Free Champagne for Buzzards by Phyllis Smallman

was about to get a taste of my fancy new boot.
    Boomer Breslau reached out a hand for me. Joey had him. Took a nice big chunk of his arm and held on, nodding his head and grinding his teeth in delight.
    Boomer yelled, a real stupid thing to do around a horse with Joey’s nasty and unpredictable personality. The yell set Joey rearing back, pulling Boomer with him. I grabbed the horn, hoping Joey wouldn’t topple backwards on top of me, and fought to keep my feet in the stirrups. Joey released Boomer.
    Boomer fell back on his ass with Joey’s hooves slicing down inches from Boomer’s head. Crablike, he scuttled away and scrambled to regain the safety of his ATV.
    Joey reared one more time but his heart wasn’t in it. I leaned forward and stroked Joey’s neck. “Okay, sweetie,” I whispered to Joey. “You did just fine.”
    Then I spoke up to the three men staring at me from their machines. “Now why don’t you boys just go on home?” I said. “I’ll tell Clay you came by to introduce yourselves.”
    I turned Joey and cantered back towards the house, trying to decide what I would do if they followed me and ran me off the path into the palmettos. Swear like hell and threaten them with everything under the sun likely. I couldn’t think of anything else.
    Just when I thought I was well clear of danger, some extra sense, some tingling of the hairs on the back of my head made me look around. Had they come after me?
    But it wasn’t that. This was a whole new terror. Deep in the palmettos, hidden and fleeting, I looked into the eyes of a man. Dark-skinned, with chiseled features, he had a face from an Aztec carving. I felt the scream bubbling up from my gut. The memory of recent pain and Joey’s reaction to surprises quelled the instinct, but my knees must have tightened, must have sent the signal for speed. It was all the stupid piece of dog food needed.

CHAPTER 16
    Joey bolted. Any man trying to run us down was going to have his work cut out trying to outrun Joey. We flew along the narrow lane. Palm fronds and other green stuff slapped us, probably adding to Joey’s speed. I bent lower in the saddle to keep from being swept away by a branch, glued to his back by panic.
    At the edge of the forest I saw Tully and Ziggy careening towards me in Tully’s beat-up old wreck. Joey saw it too. He came to a stop and shook his head, spraying me with lather.
    â€œTake it easy,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t turn around and bolt back into the forest. “Take it easy.” I wasn’t sure if it was meant for Joey or me. I pulled Joey up close to the board fence of the pasture as the old pickup slid to a stop beside us.
    Tully had a rifle across his lap. Ziggy had a shotgun, with the butt planted on the seat, in his left hand. They were looking like this was an everyday occurrence for them, a scary thought.
    I panted, “Fun’s over, gentleman.” I reached down and patted Joey’s neck.
    â€œWhat happened?” Tully asked.
    â€œMet some bad news guys out there, but this fellow finally did something right. He bit the hand that needed it.”
    Tully said, “We’ll just go on out there and have a little talk with those boys.”
    â€œNaw, everything’s cool.”
    Tully’s mouth was pulled tight into a thin angry line. “Those guys need a lesson in manners, need to be told about trespassing.”
    â€œWaste of time,” I said, nudging Joey into a walk. “They’ve already gone.”
    Tully got his old truck turned around while I walked on with Joey. I was shaking all over with shock. Boomer was nasty but a known threat, at least I was stupid enough to think so. I’d dealt with a hundred guys like Boomer in a dozen different bars. Discouraging dickheads is part of the job for any woman tending bar and most of the grungy places I’d worked in abounded in fools just like Boomer Breslau.
    At