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“I’m sure it will be fine.”
The foreman had led Lucas into the house, through rooms that were shabby but clean to one with a narrow bed and a view of the unchanging land that stretched endlessly toward the horizon.
“You want anythin’, just holler.”
“I’m fine,” Lucas had answered. Then his eyes had narrowed. “Come to think of it…Do you have a boy working here?”
The old man shifted his wad of chewing tobacco from one side of his jaw to the other.
“Ain’t you just seen Davey?”
“Not him. A different kid. One who rides a black stallion without giving a damn for anybody else.”
Nope, the foreman said, he and Davey were the only hands.
Then he’d cackled like a deranged duck. Lucas could hear the sound of his laughter even after he shuffled out of the room.
Now, standing on a sagging porch, Lucas sighed. Who knew what passed for humor in a godforsaken place like this?
Besides, what did it matter? This time tomorrow, he’d be on his way home.
Assuming, he thought irritably, Aloysius McDonough showed up. Where in hell was he? Where was the supposed wonder-mare? Truth was, he doubted if there were any horses here. The corrals were empty; the outbuildings were all in bad shape. The breeze that had come up might just—
What was that?
Lucas cocked his head. He could hear a sound on the wind. A horse. Yes. A whinny. Faint, but distinct.
Maybe McDonough was back.
The sooner he saw the mare—assuming one even existed—and told a couple of polite lies about what a fine animal she was but how, unfortunately, he wasn’t buying horses right now, blah blah blah…
Definitely the sooner he got this over with, the better.
Lucas stepped off the porch and started briskly toward the outbuildings. He was right about their condition. The first, a storage shed, was on the verge of collapse. The barn that came next wasn’t any better.
The third building was a stable, in better shape than the other two. It needed paint and some of the boards would have benefited from a hammer and nails but when he peered in the open door, he saw the signs a horseman learns to recognize as evidence of responsible care.
The floor was clean, the two empty stalls to his left were well-swept. A stack of buckets stood beside a hose and across from stacked bales of hay.
There it was again. The soft whinny of a horse. Yes, there was an animal here.
The mare, he hoped.
Mystery solved.
Lucas hesitated. Protocol demanded a man wait to be asked onto another man’s property. He frowned. To hell with protocol, which also demanded that McDonough should have been here to greet his guest.
/> Quietly, so he wouldn’t spook the mare, he stepped inside the stable, looked past the row of empty stalls and saw a tail, a rump…
The horse danced back and Lucas’s eyebrows rose.
This was not a mare. Hell, no. It was a stallion. No doubt about that, judging from the rest of what he could see.
Lucas’s eyes narrowed. Not just a stallion. A black stallion.
He took a step forward. A floorboard creaked under his weight and the stallion snorted. Metal tinkled. The animal must still be bridled and tossing its head.
“Easy,” a voice said softly. “Easy, baby.”
