She looked out the kitchen window over the barnyard, into the barely lightening sky, and started to outline the article. “The Plight of the Tennessee Walking Horse” by Arabella Snow. Arabella! A name branded onto her by her parents, who named her for fame. “No one will be able to forget it,” her mother had told her. “It’s the name of a heroine, a star.” Billie wrote under it as a way to save her private world from what became the high profile, high danger life of Arabella Snow, journalist. It had worked for a while, but her nickname had eventually gotten out. It hadn’t been a big deal to her at the time, but it did allow curious people—like Charley—to find Arabella the journalist by Googling Billie. The former journalist, she corrected herself.
Once, she was interviewed about the exposés she wrote. Is it true? The desiccated wispy-haired interviewer had squinted at her, his feigned disbelief representing that of his viewers. Is it true, Ms. Snow, that some parents actually sell their children into slavery? Billie had seen this exact same expression on other interviewers on other shows, had heard the same incredulity in his tone in myriad interviews with other guests. Low-fat corn oil? he had asked in exactly the same way. You found a python in your baggage?
She set the notebook on the futon beside her. That old life had been so urban. Exciting. Well-paid. She could have bought tractor-trailers stacked with bales of Bermuda grass and alfalfa hay. Tons of oats, Equine Senior, vitamins, and supplements. She could have paid for veterinary ultrasounds, radiographs, surgeries…whatever the horses needed.
The sky turned pearly grey then coral. She stood and went to the kitchen window to look out, searching the land that stretched for miles before her, looking for just one lone rancher out riding fence, or dust from a truck on its way to check the dirt tanks where the cattle drank and the miles of pipe that carried water to them. She saw a spiral of vultures riding the day’s first thermals, searching too.
While the air was still crisp and the coffee had filled her with energy, she hiked back down the hill to check on the horses. The filly stood with her head lowered, shifting her weight, trying to ease the pain in her legs. Billie injected her with the medicine Doc had left then moved her to a shady stall under the hay barn roof. She had not eaten her hay from last night. Billie scooped oats into a feed bucket to tempt her, but she ignored them too, her eyes small with misery.
Billie chewed the inside of her cheek, wondering what she should do. Charley had suggested she go to the farm where he worked. Maybe that would lead her straight to her next exposé. Charley might be a gift horse, and who was she to look him in the mouth? If she got a job there, she’d get paid while she researched by the people she was investigating. Was that ethical? Why not?
The sun rose as she drove, blinding her as she headed east over the mountains into a valley bisected by a crisp blue stream. The road dipped from mountain pass to river’s edge, and she followed it, her windows rolled down. The stream’s banks were furred with cattails and bamboo. She knew the valley, not a half hour from her own place. She had driven through it a few times, just for the scenery.
The humped black shapes of cattle freckled the pale pastures. Ranch land stretched as far as she could see. No power lines, no pavement, no houses. Just miles of land that looked as it had for generations. She passed a couple of cowhands riding the edge of the road, a blue heeler dog trotting behind them. She raised her hand in a small salute. They nodded in return.
Billie turned off at a ranch sign featuring a walking horse strutting over the words: Angel Hair Walkers. She stopped the truck to look at it, incongruous in the midst of a cattle ranch. On the sign, the horse’s right front leg was lifted almost as high as its muzzle, while its hind feet stretched way under its belly in what she now knew was the classic Big Lick pose. A stride that couldn’t be come by naturally, that only happened through pain. Of course the sign didn’t show the leg chains.
She restarted the Silverado. The driveway curved between thick white eucalyptus trunks. Through a mist of sprinklers, she peered at a Spanish hacienda. Raked and graveled paths led to benches placed invitingly against the building’s stucco walls. Red clay tiles created a graceful, Mediterranean-style roof.
The circular drive was crowded with parked cars. She wedged her truck into a slot between a royal blue Mercedes and a white Chevy Tahoe. She parked and got out, breathing the aromas of baked earth and watered grass. She heard the creek behind her, and when she turned to look, she saw a stand of trees and grasses, dusty but thriving. Two coyotes trotted out, one silvery red, the other dark, fringed in black. They saw her, stopped, and faded back into the scrub. A raven fluttered to the spot where they disappeared, landed hopping, pecked at the ground, and took off toward the whitewashed building.
White walls, green grass, red roof, blackbirds. Billie wished she could stand there, listening to running water, smelling moist earth, and looking at the ranch house forever. But the rapidly rising heat mobilized her.
A sign reading Office was screwed into the wall to the right of a massive, carved oak door. She decided that the sign meant she didn’t need to knock or ring, so she opened the door and stepped from the heat into a room so cold icicles could hang from the curtain rods. Heavy green drapes blocked the sun. One mustard-colored wall was covered with ribbons presumably won by the horses of this
