"Aaron Wolfe - Invasion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Aaron)

Many years ago, if the people down at Blackstone Realty were to be
believed, some wealthy gentleman farmer had bred several race horses
here, mostly for his own amusement; now, however, there were only two
sorry mares named Kate and Betty, both of them fat and accustomed to
luxuries that they had never earnedтАФplus a pony for Toby, name of
Blueberry. All three of the animals were extremely agitated, rolling their
eyes and snorting. They kicked at the back walls of their stalls. They
slammed their shoulders into the wooden partitions that separated them.
They raised their long and elegant necks and cried out, their black nostrils
flaring and their brown eyes wide with terror.

"Whoa now, whoa now," I said gently, quietly, trying my best to
reassure them. "Calm yourselves, ladies. Everything's all right. Whoa down
now. Just you whoa down."
 I couldn't see what had them so disturbed. The heating units were all
functioning properly. The air in the barn was circulating at a pleasant
sixty-nine degrees. I walked the length of the place and looked into the
empty stalls. But no stray dog or fox had gotten in through some
undiscovered chink in the clapboard walls; the horses were alone.

When I tried to calm Blueberry, she snapped at me and just missed
taking a sizeable chunk out of my right hand. I had never seen her behave
like this before. She peeled her black lips back from her teeth as if she
thought she were a guard dog instead of a horse. We had bought her for
Toby because she was so gentle and manageable. What had happened,
what had changed her temperament so radically and so quickly?

"Whoa now. Whoa girl."

But she simply wasn't going to calm down. She snorted and whinnied
and kicked at the back wall of her stall, kicked so hard that a board
splintered with a crisp, dry sound.

Oddly enough Kate and Betty were more amenable than Blueberry, even
though they both had slight mean streaks. They stopped crying out and
ceased kicking their stalls apart as I stroked their faces and rubbed behind
their ears. But even they would not come completely under control. They
whuffled like dogs and rolled their eyes from side to side.

I remembered that horses are especially sensitive to fire: the odor of
sparking wood, the distant crackle of the first flames, the initial traces of
smokeтАж Though I sniffed like a bloodhound, I could not sense anything
but hay, straw, dust, sweat, and the peculiarly mellow odor of well-used
leather saddles and reins. I examined the small oil-fed furnace that
warmed the stable. I felt the wall around the fuel tank. I studied the
heaters a second time. But I could not find any sign of danger or any
malfunction.

Yet Blueberry reared up and whinnied.