Thirty years ago.
Even at six years old, Robbie’s always been a light sleeper who wakes when he hears the first person stirring in the house. That person is usually his dad—making coffee, tugging on his boots, and heading outside before the sun rises.
This morning, Robbie pads downstairs to see the warm glow of light spilling through the kitchen door and snow piling up in every window. His dad is poised by the back door, halfway into his winter gear.
“Dad,” Robbie whispers. “I wanna come help you do chores.”
His dad grins. “You sure, buddy? It’s cold out there.”
Robbie nods solemnly, so his dad bundles him into his snow pants and boots, his heaviest coat, and his hat. Then, he finishes his own preparations, wrapping a silk scarf twice around his neck. He seems to sense Robbie watching him, and hesitates, but then he bends down in front of him and folds another scarf carefully, doubling it down until it’s a third of its original size.
“You know the secret of silk, buddy?” The rag is one his father wears often, pale sky blue and dusted with a subtle floral pattern. Robbie shakes his head. “It’s cool in the summer and warm in the winter,” his dad confides. He wraps the scarf around Robbie’s neck and knots the ends together, just like Robbie has seen him do a hundred times for himself. “There you go. Now, you really look like a Chase.” He winks, his eyelashes golden and bronze in the lamplight. “What do you think about that?”
Robbie grins. “Cool,” he says, and his father laughs.
They step outside into a snow-blurred sunrise, and Robbie squeals when his dad grabs him around the waist with one arm and swings him over the banked snow on the steps, landing him safely in the fluffy drifts on the ground.
“You know the secret of snow?” his dad asks.
Robbie shakes his head vigorously, feeling the silk move against his throat, soft and warm against his skin.
“Three months after a heavy fog, you’ll get rain or snow. So, in the fall, you can start marking your calendar for the snowy mornings. What do you think about that?”
“Cool,” Robbie says, and his father laughs again.
Today.
Robbie didn’t jot down the dates of every foggy morning last November, but he remembers a string of days where it was so dense that he could barely see. He smiles at the realization that this January morning falls ninety days later, and then touches his neck, where a plain charcoal scarf is knotted around his throat. It’s not the blue one his dad gave him; he carried that with him almost daily after his dad died, until it went missing one day. The loss still stings. Even now, he can easily picture the faded roses in its pattern and feel the glide of the fine old silk between his thumb and forefinger, and smell the hint of coffee on his father’s breath when he knelt in front of Robbie and tied it around his neck the first time.
Standing in the renovated hayloft on the ranch where his dad, grandfather, and great-grandfather worked all their lives, Robbie watches snow tumble down through the large window on the south wall. “You were right this time, Dad.”
The sky is so cloud-dense, it looks like a single roll of cotton, promising knee-deep snow by sunset. Robbie finishes washing his hands and turns off the tap, casting an automatic frown down into the sink, where he still needs to install a drain. Anywhere he looks in the apartment, he sees something on his to-do list—caulking the countertop, installing the drawer-pulls, grouting the tile around the wood stove. He keeps the list even though he hasn’t checked anything off of it since Johnny moved out.
He looks out the window again. So far, the snow is just a picturesque dusting on the stone buildings and row of evergreens north of the barnyard, but by tomorrow afternoon, the whole ranch will be buried.
Robbie finishes his coffee and tosses the dregs in the sink. By the door, he shrugs into his heavy duster coat and winter boots, takes a black felt hat from its peg, and heads out. This might be his last chance to get anything done for a few days, and there’s always plenty that needs doing. In particular, he has to make sure the horses have enough feed if he isn’t able to get to them for a while.
He still keeps four saddle horses, which is two too many, but he has yet to fully accept that Johnny is gone and shows no signs of ever coming back. Instead, Robbie throws twice as much hay and shovels twice as much crap as he should so that Johnny’s two bay geldings, who Robbie has always just called “the clones,” can stand around and look good. With them in the pipe corral is Dusty, Robbie’s old palomino mare, who’s enjoying semi-retirement. And then there’s Poco, the big black gelding who Robbie rides almost every day.
The other horses are standing in the shed, not a single snowflake clinging to them, but Poco is camped out by the hay feeder, coated in snow and completely unbothered by it. He turns his white-blazed face toward Robbie when he hears him come outside, then nickers a greeting. When he sees that Robbie is headed toward the gate, he hurries to meet him. His hooves crunch through snow and freezing mud on his way.
“You’re a workaholic,” Robbie observes, adjusting his hat on his head and grabbing the halter off the gate.
Riverside Ranch has been in Robbie’s family for six generations. Until the fire last year, the sprawling white farmhouse his ancestors built stood at the center of the outbuildings. Robbie tries not to look at the empty place in the scene where it used to be. The limestone barns, sheds, and the old chicken coop are all that’s left of the original farmstead now. To the northeast are two more modern structures for equipment and feed—an old silver-metal Quonset and the newer, hulking rectangle of the tractor shed, both erected in the 1980s by Robbie’s dad.
He takes Poco into what they’ve always called the saddle barn. It’s a small building originally built as a corn crib, but Robbie’s grandfather converted it for use for horses. It has two old wooden stalls that now contain scrap lumber and the riding and push mowers, but Robbie still uses the ties and tack room.
The five barn cats saunter out after Robbie has the horse tied, all of them stretching and rubbing against his legs. He staggers to avoid stepping on them, spreading some cat food from a bin into their tin bowls before he retrieves Poco’s blanket, saddle, and bridle. While Robbie settles the saddle blanket over his withers, Poco stares out at the piling snow with his ears forward, like he can’t wait to get back out into it.
“Like I said, he’s a workaholic,” Robbie tells one of the cats—an orange and white female called Lemon who never eats until the other cats have cleared away from the dishes. Lemon yawns and meows, and Robbie can’t help pausing to scratch down her back. Sometimes he feels self-conscious, talking to his animals like they’re people, but then he remembers no one is around to notice.
When Poco is saddled, Robbie slips off his halter to bridle him, then mounts in the barn aisle, ducking his head as he rides out so that he doesn’t hit the beam over the doorway.
Poco can be hard to handle at the beginning of a ride, so Robbie just gives him his head and lets him spring straight into a canter, barely having to guide him toward the north trail. There’s a break in the trees just on the edge of the farmyard, which Robbie maintains with a chainsaw and brush mower once every couple of years. It quickly narrows as it dives toward the first of several creek crossings.
From there, the path is just a horse trail, wide enough at times to ride two abreast, but mostly forcing a nose-to-tail orientation. It’s winding and sloping and snow-spattered, but Poco knows every inch even better than Robbie does, and he navigates it at high speed without a stumble or hesitant step.
It’s still reckless, letting Poco charge through the bends and leap the creeks instead of navigating at a conservative walk or trot. Robbie should probably be more careful. If he fell and hurt himself out here, no one would know.
Still, he ignores the fleeting thought and grins as Poco bounds over the fourth creek crossing, then surges up the steep embankment on the other side. Robbie grasps the saddle horn to help hold himself over the horse’s shoulders, his center of gravity, with his other hand resting on his hat so that he doesn’t lose it.
When Poco crests the incline, he slows of his own volition and Robbie gives his neck a pat. Residual adrenaline keeps his heart pounding even at the slower pace. There’s no sound except their combined breaths—horse and rider, briefly one—and the whisper of snow settling on the dense branches overhead.
Over the years, especially the last few, Robbie has felt like there’s no lonelier person than him, on horseback at what can feel like the ends of the Earth. But even though he sometimes hates this place and the unbreakable hold it seems to have on him, he desperately loves it, too. Especially in moments like this.
If he has to be trapped, at least he loves his cage.
Poco senses the horses before Robbie can see them. One moment, he’s ambling along with his head low and his neck outstretched, reaching for the few low branches that still have some stubborn-clinging yellow leaves, then bobbing his head and spitting them back out when they prove bitter to the taste. In the next moment, the gelding raises his head and quickens his steps, staring out amongst the trees with interest. He doesn’t break into a trot, but there’s a definite spring in his steps as he walks faster.
The horses range all over the property, hemmed in only by the perimeter fencing. Occasionally, they used to drift past the house and barns, though that hasn’t happened for a couple of years, not since the neighboring property to the west changed hands again and the new owner started keeping cattle in the meadow close to the property line. Apparently, the wild ones don’t like cattle. Robbie knows their habits like they’re a gang of teenaged troublemakers and he’s the beat cop in their neighborhood. Based on the time of year, the weather, and the time of day, nine times out of ten, he can find at least one of the bands in the first place he looks.
Today, he’s expecting them to be in the trees, anticipating the winter storm more keenly than any radiologist, and spread out into the four bands that have stayed more or less consistent since their first year here. They aren’t proper bands, Danny would be quick to remind him. They don’t behave like they would if they’d been left truly wild because the males are all geldings now and the mares aren’t busy minding foals. The closest thing they have to a juvenile are the few that were yearlings when they came, and they’re now seven years old.
Nonetheless, Robbie thinks of them as bands, the family units that wild horses naturally form. There’s Millie’s band, which is strictly female and consists of Millie and the other three oldest mares, the greys—Pewter, Silver, and Dot—and with them is Sage, Millie’s daughter, who was a yearling at her side when the horses were brought here that first summer.
Then there’s Kyle’s band, or “the bachelors” as Johnny affectionately refers to them. They’re the closest thing to friendly of all the horses, even though Robbie tries not to encourage them.
The third group is the wiliest, and sometimes weeks go by without Robbie getting a good look at them. He calls the sly black mare who heads up their ranks Bandit.
Finally, there’s Lucky’s band, the largest of the four bands at nearly two dozen strong, and they’re the ones that he and Poco have stumbled across, it seems. They don’t startle and run from the approaching horse and rider the way Bandit and her renegades would, or venture close to touch noses with Poco like the bachelors sometimes do. Lucky has one remaining eye after a close call during his first week on the ranch, which won him his name. He holds his head at an angle to get a good look at them. He’s a reddish palomino, with a coat the color of a burnished penny and a silvery-white forelock that falls over the blemished side of his face.
“Hey, handsome,” Robbie calls softly, nudging Poco onward with his calves while his eyes skate over the horses visible through the trees, their group standing close together, chins resting on one another’s snow-damp backs. When he has a good count, and sees that they’re all bright-eyed and seem to be in one piece, he starts scanning the trees for the next band.
He sees Millie’s band next. Or, at least, he gets a quick glimpse of Sage. The other mares must be tucked down along the creek bank where the wind can’t reach them, but Sage’s dark head pops up above the brush that hedges the embankment, standing out against the snowfall. He rides Poco in that direction, ducking the grasping tree branches that glance off the waterproofed canvas and leather of his duster, but snag on his jeans and Poco’s mane and tail. When he’s close enough to peer over the edge, the mares have already moved downstream. They’re drifting away—except for Millie, who stands facing Poco and him like she’s guarding their retreat. Robbie gives her a respectful little nod, and she chooses that moment to pivot and charge after the others, her hooves crunching in the shallow ice.
Robbie guides Poco back to the trail and they follow it along as it continues to weave north. Predictably, Bandit is nowhere in sight, but Robbie does hear crashing brush and hoofbeats further up the trail. He assumes Bandit heard them coming and scattered her band somewhere out of his line of vision. Poco jerks his head in the direction of the noise and lets out a long, rumbling snort that vibrates in his whole body and makes Robbie grin, cautiously.
“Easy, son. Now’s not the time to rediscover your wild side.” It takes a certain kind of horse to be the only domesticated one in sight or smelling distance and not cotton on to the wild ones’ energy. He reaches behind the saddle and gives Poco’s rump a gentle pat. Poco snorts again, then puts his head forward and trudges on, back to business.
The path forks out, breaking into a few narrow trails that the wild ones have cut, and the broader, main trail opens into the hay meadow. That summer, Robbie had swathed and baled the grass on these fifteen gently sloping, relatively clear acres, then rowed up the tightly rolled bales and put a few strands of electric wire around the perimeter to keep the horses out of them. This way, he can feed them without getting a tractor up here or forcing them into corrals by the house for the winter. They’re only halfway through the available bales. Kyle’s band is gathered around the mound of dried grass, eating contentedly, when Robbie and Poco break out of the trees.
Kyle is a dark bay, and he looks nearly all black in his full winter coat. He calls out a sharp whinny to Poco in greeting. Poco answers, which Robbie should probably discipline him for, but Robbie and Poco don’t really have that kind of relationship, so he lets it slide. He’s been riding Poco almost every day for the past ten years, and if the horse hasn’t decided to rebel, unload Robbie, and join the wild ones in their wild ways yet, he probably won’t start now.
The bachelors are a small band; it’s just Kyle, another three bays, three dun-colored seven-year-olds, and two lanky sorrels that look like siblings. The sorrels are starting to show their age. According to their paperwork, they’re sixteen. Robbie reminds himself to ask Megan if there’s another kind of mineral supplement that might help them keep their weight on. He gives them each a critical once-over, but he can see they still have healthy, round barrels, apparent even through their plush winter coats. Still, they’re leaner than the rest of the group, despite constant access to hay.
“Clear out, gentlemen,” Robbie says, waving his arms, and when that doesn’t faze them, whistling and cracking the ends of his reins against the leather saddle. It makes a sharp noise that finally scatters the bachelors, but they’re more grudging than afraid as they trudge off toward the trees.
Robbie wraps the reins around the saddle horn and dismounts, leaving Poco ground-tied. He turns off the solar charger that’s feeding a pulsing electrical charge into the wire that he can hear like a tick. When it’s safe, he adjusts the fiberglass posts and the wire strung through them so that the horses can reach a fresh bale. He’s using his pocket knife to cut loose the twine bundling the bale together when his phone rings.
Hearing his phone while he’s up in the meadow is always a little surreal, like he imagines it would be to get a call from home while visiting the moon. He has a sense of being a world apart and out of reach, and yet he can hear the tinny voice of someone in his ear when he takes the call.
It’s Danny calling, which leaves Robbie instantly worried. Even though he wishes that Danny would call him from school on the east coast every few days, like a dutiful younger brother might, he doesn’t. So, Robbie’s first thought is that Danny is in the middle of some emergency.
And as it turns out, he’s not exactly wrong. It’s just not Danny’s emergency.
“Danny?”
“Robbie? Hey...can barely hear you.”
“I’m up in the hay meadow. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Or I mean, nothing with me. Listen, I need you to do me a big favor, okay? Lance called me. He’s in jail, and I need you to go bail him out.”