SLICKROCK

When you want to get away from the rigors of a Santa Cruz veterinary practice, there’s no place like the Sierra Nevadas, where you can relax and unwind, free from the distractions of the latest colicky horse and your suddenly inattentive boyfriend Lonny Peterson. But the scenery is a little too aptly named for Gail McCarthy, whose trip to Deadman Meadow discloses a man who, if not quite dead, is just far enough along to let Gail in on his dying words. Why was fellow vet Bill Evans determined to die despite Gail’s efforts to get him medical help? And what did he mean when he said those horses’ deaths were all his fault? Before Gail can puzzle out his meaning (though many readers will have ample time to do so), she’s off on the pack trail, exulting in the challenges of the wilderness and wishing her trip weren’t so beset by accidents. There are the unwelcome encounters with ranchers and trail hands who knew Bill, the rockslide, her packhorse’s thrown shoe, booby-traps, and finally the crack of gunfire. Most troubling of all, Gail can’t tell whether Blue Winter, the cowboy who keeps turning up to rescue her, is really the miscreant who’s behind all her troubles. The biggest mystery is whether Blue will take Lonny’s place in Gail’s affections. But the gently mounting tension in Crum’s fifth (Cutter, 1998, etc.) is just the thing for readers who like their animals more personable than their people.