Chapter 16
Colt
Dark clouds twisted above in the sky. The cold air was thick with the promise of a heavy and chilly rain when I holstered my hammer to look up. Green Point wasn’t a stranger to early autumn rainstorms that usually brought on an early frost. Summer was officially at an end, and with the clouds promising rain, I knew it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world started to change.
The leaves on the oak trees were already changing on the very top. My breath puffed out in front of me as I stared down at the replaced roof shingles. At least the rain wouldn’t be getting in the barn any longer. The wooden beams wouldn’t be rotted out any longer either.
I sat back on my knees to take a deep breath while Rick finished stapling the last shingle down.
“Good timing,” I remarked, glancing up at the sky. “I don’t think this roof would’ve lasted very long under another downpour of rain.”
“It wouldn’t have lasted much longer,” Rick said. He sat up to look at the sky too. “I’m glad we got this finished before the rain though. Getting soaked in the rain is not on my list of things to do for you.”
“The beams should’ve been replaced this summer, so don’t complain.”
Rick’s face contorted at that. “I know, boss. I’m sorry again for what happened. I really did mean to replace them, but with how much work had to be done around here, I—”
“I know, Rick,” I said and reached across to clasp him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, okay? I know I’ve placed a lot on you to handle while Tif and I are out doing our own things. I appreciate everything that you have done here.”
The boom of thunder caught us both off guard. I got up from my knees, helping Rick stand up as well, and walked carefully to the ladder. I spotted Cheyenne riding the palomino mare, a friendly horse that seemed attached to Cheyenne more than the others, along the field in the direction of the barn. I climbed down to watch as a line of horses followed behind her without being roped or linked together.
I shook my head in amazement as Cheyenne rode up with a large grin. My heart skipped hard in my chest when I looked up at her with a cowboy hat perched on her dark hair to keep her head dry against the now drizzle of rain. I had been so close the other day to finally kissing her, but Cheyenne had made a point to keep herself at a cautious distance since then. That feeling overwhelmed me again looking up the curve of her toned leg in tight jeans.
“Impressive,” I said. “I think I’ll call you the horse whisperer from now on.”
Cheyenne laughed lightly as I opened the pasture gate to let the horses in. I shut the gate behind the last horse before going to help Rick put up the ladder. He came from inside the barn, glancing at the horses with a surprised frown.
“I know,” I said once he reached where I stood at the pasture gate. “It’s impressive how she can get those horses to follow her around without any problems.”
“She’s got a talent,” Rick agreed, glancing up at the sky. “Do you want to try and get to the fences or wait?”
I glanced up at the sky with a sigh. The weather was not on my side since the plumbing issues at the Iron Stallion. If I had to wait around for Marcus to call me back with a time to look into the problem, then I didn’t want to sit idle. There were repairs that Rick needed help with around the ranch—including a few fences around the property line that we would need the four-wheelers to access.
“Gas the four-wheelers up,” I told him. “I’m going to go up to the house to check messages and make sure Tiffany is okay.”
“Right. I’ll get straight to it.”
I started in the direction of the house when Cheyenne’s shrill scream cut through the silence. Panic shot through me when I ran into the barn to find Cheyenne’s hands covering her face. The horses were dancing around madly in the barn, and I barely managed to squish myself up against a barn stall to avoid being trampled over. I looked behind to see that Rick was opening the pasture gate quickly to let the horses stream back into the corral before rushing over to Cheyenne.
Her face was pale white and frightened when she looked at me through the gaps in her fingers.
“In there,” she cried, pointing to the ground. “There’s so many of them, Colt.”
I pushed the barn stall open to find a black mass scurrying along the barn floor. Out of reflex, I stomped on the one black widow that crawled in my direction. I stomped on all the ones that I could find on the floor.
“What the hell?”
I looked up to see Cheyenne peeking her head through the barn stall. Her frightened eyes met mine.
“I hate black widows,” she said. “I hate spiders, period. What were they doing in the stalls?”
“I don’t know.”
I crouched down, pushing my hat up so I could inspect the squished mass along the floor. I counted thirty of them with a frown. Thirty black widows in one barn stall seemed overkill. It was too late the season also for brand-new spiders to be popping up.
“What’s going on?” Rick asked worriedly. “The horses were running out of here in a sheer panic. Is there an animal in here or—”
“Black widows,” I replied, looking up at him with a frown. “Thirty of them in this stall. That’s a bit out of the ordinary, right?”
A frown tugged at Rick’s lips as he came into the barn stall to examine the squished spiders too.
“At this time of the year, it is,” he said. “I’d expect the spring we’d see the spiders about here, but not in one stall in early autumn.”
“I hate spiders,” Cheyenne repeated. A visible shudder went through her. “They wouldn’t bite the horses, would they?”
Rick rubbed at his face as he straightened up. “I wouldn’t think so, but they could be in the tack room with the saddle blankets.”
“I’ll check the horses for bites,” Cheyenne said. “I don’t want them to suffer through a black widow bite.”
I motioned for Rick to hand over a broom to sweep up the dead spiders. “There isn’t enough venom to kill a horse in a black widow. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“A bite can still be painful though. Rick, would you help me look over the horses?” She shuddered again. “I have boots on, but I can’t smash a spider no matter how afraid I am of them.”
I watched as Rick and Cheyenne walked out the barn door to check on the horses before sweeping up the dead spiders. Too many of them. Black widows were naturally aggressive towards other spiders. To see this many in one spot didn’t feel right.
I checked the tack room for any signs of spiders along with the rest of the barn stalls but found none. The drizzle of rain had turned into a steady rain when I stepped outside to where Rick and Cheyenne were running their hands along a horse’s legs.
“No bites?” I asked, relieved when Cheyenne nodded at me. “I don’t need to call Jacob out here then?”
“No bites from what we’ve found,” Rick said, smoothing a palm along a brown mare’s neck. “Those spiders must’ve had a nest somewhere in the beams. Maybe it was knocked down into the barn stall?”
“Black widows will kill each other,” I pointed out, pinching the bridge of my nose. “If they had a nest in the beams, we would’ve seen the webs. They are aggressive by nature. I’m surprised they didn’t bite the horses.”
Cheyenne let out a relieved sigh. “I’m just thankful they didn’t because those bites are so painful. None in the tack room or other stalls?”
“None. We can bring the horses in before the rain gets too heavy.”
I caught sight of Cheyenne’s nervous look at the barn. Reaching forward, I clasped her smaller hand in mine. Her slender and delicate fingers were soft against my own when she looked up at me with fright in her eyes.
“It’s going to be okay,” I assured her. “I promise, Cheyenne. I double-checked the entire barn while you two were out here.”
“I’ll take your word,” she said over the boom of thunder. “Let’s get them in before this storm starts up.”
It took an hour to get the horses in their stalls. It took even longer for me to convince Cheyenne that they were going to be okay. Huddled against one another when the rain started to pour, we both waved to Rick as he backed up the driveway in his truck. Darkness settled on the ranch as I guided Cheyenne at my side to the mudroom alongside the kitchen.
“What happened?” Tiffany asked the second we were inside. She hobbled over to us on crutches, frowning the entire time. “I heard Cheyenne screaming down in the barn. I saw the horses in the corral too.”
Cheyenne took her hat off to hang it up on a coat peg. She smoothed a few errant pieces of hair back from her forehead while looking up at me.
“We found black widows in one of the barn stalls,” I explained, taking my own hat off as well. “Not sure what happened, but there was about thirty of them in one barn stall. Cheyenne’s lucky that she didn’t get bit.”
Tiffany’s face lost color quickly as I suspected it would. She hated spiders with a passion. I was always the one who killed them when we were kids and even as adults.
“Black widows in the barn?” Tiffany repeated with a shudder. “Gross. Please tell me that you stomped the hell out of them.”
“The ones that I found,” I said.
“I don’t understand what they were doing in one barn stall though,” Tiffany said. “We’ve never had problems like that before. At least, not that many spiders at once.”
Cheyenne slipped off her boots, nudging them to the doormat next to the door. She gave us both a bashful smile.
“I’m sorry to cut this conversation short,” she said, “but, I can’t get the creepy-crawly sensation off my skin. I need to go upstairs and shower.”
Tiffany waited until Cheyenne was well out of ear-shot before she turned to look at me with a frown. “Something is going on, Colt. You see that, right?”
“I see it,” I said, darkly. “I saw it when I counted the spiders. I don’t know how that happened, but I can’t believe it was nature.”
“Who was in the barn with you?”
“Just Rick, Cheyenne, and me. That’s it. No one else came and left today.”
I ran a hand through my sweat-matted hair with a sigh. A long and hot shower did sound good after working out in the rain. The back of my shirt was drenched with sweat too from working around the ranch all day.
“I’m going to take a shower too,” I said and stepped past Tiffany as she hobbled to the landline. “What are you doing?”
“Calling a bug guy,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere near that barn until we have someone spray. I don’t want anyone getting bit.”
I didn’t even bother pointing out that I could buy a bottle of something to spray around the barn while the horses were out in the pastures. Something wasn’t right about the spiders, and I wanted a professional opinion when it came to explaining how that many spiders ended up in the first stall that Cheyenne had gone into.