Chapter 5
CASSIE
The cats are on the porch when I come out, the two of them already lined up at the bowl before I've got the cabin door open all the way. I fill their bowl, watch them eat for a second, then head down to the barn.
Kade's in the third stall when I come through the barn door, muck fork in hand, working through the bedding. He glances over when he hears me.
"Morning," he says.
"Morning." I pull Cricket's halter and lead rope off the hook and go into her stall.
"You're up early."
"I wanted to get a trail ride in before the session starts."
He goes back to the stall. "That's a good idea."
After putting on her halter, I bring her out and tie her by the tack room. She stands easy while I brush her down, ears relaxed, head dropping a little. The barn smells like hay, horses, and the cold that lives in old wood in the morning. I work through her coat.
Kade comes out of the stall with the pitchfork and moves to the next one over. He glances at Cricket.
"How long are you going out?"
"About forty-five minutes."
He pulls the stall door open. "Good weather for it," he says, not looking up. "The east fork's a good ride."
I tack her up and take her out the back gate.
***
The east fork climbs through a corridor of lodgepole pines, the trail narrowing as it rises, and the ranch drops away behind us before we've gone a quarter mile.
Cricket's ears tip forward and stay there, reading the trees, her stride opening up on the uphill without me asking for it.
The air up here is different from the barn, colder, pine sap and damp earth, and the smell of ground that doesn't see much sun.
The sound of the creek runs somewhere below the ridge.
A bird calls from somewhere deep in the timber. Cricket flicks one ear toward it and keeps moving.
I let her pick the pace.
The trail climbs another quarter mile before it levels, the pines pressing in close enough that the branches brush my knee on the left side. The cold that lives up here in the shade is sharper than the barn, pine resin, damp bark. Cricket's hooves are quiet on the needle-covered dirt.
We pass through a gap in the trees where a big ponderosa came down and opened a window in the canopy. Light falls through it in a wide shaft. Cricket walks through it without breaking stride, and her coat catches the sun for three seconds, her bay going almost copper, then we're back in the shade.
There's a place past the first ridge where the pines thin and the trail runs along the edge of an open slope.
The valley spreads out below, the ranch visible in pieces through the tree line, the arena roof, the barn, the cabin rooftops scattered through the pines, and the dining hall sitting in the middle of all of it.
I pull up there and let Cricket blow. It's a beautiful view.
She drops her nose to the grass at the trail's edge, and I let her.
I've been here a week and a half.
That's the thing I keep landing on. A week and a half, and the ranch already feels like something I didn't expect it to feel like yet.
The morning rhythms, the cats on the porch, the way everyone here moves through their days like the place runs in their blood.
I've only been here ten days, and I already know I'd miss it.
The ranch sits below me in the early light, still quiet, nothing moving yet except a horse shifting in the far corral.
I was thirteen the first time I stood on this property and felt like it was somewhere I was supposed to be. That was a long time ago, and I'd stopped thinking about it. Funny that it comes back up here and not somewhere easier.
I pick up the reins and turn Cricket back before I lose the morning entirely.
***
Kade's running water to the far end of the barn when I come back in. Levi's in a stall, the door propped open. He comes out when he hears Cricket's hooves on the aisle floor, leaning against the door frame with a muck fork in one hand.
"I've been in here shoveling shit for half an hour," he says. "You've been on a trail ride. I think I made a bad decision this morning."
"Yep," I say, and dismount.
He watches me for a second, and I can feel it, him deciding whether there's an angle left to try. There isn't. He goes back into the stall.
I start pulling the saddle. The thing about Levi is he's actually funny.
Not performed funny, not working-the-room funny.
The real kind, where it comes out easily and lands without trying.
I've been giving him nothing all week, and he keeps trying anyway, and the bad decision line was good, but I'm not going to tell him that.
Kade comes back through with the empty bucket and stops.
"Good ride?"
"Yeah," I say.
"Good."
He runs a hand along Cricket's neck, then heads back down the aisle.
I lead Cricket down the aisle toward her stall. Levi's two stalls down, muck fork in hand, and he looks up when we pass. I catch it in my peripheral vision and keep walking. Cricket goes in, I latch the gate, and go to work.
***
Dana's at the near rail when I come into the arena, Fable already warmed up, both of them carrying that composed, professional energy. She's been watching me all week with an assessing look she doesn't bother to hide.
Weston brings Drift in behind the group, and the gelding is already withholding through his whole body, moving but not giving anything.
Weston asks him forward, and the horse goes, flat and mechanical, no push from behind, no softness through the back.
He's patient and correct, and the horse still won't come through.
Sawyer is at the far end working with June and Maple.
I watch Drift one full lap. Then step in toward Weston's line.
"Bend him left off your leg before you ask for the forward," I say. "Give him a question first. Let him answer before you add anything else."
Weston does it. Drift's inside ear tips back. The answer moves through the gelding's back before it reaches his stride, just a shift, but it's there.
"Now ask."
Drift steps into it, his back lifting, two strides of real push before he flattens out again.
Weston nods without looking at me. I step back toward the rail.
The session runs to eleven. June gets a release through Maple's topline on the circle around the forty-minute mark, the mare's back swinging free for three strides before June's hands tighten, and she loses it again.
I'm beside her before the next circle starts.
"You felt that," I say.
"And then I grabbed her."
"You grabbed her because it surprised you. Next time it won't."
June looks down at her hands like she's considering them. "How many times before it stops surprising me?"
"Fewer than you think," I say, smiling. "It's already in your body. You just don't trust it yet."
She takes a breath and picks up the circle again.
Marcus comes through a transition at the far end, and I stop walking.
Rhea stops beside me at the rail. We both watch him bring his horse through the corner, soft in the hand, weight correct, nothing braced.
"No bad habits to fix," Rhea says. "You know how rare that is?"
"I'm trying not to get used to it."
She laughs under her breath. "Too late." She pushes off the rail and moves back toward her end of the arena, already watching the next horse down the line.
Marcus comes around again. Rhea's right. Just a man who listens, tries it, and gets out of his own way. There's a version of that which is almost easier to teach than experience.
We break for lunch at eleven-thirty, horses at the rail, people heading to the dining hall.
I'm checking my notes when Tatum falls into step beside me, like she happened to end up here.
"Levi hasn't looked away from you once this week," she says. "Just thought you should know."
She keeps walking.
She's through the dining hall door before I've finished processing what she said, already finding her seat like she didn't drop anything on the way in. She doesn't look back.
I stand there for two full seconds.
Then I write it on the back page of everything I'm not examining right now and go find Rhea.
***
Sawyer catches me after the afternoon session wraps.
"I need a supply run to Creekside," Sawyer says. "Can you pick it up? You can take the ranch truck."
"Sure," I say.
"The order's already called in, Donnie will have it pulled." She pulls a folded list from her back pocket and holds it out. "Just in case. Keys are on the hook in the tack room." She's already moving toward the dining hall.
I head to the barn to grab them. The feed room door is propped open, and the aisle is quiet. There's no sign of Levi. I get the keys and go.
The drive into Silver Creek takes twenty-five minutes on a road that unwinds through the pines in long curves, dropping out of the timber until the valley opens and the town appears at the bottom of it all at once.
The creek runs alongside the last mile, shallow and quick over the rocks, and I follow it in.
Creekside Feed and Tack sits on the east edge of Main Street, the gravel lot already half full even at midday. I pull in, grab the list, and push through the door.
Levi's at the counter with an older man, leaning on the glass case with one hand, the way he leans on every surface he's near, completely at ease.
"I ordered twelve," Levi's saying. "Eight show up. Eight."
"Supplier shorted the whole region," the man says, unbothered. "It's not my fault."
"I'm not saying it's your fault, Donnie. I'm saying I have four fence posts' worth of a problem."
"I've got the other four coming in. Tuesday, maybe."
"You said that last Tuesday."
Donnie grins. "This time I mean it."
Levi laughs, and Donnie's grinning back like he's been waiting all week for someone to find this as funny as he does.
I stay inside the door for a second longer than I need to.
A woman at the back, pulling a bag of shavings off a pallet, looks up. "Hey, Levi."
"Hey, Carol." He turns just enough to answer her. "Dale, get that water line sorted?"
"Tuesday," she says, like that explains everything.
"Always Tuesday," he says, and she laughs and goes back to what she was doing.