CHAPTER 31
Victor barely saw Johnny at all the next two weeks.
Victor’s time was filled with two-day shows, transporting a client’s two horses across state lines, helping a boarder’s horse recover from hock surgery, handling three mares in for breeding with Blitz, training any one of the four horses he had in that month, and all the lessons squeezed in between.
On top of that, Victor had to fit in sessions with Cyclone and his half-sister Venus, who was still too young to ride but mature enough to learn groundwork.
Taylor was in and out to work with Midnight, often without Victor’s supervision or instruction.
She knew enough at this point that Victor felt confident she could bring Midnight along without always being told how to do it.
Right now she was learning cattle work, which probably wasn’t an instinctual talent for an Arabian but one that Midnight seemed to enjoy nevertheless.
Jade gave lessons to the younger children, and one of their parents asked Victor for a full lease of Sprout with the possibility of purchasing him at the end of the summer.
This meant he could no longer be one of Victor’s regular lesson ponies, and that meant going back to the auction in hopes he could find a replacement.
He didn’t tell Taylor about it this time; he didn’t want to be guilted into picking up another charity case, as much as it had worked out last time. Instead, only Jade came with him.
They made the long trip to Texas, where there was an auction that ran every week instead of monthly.
The parking lot was packed with dealers’ long stock trailers and semi-trucks, so Victor had to drive around for a while to find a place to park.
After getting a number, he and Jade wandered the pens, many filled with loose horses that had only a halter as a means of identifying where they came from.
Other pens had branded Quarter Horses already tacked up and ready to show off.
Victor was most interested in the ponies, but he couldn’t resist browsing the others, even though he knew he had no time to take on any prospects at the beginning of the summer show season.
Toward the back of the complex he came across a pen of twice-branded horses, all loose and ungroomed. Many were much stockier than typically loose horses were, some with feathered legs and manes so long they’d tangled into knots hanging past their necks.
“Bucking stock, I’m guessing,” Jade said.
“Definitely.” Some were over 16 hands tall and probably 1400 pounds.
Victor couldn’t imagine Johnny strapping himself to something like that heavy and powerful.
They were the kind of horse that would fetch you thousands as riding horses.
People loved to buy draft crosses, especially if they were pretty colors, as many of these were, such as the buckskin draft with the mane and build of a Friesian.
If he weren’t so deadly, Victor would have taken a chance just for the resale value.
“My buddy brought these in,” said a voice, and Victor turned to look at the chubby guy who had sidled up next to them, one cheek bulging with chew. He tilted his head toward the pen of bucking stock. “Lotta different kinds in there. You looking for something for a string?”
“Oh no, I’m not in the rodeo business. I run a riding barn.”
“Ah. Most of these are retiring. But…” The man squinted at the herd for a moment, then pointed toward the back. “You see that big chestnut back there?”
Victor did. She was tall and barrel-chested like the rest, with a blaze down her face and two white socks on her hind legs. A gorgeous horse for sure, and obviously well-fed even if her feet were chipped and her mane was a mess.
“She’s only three or four I think. She’s the worst buckin’ horse of the bunch, so that’s why she’s gettin’ sold. Too mild-mannered for rodeo. I think if you could make a ridin’ horse outta any of them, it’d be her.”
Victor was about to tell him that he wasn’t really looking for training prospect at the moment, but he didn’t want to get into a conversation. So instead he said, “I’ll keep an eye on her in the ring, thank you.”
The man tipped his hat and walked off. Jade squeezed Victor’s arm on his other side.
“You thinking about it?” she asked with a smile.
Victor snorted. “I do not need bucking stock in my barn. I don’t have a death wish.”
Still, as the night wore on and Victor found a few ponies that he was interested in purchasing, he kept walking past that pen with the sorrel mare.
None of them were all that friendly, but he liked her temperament.
She wasn’t biting anyone or running frantically around the pen.
She seemed relaxed, and right before he headed to the sale ring, he saw her standing by the gate so he reached out a hand to see how she’d react.
Instead of bolting away, she reached out and sniffed him.
Afterward, she let out a loud and dramatic snort before walking off.
Victor ended up buying a 13 hand grey gelding that was a few years past Victor’s age limit but seemed so gentle and quiet with the child on its back that Victor was willing to take a chance. He could lease him out or resell pretty easily—children’s ponies were always in demand.
Victor should have left after that purchase, but he was so curious about the bucking horses that he decided to stay longer.
They weren’t run through until very late, and the first few went for cheap for that reason.
No one wanted an old bucking horse—they were only good as lawnmowers.
No information was given on any of them, but the brands were unmistakable, and any knowledgeable horse person steered clear.
Despite that, when that chestnut mare entered the tiny ring and her price only went up to five hundred, Victor made the very dumb decision to purchase.
Because he was an idiot, but also because he’d been thinking of getting Johnny a horse, and he couldn’t imagine a better match than a horse that had been built and bred for bucking Johnny’s ass off.
“I thought you said you weren’t interested in any bucking horses?” Jade asked after they left to pay in the office.
“I wanted to get Johnny a horse.”
“Has he asked for one?”
“No. But he can’t ride his other two, and you heard that guy. She’s young and not very good at bucking.”
“That guy could have been lying.”
“Maybe. We’ll see.”
They paid, then headed back to the pens to round up their purchases.
They had to put the mare in first, because she wasn’t halter broke and had to be chased into the trailer through a chute.
She handled the whole thing surprisingly well.
If she’d been part of a string, she was probably used to getting on and off a trailer.
Once she was inside, they put the little pony gelding on, and he went easy and quiet as you please.
Victor didn’t really get a good look at her in the daylight until the next morning, when he watched her in the small pen where he typically put the feral horses.
God, she was big. Victor guessed she was probably 16.
1 or 16.2 hands tall, but thick too, with feathered feet and a big Roman nose typical to draft horses.
She desperately needed some footcare, but she was too wild to be handled safely, so that would probably be a month or two away.
She had one brand on her shoulder and another on the top of her rump—Victor would have to look up where those brands were from or ask Johnny.
It was clear she came from top lines, because horses this big were only bred for serious rodeo.
Victor was probably crazy to believe the word of the dealer selling her.
Maybe she was in fact twenty years old and the craziest of the bunch.
If so, he could always just sell her at another auction.
Last night it seemed to be the same guy buying many of them, and Victor had to wonder if it was a kill buyer. He could have saved her life, who knew.
After a few minutes of Victor standing there, she crept up to smell him again.
Victor slowly offered her a handful of hay, which she took with relish.
He wouldn’t know her age until he could get a look at her teeth, but she didn’t look old to him.
After Victor fed her hay for a bit, she even let him run a knuckle down the soft skin of her nose.
Victor had worked with various mustangs, including Saturn.
The ones that let him get this close this fast were typically easy to bring around.
Unlike a mustang, she’d been around plenty of people.
The issue would likely be trauma. If her only experience with humans was the rodeo, surely she’d have some baggage around that, even if she was bad at her job.
“I wonder what Johnny will think about this,” Victor muttered to her as he handed her more hay. “Maybe he’ll think I’m trying to get him killed.”
Victor didn’t bother her the rest of the day, to let her decompress and take in her new home. He almost forgot about her by the time dinner rolled around and Johnny’s truck rolled into his driveway. Victor threw his dishes in the sink and greeted Johnny at the door with a long kiss.
“Damn can’t even let me get in the door,” Johnny chuckled. “You should at least give me a chance to wash the cow offa me.”
“I have a surprise out in the barn for you,” Victor blurted, hands gripping Johnny’s hips as he fought a smile and lost. “Wanna see?”
“The barn, huh? Wouldn’t happen to be a horse would it?”
Johnny was sometimes way more perceptive than Victor gave him credit for. Still, he played coy. “I dunno, you gotta come see.”
So Johnny followed Victor out past the barn to the pen where his new horse stood trying to sniff out the remaining pieces of hay from the flakes Victor had given her this morning. Immediately after they pulled up by the fence, Johnny said, “That’s a bucking horse.”