Part 2
Pastry crumbs had begun collecting beside the coffee urn before anybody brought Monarch out.
Russell’s wife had covered a folding table near the shop with a clean cloth. The men standing around it wore good hats and coats without feed dust in the seams. Along with the crew, there were close to fifty people on the place that morning.
It was the first Saturday in November. The evaluation had been rescheduled, and Russell had invited enough witnesses to make it something other than a veterinary appointment.
The Oklahoma buyer was there, along with a semen sales representative, neighboring ranchers, and a man from the bank. Russell moved among them with a cup he scarcely drank from. Every so often he pointed toward the breeding pens.
I’d been sent to check water.
From beside the nearest trough, I could see the auxiliary gate between the holding pen and the larger crowding pen. Its slide bolt looked shut until I moved a little to my right. Then daylight showed where the bolt should have passed fully into its receiver.
The spring keeper wasn’t engaged. The bolt had been pushed most of the way across and left resting on an edge.
I walked closer to make sure. A cow brushing it might not have moved it. Monarch leaning on it would.
Dean was talking with another employee beside the shop. I waited for a gap, then pointed past the alley.
“That connecting gate isn’t caught. The bolt needs seating.”
He looked at my pointing hand rather than the gate.
“Go finish your tanks.”
“I checked it. It’ll swing if he puts a shoulder on it.”
Dean turned back to the other man. “We’ve got enough going on without her hunting for attention.”
They exchanged a look. I stood there a moment, then walked back with the hose dragging behind me.
I should have gone to the gate myself. I’ve asked myself about that more times than anybody else ever could. But I’d already been told not to enter the working area, and Dean had just made it plain that another word would become another performance for the crew.
Not quite ten minutes later, Monarch came into the holding pen.
He was walking high and stiff, his head moving from one sound to the next. Boots clattered on the catwalk. Visitors talked across the safety fence. Somewhere beyond the shop a child called to an adult, and Monarch jerked his head toward the voice.
Two hands crowded him from behind.
He turned away from them, found the auxiliary gate, and tested it with his shoulder.
The bolt snapped free with a sharp metallic click. Before either hand could reach it, the gate was open and Monarch was through.
The crowding pen was empty. That matters. No visitor stood in his path, and nobody was knocked down. Both hands climbed out over the panels as soon as the gate moved.
But the equipment yard lay beyond an open connecting gate at the far side. Through it I could see a tractor, a tangle of implements, and a flatbed stacked with steel panels. If he reached that yard at a run, there were a dozen ways for him to cripple himself.
Russell began issuing orders before the gate quit swinging.
“Bring the feed truck around. Block that opening. Dean, get them on the far side and turn him.”
A man ran for the truck. Others climbed the north panels.
Monarch circled the pen at a heavy trot. His ears kept changing direction. He was trying to find somewhere the commotion wasn’t.
Then the red stick rose above the north rail.
He drove at it.
A post cracked. He recoiled, blood showing over his left eye, and wheeled for another strike.
“Get that stick down!” I shouted.
Dean was close enough to hear me. He looked straight at me and held it where it was.
I shouted again, and again. Behind the pen, the feed truck turned over. The engine caught with a rough clatter, and Monarch swung toward that new noise, then back toward the stick.
I dropped the hose.
There was a narrow personnel gate on the east side. I went along the outside fence, lifted its chain, and heard somebody call my name as I slipped through.
The ground inside was churned and uneven. My boots sank in places where spilled water had mixed with dirt. Diesel exhaust reached me from the yard, and I could hear my pulse over the engine.
Russell ordered me out. When I didn’t turn, he called me crazy.
A couple of hands started moving along the fence toward the little gate. Russell gave a short laugh that carried farther than he intended.
“Leave her. She only gets this lesson once.”
I moved sideways until I was clear of Monarch’s direct route to the equipment yard. I didn’t want to stand between him and the opening he’d been watching. Then I stopped, turned a little away from him, and let my arms hang without reaching.
He came off the damaged fence and saw me.
I kept my eyes low, where I could see his feet and the movement through his shoulders. His forehead dropped. He scraped twice with a front hoof, flinging dirt against his belly.
There was no useful distance between us. The pen looked enormous from outside it. From where I stood, it offered me no place I could reach before he could.
He started toward me.
I remember noticing a smear of wet dirt on his shoulder. Such a foolish little thing to remember. I remember thinking of Tessa’s hands around her pencil that morning, and then there wasn’t room to think of anything but the animal coming at me.
I didn’t call his sale name. I didn’t try to make myself larger.
When I could hear the separate rush of each breath, I gave him the three notes.
His head lifted before the rest of him changed. Then one stride shortened. His rear legs gathered under him, and his forefeet tore through the loose surface as he checked himself.
He stopped several feet away, close enough for flecks of damp dirt to land against my jeans.
I kept my mouth closed and took one slow breath through my nose.
Beyond him, a man had frozen halfway down a panel, one boot still hooked over the top. Nobody told him to move. The truck idled. Monarch breathed with his mouth slightly parted, his whole barrel working.
I whistled once more, quietly.
He stepped toward me. Just one step, placed with care. His ears turned forward, and his nose came near my sleeve without touching it.
I could see the blood beginning to dry above his eye. When he angled his head, the light reached behind his left ear.
There, high on the thin skin, lay a curved strip of white scar tissue about as long as my thumb.
I knew exactly where that wound had come from…
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