Roped (Gail McCarthy Mysteries) Read Online Free Page A

those two horses were hurt, but this is not abuse."
    "You should stop this roping right now." The woman had a high-pitched voice; something about her shrill, strident tone was familiar.
    I stared, trying to place her. In a second, I had it. My God. Susan Slater. Disbelieving, I looked at Lisa. "It's Susan," I said.
    Lisa nodded "uh-huh" and the woman turned toward us at the sound of her name. "Well, Lisa and Gail. If this isn't a class reunion."
    Susan Slater had been in Lisa's and my high school class. I might have recognized her earlier if I'd been paying attention; she looked very much as she had when we were all seventeen. Fair Irish skin, a dusting of freckles that matched her long, curly mane of strawberry blond hair, a slim figure shown off now, as then, in a snug tank top and swirling ankle-length skirt. Susan had always been physically attractive enough. It was her ultra-combative personality that was the problem.
    In high school she had been the one vociferously pushing any cause going, handing out pamphlets to legalize marijuana, demonstrating against police brutality and the fascist state at the slightest provocation. Susan wasn't quiet about her beliefs. She was in your face if you so much as greeted her, pressing her cause in that shrill voice.
    She had her devotees, mostly male. The quiet, bespectacled, shorts-and-sandals-wearing man with her looked like a good example of the type. He seemed quite content to let her do all the talking.
    "This roping should be stopped," she announced again.
    Glen was losing patience. "Lady, what happened to those horses were accidents. Now clear out of here."
    I could have told him that was a mistake. Giving Susan an order was like waving a red flag at a bull. She was likely to dig her heels in now.
    Susan opened her mouth and was overrun by Lisa: "I think she's right, Dad. I think you should stop the roping."
    Dead silence. Susan's mouth stayed open. Everyone stared at Lisa. This was unheard of.
    "What are you talking about?" Now Glen sounded angry.
    Lisa looked miserable and desperate. "Dad, please. I'll explain later. Really. I mean it."
    For a second, father and daughter locked eyes, and my mind jumped back to the plea Lisa had made to me earlier: "The horse you just put down, that wasn't an accident." Could Lisa possibly mean that what had happened to Pistol wasn't an accident either? It seemed unbelievable.
    In any case, this wasn't my job. "I need to take care of Pistol," I told Glen and Lisa. "I'll be over at the barn."
    I could hear voices raised as I walked away; the clearest one was Tim's: "Jesus, Lisa, will you quit being an idiot?"
    Then I was out of earshot and headed for the barn. I'd left the vet kit back there, I remembered, when I put the sorrel horse down. Hardly very responsible of me, but I'd been too stressed out to care. Hopefully no one had swiped it.
    Ropers are, by and large, an honest lot. The vet kit was right where I left it. Lonny had Pistol tied to the hitching rail behind the barn and was running cold water on his leg. I filled a syringe with four cc's of phenylbutazone and injected it into the horse's jugular vein.
    Pistol stood quietly for this, like the trooper he was. Pistol was fifteen, and between age and the arthritic condition horsemen call ringbone, he was near the end of his working life. The trouble was, Pistol didn't want to retire.
    A big, blaze-faced gelding with a flaxen mane and tail, Pistol was not only flashy to look at; he was one of the best heel horses in the state of California. He'd been a rope horse all his life, and it was what he knew. Like Rudyard Kipling's famous Maltese Cat, Pistol played for the glory of the game.
    On the occasions when his ringbone had been acting up and Lonny'd left him at home, Pistol had stood stubbornly by the gate of his corral, his head stuck between the bars, a pleading look in his eyes. He wasn't lonely; he had Plumber, my other horse, at home with him to keep him company. Pistol wanted to go