LOVE OF A RODEO MAN (MODERN DAY COWBOYS) (20 page)

Why, the old man was running scared, Mitch realized with a sudden burst of insight. He was scared of change, scared of losing his wife. He’d always had her all to himself, and now he didn’t. Maybe he was scared that she wouldn’t want or need him anymore, of all the damned stupid ideas.

Mitch felt like grinning at that. His mother doted on the old man, always had. Wilson’s ego was hurting, that was all. But was it unimportant? Was his father’s reaction that different from Mitch’s resentment of Sara’s job?

Wasn’t part of the reason he was feeling put out right now just the fact that Sara’s job was consuming her, that he couldn’t really be a part of it, that it took her away from him when he wanted her? What was all that, but ego? He absolutely hated the feeling that he and his father might have a lot in common.

“Look, Pop...”
Look, Pop... what?
The last time Mitch had tried confiding in this man, he’d had his dreams jumped on and tossed back in his face. Well, if an ornery horse bucked him off, he’d always climbed right back on, hadn't he?

“Pop, I’m having the same kind of problems you are,” Mitch finally blurted out. “With Sara. Would you believe she’s gone and bought that practice of Doc Stone’s,
without so much as mentioning it to me? And she’s always off treating some damned animal or other. Look what happened at the engagement party. Made a damned fool out of me.”

There, that ought to bring on a load of complaints
and told-you-so’s, for sure. The least it would do would be to divert the old man’s ire from Mom to him and Sara. Wilson could get into his objections to women vets, and Sara in particular, release a lot of steam at Mitch’s expense.

What the hell, the old man was his father, Mitch told himself, feeling like a martyr.

“Humph.” Wilson drank down half his cooling coffee without even a grimace and then set the cup down before he went on. “Well, that’s no different from what your mom’s done. Damned if Mother didn’t up and take that job without a word to me, either. Y’know, son, like you said before, maybe they both have their reasons. Maybe we ought to try patience. We’re men, after all. That Sara of yours, she’s got lots of gumption, and I like that in a woman. Y’know, I think your mother’s the same?”

Mitch choked on his coffee and nearly fell off his chair.

In the next hour, for the first time he could remember, he and his father actually tried to have a conversation. The fact that it was about whether or not Wilson should trade the station wagon in on a four-wheel-drive unit didn’t matter at all.

The fact that he asked Mitch’s opinion mattered one hell of a lot.

Mitch called Sara
’s cell several times that day and missed her each time. Finally, just past noon, he gave up and drove into Plains, absolutely determined to snatch her away from her work for just an hour, to talk through the strain that was between them... and hold her in his arms and kiss her until she was breathless, until all the tension between them disappeared.

He was parking the truck in front of the vet office when the sirens started wailing down the street. A fire truck and an ambulance tore by, and when he opened the office door, Sara was frantically snatching vials and supplies from the drug cupboard in the hal
l and stuffing them into a case.

She looked over her shoulder and saw him, and he took a quick, anxious step toward her when he saw the naked fear
and the relief on her pale features.

“Mitch, oh my God, I’m so glad you’re here. How did you know? C’mon, there’s no time to waste, carry this...” She thrust another bag at him and raced for the door. “I called Doc Stone and he’s meeting us out there, Floyd’s gone to fetch him...”

“What the hell’s going on? I came to see you...”

She was already half out the door. “You didn’t know? Oh, Mitch, it’s Bill
and Carol Forgie...their barn’s on fire. Some of the horses are already. ..” Her voice broke, and her face crumpled. “Oh, Mitch, I’m so scared.”

After the first, paralyzed instant, he took charge. “C’mon, I’ll drive.”

Together they raced for the veterinary van.

From several miles away they could see the black smoke rising ominously over the rolling hills.

“The barn’s so damned old,” Mitch said fearfully, and Sara swallowed the fear in her throat and nodded. “It’ll go up like tinder,” she said in a strained voice. “Horses aren’t smart about getting out, either. They panic and refuse to leave what they figure is the safety of their stalls. I only hope Bill doesn’t try being a hero.”

Mitch remembered the ambulance racing past and cold fear overcame him. He cursed the potholed road and stepped still harder on the accelerator, ignoring the bone crushing jolts the van made.

They rounded the final corner, and both of them gasped aloud with horror. The stable was an inferno, with flames shooting high into the air. Several neighbors were already on the scene, their trucks parked helter-skelter in the meadow, and men ran frantically in pursuit of two horses crazed by the fire and out of
control. The animals had huge, raw burn patches on their hides.

But it was the ambulance, and the sight of a blanketed human form being carefully loaded into it that was most horrifying to Sara and Mitch. The instant the van stopped, they hurried over, just as the ambulance attendants were about to shut the doors.

Carol, hugely pregnant, was crouching in the back beside the stretcher, her face streaked with soot, the pupils of her eyes dilated with shock.

“It was a beam, one of those old heavy logs, it fell on Bill’s leg. Sara, the colt...” she was saying urgently as the doors shut and the ambulance started to move.

The next few hours were chaos,
and Sara could never remember them afterward without shuddering and feeling again the awful, helpless nausea that had engulfed her all that day. The pitifully few horses that had survived all suffered varying degrees of burns, and she began at once putting packs of sodium bicarbonate on the worst of the wounds and injecting the animals with antibiotics to combat infection and painkillers to calm them and make them more comfortable.

Mitch helped her until Doc Stone and Floyd arrived, and then he left them with the animals and added his efforts to the volunteer firemen who were desperately trying to keep the flames from spreading across the grass and engulfing the old log house. Most of the outbuildings near the barn were smoldering masses of black ash.

Sara was humbly grateful for the solid, impassive presence of the old vet working beside her, and now he had no qualms about having Sara double-check the name of any drug he administered.

Nine animals died that day, three of which Sara and Doc Stone were forced to destroy.

Floyd wept openly, and Sara wrapped her arms around him and gave him a quick hug.

Five horses survived, two of which were Scarlett and the colt, Butler.

It was Sara’s turn to burst into grateful tears when someone led the tall mare and her rangy foal out of the woods and into the makeshift corral where the surviving animals were. Somehow, the two had escaped without a mark, the only animals totally uninjured.

Mitch happened to be there, and wordlessly he gathered her into his arms and held her for long moments, knowing exactly how she felt about the mare and the foal they’d helped deli
ver.

Before evening, more and more vehicles bumped their way down the dusty road, bearing relatives and friends of the Forgies, but also concerned residents of the area who’d heard about the tragedy and wanted to help in any way they could.

“Bill’s got a badly broken leg and a couple of burns on his back, and Carol’s gone into labor,” one of Bill’s cousins told Mitch that afternoon. “It’s one hell of a tragedy for them, losing this stock and their barn.”

Sara heard, and tears filled her eyes aga
in when she remembered Carol telling her once how much she wanted Bill present when the baby came. All those bright and shiny dreams, lost in one day.

Mitch thought bitterly about dreams as he sweated and coughed his way through the thick haze of smoke that hung over the area. Bill’s dream of a breeding stable was Mitch’s as well, and the tragedy that had befallen his friend seemed a personal loss to Mitch.

The time finally came when there was nothing more to be done that day, for either Mitch or Sara, and they drove wearily back to Plains, exhausted both mentally and physically.

Mitch drove immediately to the hospital, but he and Sara weren’t allowed past the nursing station. Bill was resting comfortably, the pudgy nurse informed them, a statement Mitch seriously doubted, and Carol was still in labor. No visitors were allowed.

“Want to come out to Bitterroot with me?” Sara asked.

Mitch shook his head. “I have to get home, there’s chores to do.” Belatedly he remembered telling Wilson at noon that he’d be gone only an hour or so. It was now nearly ten at night. Well, they must have heard by now about the fire. All the same, it wasn’t fair to leave him with Mitch’s work as well as his own.

It was an excuse, however. Mitch hadn’t talked to Sara as he’d planned to do that day, and now he just couldn’t. Partly the problems between them seemed insignificant now, buried by the day’s happenings...but partly, too, Mitch was no longer certain about dreams and futures.

All the cheerful optimism that he’d felt that morning seemed to have burned away with the fire, blown away with the smoke that was all that was left of Bill and Carol’s hopes.

He kissed her apologetically, and through the bone weariness felt the surge of need she inevitably stirred in him. If only that was all there was to consider.

“You were wonderful with those anim
als today,” he told her, wishing he had more to offer, wishing he could regain the confidence he’d had earlier that day about the two of them.

Her eyes were bloodshot, and her hair
stank of smoke.

“So were you. But our being heroes doesn’t much help Carol or Bill, does it? Do you think they had insurance to cover the loss?”

Mitch shook his head. “Bill told me they couldn’t afford it. They had a small fire policy on the buildings, but I think the animals will be a total loss.”

Sara shuddered at the memory of those dead animals. “Life doesn’t seem very fair som
etimes, does it?” she said.

Mitch remembered his brother
as he’d been a year ago last Christmas, with his youngest daughter on his shoulders and a smile on his face that seemed never to fade.

“No,” he said roughly. “No, life isn’t fair. I used to think you got out of life what you worked for, but now I’m not sure anymore.”

There didn’t seem anything else to say.

Mitch heard that Carol had given birth to a baby girl in the early hours of the morning, nine pounds, seven ounces, and wonderfully healthy, and also that it was several hours before Bill could be brought on a stretcher to the nursery to see his new daughter.

Everyone in the community
said what a terrible thing the fire had been, but it was Dave Hoffman who did something about it. He called a meeting in the school gym that Friday night, and half the town turned up. “We’re a small community,” he began, “and the way I see it, we can’t afford to lose many more people off the land hereabout. Neighbors used to help one another when a barn burned down, and, of course, we can do that, have a barn raising for the Forgies. But seems to me these youngsters need a mite more than that, losing their horses the way they did. No use having a barn without stock to put in it. Seems to me if we could figure out a way to raise some cold hard cash, give them a new chance at some breeding stock, they could begin again.”

Ideas flew thick and fast. Someone suggested a dance, and someone else said why not a barbecue as well?

It was Millie Jackson, the postmistress in Plains, who came up with the rodeo idea. Everyone loves a rodeo, she boomed in her foghorn voice, and they could incorporate the barbecue and dance, and it would draw a much larger crowd than anything else and make a heap more money.

Everyone agreed enthusiastically. Mitch wasn’t sure exactly how it happened, but before the evening was over, he found himself in charge of the rodeo committee.

He tried to explain that being a rodeo competitor didn’t qualify him at all for organizing one of the damn things, but nobody listened, and he felt totally alone and less than confident about the massive job ahead of him.

Just when he needed Sara for moral support, of course she wasn’t there. She’d come to the meeting with Mitch, but a call had come for her before Dave even got through his talk. She’d whispered to Mitch that someone’s horse had colic, shrugged apologetically to him and quietly slipped out of the hall.

He wondered if the time would ever come when they’d make it together through one single social occasion, start to finish. Their wedding, maybe? It didn’t look too promising.

Mitch found out in the next week that he despised and abhorred committees. Every suggestion he made required endless discussion and hundreds of phone calls and never ended up amounting to a hill of beans in the end. In desperation, he consulted Dave, who gave him great advice.