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drove the pickup around yet another curve en route back to the feed warehouse when she came upon something that caught her attention—a black mound in the grass on the other side of a poorly maintained barbed wire fence. A horse, lying on the ground. It was not an altogether unusual sight, but Lilly slowed. As she neared, she kept sensing that something was not right about this. Then she saw the horse thrashing on the ground.
When Lilly and her grandparents had lived back on the Hopi reservation, she’d been around her neighbor’s horses a great deal, and had done a lot of riding as a young girl. But since Lilly and her grandfather had moved to California when Lilly was thirteen she’d been around feed more often than the animals that ate it. Her grandfather had bought the feed and grain business, but he didn’t keep any livestock. She rode rarely now, and only in the last couple of years, but she still remembered a lot about horses.
She pulled onto the shoulder and watched the horse. The mare jolted suddenly, rolled a bit, then stood and attempted to stretch out, curling her lip and pawing at the ground with her front hooves and kicking with her hind. Then down she went again.
Shit, Lilly thought. That horse was sick. Very sick. The only house in sight was on the wrong side of the road, but maybe someone there could direct her to the owners of this pasture, this horse. She went to the house, and an unshaven man in a T-shirt answered the door. He didn’t know the name of the horse’s owner, but he knew where it came from. He gave her directions up the road to the next turnoff and another quarter mile to an old farmhouse and barn. She went quickly, and what she found there stunned and confused her.
She called Dr. Jensen’s cell phone at once. “Nathaniel, I found a sick mare by the side of the road and the owner’s property is deserted. It looks abandoned. No one in the house, all the furniture’s gone, a couple of real skinny dogs are hanging out around the barn, the feed bin’s half-full of grain and trough’s empty. The horse is rolling, kicking, curling, sweating …”
“Where are you, Lilly?”
“Off 36 and Bell Road at a crossroad called Mercury Pass, but there’s no road sign. A neighbor directed me to this old farmhouse. The horse is rolling around just off Bell near 36.”
“I know the property,” Nathaniel said. “That’s the Jeromes'. As far as I know, they just had the one horse—a twelve-year-old black mare. But I haven’t been out there in about a year … maybe longer.”
She was, in fact, a very pretty black mare with back stockings and a diamond on her forehead. “That’s her. She’s a beauty. And she’s in a bad way.”
“I’ll be there soon as I can,” he said, clicking off.
Lilly wanted to get back to the horse, but she couldn’t resist a quick check of the barn and around the outside to be sure there weren’t any other casualties—horses, goats, cows or chickens. The small corral was neglected and full of manure, the barn was a filthy mess, manure and trash littering the place. There was no gear for the horse in the barn that she could see, no bridle, saddle or grooming gear. Behind the barn she found a chicken coop, the door left open, a few broken shells on the ground and a lot of scattered feathers. Had the chickens been left as food for the pumas, coyotes and wild dogs?
She’d seen enough. She jumped in the truck and sped back to the roadside. The horse was up again, stretching out her legs and curling her lip. She was in abdominal pain—that was clear. She kicked at her midsection a little, unsuccessfully, and then she was on the ground again, rolling around before lying listless and sweating. Lilly jumped the fence and kneeled at the horse’s head, stroking her snout and murmuring that everything would be all right, though she wasn’t the least confident about that.
It seemed an eternity before she saw a truck pulling a horse trailer come into view. When it came closer she saw that Nathaniel had brought his new assistant with him. Just as they were getting out of the truck the horse was struggling to her feet again, going through all the same motions.
“What’s going on here, Lilly?” Nathaniel asked. He braced both hands on a fence post and leaped over the barbed wire while Clay went to the back of the horse trailer and opened it up, lowering the ramp.
“She’s acting like colic, Doc. And like she’s had it awhile.”
“You find anyone around the Jeromes'?”
“No. It’s like they ran off. There was a chicken coop behind the barn, door standing open, broken eggs and a lot of feathers. You don’t suppose …?”
“That they left the horse in the pasture, the henhouse door open, the dogs to fend for themselves?” Nathaniel pulled back the horse’s lips to look at her gums. He listened to her stomach for gut sounds and felt her tight belly, an action that made her prance a little. “This sort of thing hasn’t happened in such numbers since the Depression, or so my dad tells me. With unemployment so high and money so tight, folks are faced with hard choices. Sometimes they have to decide between feeding their kids or their animals. Some abandon their property, mortgages and animals and just look for shelter.”
“They took their furniture,” she said. “The house is empty. So is the grain bin and trough. Think it’s possible they put out the last of the feed and left some water for this horse and she gorged herself?”
“Anything is possible. A few weeks ago some folks from downriver found a dead seven-year-old gelding by the road, starved. I didn’t know the horse. Someone who couldn’t afford to keep it might’ve taken it to an empty pasture and left him, hoping it would be rescued.”
“They couldn’t've sold him?”
“In this economy? It’s tough.”
Clay joined them, a halter and lead rope in his hand. Nate took them from him and said, “You mind fetching my bag, Clay? And please, draw up 10cc of Banamine.”
“Got it,” he said.
“What can you do, Nate?” she asked him.
“I’ll get her temperature, make sure she’s not diseased. They could’ve poisoned her to put her down before leaving her, but I’d be surprised by that. Most folks who run into situations that force them to leave their animals behind hope for the best. If we have advanced colic, I’ll give her some Banamine for the pain, run a stomach tube into her and administer some mineral oil, see if that moves things along. If it’s an intestinal twist and she needs surgery… well, let’s hope it’s a blockage …”
Lilly bit her lip; she understood. Nathaniel couldn’t do surgery, hospitalize the equine patient and care for her while she was at great risk of expiring. She was an orphan. No vet could afford a lot of expensive charity cases.
When Clay returned with the bag and drug, Lilly stepped back out of their way and marveled at the way they worked together. Clay wasn’t flirting now; he was focused on the horse and assisting his vet. Over the course of about thirty minutes, the animal was agitated, stretching and kicking. Clay had the halter on her and held the lead rope so he could control her movements somewhat, keeping her upright so she wouldn’t twist her intestines, but he mainly stroked her and held her as motionless as possible while Nathaniel first completed his exam and then injected her with Banamine. That seemed to almost immediately quiet the animal. But she wasn’t real crazy about the stomach tube that was run down her throat.
It was amazing the way Clay and Nathaniel worked together, as if they’d been in this situation a hundred times before. When the mare was resisting the tubing, Lilly stepped forward to help in some way, but Clay’s hand came up, palm toward her. “No, Lilly. She’s in pain and when she’s thrashing, she could kick you. Stay back, please,” he said quietly, calmly.
After the mineral oil was infused and the tubing removed, the horse moved as though she’d go down again, but Nathaniel instructed Clay to try to keep her up, walking her slowly and quietly. If she continued rolling around on the ground, she increased the chances of twisting her intestines into a knot.
“Will you take her to your stable?” Lilly asked Nate.
“Not