Third-Time Lucky by Jenny Oldfield

Author:Jenny Oldfield [Oldfield, Jenny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781402268304
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc

6

It was like fitting a new piece in a difficult jigsaw, the fact that Lucky and several other horses at Half Moon Ranch had been left wide open to infection.

“Horse flu is what killed Moonshine!” Kirstie walked with Lisa up and down the ranch house porch. “It turns into pneumonia and kills them. At the very least, they have permanent damage to their lungs!”

“Wait!” Lisa’s advice was brief. She’d watched and listened hard as Tommy had come back into the barn after his talk with Kirstie to confess what he’d done.

“How can I? Like, waiting is the last thing we should do. Didn’t we lose enough time already?” Kirstie meant the hours lost because of Tommy’s guilty silence.

“Look, Glen did all the tests and took them off to the lab, didn’t he? Now we just have to hang on until he gets the results.”

“It’s flu,” Kirstie said in a flat, fatalistic voice, her face marked by a grim frown. “I feel that’s what it is. Lucky was the one who got closest of all to Whisper. The pony was coughing those bugs all over him.”

“Say you’re right.” Lisa caught her arm to stop her pacing up and down. “It’s still good nursing and a whole lot of patience that’s gonna pull Lucky through.”

Kirstie broke free and stepped down into the yard. Over in the corral, guests were gathering for the afternoon rides. The routine of the ranch carried on regardless. “It’s weird!” She turned back to Lisa. “We got all these tests and drugs with fancy, scientific names; we got labs and hospitals for horses and all the modern stuff, but we still can’t do a single thing to help Lucky!”

Matt had tried and Glen Woodford was doing his best, but still no one was certain what was wrong. And the thing everyone told her was “Wait and see.”

“There must be something else!” she insisted.

“Yeah, modern stuff …” Lisa echoed. Knitting her brows and catching her bottom lip between her teeth, she stepped down absentmindedly from the porch, staring at Hadley who was in the corral helping riders to mount their horses.

“Here we are, the turn of the millennium, living in a country with the most up-to-date Western medicines you could wish for, and they say ‘Rest.’ That’s it! ‘Rest’ and ‘Wait and see’!” Kirstie’s impatience took her across the yard toward the corral, to lean on the fence.

Lisa joined her. “Uhmm … Kirstie …”

“Yeah?” Once the rides were out of the way, her plan was to help Charlie dissolve Lucky’s next dose of penicillin in his drinking water.

“… Say we stopped thinking modern here. Say we started thinking something more traditional.” Lisa spoke slowly and quietly, without her usual bubbling self-confidence. She was still staring thoughtfully at the senior wrangler.

Puzzled, Kirstie followed her line of vision. “No use asking Hadley,” she objected before Lisa could even suggest it. “He already said that the type of infection Lucky’s got is bad news. ‘The ruin of many a good saddle horse,’ to use his words.

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