was a dirty white with flecks of black that looked like dried mud missed by a careless groom. Against that grayish mediocrity, the gelding’s pink-rimmed eyes seemed as bloodshot as a drunkard’s. His unloveliness might have been forgiven had it not been for a protruding and slightly wobbly lower lip that made the poor animal look addled.
“Nothin’ wrong with this horse wasn’t wrong with the fool who rode him,” said Robert.
Faced with inconsistent expectations, defeated by unreasonable demands, Snickers would stand still, looking confused. He’d been beaten for his prior owner’s failures, and having learned to fear men, the gelding no longer waited for meanness to be made manifest. Walk by his stall too quickly or too slowly or too carelessly and, like as not, he’d snake his neck out at you and clamp his teeth on whatever he could catch hold of.
“Hittin’ a horse is plain stupid, John Henry. There’s no excuse for it,” Robert declared with the serene instructive confidence of a ten-year-old boy who’s made a careful study of a single subject and knows all there is to know about it. “Horses are mirrors. They’ll show you back whatever you show them. Watch a man with a horse, and you’ll see what’s inside his own self.”
What the stable hands had, inside and out, was an entirely rational eye-rolling fright. They were scared to death of Snickers. John Henry clearly remembered the worried gray-haired uncle who’d set aside a muck shovel and hurried over to warn young Marse Robert not to let his little cousin John go near that crazy damn horse. Looking back now, he realized, there was irony to be discovered. The old man knew exactly who’d be blamed and beaten if a white child was bitten. It sure as hell wasn’t Snickers.
By contrast, what Robert Holliday had inside, even at the age of ten, was a master’s unconscious self- assurance, along with a basic decency that made him patient with a small, shy cousin who still talked funny. Robert had stepped toward Snickers, speaking low and friendly, not a bit scared, even when the pony tossed his head.
“Hey, now,” Robert said, quiet and firm and kind. “Hey, now. Settle down, you.”
That was the voice John Henry Holliday heard as he approached Dick Naylor’s stall. Part of him wanted to look at his watch again, to see how much time he had to get out to the track before the race began, but he could almost feel Robert at his side, saying,
At the sound of unfamiliar footsteps in the aisle, Dick faced around and blew a wary snort, halfway between curiosity and fright. There was no answering exhalation in the barn. That would be a source of concern to the horse, who was down in the last stall, away from the corrals where the cowboys’ mounts were penned.
Standing a few yards away, John Henry let Dick take a good look at him before asking sympathetically, “Y’all by your lonesome in here? Where’d all your friends go? Off havin’ a fine time at the fair, I expect, and here you are with nobody for company.”
He reached into a bucket of carrots hanging on a hook nearby, allowing it to clank a bit against the wall so Dick would recognize the sound. He put a couple of carrots in his pocket, keeping another in the palm of his hand, and waited to see how Dick would take this turn of events.
The horse backed away, nostrils flaring, ears flicking in all directions. Tense and ready to shy, he stretched out his neck, measuring the distance to the stranger’s hand.
“That’s right: you don’t know me, but you’d like this carrot, wouldn’t you … Wyatt sends you his best, but he is fully occupied at the moment, diggin’ his political grave. Aurelius on the plains: one law for everyone!” John Henry marveled. “Your master is a stubborn, sanctimonious Republican jackass, but I admire his principles.”
Dick lifted a hoof and hit at the stall gate.
“No, sir,” John Henry said firmly. “I will not be pawed at, thank you very much! But you want what I have … You got decisions to make, son.”
Irritated by flies, a horse will shake his head, or wag it, or jerk it up and back. Irritated by humans, the same moves in rapid succession can signal equine exasperation.
“Mind your manners,” John Henry warned softly, “or I will eat this carrot myself—see if I don’t.”
At last, there was the long, low, guttural nicker he was waiting for, used by horses to greet one another, heard by humans at feeding time.
“There you go,” John Henry said warmly. He stepped closer and held his hand waist-high to make Dick lower his head and relax, letting the horse nuzzle the carrot from his palm. “That’s right,” he said, his voice low and friendly and calm. “I am not Wyatt, but I am a man with a carrot. Can’t be too bad, can I? Oh, you found that one, too, did you? No, no, no—let me take it out of the pocket. Rip the worsted, and we’ll get what-for from Mr. Jau …”
Lured with a third carrot, Dick let himself be led out into the aisle, stood still for a cross-tie, and even let the stranger examine his mouth, which was a hardened mass of scar tissue.
“Look at that,” John Henry muttered. “Some heartless goddam sonofabitch did you a disservice, and may he rot in hell for it!”
Dick shifted uneasily.
The damage was old and not superficially abraded. Wyatt must have been using a bridle without a metal bit.
“Well, Dick, you have fallen into better hands now, and that is your good fortune. What do you think, son? Ready to return the favor? Shall we go show this burg who owns the fastest quarter-miler in Ford County?”
Dick tossed his head in response, beginning to get keyed up, and just as well, for they’d be racing soon. Running his hand along the horse’s flank, John Henry retreated down the aisle toward the central tack room.
Standing in the dim and shadowy light, he scanned the racks and pegs, trying to decide which saddle was Wyatt’s. “That’s got to be it,” he murmured when he spotted one that was unadorned and worn at the edges but well cared for, with a soft-nose hackamore slung over its pommel. He had just gathered himself to hoist forty pounds of leather and iron off the rack when someone out in the aisle walked past the tack room door.
Motionless, John Henry listened.
Dick Naylor gave a low, troubled snort.
Everybody knew Dick was supposed to run today. Thousands of dollars were riding on the quarter, and there were dozens of ways to meddle with a horse and ruin his chances. It was too late for some, but others were quick. Shove a piece of sponge up the animal’s nostril to impede his breathing. Hit a shin and lame the leg before a bruise could rise. Jam something into the frog of a hoof.
Heart hammering, John Henry lowered the saddle back onto the rack, careful not to let the stirrups clank. Like anyone else in town, he could have carried guns legally that day, but he’d left Dodge House in a rush. His pistol was back at the hotel, behind the front desk. The Philadelphia Deringer in his pocket was only good at card-table distances.
Hoping he could make it through the next fifteen seconds without coughing, he slid a throwing knife out of the sheath in his left boot, stepped toward the tack room door, and leaned carefully into the aisle.
“Back away from that horse!” he ordered. “Do it!
Kate turned and glared, offended, over her shoulder. “How dare you speak to me like—”
Dropping the knife, he rushed at her, shoving her hard and holding her down when they crashed to the floor.
The hooves just missed their heads. Dick squealed and got ready to let fly again.
Doc grabbed Kate’s arm and dragged her backward, scrambling down the aisle, pulling her crabwise away from the horse.
“God a’mighty!” he cried when they were out of range. “Are you hurt?”
She was sitting on the floor, looking like a five-year-old smacked across the face and still too stunned to weep. “Are you crazy?” she cried. “God damn you, look what you did to my dress! Why did you—”
“Never mind the dress! You were about to be kicked halfway to Colorado.” Doc got to his feet and did his best to help Kate up, although it was not completely clear who was helping whom because he was coughing now. “Are you hurt?”
“Yes! No! I don’t know! What’re you doing in here?” she demanded, rubbing an elbow. “I been looking everywhere, and Wyatt wouldn’t tell me nothing, that stupid sonofabitch—”
Dick stamped and snorted. Doc left Kate to settle the animal down. That was when she started to cry. It was the shock. And the fall. And anger that Doc seemed more worried about the horse than about her. He understood all that, but there was so little time left!
When she saw the saddle, she figured out what he was doing, and then she was like a terrier: nipping at his heels, yapping at him, getting in his way. He paused just long enough to lean over and kiss her on the mouth, but
