“Hold them up high, like this,” he said. “It’s different than you’re used to. Pull back on them reins more than you think you should, keep a steady pull. At the same time, put your leg on him and squeeze him up. You’re telling him with your legs to go forward and with your hands to go high. The more leg and hand you use, the bigger the lick. Start easy, now.”
The saddle felt slick, and there was nothing to hold on to if Jazz spooked. Billie wrapped her forefinger into his mane to steady herself. The good thing about grabbing the mane instead of the saddle, her father had taught her, was that the mane stayed in the center of the horse, while the saddle could slip. Everything felt new and wobbly to her. She prayed the horse wouldn’t bolt. The barn aisle stretched ahead of them, a couple of hundred feet long and maybe forty feet wide. Cluttered tools and piles of manure lay mounded into a center median jumbled together with wooden planks, wheelbarrows, pitchforks, and a small green tractor.
Jazz stepped off as soon as she asked him, and when she asked for more at the man’s urging, he gave it to her. She had water skied as a child, and this felt the same—like she was being lifted right off the earth and into the air. His front legs rose high with each stride, his hind legs reached farther and farther under him until he was moving forward in a smooth, steady crouch. They seemed to fly down the aisle, the chains clinking as they hit his legs. She knew they were landing on burned flesh, making him snap up his feet to get away from the torment.
“Hey there, sister, you can ride,” Simeon said when she pulled up after several laps. “You should buy this horse. You can win big with him.”
Billie slid off and patted the horse’s lathered neck. She felt sickened from having ridden a sored horse but thrilled by the power she felt when he moved. And he was just a baby, barely developed. What must one of the mature horses feel like? Ashamed, now she understood why someone would do this, what was in it for the rider besides money.
“He’s lovely,” she said. “Beautiful and so well trained. But I’m not going to buy the first horse I ride. I have to look at more before I decide.”
“’Course,” he slumped. “’Course you do.” He pulled off the saddle. “There’s no market anymore. Everyone’s hurting. All these investigations and new rules are shutting us down.” He unhooked the chains and crammed them into his pockets. He led the horse to its stall and took off the bridle. “Get in there you piece of shit,” he said, but his hand slid over the horse’s back as it entered the stall, lingering appreciatively. He latched the door. “I’m heading back to Minnesota soon as I can get out of this.” He gestured at the horses.
“Minnesota?”
“I first saw these horses at a show near Saint Paul. Thought I could train some. The good ones bring a lot of money. So I moved here. Did okay for a while. But I don’t like what I have to do to get the wins. I didn’t know I’d have to do it. I thought I could train without it. But if I didn’t do it, I lost. Now the government’s all over us too, checking up and testing and disqualifying even sound horses. They don’t know what they’re doing half of the time. Most of the time. But it’s shutting down the industry. I can’t make a living. I can’t even hire help, can’t afford it anymore. It’s just me here, and Royal.”
Billie flashed on herself, doing all the work on her ranch.
“Haven’t got it in me. I saved some of these horses from other trainers who went bust. Now it’s my turn. Nothing I can do about it.”
“What do you want for the horse I just rode?”
“Fifteen thousand. And that’s a steal. A year ago, he was worth a hundred grand.”
Not a single horse on her ranch, not even Starship, was worth more than fifteen hundred.
She got Simeon’s phone number and promised to call. He said sure like he knew she wouldn’t, and she didn’t try to convince him otherwise. As she drove away, she wondered what lay ahead for the horses living in filth in his barn and for the two-year-old she had just ridden. She imagined saving him, driving all the way from home to this ramshackle farm to get him and bring him to her ranch.
CHAPTER 23
AS BILLIE RETRACED her way back toward Shelbyville, the dozens of sleepy walking horse farms she’d passed in the early morning were now bustling. Trucks had been hitched to trailers, their doors open and piles of tack boxes stacked beside them. Men and women bustled in and out of the barns, some leading horses, everyone seeming to have a purpose. But when she tried to turn into the driveways, she found them blocked. Gates had been shut and bolted on some. Other driveways were obstructed by tractors or flatbed trailers that prevented her from driving in. At the fourth barricaded farm, she parked the rental car beside the road, got out, and hiked toward the barn, skirting a Polaris ATV with a dump cart hitched to it, filled with hay bales.
A gangly boy loped down the driveway toward her. “Closed!” he shouted.
“I just… Bo?”
He looked younger somehow, appearing so unexpectedly. He stopped then continued toward her, his hand raised in a stop gesture.
“Bo, it’s me, Billie. From Arizona.”
“We’re closed.” He scowled. “What are you doing here?”
“Here? What do you mean? Where am I?”
“This is our place,” he said then added, “Mom’s.”
She took a step backward, looking around for something that would have told her. She realized she had never once
