There was a sense of panic in Blaze’s eyes, but then he shrugged. “Okay,” he said, and there was nothing after that. No demands, noYou ought to treat me like I’m special.Nothing like that.
Making Gabe wonder all over again how a guy like that had gotten mixed up in dealing drugs. Maybe the all-prisoners-insist-they-are-innocent was true in this case. Maybe Gabe ought to read Blaze’s file again. Or maybe Gabe could concentrate on getting Blaze to tell him his own story, one not filtered through the prison system.
“My hat’ll come into good use, at least,” said Blaze as he wiped his mouth free of garlic bread crumbs with the back of his hand. “And my new boots.”
“Can I come watch?” asked Wayne.
“Anything to get out of work,” said Blaze, jabbing Wayne with his elbow.
“Hey,” said Wayne, jabbing him back. “I get more done in four hours by myself than I ever got done working with a team.”
“You can come watch,” said Gabe. “There’s always something that can be learned.”
When they finished lunch, they grabbed their straw cowboy hats and pulled on cowboy boots and headed down to the pasture to halter the eight horses that Quint would look over.
Gabe turned off the power to the fence and lightly tied each horse’s lead to the top wire. They needed a shelter for the horses, and they needed a few hitching posts, so Gabe put that on his mental list of things that needed doing, feeling a little out of kilter that what was supposed to be a side project was turning into a full-time gig. Or maybe it would balance itself out when a fresh van of parolees arrived the following week.
Quint soon drove up in one of the ranch’s silver trucks. Quickly, he got out and went to the back of the truck, where he pulled out two beat-up looking saddles and hung them along the edge of the truck bed, hooking a bridle over each saddle horn.
“Hey, Gabe,” he said with a short wave, tugging on leather gloves, settling his hat on his head. “Which ones? Oh, I can see already. Thank you.”
Without seemingly any effort at all, Quint picked up one of the saddles, and nodded at Wayne, who unhooked the gate for him, holding it open for Gabe, who carried the other saddle. Blaze trailed behind, maybe a little uncertain as to how all of this was going to go down. Wayne re-hooked the gate as Quint and Gabe saddled the two horses and replaced halters with bridles.
With his gloved hand holding onto the bridle of the closest horse, Quint turned to Blaze, and Gabe readied himself to step in, in case Quint’s sense of superiority got flung around too hard.
“Blaze has volunteered to ride on the lunge line,” said Gabe.
“You ever ride?” asked Quint.
Blaze shook his head no.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Quint. “You’re the weight in the saddle, and don’t need to do any more than sit there. I’ll help you up, and Gabe will guide the horse through its paces. Walk, trot, maybe lope, if we can manage it. This is just to see how they go. We’ll be taking notes, as well. You’re going to help us determine what kind of life this horse needs. Needs anddeserves.”
Maybe Quint was making an unspoken comment about ex-cons getting what they deserved, or maybe, as was more probably true, Quint was hyper focused, as he usually was, on the horse’s needs over its rider’s.
“Up you get,” said Quint, motioning to the stirrup, holding it still.
With a bit of a scramble, Blaze hauled himself into the saddle, sitting straight and still while Quint adjusted the length of the stirrup on either side. The horse, an older mare with large liquid brown eyes, stood still with only a faint flick of her tail, a shift from a fore hoof on one side to a hind hoof on the other as she adjusted to Blaze’s weight on her back.
“You’re all set,” said Quint. “Take it away, Gabe.”
“She’s a good girl,” said Gabe, coming closer to pat the mare’s neck gently. “What a good girl.” Then to Blaze, he said, “Hang onto the saddle horn if you like, or you can hold the reins, but loosely.”
When he nodded at Wayne, Wayne handed him what looked like a long lunge whip, but which was actually a training flag, never meant to be used on a horse, only near it.
“Hup, hup,” Gabe said as he let out the long lunge line Quint had attached to the mare’s halter.
The mare, as Gabe could see, was quite experienced and knew how to move out to the end of the lunge line and to go in a circle, to slowly turn, at a walk when he signaled with the flag, and then to trot, and again turn the other way, so all in all a peaceful ride.
“She’s older,” said Quint, as Gabe pulled the mare to a stop, coiling the lungeline in his gloved hands to bring her closer. “But she’s got a lot of work left in her, so what do you think, Gabe?”
“Good contender for beginning riders on the ranch,” said Gabe, without hesitation. He looked up at Blaze, who sat with his hands on his thighs, a thoughtful expression on his face. “What about you, Blaze? Did it feel safe?”
“Yeah,” said Blaze. “But, I don’t know, did she want to go faster?”
“She sure did,” said Quint. “But she was following Gabe’s orders to the letter.”
They saddled up the rest of the horses one by one. Blaze got on two horses, average looking, average height, both of which would make good additions to the guest ranch, which tended to have more inexperienced riders than experienced.
