as to which horse that might be, well, you’re just going to have to figure that out for yourself.”
Matt walked out to the small corral that Smoke had built and, leaning on the split-rail fence, looked at the string of seven horses from which he could choose.
After looking them over very carefully, Matt smiled and nodded.
“You’ve made your choice?” Smoke asked.
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
“I want that one,” Matt said, pointing to a bay.
“Why not the chestnut?” Smoke asked. “He looks stronger.”
“Look at the chestnut’s front feet,” Matt said. “They are splayed. The bay’s feet are just right.”
“What about the black one over there?”
“Huh-uh,” Matt said. “His back legs are set too far back. I want the bay.”
Smoke reached out and ran his hand through Matt’s hair.
“You’re learning, kid, you’re learning,” he said. “The bay is yours.”
Matt’s grin spread from ear to ear. “I’ve never had a horse of my own before,” he said. He jumped down from the rail fence and started toward the horse.
“That’s all right, he’s never had a rider before,” Smoke said.
“What?” Matt asked, jerking around in surprise as he stared at Smoke. “Did you say that he’s never been ridden?”
“He’s as spirited as he was the day we brought him in.”
“How’m I going to ride him if he has never been ridden?”
“Well, I reckon you are just going to have to break him,” Smoke said, passing the words off as easily as if he had just suggested that Matt should wear a hat.
“Break him? I can’t break a horse!”
“Sure you can. It’ll be fun,” Smoke suggested.
Smoke showed Matt how to saddle the horse, and gave him some pointers on riding it.
“Now, you don’t want to break the horse’s spirit,” Smoke said. “What you want to do is make him your partner.”
“How do I do that?”
“Walk him around for a bit so that he gets used to his saddle, and to you. Then get on.”
“He won’t throw me then?”
“Oh, he’ll still throw you a few times,” Smoke said with a little laugh. “But at least he’ll know how serious you are.”
To Matt’s happy surprise, he wasn’t thrown even once. The horse did buck a few times, coming down on stiff legs, then sunfishing, and finally galloping at full speed around the corral. But after a few minutes, he stopped fighting and Matt leaned over to pat him gently on the neck.
“Good job, Matt,” Smoke said, clapping his hands quietly. “You’ve got a real touch with horses. You didnt break him, you trained him, and that’s real good. He’s not mean, but he still has spirit.”
“Smoke, can I name him?”
“Sure, he’s your horse, you can name him anything you want.”
Matt continued to pat the horse on the neck as he thought of a name.
“That’s it,” he said, smiling broadly. “I’ve come up with a name.”
“What are you going to call him?”
“Spirit.”
As Matt lay there alongside the track he continued to think about his two horses named Spirit. He had given them good lives, treated them well, always making certain they were well fed and cared for, but in the end, both had died before their time, precisely because by being his horses, they had been subjected to more danger than most other horses.
He thought about the expression in Spirit II’s eyes just before he had pulled the trigger. It was as if Spirit II knew what was about to happen to him. Was he blaming Matt? Was he telling Matt he understood that it had to be done?
Fortunately, before Matt could sink any deeper into the morass of melancholy, he heard a distant whistle. Pushing the gloomy thoughts away, he got up from his impromptu bed and looked south, toward the train. When first he saw it, it seemed to be just creeping along, though Matt knew that it was doing at least twenty miles per hour. It was the distance that made it appear as if the train was going much slower. That same distance also made the train seem very small, and even the smoke that poured from its stack seemed but a tiny wisp against a sky which had now been made gold by the setting sun.
Matt could hear the reverberation of the puffing engine, sounding louder than one might think, given the
