Free High Stakes by John McEvoy Page A

Morrison CD as he headed back up the N27, toward dinner with Nora, he hoped, if she wasn’t working late.

Chapter Fourteen
    Sheets of rain pounded her windshield making the driving, what with the auto’s lights off, very difficult late this spring night. The whirring wipers almost obscured the Swine Research Center sign as she passed it. She cautiously turned into the long drive from the county highway and headed toward the parking behind the Large Animal Building.
    The previous night, she’d used the Google search engine to access and examine the layout of Indiana’s Carmel College School of Veterinary Medicine. Her destination was well removed from the college’s main campus.
    At the far end of the parking lot, she spotted a large truck that was piled high with bales of now sodden hay, and pulled in on the far side of it. The downpour began to diminish. The only other vehicles in the lot were two empty pickup trucks, one with a small horse trailer attached. She quickly reviewed the plan of action she had laid out using the precise information confidentially supplied by a sympathetic Carmel College staff member, one of her fellow ALWD members and a longtime “animal activist. ”
    Waiting for the rain to subside, she sat back in her driver’s seat and closed her eyes, remembering a watershed moment in her life. She had just turned thirteen when she accompanied her favorite aunt on a mission for the Equine Rescue Society. It was a cold, gray December morning when they and several other volunteers arrived at the rundown farm outside of Pekin, Illinois. Her Aunt Julia, vice-president of the organization’s area chapter, had been tipped off by an anonymous phone call the night before. According to the caller, “Horace Beasley, that sorry, cheap son of a bitch, is starving his poor horses. He’s abandoned them and moved away. You will never see that bastard. But you better hurry and see them horses.”
    Aunt Julia led the way past the small, weather-beaten house toward the paddock fence behind it. Then she halted, hand going to her mouth as she gasped, “Oh, my God.”
    In front of them were four horses, two browns and a black and a gray. They were in appalling condition, their ribs showing, sores festering on their legs. They hardly had the strength to raise their heads to look at the visitors.
    Aunt Julia opened the gate and entered the paddock, hands extended. She chirped and called out and, finally, one of the old brown horses struggled to make its way to her. It stopped and glanced at the water trough, which was frozen solid. Then it raised its head and looked at the visitors with filmed eyes and an expression of puzzlement and pain that would never be forgotten by the visitors.
    The Rescue Society’s horse van arrived an hour later. By then, the gray mare had laid down and died in the frost-rimmed grass, despite all their efforts to keep her on her feet.
    The three survivors were helped gently into the horse van headed for the Rescue Society farm nineteen miles away. The little, emaciated black gelding died en route. The other two horses survived and eventually were restored to good health and given good homes.
    Late that memorable afternoon, walking back to Aunt Julia’s truck, the sun suddenly slashed through the winter cloud cover. But it did nothing to raise their spirits. She could even tonight hear Aunt Julia’s impassioned voice saying, “ No animal should ever be mistreated like that. They depend on us for almost everything. They deserve our love. Most of all, they deserve our respect.”
    The rain suddenly stopped and she sat forward in her seat. She put on her gloves, pulled down the black raincoat hood over her head. Ready. Set . She ran across the parking lot to the door her fellow ALWD member had promised her would be left unlocked. She closed it quietly. The interior of this building was lit by ceiling lights set at a dimmed level. No