Roped by Laura Crum

    I saw the leg break.  I was standing behind the chutes in Glen Bennett's roping arena, watching the teams go, when the sorrel horse stumbled in his second or third stride out of the box and came up with his hind leg swinging loose.

    Oh, no.  Please, God, no.  I prayed the words.  Next to me I heard a man say,”Jesus."

    The horse was still running, but with his broken leg flopping disjointedly outward with every stride.
Incredibly, he kept going, chasing the steer as he had been trained to do, struggling to gallop on three legs.

    "Pull up!" Shouts from the crowd.

    The blond girl who was riding looked down, aware that something was wrong.  Her partner yelled at her to stop and she checked the horse to a lurching halt, horrified comprehension dawning on her face.
I watched as if turned to stone while she jumped off and saw the leg dangling uselessly.  Her partner got off, too, and put a hand on the leg and moved it gently.  No doubt about it at all.  The leg had snapped above the hock--a compound fracture.  Not fixable.

    "Gail." Lonny Peterson's voice behind me brought me back to my senses.

    "I'll go get my stuff," I told him.

    Turning away from the tragedy in the arena, I headed towards Lonny's pickup, where the emergency kit I always carried with me was stashed.  It was Saturday, my day off, but since I was a horse vet by trade, I came to ropings and other horsy events prepared.

    In the periphery of my vision, I could see a little knot of people gathering around the injured horse; the blond girl that had been riding him was sitting on the ground, sobbing.  Poor girl.  Poor horse.  But there was nothing I could do except put the horse out of his pain with merciful quickness.

    Grabbing the emergency kit from the floor of the truck, I hurried back towards the arena.  Glen Bennett intercepted me at the gate.

    "Can you load that horse up with enough pain-killers so we can move him in the stock trailer?" Glen's voice was level, but concern was evident in the lines of strain around his eyes.  The roping arena belonged to Glen--his concern was natural.  But it was more than self-interest.  I'd known Glen since I was fourteen; he loved horses, had owned and raised them all his life.

    I could understand why he wanted to move the horse before we put him down.  A dead horse in the middle of the arena creates all sorts of problems, aesthetic and practical.

    "Let me look at him," I said.  "If he isn't in too much distress, sure."

    "I'll have Tim get the trailer."

    Tim, Glen's son, was standing behind us, and nodded at the words.  If Glen looked concerned, Tim looked predictably relaxed.  In his late twenties, with a loose, casual air and lazy, quiet brown eyes, Tim didn't seem to get worked up over anything.  Before Glen could say more, Tim ambled away--not fast, but not slowly either--presumably to get the stock trailer.

    Gritting my teeth, I approached the horse.  He stood on three legs and sweat was beginning to break out on his neck, but he looked more confused than distressed.  I filled a syringe with three cc's of rompin and torbugesic and injected it into his jugular vein.  In a matter of seconds, his expression calmed.
I turned to Glen, who had followed me.  "Where's the owner?  I think it's okay to move this horse, but I should talk to her."

    Glen gestured toward the parking lot, and I could see the still sobbing blond girl being led away by an older woman to a waiting pickup.  "She's just a kid," he said.  "They're neighbors of mine.  I told her I'd take care of the horse."

    "You can give me permission to put him down, then?"

    "I guess I'll have to."

    We both knew this was a ticklish subject.  Lawsuits could result if the people involved decided that Glen or I had made a wrong decision.  Running my hand down the horse's hind leg, I palpated it gently.

    "This can't be fixed," I said.

    "I know.  Go ahead and put him down.  I'll take the blame, if there's any to take. Let's just move him out of here first."

    Tim was pulling the stock trailer through the arena gate and drove up next to the horse.  Glen and I loaded him as gently as we could.  The shot had taken the edge off his pain and he hobbled gamely in on three legs, willing to do what he was asked, even under these conditions.

    "I'll stay in the trailer with him," I told Tim.  "Drive real slow."

    Tim nodded and got into the cab of the truck without a word.  I could hear Glen talking to him in a low voice, "Put him in back of the bam, by the driveway where the tallow truck can get to him; there's a tarp in there by the hay you can cover him with." Then the trailer was moving forward at a crawl and I stood by the horse, steadying his head and talking soothingly to him.

    He stood quietly and I stroked his neck, feeling tears rise in my eyes.  Damn.  I scrubbed my hand roughly across my face.

    I didn't know this horse.  I'd never seen him before, as far as I was aware.  A common enough sorrel, he looked like he had some age on him and it was clear he had a kind eye and a nice temperament.  I blinked more tears out of my eyes and patted him gently.

     He was just another good horse.  But neither I nor any other horseman can explain the magic of a good horse to those that don't understand them.  The wonderful, biddable, docile nature of these swift, powerful, excitable creatures, the magical quality of their long-time partnership with man.  I loved this horse--as I loved all good horses.  It was a feeling deeper than logic and it could make my job harder than it needed to be, which it was doing now.

    The stock trailer came to a stop.  I wiped my eyes hastily and Tim came around to help me unload the horse.  The gelding got out as willingly as he went in, and I loaded the kill shot.

    No point in putting it off.  Giving the horse a final pat, I told Tim to steady his head while I injected the shot into the jugular vein.  The horse went down quickly and easily, and Tim and I jumped away from his falling body as he collapsed onto the ground, his eyes instantly and permanently blank.

    I checked his heart with the stethoscope.  All quiet.  Giving the sorrel shoulder a final pat as I stood up, I met Tim's eyes.

    "Too bad," he said.  "This was a good old horse.  Dad raised him."

    Poor Glen.  No wonder he had been willing to take responsibility for the horse.  Though it was like Glen to do whatever needed doing.  It was a measure of how highly I respected the man that I'd been willing to put the horse down without overt permission from its owner, a veterinary no-no.  But I was sure Glen Bennett would take care of it, as he'd said he would.  It was Glen's way.

    "I'll go get the tarp." Tim disappeared into the barn.

    I stood there staring down at the horse's body thinking that this could be Gunner.  I'd been planning on competing in the second jackpot of the day.  An accident like this one could happen any time, anywhere.  My horse could be lying there dead.

    The thought was almost intolerable.  Tears rose to my eyes again and I hastily brushed them away.  Shit.  It was just too much.  Not now.  Not today.

    I was wiping my nose with the tail of my shirt when two men appeared around the corner of the barn.  Lonny and Glen.  Damn.  I tried to compose my face.

    If Lonny noticed my distress, he didn't show it.  Glen had eyes only for the horse.  Tim reappeared dragging a tarp and the men covered the carcass.  Tim volunteered to call the tallow truck and moved off.  Lonny neither met my eyes nor touched me.  I stood there, feeling friendless, and hoped I wouldn't burst into outright sobs.

    I'm not usually such a big baby.  Putting horses down is part of my job.  Not the most pleasant part, but an important part.  Saving mortally ill or injured horses unnecessary suffering is a good thing to do, and I knew it.  It was just that the last month of my life had been more than ordinarily stressful, and I didn't have any reserves of strength left.

    Lonny was seeing his wife again.  Lonny, my boyfriend of almost four years, had never quite brought himself to divorce his estranged wife, for financial reasons, he said.  Sara, the wife in question, had seemed quite content to live with her doctor boyfriend and accept a monthly check from Lonny.  Then, two months ago, the doctor moved out on Sara, and my happy life disintegrated.

    Overnight Sara had decided she didn't like living alone; living with Lonny was apparently preferable.  She'd begun calling him, inviting him to dinner, making overtures.  Some of which Lonny'd accepted.  And I was furious.

     Call me unreasonable, call me stupid, call me anything you like.  I'd never been jealous in my life and jealousy was chewing a hole in my gut.

    Glen stood up from covering the horse and said impartially to Lonny and me, "He was thirteen years old.  I raised him.  He was always a good horse.  His name was Streak."

    Distracted from my problems, I put a hand on Glen's arm.  "I'm sorry, Glen."

    He shook his head.  "It happens.  Nothing anyone could do."

    Both he and Lonny stared somberly at the covered shape under the tarp and I knew more or less what they were thinking.  The same things I'd been thinking.  Requiem for a good horse.  An unexpressed hope that their own wouldn't be next.

    Two men in their fifties, in many ways very alike, in others very different, Glen and Lonny had known each other all their lives, more or less.  Both of them had spent most of those lives owning horses and going team roping; both of them, I had reason to know, truly loved their horses.  There the resemblance ended.

    Glen was movie star handsome, if you didn't mind an older hero, with square shoulders and a body that remained trim and hard.  He had a square jaw to match the shoulders, winter blue eyes, iron gray hair.  Above and beyond all that he had an indefinable charisma, an inner force that attracted women and men, though in different ways.  Men followed Glen; women fell in love.  I'd idolized him when I was a girl.

    Lonny, on the other hand, was big and untidy, with a rough-featured face that most would call homely, and a slight roll over his belt.  It was the warmth and boyish enthusiasm in his green eyes that made him appealing, that and a certain sense of virile, physical power combined with a sharp intelligence.
Damn.  Cataloging Lonny's virtues was making me feel even more miserable.  Abruptly I turned away from the two men and the dead horse, then turned back and spoke to Lonny.  "I'm sorry.  I'm backing out of the next pot.  You'll have to find another partner."

    "But we're entered." Lonny still wouldn't look at me.

    "I'm sorry," I said again.  "I can't do it.  Not now."

    "All right.  If that's what you want." Lonny's voice reflected no recognizable emotion.

    "That's what I want." Almost stumbling in my efforts to hurry away, I walked around the corner of the barn and towards the hitching rail where I had tied Gunner, tears rapidly blurring my vision.  I had to get out of here.  Find somewhere where I could be alone to cry.

    Walking up to Gunner, I patted his shoulder, feeling, even in the state I was in, a little glow of comfort and relief at the sight and the feel of him.  Gunner, my big, stocking-legged bay gelding with his friendly, clownish expression, was a perpetual comfort in hard times.  I climbed on him and pointed him up the hill, away from the arena, towards a solitary oak tree I was familiar with.  I knew Glen Bennett's ranch well, having spent many hours here as a teenager.

    Gunner took the trail in a long swinging walk and I let out my pent-up breath.  Thank God.  At the moment, the one thing in the whole world I wanted was a piece of solitude.

    Waves of heat seemed to crackle in the yellow grass around me.  Though it was only ten in the morning, I was already sweating.  Sweat broke out on Gunner's neck, too, as he climbed the hill.  Going to be a hot one.

    It was May in central California, a time when we occasionally got heat waves.  This one had been on for a week already, with the temperature hitting a hundred every day up in the hills.  The grass had gone from green to bleached gold, and ranchers were bemoaning the early end of the feed.

    The oak tree I'd been aiming for was close; Gunner lengthened his walk, clearly guessing my destination and as eager for the shade as I was.  The heat was already oppressive.

    We ducked under the canopy of branches and out of the sun's glare with mutual relief, and I turned the horse so we faced back the way we had come.  A small breeze swept up the hill and fanned my face, stirring Gunner's mane.  Below us was the roping arena and the crowd of ropers, beyond that the little town of Lone Oak, and beyond that a tapestry of rolling, tumbling coastal hills, thick with wild oats, live oak and greasewood, falling away to the blue curve of the Monterey Bay in the distance.

    My God, it's beautiful.  I forgot what had brought me here, I forgot the urge to cry.  Santa Cruz County must be one of the loveliest spots on earth.  I was lucky just to be alive and in this place.
 Of course, I'm prejudiced.  I was bom and raised in Santa Cruz County; to me, it's home.  Yet one of my wealthy clients, a woman in her seventies who had been a world traveler, had once raised an arm at the view from her place, similar to this one, and told me, "Take a good look.  There's nothing like it anywhere.  When I was young, the Riviera looked like this, but it's been overrun.  This is special."

    I believed her, too.  The coast of central California is special, particularly the gentle half-moon of Monterey Bay and the round-shouldered mountains that frame it.  The town of Lone Oak is in the hills just south of Santa Cruz and is as picturesque a place as you could imagine.

    To speak of the town of Lone Oak is misleading, really.  Lone Oak isn't actually a town, it's more of a place, and there are lots of oak trees.  What passes for the town is a store/gas station and a bar/restaurant at the junction of two winding country roads that intersect on the spine of the coastal ridge.  The lone oak for which it was named is a huge, ancient tree that sits in solitary splendor next to Glen Bennett's roping arena, which is a stone's throw from the bar and the store.

    The Bennett ranch surrounds Lone Oak, and the Bennett family owns the town, what there is of it.  It's just far enough away from Watsonville in the west and Morgan HiII to the east, and the roads are narrow and winding enough that the place is still relatively isolated.  Lone Oak is a tiny slice of Santa Cruz County the way it used to be.

    Gunner pricked his ears sharply and I looked where he was looking.  A woman was riding up the hill toward us.  A blond woman on a bay horse.  In a second, I realized who it was.  Lisa Bennett, Glen's daughter, my high school friend.  A woman I hadn't seen in over fifteen years.

    "Shit," I said softly.

    Gunner cocked an ear back at me and I stroked his neck.  It wasn't that I didn't want to see Lisa; I didn't want to see anybody.  The urge to cry had evaporated, but I still wanted to be alone.

    Lisa rode steadily on, coming my way.  I had to be her destination; there wasn't anything else up here but trees and rocks.  Gunner nickered at her horse and the bay nickered shrilly back.

    Automatically, I sized the horse up as he approached.  Solid bay and not too tall, the little gelding had a willowy, deer-like quality to him that was somewhat unusual for a team roping horse.  He looked more like a cutting horse.  He also had a pretty head, a bold, bright eye, and a graceful, balanced way of moving.  Nice horse, I thought.

    By now, Lisa was upon us and I tried to arrange my face in a welcoming smile.  "Hi, Lisa, good to see you," I said.

    It was a wasted effort.  Lisa didn't smile back.  Her eyes were hidden by sunglasses, but her mouth and jaw were tense with strain.  "Gail, I need help," she said.
 

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