Thieves Dozen by Donald E. Westlake Read Free Book Online

thing as playing
too
hard to get. With a toss of the head, moving with a picky-toed dignity that Dortmunder might have thought sexually suspicious if he hadn’t known Dire Straits’ rep, the big black beast came forward, lowered his head, wuggled and muggled over Hiram’s palm and the cubes were gone. Meanwhile, with his other hand, Hiram was patting the horse’s nose, murmuring, rubbing behind his ear and gradually getting into just the right position.
    It was slickly done, Dortmunder had to admit that. The first thing Dire Straits knew, the bit was in his mouth, the bridle straps were around his head and Hiram was wrapping a length of rein around his own hand. “Good boy,” Hiram said, gave the animal one more pat and backed away, opening the stall.
    After all that prima-donna stuff, Dire Straits was suddenly no trouble at all. Maybe he thought he was on his way to the hop. As Daffy and a couple of other horses neighed goodbye, Hiram led Dire Straits out of the barn. Dortmunder and Kelp stuck close, Hiram now seeming less like an old coot and more like somebody who knew what he was doing, and they headed at an easy pace across the fields.
    The fences along the way were composed of two rails, one at waist height and the other down by your knee, with their ends stuck into holes in vertical posts and nailed. On the way in, Dortmunder and Kelp had removed rails from three fences, because Hiram had assured them that Dire Straits would neither climb them nor leap over. “I thought horses jumped,” Dortmunder said.
    “Only jumpers,” Hiram answered. Dortmunder, unsatisfied, decided to let it go.
    On the way out, Hiram and Dire Straits paused while Dortmunder and Kelp restored the rails to the first fence, having to whisper harshly the length of the rail at each other before they got the damn things seated in the holes in the vertical posts, and then they moved on, Kelp muttering, “You almost took my thumb off there, you know.”
    “Wait till we’re in the light again,” Dortmunder told him. “I’ll show you the big gash on the back of my hand.”
    “No, no, honey,” Hiram said to Dire Straits. It seemed there were other horses in this field, and Dire Straits wanted to go hang out, but Hiram held tight to the rein, tugged and provided the occasional sugar cube to keep him moving in the right direction. The other horses began to come around, interested, wondering what was up. Dortmunder and Kelp did their best to keep out of the way without losing Hiram and Dire Straits, but it was getting tough. There were five or six horses milling around, bumping into one another, sticking their faces into Dortmunder’s and Kelp’s necks, distracting them and slowing them down. “Hey!” Dortmunder called, but softly. “Wait up!”
    “We got to get out of here,” Hiram said, not waiting up. Kelp said, “Hiram, we’re gonna get lost.”
    “Hold his tail,” Hiram suggested. He still wasn’t waiting up. Dortmunder couldn’t believe that. “You mean the horse?” “Who else? He won’t mind.”
    The sound of Hiram’s voice was farther ahead. It was getting harder to tell Dire Straits from all these other beasts. “Jeez, maybe we better,” Kelp said and trotted forward, arms up to protect himself from ricocheting animals.
    Dortmunder followed, reluctant but seeing no other choice. He and Kelp both grabbed Dire Straits’ tail, way down near the end; and from there on, the trip got somewhat easier, though it was essentially humiliating to have to walk along holding on to some horse’s tail.
    At the second fence, there was another batch of horses, so many that it was impossible to put the rails back. “Oh, the hell with it,” Dortmunder said. “Let’s just go.” He grabbed Dire Straits’ tail. “Come on, come on,” he said, and the horse he was holding on to, which wasn’t Dire Straits, suddenly took off at about 90 miles an hour, taking Dortmunder with him for the first eight inches, or until his brain could