Thieves' Dozen

Walking through this first barn, Dortmunder learned several facts about horses: (1) They smell. (2) They breathe, more than anything he'd ever met in his life before. (3) They don't sleep, not even at night. (4) They don't even sit down. (5) They are very curious about people who happen to go by. And (6) they have extremely long necks. When horses in stalls on both sides of Dortmunder stretched out their heads toward him at the same time, wrinkling their black lips to show their big, square tombstone teeth, snuffling and whuffling with those shotgun-barrel noses, sighting at him down those long faces, he realized that the aisle wasn't that wide after all.

"Jeepers," Kelp said, a thing he didn't say often.

And Dire Straits wasn't even in there. They emerged on the other side, warm, curious horse breath still moist on Dortmunder's cheek, and looked around, accustoming themselves to the darkness again. Behind them, the horses whickered and bumped around, still disturbed by this late-night visit. Far away, the main farmhouse showed just a couple of lights. Faint illumination came from window openings of nearer structures. "He has to be in that one or that one," the old coot said, pointing.

"Which one you want to try first?" Dortmunder asked.

The old coot considered and pointed. "That one."

"Then it's in the other one," Dortmunder said. "So that's where we'll try."

The old coot gave him a look. "Are you trying to be fu

"Or what," Dortmunder said.

And, as it turned out, he was right. Third stall in on the left, there was Dire Straits himself, a big, kind of arrogant-looking thing, with a narrower-than-usual face and a very sleek black coat. He reared back and stared at these human beings with distaste, like John Barrymore being awakened the morning after. "That's him," the old coot said. More important, a small sign on the stall door said the same thing: DIRE STRAITS.

"At last," Kelp said.

"Hasn't been that long," the old coot said. "Let me get a bridle for him." He turned away, then suddenly tensed, looking back toward the door. In a quick, harsh whisper, he said, "Somebody coming!"

"Uh-oh," Dortmunder said.

Turning fast, the old coot yanked open a stall door-not the one to Dire Straits-grabbed Dortmunder's elbow in his strong, bony hand and shoved him inside, at the same time hissing at Kelp, "Slip in here! Slip in!"

"There's somebody in here," Dortmunder objected, meaning a horse, a brown one, who stared at this unexpected guest in absolute astonishment.

"No time!" The old coot was pushing Kelp in, crowding in himself, pulling the stall door shut just as the light in the barn got much brighter. Must be on a dimmer switch.

"Hey, fellas," a male voice said conversationally, "what's going on?"

Caught us, Dortmunder thought, and cast about in his mind for some even faintly sensible reason for being in this brown horse's stall in the middle of the night. Then he heard what else the voice was saying:

"Thought you were all settled down for the night."

He's talking to the horses, Dortmunder thought.

"Something get to you guys? Bird fly in?"

In a way, Dortmunder thought.

"Did a rat get in here?"

The voice was closer, calm and reassuring, its owner moving slowly along the aisle, his familiar sound and sight leaving a lot of soothed horses in his wake.

All except for the brown horse in here with Dortmunder and Kelp and the old coot. He wasn't exactly crying out, "Here, boss, here they are, they're right here!" but it was close. Snort, whuffle, paw, headshake, prance; the damn beast acted like he was auditioning for A Chorus Line. While Dortmunder and company crouched down low on the far side of this huge, hairy show-off, doing their best not to get crushed between the immovable object of the stall wall and the irrepressible force of the horse's haunch, the owner of the voice came over to see what was up, saying, "Hey, there, Daffy, what's the problem?"

Daffy, thought Dortmunder. I might have known.

The person was right there, leaning his forearms on the stall door, permitting Daffy to slobber and blubber all over his face. "It's OK now, Daffy," the person said. "Everything's fine."

I've been invaded! Daffy whuffled while his tail dry-mopped Dortmunder's face.

"Just settle down, big fella."

Just look me over! Have I ever had ten legs before?

"Take it easy, boy. Everybody else is calm now."

That's because they don't have these, these, these. . . .

"Good Daffy. See you in the morning."

Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, Daffy mumbled, while trying to step on everybody's toes at once.

The owner of the voice receded at last, and the old coot did something up around Daffy's head that all at once made the horse calm right down. As the lights lowered to their former dimness and the sound of thumping boots faded, Daffy gri

Kelp said, "What did you do?"

"Sugar cubes," the old coot said. "I brought some for Dire Straits, didn't have time to give one to this critter before that hand got here."

Sugar cubes. Dortmunder looked at the old coot with new respect. Here was a man who traveled with an emergency supply of sugar cubes.

"OK," the old coot said, shoving Daffy out of his way as though the animal were a big sofa on casters, "Let's get Dire Straits and get out of here."

"Exactly," Dortmunder said, but then found himself kind of pi

"Oh, sure."

Hiram did, and Dortmunder gratefully left that stall, hurried along by Daffy's nose in the small of his back. Kelp shut the stall door and Hiram went over to select a bridle from among those hanging on pegs. Coming back to Dire Straits' stall, he said softly, "Come here, guy, I got something nice for you."

Dire Straits wasn't so sure about that. Being a star, he was harder to get than Daffy. From well back in the stall, he gave Hiram down his long nose a do-I-know-you? look.

"Come here, honey," Hiram urged, soft and confidential, displaying not one but two sugar cubes on his outstretched palm. "Got something for you."

Next door, Daffy stuck his head out to watch all this with some concern, having thought he had an exclusive on sugar-cube distribution. Whicker? he asked.

That did it. Hearing his neighbor, Dire Straits finally realized there was such a thing as playing too hard to get. With a toss of the head, moving with a picky-toed dignity that Dortmunder might have thought sexually suspicious if he hadn't known Dire Straits' rep, the big black beast came forward, lowered his head, wuggled and muggled over Hiram's palm and the cubes were gone. Meanwhile, with his other hand, Hiram was patting the horse's nose, murmuring, rubbing behind his ear and gradually getting into just the right position.

It was slickly done, Dortmunder had to admit that. The first thing Dire Straits knew, the bit was in his mouth, the bridle straps were around his head and Hiram was wrapping a length of rein around his own hand. "Good boy," Hiram said, gave the animal one more pat and backed away, opening the stall.

After all that prima-do

The fences along the way were composed of two rails, one at waist height and the other down by your knee, with their ends stuck into holes in vertical posts and nailed. On the way in, Dortmunder and Kelp had removed rails from three fences, because Hiram had assured them that Dire Straits would neither climb them nor leap over. "I thought horses jumped," Dortmunder said.