The beer never happened.
Cody was halfway to the porch when Rip came out of the barn and said his name.
Not loud.
Just once.
Cody stopped.
Looked at Wyatt.
Shrugged like he’d done this before.
He walked back toward the foreman and Wyatt stood alone at the bottom of the bunkhouse steps watching a conversation happen in silence.
Rip’s hand moved once toward the corrals.
Cody nodded.
Came back.
“Rain check,” Cody said.
“Rip wants me on night pasture.
Fence is down somewhere and the heifers are getting ideas.” Wyatt lifted his chin once.
Watched Cody jog toward the truck barn.
Watched the taillights disappear toward the hills.
Lloyd came out onto the porch carrying two beers anyway.
Handed one to Wyatt without speaking.
They sat.
The mountains were black against a sky that was still holding light it shouldn’t have.
Lloyd drank.
Wyatt drank.
The beer was cold and tasted like the aluminum it came in.
“You ever work horses before you came here?” Lloyd asked.
Wyatt turned the can in his hands.
“Some.” “You got a way with them.
I saw you this afternoon.
You were talking to that sorrel in the second pen.” “Wasn’t talking.” “No,” Lloyd said.
“You weren’t.” They sat.
Somewhere down by the river a coyote started and two more answered.
Lloyd finished his beer.
Set the can down on the step between them.
“Tomorrow morning,” Lloyd said, “Rip’s gonna put you on Roamer.” Wyatt looked at him.
“Bay gelding.
Good horse.
Bad history.
Threw the last hand in October and the hand before that in July.
Won’t take a bit.
Won’t stand for a saddle.
Rip’s been trying to figure out if the horse is broke or just broken.” “And he’s giving him to me.” “Yeah.” Wyatt drank.
The beer had gone warm.
“Why?” Lloyd stood.
Picked up both cans.
“Because you throw hay like you’ve done it but you walk like you’ve never seen a barn.
And Rip wants to know which one’s true.” He went inside.
The screen door didn’t slam.
It settled.
Wyatt sat alone on the porch until the sky went dark and the cold came down off the mountains like something with weight.
— Morning came too early and too cold.
Wyatt dressed in the dark.
Followed the others to the barn.
Coffee in tin cups.
The same drill.
Rip called assignments from a list that didn’t exist and every man moved when his name landed.
“Wyatt,” Rip said.
His head came up.
“Roamer.
Second corral.
Lloyd’ll bring him out.” The bunkhouse went quiet in a way that wasn’t quite quiet.
Wyatt set his cup down.
Walked toward the corrals.
Behind him he heard Jimmy say something under his breath and someone else Ryan, maybe laugh once and stop.
The second corral was empty.
Wyatt leaned against the rail and waited.
The sun was just starting to find the tops of the mountains.
The air smelled like frost and manure and something else.
Something warm.
He turned.
Lloyd was walking a bay gelding across the yard.
Fifteen hands.
Scarred knees.
One ear cocked forward and one back like the horse was listening to two conversations and couldn’t decide which one mattered.
The horse saw Wyatt and stopped.
Lloyd stopped with him.
“His name’s Roamer,” Lloyd said.
“And he’s not mean.
He’s scared.” “Of what?” Lloyd didn’t answer.
He brought the horse to the corral gate.
The bay balked.
Planted.
Lloyd didn’t pull.
He waited.
After thirty seconds the horse took one step.
Then another.
Lloyd led him through the gate and unclipped the lead.
The gelding stood in the center of the corral.
Wyatt stood at the rail.
They looked at each other.
Rip was leaning against the fence twenty feet down.
Watching.
He hadn’t said a word.
Wyatt climbed through the rails.
His boots hit the dirt and Roamer’s ears went flat.
The horse took two steps back.
Stopped.
Nostrils wide.
Wyatt stood still.
Didn’t move.
Didn’t speak.
Just stood.
Roamer’s near ear came forward.
The other stayed pinned.
Wyatt took one step.
A violent toss of his head, mane snapping like a rope.
Wyatt stopped.
That broad chest heaved and the gelding blew hard through his nose a sound that was almost a word, almost a question, the kind of noise a creature makes when it hasn’t decided yet whether the thing in front of it is a threat or a door.
Wyatt took another step.
The gelding didn’t move.
Close enough now to see the white rim around the horse’s eye.
Close enough to smell him hay and sweat and fear.
Wyatt raised his hand.
Slowly.
Palm out.
The bay watched the hand like it was a snake.
“Easy,” Wyatt said.
His voice sounded wrong.
Too low.
Too careful.
The voice of someone trying to gentle something wild.
He touched the horse’s muzzle.
The world doubled.
He was standing in the corral and he was the horse and the man in front of him smelled wrong human wrong, metal wrong, the wrong kind of fear.
And there was a pressure in his skull that had been there for weeks.
Months.
Since the rider with the gloves.
The one who’d used the rein-end like a whip and whose voice had been low and cold and wrong.
The pressure was a knot of memory wound so tight it had nowhere to go but down into the bones.
Wyatt’s knees buckled.
He was on the ground and the dirt was cold and his hands were shaking and somewhere far away he could hear a voice his voice saying easy, easy, easy like a prayer.
Roamer’s memory was a reel that wouldn’t stop.
The rider who’d beaten him.
The smell of the rein-end.
Leather and salt and old blood.
The sting of it.
The sound it made.
The way the rider’s voice had stayed calm while the blows landed.
Over and over.
And the horse had stood because the horse had been trained to stand.
Trained so well he’d stopped fighting and started breaking.
Wyatt could feel it.
The knot.
The place where the fear had compressed into something hard and immovable.
He could feel it in his own chest.
His vision grayed.
And then Roamer’s head dropped.
The ears came forward.
The gelding closed the distance between them and pressed his muzzle into Wyatt’s shoulder.
The pressure in Wyatt’s skull released.
The memory-reel stopped.
He was on his knees in the dirt.
Breathing hard.
Roamer was standing over him like a dog guarding a man who’d fallen.
The corral was silent.
Wyatt looked up.
Rip was still leaning against the fence.
Still watching.
His expression hadn’t changed.
He looked at Wyatt.
Then the horse.
Then back.
Then he turned and walked away.
Wyatt sat in the dirt for twenty minutes.
Maybe longer.
Roamer didn’t move.
Just stood there.
Close enough that Wyatt could feel the warmth coming off his shoulder.
Close enough to hear the horse breathing.
When he finally stood, his legs were shaking.
His hands were shaking.
His whole body felt like it had been wrung out and left to dry.
Roamer followed him to the gate.
Pressed his nose into Wyatt’s palm.
Wyatt opened the gate and the horse walked through it without being led.
Stood in the yard.
Waiting.
Lloyd was sitting on the fence.
“You fall?” Lloyd asked.
“Yeah.” “Roamer throw you?” “No.” Lloyd nodded.
Slid off the fence.
Took the horse by the halter.
“That’s the first time in four months that horse has let anyone touch his face.” Wyatt didn’t say anything.
There was nothing to say.
His head hurt.
His chest hurt.
His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Lloyd started to lead Roamer back toward the barn.
Stopped.
Turned.
“The rider who broke him,” Lloyd said.
“He’s dead now.
Tractor rolled on him last spring.
But the horse don’t know that.” Wyatt’s eyes found his.
“Now he does,” Lloyd said.
He led Roamer away.
Wyatt stood alone in the corral.
The sun was up now.
Full light.
The mountains were sharp and clear and they didn’t care.
His chest still hurt.
Not from the fall.
From something else.
Something deeper.
Like a hand had reached inside him and moved something into a place it hadn’t been before.
He climbed through the rails.
Walked toward the barn.
Halfway there, Cody appeared at his shoulder.
“That was wild,” Cody said.
“I mean that was actually wild.
Roamer hasn’t let anyone near him in months.
What’d you do?” “I don’t know.” Cody grinned.
“Well, Rip saw it.
Whatever it was.” Wyatt didn’t answer.
The hand in his chest tightened.
That was the problem.
Rip had seen it.