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I looked up at her, curious to hear what else she would require of me. Her eyes drifted to the horses grazing in the pasture, and she said, “Somewhere out there in those fields, there’s a little buckskin mare that you left behind. According to your Pa, no one’s been able to catch her in a couple years. That mare was a gift from your Pa, and it would mean a lot to him to see you on her again.”
I was surprised by all my mom had just said. “So, let me get this straight, you don’t want me to help you cook, you want me to be out with dad on the ranch?”
She nodded. “Don’t let what happened chase you away again. Your place has always been out here with the animals. The sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be.”
For a while, we sat in the stillness, taking in the quietness of nature. Eventually, I told my mother about my eventful day in Durango, about running into my old teacher, and about Sammy. As I had known she would, she was deeply distressed by Samantha’s predicament. She and I had been best friends since fourth grade, and my mom thought of Sam as another daughter. She was worried about the reaction her parents would have, just as I was. My mother and I made plans, just in case, and we kept both those plans, and the news of Samantha’s pregnancy between us.
I found my father in the breeding barn after breakfast, and I made my way toward him. He was talking with a younger man, one I didn’t recognize, when I approached. He looked up, a grin spreading the wrinkles on his face apart. “Callie, my girl, didn’t expect you’d come out here.”
I smiled. “Mom said you guys have been having some bad luck with breeding for a while. I thought maybe I could help.”
My father’s gold eyes took me in for a moment, and then the grin widened into a genuine smile. “I’d be glad for the help.” Turning, he nodded his head toward the younger man who was inspecting a horse’s hoof. “This is Reeve Thornton. He just started working here this summer. Reeve’s a farrier and a great hand with the horses. Reeve, this is my daughter, Callie.”
I glanced at the man, who appeared to be about my age, and I watched as his brown eyes widened in surprise as my father introduced me. He held out his hand. “Wow, nice to meet you, Callie.” Turning to my dad, he continued, “Had no idea you had another daughter, Sir.”
My dad chuckled. “Yep, Callie here’s our youngest. Our little runaway. She just came back from New York.”
Reeve’s eyes widened even further. “New York? Geeze, that’s quite a bit different than Durango. Were you going to school there, or something?”
I laughed. “Or something…” Reeve was a handsome man, tall, muscular, with sandy brown hair and dark brown eyes. His hair was cut short, not quite a crew-cut, but still pretty short. His face hosted a fireman mustache, bushy enough to nearly cover his upper lip with long edges that curved slightly downward. The hair there had a slight red tint to it, and I found it both cliché and oddly attractive at the same time.
Turning back to my dad, I asked him, “So, want to fill me in on the breeding program, and issues?”
My dad excused us from Reeve, but I didn’t miss the look of interest on the younger man’s face as we walked away, and apparently neither did my father because he chuckled and shook his head. Over the next hour, my dad walked me through the protocol he had been following and told me about the problems they’d encountered.
“See, when you were a kid, it was simpler. We just left the stallion turned out with the mares, and he did the work for us. Now, we’ve gotta keep the stallion we have stalled up because he’s too aggressive to be with the mares, and then we must deal with an aggravated, stud full of energy.” He shook his head. “The mares baulk from him, and we’ve had nothing but bad luck since we bought him. Paid a damned fortune for him too.”
Now I found myself confused. “Wait, what happened to Clancey?”
My dad pulled off his dirt-stained cowboy hat and raked a hand through his gray hair. “Clancey died year after you left for the big apple. Went outside one morning, and there he was, laying down in the grass. When he didn’t come to feed, I knew he had probably passed. He was old.”
My shoulders sank. Old Clancey was the gentlest, sweetest tempered stallion I’d met, and the news of his death was depressing. “Didn’t we have any of his offspring we could use instead of buying a new stud?”
My dad shook his head. “Nah, we never kept the colts unless we gelded um’, because they were related to too many of our mares. Cody suggested investing in a new bloodline, and he was right, it was time to change the breeding up a bit, I just think we got a dud.”
He smiled at me then. “Clancey’s not completely lost to us. We’ve got a handful of his sons-geldings-and a few of his daughters. Your own little mare was by him, if you recall.”
Pizazz. Just the thought of her threatened to turn the emotional faucet in me back on, and I had to chomp down on my jaw to stop it from overflowing. “Yeah, I remember. Have you gotten any foals outta her?”
My dad shook his head sadly. “Turned her out on the back forty after you left, she hasn’t come back in since. Every time we go out there to catch mares, she manages to elude us, like she’d turned wild or something.”
I had to bite down on my cheeks to stop the sob that tore at me. Pizazz had been orphaned a month after birth when her dam coliced and my dad had given me the responsibility of bottle feeding her. She had grown extremely attached to me, and as she matured and I began her training, the bond between us had only grown. It had grown so much, in fact, that it had been with her I’d first began realizing that I had some weird…abilities with animals.
Lifting my gaze, I found my dad watching me. “You want to go see her?”
I wasn’t ready for that yet. Maybe I was being a coward, but I didn’t care. “No. Let me see this stallion Cody talked you into buying.”
10
My father hadn’t been kidding. The big black horse thrashed around the arena, snorting, pawing and bucking. He was like a tightly coiled spring ready to be released. The whites of his eyes flashed as he sped past me, his thick body a force to be reckoned with. Built like a tank, and easily sixteen feet tall, the stallion was a brute. He was impressive, there was no denying that, and the few times he had been still enough for me to get a good look at him, I had been able to see the perfection of his conformation, but his temperament…that was another story all together. His coat was sleek and the deep black of velvet, his mane and tail long and thick.
He had the classic Quarter Horse build, thick wide chest, bulging muscles, and full, rounded hind quarters. His face was neither too small nor too large, with a refined look and large cheeks. Overall, he was stunning. Picture perfect, and from what I could see, dangerous. Glancing at my dad, I arched a brow.
“I can certainly see the appeal, but really, dad? He’s too big. Most of our mares are only fifteen hands. This guy’s huge. You’re lucky you’ve only lost foals and not the broodmares. What were you thinking?”
My dad sighed. “I let Cody go alone to pick him out at the sale. He texted me a picture of him, and his papers. I didn’t realize he was so large, and he was only a two year old then, so he got bigger.”
I laughed. Shaking my head, I said, “Pa, I think you should sell him, find another stud.”
