“He won’t. Not yet.”
“I know. But Lee, those hooves.” She shakes her head. “From what I could see, the front left has significant flaring. Possible rotation. The right isn’t much better. And there’s what looks like an old abscess on the left hind that healed wrong. He needs corrective farrier work before we can do anything else.”
“I’ll get to it once he’s?—”
“You’re good, but you’re not a corrective farrier. This is specialist work. He needs someone who can do a full assessment, probably therapeutic shoes, maybe a resection on that abscess.” She pauses. “There’s someone who just moved to the area. Farrier with a strong reputation for corrective work. Trained under a guy in East Texas who’s one of the best in the state.”
Something in the way she says it—careful, deliberate—makes my shoulders tighten. “Who?”
“I’ll send you the info.” She pushes off the rail. Diplomatic. Sidestepping the question like she knows the answer will cost her something. “We’ve got six rescues that need hoof work in the next month, Lee. The yearling, the two mares in pasture four, the paint with the chronic thrush. I can keep these animals healthy, but I can’t do my job if their feet are falling apart underneath them.”
She’s right. I know she’s right.
We’ve been limping along with a general farrier out of Kerrville who does adequate work on healthy horses but doesn’t have the skill set for the kind of damage kill pen rescues come in with.
Neglected hooves are the silent killer in this business.
A horse can survive starvation, abuse, parasites—but if the feet go bad enough, nothing else matters.
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
Grace gives me the look.
The one that says she knows I’m stalling and she’s going to let me do it for exactly as long as her patience holds, which isn’t long.
“Think fast,” she says. “That bay’s feet aren’t going to wait for you to be ready.”
She walks back toward the cabin.
I watch her go and try not to notice the way her hand rests on her belly—absent, protective, the unconscious gesture of a woman growing something she already loves.
Rose used to do that.
Touch her stomach like that when she was thinking about the future.
We never got there. Never got the chance to find out what our version of that would have looked like.
The mare nuzzles my shoulder and I run my hand down her neck and breathe through it.
Church is at noon.
There’s a full table.
Phantom’s at the head, gavel on the wood, patches around the room.
The Shotgun Saints meet in the back of the clubhouse in a room with a heavy door and no windows, where club business stays club business and the only gospel is the code we ride by.
I take my seat.
Road Captain’s chair, third from the head on the right.
The same chair I’ve sat in for years—through the good times, through the Houston mess, through all of it.
Phantom never stripped my patch.
Never stripped my seat.
That means something to me, shows him he knows how loyal to his club I am.
