Donna’s quiet, reliable husband, Jose, had worked for Jake for years, cutting hay, cleaning barns, fixing fence and talking to the Andalusians in soothing Spanish. Soon after Lana packed herself off to her daddy’s house, Jose had mentioned that the couple could sure use some extra income, with three boys studying engineering over at the university—and Jake, he had pointed out gently, could sure use Donna’s kind of help.
At first Donna wore herself out, beating a path from the hospital to the ranch the minute her shift was over, arriving just about the time the school bus dropped Jayden at the road. But before long, Jake offered to make her position full time. She and Jose had prayed about it for about two seconds, then jumped at the deal. Jose and Jake’s main hand, Buck Winfrey, had always been friendly, and they soon got into the habit of hitting the ranch house of a morning, looking for Donna’s home-baked treats. Sometimes they’d grab a quick cup of coffee with Mack. Donna called the three older men “the boys” in the same tone she used for her sons. Jake didn’t mind the traffic in his home. His life, Mack’s life and, most of all, Jayden’s life would be awful lonely without that little ensemble running in and out.
And in the past year, Donna had become a trusted confidante to Jake where it concerned his father’s declining health. She seemed to be able to put a calm, cheerful, down-to-earth slant on the discouraging daily incidents that came with Alzheimer’s disease. If the woman had known anything about horses, Jake decided, she’d be dang near perfect. Except that she weighed two hundred pounds and her unkempt frizzy hair was died the color of day-old coffee and her little mustache was thicker than Mack’s. But Jose seemed to think she was a goddess.
“I shouldn’t have left your dad alone with that woman.” Donna looked slightly embarrassed. “Honest to Pete, I don’t know why I let her get to me.”
“It’s okay.” Jake stood and threaded his arms into the sleeves of his denim jacket. “Dad’s asleep in his chair. I’ve gotta get out to the barns.”
“What’ll I do with these?” Donna held up the plastic grocery sack she’d carried in.
“Here—” Jake held out his hand for the carton of cigarettes. “I’ll give the smokes to Buck. He’s not picky about the brand.”
She handed him the cigarettes, then pulled out the expensive cookies. “And these?”
“Have the boys already been here?”
“Cleaned out my cinnamon rolls an hour ago.”
“Then, I guess you and Jayden can have a little party when she comes home from school.”
“Oh, not me. I’m on a diet.” Donna winked.
“Yeah, me, too.” Jake winked back. He grabbed another apple—his standard snack—out of the basket that Donna kept filled on his desk. “So how about a nice big pan of sour-cream chicken enchiladas for lunch?”
Donna flapped a chubby palm at him. “Behave yourself and get on out to the barns!”
AS JAKE PULLED A GOLF CART up to the barns in the eastern pasture, he saw Buck Winfrey opening the south-facing barn doors. On a chilly day like this, Buck might even have the space heaters going. Jake trusted Buck, a veteran of the horse trade, with all such decisions.
Just inside the doors, two barn boys were blanketing this year’s heavily pregnant broodmares for a walk in the sun. Jake was worried. The mares, normally placid, were dancing away as the barn boys held up the blankets. How high-strung had the quarter horses become? Jake had kept the Andalusians, thoroughbreds and quarter horses cycling this winter. Of those, the quarter horses were the biggest worry.
Losing an Andalusian or thoroughbred foal to prematurity would be costly, but early quarter horses, a full year behind the growth curve, might hurt the Cottonwood Ranch reputation for years to come. In the horse-breeding business, Jake himself was a rare breed, raising both racing and show horses. He valued his reputation, which was his father’s, which was his grandfather’s, as if it were an actual commodity.
The booming seemed considerably louder on this side of the valley. As he parked, Jake saw one of the old pickup trucks, loaded with hay, pulling around beside the barn. With his skinny arms raised over his head, Buck signaled the driver to go out far, past the water troughs. The farther he took the hay into the field before dumping it, the farther the mares would run for the feed and the longer they would stay out in the sunlight while they ate, getting needed exercise and sunshine.
“Buck!” Jake hollered, waving.
Buck ambled toward him, his cowboy’s gait loose, easy, reflecting the wiry older man’s attitude about life. He pushed a battered baseball cap back on his bald pate.
“What’d that McClean gal have to say about this damn racket?”
“She’s taking me to court.” Jake got out of the cart.
“Say what?” Buck cupped an ear against the intermittent noise of the crushers. “Taking you where?”
“To court!”
“Court!”
“Silly, isn’t it?”
“What the hell for?”
“I expect so she can drive her concrete trucks through this ranch.”
“By God, she will not,” Buck asserted. He pushed his hat farther back and spit into the straw at his feet. Then he fished a cigarette out of his breast pocket.
“Let’s hope not. But I’ve decided a court hearing could be useful. It’ll give me a chance to ask the judge to shut down this noise permanently. I told Edward to ask for another restraining order.”
“That’ll show ’er.”
“How’re the mares?” Jake set off toward the barn.
Buck double-timed it to keep up with Jake’s long legs. “Bailadora and Encantadora just about kick their stalls down every time that damn thing starts going ka-boom.”
As he reached the barn door, Jake could hear the disturbed whinnying of his two most beautiful Andalusians. The plaintive sound made his chest tight. He opened the heavy steel door, and once inside the dim barn, the echoes of the horses’ cries felt suffocating to him. Jake never broke stride on his way to the mares, but reached into a coffee can nailed to a post and grabbed a handful of sugar cubes on his way by.
He went straight to the mares, soothing them with his voice. “Whoa, girls. Facil. Fah-ceel. Easy. Easy.”
The whinnying stopped, and first one, then the other, came to the stall’s bars to nip a sugar cube off his palm. He popped one into his own mouth while he patted the mares’ withers, each in turn.
Jake found that the ritual calmed him as much as it did his animals. For the first time all day, he felt his shoulders relax, felt his breath filling his lungs fully. This was where he found peace—in the barns, in the fields, with the smell of clean hay and healthy horseflesh around him. These beautiful animals, their solidity, their strength, their warmth, had calmed him ever since he was a small boy, reaching up into his grandfather’s pocket for a sugar cube. Even as a man of thirty-five, with all the responsibilities a man could bear, Jake still found that a little time out in the barns, with the taste of a plain sugar cube melting
