Kaya’s sorrel mare explodes into the arena. Her horse’s lower legs are wrapped in bright turquoise tape, so you can see just how much ground those legs cover. Kaya’s dressed in a white dress shirt and jeans. And she’s all business. Her mouth is puckered tight in concentration, her chin and shoulders reach way over the front of the saddle, while the bottom half of her rocks like crazy to take the full-on gallop. When she flies past with her silk black hair streaming, Alice and I cheer our heads off.
When she crosses the finish her time is 0.23 seconds faster than the next closest rider. “Yes, ma’am!” I yell, jumping up. “Go, Kaya!” Charlie and Ethan and a few of the other campers are on their feet, too, jumping up and down.
The crowd gives her a good round of applause. After a few seconds we all start to sit down. The noise settles suddenly, so it is not hard to hear the BLM officer say to the man next to him, “. . . squaw meat.” The man on the other side of Riker, or whatever his name is, jerks his head around to the officer and then turns quickly to his wife and daughter sitting next to him. The older man, the one the BLM officer was talking to, kicks his head back and laughs. “Yeah, but I wouldn’t mind some of that squaw meat.”
“What did he just say?” says Ethan.
“He just called Kaya squaw meat,” says Charlie.
Ethan raises his deep voice. “You mean that cracker jack just said something about the rider who just kicked butt all over everyone else?”
The old man sitting next to the officer turns around in his seat. “You better shut your mouth, boy, if you want to stay in one piece.”
I’m suddenly very aware that there are mainly white people in the bleachers. Like, all white people. But still, I mean, so what? So freakin’ what?
“Did you just call me boy, old man?” says Ethan. His voice just keeps getting louder and carries farther in the crowd.
The BLM man turns to us. “You little shits put a cork in it. That includes you, boy. You want to cheer for that red bitch, you can go elsewhere.”
“You can’t talk about people like that,” I say, standing up.
The man with a wife and daughter says, “Let’s everybody just watch the rodeo.”
His wife stands and picks her daughter up in her arms. “No way, Tom. I’m not going to sit here and let my daughter listen to that kind of language. Riker, Henry, I don’t care how much you’ve had to drink, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”
“Why don’t you control your wife, Tom?” says the older BLM man.
“Why don’t you shut your mouth, Riker,” says the big man, standing up.
Then everyone is standing up. Scotty and Devri and Banner and the whole crowd of kids are on their feet, and everyone in between. I’m sure people don’t even know what they’re standing up for. I grab Ethan’s arm like a break switch. Ethan’s big, but those old men look like the worst kind of trouble. Ethan shakes my hand off. He’s ready to hit somebody. I look down. Alice has gone into her coat completely. I drop down to put my arm around her again, and I see that Justin is sitting calmly in his seat, like he’s waiting for the next event, which he wouldn’t be able to see through all the people about to punch one another.
I hear some talking and scuffling and see a white beard. I hear people start to sit, and a few start to yell, and then Coulter laughs and everyone starts to sit down. Except Ethan. And Charlie. So I stand up next to them. I don’t know what else to do.
Coulter waves his hands to the direction of the exit. “All right, campers. Time to go. Rodeo’s over.”
* * *
Once we’re on the road back to camp Coulter makes everyone shut up so he can talk. “I am going to give you future leaders a story problem. So I want you to listen, even the ones who normally don’t. How does that sound?”
We’re all dead quiet.
“Let’s say you live in a neighborhood with a bad dog. Maybe a couple of bad dogs. Those dogs live in a house that you pass on your way to school. What do you do? Do you walk past the dogs and take your chances? Do you shoot the dogs in the street? Do you stop going to school? Or do you walk on the other side of the street?”
“I don’t have to take that shit off anyone,” says Ethan. “This isn’t the 1950s, in case you haven’t gotten the word up here.”
“Thank you, Ethan. You’ve had a shocking experience. Adults acted badly, no question. Now, what is your answer?”
“Mr. Coulter,” says Charlie. “If you are using rabid dogs as a philosophical metaphor, I would say dogs shouldn’t be allowed to attack people. That’s what laws are for. To protect people.”
“What if the dog catcher in town owns the dogs?”
“If a dog tried to bite me, I’d shoot that hound in the street,” says Banner. “Catcher or no catcher.”
“The Big Empty is not the kind of town where you can shoot every ill-mannered dog. Dogs have to be tough, and sometimes that brings out the worst in them. What would you do, Ethan? What gets you the result you want?”
Ethan looks out the window instead of answering. “We got bad dogs in my neighborhood, too, Mr. Coulter. And nobody calls me boy there either.”
“No, they don’t. Because you and your family have been smart enough to pick your battles and win, right?”
Ethan doesn’t answer.
“Sometimes being a smart leader is losing the battle so you can win the war.”
“We didn’t win anything tonight,” I say.
Coulter says. “Kaya did. And you did. Because you all stuck together. Don’t forget that. And also please try to remember all the good people you met tonight. Like the Anderson family, who were trying to help. There are more good people than bad in The Big Empty, and more good people than most towns have period.”
* * *
I think I will remember everything about this night. The good and the bad. When I finally get to bed I close my eyes and think of Kaya flashing around those barrels while those men talked trash about her in the bleachers. I think about Ethan and Charlie standing up to those men. And Alice going to the rodeo even though it was so hard for her. My friends make me want to be brave other places besides the saddle.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“TODAY IS EVERYBODY’S birthday,” says Coulter. “Or pretty close to it. In just a few minutes you get your yearling. And just like when you were born, you can’t pick your legs, but you can pick what you do with them.”
Match day. When we get the yearling we will work with for the auction. I’m sweating I’m so excited and nervous. Plus it’s hotter than Hades in this field we’re standing in, and ghastly botflies are everywhere. I love that Wyoming even has flies that eat your flesh.
Coulter continues. “Your mustang has a freezemark on the left side of his or her neck that we’ve translated for you and written the individual four-digit code on the horse’s halter. All your mustangs have a halter on them already. We had that picnic this morning.
“Now, I know you all think you’re going to walk out into the pasture and find your soul mate. But the reality is that horses, like people, are not perfect. Soul mates are earned, not found. And as you’ve hopefully noticed, these horses are young, so you won’t ride them. The reason we work with yearlings is that buyers want to train their own horse, but they want someone else to do the hard work of getting them used to people.”
Coulter looks funny. His eyes are watery and his arms are extra floppy. “So the way this works is that you stick your hand in this bucket and get a number. We don’t name them so you don’t get attached. Of course you will, but we try to keep that to a minimum.”
Darius walks though the crowd, letting all of us pick a number out of a feed bucket. My number is 4748. That sounds lucky enough. Everyone bumps over to the fence to get a peek at their equestrian match. I’m so short all I see are heads. But I hear people sounding happy. That’s promising.
When I finally get
to the front I see a red roan marked 4748 wandering near the gate. I’ve noticed her before. She looks like she’s about two years old, and she’s already pudgy. Or maybe that’s baby fat, but I’m not sure how you get fat as a baby mustang. It’s like getting fat on lettuce as a toddler. Anyway, she has straight legs and a pretty head. And gorgeous strawberry coloring. I’ll call her Roanie. I turn to Alice. “Who’d you get?”
She points to a tall black yearling with a white blaze down his face. He’s bumping around with the other yearlings in the corner. “Wow. Your horse is beautiful,” I say.
“All horses are beautiful,” says Alice. “Who did you get?”
I point to the red roan.
“Is she pregnant?” asks Alice, smiling.
“Weird, huh?”
“She’s pretty. She just needs some exercise,” says Alice.
Coulter makes us all stand and watch our horses interact with one another. Goliath has been separated out already to the small round pen so no one gets kicked while we go out to get our yearlings. Coulter says, “Starting now you will all get a chance to feed them, and we will supervise you getting them out and walking them around on a halter. All of these horses have been worked in a round pen with us already, and nobody has been an idiot but that one.”
Coulter points to Goliath. All the boys laugh. I guess they recognize a bully when they see one. “He’s Justin’s problem. If Justin gets a saddle on him, one of you can ride him at the auction. If not, we’ll have to ship him off to Rock Springs.”
“What really happens in Rock Springs?” I ask.
“Nothing,” says Coulter. “They put the mustang’s picture up on the Internet. Then they keep ’em there until someone takes them. Which is never for most of them.”
“Never?” I say.
“Never,” says Coulter. “And that goes for any of these horses who don’t get adopted. This is their shot at something more than standing in an overcrowded pasture with nothing to do but get older for the rest of their lives.”
All the kids get quiet.
“That’s like jail,” says Banner.
“Call it what you want to, honey, that’s the way it is.”
* * *
We all watch as everyone catches their horses. Ethan’s bay follows him almost instantly. Alice’s horse rears when she tries to lead him out of the pasture, so Darius comes to help her, but Alice doesn’t shy away. When the horse comes back down she stands opposite and pets him until he settles down.
Banner stands next to me with Devri behind her. “Nervous?”
“No,” I say.
“You aren’t going to have a seizure or something?”
“Tomorrow. I thought the first day we’d go for ice cream.”
“Darlin’, it looks like your horse has done that a few too many times already. You might want to get her some diet hay.”
Devri thinks this is hilarious. If she were a horse, Devri would eat diet hay.
Coulter calls Banner to come get her horse. “Hey. Look at that. My guy’s gorgeous. What do you know?”
And he is. He’s a paint with dark brown patches on pure white. Banner strides out to get him, and he stands quietly for Coulter, but as soon as she gets ahold of him he’s all over the place. Coulter steps in and takes the horse. “You might want to wait on this one. I’ll work with him this afternoon.”
Banner says, “He’s mine, isn’t he?”
Coulter has Justin move Goliath from the round pen while he gets Banner’s mustang under control. Banner and Coulter walk into the round pen together, and then Coulter turns the horse loose. He stands behind Banner’s big red hair. “Have at it.”
Banner stands up square to the horse. And when I say square, I’m not counting the curves that come out of that skintight T-shirt she’s painted into. I can see her belly button indentation. Then she flips out the lead line like a whip. The horse takes off running and works himself into a lather. He looks like he wants to quit, but she keeps running him. Finally, when the horse is breathing smoke, Coulter nudges Banner, and she puts her hands down. The horse stops and gasps for air.
“What did you just teach that colt?” says Coulter.
Banner walks out to the horse, swinging her hips. The horse looks nervous, but he’s too tired to run. She strokes his neck. She scratches his head. She talks to him, but I can’t hear what she’s saying. I look around me. Every male with eyeballs has his tongue hanging out. Some of them look like they might fall over if I pushed them with two fingers. She hooks the lead line back into his halter. “He’ll be right as rain after a week.”
Coulter nods. “You’ve done this before then?”
“I break all my daddy’s horses.”
“We don’t break horses here, Banner, we gentle them.”
Banner walks out of the round pen with the horse trailing behind her. “He looks gentle to me, Mr. Coulter,” she says sweetly. “In fact, I think I’ll call him Sugar.”
Coulter drops his head. Every guy is making the same stupid face. It’s revolting. And I’m not at all hypersensitive.
“You’re next, Cassidy,” says Coulter.
“Someone else can go next if they want to,” I say.
“Get your horse,” says Coulter.
I look out into the corral. Darius is approaching the roan. She spins back from him. Great.
“I’ll come get her,” I say, rushing in. She spins even wilder when I move too fast.
“Hold up, you two,” says Coulter. “She’s a spooky one.”
I stop walking. “Darius, can I catch her myself?”
Darius gives me the king of dirty looks and then comes out, dropping the lead line in my hand. “She’s all yours, genius.”
I feel my face go pink. He’s right, of course. This horse is way more than I can handle. But he wasn’t doing her any favors. I just stand there. I mean for a long time. Then I take a step forward. When she looks, I step. When she doesn’t, I wait. After several minutes, I make it to her side. She dances off to the right. I turn and see Kaya standing right behind me.
“I’m here just in case,” she says.
I know I’ll probably be sorry, but I think that having two of us in here is just making it more dangerous for everyone.
“Can I try it alone for three more minutes?”
“Cassidy, you barely started riding.”
I think of Dalton and step back. Kaya gets the horse for me and hands me the lead rope. Then I walk with the roan out to where Justin is standing against the fence, leaning up against it with his boot stuck in the gate.
“Don’t let Kaya do your work for you. That roan isn’t spooky unless you think she is.”
Why does Justin come at me like that? I know how the horse feels. Then it hits me. I know how the horse feels. Not exactly, but something like it. I stop there in the middle of the walkway. The roan sidesteps, watching my every move. I look at Coulter, waiting for him to compare me to Banner. I start humming and walk away in the opposite direction.
“Where do you think you’re going?” says Coulter.
“For a walk,” I say.
When I pull, she gives, and I let go. When she stops, I stop, too, but I keep pulling. In about nothing flat she gets it, and I take her all around the outside of the arena area. She’s smart. If I was that smart, I’d have figured out how to ride the first day I was here.
When I get back to where Coulter is standing he’s smiling. “Well done.”
“Thanks,” I say.
I look up and see Justin’s hat facing down. I know underneath it he’s smiling, too.
* * *
That night I go back to feed Goliath. But when I get to the upper corral he isn’t there. I panic for a second and then remember how Coulter kept him separate earlier today. But in the morning when I go to get Roanie I find him back with the yearlings. I won
der how I could have missed him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
EVERY DAY IT’S something else at Point of No Return. Today the adventure is a trail ride. Coulter meets me outside the outhouses when I finish cleaning. I swear it’s like my dad’s office hours. People know they can always find me here. Coulter points at a mountain that juts into the sky off to the south. “Can you handle that today? There will be some tight spots.”
Every time I do something I think is impossible, Coulter raises the bar higher. “I don’t know.”
“You’re welcome to stay here and help Darius clean out the clog in the shower drains.”
* * *
I hustle to finish my chores and get saddled. I decide not to think about all the ways I could get hurt on the trail ride. This horse stuff seems to be coming back to me, at least some of it. But it’s like finding a hundred-dollar bill in my pocket. I’m not quite sure what to do with it, or if it’s really mine. Anyway, riding in the mountains sounds a hundred times more fun that riding in circles in the arena. I just hope Smokey and I are up to it.
The morning goes like a dream. Smokey’s in a great mood. I saddle him quickly. The sun makes pink layers on the morning clouds. Everyone is quiet and busy getting their gear set. There’s a lot to do before you can set off for an all-day ride, like packing clothes and food and going to the bathroom about seventeen times. By the time we’re ready the sun has burned off the morning mist. I look across the valley up at the mountain. It seems impossibly far to go, but then again, just being here seemed impossible a few weeks ago.
Right as we’re getting into our saddles, a cloud of dust shows up on the horizon, and Officer Hanks’s truck speeds into the yard. The truck makes a hard stop, throwing up dust. A bunch of the kids nearly lose control of their horses trying to get out of the way. “Aww hell,” say Coulter.
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