she, with no knowledge of any kind of livestock, could read a terrible story in that donkey’s condition. His fur was matted. In places, there was no fur, only welts. He looked thin to the point of starvation, his hip bones sticking out. His mane and tail were barely visible for the burrs imbedded in them.
Grimes had pulled himself up from the truck deck. He had a club in his hand, and a look in his eye, and Corrine yelped with wordless dismay as he moved toward the donkey.
Matt turned toward her sound, and saw the man coming toward him.
“You touch this animal,” he said, his voice a low growl like a bear about to charge, “and I’ll take that club to you.”
She shivered at the pure menace Matt managed to exude without even raising his voice.
Grimes stopped, and eyed Donahue warily.
“Look at this poor dumb beast,” Matt said, “He’s been beaten. He’s starving. His feet haven’t been looked after. He’s got worm belly.” There was barely leashed fury in each carefully bitten out word.
Grimes was beating a hasty retreat to his truck. “He weren’t never mine,” he called over his shoulder as he climbed in his truck and slammed the door. “I just got paid to deliver him.”
After two or three desperate grinding tries on the starter, the truck finally sputtered to life. It bounced back down the driveway at least twice as fast as it had come in.
Donahue did not turn and look back at her. “The kindest thing to do,” he said, “would be to put him down.”
The ice edge was gone from his voice, but it didn’t make the message any less brutal.
“Kill him?” she breathed. A shudder went through her at the thought of the donkey being murdered. She didn’t even want to think how one murdered a donkey, let alone the kind of person who could suggest such a thing. “No.”
“He isn’t trained,” His voice was soft, almost gentle, a voice one might use on a stubborn child. “He doesn’t look healthy. He seems to have a mean streak. The kindest thing to do—”
“Somehow kindness and cold-blooded murder don’t go together in my world.”
He sighed. The sigh whispered with the exasperation of a country man facing a city girl, a man used to dealing with the hard cold realities of livestock coming face-to-face with a woman whose unrealistic love of all creatures great and small was probably based on a solid dose of Disney movies.
And even if she knew it was unrealistic, she wasn’t letting him kill her donkey for the flimsy reason that the animal wasn’t perfect.
After a long time, he spoke again. “Don’t you have any idea where he came from? Or why he came to you?”
“No.”
He glanced over his shoulder at her again, and sighed, the sigh even more heartfelt than his first one, if that were possible. “Then where do you want him, Ms. Parsons? And don’t say your pasture until you’ve got your fences fixed, because you’re legally libel for anything that happens to my mares.”
Aha. The real reason he wanted her donkey dead.
“There’s a stall in the barn.”
“I’ll put him in there for now. Tomorrow, I’ll come look after the fences.”
“I can look after my own fences.”
“Humor me.”
The donkey chose that moment to lunge at him, his teeth bared. Donahue sidestepped easily, shook his head and dragged the unwilling donkey toward her barn. She started to follow.
“Don’t get too close behind him. He’d probably kick you as soon as look at you.”
So, she trailed behind at a safe distance, and followed them into the murky barn. “I hope the barn doesn’t fall down on top of him,” she said, watching Donahue struggle with a rusted latch on a stall gate.
He gave her a look that said he hoped it did. He installed the donkey in the pen, stepped back and relatched the gate.
“Do you have any feed for him?”
She contemplated that for a moment. Feed for him. A hint might have been nice. Couldn’t she just go pick some of that grass and throw it in here? Donahue read her mind.
“You don’t even know what he eats, do you?” he asked, the softness of his tone not even beginning to hide his impatience.
“I’ll go to the library and find out,” she said proudly.
“That sounds a lot easier than just asking,” he said sardonically.
She fought with her pride briefly then gave in with ill grace. “Okay. What does he eat?”
“He’ll need hay, until you can get him on the grass. A couple of bales. And if you plan to build him up, he should probably have oats. Though,” he frowned, “that might make him all the more eager to get after my mares.”
“All right. I’ll go get a couple of bales of hay, then, and some oats.”
He glanced at his watch, and sighed. “Well, not today you won’t. Feed store closed at five. You couldn’t get hay there, anyway. You don’t generally buy hay by the bale. You buy it by the ton.”
The donkey let out an outraged bray that made the walls shake and made her worry the barn was going to come down around them.
“He’ll need water right away. Don’t go in there with him, you hear?”
The donkey chose that moment to lunge at the gate, so she decided not to argue with Donahue on the issue of entering the pen, even though she did not like the bossy tone of that you hear? She nodded stiffly.
“I’ll bring by some straw for his bedding and enough hay to get you through a few days until I can have a look at those fences.” He glanced at his watch, and she caught a glimpse of weariness as he tried to figure out where to fit her into his day. “I’ll try to come around by eight or nine.”
She wanted desperately to tell him that wasn’t necessary, that she would look after it herself. But the truth was, it was necessary. Her donkey could not wait on a point of pride. He looked like he might perish if he did not get the right kind of attention soon.
She didn’t know a single soul who would know the first thing about giving a donkey the proper kind of care. Certainly her sisters would not. And their husbands were a lawyer and an ex-cop. Somehow that seemed far removed from donkey land.
“I’ll pay you,” she said proudly.
“Whatever.” He stood regarding her for a moment, and then with a small shake of his head, he strode by her and was gone.
His scent lingered in her nostrils for a long, long time.
She went and put her hand cautiously over the gate to the stall, hoping the donkey would touch her fingers again with his muzzle and prove to her she had done the right thing.
