Part 3
Her needle stayed still for a moment.
“That will be expensive,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And difficult to explain to men who thought he was merely stubborn.”
“They don’t have to pay for him.”
She glanced down at the shirt, then back at Nolan. “You could have kept asking until I gave you an answer you liked.”
“You’d have had to give one.”
“That seems unlikely.”
He almost smiled. Almost.
“I shouldn’t have asked him to do work without knowing what it would cost him.”
“No,” she said. Then, after a pause, “Thank you for stopping.”
He nodded and left her to the fading light.
Voss’s three horses came on a Thursday, sturdy animals with ordinary manners. Nolan inspected their feet, signed the hire agreement, and counted out the money. From the cottage, Evelyn saw Silas take the receipt without making any observation about the expense.
She had begun to appreciate Silas’s omissions.
The men were less economical. While she drank coffee on her porch, Hank and Owen talked beside the trough, apparently forgetting how far voices carried in the morning air.
“Never thought I’d see him change the whole string over a woman’s opinion,” Owen said.
“She found broken wood in the saddle,” Hank answered.
“That’s not the same as saying the horse can’t go.”
“No. But would he have listened if you’d said it?”
Owen took long enough to answer that Evelyn could hear water dripping from the pump spout.
“Maybe not.”
She set her cup on the step. There was no pleasure in having become an argument between men. She had work to do that might eventually settle it.
Bellamy arrived the following afternoon carrying a leather case and expecting, by his manner, to finish before the light changed.
He stayed nearly three hours.
Flint allowed the examination because Evelyn remained at his shoulder. The veterinarian found old damage around a rib, a fracture that had healed imperfectly. The bad saddle had aggravated the area and left the horse guarding his back and one shoulder.
“He may carry a light rider,” Bellamy told Nolan. “Not cattle work. The turns, the bracing, the uneven pull would keep stirring it up.”
Evelyn kept her palm against Flint’s neck. “When you say light riding, what do you want to see in the rib before we begin?”
Bellamy started to answer Nolan.
Nolan stepped out of the way to hold the case open.
The veterinarian looked back at her. She asked about tenderness, about the difference between an old habit of bracing and a fresh sign of pain, about what would require stopping immediately.
By the fourth question, Bellamy no longer looked elsewhere before replying.
Evelyn listened, repeated the important points, and asked him to check one spot beneath the shoulder again. Nolan held the horse’s lead without interrupting.
When Bellamy left, she wrote his instructions on the back of an unused invoice. She kept that page beside her sewing basket.
The drive left on a Wednesday. Saddles creaked in the cold, and the wagons made dark tracks through the damp yard. Nolan rode out with the first push. Silas would take charge of the longer portion once the cattle had reached the lower ground.
For four days, the ranch had fewer voices.
Evelyn finished the mending sack by Friday, only to find three better-quality shirts laid beside the table the next morning. Apparently some men waited to see whether a person would stay before surrendering their good clothing.
Silas left his coat without a note. Its lining had split in several places, and one pocket contained enough loose tobacco to plant a row. She emptied the pocket into an envelope, repaired the coat, and returned both. He took them away without a word.
In the afternoons, she worked with Flint.
He had begun coming to the rail before she reached it. She could run her hands over his shoulders now, tracing the places where the muscles still tightened before her fingers arrived. If he stepped away, she let her hand fall. When he returned, she began again somewhere easier.
On Saturday, she was working beneath his mane when a rider came up the lane a day early.
Nolan’s coat was powdered with dust. He dismounted carefully, handed his horse to a waiting man, and stood for a moment with one boot still braced against the stirrup as though remembering how to unfold himself.
Then he saw her at the pen.
“How is he?” Nolan asked when he reached them.
“Comfortable with the blanket. Less guarded through his back. I’m still watching the left shoulder.”
Flint reached toward her sleeve and then resumed standing quietly.
Nolan studied him. “He doesn’t look like the same animal.”
“He’s had some comfortable days.”
Nolan turned his hat in his hands.
“The cattle?” she asked.
“Moving well. Voss sent good horses. Silas can manage the next stretch.”
“So you came to inspect everything at home.”
“There were papers waiting.”
“They’ll still be on your desk. I moved the supply receipts out of the rain, but there’s a note explaining where.”
His attention sharpened.
“The window had blown open,” she said. “I went to shut it. The papers were getting wet.”
“You sorted them?”
“Back into the order the labels indicated. If you don’t want me doing that, say so.”
He glanced toward the house, then back at her.
“No. You did right. Thank you.”
She gave Flint a last slow stroke. “There’s coffee at the cottage.”
He looked down at his hat as if it might tell him how to answer an ordinary offer.
“I could use some.”
Inside, he stood beside the window while she filled a cup. The machine was ready for a shirt she had brought home at noon. She sat down to it, leaving him the choice of conversation or quiet.
He chose quiet until half the coffee was gone.
“Three men missed the first morning’s gathering. Stayed up settling a card game.”
“Did they settle it?”
“They spent the day behind the herd.”
“That would give them plenty of time to think.”
“And dust enough to keep them from talking.” He turned from the window. “Only one has apologized.”
“The other two may still be composing something impressive.”
This time he did smile.
He took the second chair, the sound one she had requested on arrival. She drew Hank’s shirt under the needle.
“He tear that on the drive?” Nolan asked.
“Moving hay before you left. I saw him favoring his right arm when he carried water.”
“He never mentioned it.”
“The seam was pulling. It would have opened farther.” She stopped to clip a thread. “A man will bring a harness in for repair before it fails. Ask him about his own sleeve, and you’d think you’d asked something intimate.”
Nolan rubbed a hand over his unshaven jaw.
“My mother used to catch things like that.”
“Did she sew?”
“She ran this place, mostly. My father called it interfering when she pointed something out.”
Evelyn waited.
“He’d have lost half of what he owned without her,” Nolan said. “He didn’t enjoy being reminded.”
The machine’s crank made a short, regular click under her hand. Outside, someone dropped a pail, swore, and retrieved it.
After a while, Nolan asked about her father’s horses.
She finished the seam before answering. There had been a modest Kentucky farm, mostly draft stock and a few saddle horses. By eight, she could recognize an uneven stride from the lane. Reading a whole page had taken her longer.
“And your husband?”
“Thomas handled cattle horses when we met. I taught him the breeding work. We had six years together, learning from each other.”
She laid the shirt aside.
“After he died, people remembered him doing it. They forgot whose hands had taught his.”
Nolan lowered his cup.
“That’s what the separate pay was about.”
“Partly.”
“And the last word about whether a horse is ready.”
“Yes.”
He looked at the machine, then at her.
“If Silas had written asking whether I wanted a woman to train horses, I would have said no.”
She gave him time to hear his own admission.
“I was wrong before you ever got here,” he said…
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