A Cold Creek Noel

He trusted her to take care of him and she refused to let him die.

She hurried to the front door, barely noticing the wind-driven sleet that gouged at her even under her Stetson.

Warm air washed over her when she opened the door, familiar with the scent of animals and antiseptic mixed in a stomach-churning sort of way with new paint.

“Hey, Caidy.” A woman in green scrubs rushed to the door. “You made good time from the River Bow.”

“Hi, Joni. I may have broken a few traffic laws, but this is an emergency.”

“After you called, I warned Ben you were on your way and what the situation was. He’s been getting ready for you. I’ll let him know you’ve arrived.”

Caidy waited, feeling the weight of each second ticking away. The new vet had only been in town a few weeks and already he had made changes to the clinic. Maybe she was just being contrary, but she had liked things better when Doc Harris ran the place. The whole reception area looked different. The cheerful yellow walls had been painted over with a boring white and the weathered, comfortable, old eighties-era couch and chairs were gone, replaced by modern benches covered in a slate vinyl that probably deflected anything a veterinarian’s patients could leak on it. A display of Christmas gifts appropriate for pets, including a massive stocking filled to the top with toys and a giant rawhide bone that looked as if it came from a dinosaur, hung in one corner.

Most significant, the reception area used to sit out in the open but it was now stuck behind a solid half wall topped with a glass partition.

It made sense to modernize from an efficiency point of view, but she had found the comfortably worn look of the office before more appealing.

Not that she cared about any of that right now, with Luke lying out in her truck, cold and hurt and probably afraid.

She shifted impatiently. Where was the man? Trimming his blasted nails? Only a few moments had passed but every second delay was too much. Just when she was about call out to Joni to see what was taking so long, the door into the treatment area opened and the new vet appeared.

“Where’s the dog?” he asked abruptly, and she had only a vague impression of a frowning dark-haired man in blue scrubs.

“Still out in my truck.”

He narrowed his gaze. “Why? I can’t treat him out there.”

She wanted to take that giant rawhide bone out of that stocking and bean him with it. “Yes, I’m aware of that,” she said, fighting down her frustration. “I didn’t want to move him. I’m afraid something might be broken.”

“I thought he was gored.”

She wasn’t sure what, exactly, she had said in that frantic call to let Joni know she was on her way.

“He did end up on the business end of a bull at some point. I’m not sure if that was before or after that bull stepped on him.”

His mouth tightened. “A young dog has no business running wild in the same vicinity as a dangerous bull.”

His criticism stung far too close to her own guilt for comfort. “We’re a working ranch at the River Bow, Dr. Caldwell. Accidents like this can happen.”

“They shouldn’t,” he snapped before turning around and heading back through the treatment area. She followed him, heartily wishing for Doc Harris right now. The grizzled old vet had taken care of every dog she had ever owned, from her very first border collie and best friend, Sadie, whom she still had.

Doc Harris was her friend and mentor. If he had been here, he would have wrapped her in a warm hug that smelled of liniment and cherry Life Savers and promised her everything would be all right.

Dr. Ben Caldwell was nothing like Dr. Harris. He was abrasive and arrogant and she already heartily disliked him.

His eyes narrowed with surprise and displeasure when he saw she had followed him from the waiting room to the clinic area.

“This way is quicker,” she explained. “I’m parked by the side door. I thought it would be easier to transport him on the stretcher from there.”

He didn’t say anything, only charged through the side door she indicated. She trotted after him, wondering how the Pine Gulch animal kingdom would get along without the kindness and compassion Dr. Harris had been renowned for.

Without waiting for her, he opened the door of the truck. As she watched, it was as if a different man had suddenly taken over. His harsh, set features seemed to ease and even the stiff set of his shoulders relaxed.

“Hello there,” he crooned from the open vehicle door to the dog. “You’ve got yourself into a mess, haven’t you?”

Even through his pain, Luke responded to the gentle-sounding stranger by trying hard to wag his tail. There was no room for both of them on the passenger side, so she went around to the driver’s side and opened that door, intent on helping to lift the dog from there. By the time she made it that short distance, Dr. Caldwell had already slipped a transfer sheet under the dog and was gripping the edges.

His hands were big, she noticed, with a little light area of skin where a wedding ring once had been.

She knew a little about him from the gossip around town. It was hard to miss it when he was currently staying at the Cold Creek Inn—owned and operated by her sister-in-law Laura, married to Caidy’s brother Taft.

Though Laura usually didn’t gossip about her guests, over dinner last week her other brother, Trace—who made it his business as police chief to find out about everyone moving into Pine Gulch—had interrogated her so skillfully, Laura probably didn’t realize what she had revealed.

From that conversation, Caidy had learned Ben Caldwell had two children, a girl and a boy, ages nine and five, respectively, and he had been a widower for two years.

Why on earth he had suddenly pulled up stakes to settle in a quiet town like Pine Gulch was a mystery to everyone. In her experience, people who came to this little corner of Idaho in the shadow of the Tetons were either looking for something or running away.

None of that was her business, she reminded herself. The only thing she cared about was the way he treated her dogs. Judging by how carefully he moved his hands over Luke’s injuries, he appeared competent and even kind, at least to animals—something she generally considered a far more important character indicator than how a man treated other people.

“Okay, Luke. Just lie still, there’s a good boy.” He spoke in a low, calm voice. “We’re going to move you now. Easy. Easy.”

He handed the stretcher across the cab to her and then reached for the transfer sheet. “I’m going to lift him slightly and then you can slide the board under him. Slowly. Yes. That’s it.”

She had plenty of experience transferring injured animals. Years of experience. It bothered her to be treated as if she didn’t know the first thing about this kind of emergency care, but now didn’t seem the time to correct him.

Together they carried the stretcher into the emergency treatment room and set the dog gingerly down on the exam table.

She didn’t like the pain in Luke’s eyes. It reminded her a lot of how Lucky, her brother Taft’s little beagle cross, had looked right after the car accident that had nearly killed him.

Now Lucky was happy as a pig in clover, she reminded herself. He lived with Taft and Laura and their two children at Taft’s house near the mouth of Cold Creek Canyon and thought he ruled the universe. If Lucky could survive his brush with death, she couldn’t see any reason for Luke to do otherwise.

“That’s a nasty puncture wound. At least an inch or two deep. I’m surprised it’s not deeper.”

That could be because she had managed to pull Luke to safety before Festus could finish taking his bad mood out on a helpless dog.

“What about the leg? Can you save it?”

“I’m going to have to x-ray before I can answer that. How far are you prepared to go for his care?”

It took her a moment to realize what he was asking in his blunt way. A difficult part of life as a vet was the knowledge that, although a vet might have the power to treat an animal successfully, sometimes the owner’s ability—or willingness, for that matter—to pay was the ultimate decision maker.

“Whatever is necessary,” she answered stiffly. “I don’t care about the cost. Just do what you have to do.”

He nodded, his attention still on her dog, and she wanted to think his hard expression thawed slightly, like a tiny crackle of ice on the edge of a much deeper lake.

“Regardless of what the X-ray shows, his treatment is going to take a few hours. You can go. Leave your number with Joni and I’ll have her call you when I know more.”

“No. I’ll wait.”