The Secret

Ch1

Frank pov

This morning as the alarm goes off I quickly hit the snooze button and just lie here. I look up at the ceiling knowing that in a couple days I will be driving up to Denver for a business meeting. I have some people flying in that are interested in possibly working out a deal in breeding some of their horses. I absolutely love what I do and love my life. I have my ranch and my horses. I get to train horses for a living while doing rodeo. I do calf roping and have made a name for myself with my horses. There’s just that one thing I’m missing. That girl that I need to make it complete.

I’ve been on dates plenty of times going to different rodeos but nothing knocked me off of my feet. They are either high maintenance to begin with or just not my type, or those rodeo girls that just want to brag that they slept with a rodeo guy. I started with nothing and have built my business to what it is now. I want a simple girl that is easy to please, and doesn’t mind getting dirty. I mean after all I do live on a ranch.

I swing my legs over and rub the back of my neck when I hear a knock on the door.

“Yeah, yeah I”m up.”

“Boss man! Bailey started labor and we think there might be something wrong.”

“Quick get the vet called! I’ll be right out!”

I jump off the bed and run to the closet throwing on some jeans and a shirt. I rush out to the door where my boots are and throw them on while running out to the stables. I can see Ryan running in front of me full speed as I’m slowly gaining. When I enter the stables I see other workers standing around with concern all over their faces. Bailey is a young thoroughbred that we picked up earlier this year from the auction. We had her screened for any issues before we even bred her.

I’m extremely thorough with my vet on what horses I breed and which ones I don’t. I don’t want to put any of their lives at risk since they are going to be trained later on for roping and ranch life. The females get to live an easy life. For the males I only have the best of the best. I look for qualities that I want in the next generation of horses.

When I make it to the stall and enter I see Bailey struggling to have the baby. I can only see one hoof presenting so I quickly reach in to find the other hoof. Once I get it in position I quickly look at Bailey who’s now barely breathing. It’s like everything is going in slow motion. I see out of the corner of my eye the vet come running in to assess Bailey. I can see that her body is not responding anymore and the vet looks at me shaking his head.

I reach down quickly because I can at least try to save the foal. Dr Gander comes and helps me pull out the baby and we work quickly to get to breathe. It takes a few tries but it takes a deep breath and starts breathing. I just sit back not understanding what went wrong. This little one is a gorgeous paint color, and when I look between the legs I see that it’s a boy. Once the baby is out we see some blood come out after and wonder what could have happened.

I stand up when the doc says he wants to take Bailey to do an autopsy. I nod my head because I need to know for sure what happened. I walk out to the hallway and look down the row of doors and see Beauty hanging her head over looking at me. She was the first mare I had ever gotten and has always been the step mom. She has fostered plenty of orphans from neighboring farms over the years. It’s almost like she knows when she is needed. Just smelling a newborn foal has her producing milk pretty quickly and with it being the foal season she seems to be ready to go just in case she’s needed. We even had the vet check her to make sure there wasn’t anything else going on with her hormones but nothing was found.

“Aaron, can you go down and let Belle out please.”

He nods and goes running down to her stall door. She starts getting restless wanting out and when the door gets thrown open she bolts towards me. I watch her slowly walk up, placing her head against my chest and she knows I’m hurting. I invest so much into these horses that each one is like a child. So when I lose one it hits hard.

“Beauty, that little one in there needs you right now.”

She blinks at me and turns towards the stall walking up. As she walks by I can see sure enough she is leaking milk. She peeks in to observe the situation and lets out a whinny and a huff. We scoop up the baby and slowly help it to stand up moving it to the hallway so it can nurse. It took a while but as he latched on Belle started cleaning him and we knew that was it. Beauty had her own babies but as she is getting up there in age I wanted to retire her from breeding anymore. So now she just fosters orphans.

“Frank, I will get Bailey up to the University to have an autopsy done. I’m just waiting for a trailer to arrive.”

“Dr Gander, just use one of ours.”

I see him nod and just stare into the stall at Bailey. When everyone clears out I see Beauty stand there just staring while the baby continues to nurse. I stand there for what seems like forever when I feel a nudge on my arm. I turn and see Beauty staring at me. I pet her head and reassure her I will be ok. We will figure out what happened. She drops her head and turns to walk back to her stall as the ranch hands help the little guy follow his new mom over to her stall. When they came back over they were laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

“As soon as we got the little guy in there he laid down and fell asleep. Beauty just stared at him and continued to lick him to clean him off. You lucked out with that one. She is one of a kind.”

“She is definitely something else. I’ll never find another one of her, that’s for sure. She is the only one I know that I can trust to just accept the babies.”

The ranch hands walk away and I know I need to get my bags packed for Denver and this meeting. They are wanting to bring their mares here to possibly be studded by my boys but I want to see the vet reports and to have my vets go over them first. I am very strict about horses. I don’t just breed them to anyone who comes along and throws money at me.

While I head back out to the house I see the doctor backing up one of our trailers hooked to his truck. I have to know what happened. Is it just some fluke thing or did she have something wrong that we didn’t know about. She wasn’t in labor that long so could it be it was just too much for her. The questions that keep running through my head are making me second guess everything. I currently have four more mares pregnant about to foal in the next few weeks from the same stud so I have to know for certain. I have a rodeo in a couple weeks and want to know they will be fine.

When I enter the house I just sit on the couch with my head in my hands and let everything out. Sometimes no matter how careful we are, things can always go wrong. This is one of those times. As hard as it is to think what I have just lost, at least we were able to save the foal. That foal will never leave the ranch. He will have a permanent place here and will become my personal horse. My current horse Rango is amazing, but he is getting up there in age. I want to retire him within the next couple years and have just found his replacement.