Sky Rider - Hardcover

"No, Tazz," Dusty whispered as the tall bay gelding nuzzled her hip pockets, "no more carrots." Hugging his neck, with her face in his black mane, the wanted to cry but joked instead. Dusty always joked when life got not funny at all. "Too many carrots will make you sick," she informed her horse gravely. "You don't want to get sick for Doc, do you?"

It was dark in the stable, shadowy in the light of a single forty-watt bulb. At dawn the vet would come to put Tazz down. Euthanize him.

Kill him.

Dusty blinked hard, let go of Tazz, bent over--moving stiffly because of her back brace--and picked up her sisal cloth. Tazz loved to be curried. All night Dusty had been brushing him, rubbing him, sweet-talking him. He stood in the stable aisle with no halter on him, no cross ties, not even a rope looped around his neck. Dusty knew he would not bolt out the open door. As she rubbed his red-brown crest, he lowered his head with a sigh that fluttered his soft nostrils. He stood with his ears at a contented sideward angle. With his big eyes haff-closed.

With one forefoot extended because of the navicular disease.

In a moment he shifted his weight and stretched the other forefoot, trying to relieve the pain. The great hearted thoroughbred who had once borne Dusty over Olympic-size fences, who had raced goldfinches on the wing for the fun of it, who had run bucking down the pasture every morning just because the sun was up, could no longer hobble more than a few steps at a time. Tazz lived in constant pain.

Dusty knew what intractable pain was like. Her back hurt all the time now.

Like Tazz's forefeet. Once the navicular bones in his hooves went bad, there was no cure, and no treatment except painkillers--which had stopped working as his condition got worse. But even with Tazz barely able to walk, it had been hard to make the decision to end his misery by putting him down. "Remember, Dusty," her father had told her, trying to help her accept what had to be done, "Tazz doesn't know, so he doesn't dread it. He won't be frightened. It's not like we're sending him off to the auction or the slaughterhouse. It'll just be Doc, right there in his own stall. He won't care."

Yes, Daddy. But I care.

She tried to stop thinking about it. Didn't want to cry till this was over. Didn't want to scare Tazz.

"Big show, Tazz," she whispered owlishly as she picked up the soft brush. Let him think she was grooming him for hours and hours to get him ready for Devon or the National, like in the old days when she would be busy in the stable hours before dawn, when he and she, Miss Destiny Grove and Razzle My Tazz, had won trophies all up and down the east coast. Back before her stupid spine got hurt and she couldn't ride anymore.

Out of nowhere, out of the 3 A.M. silence came a sudden chilly wind and, in Dusty, a gale of anger. Why don't they just put me down too? I'm unsound. I'm costing a lot of money. I'm in pain, I'm useless, why don't they kill me? "Tazz," she cried, throwing down the brush, "nobody should die young!"

The gelding's head jolted up, but not because Dusty had startled him. With his ears pricked high he was staring beyond her, toward the rectangle of night outlined by the big stable door. She turned.

There had been no sound of a car or a bike or even a footstep, but a stranger, a boy maybe sixteen years old, stood there looking at her.

Dusty felt her world stop, she was so startled, even frightened--yet she did not scream. He was too beautiful, a white marble Michaelangelo in Levi jeans, shadows softening his chiseled face. There was something not quite human about his beauty, yet something all too hot and human about the way his dark eyes glowered. He kept his face hard and still. The anger showed only in his eyes.

The breeze had halted as if the night were holding its breath. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound.

Then the boy moved, one swift step toward her. He spoke. "You want me to take him?" His fierce, soft voice resonated between the stable walls.

"Huh?" Dusty couldn't think. His shadowed stare wouldn't let her think. What did he want? What was he talking about? Who was he?

"For God's sake," he said even more quietly, more fiercely, "it's either me or the vet. You want me to take him?"

He was talking about ... Tazz? He seemed to be. His dark gaze had turned to the horse, and his hard face softened. His hot stare gentled momentarily as he walked to Tazz and lifted his hand to stroke the silky fox-red cheekbones, the white blaze between deep, wise eyes. Dusty stood still. Forshe couldn't think of a joke--but Tazz would tell her what to think of this stranger. Tazz knew things. All horses did.

When the stranger touched him Tazz did not shy away. His ears alerted so high that they almost touched at the tips, quivering. He tucked his chin, arched his shining neck, snorted--but not in fear. "Holy gee," Dusty whispered, for in Tazz's eyes she saw a blue fire she had not seen there for a couple of years. Morning was coming, and Tazzwanted to leap right over the sun. He rose into a low rear and came down with his weight squarely on his forefeet as if they had never heard of pain.

"You want me to take him?" the boy demanded again not turning around.