Page 12 of Rolling Thunder

Joey was the only horse who hadn’t run to the other side of the pen, and now she ran her hand down his neck. He was probably two hundred pounds underweight, and his neck no longer had the strong arch of muscle that it once had. “Is he going in the auction?”

“Yeah.” Toby answered.

In her grandmother’s memory, she felt positively compelled to get this horse out of this dangerous squalor and back home to the farm he’d spent his life on. If she could feed him up, he might even be a good trail horse again. She had really come back to the farm out of desperation, not hoping for redemption. But here was a possible bit of redemption staring her in the face, with one blue eye and one brown.

“Could I possibly buy him now? I’ll go get my trailer. I just know…I know she wouldn’t have wanted him here like this.” Her voice cracked a little, and she bit her lip, praying.

“I ain’t supposed to make any deals this early in the week,” Toby countered, but he looked at her face, and she was doing an awful job of hiding her emotion. Her cheeks burned as she begged for an old broken-down horse, but she was past the point of pride now. She just had to get Joey out of here, and she would do anything to achieve it.

“Please,” she said. “Don’t put him in the auction. I don’t have a ton of money, and if I get outbid, I’ll lose him. She wouldn’t want him here, Toby. Please just let me get him.”

“We can’t save them all,” she heard her grandmother say. But she was NOT leaving this one.

“All right. How old you say he is?” Toby asked.

“He’s twenty-four.” She glanced at the horse, praying he wasn’t foundered or otherwise crippled already. She could barely come up with the meat-market price for this horse, but after that, she was going to have to pray for another miracle. Praying for miracles had become a regular thing for her anyway. What was one more?

“At that age, I reckon he’d be on the meat truck anyway. Let me see what we’re into him for.”

“Thank you! Thank you so much!” she exclaimed, feeling her shoulders relax suddenly.

He glanced away, uncomfortable, and she knew she had to rein herself in. She was embarrassing the stoic old auction man.

“I’ll go get my trailer. I have cash at home. I’ll be back in a half an hour.”

He nodded and unlatched the door of the pen in a wordless order for her to get out of there before he left. She slipped out by him and started down the hall.

“Half hour!” she called again over her shoulder. She had to force herself not to look back at the horse. She fought to leave him there at all, against a deep terror that somehow he wouldn’t be there when she got back. Or that Toby would change his mind or name a price she couldn’t match.

She hammered home in her grandmother’s old Chevy Silverado, then hitched up the old stock trailer. These had survived the plunder of the farm by being left with Mr. Morales for her to collect.

She made it back to the fairgrounds in record time. Another wave of relief crashed over her when she saw Toby waiting outside the holding pens with Joey’s lead in one hand, and the sale paperwork in the other. “We’re not into him for much,” Toby said, looking at the ground. “Two fifty and we’ll call it even.”

Clearly, he was doing her a favor, but a man like him wouldn’t want attention for it. She counted out the cash without comment out of respect and appreciation. Old Toby was a good man. He helped her load Joey into her trailer and latched the gate with a slam and a wink.

“You take good care of yourself now. Don’t be a stranger.”

“I won’t. Thanks, Toby. From me and Gram Kay.” And that was one name drop she didn’t feel bad about. She’d done so much wrong, but this one thing she had made right in her grandmother’s memory. He touched the brim of his cowboy hat in acknowledgment. She saw him in her mirror, watching her drive off. So, there were good men left in the world.

She’d only gone to the fairgrounds in the first place hoping to scare up more business for herself. Instead, she spent money on a horse she didn’t need and now had to feed. He was almost certainly in need of overdue vet and hoof care, and that would cost her even more. The dread of how she was going to have to handle that problem was momentarily smothered when she carefully backed Joey out of the trailer in front of the barn.

Joey looked around, flared his nostrils, and nickered to see who would answer. Some of the horses in the barn nickered back, and he tugged at the lead rope to go inside. She could sense his relief to be home in the eagerness with which he marched back into the barn of his youth.

He was coated in filth and looked like he might have a fungal infection from standing out in the rain. She tied him up in the wash rack and began to spray him down. As the grime washed away, revealing the bright white and chocolate patches, she could see he was thinner than she had thought. It wouldn’t be cheap to feed him back up. Assuming his teeth were still good enough to chew. If not, there’d be a dental vet bill as well. More money she didn’t have.

When he was clean, she put him into an empty stall instead of the pasture. She didn’t know how long it had been since he’d had fresh grass and she didn’t need a colic bill on top of everything else. He pawed in the fresh shavings and dropped down. But instead of rolling like she expected, he seemed to simply immediately fall asleep. She watched him sleeping peacefully in the clean stall and took a fortifying breath.

“I’m sorry, Gram,” she murmured. “I’m gonna make it right.” Joey was here. He was safe. Hopefully, somewhere, her grandmother knew. That was all that mattered.

CHAPTER 5

The grim reality was that she had spent so much money on Joey that she again didn’t have her mortgage money. She stared at her phone in despair, steeling herself to call Trent, when the text popped up.

Evan: Want to go for a ride?

Her heart leapt even as her stomach dropped. She couldn’t keep seeing him. She knew this. She had to walk down a dark path to dig herself out of debt, and she hated herself for it. Little did he know that the horse trainer he thought he was dating was really moonlighting as a stripper in the worst kind of place with the worst kind of people. And every time she went back to Trent’s world, she was an inch closer to him regaining control of her life.

Nevertheless, Evan’s timing was impeccable. She wanted nothing more than to take her mind off the inevitable hell she was about to wade through. Once again, he was the perfect distraction. She texted back: Sure.

---