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The breath was knocked out of me. I gasped in a quick lungful of air, letting out the sound of a frightened child. How embarrassing.
He glanced at the camera in my hand. “You see something you like?”
I smiled nervously. “Could I take your picture?” My words came out hurried and defensive.
“Sure, kid.” He put a boot on the trailer tire and, one leg bent at the knee the other turned toward me, he stood with an open stance like he was mounting a colt, all his weight on his back hip. He lifted the saddle and rested it on his knee.
“Great.” I set the basket on the ground and put the camera to my eye. Now I saw him through my lens; now I felt cool and in control. He flashed a stiff smile. I took a step toward him and got down on my haunches.
His pose was awkward, and his smile forced, but I took the shot anyway. I stood then moved to the side to find another angle. As I did so, he straightened, made as if he was leaving then stopped. He looked my way over his shoulder and said, “You come round in a few weeks, and the next photo you take of me will be on the winners’ podium.” He gave me a wink and a nod.
That was the shot I wanted: the wink and the nod. But the camera was at my side. Before I’d even thought to raise it, he turned and was gone.
I had seen this countless times at the agency. Some men were electric in the flesh, but when the camera was on them, they became stiff and lifeless. Others were quite the opposite. This man, when it was just my eyes on him, had me shaking in the knees. But he had no charisma for the camera. I understood, then, that I was going to have to steal some shots to make my calendar. I was going to have to catch my cowboys in action unaware that I was watching. And that understanding, I won’t lie, had me excited.
I’d initially imagined leading an organized photoshoot, rounding up a dozen hunky cowboys, and getting them to strike poses for me, like the kind of work I’d done at Handsome’s. That too had its appeal. But combine a staged photoshoot with sneaking shots of them ‘in their natural habitat’ like a private investigator trying to catch a target in an illicit act, that prospect had the project taking on a new extra tantalizing dimension.
I waited a beat for my hunky cowboy to get a good distance away then I followed him. Once I’d come within a dozen yards of the stables there were teams of men passing every which way. some lugged equipment, others signs and planks of wood. I didn’t see any women, wayward or otherwise, and I suddenly felt quite nervous and out of place.
An older cowboy with a bushy mustache spotted me; he touched the brim of his hat and nodded to me. Another flashed me a quick smile then went on with his work. I hesitated to continue ahead, but the neigh of horses coming from the stables drew me on.
Whether I was nervous to enter uninvited or not didn’t matter. The horses called to me, and I could do nothing other than comply.
A young man, probably about my age, held the reins of a beautiful chestnut Halflinger and was brushing its flaxen mane. The groomer didn’t see me, but the horse did. It turned its head and stared at me intently.
My instinct was to go for my camera and take the shot, but I had the inexplicable sensation that the horse was asking me not to. So, instead, I stood still and watched. I smiled at the horse and blinked slowly. When I’d opened my eyes anew, the horse turned its head away from me, confident I posed it no threat.
Farther ahead, to my right, a cowboy led a pinto horse from its stable. The horse swayed its muzzle to and fro as if adjusting its harness. And the cowboy spoke to it reassuringly, though his actual words I couldn’t distinguish.
It had been four years already since Tammy’s death, kicked by a pinto horse not too dissimilar from the one being led out of the stables now. Of course, I couldn’t blame the horse; Tammy had frightened it. But the pinto, although slimmer than the one who’d kicked Tammy, had the same caramel-colored coat with similar-sized splashes of white on its neck and body, and immediately my thought strayed to Tammy and the accident and my guilt.
Running into Lincoln then seeing a caramel-white pinto horse, all in one day. The memories came flooding back too quickly for me to digest. The discomfort must have shown on my face, because a stable hand came up to me, “You okay, there?”
