The chance came unexpectedly that very afternoon. He had avoided the aisle in front of stall 17 as much as possible, not wishing another confrontation with that bitch, but some horse had dropped a pile of road apples halfway down and he'd be in trouble if he didn't clean it up. When he parked his wheelbarrow and started to shovel the droppings into it, he glanced into the open tack room of Windmere Farms and saw that no one was there. There was a popular jumping class being shown in the arena, and most people had gone into the stands to watch. Cynthia had apparently gone too, and must be wearing something other than her show riding boots, because they stood beside the tack chest in their gleaming, burnished perfection. Had Ranny known that Cynthia flew to England to have her boots custom-made, he would have hated them even more than he did, considering them a symbol of the effete leisure class, unlike the boots worn by the working cowboys.
Something clicked in Ranny's mind, and he suddenly had an inspiration for his revenge. It wasn't as harsh as he'd like it to be, but it would affect her directly and maybe give her a taste of humiliation.
A couple of empty Vernor's Ginger Ale cans sat under the table, and Ranny could legitimately consider it part of his job to remove them. He looked around quickly to see if anyone was watching, then put his shovel in the wheelbarrow, retrieving a large horse turd as he did so. It was still warm from the horse, and though moist, was compacted enough to hold its shape as he held it lightly palm-down in his fist, fingers curled to conceal it. It might have been unpleasant to hold in his bare hand, but Ranny was so excited by the knowledge of how successful his revenge would be that he didn't care. The anticipation was tempered with the knowledge that he could get caught, but no one was watching as he nonchalantly entered the enclosure. In one fluid motion, made with unaccustomed smoothness due to his heightened awareness of the need for speed and stealth, he bent down to retrieve the cans with one hand while the other brushed over the top of the boots, dropping the horse turd into one of them.
His mission accomplished, Ranny stuffed the cans in a trash bag suspended from the handles of the wheelbarrow and headed out of the barn. He would have loved to have stayed around that area all afternoon to savor the results of his trick, but he knew that he had to find things to do instead which would keep him well away all day. A shame, really, because he could imagine nothing more enjoyable than to stand and watch as that haughty blond bitch slid her expensively-clad little foot down into the long shaft of that polished boot. He hoped that she was one of the people who put on their boots standing up, and that she'd really cram her foot down in. He wondered if she'd be able to keep her voice to the level of quietly controlled fury that she'd exercised with him, or if she'd forget herself and scream out obscenities when she pulled her boot off and found her foot smeared with pungent horseshit. It would have been worth it to have been in a neighboring aisle just to hear her, but Ranny knew that he'd be a suspect and had to stay well away, around other workers who could provide an alibi. But he could imagine her reaction, and that thought gave him great pleasure.