4. Neighbor
Neighbor
Winter held on with no sign of letting go, and Kain kept doing what he could to get ready for spring. Snow came, then melted halfway off, and then more snow came down to bury what was left of it.
He woke one morning to the sound of hooves and wagon wheels out on the road, and he got up.
Ghost was already on its feet and waiting at the back door, which meant someone was coming up to the front. Kain let the wolf out the back, quiet about it, and went to answer the front.
He opened the door on Jeremiah, stamping the snow off his boots on the step.
"Morning, neighbor. How are you holding up?"
"Still waiting on spring." Kain stood back from the door and waved him inside.
He wasn't friends with the old man, not quite, but he liked him well enough, mostly for the way Jeremiah kept to his own business and didn't pry into Kain's.
"Last we talked you made it sound like spring was nearly here. "
"Some years it goes like this." Jeremiah shrugged out of his coat. "Probably some frost dragon down a dungeon somewhere throwing a fit about it. You'd know more about that sort of thing than I would."
Kain knew that wasn't how it worked, because frost dragons threw their weather around inside their own dungeons and never a step past the door, and no dungeon he'd ever heard of could chill a whole valley for a season, so he kept it to himself.
"Something like that," he said. "What brings you out?"
"Mostly to look in on you. Sorry if it's early. The goats want milking before light, and in cold like this I run the milk up to town quick before it freezes in the cans." Jeremiah scratched at his jaw. "Heard you took a horse off Will Martinson. A roan gelding."
"That's right."
"What do you call him?"
"Roan."
Jeremiah weighed the name a moment and let it pass.
"Practical. I'll give you that. Mind if I have a look at him?
I know horses well enough, and I might save you some grief.
Run me off if you'd rather, but you never came asking, and a horse finds ways to go wrong on a man who doesn't know where to look. "
"I'd take whatever you've got. Give me a breath."
He stepped into the bedroom for his cloak, pulled his boots on, and grabbed a strip of dried fish off the counter on the way out.
The two of them crossed the yard toward the barn through the snow. Ghost was nowhere in sight, but its pawprints ran everywhere across the white, porch to barn to treeline and back again.
Jeremiah looked down at them, and his brow creased.
"Still keeping your wolf, I see."
"None of the pack will be eating anyone's livestock again." Kain said it carefully.
Jeremiah cut him a sideways look, then let it go with a shrug. "That's not quite the half I was asking after. But I ought to know by now not to worry my head over you."
"You ought to," Kain said.
They hauled the barn doors aside, and Kain nodded toward the stall. "He's right there."
Jeremiah went up the barn to the stall, and Roan put his head over the door and nickered.
Jeremiah dug an apple out of his coat, held it flat on his palm, and let the horse take it.
"Pay me no mind, boy. I'm just here to see this city fella isn't killing you.
" He rubbed the flat of the gelding's nose. "Hungry thing, aren't you."
"Always," Kain said. "Don't let him tell you I've been starving him."
"Oh, he won't fool me. I know the type." Jeremiah ran a hand down the gelding's neck and looked him over. "Carol Martinson's work, this one. She had him gentle as this by the time he was three. Four now?"
"Four."
"Good age. He'll do you well a long time yet." Jeremiah glanced past the door into the stall. "And you've kept it clean. That's the first thing most beginners let go. A stall wants mucking every day, and a horse has got no sense of modesty about where he stands."
"Or sanitation," Kain said.
"Nor that." Jeremiah looked the stall over once more. "Which is what he's got you for. Now, his water's near empty."
"I only just woke up. Haven't filled it yet."
"How often do you see to it across a day?"
"Once, in the morning. Twice if he's worked hard."
"Winter, you check it twice, a few times if you can manage.
Ice sets faster than you'd think, and he can't break it himself.
" Jeremiah reached over and rapped the trough with a knuckle.
"And this one's a bigger job, but you'll want it lower.
Watch how he reaches for it. He's lifting his head too far to drink.
Pull the nails and drop it half a foot. Won't hurt him to reach, but there's no call to make him work for his water. "
"Half a foot," Kain said.
"And here." Jeremiah turned and laid a hand on the saddle hanging by the stall. "See these bite marks in the leather?"
Kain looked, and the leather was gnawed along one edge where he'd put the marks down to mice. "Thought I had mice."
"Just Roan, after what he shouldn't have. They like the oils in the leather, and the salt off your hands soaked into it besides. Hang your tack on the far wall, out of his reach. Every horse I've kept has tried it sooner or later."
"I'll move it."
"Good. Now the hooves." Jeremiah opened the stall door, and Roan shifted his weight. Jeremiah ran a hand along the gelding's neck. "Easy, boy. For this part you just keep talking, low and steady. Doesn't matter a bit what about."
He went on about a pot of potatoes Elizabeth had cooked the night before, low and easy, while he bent and lifted Roan's near forefoot up to where he could work at it. The underside was packed hard with mud, and he drew a pick from his back pocket and set to clearing it.
"This is how you do it. Easy now, mind you don't hurt him, but clean his feet out regular.
A stone works up in there and he can't tell you about it.
He'll start favoring the leg, and by the time you catch the limp it's gone to infection.
" Jeremiah's voice stayed low and working, the voice of a man who'd done the thing a thousand times.
"And while I'm running my jaw, you need that front fence made right.
Rope and posts hold a patient horse. You haven't got a patient horse.
First thing that spooks him off the road, he's over it and gone. "
Jeremiah finished the first hoof and started on the second. Kain set the advice down in his head as it came, pick the hooves daily, drop the trough half a foot, hang the tack on the far wall, build a real fence before the thaw.
When the second hoof was clean Jeremiah handed the pick across and stepped up to Roan's head, and Kain crouched and started in on the mud packed under the next one while Jeremiah eased the horse's mouth open to look inside.
"Thought you weren't supposed to look a horse in the mouth," Kain said.
"That's a gift horse. A bought one you look at close." Jeremiah ran a thumb along the gums. "A bad tooth turns into a bad month before you know it, and he can't tell you which one's aching. Keep talking to him. I'll say if I find anything."
Kain murmured to the horse. He didn't have much to say, since most of his hours passed without a word in them, so he told Roan about the ground he'd walked instead, up along the road and over the hills and down by the creek.
By the time the last hoof was clean, Jeremiah had moved on to going over the coat.
"All in all, he's a sound horse. Mouth's good, and a bad tooth on a horse is a misery for the both of you.
Now look here." He parted the hair along the flank.
"That's the start of a little infection in the hide.
Nothing to fret over, cleans up easy enough, but it looks like plain dirt right up until it doesn't."
Jeremiah went over the whole animal that way, up one side and down the other, naming off the things to watch for as he went, and Kain held onto every word of it. When he'd finished he straightened and gave a short nod.
"You'll forget the half of it, so anything you're not sure on, you come find me. Just keep it in your head that he's an animal, not a wagon or a hammer. You can't shut him in a shed and trust him to keep himself."
He was halfway to the barn door when he stopped and turned back. "You got a scrap of paper?"
Kain had one, and they went back into the house, where Jeremiah sketched a fence out on the back of an old seed receipt, marking the spacing of the posts and the run of the rails.
"Three rails, four foot high or near it.
Leave that rope up and you'll be chasing this one through somebody's wheat come summer. "
"Appreciate it." Kain took the paper. "I'll start on it the day the ground gives."
"You do that." Jeremiah pulled his coat back on and worked the buttons. "You've got grit, Kain. It's good to see. You'll do well out here."
He climbed up onto his wagon and brought it around toward the road, and Kain stood in the yard and watched him go.
It had been good information, and the list in his head was longer for the visit. Kain went into the barn, broke the new skin of ice off Roan's trough, and filled it to the brim.
The rest could wait on the thaw, and he'd get to every bit of it in its own time.