue.

  "You bet. He's learned a bunch. If he goes as well as this, I think you could ride him next session."

  "Really?"

  "If you want. Of course, that's up to you."

  "I'm willing." I unsaddled Danny, being careful not to scare him, and led him down to his corral and put him away.

  "Ready for a sandwich and a beer?" I asked Blue.

  "You bet," he said.

  We walked side-by-side up to my house, Roey trotting at our heels. I couldn't help but think how wonderfully companionable it all was. What would it be like to have a partner like this, someone with whom I could share my life?

  I fixed Blue a sandwich and brought him a beer. When he was done, he stood up. "Unfortunately, I need to go back and check on my young plants. They're at a touchy stage right now and this heat is worrying me." He hesitated. "Would you like to come over to dinner tonight?"

  My turn to hesitate, as I tried to recall if I had any other commitments.

  Misunderstanding my silence, Blue said sheepishly, "I'm not the world's greatest cook."

  "No, no," I said quickly. "I'd love to come. I think I'm free and clear. I'm not even on call." Inwardly my heart was singing.

  "Five o'clock all right?"

  "I'll be there," I told him.

  He started for the door and then looked back. "Do you like paella?" he asked.

  Paella? What the hell is paella, I wondered. I smiled at him. "I love it," I said.

  ELEVEN

  I drove in the entrance of Brewer's Rose Farm at five-fifteen, a time I'd carefully calculated. Not so late as to be rude, late enough that Blue would be waiting for me. I passed the office, the display gardens, the greenhouses. Blue lived "out back"-behind the facility. I'd been to his place once before.

  Parking my truck next to his in the drive, I got out with a smile on my face. Blue's dwelling was every bit as unique as my own.

  Perched on a bluff overlooking rolling agricultural fields that swept down to the Monterey Bay, Blue's little travel trailer was sheltered by a simple pole barn with a tin roof. In front was a veranda, and climbing roses had been trained up the posts and along the roof. The vines were turning golden now and they were covered with tiny glowing red rosehips, like fairy lanterns. Two wooden chairs and a table underneath the arbor faced southwest-out to sea.

  A couple of short, sharp barks alerted me to the presence of Freckles, Blue's little dog. She came dashing out from under the trailer, waving her white plume of a tail, her spotted form wiggling in greeting. I rubbed her head and let her sniff my hand and she trotted happily along beside me.

  As I made my way to the door, I glanced with surprise at the corrals behind Blue's trailer.

  "Where are the horses?" I asked, as he opened his door.

  Blue didn't say anything. Stepping back, he gestured that I should come in.

  A wave of rich scent rolled over me as I walked into the trailer, Freckles at my heels. Aromatic and rich-spices and onions and olive oil and what?

  "Wow," I said. "Whatever you're cooking smells wonderful."

  "Paella," Blue said briefly, and went to stir the contents of the skillet. "How about a margarita?" he asked, with his back to me.

  "Sure." I settled myself in the one armchair in Blue's living room. Even tinier than my own living-room area, the space had a cozy feel, like the cabin of a boat. The walls were paneled with warm, teak-colored wood and there were windows on all sides. A small couch, the chair, and a desk filled the available space.

  Blue busied himself making margaritas in the kitchen. I stroked the arm of the chair I was sitting in. Like the desk, the chair was somewhat Victorian, with curving, carved wooden arms and legs. It was upholstered in a soft moss-green velvet and seemed to curl itself comfortably around me. A lamp placed just next to it and a stack of books alongside indicated its primary use.

  Freckles lay down at my feet and put her nose on her paws. Giving a long sigh, she settled her body against my ankles, as if it were an accustomed routine.

  I gazed around the little room and smiled.

  "So, you don't have a TV?" I asked Blue.

  "No." He shrugged, his back still to me. "I like to read." He waved one hand at the computer on the desk. "I can watch videos on the monitor if I want."

  "Sounds good to me. I haven't lived with a TV since I've been able to own my own place."

  Blue said nothing.

  I hesitated, then asked again, "Are the horses gone?"

  Blue kept making margaritas and didn't reply.

  I considered. Should I ask again, as if I believed he hadn't heard me? He had heard me though; I was sure of it. Should I just shut up about the horses and assume he didn't want to tell me what had happened to them?

  I thought about that. Then I said, "Do you not want to talk about it?"

  Blue turned toward me, holding two short glasses filled with ice cubes and lemon-lime-colored drink. Handing me one of the glasses, he touched the other to it with a slight clink.

  "Here's to you, Stormy," he said. And then, after a quick swallow, he met my eyes. "It's not that I don't want to tell you, it's just that I'm not sure what to say."

  I waited.

  "I sold Dunny to a friend," he said at last, "and leased the mare to another friend who wants to raise babies out of her. They both went to good homes."

  "But, why?" I asked in surprise.
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br />   Blue looked down and took another swallow of his drink. "I have to move," he said at last, "and I didn't think I'd be able to take them."

  "You have to move?"

  "Yeah. We're expanding the greenhouse range." Blue gave me a quick smile. "Our growing operation is doing really well. But the only place for the new greenhouse is right here. So, I have to move."

  "Where will you go?”

  "I don't know yet. The Brewers have given me a big raise to compensate for losing my living space, and the trailer's mine, so I can move it somewhere else, but I've looked into it, and the only option I can afford would be a trailer park."

  I winced.

  "Things are pretty expensive in Santa Cruz County," Blue went on. "I had hoped I could buy a piece of land, but it seems impossible. Even finding a spot in a trailer park is looking problematic. I'll probably have to sell the trailer and just rent an apartment in Watsonville. So you can see why I had to get rid of the horses."

  "That must have been hard," I said sympathetically.

  "Not so much," Blue said. "They both went to good homes, like I said. I can see them and know they're doing fine. It's okay."

  "But how can you stand to move from here to an apartment in Watsonville?"

  Blue got up and stirred his skillet. "I can stand a lot of things," he said quietly, with his back to me. I took a swallow of my drink and watched his broad back under the blue denim shirt.

  "So, what's paella?" I asked him.

  "It's a rice dish made with saffron. It usually has some kind of seafood, maybe sausage, maybe chicken. It varies according to locale. I learned my version in the South of France. In my misspent youth."

  "Did you have a misspent youth?"

  "Depends what you mean." Blue turned and smiled at me. "I think my folks hoped I'd go to college, become a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer. The American dream and all that.

  "When I got out of high school I told my dad I wanted to travel. He said it was probably a good thing for a young man to see a bit of the world in the year between high school and college. So off I went."

  Blue smiled at me again. "I didn't come back for ten years."

  "Did you support yourself the whole time?"

  "I did. My father wasn't a rich man, and I wouldn't have asked him for money, anyway. I'd saved all the money I made working for Tom Billings; that's what got me started. And then I just worked my way along.

  "I was a dishwasher in France, and I worked for a greenhouse grower one winter in Greece while I waited for the weather to turn warm so I could go to India. I was a gardener in Australia. I taught English in Iran." Blue grinned. "They fired me because I couldn't spell. In between jobs, I smuggled a little pot to make ends meet."

  "You sold pot?" I was quite honestly surprised.

  "I told you I had a misspent youth." Blue shrugged. "I spent time in jail in Bali, too."

  "You did?" Jail in Bali sounded a good deal more exotic than most personal histories I'd listened to. "What were you in jail for?"

  "Possession of marijuana." Blue shrugged again. "I was there six months. Had to bribe my way out."

  "And then you were taught by the senior tutor of the Dalai Lama?"

  "That's right. Quite the study in contrasts, my life."

  "It is that." I took another swallow of my drink and stared at Blue in fascination as he stirred his skillet. I had never met anyone remotely like him before. "What other adventures have you had?"

  "Well, I hiked through parts of India that probably hadn't seen a white man since the Raj. Little children would run and hide behind their mothers when they saw me. They thought I was a devil. If I stopped at a tea shop, a crowd would gather, as if I were some exotic animal exhibit."

  "Wow." I laughed.

  "Yeah." Blue poured a little more margarita into both our glasses. "I ended up going trekking in the Himalayas and got lost one night in a snowstorm. It got so dark I couldn't see and the terrain was so treacherous that I was afraid to move around at all, even to make camp. I thought I'd fall into a ravine. I had no wood to make a fire, so I just stood next to a big rock that sheltered me some and pretty much ran in place all night to keep from freezing to death. It was a long night, I can tell you."

  "Wow," I said again.

  Blue laughed. "That wasn't the worst of it. Somehow during that trip I ended up catching hepatitis, and I was so sick when I made it back to Katmandu I could barely walk. I managed to get on an airplane and fly to Bangkok, where there were doctors, and I lived there in the Hotel Malaysia for six weeks-basically living off room service."

  "All alone?" I asked.

  "All alone," he said. "That did get me down. I almost flew back to the States when I felt a little better. But somehow, I didn't. I went to Australia instead."

  "Wow," I said yet again.

  "So, you see," Blue smiled at me, "moving to an apartment in Watsonville is not really a big deal."

  "I see," I said. This man had certainly been through enough to be able to put life's ups and downs in proportion. Taking another sip of my drink, I asked him, "You spent quite a bit of time in Australia, didn't you?"

  "Five years," he said.

  "And then you came back to America?"

  "Not exactly. I traveled around the East for a while before I came home."

  "I bet you had a few more adventures," I teased him.

  "Am I boring you?" Blue gave me an inquiring look.

  "Not at all. Really. Truly. I'm fascinated."

  Blue began ladling food onto plates. Over his shoulder, he said, "I did have a few more interesting experiences. I left Australia as part of a crew on a boat that was solely powered by wind. No engine at all. We were on our way to a remote Indonesian island to pick up another sailboat. On the way we got becalmed, and a trip that was supposed to take three days took three weeks."

  "What did you do?"

  "Fortunately, we were prepared. We had enough water, and the hold was full of a kind of pumpkin they called a 'Queensland Blue.' And we fished, of course. We had pumpkin soup and fried pumpkin, and innumerable versions of fish-and-pumpkin stew." Blue grinned. "To this day I don't care if I ever eat any kind of squash again."

  I laughed.

  Blue handed me a plate of fragrant, steaming rice and seafood. "It's sort of a one-dish meal, I'm afraid," he said.

  I accepted a fork, napkin, and a glass of white wine and told him truthfully, "It's perfect. Just the sort of meal I like."

  Paella turned out to be wonderful. The saffron added a subtle flavor, warm and rich, not peppery. Blue's dish included clams, shrimp, chicken, and bell peppers. "The way I learned to make it in the Pyrenees," he said.

  "You've certainly led an interesting life."

  "That's one way of putting it. I'm afraid my parents might be more inclined to go with the misspent-youth theory."

  "Why did you come back to America?" I asked him.

  "My parents," he said simply. "I'm their only living child and they're getting older. I felt I needed to live where I could see them from time to time."

  "But you didn't move back to the family farm."

  "No, by the time I came back, they'd sold the farm and moved into the condo in Fresno. But I would never have chosen to live in the Central Valley, anyway. Too claustrophobic for me. I always knew that if I came back to the States to live, it would be on the California coast."

  "And here you are."

  "And here I am," he agreed. "Close enough to visit my folks two or three times a year, and living in one of the most beautiful places on earth."

  "You ought to know," I said.

  Blue smiled.

  "How'd you end up working at the rose farm?"

  He shrugged one shoulder. "I knew I wanted a job in agriculture, and I liked the Monterey Bay area. So I went around to various greenhouse growers and asked for work. Brewer's needed a laborer."

  "You started at the bottom, then?"

  "Oh yeah. I started out watering plants for minimum wage."

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nbsp; "And went on to become their breeder and greenhouse manager."

  Blue shrugged again and looked down. I stared at him. The curling red-gold hair, the long, lean, muscular frame, the slender hands and strong chin. I ached to touch him. I took a swallow of wine and went back to eating paella.

  Blue looked up from his food. "Are we going to work with your colt tomorrow?"

  "If you have time, I'd love to have you there. Do you really think I ought to ride him?"

  "It depends. If you go through the same routine you did today, and he doesn't show any fear, I'd get on him, sure."

  "We haven't even bridled him yet."

  Blue drank some wine and said slowly, "The way Tom taught me, we got on them before we bridled them. We always rode them for the first time with the halter on their heads, and we did it as soon as they were comfortable with a saddle on their backs. Like I said, for some horses that takes quite awhile. Others, like your Danny, get there very quickly."

  "Why do you get on them like that?" I asked him.

  "It's easier for them. We didn't try to control them much, just got them to move around, get used to having a human on their backs. When they were used to that, which usually takes somewhere between three and a dozen rides, depending on the horse, we'd start putting the bridle on them and teach them to be guided by the reins."

  "So what happens," I said carefully, "if you get on one with just a halter on him and he decides he wants to buck?"

  Blue smiled at me. "A relevant question, from your point of view."

  "That's right." I laughed.

  "Well, first off, a colt will buck you off with a bridle on his head just as well as he will with a halter, if that's what he wants to do. A bit won't stop a green horse from bucking, nor will he usually respond to it much. Having a bit in his mouth is more likely just to scare a colt. So, a bridle's no protection.

  "What I've found is, if you get on a colt and just stay relaxed, let him move however he wants to move, hold onto the saddle horn if you need to, just pretend you're a sack of potatoes, they mostly never buck. If they do, you just encourage them to move forward with your legs, and most of the time, they'll come out of it." Blue looked at me. "I'll ride your colt for you, if you'd like me to."