The slow beat of hooves made Caleb Voss look up from the fence. He expected one of the ranch geldings, loose again, and had already started thinking about which gate somebody had left unlatched. Then the animal cleared the rise, and Caleb saw what lay across its neck.
A foal’s legs dangled on either side. Its head hung low against a vast red shoulder.
Caleb forgot the wire in his hand. When he released it, a barb caught his thumb, but he scarcely noticed. The horse was coming down through Grant Berrick’s north pasture, shortening each stride whenever the ground dipped. It stopped well short of him, holding its neck almost level.
At twenty-eight, Caleb had been handling horses for most of his life. He could judge an ordinary horse’s height without much trouble. This one defeated his eye. It had to stand over twenty hands, yet its body lacked the heavy, rounded construction he associated with draft stock. Under the sweat-darkened chestnut coat were long limbs and an unexpectedly fine outline.
He couldn’t imagine how the foal had come to be up there. He kept watching its head, waiting for it to move on its own.
“Easy. I’m coming over.”
He approached at an angle, his injured hand held away from his jeans. An old scar interrupted the hair beside the horse’s amber eye. Its ears tracked him, but it made no move to leave.
Only when Caleb stood close did he hear the small, clogged breath. One nostril quivered. He reached beneath the foal’s damp mane and found skin so cold that he spread his hand wider, as though that might help.
A pickup rattled along the service track behind him. Dr. Audrey Lawson had just finished a call at the main ranch. Caleb raised his arm until she braked, then pointed without trying to explain.
She came through the gate with her medical bag. Halfway to him, she slowed.
“Alive,” Caleb said. “Barely.”
Audrey set down her bag and reached toward the little chest. “Keep him steady while I look.”
The foal was a filly. A dirty puncture high on her flank had swollen around its edges, and Audrey’s expression tightened as she checked her gums and listened to her breathing. Caleb knew that expression from calving sheds.
“She’s badly dehydrated. Cold, too. That wound’s infected.” Audrey looked over the little body again. “I can’t tell you what caused it. I can’t tell you she’ll make morning.”
The red horse bent his head. Caleb got both arms under the filly’s hindquarters while Audrey supported her chest, and together they lowered her onto a blanket. The great muzzle descended with them until it nearly touched the cloth.
“My place is nearest,” Caleb said.
Audrey glanced across the pasture toward the ranch buildings. “Have you considered what Grant will say?”
“He won’t have to sit up with her.”
They lifted the filly into the pickup, where Audrey could stay beside her. Caleb walked ahead along the track. The big horse followed without a rope, pausing whenever Caleb turned to check him.
At the cabin, the horse tried to go through the door after the blanket. Caleb found himself facing a chest that filled the opening. He pressed his palm against it, not pushing so much as asking, and held his breath while Audrey carried the filly inside.
For a few seconds the horse leaned toward her. Then he stepped back.
Caleb rigged a tarp outside to break the wind and left the cabin door open. He brought hay, filled a bucket, and placed both where the horse could reach them. Inside, Audrey shoved his table against the wall. The filly lay on the quilt he usually saved for the coldest nights.
The horse wouldn’t drink.
Whenever a small noise came from the room, he lifted his head. Caleb kept lifting his own. Usually, even in sleep, some part of him listened for Grant’s pickup: the rough idle outside, a door slamming, the approach of another complaint. Now he counted the intervals between the filly’s breaths while Audrey worked beneath the lamp.
By the time light reached the cabin window, his damp boots had gone stiff on his feet.
Audrey came outside rubbing the heel of one hand. “Her temperature’s coming up. The treatment’s getting a response.”
Caleb looked past her.
“That’s all I can promise,” she added.
He carried the bucket to the red horse again. This time the animal lowered his head and drank so hard that Caleb had to brace the rim with both hands. Water ran down his wrists. When the bucket was empty, the horse rested his muzzle against Caleb’s shoulder for a moment.
Audrey watched from the doorway. “I’ll leave what milk replacer I have. You’ll need more. You’ll also need an explanation Grant can live with.”
Caleb brushed a few red hairs from his shirt. “I’ll work on it.”
Instead, he worked on hiding them.
The narrow canyon behind the cabin offered shelter and couldn’t be seen from the main track. Over the next several days he carried feed there after his ranch work was done. The filly needed frequent small meals, and sleep became something he fitted between them. Audrey stopped when her calls allowed, writing instructions while Caleb searched his pockets for something to write on. Feed receipts accumulated beside his stove.
He called the horse Bracken. At first he used the name while wrestling another bucket down the uneven path. Soon he was saying it before he rounded the last bend, and the red head would turn toward his voice. The filly usually stood close beneath that enormous shoulder.
Caleb took to sitting on an upended tub after feeding. He told Bracken about his own gelding, a handful of bent fence staples, the gate Grant had ordered hung differently for the third time. There was no need to make any of it interesting. He could stop speaking halfway through a thought and begin again when he pleased.
Once, Bracken shoved him with his nose hard enough to tilt the tub. Caleb caught a rock and laughed aloud. Then he looked toward the canyon mouth and lowered his voice.
On Tuesday, Grant found him at the road gate. The pickup’s tire rolled close enough that Caleb snatched his toolbox out of its path.
“We’re missing three head down below,” Grant said through the open window. “Anybody been through here?”
“Not while I’ve been working.”
Grant got out and lifted the gate at its far end. He was good at finding a hinge that wouldn’t hold. Caleb had never denied him that.
“Folks north of us are short cattle, too. Keep track of more than your wrench.” Grant dropped the gate and watched it settle. “You’ve been half asleep all week.”
Caleb tightened the bolt another quarter turn.
“If somebody’s helping himself to stock on this ranch, I’ll handle him.”
The truck pulled away before Caleb answered.
That evening, he stopped at Lorraine Pike’s feed store and asked what she’d heard about the losses. She continued adding a column in her ledger until he mentioned the north pasture.
“Otis Fenn saw a horse near the old silver workings,” she said. “Or something he first took for a horse.”
Caleb rested his forearms on the counter. “Otis has seen a few things.”
“He hadn’t been drinking.” Lorraine capped her pen. “And occasionally the man is worth listening to.”
The mine was uncomfortably close to the cabin. Caleb bought a sack he hadn’t planned to buy and headed home.
Bracken was walking back and forth across the canyon entrance. Behind him, the filly stood square on her little legs, both ears aimed toward the ridge.
Caleb fetched his rifle and sat on the porch. By daylight, his knees ached from staying bent, and he had watched every patch of brush above the canyon without seeing anything move.
Two afternoons later, he was riding home from the main ranch when smoke showed between the pines.
He urged his gelding down the track. The tarp lay on the ground, one edge still glowing, and three riders had crowded Bracken against the canyon mouth. Ropes swung above their heads. The filly had backed herself against the rock wall.
Bracken struck with a forefoot, making one horse wheel away. The man directing the others was Roy Stanner, whom Grant hired whenever an order might otherwise be questioned.
Caleb’s warning shot broke across the canyon.
The ropes stopped moving. Roy turned in the saddle and studied the rifle, then the man holding it.
“Lower that, Voss. Grant’s claiming the horse…”
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