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The little red dun was wedged on her left side in the narrow space, struggling to find her feet but unable to get up or even move her legs much at all. She was cast. It’d be impossible for her to get her feet under her and get up without help.
It wouldn’t be long, either, until the mare ran out of strength to help them help her.
Darcy heaved a huge sigh. She had taken an oath, after all.
“We’ve got to get her out of there pretty quick. I’ll help you. I’m Dr. Darcy Hart. I’m a veterinarian.”
“I saw the vet box,” he snapped.
“So,” she said, just as sharply. “Be grateful I happened along.”
“Go back to Oklahoma.”
“You’re pretty observant for a man with a sick, cast horse in a ditch on the side of the road.”
“It’s hard not to notice a bossy woman veterinarian hollering orders at a perfect stranger.”
Darcy felt a stab of anger.
“Hang on?” she said sarcastically. “I’ll help you? That’s all I said. You call that hollering orders?”
He pulled his straw hat down and impaled her with his bright blue gaze.
“Get on down the road,” he said harshly. “I don’t need any pity assistance.”
She had to think about it, because she wasn’t quite sure what he meant, at first. Then she knew. His leg. He thought she’d stopped because he was physically disabled.
Darcy looked him straight in the eye for another long beat. He wasn’t the kind of man to seek or accept help from a woman. He was, no doubt, a typical male of the cowboy kind. Those men had the desire and duty and determination to protect and take care of any female bred right into their bones.
“I wouldn’t waste my pity on you, mister,” she said evenly, “although you deserve a truckload of it for being mean as a snake. My only concern here is the mare and foal.”
He tried to hide it, but she saw a flash of surprise in his blazing eyes. And maybe…even a twitch of humorous appreciation at the corner of his mouth?
That gave her a tiny satisfaction.
Her blood was pulsing with urgency to help the mare, but she waited. He needed to decide what to do. He needed to be the one to give the orders if they weren’t going to waste any more time arguing.
He was the kind of man she thought he was. He was a horseman, and the horse came first.
“I’ll get a rope,” he said. “Scoot down in there by her head and see if you can calm her a little.”
Darcy started down into the ditch as he turned to his trailer.
“What’s her name?” she called.
“Tara.”
“What’s yours?”
He hesitated for an instant, as if she had a lot of nerve to ask, but finally he answered.
“Jackson.”
Whether that was his first name or his last, Darcy couldn’t tell. But what did she care? It didn’t matter. He wasn’t the reason she was here.
Tara had stopped struggling for the moment, but her eyes were still showing fear, and she was looking over her shoulder at her flank. Darcy slid down the incline to her head and began stroking it and talking to her.
It helped a little. She struggled once again, hard, and then stopped.
Her breathing sounded wheezy, and it wasn’t just from the fall. Since her eyes and nose were runny, there was every likelihood that the stress of the developing foal on such short rations had probably lowered her immune system and caused her to contract a respiratory virus.
Darcy’s heart clutched as she sat on her haunches there, stroking the pretty head, looking into one of the big soft eyes of the mare. The foal would most likely be sickly, too, if it wasn’t stillborn.
Jackson came back with a length of soft rope in his hands and managed, a bit precariously, to half-walk, half-slide into the ditch behind Tara. He talked to her soothingly so she’d know he was there and stepped sideways along the near side of it to reach her, all the while forming a loop in the rope with his gloved hands. Darcy thought vaguely that that would be easier to do without gloves.
Quickly, almost before she knew it, he had the rope around all four of Tara’s feet and was making his way around her to the lower side of the ditch. He had a little trouble with the terrain, but he made it, and as Darcy got to her feet, ready to help, he set his heels into the ground as best he could, braced himself and pulled. Talking to the mare in a surprisingly soothing voice, he quickly pulled her feet over her massive belly so that she could stand.
“I’ll get it,” he said hatefully, hurrying around to take the rope off.
“All right.”
When he had it off, Darcy backed up to give Tara some room and pulled up on the lead rope to help her. Jackson gave her hindquarters a little help. Heavily, awkwardly, the mare got to her feet.
“Now,” Darcy said, “let’s get her out of the ditch and I’ll look her over….”
“No need of that,” he said, and he came past the mare to take the lead from her.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Darcy snapped.
She tried to think, tried to control the sudden anger that took her. Here he had a volunteer veterinarian for a horse in danger and he wasn’t even going to let her take care of the animal. How could he be such an ungrateful wretch?
The question stopped her short. The man didn’t matter. The mare did.
She put a conscious effort into trying to control her temper. He had every right to send her away, and if she wanted this mare to have care, she had to get his permission.
“Jackson, you’re a good horseman, I can tell,” she said. “And this clearly is a good horse, even if she does look as if she’s been turned out during a seven-year drought.”
Jackson didn’t answer. He led Tara out of the ditch and onto the side of the road.
Darcy followed.
“When you had the blowout, did you call anyone to come get her? She needs…”
“I had just had the blowout when you came along.”
His tone said that was the end of the conversation.
“Well, while you wait for someone to come for her, let me check her…”
“I’ll walk her home,” he said harshly. “That’s my barn over there.”
He gestured toward a small barn and house that she hadn’t noticed in the near distance, not far past the chapel. The place was within easy walking distance across a pasture.
The mare could make it that far, and Darcy could meet them there. If she could get him to agree.
A thought struck her. Maybe his infuriating attitude stemmed from worries about money. Yet his truck was expensive and new. His place wasn’t, though.
“This is a new experience for me,” she said. “Most of the time, people are trying to get free veterinary care instead of turning it down.”
Still wheezing, Tara looked at her flanks as they walked toward the trailer, then lifted her head and looked straight at Darcy as if she knew she was trying to help her. Her tail lifted and switched back and forth restlessly. She was obviously in early labor and ready to foal.
Darcy patted her sweaty side and tried again.
“If you want her to get through this foaling alive, she’s going to need some help.”
Then it hit her.
“You don’t want a woman veterinarian, do you? You’re that narrow-minded!”
She bit her tongue. This was no way to get him to let her treat the mare.
It made him talk, though.
“I don’t know why women are always trying to be equine vets when they’re not strong enough to do half of what needs to be done,” he said bitterly.
His blue eyes blazed at her again.
“And you’re smaller than most.”
“And you’re more two-faced than most,” she said, blazing back at him. “You act like a real horseman, yet you starve a fine mare. And then you deny her medical care.”
Jackson opened the tack room door of the trailer. He flicked a careless glance at her as if her opinion meant absolutely nothing to him.
“If you want a job so bad,” he said, “hold her a minute while I get a better halter.”
He handed Darcy the lead rope, opened the door and stepped into the neatly arranged tack room. Its contents included several expensive saddles on built-in racks. He could certainly afford a veterinarian.
Tara moved around uneasily, and Darcy turned her attention to the mare. Her tail was going like a metronome, switching back and forth. Back and forth. Then she dropped her head and seemed to be looking for a spot to lie down.
Dear Lord, don’t let this mare foal right here in the road.
She was so angry with this strange, contradictory man she could scream. But she had to control her temper and her tongue or she’d never be able to help this good mare through her hard time coming.
Maybe she could be friendlier and accomplish more.
To calm herself and Tara, she stroked the horse’s cheek some more. Her fingernail caught in one of the ravelings of the halter. It was nothing but a ragged remnant of a halter, truly not safe to use.
“Why did you ever put this one on her?” she called.
“I was in a hurry,” he said, his voice muffled by the wall. “It was all I could find.”
“Were you hauling her to the vet?”
When he didn’t answer, she turned to look at him. He was stepping down from the trailer, favoring the weaker leg as he reached the ground.
“No,” he said. “I was stealing her.”
Darcy stared at him. He appeared to be perfectly serious.
He walked toward her with a good halter, new, high-quality and embroidered along the side. It fit with the truck and the saddles but not with the looks of the place. She read it as he slipped off the old one and slid the new one on.
Rocking M Ranch, it said, and beneath that was the brand.
“Is the Rocking M mainly a horse-stealing out-fit?” she said, trying for a lightly charming tone.
She smiled at him as she checked Tara’s respiratory rate. It was twice what it should be, and the mare was sweating more than ever. Darcy flipped the mare’s lip up to reveal pale, pasty gums. This horse was in trouble.
“Not usually.”
He growled the words but he looked straight at her, his eyes and mouth holding that hint of humor again. His gaze lingered on hers for a long moment, too—almost as if he were seeing her for the first time.
“Tara’s a special case,” he said. “I don’t make a habit of stealing just any horse.”
“Why’d you pick her?”
He adjusted the halter and buckled it.
“We bred her on the Rocking M and sold her as a two-year-old. She won a lot in reining and she gave her all every time—she beat a lot of more talented horses. Her heart’s as big as Texas.”
He took the lead from her, and she thought he was going to walk away.
“What about the consequences of being a horse thief?” she said quickly.
He shrugged.
“He may come after me, but I doubt it.”
“Who?”
“The worthless neighbor of mine who won her papers in a poker game. He neglected her. I warned him twice.”
Tara’s side rippled, and she turned to look at it. Again, she smelled the ground and thought about lying down.
“Well, God sent you to get her this morning,” Darcy said. “She’s in first stage labor. She would’ve died foaling over there.”
“God has bigger things to do,” Jackson snapped, his voice so bitter it chilled her.
Then, in a slightly nicer tone, he added, “Thanks for your help in getting her out of the ditch. I’ll take her home now.”
