The Mckettrick Way. Linda Miller Lael

in the scabbard fixed to Brad’s saddle before, back at the O’Ballivan barn, but it stood out in sharp relief now, the polished wooden stock glowing in a silvery flash of moonlight. He must have seen her eyes widen; he patted the scabbard as he met her gaze.

      “You’re expecting to shoot something?” Meg ventured. She’d been around guns all her life—they were plentiful on the Triple M—but that didn’t mean she liked them.

      “Only if I have to,” Brad said, casting a glance in the direction Olivia had gone. He nudged his horse into motion, and Cinnamon automatically kept pace, the two geldings moving at an easy trot.

      “What would constitute having to?” Meg asked.

      “Wolves,” Brad answered.

      Meg was familiar with the wolf controversy—environmentalists and animal activists on the one side, ranchers on the other. She wanted to know where Brad stood on the subject. He was well-known for his love of all things finned, feathered and furry—but that might have been part of his carefully constructed persona, like the notched bedpost and the trashed hotel rooms.

      “You wouldn’t just pick them off, would you? Wolves, I mean?”

      “Of course not,” Brad replied. “But wolves are predators, and Livie’s not wrong to be concerned that they’ll track Ransom and take him down if they catch the blood-scent from his wounds.”

      A chill trickled down Meg’s spine, like a splash of cold water, setting her shivering. Like Brad, she came from a long line of cattle ranchers, and while she allowed that wolves had a place in the ecological scheme of things, like every other creature on earth, she didn’t romanticize them. They were not misunderstood dogs, as so many people seemed to think, but hunters, savagely brutal and utterly ruthless, and no one who’d ever seen what they did to their prey would credit them with nobility.

      “Sharks with legs,” she mused aloud. “That’s what Rance calls them.”

      Brad nodded, but didn’t reply. They were gaining on Olivia now; she was still a ways ahead, and had dismounted to look at something on the ground.

      Both Brad and Meg sped up to reach her.

      By the time they arrived, Olivia’s saddle bags were open beside her, and she was holding a syringe up to the light. Because of the darkness, and the movements of the horses, a few moments passed before Meg focused on the animal Olivia was treating.

      A dog lay bloody and quivering on its side.

      Brad was off his horse before Meg broke the spell of shock that had descended over her and dismounted, too. Her stomach rolled when she got a better look at the dog; the poor creature, surely a stray, had run afoul of either a wolf or coyote pack, and it was purely a miracle that he’d survived.

      Meg’s eyes burned.

      Brad crouched next to the dog, opposite Olivia, and stroked the animal with a gentleness that altered something deep down inside Meg, causing a grinding sensation, like the shift of tectonic plates far beneath the earth.

      “Can he make it?” he asked Olivia.

      “I’m not sure,” Olivia replied. “At the very least, he needs stitches.” She injected the contents of the syringe into the animal’s ruff. “I sedated him. Give the medicine a few minutes to work, and then we’ll take him back to the clinic in Stone Creek.”

      “What about the horse?” Meg asked, feeling helpless, a bystander with no way to help. She wasn’t used to it. “What about Ransom?”

      Olivia’s eyes were bleak with sorrow when she looked up at Meg. She was a veterinarian; she couldn’t abandon the wounded dog, or put him to sleep because it would be more convenient than transporting him back to town, where he could be properly cared for. But worry for the stallion would prey on her mind, just the same.

      “I’ll look for him tomorrow,” Olivia said. “In the daylight.”

      Brad reached across the dog, laid a hand on his sister’s shoulder. “He’s been surviving on his own for a long time, Liv,” he assured her. “Ransom will be all right.”

      Olivia bit her lower lip, nodded. “Get one of the sleeping bags, will you?” she said.

      Brad nodded and went to unfasten the bedroll from behind his saddle. They were miles from town, or any ranch house.

      “How did a dog get all the way out here?” Meg asked, mostly because the silence was too painful.

      “He’s probably a stray,” Olivia answered, between soothing murmurs to the dog. “Somebody might have dumped him, too, down on the highway. A lot of people think dogs and cats can survive on their own—hunt and all that nonsense.”

      Meg drew closer to the dog, crouched to touch his head. He appeared to be some kind of lab-retriever mix, though it was hard to tell, given that his coat was saturated with blood. He wore no collar, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a microchip—and if he did, Olivia would be able to identify him immediately, once she got him to the clinic. Though from the looks of him, he’d be lucky to make it that far.

      Brad returned with the sleeping bag, unfurling it. “Okay to move him now?” he asked Olivia.

      Olivia nodded, and she and Meg sort of helped each other to their feet. “You mount up,” Olivia told Brad. “And we’ll lift him.”

      Brad whistled softly for his horse, which trotted obediently to his side, gathered the dangling reins, and swung up into the saddle.

      Meg and Olivia bundled the dog, now mercifully unconscious, in the sleeping bag and, together, hoisted him high enough so Brad could take him into his arms. They all rode slowly back down the trail, Brad holding that dog as tenderly as he would an injured child, and not a word was spoken the whole way.

      When they got back to the ranch house, where Olivia’s Suburban was parked, Brad loaded the dog into the rear of the vehicle.

      “I’ll stay and put the horses away,” Meg told him. “You’d better go into town with Olivia and help her get him inside the clinic.”

      Brad nodded. “Thanks,” he said gruffly.

      Olivia gave Meg an appreciative glance before scrambling into the back of the Suburban to ride with the patient, ambulance-style. Brad got behind the wheel.

      Once they’d driven off, Meg gathered the trio of horses and led them into the barn. There, in the breezeway, she removed their saddles and other tack and let the animals show her which stalls were their own. She checked their hooves for stones, made sure their automatic waterers were working, and gave them each a flake of hay. All the while, her thoughts were with Brad, and the stray dog lying in the back of Olivia’s rig.