Cowboy Take Me Away Read Online Free PDF Page B

of her desk, which was Freddie Jo’s weekly report that listed information about every animal on the premises. She flipped through it and shook her head. It was always more painful to see it in black and white.
    “Don’t worry,” Freddie Jo said. “We’ll just do what we always do. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”
    Shannon nodded glumly.
    “You need the Wall,” Freddie Jo said. “Go look at the Wall.”
    “I don’t need the Wall.”
    “The Wall. Now .”
    With a heavy sigh, Shannon rose from her chair and went to the wall beside the front door, which was covered with photos of animals that had passed through there and the people who’d adopted them. Sometimes on the hardest days, she’d stand there in front of it, her gaze going from one photo to the next, just to remind herself for the umpteenth time that nothing was impossible. And now, as she looked once again at the down-and-out animals that had gotten their second chances, she felt her conviction coming back.
    Failure was not an option.
    Shannon heard the back door open, and a few seconds later, Angela Cordero came into the office. She was a seventeen-year-old girl with an unprecedented love of animals and an uncanny ability to identify a problem and solve it, sometimes before Shannon even knew there was one. Angela wore a T-shirt with the shelter’s logo on it and a pair of khaki shorts, which was normal for her. What wasn’t normal was the lead rope and muzzle she held in one hand and the bucket of oats she held in the other.
    “Oh, no,” Shannon said. “Don’t tell me—”
    “Manny got out again.”
    “That’s impossible! I tied a rope around that gate to keep him from flicking the latch with his nose!”
    “He chewed through it.”
    Shannon couldn’t believe it. Another jailbreak? She didn’t need this today. She just didn’t.
    “Did he take anybody with him this time?”
    “Nope. Everybody but Manny thinks they have it pretty good around here. You want me to go after him?”
    “No,” Shannon said, taking the rope, muzzle, and bucket of oats from Angela. “If somebody’s going to get bitten, I want it to be me.”
    Manny was part miniature horse and part escape artist, and hardly a day went by that he didn’t pose some kind of challenge. Fortunately, he was also part pig, so sooner or later she’d be able to lure him with the bucket of oats as long as she didn’t make any sudden moves. Once he had his head stuck in there, she could grab his halter and slip on the muzzle so she could walk him back home without losing a few fingers.
    “You guys hold down the fort,” Shannon said. “I’ll be back soon.”
    On her way out the door, she glanced at the Wall one last time for a little moral support. How many more tightwad millionaires and tiny runaway horses would she have to deal with before things got easier around there?
    She hurried up the drive, knowing if Manny had gotten out of the paddock, he was free to walk right out the open front gate. Last time he’d merely strolled along the highway, stopping now and then to graze. She’d had to follow him for a good quarter mile before he realized she was holding a bucket of oats and turned back. And the entire time she’d held her breath that he wouldn’t suddenly decide to cross the highway and get hit by a car.
    She reached the road. Looked left and right. No little horse. He’d been out such a short time that if he was walking the shoulder of the road, she’d see him. So where—
    There.
    He’d crossed the highway—safely, thank God—and wandered down to Glenn Dawson’s property. Now he was making his way down the gravel road toward the house. Clumps of grass grew up through the gravel, and he stopped now and then to chomp on a few.
    Shannon waited for an aging Toyota to speed by, then dashed across the highway and down the shoulder of the road until she reached the rickety gate. Manny saw her coming and went from a walk to a trot, rounding a large stand of