He dressed and sat on the bed to pull his boots on, looking out over the little parking lot that was crammed with the pickups and four-wheeler trucks of those coming to the clinic. As of last night there were going to be twenty in the colt class and about the same in the horsemanship class. It was too many but he never liked turning folk away. For their horses' sake more than theirs. He put on his green wool jacket, picked up his hat and let himself out into the narrow concrete corridor that led to reception.
The young Chinese manager was putting out a tray of evil-looking doughnuts by the coffee machine. He beamed at Tom.
'Morning Mr Booker! How you doing?'
'Good thanks,' Tom said. He put his key down on the desk. 'How are you?'
Fine. Complimentary doughnut?'
'No thanks.'
'All set for the clinic?'
'Oh, reckon we'll muddle through. See you later.'
'Bye Mr Booker.'
The dawn air felt damp and chilly as he walked toward his pickup, but the cloud was high and Tom knew it would burn off by midmorning. Back home in Montana the ranch was still under two foot of snow, but when they drove into Marin County here last night it felt like spring. California, he thought. They sure had it all worked out down here, even the weather. He couldn't wait to get home.
He pointed the red Chevy out onto the highway and looped back over 101. The riding center nestled in a gently sloping wooded valley a couple of miles out of town. He had brought the trailer up here last night before checking into the motel and turned Rimrock out into the meadow. Tom saw someone had already been out putting arrow signs up along the route saying BOOKER HORSE CLINIC and wished whoever it was hadn't. If the place was harder to find maybe some of the dumber ones wouldn't show up.
He drove through the gate and parked on the grass near the big arena where the sand had been watered and neatly combed. There was no one about. Rimrock saw him from the far side of the meadow and by the time Tom got over to the fence he was there waiting. He was an eight-year-old brown quarter horse with a white blaze on his face and four neat white socks that gave him the dapper look of someone dressed up for a tennis party. Tom had bred and reared him himself. He rubbed the horse's neck and let him nuzzle the side of his face.
'You got your work cut out today, old son,' Tom said. Normally he liked to have two horses at a clinic so they could share the load. But his mare, Bronty, was about to foal and he'd had to leave her back in Montana. That was another reason he wanted to get home.
Tom turned and leaned against the fence and the two of them silently surveyed the empty space that for the next five days would be buzzing with nervous horses and their more nervous owners. After he and Rimrock had worked with them, most would go home a little less nervous and that made it worth doing. But this was the fourth clinic in about as many weeks and seeing the same damn fool problems cropping up time and time again got kind of wearing.
For the first time in twenty years he was going to take the spring and summer off. No clinics, no traveling. Just stay put on the ranch, get some of his own colts going, help his brother some. That was it. Maybe he was getting too old. He was forty-five, hell, nearly forty-six. When he'd started out doing clinics he could do one a week all year round and love every minute. If only the people could be as smart as the horses.
Rona Williams, the woman who owned the center and hosted this clinic every year, had seen him and was coming down from the stables. She was a small, wiry woman with the eyes of a zealot and though pushing forty, wore her hair in two long plaits. The girlishness of this was contradicted by the manly way she walked. It was the walk of someone used to being obeyed. Tom liked her. She worked hard to make a success of the clinic. He touched his hat to her and she smiled then looked up at the sky.
'Gonna be a good one,' she said.
'I reckon.' Tom nodded toward the road. 'I see you got yourself some nice new signs out there. In case any of these forty crazy horses get themselves lost.'
'Thirty-nine.'
'Oh? Someone drop out?'
'Nope. Thirty-nine horses, one donkey.' She grinned. 'Guy who owns it's an actor or something. Coming up from L.A.'
He sighed and gave her a look.
'You're a ruthless woman, Rona. You'll have me wrestling grizzly bears before you're through.'
'It's an idea.'
They walked down to the arena together and talked the schedule through. He would kick off this morning with the colts, working with them one by one. With twenty of them, that was going to take pretty much the whole day. Tomorrow would be the horsemanship class, with some cattle work later, if there was time, for those who wanted it.
Tom had bought some new speakers and wanted to do a sound test, so Rona helped him get them out of the Chevy and they set them up near the bleachers where the spectators would sit. The speakers squealed with feedback when they were switched on, then settled into a menacing, anticipatory hum as Tom walked out across the virgin sand of the arena and spoke into the radio mike of his headset.
'Hi folks.' His voice boomed among the trees that stood unstirring in the still air of the valley. 'This is the Rona Williams show and I'm Tom Booker, donkey tamer to the stars.'
When they'd checked everything through, they drove down into town to the place they always had breakfast. Smoky and T.J., the two young guys Tom had brought from Montana to help with this run of four clinics, were already eating. Rona ordered granola and Tom some scrambled eggs, wheat toast and a large orange juice.
'You hear about that woman killed by a mountain lion out jogging?' said Smoky.
'The lion was jogging too?' Tom asked, all big blue-eyed innocence. Everyone laughed.
'Why not?' said Rona. 'Hey fellas, it's California.'
'That's right,' said T.J. 'They say he was all in Lycra and wearing these little earphones.'
'You mean one of them Sony Prowlmen?' said Tom. Smoky waited for them to finish, taking it well. Teasing him had become the morning game. Tom was fond of him. He wasn't a Nobel prizewinner, but when it came to horses he had something going for him. One day, if he worked at it, he'd be good. Tom reached out and ruffled his hair.
'You're okay Smoke,' he said.
A pair of buzzards circled lazily against the liquid blue of the afternoon sky. They floated ever upward on the thermals that rose from the valley, filling that middle space between tree and hilltop with an eerie, intermittent mewing. Five hundred feet below, in a cloud of dust, the latest of the day's twenty dramas was unfolding. The sun and maybe the signs along the road had lured as big a crowd as Tom had ever seen here. The bleachers were packed and people were still coming in, paying their ten bucks a head to one of Rona's helpers at the gate. The women running the refreshment stall were doing brisk business and the air was laced with the smell of barbecue.
In the middle of the arena stood a small corral some thirty feet across and it was here that Tom and Rimrock were working. The sweat was starting to streak the dust on Tom's face and he wiped it on the sleeve of his faded blue snap-button shirt. His legs felt hot under the old leather chaps he wore over his jeans. He'd done eleven colts already and this now was the twelfth, a beautiful black thoroughbred.
Tom always started by having a word with the owner to find out the horse's 'history', as he liked to call it. Had he been ridden yet? Were there any special problems? There always were, but more often than not it was the horse who told you what they were, not the owner.
This little thoroughbred was a case in point. The woman who owned him said he had a tendency to buck and was reluctant to move out. He was lazy, cranky even, she said. But now that Tom and Rimrock had him circling around them in the corral, the horse was saying something different. Tom always gave a running commentary into the radio mike so the crowd could follow what he was doing. He tried not to make the owner sound foolish. Too foolish anyway.