Part 2
Nolan put his thumb where hers had been. Under pressure, the hidden break opened enough to drive a hard ridge through the padding.
Mrs. Mercer watched his face, not his hand.
“With a rider up there, every stride would have pressed it into him.”
Silas had come close without announcing himself. He examined the worn leather above the break, then glanced across the yard at Flint.
“How long?” Nolan asked.
“The leather’s been rubbing against it for months. I can’t give you a date.” Mrs. Mercer let the lining fall back. “But I can tell you what he’s been learning whenever someone tightened the cinch.”
Nolan remembered Owen on the ground. Before him, Hank. Before Hank, a visiting hand who had advised selling the horse before he killed somebody.
“We thought he was fighting the rider,” he said.
“He was trying to get away from pain.”
Silas took the saddle from him. Nobody proposed using it again.
Nolan looked toward the cottage, where Flint was picking at a tuft of grass by the step. “Would a veterinarian be able to tell what damage it’s done?”
“He should examine him whether you intend to ride him or not. His back may have been compensating for a long while.”
She collected her basket and shook a little dust from its bottom.
“Mrs. Mercer, where—”
“The shirts are waiting, Mr. Kessler.”
She went inside, leaving Nolan beside the fence with his foreman and the broken saddle.
Silas ran his finger along the damaged wood.
“Have somebody fetch Bellamy,” Nolan said.
Silas nodded.
“And put that thing where no one can mistake it for usable tack.”
That evening Nolan found a narrow ribbon of lamplight beneath the cottage door. She answered with a cuff turned inside out over her fingers and a pin caught in the edge of her apron.
“I’d like to discuss the gelding.”
“Then you’d better come in.”
She had carried the little machine over from the workroom. It sat on the cottage table beside a carefully shaded lamp. Wine-red curtains covered the windows, and several spools stood upright in an old wooden cutlery tray. The place had been empty all summer. It no longer looked empty.
Nolan remained standing until she pointed to a chair.
“Would you undertake his handling?” he asked.
“Not as part of the sewing.”
“I wasn’t proposing that.”
“You hadn’t proposed anything definite yet.” She laid the cuff aside. “I’d rather make that part definite first.”
“All right. What would the arrangement be?”
She drew the loose loop of red thread from the tip of one finger to its base.
“Separate pay. Separate work. And if I say a session is finished, or a horse isn’t ready, that decision stands.”
“I’ve known you two days.”
“You’ve known the saddle longer.”
He looked at her.
She did not lower her eyes or offer a smile to make the answer easier.
“I’m asking you to hire my judgment,” she said. “If you only want another pair of hands following yours, ask someone else.”
He thought about the cattle coming off the high ground, the winter bills, the horse eating grain while his usefulness remained a question. He had paid men for years without requiring them to prove every bit of knowledge they possessed before beginning work.
“What can you promise?”
“Careful work. An honest report. No particular result.”
“And the drive?”
“That may be out of the question. You’ll have to mean it when you accept that.”
For a while, the lamp wick made the only sound in the room.
“I accept it,” Nolan said.
She nodded. “I’ll work with him after the morning sewing. I may spend a little time at his fence before that. It won’t take away from what I’ve already agreed to do.”
At the door, he turned. “You didn’t learn this hemming dresses.”
“My father raised horses in Kentucky. I grew up helping him.”
There was room for another question. She had left no invitation for one.
Nolan put on his hat. “Good evening, Mrs. Mercer.”
For the first several days, her new employment consisted chiefly of standing still.
She leaned on the rail with a stocking in her hands. She sat on an overturned bucket outside the pen. Once Nolan passed while she ate half a pear, offering Flint no more attention than she offered the clouds.
The horse kept his distance at first. On the second afternoon, he came within reach of the fence. On the third, she let her fingers rest against his neck.
Nolan had seen men congratulate themselves for getting a halter on a frightened horse. Mrs. Mercer went back to darning the stocking.
Bellamy had not yet arrived when Nolan found her laying a clean blanket across Flint’s back. She set it down, waited, and watched the horse’s belly for the movement of his breathing.
“When do you expect a rider on him?”
“I haven’t enough information to expect one.”
“Even roughly?”
She lifted the blanket away before answering. “A guess won’t make your plans safer.”
“I need to arrange the string for the drive.”
“Then arrange it without a promise from me.”
He put both hands on the top rail. “We don’t have an unlimited supply of horses.”
“I understand. He doesn’t have an unlimited supply of soundness, either.”
Flint turned his head toward her. She waited until he settled before folding the blanket.
Nolan could hear a wagon being loaded behind the barn. Two men argued over which provisions belonged in which box. Everywhere he looked, something wanted an answer.
“You could at least tell me whether there’s a chance.”
She faced him fully then.
“I could tell you something pleasant. You’d still be planning around a horse whose condition we don’t know.”
He stayed at the fence another moment, then went back to the house.
At his desk, he opened the account book to the page he had been avoiding. A replacement mount would cost money before a single steer reached market. Running Flint hard might cost the horse and still leave him without the mount.
He found Silas beside the harness pegs.
“Write Voss in town. Ask what he has available to hire.”
“How many?”
“Three. Sound ones. I don’t want a shortage if another comes lame.”
Silas reached for the pencil behind his ear.
“It’ll add to the bill,” he said.
“I can read a bill.”
“Never doubted it.”
Nolan looked at him sharply. Silas was already writing.
After supper, Nolan crossed to the cottage. Mrs. Mercer sat on the step with a shirt spread over her knees, taking advantage of the last usable light. The red thread had caught on a rough spot in her thumbnail. She freed it before looking up.
He stopped below her.
“Flint’s off the drive. I’m hiring replacements…”
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