The Mill River Recluse (3 page)

A sudden
thump
came from behind the straw stack at the end of the aisle, and the pitchfork fell to the floor.

“Hello?” Patrick asked, startled. “Is someone there?”

Silence.

“Patrick!” a voice called from outside the barn. He turned and saw his father and another man standing in the doorway, watching him.

“Son, this is Sam Hayes,” his father said as Patrick came over to them.

The stout horse farmer wore dirty overalls and a wide-brimmed hat pushed back off his forehead. His hair was just beginning to show strands of gray, but the deep crevices in his face made Patrick think that he was older than his barn.

“Mr. Hayes. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Patrick said, extending his hand. “I’ve heard that your Morgans are the finest around.”

“Pleasure’s mine,” Mr. Hayes replied, clasping his hand and obviously pleased by Patrick’s compliment. “I don’t raise as many as I used to, just a few a year now. Quality over quantity, you might say. Plus, there hasn’t been much of a market for ‘em for a few years now. People’ve been pretty hard up.” He paused a moment, looking at Patrick’s fine attire with hopeful eyes. “Your Pop here tells me that you’re the horseman of the family. Well, you can’t go wrong with a Morgan. ‘Course I’m sure you know that. They’re the sturdiest horses you could ever have. Smart, too. An’ their temperament’s usually steady an’ sensible. All my Morgans’ pedigrees go back to Justin Morgan, the foundation stallion. I break ‘em in myself, teach ‘em manners, an’ I don’t sell ‘em ‘til they’re four. Don’t believe a horse is full grown ‘til it’s four, so I keep ‘em ‘til then to be sure they all get a proper start.”

“You said you had several horses for sale?” Stephen asked.

“Yep, there are four, two colts an’ two fillies.”

“I’d prefer a colt,” Patrick said.

“I’ve got ‘em all in the barn there,” Mr. Hayes said. “I’ll take each one out separately, so you can see how they’re built an’ ride ‘em, if you want. There’s a small paddock on the other side of the barn.” He went into the tack room and emerged carrying one of the old saddles and a saddle pad. “If you could take this around the side,” he continued, handing the tack to Patrick, “I’ll bring the first one out for you.”

Stephen and Patrick turned and walked around the barn to a circular training paddock adjacent to the pasture. Content to let his son handle the selection, Stephen leaned awkwardly against the fence. Mr. Hayes came out of a rear door of the barn leading a chestnut horse behind him. Patrick set the saddle over the top of the fence and looked closely at the horse. It was a beautiful animal, with conformation much like that of the blood-bay he had seen in the barn. This horse was tan, with a bright white blaze down its forehead and nose.

The horse wore a bridle with a long rein, and Mr. Hayes stepped to the center of the paddock with the rein in his hand. He shook it gently. The horse began to trot in a circle around him. Its movement was fluid and smooth. A chirrup from Mr. Hayes prompted the horse to canter, tossing its head and swishing its tail. After a few minutes, Mr. Hayes stopped the horse, and Patrick came over to it.

Mr. Hayes held the colt’s head up so that Patrick could examine its overall conformation. Patrick ran his hands down its neck, sides, and legs, and picked up each of the horse’s feet. The colt was obviously accustomed to being handled. After waiting patiently until Mr. Hayes released its head and it once again could stand on four legs, the horse turned its attention to the grass growing in the paddock.

“You want to saddle him?” Mr. Hayes asked Patrick.

“Could I see the other one first?” Patrick responded. He was thinking of the blood-bay colt he had seen in the barn.

“Sure thing.” Mr. Hayes led the colt outside the paddock. After looping the end of the reins around the fence, he walked back into the barn. He returned with the second four-year-old, not the blood-bay, but a dark brown horse. Patrick again watched as Mr. Hayes worked the horse in a circle within the paddock. This colt, too, had impeccable conformation and appeared to be trained as well as the first. Having refused a ride on the chestnut, he felt obliged to saddle this one. He rode the horse several times around the paddock. The ride was smooth and effortless, and the colt obeyed all of his commands without hesitation. Still, with this horse and the chestnut, there was something missing.

He dismounted and handed the reins to Mr. Hayes.

“They’re both fine animals,” Patrick told him. He paused. “I couldn’t help but notice another colt in the barn earlier, a bay? Is that horse for sale?”

“He’s a three-year-old, nah, three an’ a half, really,” Mr. Hayes replied. “He’s a spirited little devil. I kept him in his stall this morning so I could work with him this afternoon. I just started him under the saddle, an’ I can already tell he’s going to be a handful. Not mean, mind you, but definitely spirited. I wouldn’t sell him until he’s four, like the others. But I can bring him out for a look, if you’d like.”

“I
would
like to see him,” Patrick said. He looked over at his father for a second opinion, but Stephen, oblivious to their discussion, was gingerly stroking the nose of the chestnut tied outside the paddock.

“Mary, could you bring out the bay?” Mr. Hayes called toward the barn. He began to unbuckle the saddle on the brown colt. “Mary’s my daughter,” he explained. “She’s pretty shy, doesn’t really get involved with the sellin’ much, but otherwise, she helps out quite a bit with the horses. She’s even better with some of ‘em than I am, an’ the bay in there really behaves for her.”

Patrick had neither seen nor heard anyone except Mr. Hayes since they had arrived at the farm. Then he remembered the noise in the barn. Apparently, he had not been alone.

A loud whinny captured their attention, and the blood-bay appeared at the barn door. The colt was tall for a Morgan and almost completely obscured Mary as she walked on the other side of the horse. She kept a firm hand on the lead of the halter as she led the colt to the paddock.

The bay colt was even more spectacular in the morning sun than he had looked in the dim light inside the barn. The colt seemed to know it, too. He tossed his head repeatedly, shied sideways, as if to flaunt his mahogany beauty. They came closer, through the gate of the paddock. If Patrick had looked closely, he would have noticed a certain spark in the deep brown eyes of the colt, that
something
that had been missing from the previous two. But despite his fine eye for horses, he didn’t notice the spark at all.

He couldn’t tear his gaze from Mary.

She led the colt into the paddock and stood almost motionless beside it, still holding fast to the lead. Patrick heard Mr. Hayes telling him about the bay, but the voice was little more than a monotonous hum occasionally punctuated by a few intelligible words.

“—an’ he’s got one of the finest heads I’ve ever seen on a Morgan, deep-set eyes, an’ a fine arch in his neck—”

Patrick nodded, shifting his gaze to the colt, but his green eyes were drawn back to Mary. She had dark brown, almost black hair. Most of it was pulled into a loose ponytail at the nape of her neck, but a few tendrils fluttered around her temples. Her cheekbones were high and delicate, under fair skin tinged with the palest pink. She looked up at him with blue eyes rimmed by the longest black lashes he had ever seen. He got an especially good look at the lashes, because Mary averted her eyes downward only a second after he looked into them. She turned her face toward the bay colt. Her unobtrusive manner made her easy to overlook, but once noticed, she was exquisite.

“—straight legs, an’ you’ll notice that his build is just as good as the four-year-olds, an’ he might end up a bigger horse, over fifteen hands when he’s full grown—”

Mary wore a gray cotton blouse and old work pants cinched with a brown leather belt. Her pants were tucked into scuffed riding boots that came up to her knees. Patrick hardly noticed her attire. He was much more interested in what was beneath her clothing. He saw only the small of her throat exposed at the top of her shirt, the outline of her breasts, the slim waist hidden beneath the belt. She was about five and a half feet tall, but her petite frame made her appear much smaller.
Such fine breeding
, he thought.

Aside from Mary’s beauty, though, there was something else about her that appealed to Patrick: vulnerability. Her meekness would be apparent to anyone, but to a man of society who could sum up everything about a person from a thirty-second introduction, and to whom the exercise of power over another was recreation, it was an invitation for pleasure. Patrick was a hawk that had just spotted a sparrow.

“He’s just green broke now, an’ he needs several months of training before he’d be fit for a gentleman such as yourself,” Mr. Hayes finished. “An’ as I said, I don’ sell ‘em ‘til they’re four, anyhow. But he’s a good’un, for sure.”

Patrick forced himself to concentrate on the farmer. “I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Hayes. The colts are all exceptional, but this bay tops them all. I don’t need to see you work him to know that this is the one I want, assuming he checks out with our veterinarian. Surely we could work out an arrangement. He’d be almost four at the end of the summer. Could I give you a deposit for him and take him then?”

Mr. Hayes pushed his hat more firmly onto his head and smoothed his grizzled beard. “I’ve never done that before,” he said. “Mary, why don’ you put the others in the field?” Mary slipped over to the four-year-olds and led them away toward the gate in the pasture fence. Patrick watched her go. He pictured her on his arm, wearing a fine gown as they made their entrance at a social engagement, saw his parents smiling their approval, saw the looks on the faces of the other guests, especially the other men, as he escorted her. He had always had the best of everything. She would be his perfect match--a shining but submissive partner in his world of wealth and prestige. He clenched his jaw, overcome with a sudden sense of desperation at the thought of not seeing more of her, until an idea hit him.

“I’ll pay you double what you normally ask for one of your colts,” he blurted, causing the expression on the farmer’s face to change entirely, “and I’d gladly come out here on weekends to help with the training. That way, you could be sure that he’d get a proper start, as you describe it. I learned to ride at school, but I’ve never helped train a horse before. Judging from the manners of those four-year-olds, you must be pretty good at it.” Patrick smiled, trying to look pleasantly hopeful and fighting a hungry urge to stare at Mary’s backside as she walked farther away.

“Well,” Mr. Hayes finally said, “That’s a little sooner than I usually let ‘em go, but I don’ know that I could refuse an offer like that. I s’pose if you work with him some, he could get used to you, an’ I could make sure everything goes well with him....”

“Then we have a deal?” Patrick asked.

“I’ll expect you here on Saturday mornings, about ten,” Mr. Hayes said, as they shook hands.

Patrick’s father strolled up to them. He looked first at Patrick, then at the bay colt grazing beside him. “This the one?” he asked. “Nice color. When shall we send a truck for him?”

“Oh, around the first of September or so,” Mr. Hayes said, smiling.

“Come again?”

“He’s the best of them, Pop, but he’s not fully broken yet,” Patrick explained. “So Mr. Hayes is going to keep him for the summer, work with him, and we’ll get him in a few months. And, I’m going to help with the training on the weekends.”

“Oh.” Stephen’s mouth drooped and opened slightly, and his brow furrowed. “I suppose we won’t have our Saturday drives then.” His voice was whiny and pouting. “But Patrick, you were so excited to get a horse. Are you sure you want to wait all summer? The other two looked like fine specimens to me,” he said.

“Of course they are,” Patrick said. “But a few more months for the right horse isn’t really long to wait. Besides, there’s something about this one. I have to have this one.”
And
, he thought to himself,
I’ll have more from this farm than the bay colt
.

“Whatever you want, son,” Stephen said, forcing a smile. He pulled out his checkbook and a pen.

Stephen gave Mr. Hayes a deposit for the bay colt, and he and Patrick walked back to the Lincoln. Father and son were quiet as they headed down the driveway of the farm, back toward the main road.

“I must say, I still prefer good horsepower to a good horse,” Stephen finally said. “If you think that red horse was a real find, I trust you. It must be if you’d wait ‘til the end of the summer for it, being as horse-crazy as you are. But,” he added, stepping on the accelerator with a satisfied grin, “to each his own.”

“A real find,” Patrick said, but he wasn’t speaking of the bay colt.

Chapter 3

As darkness crept past the town of Mill River, Father O’Brien struggled to come up with a sermon for the morning’s service. The various themes running through his mind lingered for only a few minutes before his thoughts drifted back to Mary. He would have stayed with her through the night, but she had insisted that he leave. Reluctantly, he had done so, but now he was beginning to think that he should have stayed regardless of what he had promised her.

He looked at the large box of spoons sitting on his desk. It was a box of joy and guilt and sin. He had taped it shut and printed his return address in the upper left corner of the top surface. The address for the box’s destination was another matter. It didn’t have a destination yet, and he was too tired to worry about it now.

Of far greater concern to him was Mary. He intended to go back up to her marble mansion at first light. Mass would not begin until ten-thirty, so he would have plenty of time.

He had a dreadful feeling that he would need it.

~~~

Officer Kyle Hansen was quiet as he opened the door of his apartment. He hung his coat on a hook by the door and went to check on Rowen.

The nine-year-old was sound asleep in her bed, surrounded by a zoo of stuffed animals.
I’ll surprise her with Mickey Mouse pancakes in the morning
, Kyle thought as he watched her sleeping. He kissed her lightly on the cheek before heading to the bathroom to take a shower.