Whiskey was in a crowd of horses near the manger, which had just been filled with hay. Lainey set a saddle and blanket outside the barn and carried a bridle to him in the corral. “Whiskey,” she called. Then she whistled two notes that she hoped he’d learn to recognize as his. “Whiskey, want to go for a ride?”
She began by stroking him as he ate. Then she looped the reins over his neck, talking to him all the while. “This morning we’re going for a nice ride, just you and me. It’ll be fun, Whiskey. Give you a chance to stretch your legs out. You don’t want to spend all your time in this corral, do you? Of course you don’t. You need your exercise.”
His head was turned back so he could eye her as he chewed his hay. She kept smoothing his hide, which was the brown of a tilled field in spring, and talking until he had eaten his fill. Then she held the leather headstall up with one hand and slipped the bit in his mouth with the other.
He opened his mouth to take the bit, showing big, square teeth in his upper and lower jaw, but he jerked his head and backed away from her. She stayed alongside him, easing the bridle over his ears, as he pushed his way backward into the other horses, who sidestepped out of the way. “There,” she said. “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Still moving slowly and talking to him, she led him out of the corral, being careful to shut the gate behind her. At the hitching rail outside the barn, she flipped the saddle blanket onto his back and heaved the light saddle she’d chosen neatly on top of it. A quick duck under his belly and she grasped the cinch, which she tightened snugly. It pleased her that at least Whiskey would let her saddle him. So far so good. He still had his head turned so he could see her. His ears twitched back and forth, but he didn’t have the mean look of a horse that intends to bite.
“You’re just interested, aren’t you?” she asked him. “Just want to know what I’m planning to do. Well,” she said, “what we’re going to do is try riding along the road to the right instead of left. That way you can’t tell when you’ve gone a quarter of a mile because we won’t be walking past my house, see? And if it was something there that scared you, well, we won’t be passing it. So what do you think? Think I’m smart to figure that out, huh?”
She put her foot in the stirrup and lifted herself lightly into the saddle. Whiskey stood still as he was supposed to and snuffled softly. She smiled to herself. What if he behaved for her? What if he acted like a perfectly trained horse in her hands? That would be wonderful in one way, but not so wonderful in another because Mr. Dodge wouldn’t owe her anything if she couldn’t prove she’d trained Whiskey. She clucked and directed the horse toward the road. The light touch of her heels against his ribs was enough to get him walking.
Lopez was leading a lame horse to the barn. He turned to ask, “What are you doing on Whiskey, girl?” The sun glinted off the silver in the triangular beard he was growing. It made him look like a Spanish conquistador straight out of a social studies book.
“Mr. Dodge gave me permission to train him,” Lainey said. “I’m going to ride him down the road to the right. Did you try him in that direction, Lopez?”
He nodded. “Whiskey’s limit’s the same both ways.”
She was disappointed, “Well, what should I try, then?” she asked.
Half his thin mouth lifted in a smile. “Try riding another horse,” he said and continued on his way to the barn.
She sat up straight. So what if Lopez didn’t think she could do it. He might know horses, but he’d tried and failed with this one. Whiskey was different, and it was just a matter of figuring out how.
Whiskey turned calmly to the pressure of knee and rein and walked along the road to the right even though it was an unusual direction for him. There were no riding trails that way. He seemed so accepting of Lainey’s control that she even risked stopping him so that she could adjust her left stirrup. She’d been too anxious when she mounted to notice it was a little short.
“Come on, Whiskey, you’re doing great, boy.” She nudged him in the ribs with her heels to get him started again. He walked so sedately that she could relax and notice a late-blooming cactus whose startling red flower hadn’t completely laded yet. The morning sun massaged her shoulders gently. Only an occasional commuter vehicle to Tucson sped past, kicking up loose gravel at Whiskey’s legs.
“Isn’t this fun?” she asked him. “Aren’t we having a good time? And if you’re real good, I’ll give you some oats when we get back to the corral.” Oats were a special treat. Mr. Dodge didn’t dole them out unless a horse was off its feed for some reason.
When they got as far as the hotel—that would be a mile—she would turn around, because riding on the shoulder of the road wasn’t all that much fun. She would walk Whiskey back past the stable and—
In the middle of her thought, Whiskey began turning.
“Hey, what are you doing?” She pulled the reins against his turn. Ignoring the pressure of reins and her knees, he kept going until he was facing back the way they’d come. A quarter of a mile, she realized, that’s what he had done. That’s what he would do—no more. He wasn’t obeying her at all. He was doing what he wanted to do.
“Oh, no you don’t,” she said, and insisted with the rein and her legs that he turn back to go toward the hotel.
Whiskey tossed his head to get rid of the pressure of the high arched bit in his mouth. He snorted and tossed his head again, moving in the direction she wanted. But he continued in a circle right into the middle of the road and swung around until he was heading back to the ranch.
“Whiskey, you stop that now.” She fought him until he broke out in a surge of power and galloped for home.
Standing in the stirrups on the runaway horse, with one hand grasping the reins and the other clutching the saddle horn, Lainey felt as if she were on the edge of a diving board and about to fall off. Holding the horn also put her out of sync with the wild rhythm of Whiskey’s gallop. Neither reins nor horn was firm enough to keep her from flying off Whiskey’s back. One unexpected jerk and she’d be thrown onto the roadway. It took all her willpower to squeeze her fear into a hard little ball, let go of the horn, and pull back on the reins with both hands.
“Whoa, Whiskey. Slow down. You can’t gallop on this highway. It’s against the law.” Her shoulders ached, but she kept sawing on the reins. Finally, he slowed into a fast trot the last hundred feet to the ranch. To Lainey’s dismay, as she came bouncing in, Lopez just happened to be on horseback near the corral. He was talking to Chick, who had come back from leading the sunrise trail ride.
With a big grin, Chick opened the latch on the corral gate for her. He bowed mockingly and said, “Here she is, the horse trainer. How’d you do, Lainey?”
“Well, I kept Whiskey from galloping all the way back,” she said.
“No kidding! Guess you showed him who was boss, huh?”
Lainey bit her lip, refusing to respond to his mockery, but she couldn’t keep her face from flushing.
“Face it, kid,” Chick said. “That horse won’t give in lessen you can beat him to his knees or starve him, and you haven’t got the guts for that.”
“I don’t think breaking a horse’s spirit is the way to tame him,” Lainey said.
“You don’t, huh? What do you think of that, Lopez? Think this girl knows something we don’t know?” Chick was leaning toward Lopez as if hanging on his answer.
“I think Whiskey’s the wrong horse for you, Lainey,” Lopez said.
It surprised her that he had used her name, and it pleased her that at least he wasn’t making fun of her. “Well, I’m not finished with him yet,” she said. She ignored the opened corral gate and rode Whiskey to the barn, where she tied him to the hitching rail.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Lopez enter the corral and ride toward the fence at the far end with Chick following him on loot. Both men were carrying tools to repair the fence. Lainey was relieved that they’d turned their attention away from her.
For a few minutes she stood stroking Whiskey to calm him, although he seemed calm enough now that they were back. Then she brought him a bucket of oats from the feed bin in the barn. “There you go, fella. I know you don’t deserve it yet, but maybe if I’m nice to you, you’ll want to be nice to me, huh?”
When he was finished eating, she mounted him again. This time they went in the usual direction, to the left.
As soon as she saw Cobb Lane Development coming into view, she started talking to Whiskey, telling him what a basically fine horse he was, “and so beautiful,” she said. His ears turned back to listen. She talked with more animation, hoping to keep him distracted enough so he’d forget to turn around.
To her dismay, he began turning just before they got to Cobb Lane’s arch. Patiently, she allowed his turn as if it were her idea, but then she tugged him past the direction he’d meant to go and back the way they’d been heading in another 360-degree circle.
She dug her heels in and said, “Okay, Whiskey, let’s go.”
He reared and neighed and reared again. A bolt of fear split her gut as she remembered Mr. Dodge’s warning. If the horse got desperate enough, he’d rear so high he’d fall backward, hurting either or both of them.
A station wagon passed her. Children’s faces stared out the back window, goggle-eyed, as Whiskey did his Wild West act.
In any case, fighting her wasn’t what she wanted Whiskey to remember. She gave him his head, and they loped back toward the ranch. Again she managed to slow him enough so they were trotting rather than galloping when they turned in the driveway.
This time, after she tied him to the rail outside the barn, she removed his saddle. Then she went for the currycomb and brush and rags. She worked out her frustration grooming Whiskey, starting with the hot, sticky side of his neck and working back toward his haunches.
“How come you’re being so good to a cuss that done you wrong?” Chick asked. He rested the sole of his pointy, tooled-leather cowboy boot on the hitching rail.
“Just feel like it,” she said.
“Don’t make sense to reward a horse for bad behavior,” Chick said.
“So what would you do to teach him?”
“Like I told you. Tie him up, don’t give him any food or drink, use the quirt hard on him, and get yourself some spurs to dig in his hide.”
She swallowed. He was dead serious. “I couldn’t do that to an animal,” she said. Chick guffawed. Lopez, who was passing them on foot this time, raised an eyebrow and said nothing.
“Anyway, it won’t hurt to try training him my way, will it, Lopez?” Lainey asked.
“No,” Lopez admitted. “Just cost Mr. Dodge some oats.”
Chick acted as if that was the funniest thing he’d heard in a week. He reminded her of her brothers, who had enjoyed teasing her if they noticed her at all, and she was glad when he and Lopez walked on past her into the barn. It was lunchtime. They were going inside to eat.
She kept roughing up Whiskey’s dark matted hair and then using the brush to smooth it. He whisked his long black tail at the flies that had gathered and muttered to himself contentedly. When she was done, she rubbed him shiny with a rag.
“Tomorrow,” she told him, “I’ll bring you some bread. Think you’d like that? Hmmm, Whiskey?”
The intelligent brown eye with its fringe of black lashes regarded her with interest. A surge of liking for the independent animal filled her throat. Why should he obey any two-footed stranger who came along? Why shouldn’t he have a will of his own? “You want to be respected, don’t you, Whiskey?” she whispered. “Well, I can understand that all right. Yes, I can.”
As if he understood, Whiskey nudged her with his head. He was saying thank you, Lainey thought, and she smiled.