Minutes after Jane’s arrival at the house in rural Orange County, in the early dark, with the moon not yet afloat on the eastern sky, Travis took her to the stable behind the house, the crisp leaves of live oaks crunching underfoot.
“See, Exmoor ponies came from England,” the boy told her excitedly. “This one, she was born here. But they’re from England. Ponies were in England like ten thousand years before people. They had scary saber-toothed tigers then and these giant old mastodons. The tigers and mastodons, they’re gone long ago, but not Exmoor ponies. Exmoor ponies are forever.”
The hanging lamps in the center aisle poured brandy-colored light onto a floor embedded with hoof-stamped bits of straw. Drifts of soft shadows smoothed the corners and sabled those stalls that were empty.
Bella and Sampson stood side by side in their enclosures, craning their necks over the half doors, nickering hello, tails swishing across stall boards.
Jane and Travis would visit the mare and stallion, but not before he introduced her to the survivor of saber-tooths that waited across the way from the larger horses, in a stall with a door cut lower. She was a bay mare with a darker brown mane. Her eyes were large and wide apart and suggestive of keen intelligence.
“Isn’t she really beautiful?” Travis asked.
“She really is.”
“Her name’s Hannah. We just got her Tuesday.”
Hannah had a clean throatlatch and fine neck, shoulders well laid back, a deep, wide chest. The pony was full-grown, standing at most twelve hands high, no more than forty-nine or fifty inches, yet it seemed too big for the boy.
Although Jane knew her concern was exaggerated if not entirely misplaced, she said, “You’re careful with her?”
“Yeah, sure. She’s real gentle.”
“She’s strong, and she can kick.”
“She never kicks me.”
“You better always wear your helmet when you ride.”
“Yeah. I can mount by myself already, Mom. I can ride kind of. We don’t ride fast. It’s Gavin and me, not just me myself.”
“You always do what Gavin tells you with horses.”
“I will. Yeah. I do.”
She put an arm around the boy and pulled him against her side, counseling herself not to leave him with memories only of a nagging mom. “I’m proud of you, cowboy.”
“When did Daddy learn to ride?”
“Raised on a Texas ranch? Probably as young as you.”
“He did rodeo.”
“He did indeed. Before he joined the Marines.”
“Can we go there, to Texas, someday?”
“You were there once, when you were just three.”
“I kind of remember, but I don’t.”
“When all this is over, we’ll go again. Your grandma and grandpa are great people.”
“You got to watch me ride tomorrow.”
“I have to be on the road early, but I’ll wait to see you ride. I wouldn’t miss that.”
He’d brought two quartered apples in a large paper cup. He fed two pieces to Hannah, and the pony took them almost quicker than the eye could follow, blessed as it was with prehensile lips peculiar to its breed.
“I miss my dad,” Travis said softly.
“I miss him, too. Very much.”
“I wish he was here to see me ride.”
“He sees you, Trav. You don’t see him anymore, but he sees you every day, and he’s proud, too.”