Read Cutter (Gail McCarthy Mystery series) for Free Online Page A

toward me, big white blaze prominent in the late afternoon light, and I smiled when I saw him. "Hey, big horse, how you doing?"
    He nickered and stretched his nose out ... "Pet me, pay attention to me, I'm bored."
    "I know, I know," I told him, "it's rough being penned up like this with nothing to do, but it's just the way it has to be for a while." Rubbing his forehead and then the underside of his neck, I explained to him at length that he'd severed both the deep and superficial flexor tendons in his front leg and if he were ever to be sound again, he needed a year of forced rest and inactivity.
    He bumped me with his nose impatiently and I held my hand out, showing it was empty. "No apples, no beer, sorry."
    Gunner licked my palm hopefully; his favorite treat was beer and I often poured a little in my cupped hand for him, but I hadn't brought any today.
    Frustrated, he swung his head in an impatient shake that flipped his thick black mane from one side of his neck to the other. "Well, what good are you then?"-I could almost hear the words.
    Smoothing his mane back where it belonged, I regarded him affectionately. Gunner was three years old, a bright bay (red with black mane and tail) with three high white socks, a big blaze and one blue eye and one brown one. Bred to be a champion cowhorse, he'd belonged to one of Casey Brooks' millionaire clients, this guy a dude who'd known nothing about horses. The man had taken his green colt for a ride through the hills one day and Gunner had spooked at a rabbit, dumping the owner on the ground. Frightened, the colt had galloped for the barn and somewhere in his mad scramble for home had overreached with one driving back hoof and severed the suspensory tendons of his left front leg. That was six months ago now, and I could remember the emergency call perfectly.
    Yellow light had streamed out of Casey's barn into the soft March evening as I'd walked toward the big bay colt standing on three legs in the aisle. Casey was holding the leadrope, and pain and distress were plain in the horse's eyes.
    No trouble with the diagnosis; I'd explained to the middle-aged, overweight man with the pouting mouth that his horse would have to have the leg wrapped and be kept in a stall for three months, then confined in a small pen for six more, and be gradually legged up a full year later, if he was to have any chance at all.
    Whether it was chagrin at being thrown, or natural bad temper, or the non-horseman's unrealistic expectations of what owning a horse would be like, the man had simply shrugged and said, "Put him down." I could still hear the crunch of his expensive Tony Llama cowboy boots on the gravel as he'd marched to his Mercedes and driven away.
    Casey'd turned to me, anger on his face. "Dammit, this is a good colt, Gail, one of the best ones I've had. He'll be a hell of a horse someday; that dumb son of a bitch wouldn't know a good one if it bit him."
    I was staring at the three-year-old, seeing the quality: legs with good strong bone; long, flat muscles; alert eyes, their contrasting colors combined with his big white blaze giving him a friendly, clownish look, even in the state he was in. And then Gunner, standing on his three good legs, had reached out and bumped my chest with his nose. I rubbed the nose.
    Casey's voice had droned on in the background in the timeless litany of horsemen everywhere, "And he's by Mr. Gunsmoke out of a King Fritz mare-bred in the purple, Gail-and he's got a real good mind."
    "I'll take him." The words just came out of my mouth as I stroked the bay gelding, and I already knew I wouldn't put him down. Putting down a healthy animal that can be restored to wholeness goes against all my instincts. Besides, I wanted this horse.
    "I'll take him," I said again. "Can you make it right with the owner?"
    "Sure I can." And Casey grinned. "Hoo-aw, buddy, you got yourself a horse."
    Six months later I still had him, and he was recovering nicely. I'd arranged to board him at