Chapter 22
It had taken them a year to gentle and train the Mustang they’d aptly named Diablo for both his attitude and his homeland.
Despite James and Benji’s lifetime of combined horse experience, the dun gelding had lived the first four years of his life as a stallion, raising hell in Devil’s Garden, an area of Arches National Park known for its wild herds.
Since they’d brought him home, Benji and James had worked side by side, at first, just to be able to get close to the horse without him aiming a powerful kick in their direction, then, to halter him, lunge him, saddle him, and finally, ride him.
It had been difficult. Diablo was unlike any of the horses Benji had worked with before.
The gelding was a handsome brute, with a shiny dun coat and contrasting black mane and tail that were impossibly long, so that Sierra jokingly called him Fabio.
But he was also stubborn and spirited, with an attitude that seemed born more from mocking amusement than any prey animal fear.
The horse had been corralled as part of the Bureau of Land Management’s annual herd management, a programme necessary to maintain the land’s carrying capacity for not only wild horses, but also other animals that relied on the natural resources.
While it had always been hard for Benji to see the terrified horses loaded onto trucks and pushed into pens before being adopted out to anyone for a mere two-fifty, he also understood that if left unchecked, the horses could quickly outbreed available resources in their territories.
Still, Hunt Ranch was a working cattle ranch. They weren’t known for taking in feral horses. Diablo had been a spontaneous adoption by James Hunt when they’d attended a Mustang event to help a neighbour find a suitable project horse for her young daughter.
Diablo had been isolated in a pen by himself because he’d been deemed too dangerous by staff to corral with the other horses.
Benji had been taken with the fiery animal immediately. While James, Mav and their neighbour had discussed the relative attributes of the other horses fearfully huddled together, Benji had wandered off to look in on the dun.
The horse had been cantering in the small pen, pacing restlessly from side to side, his neck swinging, tail swishing. But the moment he’d seen Benji looking at him through the bars, he’d charged.
Benji hadn’t moved.
He’d stood there as Diablo had come to a sudden stop right in front of the fencing separating them and blown a warning snort right in his face. He’d said, ‘You’re a handsome devil, aren’t you?’
Diablo had just lifted his head and turned his butt in Benji’s direction, making him laugh.
A nearby volunteer had looked at him beseechingly. ‘His prospects aren’t looking good. Nobody who’s stopped by has had the balls to take him on.’
James had come up behind Benji and witnessed the entire thing, and he’d said, ‘We’ll take him.’
And that had been that.
Now, a year later, as James perched on the piped corral fence of the round pen, watching their progress, Benji worked on Diablo’s liberty training.
He held his left arm out and clucked his tongue, and Diablo immediately started circling him to the left.
After the horse had completed a few full circles, Benji whistled once, a short, sharp sound that cued the horse into a lope.
The horse tossed his head happily and ran circles around him, but the moment Benji held his hand up and said, ‘Woah,’ the horse stopped and came in.
Using the hand signals he’d painstakingly taught Diablo over the past year, Benji cued the huge animal to lower his right leg to the ground and extend his left in a bow.
On the nearby fence, James started clapping.
Benji flushed with pride. He’d thought he would be used to it by now, that glow of warmth that filled him anytime Ava or James Hunt praised him for a job well done. But he wasn’t.
He cued Diablo to stand again, and when he turned his back on the horse to walk to James, the animal followed of his own volition.
‘He’s ready for sale,’ Benji observed. The words were said calmly and with pride, but they hurt to admit.
He and Diablo were bonded, and while Benji understood that he could have asked James to keep the horse, he wouldn’t.
With the training they’d put on him, Diablo had all the fancy moves a rider could want.
He could be taken in any direction, within any discipline, and would sell for upwards of twenty-five thousand dollars even though he was a Mustang.
Benji couldn’t justify the expense of keeping a personal horse when he had a barn full of ranch horses to work on. Horses cost money, and he had already decided that everything he saved would go towards his and Sierra’s future.
He was getting impatient. He wanted her to be his. Officially. Permanently. He just needed a little more saved up, so that he could ask James for his permission with pride instead of self-consciousness.
James looked at him for a long moment and when he spoke, his deep voice was calm but full of genuine emotion. ‘I’m proud of you, Benji. Diablo wasn’t an easy horse to take on, but you’ve done him justice. More than I ever could have done myself.’
James couldn’t know that those few words, so simple to him, were everything to Benji. ‘Thanks,’ he managed. But because his own voice was far from steady, he shucked his head in the direction of the barn, indicating that he’d put the horse in for the night.
Instead of leaving him to it, James hopped off the fence with the agility of a far younger man. He walked at Benji’s side towards the barn, his towering presence somehow comforting instead of intimidating. Always.
As they drew closer, Benji saw Ava’s truck parked outside next to Mav’s Jeep. He frowned. ‘We have a family ride scheduled?’
Family rides were something that Ava had started when he and Mav had been in their teens. If they’d been restless or destructively bored at home, she’d barge into the room and say, ‘Get your butts up! Family ride!’
She wouldn’t take no for an answer, so they’d all trek to the barn, saddle up, and ride Hunt Ranch as a group.
As a family. Occasionally, as kids, Mav or Sierra had grumbled about it, but Benji was always out the door like a shot the moment a family ride was suggested.
Because it wasn’t just a ride for him. It was time with a family that he was far closer to than his own.
It was just a few hours where he felt like he belonged.
The rides had turned into a tradition, so that now James just shrugged and replied, ‘Let’s go find out.’
They walked into the barn side by side, but while James kept walking, Benji stopped in his tracks, forcing Diablo to bump into him from behind.
All he could do was stare.
Ava, Mav, Sierra and all the ranch hands were there. They stood beneath a banner that read: Happy Got You Day, Diablo! And that’s exactly what they shouted as Benji gaped.
The picnic table was laden with food.
The cooler on the floor was bursting with beers and sodas.
James came forward then, except now he carried a black, leather halter that had clearly been custom made. The brass nameplate on the cheek band read, ‘Diablo’ followed by the horse’s government-issued ‘freeze mark’, the same mark that was seared on Diablo’s neck.
James passed the halter to him along with a rolled-up piece of paper, and the moment Benji took them, James placed one heavy hand on his shoulder. ‘You didn’t think I’d actually sell your horse now, did you?’
Benji’s eyes burned, betraying him. He slowly unrolled the paper. It was the BLM’s certificate of title, which transferred ownership of Diablo from the US government to Benjamin Matthews.
Benji thought he’d dreamed the entire thing for a full minute before Mav had came up to them, nudged his father out the way, and pulled Benji into a huge bear hug. ‘Congrats, man.’
‘It’s long past time you had your own horse,’ James said. ‘We’ve been looking for a while, but until we picked up Diablo, we hadn’t found the right one.’
Benji couldn’t express the tide of emotions pulling him apart, so he didn’t try. He just said, ‘Thank you. I won’t ever forget it.’ And when Ava approached, Benji picked her off her feet in a bone-crushing hug.
She laughed, and the moment he put her down, she raised one hand to his face, and said, ‘We’re so proud of you, honey. You put the work into that horse. He’s only ever been yours.’
‘I’ll pay you back,’ Benji said, meeting Ava’s eyes and then James’s. ‘I know what we could get for him in a sale, and I’ll pay you—’
To Benji’s horror, James’s eyes flashed with something that looked eerily close to disappointment, silencing him.
‘The hell you will,’ he shot back. ‘We picked this horse up for a measly adoption fee because, despite his looks, nobody else had the balls to take him on. The only reason he’s worth anything at all is because you put the work in. ’
Ava smiled gently. ‘Baby, don’t insult us. He’s yours. And the boarding, feed, and vet upkeep is our gift to you.’
And more than the horse or the thought and effort the gift had taken to plan and see to fruition, those words from Ava Hunt felled him. ‘Thank you. I won’t ever forget it,’ he said again.
He’d greeted everyone else and accepted the congratulations before excusing himself to put Diablo back in his stall.
And it was there that he’d found Sierra. She was leaning against the stall wall, her arms crossed over her chest. At his bewildered look, she just smiled and said, ‘I figured you’d need me.’
And he did. Always.
He went to her, buried his face in her hair, and completely overwhelmed with love and gratitude for the Hunts, cried for the first time as a grown man.