– leave it on all winter, remove it in the spring, and you’ll be ready
for however much butt kicking Mother Nature has in store for us.”
No sign of Toby. Heather’s heart was pounding again. The sun was
about to set.
If Toby … if he got lost or … or something … they would have a
harder time finding him at night. She restrained herself from breaking
into a run. “Now, last winter,” Paul continued smoothly, unaware of
her trepidation, “was on the dry side, which probably means we’re going
to take a shellacking this year.”
As they reached the stable and as Heather was about to cry out for
Toby, he reappeared. He was no longer playing airplane. He sprinted
to her side through the unmown grass, grinning and excited. “Mom, this
place is neat, really neat.
Maybe I can really have a pony, huh?”
“Maybe,” Heather said, swallowing hard before she could get the word
out. “Don’t go running off like that, okay?”
“Why not?”
“Just don’t.”
“Sure, okay,” Toby said. He was a good boy.
She glanced back toward the caretaker’s house and the wilderness
beyond. Perched on the jagged peaks of the mountains, the sun seemed
to quiver like a raw egg yolk just before dissolving around the tines
of a prodding fork. The highest pinnacles of rock were gray and black
and pink in the fiery light of day’s end.
Miles of serried forests shelved down to the fieldstone bungalow. All
was still and peaceful. The stable was a single-story fieldstone
building with a slate roof. The long side walls had no exterior stall
doors, only small windows high under the eaves. There was a white barn
door on the end, which rolled open easily when Paul tried it, and the
electric lights came on with the first flip of a switch. “As you can
see,” the attorney said as he led them inside, “it was every inch a
gentleman’s ranch, not a spread that had to show a profit in any
way.”
Beyond the concrete threshold, which was flush with the ground, the
stable floor was composed of soft, tamped earth, as pale as sand. Five
empty stalls with half-doors stood to each side of the wide center
promenade, more spacious than ordinary barn stalls. On the twelve-inch
wooden posts between stalls were castbronze sconces that threw amber
light toward both the ceiling and the floor, they were needed because
the high-set windows were too small–each about eight inches high by
eighteen long–to admit much sunlight even at high noon. “Stan
Quartermass kept this place heated in winter, cooled in the summer,”
Paul Youngblood said. He pointed to vent grilles set in the suspended
tongue-and-groove ceiling. “Seldom smelled like a stable, either,
because he vented it continuously, pumped fresh air in. And all the
ductwork is heavily insulated, so the sound of the fans is too low to
bother horses.”
On the left, beyond the final stall, was a large tackroom, where
saddles, bridles, and other equipment had been kept. It was empty
except for a built-in sink as – long and deep as a trough. To the
right, opposite the tackroom, were top-access bins where oats, apples,
and other feed had been stored, but they were now all empty as well.
On the wall near the bins, several tools were racked business end up: a
pitchfork, two shovels, and a rake.
“Smoke alarm,” Paul said, pointing to a device attached to the header
above the big door that was opposite the one by which they had
entered.
“Wired into the electrical system. You can’t make the mistake of
letting batteries go dead. It sounds in the house, so Stan wouldn’t
have to worry about not hearing it.”
“The guy sure loved his horses,” Jack said. “Oh, he sure did, and he
had more Hollywood money than he knew what to do with. After Stan
died, Ed took special pains to be sure the people who bought all the
animals would treat them well.
Stan was a nice man. Seemed only right.” the lights. “Name’s Lester
Steer, and he owns the Main itreet Diner in town.”
“He’s a man!”
“Well, of course he’s a man,” Paul said, rolling the door shut.