It was a hunger that so bothered Jake Kendall that he denied it by lashing out at Amanda.
“I’m afraid I didn’t bring real work clothes,” she apologized to Clovis.
The leathery little foreman, who had adopted her on nothing more than Lee Kendall’s recommendation, grinned like a jack-o’-lantern and handed her a bridle. “Don’t matter. We can get these just as dirty as jeans and a sweatshirt.”
Amanda smiled back at him and closed her hand around the leather-and-metal apparatus, making it jingle faintly. Two equine heads turned in their stalls at the sounds. “If you really don’t mind, Clovis. I know how busy you are.”
Clovis let fly with a stream of tobacco juice that decorated a corner pile of sawdust on the floor of the barn. “Man’s got a right to spend his lunch hour any way he sees fit. I choose to teach you about horses. You said something about buyin’ one, didn’t you?”
Amanda blinked in a bit of confusion. “Did I?”
Clovis hit his target again in a way that seemed like judgment. “‘Course, you might not find anything you like. Even with a fine herd like the Diamond K’s got, can’t please everybody. But ridin’s the first step to buyin’, I’d say.”
Amanda’s grin was brighter than her co-conspirator’s. “My thought exactly.” Lifting the bridle, she gave it another rattle. “Where do I start?”
“Fourth stall from the end,” Clovis informed her with a definite shake of the head. “A real sweet mare who’s a year or two past any real excitement. I brought her in from the pasture this morning just for you.”
Amanda followed him down the row of stalls, past a beautiful gray horse and a dirty-looking brown one and a pinto who kept nodding as if making judgments of her own.
“These are all mares?” she asked.
“All ladies,” he nodded. “Can’t expect anybody to get any work done in a coed dormitory. Geldings are in on the other side, and stallions in a different barn. They’re just a little touchier to get along with sometimes.”
“Like Bill Nelson’s horse?”
Clovis shook his head. “That ain’t a horse. It’s a disaster on four legs. I can’t imagine what that man thinks is gonna come out of an animal like that.”
“Why did Jake agree to train him?”
“‘Cause Jake has this strange idea that there ain’t a horse he can’t work with. And until that one, I’d ‘a’ said he was right. I never seen anybody better on a horse than Jake Kendall...here she is. Pokey.”
Amanda scowled, beset by the same feeling she had on her first day of undergraduate school. Pokey. Next Clovis would offer to lead her around on a rope so her parents could take her picture.
Pokey was a pretty horse, anyway. She was big and dark brown, with a star on her forehead and immense liquid brown eyes.
“I read in the original papers that the Diamond K started out raising cattle,” Amanda said as Clovis unlatched the stall door and swung it open. Pokey watched with placid interest. “When did they decide to go with horses instead?”
“That’d be Jake,” Clovis allowed, stepping on into the big, airy stall. “His daddy was a good man. Tried his best and all, but I just don’t think he was meant to be a rancher. And, truth be told, this ain’t real cow country. Too high up, mostly. Cattle’s down more toward Pinedale.”
“Then how could Jake raise horses?”
“Knack. Pure cussedness. There’s somethin’ about Kendall men and this piece of land that don’t always make sense. They can’t seem to leave, even if it’s good for ‘em. ‘Course, the first thing he did was invest in an indoor ring so he could work all winter on a horse if he wanted. All right, now, walk up alongside of her here and make her acquaintance, just like this.”
Pokey seemed perturbed that Clovis would sidle up alongside her and begin rubbing her neck. She butted him right in the chest, as if to say, we know each other too well. However, she lifted her head to inspect Amanda when she did the same.
“You’re a pretty girl,” Amanda crooned, breathing in the age-old perfume of horses and hay, of leather and old wood. The sunlight streamed in the gaps in the wall, milky and dancing with dust motes, and the other denizens rustled around in their quarters. The sights and sounds and smells calmed Amanda, quieted her in a way nothing had since she’d been a child standing in her Uncle Mick’s barn with the cows. There was something solid and real about the place, earthy in a way that centered a person.
“When I was a girl,” she found herself saying a few minutes later as she helped Clovis bridle and saddle the big mare outside by the corral, “we used to ride this mule bareback up the mountain to go blackberry picking. Mule’s name was Martha, and she could hold six of us at a time. Uncle Mick used to throw us right up on her back like we were sacks of flour. He was a huge man.”
“Mules are fine animals,” Clovis assured her. “But they ain’t horses. There, that’s right. Tighten the cinch just one more time before you get atop her.”
Amanda took a look up at the very high back of her mount, at the stirrup she’d measured beneath her armpit to match the length of her leg. It was somewhere just south of her belt line, which made her wonder how she was supposed to reach it.
“I’m sure this was a wonderful idea when I thought of it,” she murmured, more to herself than her teacher as she gave the cinch one more careful tug and readjusted the ends. Considering just how foolish she had a feeling she was about to look, she heartily wished they could have done this back inside the barn.
“Now, Pokey, she’ll hold real still for you,” Clovis assured her. “All you have to do is slip your foot into the stirrup, bend that other leg a little and vault right into the saddle.”
Amanda bent her leg higher than should have been possible and managed to wedge her foot into the stirrup before it sprang back into place. That left the rest of her in an uncomfortable physical relationship.
