Part 3
Before Lester could move forward, Havoc stepped out of range.
He didn’t strike back. He backed a little farther, turned his head aside, and began pulling grass several yards from the mares.
Elaine felt the cold gate bar beneath her palms. She loosened one hand, then the other.
Lester lowered the whip.
“Well,” he said.
They stayed there through the rest of the ten minutes. Dottie grazed. Havoc grazed. One of the younger mares drifted toward him, and he lifted his nose to meet hers without moving his feet.
At last Lester tucked the whip under his arm and headed for his truck.
“Call if you need me,” he said over his shoulder.
Elaine watched the herd until the light began to leave the pasture. Then she went to finish the evening feeding.
During the next three weeks, she carried her morning coffee onto the porch and let it cool while she watched them.
Havoc learned where each mare wanted him. Dottie could still send him away with a warning, and he went. He approached the others without rushing them and waited when they weren’t receptive. When breeding took place, Elaine saw none of the fighting she had feared.
In the afternoon, when the mares lay down, he often remained standing near them, resting one hind leg but keeping his head up.
One morning Lester’s cattle dogs came along the far fence. Havoc left his grazing and moved between them and the mares. He didn’t charge the wire. He stood broadside until the dogs lost interest, then nudged the herd back toward the middle of the field.
Elaine finished the last swallow of cold coffee and went to rinse the cup.
By late May, Keene’s truck was back beside the barn.
She had the mares ready for examination and Havoc in the neighboring enclosure. He followed the veterinarian’s progress along the fence, watching most closely whenever Keene came near Dottie.
Elaine held each mare in turn while the vet worked with his portable ultrasound. She tried not to read his expression. The little gray screen showed her shapes she couldn’t reliably name.
When he finished with the last mare, he stripped off his examination glove and looked toward Havoc.
“Five,” he said.
Elaine waited.
“Five pregnancies. Every one of them.”
She put her free hand against the rail. Dottie leaned into the halter, asking to be released, and Elaine fumbled the buckle before getting it loose.
Keene packed the machine into its case.
“You got your chance,” he said. “Don’t spend the foal money yet. There’s eleven months between breeding and a live baby, and plenty can happen.”
“I know.”
The vet lifted his case. Havoc moved along the fence with him, keeping himself on Dottie’s side of the enclosure.
Keene glanced back once before carrying the machine to his truck.
Elaine took the pregnancy records and her revised figures to the lender. The projection bought her time through the following autumn, when the foals would be old enough to sell. She pinned that agreement where the pink notice had hung.
By the next winter, she could tell which mare was walking down the barn aisle by the sound of her feet.
Ice glazed the fences more than once, and the wind came across the neighboring cut cornfields hard enough to make the loose barn siding complain all night. Elaine kept salt by the doors and carried water when the lines threatened to freeze.
A canvas cot took up most of the tack room’s open floor. She kept an electric heater on the bare concrete, safely clear of the bedding and the wall, and slept beneath blankets that never seemed entirely warm.
As the mares grew heavier, she woke every two hours to check them. Sometimes she found all five quietly chewing. Sometimes Dottie turned her broad head and regarded her as though the visit were an unnecessary interruption.
Across the aisle and through the paddock door, Havoc would answer the sound of her boots with a low call.
He had grown a dense winter coat. When she came home from a trip for feed, he recognized the pickup before she reached the barn. When she walked out in darkness, he came to the fence and waited where she could find his nose.
One night in late March, sleet began tapping against the tack-room window before midnight. At the next check, Dottie had quit eating.
Elaine stayed.
She bedded the foaling stall more deeply and set out what she would need. Dottie walked, lay down, got up again. When the labor became strong, Elaine knelt in the straw beside her and waited through the contractions.
The colt came correctly, but he was big. Elaine gave him careful help when Dottie pushed, then cleared his face and moved back enough for his mother to reach him.
Dottie lifted her head and began licking.
Under the wet birth coat, he was black. A small white star marked his forehead.
Elaine sat on her heels, listening to the mare’s steady rasping tongue. The colt’s hindquarters had Dottie’s substantial shape, but his neck ran longer, and his legs unfolded in slim, improbable lengths.
He began trying to stand before she had finished cleaning up.
“Take a minute,” she told him.
He didn’t. By half an hour he was upright, legs spread, nosing determinedly along his mother’s side. Elaine stayed close without touching him and watched until he found what he needed.
In the adjoining paddock, Havoc called once. The colt lifted an ear.
The other four arrived over the next two weeks. Elaine filled pages in her foaling notebook with times, feeding checks, and small observations written in a tired, cramped hand. All five survived. All five got to their feet and nursed.
When the weather settled, she watched them discovering the pasture. They could turn beneath themselves like their quarter horse mothers, then lengthen into a stride that reminded her of Havoc’s first run. They approached a new object cautiously, learned its place, and went back to playing.
Elaine handled them every day. She taught them to accept a halter, to give to a lead, to let her run a hand down a leg. Dottie’s colt liked to inspect the empty feed scoop. A bay filly learned the sound of Elaine’s coat pocket and came looking for treats she was not yet allowed to have.
By autumn they were sturdy weanlings, eating well on their own and spending their days in the sale paddock. The lender’s extension was nearly used up.
Elaine bought a quarter-page advertisement in a regional livestock magazine with the last room on her credit account. She kept the wording plain: athletic crosses suitable for sport, not started under saddle, handled every day. Then she set a date when buyers could come see them.
The evening before, she swept the barn aisle twice. She repaired a loose halter buckle and put clean cups beside the coffee urn she had borrowed. There wasn’t money to improve what a visitor would see beyond that.
On sale morning, she stood at the drive and looked at the empty road.
At nine, the telephone rang in the tack room. The lender’s number showed on the small display. She let it ring and went back outside.
The five youngsters were running in the sharp autumn air, wheeling together, then breaking apart. From his separate pen, Havoc watched them over a mouthful of alfalfa.
Elaine checked her watch. Nine twenty-eight.
She bent to pick a piece of baling twine from the gravel. When she straightened, a polished dually was turning into the drive with a horse trailer behind it…
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