All the King's Horses by Lauren Gallagher Read Free Book Online Page A

like he always did. When he saw me, his ears went up, but he laid them back again when he heard her. He did that with everyone. Couldn’t say I blamed him this time.
    I rested my elbow on his door and thought about the moment I’d introduced Amy to this one yesterday.
    “This is Chip,” I‘d said, and I didn’t take my eyes off the chestnut gelding. More than any other horse, you didn’t turn your back on Chip. “You’ll want to be careful with him.”
    “Oh?” She’d looked past me at the gelding, and, surprise, surprise, nothing registered in her expression beyond the most basic curiosity. Same as with every horse, from the babies to Ransom to the abuse cases. Like she was looking over farm equipment instead of horses.
    “He’s another rescue,” I’d gone on. “From the same farm as Blue and Star, actually, but I’ve had him longer.” Just the thought of what he’d been through made me grimace. “He had a long, long show career, and the owners abused the hell out of him.”
    “Poor thing,” she’d said flatly.
    “No kidding. His feet and legs were a mess when the rescue group got hold of him.” I’d paused, watching the beautiful red gelding eye us warily from the other side of the stall with decidedly more interest than Amy watched him. “He’s doing a lot better now. Almost sound. Physically, anyway.”
    “Not rideable?”
    “Not even close.” I’d sighed. “Usually the ones who come from that farm are just timid and nervous. Comes with having the shit beat out of them. This one, I don’t know what switch they flipped in his head, but he gets scared, he gets aggressive. And it doesn’t take much to scare him.” I’d gestured at his hooves. “That’s why his feet are still such a goddamned mess.”
    Amy craned her neck over the door and looked down. Her tone flat and her expression indifferent, she asked, “Afraid of the farrier?”
    I nodded. “And the farrier’s scared to death of him. Takes a metric ton of sedatives to calm Chip enough, and no small amount of persuading to get the farrier near him. Ever seen a horse drugged out of his gourd still manage to take a chunk out of someone’s hide?”
    Her eyebrows flicked up, which was the most expressive she’d been around a horse so far. “You’re kidding.”
    “Nope.” I pushed up my sleeve, revealing a scar just above my elbow. “He was twitched and so drugged up he was practically unconscious, but the farrier went to put a shoe on him, and he went nuts. Snapped at me, jerked his foot away from the farrier.” I pulled my sleeve down again. “We decided to keep him barefoot for a while.”
    “Smart move,” she murmured. She watched him silently, and I watched her. I wondered what went on in her mind. A lot of my farmhands over the years had been inexperienced with horses but not completely uninterested and disconnected like she seemed to be.
    Not that she seemed terribly interested in or connected to anything, really. The woman was like indifference personified, and she unnerved me. She’d been attractive at first sight, but I kept her at arm’s length now.
    “You’ll want to avoid him,” I said finally. “Just let me turn him in and out, and you can clean his stall whenever he’s out to pasture. But”—I gestured at the door—“don’t mess with him.”
    Irritation flickered across her face and tightened her lips— oh, now you show emotion? —but she just nodded, and I’d led her out of the barn after that.
    I sighed as my thoughts returned to the present. I gave Chip one last look, then left Amy to feeding, and I headed toward the house. On my way across the parking area, my gaze drifted toward the pickup truck parked in front of her side of the house. It was dusty, and the front end was covered in the remains of a sizeable chunk of Eastern Washington’s insect population, but it was a nice truck. No rust in the paint. Diamond-plate running boards. Solid tread on the tires. Definitely manufactured