Hot Trail

By Jill K. Yaranon

Sylver Sullivan has to make some big changes in her life. After her husbands traumatic death, she discovers she is financially ruined and will not be able to keep her beloved horse ranch in the Sierra Nevada foothills. To help pay the bills, she takes on a trio of quirky roommates who both enrich and complicate her quiet country life, and together they are pulled down the trail of treachery, drugs, and stolen horses.

The turn of one trail leads to a mysterious new man in town who captivates Sylvers young roommate and connects them all to the vicious world of the drug cartels.

Another twist in the trail leads Sylver to investigate missing horses in her neighborhooduntil she finds out the hard way that you do not want to cross paths with drug lords. As with all trail rides in the rugged Sierra foothills there are always unplanned routes, unexpected delights, and dangerous obstacles.

Join Sylver as she rides the rocky trail of life, fighting to hold on to her ranch, her horses, and the Cool country life she loves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503531710

Jill K. Yaranon

Jill K. (Katie) Yaranon is living the dream on her horse ranch in Cool. She is president of the local horse club, Divide Horsemen’s Association, which advocates for equestrian trails in the communities of Cool, Georgetown, Pilot Hill, and surrounding hamlets. (Yes, there really is a town named Cool.) While riding through the Sierra foothills, she meets many interesting characters—few of whom are dangerous. She has three exceptional horses that faithfully carry her over the rugged trails and the many challenges they present, like swift water crossings, rattlesnakes, wild turkeys, and only the occasional drug lord.

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Copyright © 2015 by Jill K. Yaranon.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2014922976

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5035-3169-7

      Softcover      978-1-5035-3170-3

      eBook      978-1-5035-3171-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 02/20/2015

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CONTENTS

Chapter One: Old Joe Goes Missing

Chapter Two: New Roommates

Chapter Three: Run Horse Run

Chapter Four: Hubba Sighting

Chapter Five: More Missing Horses

Chapter Six: A Pattern

Chapter Seven: La Bonita Produce

Chapter Eight: Annie Goes Down

Chapter Nine: Radish Helps

Chapter Ten: Thief in the Night

Chapter Eleven: Roping Shadows

Chapter Twelve: Where There’s Smoke

Chapter Thirteen: Friends to the Rescue

Chapter Fourteen: In the News

Chapter Fifteen: End of the Trail

It’s the way you ride the trail that counts.

—Dale Evans

CHAPTER ONE

Old Joe Goes Missing

Of course I shouldn’t have ridden out to look for Old Joe on the morning of Paul’s funeral, but Lee was standing at the back fence whistling for his faithful gelding when I went out to feed.

Joe get out again? I button my ragged canvas barn coat over my pajama top and walk over to the fence.

That horse is a Houdini. Lee shakes his head and a stem of hay falls from his hat and sticks to the sleeve of his brown woolen bathrobe. His gnarled hands, swollen with ropey blue veins, grip the top of his three-pronged cane.

My condolences to you and the kids, Syl. I know it’s a hard time for you but you did the right thing taking Paul back in and letting him die at home. I just hope someone will do that for me. His eyes water up and he turns his head away from me. I want to hug him but I know he will hate that. So I just lean on the fence with him and we watch for the morning sky to light up the hills behind our ranches.

Thanks, Lee. It’s been a hard few months. Paul’s services are in San Francisco this afternoon, so we’ll head down there in a bit.

I saw the obituary in the paper. I wish I could go but my legs are shot.

I can see Lee’s knees shaking with the effort of standing. Lee is my closest neighbor; he is nearly ninety years old—a tough old horseman with a heart of gold. When we first moved to the ranch he helped Paul and me with everything from horse training to horse husbandry, but for the past few months I have not even been asking him to feed for me. His knee joints are so bad that I know he couldn’t handle my four horses. Most of the time he rides his little blue golf cart when he comes outside, but today he has walked to the corner of his property. Old Joe is Lee’s only companion—an ancient roping horse that back in the day carried Lee to world-class wins.

I’m going to ride out real quick and see if I can find Joe before I leave.

I know Megan will be furious if we don’t leave on time, but any horse that will kneel down and let his lame owner climb aboard is a horse I have time to find. Over Lee’s protests, I run inside to throw on my jeans and then saddle up my mare Bella and ride out toward the big meadow to see if I can find Joe before I have to leave. Joe has escaped before and usually heads to the proverbial greener pasture just a few miles down the trail.

As always the freshness of dawn washes over me and I breathe in the wildness of the trail. Paul and I bought this ranch because it borders on thousands of miles of wilderness and I can literally ride out my back gate and never be seen again. But today the vastness of this land seems daunting when I am trying to find a thirty-year-old gelding that has been losing weight lately.

We hit the trail at a trot and before I get to the cut off my mare is settled and in an easy rhythm. I can ride this gait all day. When I am in the saddle I feel like I am twenty years old again and my spirit lifts and flies with the hawk that circles above me. My mom would say it’s my gypsy blood. Even though I am only a small part gypsy, I have inherited a large part of my great-grandfather who was a gypsy horse whisperer in Spain. The one and only photograph we have of him sits in an ancient silver frame in my office. He is a fierce-looking man with thick bushy, black eyebrows and piercing eyes—both characteristics I have inherited from him. But with the horses it was said he was a magician—a kindred spirit, which is why he was in charge of the king’s stables.

Now as I ride over the trail I feel my blood course through my veins and my legs wrap around the girth of my beautiful grand white mare Bella as we break into an easy rocking lope. It is so early that last night’s dew is still on the grass and the sun is behind the hills. We fly by a small herd of deer still lying in their grassy nests. They look at us but don’t get to their feet. When we reach the meadow there are a few stray cows grazing but no Old Joe. I let my mare graze a few minutes and watch the sky lighten up—first apricot then pink and finally washing out to crystalline blue. I feel like getting back on the trail and riding down into the canyons, leaving all my worries and sadness behind, let someone else worry about the house and the barn and the hay and the medical bills. But I realize with Paul gone that the only someone else is me. After calling for Old Joe one more time, I turn Bella toward home and force myself to think about something decent to wear to Paul’s funeral.

All the reasons I hate church come back to me as Father Brian chants the Kyrie. Even though I grew up in this church I can’t wait to get out of here. But I know that it would be horrible etiquette to leave my ex’s funeral, even though these walls are crushing me.

Lord, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy.

Lord, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy.

I don’t know where the mercy was when Christ was watching Paul struggle and moan for every breath. Maybe he wasn’t watching, maybe it was just Cricket and me. Father Brian drones on and his baritone voice fades away into the cavernous marble sacristy. I get off pattern. In trail class, if you go off pattern you are disqualified or at least penalized. In the Catholic Church, it is probably some kind of sin. I try to catch up and the chanting stops. I am mesmerized by the little side door that leads outside to the contemplation garden. Through the skinny clear glass panel I see a slice of grey sky and a splash of hot pink. My claustrophobia is another trait inherited from my gypsy blood.

When I was young I would camp outside all summer in a tent in the yard. My parents told me not to tell other people I slept outside. They thought they might be arrested for child endangerment. But those long summer nights sleeping outside with our dogs and falling asleep to the sound of cricket song and owl calls are some of my happiest memories. When I went to college and interned on the Navajo reservation for a year, I knew I could only be happy working outside.

Gypsy blood is strong stuff. Sometimes I can feel it coursing through my veins—it is wild and free and passionate. It’s why I can ride my horses like the wind and talk with them. My mother’s voice pops into my head again. Don’t tell anyone you can talk to horses. People will think you are crazy. But horses make perfect sense to me. I understand them better than most people. If you watch horses, really watch them, every twitch of the ear, every flick of the tail, every wrinkle of the mouth will tell you what a horse is thinking. They don’t lie or pretend to be what they are not. They are exactly what they are and they will give you their heart and soul.

I look at the stained glass windows that line the stone walls of the church. They show the twelve Stations of the Cross and they remind me of the pain and suffering Paul went through before he died. Even the drugs didn’t help much, which is why I helped Paul when he asked. In his lucid hours we planned how he wanted to end his life. I look to the gigantic cross of Jesus hanging over the altar and I swear I see Him glaring at me.

By the time Father Brian gets to the communion, my black skirt is damp from wiping off my sweaty palms. My daughter Megan nudges me, and my son Ryland puts his arm around me.

Are you okay, Mom? he asks.

I lean into him for a moment and breathe in his strength and I feel like I may be able to stay until Paul’s services are done. He helps me kneel for the communion offering.

We all stand up and file out of the pew to receive communion. I am only going because 1) I love Father Bri and 2) if I don’t get up and move my knees will lock into permanent stuck position and I’ll be here forever doing penance. And as much as I like Father Brian, I don’t want to stay here forever— already I long for my ranch and horses. Father Brian visited Paul every week as he died from his pancreatic cancer, and every week he brought us soup, wine, and a few jokes. What else could possibly be more important in your last days?

When we get to the altar Father puts down the hosts and hugs us all. That’s the kind of person Father Brian is. The church is full of our friends and family. Even though we moved out of San Francisco years ago, Paul travelled here frequently and still has a lot of contacts down here. I rarely leave the ranch, and I’m sure that is one of the reasons that we drifted apart.

Megan pulls down the kneeler when we get back to our pew. Mom, you have your cowboy boots on—you were supposed to change over to your heels.

Whoops. I look down at my boots before kneeling. At least they are my good dress boots, turquoise and green vines and red roses on black ostrich leather.

Ryland takes my arm to help me down. It’s okay, Mom, no one cares.

I know they are both worried about me. Hell, I’m worried about me. After I figure out the foreclosure mess and pay all the medical bills I am not sure I will be able to stay on my ranch. And they don’t know the half of it. So forgetting to put on my heels (which hurt my feet anyway) is the least of my sins. What would they think if they knew that at the end I gave Paul a little too much morphine? What would they think if I told them that their dad and I were best friends only? He had a girlfriend who ditched him as soon as he was diagnosed with cancer.

Before Paul’s diagnosis we had been living separate lives anyway—he in a condo in the city and me on our beautiful Sierra Nevada horse ranch. We were both happy with this—he with his city girlfriend and golf, and me with my horse ranch life. Things were working out well until the day Paul called me with his diagnosis, and both our worlds were turned upside down.

When he sickened and couldn’t work anymore, of course I went down and packed him up into the Jeep and drove him up to the ranch. We hired Cricket as his caregiver since I could hardly keep up with the horse ranch and all the chores that go with that. Paul and I spent some of the best times we have ever had in those last few months, but we burned through our savings trying every experimental pancreatic cancer treatment known to medical science. And still the end came sooner and harder than we expected.

Right now as I watch our family and friends take communion and Father Brian wipe the chalice clean and return to the altar, the bank could be slapping a foreclosure notice on the front door. I made arrangements with the bank to reduce our mortgage until we could refinance but somehow our paperwork got kicked into the foreclosure system, and when your husband is dying of pancreatic cancer in the family room, a paper mistake seems silly by comparison. Since Paul handled all the finances and paid all the bills for both households, I never knew the true state of our affairs until it was too late.

Ryland stands up and walks to the pulpit to talk about his father. He tells of the time we went on a family ski trip and got snowed in for three days. All we did was play Monopoly, eat s’mores, and tell stories. Paul did his three famous magic tricks. It was one of those perfect times and reminds me of all the good times we had.

Ryland invites everyone to the internment at Holy Cross Cemetery and the luncheon at the Irish Cultural Center. Since Paul and I grew up in San Francisco, he wanted all his services down here. It is a vibrant and dynamic city but already I am longing for my oak trees, the sky, and the smell of my horses—gypsy blood.

I look around the church as our niece sings Amazing Grace. I see Bobbi and her new husband Jackson sitting near the confessionals. Cricket sits with them. Bobbi is dressed all in black, her ebony wool coat only makes her platinum white hair more striking. Around her neck is an emerald green scarf, probably cashmere. She looks demure and stunning at the same time. Cricket looks like hell. She has on a thin denim jacket over a dark slinky dress. She is probably freezing. She really loved Paul and has taken his death hard. She blames me, I know. She sees me looking at her and gives me a piercing stare and dabs her eyes with a tissue.

I look down at my