Dakota's eyes change when we pull into the back lot.
I watch it happen.
She straightens. The slump from four hours in a truck disappears. The set of her jaw shifts into something that's been doing this since she was twelve years old.
By the time she's out of the truck and walking back to the trailer she's not the woman who slept in my passenger seat.
She's a competitor. Top fifteen in the country. Top fifteen for a reason.
She unloads Jaeger.
He comes off the trailer the way he always comes off, head up, ears forward, two seconds of looking around to figure out where we are before he settles into it.
She pats his neck twice. "I'm going to walk him."
"Okay."
She doesn't saycome with me. She doesn't have to.
Phantom said twenty-four-seven. I told him I'd do it, and Dakota was in the kitchen when I said yes. She knows.
She walks Jaeger out of the back lot.
I follow three feet off her shoulder.
Past the trailer with GO BIG OR GO HOME stenciled across the back doors.
Past a stock contractor unloading a paint mare with a torn fly mask.
Past the concession trailer that hasn't lit up its grill yet.
She doesn't talk to me. I don't talk to her.
Jaeger walks between us the way a horse walks between two people who he knows aren't going to ask him for anything.
Calm. Ears soft. Halter loose in Dakota's hand.
Every fifteen feet he flicks an ear back to clock me, and every fifteen feet he settles again.
A horse trusts what his human trusts.
Luckily, Dakota trusts me. Or she's letting Phantom's order make the decision for her.
I don't know which it is yet.
We walk the perimeter of the back lot in silence for forty minutes. She comes back to the trailer when she's ready. Hands me Jaeger's lead. Goes to the trailer for her gear.
"Warm-up pen. Twenty minutes."
"I'll be there."
She walks off toward the warm-up pen with her saddle over her arm. I tie Jaeger to the trailer rail and follow.
* * *
Two hours have passed and we’re in the warm-up pen.
She's working Jaeger in slow circles to loosen him up. Cantering. Bringing him back to a trot. Then asking for the canter again.
