Across Raven River Page 2

  I raised my not perfectly shaped eyebrows.

  “Yup. Just like Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, I was crammed into a one-room cabin, walls you could throw a cat through, and a sibling born every year. I’ve worked hard to lose my accent and to get where I am today.” With a twinkle in her eye, she said in an accented drawl, “though sometimes I mess with y’all.

  “And absolutely on more food. Geoffrey’s personal chef and his staff are in residence. A small nation could live off the food budget for this film, not to mention feed themselves on what will be wasted. Oh, man, that sounds preachy, doesn’t it?”

  I CHOSE THE RIVER PATH for my walk. The black ribbon of asphalt twisted and turned away from the back patio to deposit me at a large grassy clearing that butted up against Raven River. The snowmelt from higher elevations was evident in the fast-moving water. Having never learned to swim, I kept my distance. An ugly, ripped tree branch the size of a canoe swiftly came and went. I sincerely hoped my “horsey stuff” job wouldn’t find me crossing this fast-moving, ice-cold river on an unfamiliar horse.

  After my walk, I stopped at my room to pull on a cardigan before returning to the dining hall for the meet and greet. Really, I was having body-conscious moments being surrounded by so many thin women, but I justified wearing the bulky sweater with knowing that temperatures drop after sunset in the thin mountain air.

  Sissally waved to me, and I joined her after dishing up a more modest plateful of food. “How was the walkabout?” she asked in an Australian accent.

  I smiled and replied, “I’m disappointed there’s no shrimp on the barbie. I went down by the river. Wild beauty would describe it.”

  “I’ll have to check it out. Maybe we can do some exploring together.” She winked and added, “Maybe even off the designated walking paths.”

  “I’d like that,” I said. And meant it. Though I considered Wyoming my home base, I now travelled constantly on book tours and speaking engagements. That made it hard to maintain a weekly schedule of lunches with girlfriends. Thinking about spending time with Sissally made me think maybe I wasn’t quite the loner I professed to be.

  We chitchatted through our meal, and I offered to raid the dessert spread to get us a sweet treat along with coffee. As I returned to the table, Tiffany Rawlings walked gingerly to the front of the room in pointy-toed cowboy boots. My crystal ball saw bunion surgery for her by age 35.

  “May I have your attention, please?” My mother would be beaming at this girl’s proper use of the word “may.” Tiffany began by recapping the information from our check-in packet. There was a quiet buzz throughout the room as most people ignored her and continued their conversations. “Mr. Stone will be here at 8 o’clock sharp tomorrow morning to go over general filming information. Afterwards, I will meet with individual groups. I encourage everyone to check your name tag for your group assignment and locate fellow members before leaving this evening.”

  “Groups?” I asked Sissally. “I’ve never been on a movie set before. What does she mean by groups?”

  “Mr. Stone divides his filming crew into sections—like wardrobe, which includes me for hair and makeup.” Waving her purple name tag, she said, “We are color-coded. We will get a text telling us when and where to be, and everyone in that group had better be there and be ready to ask how high when he says jump. It’s a fast-paced industry, especially when the scene depends on a specific natural lighting. I’m not sure who else is here for wardrobe. I’m going to go see.”

  I stood up, scanning the crowd, squinting to look for other brown tags.

  “Staring at young women’s chests makes me feel like a dirty old man.” Warm breath brushed the curls at my right ear, causing me to jump and hit my knee on the table leg. A full water glass toppled, sending ice cubes floating on a rivulet of water.

  “Sorry,” the voice spoke again. “I think you are in my group—brown name tag, Silver the horse? Pretty sure the Lone Ranger wouldn’t be happy to see his classy stallion depicted as a cartoon.”

  I turned and said, “You got that right, Kemosabe.”

  “I’m David Brown, horse wrangler.”

  I was caught off guard by David’s Irish good looks—blue eyes, black hair, and a sexy five o’clock shadow. He was close to my age, and my mind immediately jumped to thinking that together we would make beautiful babies.

  I shook away the thought and said, “Courtney McKeena, consultant to all things horsey. I guess. My job description was a little ambiguous.”

  “I think you are my . . .” his voice trailed off.

  “Your what?” I asked.

  Ignoring my question, he asked, “Have you seen anyone else in our group?”

  I gave him a puzzled look before responding, “No, but I only started looking. Should we mingle?” After a walk through the room, we determined that we were the only ones with Hi-Yo Silver—Away! I challenged David, “Do you know Tonto’s horse’s name?”

  “Scout. My parents exposed me to all the old classics. How about you?”

  “My grandmother. She loved all the Westerns. In fact, she’d play Marshall Dillon while I pranced around as Miss Kitty. My hair isn’t quite as red, but it’s close.”

  “I think it suits you perfectly,” David said.

  Embarrassed, I looked away at the thinning crowd. “Looks like the party is breaking up. Have you worked on a movie set before?”

  “Nope. First time. I’m eager to see what the horses look like. Hopefully, there will be some nags these Hollywood types can ride.”

  Chapter 3

  THE NEXT MORNING, a worried-faced Tiffany addressed the gathered film crew. She looked stylish in embroidered stiletto boots. I calculated that if shooting a movie took two months and Tiffany wore different footwear every day, that’d be sixty pairs of shoes. I’d heard eighteen-wheelers grinding gears this morning and had gone to investigate. Big rigs, straight trucks, and vans of every size were being flagged to park in symmetrical lines next to the airstrip.

  Shoe reinforcements?

  David slipped into the seat beside me as someone whistled to get the room’s attention. Tiffany said, “Mr. Stone has been delayed in L.A. and won’t be flying in until late afternoon. His morning ‘hello’ has been postponed until tonight. Keep in mind our filming schedule is now set back, and the time will have to be made up.”

  I was sitting at the same table and in the same chair as yesterday. It’s part of my OCD that when I’m at a place more than once, I need to sit at the same table and in the same chair, drink out of the same colored cup, and use the same bathroom stall. It was those quirks that sent my last love interest fleeing to enjoy his undisciplined life.

  As Tiffany talked, my eyes wandered to David’s tanned hands on the white tablecloth. I wonder if I should try writing a romance. How would my suspense readers respond? Or maybe I should let Serena have a love interest. Add a new character to the series—a black-haired, blue-eyed Irishman.

  David bumped my shoulder. “Do you want to go to the barn with me?”

  “Yes,” I breathed. I cleared my throat and said louder, “Sure.”

  Outside, David led me to a row of John Deere gators parked beside a detached six-car garage behind the lodge. The barn/corral complex was just shy of a quarter mile down a black ribbon of paved road that cut through golf-course-green fields. As we neared the barn, David let out a low whistle. “Looks like Kentucky horse country meets Montana mountains,” he said as he parked in the area marked ATV Parking Only. We left the paved parking lot and walked on the freshly raked gravel pathway.

  The complex centered around a huge two-story red barn; its double doors rolled open to show an alley leading through to an indoor arena. The letters “TRO,” evenly spaced across the face of the barn, shone a brilliant white against the red. To our left, long stretches of white fence sectioned green paddocks into neat squares. To our right was a set of pipe corrals that looked sturdy enough to stop a charging buffalo.

  “Bet you they have a white sta
llion named Silver,” I said.

  “If they do, I hope Mr. Stone doesn’t plan on using him in the film. I don’t have the patience for a temperamental stud around people who don’t know which end of the animal the feed goes into.”

  “Don’t they usually have body doubles for the dangerous scenes? Horse doubles too?”

  “No clue. I don’t know anything about the business. Have you seen a script of this movie?”

  I shook my head. “Above my pay grade.” I snorted. “I don’t even know what my job description is.”

  “Yeah, about that—,” David began, only to be interrupted by a lanky cowboy who walked up on us.

  “Name’s Skeeter Reed.” The real-deal cowboy stuck out his hand to David. I could smell, as well as see, the chewing tobacco stuffed between his lower lip and gum. “I’m head wrangler here at the TRO. You must be movie people.” He spit the words out, followed by a stream of brown juice that splattered close to the toe of David’s cowboy boot.

  Oh, boy. A test of testosterone coming up.

  “David Brown, and this is Courtney McKeena,” David took the outstretched hand. Skeeter’s face flinched a little with pain (David-1, Skeeter-0) before he turned his attention to me. His gaze roamed my body, slowly undressing me with his pale blue eyes. It’d been a long time since I felt like I needed a disinfecting hot shower just from a man’s gaze.

  David cleared his throat. “We thought we’d look over the horses.”

  “Look away,” Skeeter addressed David. “Big corral has horses even you kind of people can ride.” He turned his attention back to me. “Let me know if there’s anything special I can do for you, little lady,” he said while trying to pull off a sexy wink. To me it just looked like he had something in his eye.

  After we had walked out of earshot, David bumped my shoulder. “Looks like you made a new friend.” This shoulder bumping from David was irritatingly sexy.

  “Oh, lucky me,” I said with a sigh.

  A few horses were penned separately, and we bypassed them to get to a large corral. We stood at the walk-through gate watching the dozen or so horses. A white Molly mule stood at the water tank fifty feet from the gate. I shoulder bumped David. “Oh, look! It’s Silver.”

  “Ah, that’s a mule. Plus, you’d better get your eyes tested. No hangy-down thing.”

  To my relief we were interrupted by a ruckus in the corral to our right. Skeeter was man-handling a young grullo gelding. I was hoping the score of this little venture would be Colt-1, Skeeter-0.

  “I can’t watch this,” David said, his jaw muscles tightening.

  We passed through the gate and walked toward the horses. Only a few looked at us; the rest were content to keep their heads stuck in the hay feeder. “Looks like the best years are behind most of these,” David observed.

  “Probably a good idea for our Hollywood riders.” I walked up to a nondescript brown gelding. He nuzzled me, his soft nose twitching to detect whether I had any treats hidden in my hand. “Might be a good horse for Lindy.”

  “Yup. Seems gentle and has a kind eye.”

  I left David checking out the rest of the herd and made my way to the mule I’d dubbed Silver.

  Mules and donkeys have bad reps; they’re thought to be cantankerous and stubborn. My uncle once had a guard donkey named Bingo that he ran with his herd of sheep. Early one morning, when I went with him to check his lambing ewes, we watched Bingo protect a newborn lamb from a coyote, stomping the predator to death. The following Monday, my mother got a call from the principal because I’d shared the event in great gory detail with my fellow kindergartners. Who knew Amy Nelson would throw up at the description of eyeballs popping out of the coyote’s skull?

  Silver stood watching me as I approached—one ear flopped down, the other perked toward me. Even though I’d taken an immediate dislike to Skeeter, at a glance the horses looked to be in good shape. Silver was no exception. I spoke to her as I side-stepped into her shoulder; her height was about thirteen and a half hands. Silver stamped her front foot, narrowly missing my toe. She turned to look at me, and I swear she gave me a slight grin and pulled off a wink that put Skeeter’s to shame. I gave her a parting pat and walked toward David, who was waiting at the gate for me. The mule followed, walking a step behind me and just to the right.

  “Well, I’m jealous.” David grinned at me. “You’ve made another new friend.”

  I returned his grin. “Sometimes it’s a burden to be so popular.” When I stopped, Silver nuzzled my neck, her whiskers tickling. I shrugged my shoulder, rolling my head against hers. Just as I was about to turn and pet her, she whirled and kicked, narrowly missing me before trotting off.

  I called after her, “Oh, it’s game on, old girl.”

  David belly-laughed. “I’m going to snoop around a little bit. Care to join me?”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find you a friend.”

  The only people we found were two Mexican workers coming out of the barn. They immediately said “no English” and avoided making eye contact as they continued away from the barn. One pushed a full wheelbarrow, the other carried the tools of the trade. We walked through the open barn doors into dim coolness. Our boot steps echoed on the concrete as we walked down the aisle between box stalls, six on each side. Most were empty, but as we neared the open tack room door, I heard the sharp sound of a hoof meeting wood. “Somebody’s not happy,” I said.

  The somebody was the young gelding we had seen Skeeter manhandling earlier. As David and I approached the open half door, the horse lunged at us with teeth bared and ears pinned back.

  I stepped back and hoped the door was latched securely. “No friend here for you.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” David said. “I like a challenge.” I watched as he stepped toward the stall door. The sound of the horse’s teeth snapped loud in the air.

  “I faint at the sight of blood,” I said, taking a step backward. “I’m going to check out the tack room.”

  “Room” was really a misnomer. The wood and concrete enclosure was larger than my first apartment, and there was more horse tack than most stores carry in stock. Row after row of halters and headstalls lined one wall, and the bling from rhinestone conchos hurt my eyes. I stopped to admire a Wild Cactus headstall and matching breast collar rich with turquoise and silver. There were saddle blankets marked with Reinmaker labels that had never yet seen a horse. I weaved my way through saddle stands, touching the ridges of tooled leather. I actually staggered when I saw the saddle maker’s stamp—Trail’s End Saddle Shop, Dale Harwood, Idaho Falls, Idaho. To touch a saddle tooled by Dale Harwood is something few have the privilege to do. I knew there was at least a ten-year waiting period for one of his saddles, and I’d seen a used one offered for sale with a starting bid of $20,000.

  I still ride the saddle I’d been given as a high school graduation present from my parents. I’d replaced the cinch and saddle strings but done little maintenance other than an oiling twice a year. Since I’d become a best-selling author, my time spent on the family ranch had dwindled to a long weekend every few months. I blinked away tears thinking about home and my description of family—a deceased father; an estranged mother who had moved away, leaving the ranch in care of a manager; and no siblings.

  I turned to leave before I got too mopey. On either side of the exit door, the walls were covered with pictures and framed newspaper clippings that told an interesting story. TRO Ranch had been established as a forever home for retired police horses, horses used in search and rescue operations, and Hollywood’s four-legged stars. One man figured prominently in each photo. I assumed he was the ranch owner, and the caption under a picture confirmed it: “Bryce Bentley, owner of TRO Ranch, looks out over a pasture full of New York City retired police horses.” I had a Kodak moment thinking these animals were able to spend their last days in the beautiful scenery of Montana.

  I read through clippings describing the heroic rescues horses had been part of. In one picture, a littl
e girl who was missing her two front teeth grinned at the camera while hugging the white leg of a mule. Yup, it was my Silver. The caption read “Destiny Roberts hugs Bonnie.” The article described how 6-year-old Destiny had wandered away from her parents’ campsite in the Zion National Park. Eighty-six-year-old Sadie Noback had been out for a ride on her Molly mule, Bonnie. The article quoted Sadie as she retold the events. “I’m a volunteer for the park. I often take early-morning rides before starting my day as a tour guide for the horseback excursions. As we were riding along, Bonnie stopped dead in her tracks near a rock big as a house. We skirted around it, and there was little Destiny.”

  The article ended with an editor’s note: Following the death of Ms. Noback, Bonnie has found her forever home at the TRO Ranch in Eagle Landing, Montana.

  Now there’s a Kodak moment!

  I gave myself the pleasure of one more deep breath of the unique smell of leather before stepping back into the alleyway. I walked to the gelding’s stall and hesitantly looked in, relieved when I didn’t see David’s mangled body underneath blood-splattered hooves. Instead, the young horse was munching hay from the hanging stall feeder, looking gentle as a kitten.

  There was an hour before Mr. Stone was scheduled to address the film crew. I sniffed my armpit. Maybe I’d better take a shower, because I was planning on finding an excuse to scooch my chair close to David. I might even shave my legs in case there was some knockin’ boots later.

  Nearing the end of the stalls, I heard shh coming from inside a stall whose split doors were both closed. I held up to eavesdrop.

  “Someone will hear you,” a woman’s voice scolded.

  “I want to go public,” came a male’s response.

  “We can’t. Ever hear of publicity suicide?”

  “Or could really promote the movie. Lindy, baby, I love you.” Okay, that IDs the woman. But who is the man?

  “Oh, my God! Get it off me,” Lindy squealed.

  “Relax. It was just a fly.”