Ivy Takes Care Read Online Free Page B

into, were threats. Most other critters, like jackrabbits, raccoons, and prairie dogs, were just out there, harmless and making a living like everyone else.
    Quietly, Ivy edged down the sluiceway to the unused stall. She peered over its wall. On a heap of hay in the corner lay a red fox — a vixen — and six kits. A hole in one of the boards at the base of the stall must have been her way in, and there she had had her babies.
    The fox’s coat was the color of fire. She studied Ivy and showed her sharp teeth. Ivy studied her back and sensed the fear in her.
    “What’s wrong with that front foot, Mama Fox?” she asked.
    On the floor, Ivy could see drops of blackened blood. She looked back at the fox’s foot and spotted a blood-caked mass between the swollen pads.
    Ivy looked deep into the fox’s bright brown eyes. She longed to lay a hand, for one second, on the snow-white hair in the creature’s ears. This little red mother was needy, but she was also determined to take care of her kits.
    Caring for wild critters was not something Ivy had been raised to do. Coyotes and foxes preyed on chickens and lambs. There was an Agriculture Department bounty paid to anyone who brought in a pair of ears and a tail. Still, Ivy believed the little fox family had a right to live, too.
    “You beauty!” she whispered to the mother fox. “You beauty with your little kits, you’ll have trouble finding food with that bad leg. I’ll bring you something to eat and drink and get you through this.” Ivy hoped her voice carried the same kind of comfort to the fox that it had for Chestnut. This time, the fox did not bare her teeth.
    Ivy left the stable and went to a pine tree behind the Pratts’ house. Out of a knot in the curled and prickly bark she took the spare house key off a rusty nail, where it was hidden.
    The key worked perfectly in the kitchen door. Ivy found the icebox with no trouble. She held her breath and, joy of joys, there was a box of eggs with half a dozen still left. They’d go bad by the time the Pratts came home. She grabbed the box.
    Ivy locked up and double-checked the door before she headed out to the stable. Without showing her face to the fox or making any noise she could help, she squatted down and rolled each egg into the stall so it ended up near the fox’s tail. She followed this up with a dish of water, then left the stable. As she straddled her bike, Ivy paused to listen. She thought she could hear the crunch of an eggshell. All the while, the loopy, jazzy
Music from the Stars
serenaded both Chestnut and the stranger from the mountains with her tiny, hungry family.
    The Red Star Ranch was not a fancy dude ranch like some of the big spreads in Nevada. It was just a workaday ranch that took on four guests at one time. All of the guests spent exactly six weeks on the ranch in their own little wooden cottage. Each had a bedroom with a single cot, an easy chair, a bathroom with a tin shower stall, and a front porch with a light that collected moths of all varieties. There were screens on the windows, and the towels were changed by Cora Butterworth once a week.
    After six weeks, the guests went home, each of them with a Carson City judge’s signed affidavit saying they had lived in Nevada for the required time. By the time they were home, they were no longer married to the person they’d been married to before they came. In 1949, Nevada, alone in the other forty-seven states, was the Divorce State.
    But Ivy didn’t know any classmates whose parents were divorced or who gambled good money down the drain in the slot machines. She noticed that the divorcing guests all seemed to come from places like New York City or Dallas or Miami. Ivy didn’t think they were bad people. A lot of them were funny and nice. She guessed they had just made mistakes, and so they came to Nevada to unmake them. And while they were at the ranch, there wasn’t a whole lot for them to do except go to the casinos, enjoy the mountain