The horse made several more revolutions of the corral. He was amazingly beautiful as he ran, a magnificent horse. Bethany looked on doubtfully from the other side of the fence. Colt couldn’t blame her for being skeptical.
It took a while, but Colt finally recognized the signs. Sidewinder licked his lips and pretended to chew. The horse was ready to calm down.
“Maybe you’d better come out of there,” Bethany said behind him. “He’s looking agitated.”
She’d misread the signs. Lots of people did. Bethany clearly thought that Sidewinder was gathering himself for an attack. Well, her thinking was not unusual.
“He’s fine, just fine,” he said. To his satisfaction, Sidewinder dropped his head and kept trotting. This was a signal.
Colt now broke eye contact and changed his body position. Sidewinder stopped running. The roan stood, his flanks heaving, watching. Colt didn’t move.
“Colt—” Bethany said urgently.
Colt shook his head slightly and she knew enough to keep quiet. The horse took a tentative step forward, then another. He stopped again. Colt waited.
Then Sidewinder, the horse that had almost trampled Bethany Burke less than a half hour ago, walked slowly to him and stood submissively at his side.
Colt spoke to him then. “Good boy,” he said as he reached out and stroked Sidewinder’s nose. The horse remained alert, but allowing himself to be stroked was an admission of trust. Colt kept stroking, moving his hand downward to rub the horse’s neck. This horse was no problem horse. He just hadn’t been handled right.
“Never have I seen anything like that. It’s incredible,” Bethany said from her perch on the fence. She sounded awestruck.
“Tomorrow we’ll try a saddle,” Colt said. He patted Sidewinder’s neck and made a slow turn. The horse followed him when he headed for the gate.
Bethany met him on the other side and waited while he closed and latched it. “Lordy, Colt, what is it you do?” she said.
Colt was feeling pretty good about what he’d accomplished. “Secret,” he said. He didn’t let on how psyched he was.
“Will you really try a saddle tomorrow?”
He peeled his shirt off the top rail of the fence. It had dried stiff, and he didn’t want to put it on so he crumpled it into a ball.
“And maybe more.” Until those final moments, he hadn’t realized how exhilarating it was to be doing what he did best. He’d been aware of Bethany Burke. He’d wanted to impress her. But that wasn’t the main thing.
Bethany studied him, and he wondered if she was assessing more than his resolve. Her gaze dropped to his bare chest, a movement that looked involuntary. Or was he reading too much into this? Maybe he’d better stick to reading horses.
“Well, cowboy, that was some show. I’d like you to tell me how you do it. I mean it.”
“I can show you much better than I can tell you,” he said. “Meet me here tomorrow afternoon at the same time.”
“Is it okay if Frisco watches?”
“How about just you?” So far Frisco had been all hiss and vinegar, and the idea of the old guy’s spectating held no appeal. Colt was determined to cement his place here before setting himself up for criticism. A job was a job, and he intended to keep this one. It was far enough away from Oklahoma, for one thing, and there was plenty to do and no competition. The Banner-B suited him.
“All right, then, just me.” Bethany smiled at him.
Smiles from beautiful women had been few and far between in the last few years, and it was all Colt could do not to turn his considerable charm on her.
Bad idea. He’d save it for the horse.
“I’ll be out planting posts tomorrow early,” he said. He deliberately tacked a gruff edge to his words.
“Fine.”
With a curt nod, he left her. Next, supper with the Neilsons. Maybe he could soften up the old coot by being friendly with the kid. Eddie liked him, he could tell.
COUNTRY MUSIC WAS PLAYING on the radio, something whiny and sad that made Bethany feel mopey just listening to it. She rattled around in the kitchen, cobbling a meal together from leftovers because she didn’t feel like cooking. To make things even worse, she was nursing a bruised shoulder, an unpleasant souvenir of her dust-up with Sidewinder.
While her food warmed in the microwave, she wondered what was going on around the Neilsons’ supper table. Frisco was probably whittling invisible notches in that chip on his shoulder, and Dita would be making cheerful table conversation. Eddie—well, Eddie was Eddie.
What would Colt McClure add to the mix? He wasn’t exactly Mr. Personality. And anyway, why did she care?
Well, she did care. She desperately wanted the new hand to work out. Not to prove Frisco wrong, but to make life easier at the Banner-B for all of them. After she’d left the corral that afternoon, she’d ridden out to the new fence line and checked on the work Colt had done. He’d dug more fencepost holes than she’d imagined one man could do in a single day. And what he’d accomplished with Sidewinder was nothing less than phenomenal.
Bethany was glad that the old system of breaking a horse’s willpower and creating subservience through fear had fallen into disrepute. She hated pain and cruelty of any kind. These days, the trend in horse training was to use more humane methods than trainers had employed in the past.
She and her own horse, Dancer, worked as a team, and next to Frisco, Bethany considered Dancer her best friend on the ranch. Consequently when Sidewinder first arrived in trade from Mott Findley for some extra bales of hay that she’d grown last year, when the horse had turned out for some reason to be skittish and afraid, she’d thought that teaching him was a mere matter of showing him love and thereby developing trust. So far, all her high-minded theory had achieved for her was a near-death experience courtesy of a terrified horse that was worth less than spit.
But Colt McClure knew something she didn’t, something that would save Sidewinder. He had a rare gift. And Bethany was eager to learn his secret.
She’d been so preoccupied with all she’d had to do today that she’d clean forgotten that Colt needed sheets for his bed. After supper, she loaded the dishwasher and then rummaged in the linen closet until she found what she was looking for. Colt would probably still be eating with Frisco and his family, so she’d drop the sheets off and afterward take a long walk the way she often did late in the evening.
That rascal Jesse roused himself from his spot alongside her old slat-bottomed porch rocker and followed her as she headed toward the barn, her arms full of neatly folded sheets and an extra pillow.
“Dumb dog,” she said to him, nice as pie even though she didn’t feel it. “Trying to ruin my sunflowers. Seems like after all I’ve done for you, you could show respect for the things I love. How am I ever going to get flowers started around the house? What am I going to do with you, Jesse James?”
Jesse, outlaw that he was, wagged his tail enthusiastically and lifted his leg on the truck tire.
Bethany, thoroughly put out, kept walking. “Like I said, Jesse, you’re a dumb dog. But maybe not so dumb. You’ve got Frisco on your side at least.” When he saw that Bethany was going nowhere more interesting than the barn, Jesse wandered away toward the bunkhouse, which was so decrepit and rundown that it wasn’t in use anymore.
The barn was big and more ramshackle than Bethany would have liked, but repairing either it or the bunkhouse was out of the question as long as she continued to have serious cash flow