Montana Blue. Genell Dellin

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СКАЧАТЬ but now the tender ankle was in a much narrower spot, held tight. Blue grunted comfort to the horse as he and Micah moved slowly toward him.

      “It’ll take us both,” Blue said in a soothing tone. “Stand on the fender, hold his head, and get ready to grab the hoof. I’ll spread the bars.”

      The colt trembled with fear so strong Blue could smell it. His eyes rolled white and his nostrils flared. They didn’t have long until he hurt himself bad. No, until he hanged himself.

      “Got yourself in trouble, huh?” Blue murmured to him as he climbed up onto the fender. “Huh?”

      He began a rhythmic “huh, huh, huh,” the old calming sound that mimicked a horse’s own talk, and set his feet as far apart as the space permitted. He glanced sideways as Micah stepped up there, too, and took hold of the halter.

      The roan colt was on the sharp edge of panic. The air was filled with it.

      Blue felt shaky inside. He hadn’t done anything—actually done anything remotely important in too long. But he had to do this now. He took hold of the two bars and put his back into separating them. It was a lot harder than he expected but when he pulled them apart and bent them out at the same time, he could make enough room. Micah grabbed the hoof and turned it, pushed it back into the trailer, gave it back into the roan’s control.

      The colt dropped to the floor and stood, trembling.

      Micah and Blue looked at him, then at each other. Micah grinned and Blue felt an answering grin lift the corners of his mouth. Micah let go of the halter and checked the tie knot. They stepped down to let the colt have a little space.

      “Damned if he didn’t nearly hang his ornery self right here,” Micah said. “I allus say there ain’t no limit to what kind of a fix a hoss can git hisself into.”

      Blue looked at the roan’s shiny hide glistening with the sweat of fear. He knew the feeling.

      “Royally bred for a cutting horse,” Micah said, as they stood and watched the young horse get his wits back together again, “even if he’s too big for one and acts like a crazy no-name on top of that.”

      “Maybe he never heard the old saying, ‘Blood will tell.’”

      Micah Thompson didn’t answer. When Blue finally looked at him again, his eyes had taken on a glint of humor.

      “It will tell sometimes, and then again it won’t,” Micah said, still studying him.

      Then he added, “This sucker hates the sight of a cow.”

      That made Blue’s smile widen and he laughed out loud. He hardly recognized the feeling or the sound.

      The horse kicked then, and snorted at them as if they weren’t taking him seriously enough. Blue laughed again.

      “God knows I’m too crippled up to fork the big bastard,” Micah Thompson said. “If’n I kin make a hundred or two on him, he’s down the road.”

      He turned and started walking to the truck as if he expected Blue to go with him. With another look at the chastened colt, Blue followed.

      “It’s not far to my place,” Micah said as he started around to the driver’s side. “Couple of hours as the crow flies. I’ve got a few more for sale, too, if you’re thinking you might want somethin’ different.”

      Blue stopped.

      “Or if you can ride, I could use some help with the whole bunch of twos,” Micah said. “That is, if you happen to need a job.”

      He opened his door and got in behind the wheel. Blue hesitated only another second, then he walked to the passenger door and got into the old truck.

      His hands were shaking just a little, so he spread them flat on his knees. In ten years he might’ve lost his balance and every trick he knew for staying on a rank one.

      But he felt his lips curve again in the stupid grin. That roan devil behind him would make him remember how to ride or wish he never had tried. That horse would make him know he was alive again, at least for a little while.

      He twisted in his seat and looked back. Horses had been living only in his dreams and his memory for so long and this one was real.

      The roan was lifting his muzzle into the wind, real as the cracked glass of the window between them. Blue felt the blood rise in his veins.

      The feel of a horse beneath him. That sweet challenge of swinging up onto a new one and finding out how to learn the secrets he had in his heart, what all he could do and would do with his four legs and thousand pounds of muscle and sinew. Bronc or ranch horse or cutter or anything else, Blue had never stepped on a new one without feeling that fierce, wild thrill.

      “This here’s a pretty day,” Micah said, pushing down hard on the gas pedal. “Reckon it’s good to see summer comin’ on again.”

      Getting hooked up with this old man and trying this colt was all right. He had a job and a place to stay now, at least.

      This was okay. He’d known a hundred men like Micah Thompson when he was a kid.

      “He’s still a stud, you said?” he asked.

      “Yep. Reckon that might account for his meanness. A couple of swipes of the knife and he’ll likely turn into a pussycat.”

      Blue slanted a look at him. “Not entirely, I’d say.”

      Micah gave an evil chuckle.

      “Told you you was a horseman, didn’t I?”

      I used to be. I don’t yet know what all I’ve lost. Or will lose again.

      Micah began ranting on about the characteristics of a real horseman, giving examples from a long list of the best horsemen he had known down through the years. He was talking as much to himself as to Blue, so Blue tuned him out as the miles rolled past his window.

      The power of the mountains began taking him over, filling him up with their fierceness, an excitement nearly as strong as the one that had come with his first glimpse of the roan. Great Spirit of the Earth and Sky, how had he lived ten years without being out among the hills and mountains, the trees and the plains, ten years without laying his hand on a horse’s warm flesh?

      Or a woman’s. Ten years without the touch of a woman.

      No mountains and no horses and no tenderness for that long time. It was a miracle he hadn’t died.

      But he hadn’t. That meant he could do anything he had to do. He had already gone through the worst.

      He stared out of the truck as if his head couldn’t turn. It couldn’t. He couldn’t get enough of looking.

      Or of smelling the wind and hearing it. Or of tasting fresh air on his tongue and feeling the worn paint of the truck door smooth beneath his hand. He wanted to hang his head out the window and soak it all up through his pores. They drove on and on and the farther they traveled, the freer he felt.

      The land was huge. The sky was enormous. The day he’d СКАЧАТЬ