Black Stallion's Shadow Page 8

  Wes was in the first Jeep to arrive, even before the camera car. He ran over to the fallen horse. On seeing the sickening head injury, he must have known immediately that Joey would never survive. There was only one thing that could be done. Wes fumbled in his pocket for a folding knife. A flash of metal shone in his hand. The old trainer knelt beside the injured horse and jerked the knife across the horse’s throat. In a moment Joey lay still.

  Wes stood up slowly. Blood dripped from the jackknife in his hand. Alec pulled himself to his feet. He felt weak in the knees. His hands still trembled, and he stuffed them into his pockets. Hadn’t he been here before? This was the second fatal accident he’d witnessed in three days. Vomit suddenly choked his throat. He ran behind a tree and was sick.

  CHAPTER 12

  Sabotage

  The next Jeep to reach the crash site was the camera car. Frank jumped out, quickly checked on the actors and then stormed over to Wes. He took off his French Foreign Legion cap and threw it to the ground. His face was red and veins stood out on his forehead. “Two days ago we lost the trailer. Today this. What’s with these animals of yours?”

  “Don’t start up with me, Frank. You know I can’t program a horse like a computer. They have minds of their own.”

  “And you’re paid to train them, right? These setbacks are going to finish us. We’ve lost Kramer and Dousette for the rest of the day at least.”

  “That’s not all we lost,” Wes said quietly.

  “We’re lucky someone didn’t get killed, instead of just a horse,” the director said.

  Wes squinted his eyes and leveled a cool stare at the director. He bent down to pick up a lash whip that had fallen from the wagon and lay on the ground nearby.

  “Just a horse, huh, Frank? Just a horse? Why, I’ve half a mind to …” He snapped the whip with deadly accuracy, popping the dirt inches from the director’s feet.

  Frank jumped backward. “You crazy carny. Are you trying to lose this job or what?”

  Wes loosened his hold on the whip and let it slide through his hands to the ground. He looked down at the dead horse and took a deep breath. His voice softened. “Someone has to take care of these horses, Frank. You want to do it?”

  Frank didn’t say anything.

  “Leave me be, will you, Frank? I have work to do. Go on now.”

  “Okay, Taylor. We’ll talk about this later.” Frank spun around and marched back to the camera car.

  Alec walked over to check on the Black. His stomach still felt a little queasy. On the other side of the trees the wranglers’ Quarter Horses bunched together with the Appaloosas. Steam rose from their sweat-drenched coats. Some of them started running up against each other. They must have smelled the death in the air. Alec caught hold of the Black’s bridle. He moved the stallion upwind and away from the others.

  Kramer sat on the ground near Alec, rubbing his shoulder and moaning loudly. Considering what had just happened, the actor had been incredibly lucky. He’d slid at least twenty yards across the dirt, but his leather suit had protected him from being hurt. Now Alec understood why motorcyclists wore leather outfits. One of the cameramen knelt beside him. “How are you feeling, Paul?”

  “I’m getting too old for this.”

  “Everything’s going to be all right. We’ll get you out of here as soon as the rest of the crew shows up. You just hang in there.”

  The other Jeeps arrived, and the rest of the crew pitched in to help. The injured actor, Louie Dousette, was carried to a Jeep and driven back to the ranch. Alec overheard someone say that the actor would have to go to the hospital.

  It didn’t take long for Kramer to begin playing the part of the tough old trooper. “This is nothing,” he said. “Why, you people shoulda seen what happened to me on the set of Texas Territory.” He shared his story with the three crewmen who helped him to his feet and escorted him to another Jeep.

  When Marty Fisher reached the crash site, he rushed straight over to Wes, who still stood beside the fallen horse. Marty shook his head with disgust. “For crying out loud, Taylor.”

  “Would you’ve rather I waited for a vet? Anyone could see Joey wasn’t gonna make it.”

  “So you had to cut his throat with a jackknife?”

  “What else was there?”

  The scowl on Marty’s face deepened to a dark frown. “You know I’m going to have to report this. The council might want to bring charges.” Wes nodded.

  The humane man’s anger was understandable, Alec thought. After all, his job was to look out for the horses’ welfare. Yet he must have seen what Wes meant. Waiting for a vet to put Joey down could have taken hours. Someone needed to act. Wes took the responsibility and did what had to be done.

  Mike came limping by in a daze. He looked badly shaken, even if he hadn’t broken anything. No one could jump from a horse at that speed without getting bruised. Patrick tried to get Mike into a Jeep so he could be driven back to the ranch.

  “I almost had ’em,” Mike said. “Just another second and …”

  Patrick put his arm around Mike’s shoulders. “Don’t feel too bad, Mike. You tried. And I’m sure Kramer appreciates what you did.”

  Mike shrugged off the consoling arm and staggered away. “Kramer!” he said. “Man, I was thinking about the team, not that dude.”

  Wes chased after Mike. “If you won’t go to the hospital,” he said, “at least go back to your trailer and lie down. That’s an order, Mike.” The wrangler did as he was told and climbed into the back of the camera car.

  Frank gave the word to cancel work for the rest of the day and headed back to the ranch.

  Marty pulled out a notebook and began making notes for a report to the Humane Council. He talked with the wranglers and looked over the wagon and harness. After finishing the notes for his report, Marty also got back into his truck and left.

  The wranglers, Alec and Wes stayed behind to take care of burying Joey. They dug a grave a short distance from where the poor Appaloosa had fallen. Wes, deeply shaken, kept looking at the shattered wagon, as if staring at it long enough would somehow reveal how this could have happened.

  Alec turned the Black out with the other horses, who were looking for patches of dry grass among the tumbleweeds and yucca plants dotting the landscape. Clouds moved over the sun, shrouding the canyon. Gloom seemed to hang in the air even after the sun burned through the clouds again.

  Alec watched Patrick and Julio tamp down the last few shovelfuls of earth over Joey’s grave. Patrick jammed the shovel into the dirt. “Joey was a good old boy. Always worked hard, did what you told him. Doesn’t seem right it should end like this for him.”

  Julio shook his head. “I hear you.”

  “I still can’t figure how those lines busted like that. They weren’t more than a month old.”

  “Only been used two or three times at the most.”

  Alec also wondered about the broken lines, and he wondered what the other two were thinking. He turned to Patrick. “What happened to them, anyway? Did they just rip apart or what?”

  Patrick shrugged. “Who knows? Cheap leather, maybe something else. Man, that was some crackup.”

  Julio nodded in agreement. “Aye, hombre. I wonder how Mike is feeling after that fall. He went flying!”

  “He didn’t seem to be hurt too bad.”

  “Lucky guy.”

  They stood there in silence for a moment and looked down at the grave. Then Patrick touched the brim of his cap in a salute. “Good-bye, old fella.”

  Julio crossed himself and rubbed his foot through the dirt. “Adiós, amigo.” The two wranglers shouldered their rakes and shovels and carried them back to the Jeep. Alec followed after them.

  Alec heard the sound of a Jeep coming up the trail. The Jeep drove out into the box canyon. It came closer and parked near the overturned wagon. Ellie got out and ran over to Wes.

  Alec guessed she had heard what had happened from the crew. He wondered what Ellie thought about it all
. Before the wagon crash, he’d been inclined to doubt her suspicions of sabotage on Drover Days. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  Everyone gathered beside the wagon. Wes fingered the frayed ends of the two broken harness lines. Ellie stood back from the others, and her intense gaze shifted between Wes and the lines.

  Patrick and Julio crowded around to get a better look at the pieces of broken leather. Their voices hushed to whispers as the lines were passed from hand to hand.

  “Will you look at that?”

  “Well, I’ll be.”

  When the reins reached her, Ellie took a close look at the torn strips of leather. She shook her head and handed the lines to Alec. He ran his fingers over the leather.

  Alec pointed to the frayed stitches. “It just looks worn through,” he said.

  “Yeah, almost too worn, as if someone distressed the leather on purpose,” she said.

  “You mean someone scuffed it up just to make it look worn out?”

  Ellie nodded. “When I worked in wardrobe one summer, we did it all the time. It’s easy to make new things look old.”

  She pointed out a two-inch-long section on either side of the broken line. “See there? It could have been cut apart and then loosely sewn back together, like a prop that’s supposed to break.” Alec saw that some of the stitches were split cleanly in half. Only a sharp knife or razor could have made such a cut.

  Wes frowned. “I should have caught it. I should have checked out the wagon and tack this morning.”

  “Don’t start blaming yourself, Wes,” said Patrick. “What happened to Joey wasn’t your fault.” Julio nodded in agreement.

  “Maybe not, but Ellie has a point. Those stitches look cut. Anyone can see that. It looks like someone set us up.”

  “So what are we going to do about it?” asked Ellie.

  “For one thing, I’m going to call the sheriff as soon as we get back home. Maybe he can figure this thing out for us.”

  Everyone started back to the ranch. Alec boosted himself up onto the Black and started to the head of the trail. Ellie was right, he thought. It looked like someone wanted to stop Drover Days and didn’t care who got hurt in the process.

  The wagon crash wasn’t some harmless prank. It had left a horse dead, a wagon destroyed and sent at least one actor on his way to the hospital. Yet even with the reins as evidence, they weren’t any closer to finding out who was behind the sabotage than they were before the accident.

  Alec squeezed his legs and pressed the Black into a gallop. He needed to lose himself in that familiar surge of speed, let the rush of wind in his face clear his mind. The thunder of hoofbeats filled his ears. He felt nothing but the oneness with his horse. For a few brief seconds, everything else was swept away.

  CHAPTER 13

  A Helping Hand

  Alec left the Black in his corral. He walked over to the house and sat on the porch steps. The ranch, which had looked like a crowded parking lot earlier that morning, was quiet again. Ellie came out of the office and called to Alec, “Let’s go see how Mike’s doing. I’m a little worried about him.”

  Ellie gave a rap on the door to Mike’s trailer and walked inside. Mike was stretched out in bed. He sat up, glanced at his visitors, then reached down to adjust an ice pack wrapped around his left ankle.

  “How you feeling, Mike?”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  Ellie sat down on the edge of the bed. Picking up the ice pack, she poked at Mike’s swollen ankle.

  “Ouch!”

  “Sure you don’t want to see a doctor about that?”

  “Nope. I wouldn’t even be in here if Wes hadn’t ordered me to.”

  “Well, nothing’s happening, anyway. Frank moved the crew to the studio for the rest of the day.”

  “How’d the other horses in the team make out?”

  “The vet’s coming over later to take a look. They seem okay. But we don’t know about Dousette yet. He’s still at the hospital.”

  “What happened to Kramer?”

  “Oh, he’s fine and dandy. Just a few scrapes. Kramer must be the luckiest guy in all of Hollywood. I doubt that he’ll be up for any barrel riding for a few days, though.”

  As Ellie and Mike talked, Alec looked around the room. Mike’s trailer was small, about the same size as Alec’s. Every square inch of wall space was papered with publicity stills and cutouts from movie and horse magazines. On a shelf by the window were a half-dozen gold- and silver-plated belt buckles, trophies won for bronc riding, roping and other rodeo events. A movie poster from the John Wayne Western Stagecoach hung on the back of the door.

  Among the pictures Alec noticed a fading, dog-eared photo clipped from a newspaper. There was no caption beneath the photo, but it appeared to be Mike receiving a trophy at a rodeo. Alec recognized something familiar about the guy in the floppy hat presenting the trophy but couldn’t quite place him.

  The front door opened and Jim poked his nose inside. “Howdy, Mike. You feeling better?”

  Mike gave him a sidelong glance. “Hey, what is this, open house?”

  “Just came to see if there’s anything I could do.”

  Mike muttered something under his breath. Ellie took the hint. It seemed that they’d overstayed their welcome. “Sorry, Mike. We’ll leave you be.” She shooed Jim away and closed the door behind them.

  “He seems all right,” Alec said.

  Ellie nodded. “Mike’s funny sometimes. You never can tell what he’s really thinking. He always has to play the tough guy, the hero.”

  Jim thumped his chest. “I’d of done what he did myself if I could have.”

  Ellie smiled and nudged Alec. “Sure you would, Jim.”

  Jim’s face lit up with anger and pride. “You doubt it? I’m not that old, missy. I’d put myself on the line for this place any day of the week.”

  Ellie’s voice gentled. “We know you would, Jim.”

  Alec saw Wes sitting on a bench outside the doorway to the tack room. The old cowboy waved them over. He looked tired. New lines of worry marked his face. He’d just finished speaking on the phone with someone at the hospital. Dousette was still unconscious.

  Jim scratched his chin. “Poor Louie. Funny the way Kramer’s partners end up taking the fall when things get tough. Kramer always manages to scrape by, though.”

  Wes nodded. “We’re just lucky Kramer’s still in one piece after that wagon crackup. At least he’ll be able to be around for that PSA. But without Dousette, I don’t know how we’re going to pull it off.”

  “His part wasn’t that tough, was it?”

  “No, but even so, I don’t know who we can get to fill in for him on such short notice.”

  Ellie shook her head. “At this point, I wonder if it’ll make any difference. After what happened to Joey, it just might be too late to smooth things out with the Humane Council.”

  A black-and-white police cruiser turned off the road out front. Jim turned to watch it. “What’s O’Brien doing here?” Wes told him about finding the cut stitches in the wagon harness.

  Jim didn’t believe any of it. “What!” he bellowed. “You guys really think someone could have snuck into the tack room and messed around with the tack right under our noses?”

  “I’m not accusing anyone,” Wes said, shrugging, “just being careful.”

  “Come on.”

  “Take off the blinkers, Jim. Some people will do whatever it takes to get ahead. For them, it’s hooray for me and the heck with the other guy. You’re too trusting.”

  “And you’re crazy to be buying into Ellie’s conspiracy theory.”

  The patrol car rumbled up the driveway and pulled to a stop in a cloud of dust. SKY VIEW TERRACE POLICE was printed on the car door. Sheriff Nick O’Brien, a husky, middle-aged man, got out and slammed the car door behind him.

  Wes strode over to greet him. “Thanks for coming, Nick.” The police officer shook Wes’s hand and then casually adjusted the thick, black leather gun belt slung around h
is waist. Wes led the way into the tack room and showed O’Brien the harness, pointing out the spot where the lines had broken.

  “Horses are your department, Wes,” the policeman said. “I wouldn’t know one harness from another.” O’Brien put the harness down. His tone of voice evened, all business. “So let’s have it. What’s this all about?”

  Wes took a deep breath. He told O’Brien the whole story. The officer listened quietly, scribbling notes onto a pad of paper.

  When Wes had finished, O’Brien put down his pencil. “What took you so long to report that fire?”

  “Up to now, we weren’t sure it was anything more than bad luck.”

  “From what you’ve said, that might be all it is. But you did the right thing in giving me a call. Can you think of anyone who might have a grudge against you?”

  “This is a competitive business, and I’ve been in it for more than thirty years. I’m sure I’ve stepped on some toes along the way.”

  “Anything might help, no matter how unimportant it may seem to you.”

  Ellie, who up to this moment had been listening quietly, told the sheriff about her suspicions of Sagebrush.

  The sheriff asked about the people working on Drover Days. Wes told him that the makeup of the cast and crew was determined by the type of shots planned for the day. Some days there were only a handful of people working at the ranch; other times there might be thirty or forty.

  “I think you’re all way off base with this sabotage business,” said Jim, “but if you want to know someone with a grudge against us, well, what about Emerson Livestock? They’re our main competition. Tell you what, those guys weren’t very happy when we won the Drover Days contract away from them.”

  Wes chuckled at Jim’s suggestion. “I reckon not. Still, I can’t believe anyone at Emerson’s would sabotage one of our wagons.”

  “I can’t either,” Jim admitted, “but the sheriff said he wanted to know of anything, no matter how far-fetched.”

  “That’s pretty far-fetched, all right.”

  “Then I guess you don’t want to know who I saw talking with the foreman from Emerson’s Ranch at the pizza parlor in town the other day.”