The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans Page B

putting him down but that wasn’t the half of it. His nasal bone was hideously crunched in, there were clearly some broken ribs, an ugly gash over the left cannon bone and God knows how many other smaller cuts and bruises. He could also tell from the way the horse had run up the slope that there was lameness high up in the right foreleg. He should just put the poor beast out of its agony. But now he’d got this far, he was damned if he was going to give that triggerhappy little fucker of a hunter the satisfaction of knowing he was right. If the horse died of his own accord, so be it.
    Koopman had the mill truck and the trailer down beside them now and Logan saw they had managed to find a canvas sling from somewhere. The rescue-squad guy still had Mrs. Dyer standing by on the phone and Logan took it from him.
    “Okay, I’m yours,” he said and as he listened, he indicated to them where to put the sling. When he heard the poor woman’s tactful rendering of Annie’s message, he just smiled and shook his head.
    “Terrific,” he said. “Nice to be appreciated.”
    He handed the phone back and helped drag the two canvas sling straps under Pilgrim’s barrel, through what was now a sea of red slush. Everyone was standing and Logan thought they all looked funny with their matching red knees. Someone handed him a dry jacket and for the first time since he was in the river he realized how cold he was.
    Koopman and the driver hitched the ends of the sling to the hoist chains and then stood back with the others as Pilgrim was slowly lifted into the air and swung like a carcass onto the trailer. Logan climbed up there with two paramedics and they manhandled the horse’s limbs so that eventually he lay as before on his side. Koopmanpassed the vet’s things up to him while others spread blankets over the horse.
    Logan gave another shot of steroids and took out a new bag of Plasmalyte. He suddenly felt very tired. He figured the chances of the horse being alive by the time they got to his clinic were odds on against.
    “We’ll call ahead,” Koopman said. “So they’ll know when to expect you.”
    “Thanks.”
    “All set now?”
    “I guess so.”
    Koopman slapped the rear end of the pickup that was hitched to the trailer and yelled for the driver to move out. It started slowly up the slope.
    “Good luck,” Koopman called after them but Logan didn’t seem to hear. The young deputy looked vaguely disappointed. It was all over and everyone was going home. There was a zipping sound behind him and he turned to look. The hunter was putting his rifle back in its bag.
    “Thanks for your help,” Koopman said. The hunter nodded, swung the bag over his shoulder and walked away.
       Robert woke with a jolt and for a moment thought he was in his office. The screen of his computer had gone berserk, quivering green lines racing each other across ranges of jagged peaks. Oh no, he thought, a virus. Rampaging through his files on the Dunford Securities case. Then he saw the bed with its covers neatly tented over what remained of his daughter’s leg and he remembered where he was.
    He looked at his watch. It was nearly five A.M . The room was dark except for where the angle-lamp behindthe bed cast a cocoon of soft light over Grace’s head and her naked shoulders. Her eyes were closed and her face serene as if she didn’t mind at all the snaking coils of plastic tube that had invaded her body. There was a tube into her mouth from the respirator and another up her nose and down into her stomach through which she could be fed. More tubes looped down from the bottles and bags that hung above the bed and they met in a tangled fury at her neck, as if fighting to be first into the valve slotted into her jugular. The valve was masked by flesh-colored tape, as were the electrodes on her temples and chest and the hole they had cut above one of her young breasts to insert a fiber-optic tube into her heart.
    Without a riding hat, the doctors