Read Online Solomon's Oak by Jo-Ann Mapson - Free Book Online Page B

they went for a walk. Years ago, when Dan was due back from a job, their old dog Jeep, a mixed breed—“cattle dog and surprise,” Dan called him—scratched to get out, then trotted down to the mailbox to wait. He did not lie down to sleep or get distracted by the goats. He did not chase cars, which had been his one fault Glory could not break in their eleven years together. Jeep waited. Nine times out of ten, within a half hour, Dan drove up. Fifteen minutes before Dan showed up, Jeep started wagging his tail. Jeep was the reason Glory started with last-chance dogs in the first place. When he died, she had buried him under the white oak so he’d have a shady spot for all eternity.
    Then there were the Solomon horses. As two-year-olds in halter training, they were stabled at the same facility. Over time, they were sold to various people, shown in gymkhanas, had become family horses, spent time on the trail-horse circuit, then were abandoned and neglected, miles apart.
    First to come to Solomon’s Oak was Cricket, a bone-thin, red-and-white pinto mare pastured alone in a steep and rocky field that Glory and Dan passed every time they drove into town. No matter if it was pouring down rain or a hundred degrees, the horse stood at the fence, looking out onto the county road. Her owner’s property featured, among the tires and broken appliances strewn across the yard, two dead trucks and a female pit bull tethered on a chain. A circle of dirt around the dog was as wide as the chain reached. Her water source was a horse trough green with moss the dog had to climb in order to drink. Glory was all for Dan punching the man in the nose, but Dan being Dan said, “Good afternoon,” and offered the man $200 for the horse. A decent person would have given Dan the horse for nothing and been grateful that the animal was off his hands, but this guy took the $200. He refused to help transport the horse to the Solomon ranch, however, so Glory drove home to fetch the horse trailer while Dan stayed with the horse.
    She would have ridden Cricket home if her hooves weren’t so desperately deformed from neglect. It took the best horseshoer in the Central Valley three visits before he had her hooves properly trimmed to hold a shoe. While Dan drove the truck and pulled the horse trailer, Glory opened the truck’s rear window so she could keep Cricket in sight. The pit bull, already named Roadie, rode shotgun. There was no way Glory would leave that dog behind to weather the elements without even a porch for escape. So she slipped the dog’s collar off the chain and leashed her, and the dog happily went with her.
    Her nipples were so distended that Glory knew she’d been overbred. She had scars on her face, neck, and front legs. Animal neglect made Glory furious, but pit-bull fighting made her killing mad.
    “Matthew 20:28,” Dan said when the man stood in the doorway and didn’t say a word as the Solomons drove away. “ ‘Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for so many.’ ”
    A year and a half later, Kristen Donohue, the animal-shelter volunteer who called the Solomons whenever a dog was on death row, came in to work one morning to find Piper tied up outside. It was the same morning Glory was picking up a shar-pei/chow scheduled for euthanasia that turned out to be a real sweetheart and now lived on a farm in Castroville. “You looking for a second horse?” Kristen asked Glory, and the minute Glory touched Piper’s black-and-white-spotted neck, he began to whinny and lip her shoulders. After checking him for soundness, Glory had Dan bring over some tack so she could ride the horse home. The idea was to tire him out to make the transition to the paddock easier. Dan’s idea was to drive alongside her in case things didn’t go so well.
    A mile before they reached the ranch, Piper started whinnying so hard that shock waves ran up Glory’s spine. She patted his neck.