Part 2
“Before I pulled the girth up.” Caleb kept looking at the place where the saddle had struck. “I thought she’d quit once it was fastened.”
Ruth went to call Mara. Caleb opened the gate and moved well aside. Tess stayed against the rail, her ears turning between him and the opening.
Mara found no obvious fresh injury from the fall. That didn’t tell her why it had happened, or rule out pain. The saddle was to stay off while they investigated.
Caleb put it away. When he brought Tess hay later, he set it down and walked back far enough that she could reach it without passing him.
At supper Ruth laid the teacher’s note beside the account book. Caleb had eaten very little before she pushed her plate away.
“You asked me to trust your care.”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt her.”
“I know what you meant to do. You kept going after you saw her shake.”
He pressed his fork into a potato and left it there. For a moment he wanted to say that Arthur had made mistakes. Ruth’s thumb was rubbing a frayed patch on the book’s cover. She had held horses for Arthur after mistakes, paid the veterinarian, and gone to work the next morning.
Caleb set the fork down.
For eight days, Tess received nothing from him but feed, water, and room. He watched from outside her paddock. His schoolwork didn’t recover as quickly. He dozed through part of history and missed another algebra assignment.
Ruth cleared the kitchen table again. She was on the last water round when he finally put his pencil down, pulled on his coat, and went out to take a bucket from her.
Warren brought hay in November. Before unloading, he drove Caleb along the fence that would pay for part of it. Several posts were loose enough to rock by hand. They needed replacing before frozen ground made the job harder.
Back in the yard, Jasper stopped short of the barn and retreated. Warren watched Caleb coil the lead.
“Your granddad could quit asking,” he said.
“I’m not making him do anything now.”
Warren slid a bale toward the tailgate. “And after now?”
Caleb took the bale without answering.
A few days before Thanksgiving, Victor arrived carrying a map and a written offer. His stable needed a second entrance. The frontage along Tarlowe Road would give him one, and he was willing to buy the farm to get it.
Ruth studied the proposed drive. Victor explained the figures without pretending the horses would soon solve her accounts. His price would discharge the debts and leave money for a modest house in town. Caleb, he added, could work alongside his trainers after finishing school.
Ruth asked about the boundaries, the closing costs, and how long she had to decide. The offer would stand through the last day of February.
She thanked him. Afterward she tucked the papers beneath the flour canister. Every morning she had to lift that canister to reach her account book.
Caleb began going to Jasper’s paddock with nothing in his hands.
Out in the open, the gelding came for scratching. Near a stall, he wouldn’t. Caleb changed his own position, shifted feed tubs, and left gates at different angles. He wrote down the results instead of calling one attempt good and another bad.
One morning Ruth was carrying hay through the barn with the doors open at both ends. Jasper wandered partway down the aisle for a bucket near the far opening. There was enough space behind him to turn around.
The next morning the far door was closed. He wouldn’t put a foot inside.
Caleb couldn’t recover whatever had happened to Jasper before the sale. He could account for the things he’d done himself. Whenever the horse had tried to retreat at a doorway, Caleb had taken up more rope.
In his notebook, he started each entry earlier: where the horse had been looking, what the person had changed, what had happened before the feet moved.
Mara read several pages on her next visit. With the sorrel, she could now distinguish two sources of discomfort. The front foot hurt, but lifting it also shifted weight onto a tender shoulder. She showed Caleb a way to support and handle him that didn’t demand the same balance.
Tess offered no comparable answer. Mara examined her again and kept the restrictions in place.
“A frightened horse can hurt, too,” she told him. “Don’t use one to rule out the other.”
Weeks passed without what Caleb would once have called a training session. He watched horses choose a turn, cross a soft patch of ground, or move away from a person at the fence. He filled a page describing one mare’s uneven steps. Another day he wrote only that he’d thought a horse was relaxed because it hadn’t moved.
Ruth started taking a folding chair out after her shifts. She’d sit with her coat still buttoned, watching while Caleb made his notes.
Once he lifted Jasper’s lead from its hook. Ruth touched his sleeve and pointed toward the hay. The gelding’s muzzle was still buried in it, but his jaw had stopped.
Caleb put the lead away.
By Christmas, the two thin horses had enough condition for Mara to discuss homes where they would receive ordinary care rather than rehabilitation. Riding wasn’t in the plan for either of them. Ruth and Warren each knew somebody who might be content with that.
Meanwhile, Warren could accommodate two others in a separate paddock on his larger property. He offered a modest boarding rate, not free pasture. Ruth added the charge to the book, and Caleb arranged his week so he could visit them.
Nine of the original eleven remained on Tarlowe Road.
Caleb came into the kitchen one evening and found Victor’s offer spread across the account book. Ruth had placed a pencil beside it.
“You were going to talk to me about that, weren’t you?” he asked.
“I’m doing that now.”
“We said January for deciding.”
“For reviewing the horses. The land belongs to me, Caleb. Victor’s waiting until February.”
He pulled out a chair. Beyond the glass, one of the horses was working hay from the feeder Ruth had helped him mend. On the page under her hand were the hauling, the visits, the feed, and the debts that had been there before he went to the auction.
“I gave you a date I couldn’t back up,” he said.
“Yes.” She moved the offer aside and opened a fresh page. “Let’s use what we actually know.”
In January he opened both barn doors and left Jasper loose in the enclosed yard. A little hay waited beyond the aisle. Caleb stood flat against the inside wall, clear of either route out.
Jasper stopped with one forefoot just over the threshold. His ears worked forward, then back. Caleb’s fingers stayed tucked inside his coat pockets.
After several minutes, the gelding crossed.
He hesitated again the following day, though not as long. On the third afternoon he entered, turned halfway down the aisle, and went back outside. Caleb hadn’t moved when Jasper came in a second time.
Ruth watched from the yard. The unused rope hung beside the door.
Victor’s truck slowed at the road that afternoon and stopped on the shoulder. He watched Jasper pass through the barn and circle back. Caleb went to the fence.
Victor rested an arm on the open window. “Promising. But the count’s still eleven. Nine here, two at Warren’s. And February’s coming.”
“The date is hers,” Caleb said. “I haven’t forgotten.”
“Make sure she isn’t carrying it alone.” Victor put the truck in gear.
Inside that evening, Ruth smoothed a new tax notice with the edge of her hand. The county had agreed to installments. The first one was nearly due.
“Jasper crossed three times today,” Caleb said.
“I watched him.” She pushed the notice into the light between them. “Which horses can leave by February? No guesses…”
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