Jaeger goes from standing to a full lunge in the space of one breath.
The dirt comes up around his hooves the way water comes up around a thrown rock, and Dakota's body in the saddle is a single line of intention from the crown of her hat to the heel of her boot.
First barrel comes up. She rates him. Drops her shoulder into the pocket. Comes around clean. Three seconds. Four.
Second barrel.
She comes in a hair too tight.
I see it before she does. The pocket is half a foot tighter than her usual line.
Jaeger drops his shoulder anyway because he is the kind of horse who will give her whatever she asks for, but the angle is bad and his back hoof skids in the soft part of the dirt and for a tenth of a second the whole thing is wrong.
He recovers.
She recovers.
The barrel doesn't fall.
Third barrel clean. Home stretch wide open. She comes back across the timer at sixteen-flat.
Top five for the round.
Not a win. Points she needs.
The crowd does the thing crowds do for a clean ride that wasn't her best.
She walks Jaeger out of the arena.
Hat low. I can't see her face from where I am at the back rail, but I know the set of her shoulders.
She's mad. At herself. At the second barrel.
At the soft dirt and the angle and the way she let the pocket get away from her in front of eight thousand people.
She rides past me without looking up.
I follow her back to the trailer.
She's at Jaeger's neck when I get there. Forehead pressed against him. One hand flat on his shoulder. He's breathing hard and so is she.
"Sixteen-flat is points," I say.
"Sixteen-flat is third place at best."
"Third place gets you to nationals."
"Sixteen-flat doesn'twinnationals."
I don't argue. She's right, and I don't insult her by pretending otherwise.
She unsaddles him in silence. I cool him out with her, walking him in a slow loop around the back lot while she does the things her hands need to do—wrap his legs, check his hooves, give him water in slow controlled amounts.
Routine work. The work of a woman processing a ride she didn't like through the body of an animal who doesn't know what placing is.
When she's done she leans against the trailer with her arms crossed.
"Harper Beaumont said good luck."
