Part 6
Claire put the receiver down and left the feed receipt on the table. The next morning it was still there when she packed hay into the wheelbarrow, and there again that evening when she came in with cold fingers.
On Thursday, she made the calls.
She thanked the Ordel outfit. She declined Russell’s offer and the Kansas buyer’s. Then she called Grant.
He let her finish before trying another approach.
“Forget the offers already made. What figure would get this done?”
Claire stood with the cord looped around one finger.
“I wanted him at sixty dollars. I’m keeping him.”
Grant went quiet. Then he told her to take a little more time.
She hung up without promising to do that.
For the next week, he waited for a price. He sent no trailer and made no threat, but his messages assumed she would eventually name a sum. Claire returned one to say her answer hadn’t changed. After that, she went on with the work.
The last visit came on a Saturday near the end of November. Three trucks stopped along the fence, their tires crunching the frozen edge of the ditch.
Claire came down from the barn in the same canvas coat she’d worn to the auction. Wind pressed its worn cuffs against her wrists. Across the rail stood men who could have bought Flint in July without noticing the money was gone.
Now they held checkbooks and asked whether she was certain.
Grant wanted her to name a number. Russell suggested there must be something the place needed. Another question followed, offering her one last opportunity to reconsider.
Claire could have repeated what they’d said in the sale barn. She remembered every word. Russell’s bargain joke and Grant’s prediction had remained remarkably clear through the weeks of small meals and written measurements.
She rubbed a thumb over the cold latch.
“Thanks for coming out,” she said. “He’s staying here. I hope winter treats you well.”
She closed the gate and fastened it.
As she walked toward the barn, Flint came alongside on his side of the fence. He matched her pace all the way up the lane. Behind them, the trucks started one at a time.
The Aldens hired Claire for fall shipping. The work paid modestly, but when she came home, she put the money in the account instead of taking it straight out again for an overdue bill.
A rancher east of Belsa asked her to look at a four-year-old that wouldn’t stand for mounting. She spent two afternoons with him, letting him learn that a person stepping up didn’t mean he had to leave. By the end of the second day, the rancher put a foot in the stirrup and got on while the gelding stood.
He told three people.
By February, Claire had two outside horses at Avren. She kept their instructions on separate pages beside Flint’s old weight sheet. Other owners began asking when she could take theirs, and she found herself saying dates several weeks away.
She didn’t call it a waiting list until Owen did.
“You’ve got four names on there,” he said, glancing at the calendar in her feed shed. “What else would you call it?”
“People I haven’t gotten to yet.”
He gave her a look and carried another bale inside.
During calving, a large outfit hired her to check heifers. The job began in March and ran forty days. There were mornings she saddled by the yard light and evenings she hardly remembered taking off her boots. Flint carried her through most of them, steady in the dark, attentive to cattle, willing when she asked him to leave something alone.
The payment covered the north fence.
Men who’d first come to see the famous buckskin began stopping to watch Claire work a young horse. They stayed through the pauses. They saw her release a request before confusion became a fight, wait for a tight back to soften, and quit while the animal still had something to give.
A few asked how long she’d been doing that kind of work.
“Quite a while,” she said.
Her pickup hadn’t changed. Neither had the coat hanging beside the back door. On the new fence, the staples were straight and the wire held its line.
In April, Claire drove to the Belsa sale barn for a stock tank and another set of panels. She parked in the weedy corner because the trailer was easy to turn there, then walked inside with her folded list.
Flint waited in the trailer. She’d brought him along rather than leave him alone for the day, with hay in his net and both side vents open to the cool air.
The equipment sold. Claire got what she came for and remained on the bench near the back while the crowd diminished.
When a thin gray mare entered the ring, Claire’s fingers went toward her bidding card.
Laughter came from somewhere below her.
She put the card down and slid both hands beneath her thighs.
For two minutes, she watched.
The mare guarded one shoulder. Each time the handler moved toward her head, her eye changed and her body tightened. When a gate struck its post, she hurried sideways, then stood trembling against the lead rope.
Claire kept her hands where they were. There was no balanced turn to catch her attention, no trace of fluent old training beneath the thinness. She saw pain, fatigue, and fear. This mare might need months of care before anyone could fairly ask her for anything. She might never become a useful riding horse.
Claire looked down at her list. At home, the hay stack was sufficient. One small paddock was empty. The training calendar had room for the slow work of earning a frightened animal’s confidence, though not much else.
When she finally raised her card, she knew the difference between what she wanted to see and what stood in the ring.
The mare cost one hundred and ten dollars.
At the office window, Claire asked for the transfer slip and folded it carefully into her pocket. Then she went to get the trailer.
Outside, evening sun warmed the sheet metal along Flint’s side. He stood with a resting hind leg, working the last stems from his net. When Claire opened the door, he lifted his head and waited.
She brought the gray mare slowly across the yard. The mare stopped at the ramp, pulled back a little, and stared into the dim compartment.
Claire moved out of the doorway and let the rope ease through her hand.
Inside, Flint shifted over without being asked. He left a clear space beside him and lowered his nose toward the newcomer.
The mare put one hoof on the ramp. Claire waited for the next.
When both horses were aboard, she secured the divider, checked each tie, and closed the door. No one near the loading yard laughed as she climbed into the pickup.
She drove toward Avren with the new tank strapped behind the cab and two horses riding quietly home.