Wayne needed to spill his guts, and it was occurring to Blaze, in a delicious, heady way, that if Wayne and Tom were both off horse duty, he’d have a chance to have Gabe to himself for chunks of hours at a time. That way, even if he didn’t dare say anything, he could stare at Gabe and call it work.
At the pasture, Gabe gestured to the fence line, explaining, once again, how it worked. Then he unhooked it without turning off the generator, explaining how you could do it this way, if you were careful not to touch the cloth-covered wires. They followed him through and waited while he re-hooked the gate, then he talked about the feed troughs, and the water tanks, and about the need to build a small shelter for the horses, if they felt like being in the shade.
“There are trees about, but they are at the far end of the pasture. This is where the food and water are, so the horses are likely going to want to be here rather than out there.”
Blaze knew all of this, and he was tired of Wayne’s face looking all pinched.
“Wayne has something to tell you,” he announced. “Don’t you, Wayne.”
With a shrug and a nod, Wayne finally blurted it out. “I’m allergic to horses,” he said. “I can’t get within feet of ’em or I start sneezing and my eyeballs explode.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Gabe seemed genuinely puzzled, his dark brows furrowed, but, being the kind of guy he was, patient and kind, he didn’t look mad. “And it’s not in your file, so—”
“Was allergic when I was a kid,” said Wayne, accompanying this with another shrug. “I thought I’d grown out of it. Sorry.”
He didn’t look terribly sorry, and Blaze tried to make up for this by looking extra sorrowful and sad, even though, on the inside, he was shouting, bubbles of joy moving up inside of him. Wayne’s loss. His gain.
“Well, you’re off the hook then,” said Gabe, a little laugh as he tried to make a joke of it. “You can work with Tom.”
“Thank you.” With a nod, Wayne made his way back toward his tent, head down, hands in his pockets, seeming to shuffle through the grasses along the path, but he was hurrying and Blaze knew he must be glad to get that part over.
“Just you and me, then,” said Blaze, doing his best not to sound too pleased about it, but utterly failing. Utterly failing to keep from smiling, as well, though perhaps Gabe only thought that Blaze was trying to be upbeat and cheerful, a team player. “Show me what you got.”
He did not mean that to come out sounding like it had, creatively suggestive, come-hither-inducing, but somehow, the words lingered in the air in just that way. Gabe blinked and looked toward the ridge of mountains, then pressed his hands together, then cupped one hand on his hip as if he didn’t quite know what to do with it.
“I’ll show you what I know,” said Gabe, as if he didn’t know very much and it wouldn’t take very long and that Blaze shouldn’t be prepared to be very well schooled in the art of horsemanship.
It turned out, as Blaze figured it would, that Gabe knew about horses. In fact, he knew a lot, and it seemed he was pleased to have Blaze as his only pupil, however inept he was, and unused to being around horses.
They spent the evening going over the basics, the parts of a horse, how to use the body brush, the chamois cloth, the hoof pick, all of it. How to judge how much hay to give a horse by counting out the flakes. How to walk up to a horse, how to walk away. How to move slow, and to always be watching.
“They’ve all been broken to ride,” said Gabe. “But that’s the outdated way to say it,broke. We say, these days, that they’ve beenstarted, they’ve been whispered into agreeing to work with us.” He smiled as a larger horse moved forward and bumped Gabe’s elbow gently with its muzzle. “This one knows where his eats and treats come from, that’s for sure.” With a soft pet to the horse’s neck, he gently pushed it away. “One daily chore we’re going to have to do until the horses are settled elsewhere is to clean the manure and make sure overflow from the water troughs is draining away properly.”
The words settled over Blaze’s shoulders like a reassuring cloak. Frankly, he didn’t care what he had to do. He’d even shovel horseshit and carry it away in a wheelbarrow. As long as Gabe was his teacher, as long as he didn’t have to share Gabe with anyone. If that made him selfish, so what?
They quit around sunset, and on Tuesday, while Tom and Wayne were away in the woods, chopping down trees, Gabe and Blaze spent the morning feeding and watering the horses, checking the fence line, and Blaze even got to be in on the cellphone conversation between Gabe and Jasper, the guest ranch’s blacksmith. Who appreciated the consideration of having the horses brought to his forge, rather than him having to set up a makeshift forge.
“You want to trailer ’em up here or walk ’em up?” asked Jasper over the cellphone’s speaker. “It’s easier to lead four than to trailer four, eh?”
Gabe looked at Blaze as if for confirmation, though surely he knew the answer all on his own, and Blaze nodded, feeling wise.
“Depends on the horse,” said Gabe. “I’ll teach Blaze how to do both, trailer and lead.”
“What about the other two?” asked Jasper, his voice a little tinny through the speaker. “Don’t you have three on your team?”
“One’s allergic and one’s not interested.”
“I’m interested,” said Blaze, though he knew the truth of it was that it wouldn’t have mattered if Gabe was in charge of pulling weeds, as long as Blaze got to work with that blue-eyed, broad shouldered, strong and silent man.
“Will you be ready for us tomorrow? Wednesday?”
“Sure will,” said Jasper. “Mornings are best. I can take four tomorrow, starting at nine.”
“You got it.”
Gabe clicked the cellphone off, then moved it back into his pocket.
“I’m all in,” said Blaze as if Gabe had asked him a question about it, and wasn’t sure about Blaze. “I won’t ghost you, I swear.”
