Part 3
The red horse entered below the herd, where Caleb wouldn’t have dared ride his gelding. Cattle nearest the wash swerved from his shoulder and drove into the animals above them. For an instant, a strip of bare ground appeared along the crumbling edge.
Caleb ran beside the upper fence, shouting through rain that swallowed his voice. Bracken crossed the slope again. A cow tried to force past, and he shouldered her uphill, using his height and bulk to turn the press behind her.
Mud hid his lower legs. Twice Caleb thought he had gone down. Each time the red back came clear again, still moving along the dangerous side of the herd.
The cattle began climbing.
Bracken stayed below them for almost twenty minutes, turning one straggler, then another, until the last few followed the herd onto higher ground. When they finally stopped, he stood away from them with his neck extended and his head low.
Caleb reached him still carrying the unused bridle. He checked each leg while rainwater dripped from the horse’s belly. Bracken trembled so hard that Caleb waited beside him before asking him to walk.
They went back to the barn together.
Vivian arrived in the gray light after the storm. She counted her cattle, stopped, and counted them again, touching a finger to her thumb at each animal.
“How’d you get below them?” she asked Caleb.
He pointed.
Bracken filled the barn doorway. The filly peered out beside him.
Vivian lowered the rag she’d been using on her face. “So he’s here.”
Inez came down the porch steps. “And your cattle aren’t in the wash.”
Caleb asked Vivian not to tell anyone where the horses were. She agreed, then took the empty bucket from his hand and filled it before she left.
A week later, he heard at the feed store that a giant horse had gone into the flood and fetched cattle out. The man telling it hadn’t been anywhere near Inez’s place. Caleb let him finish.
Lorraine slid his order across the counter.
“Grant’s been asking where you’re staying,” she said quietly.
Caleb drove straight to Audrey’s clinic.
She was cleaning equipment. He waited until she had laid down the piece in her hand, then told her he couldn’t keep bringing danger to Inez’s door.
Audrey stood with her hands on either side of the tray.
“Take his money,” she said at last. “Get this ended before someone’s hurt.”
Caleb watched her face. “What does he do to Bracken the first time the horse refuses him?”
She looked down. “I don’t have a good answer, Caleb.”
“The livestock gathering in Dalmere is next week. Grant’s taking his team.”
Audrey raised her head.
“Most of Keldren County will be there,” he continued. “They’ve heard his version. They can look at the horse themselves.”
“You’re counting on witnesses to hold him back.”
“I’m counting on it being harder in front of them.”
“He’ll still be Grant.”
“I know.”
She leaned against the counter for a while. Then she looked at his hands.
“Have you even got a halter big enough?”
He made one from broad hauling webbing. During the next week, Bracken learned to stop when Caleb stopped and wait while people moved around him. Caleb also assembled a wide, padded breast rig, checking the material and every place it would bear against the horse. Nothing made for an ordinary draft animal would fit him.
When Caleb led Bracken away from the filly, Inez stayed with her. If the separation worried him too much, she brought the little one along until he settled.
At Dalmere, Caleb waited outside the arena with both horses while a food stand hissed and popped behind him. People carried paper trays toward the bleachers. The loudspeaker kept returning to Grant’s name, praising the matched Percherons that had just made the strongest pull of the day.
Caleb walked through the gate.
The nearest spectators fell quiet first. Others turned to see what they were looking at. The filly followed Bracken until Inez took her lead at the rail.
Grant still held the microphone. He noticed Caleb, looked higher, and stopped smiling.
“That horse was taken off my ranch,” he announced. “By the man standing beside him.”
Caleb’s mouth had gone dry. He wanted to watch his boots rather than all those faces.
“He came looking for help with an injured foal,” he said. His voice didn’t carry evenly. “Your men came with ropes. I wouldn’t let them take him.”
Grant turned toward the pulling sled. It had been loaded again, this time beyond what his own pair had moved.
“Brought him to impress us? There’s your chance.”
Caleb looked at the iron, then at Inez. She stood with the filly and waited. He had come to make Grant answer in public. Now the whole place was waiting for an answer from him.
He went back to Bracken and loosened the lead.
It took time to settle the broad breast rig properly. Caleb checked the padding, fastened the traces, and ran his hand beneath every bearing point he could reach. The horse stood while people leaned over the rail.
Bracken touched his nose to Caleb’s shoulder.
Caleb laid a palm against the muzzle, then stepped alongside the track.
“Come on, Bracken.”
The webbing drew taut. Dirt piled behind one enormous hoof. For a second the sled held, and then its runners ground forward.
Caleb walked beside him, the lead slack between his hands. He didn’t touch the horse. Each long step brought another scrape from the sled, another deep print in the track.
They passed the finish.
Caleb let him take a few more strides before asking him to stop. They ended near the section of rail where Grant stood. Bracken breathed hard into the sudden quiet.
Someone slapped a board. Another person began clapping, and the sound spread through the bleachers until Caleb could feel it in the rail beside him.
Grant reached for the microphone.
Caleb looked straight at him.
“He’s not yours to use.”
He unfastened the traces and led Bracken back to the filly. At the gate, Lorraine was clapping beside Otis Fenn. Caleb passed close enough to notice that she had wet cheeks.
Grant made no further announcement. As the horses left the arena, his eyes stayed on the filly…
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