Love Letters From Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [45]
Those were the kind of fuming thoughts that were occupying Bridget’s mind as she came down the back steps with a laundry basket filled with damp sheets and tablecloths to be hung on the line. One of the few points on which she had finally come to agree with Ida Mae was that the sun was far superior to electricity when it came to drying and freshening whites, and laundry was only one of those hundreds of things that, right now, were more important to Bridget than the menu crisis at someone else’s wedding.
She eased the screen door closed with her hip, came down the brick steps with the plastic basket of laundry balanced before her, and noticed in dismay that something had made a shambles of the pretty little pansy bed at the bottom of the steps. Then she noticed the rest.
The white sheets and lace tablecloths that she had hung earlier were strewn on the ground or hanging by one pin on the line. Dirty paw prints and grass stains smeared the fabric, and one of the tablecloths was torn right down the middle. For a moment she was too shocked to do anything but stare, but her breath came back to her in a rush and she exclaimed furiously, “Rebel! You bad dog! You bad, bad dog!”
Rebel was, of course, nowhere to be seen.
She marched over to the scene of the disaster, plopped the basket of clean laundry onto the ground, and started snatching up the ruined linens.
It was then that she noticed that the dirty smears on the fabric weren’t exactly paw prints. They were more like ... hoofprints. Bambi? She started to straighten up, squinting in the sun, looking around for the deer, and then she felt something brush the back of her knees. She whirled around, full of invectives for the deer, and found herself staring, not into a pair of big brown eyes as she had expected, but into a pair of narrow yellow ones. She gasped and stumbled backward. The creature lunged at her. That was when she screamed.
Lindsay and Cici arrived just as Bridget, who had tripped over the laundry basket, was scrambling to her feet. Ida Mae came stiffly down the steps, flapping a towel and shouting. A brown and white goat stood a few feet away, bleating in confusion.
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Lindsay, staring. “Where did that come from?”
Cici helped Bridget to her feet. “Are you okay?”
“Nasty damn thing,” Ida Mae swore, snapping the towel in the direction of the goat. “Look what it did to my laundry! Get on out of here! Shoo! Shoo!”
“Wait!” Bridget cried as the goat bounded a few feet away. “You’re scaring him!”
“That’s what I mean to do,” returned Ida Mae, advancing menacingly on the goat. “Shoo! Get!”
“How did a goat get all the way out here?” Lindsay said. “I mean, they don’t just wander around in the wild, do they?”
Cici said, “Look, it’s got a rope around its neck.”
Bridget held out a staying arm to Ida Mae. “Ida Mae, stop it. Just hold on for a minute.” She took a couple of cautious steps toward the goat, who eyed her warily but didn’t move. “Maybe he’s got some kind of identification.”
Ida Mae gave a snort of disdain, but she stopped waving the towel. “Goats don’t wear collars.”
Lindsay insisted, “He’s got to belong to somebody.”
“She,” Ida Mae said shortly. “Ain’t you got eyes? That’s a milking goat.”
Bridget, holding out her hand invitingly, murmured, “Nice goat. Good goat, don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you. Good fellow, I mean girl ...”
The goat stayed its ground uneasily, watching her with wary yellow eyes. Bridget got within a hand’s reach of the animal, and from out of nowhere Rebel lunged from his border collie crouch, lightning fast and without a sound. He charged the goat, which leapt into the air as though on springs, landed in a panicked run, and charged toward the house. Bridget screamed, “Rebel, no!” Ida Mae threw the towel at the goat, Cici ran to put herself between the older woman and the terrified goat, and Lindsay lunged to catch the rope that dangled from the animal’s neck. But it was Rebel who, with a well-placed