Diablo had been isolated in a pen by himself because he’d been deemed too dangerous by staff to corral with the other horses.
Benji had been taken with the fiery animal immediately. While James, Mav and their neighbour had discussed the relative attributes of the other horses fearfully huddled together, Benji had wandered off to look in on the dun.
The horse had been cantering in the small pen, pacing restlessly from side to side, his neck swinging, tail swishing. But the moment he’d seen Benji looking at him through the bars, he’d charged.
Benji hadn’t moved.
He’d stood there as Diablo had come to a sudden stop right in front of the fencing separating them and blown a warning snort right in his face. He’d said, ‘You’re a handsome devil, aren’t you?’
Diablo had just lifted his head and turned his butt in Benji’s direction, making him laugh.
A nearby volunteer had looked at him beseechingly. ‘His prospects aren’t looking good. Nobody who’s stopped by has had the balls to take him on.’
James had come up behind Benji and witnessed the entire thing, and he’d said, ‘We’ll take him.’
And that had been that.
Now, a year later, as James perched on the piped corral fence of the round pen, watching their progress, Benji worked on Diablo’s liberty training. He held his left arm out and clucked his tongue, and Diablo immediately started circling him to the left. After the horse had completed a few full circles, Benji whistled once, a short, sharp sound that cued the horse into a lope. The horse tossed his head happily and ran circles around him, but the moment Benji held his hand up and said, ‘Woah,’ the horse stopped and came in.
Using the hand signals he’d painstakingly taught Diablo over the past year, Benji cued the huge animal to lower his right leg to the ground and extend his left in a bow.
On the nearby fence, James started clapping.
Benji flushed with pride. He’d thought he would be used to it by now, that glow of warmth that filled him anytime Ava or James Hunt praised him for a job well done. But he wasn’t.
He cued Diablo to stand again, and when he turned his back on the horse to walk to James, the animal followed of his own volition.
‘He’s ready for sale,’ Benji observed. The words were said calmly and with pride, but they hurt to admit. He and Diablo were bonded, and while Benji understood that he could have asked James to keep the horse, he wouldn’t. With the training they’d put on him, Diablo had all the fancy moves a rider could want. He could be taken in any direction, within any discipline, and would sell for upwards of twenty-five thousand dollars even though he was a Mustang.
Benji couldn’t justify the expense of keeping a personal horse when he had a barn full of ranch horses to work on. Horses cost money, and he had already decided that everything he saved would go towards his and Sierra’s future.
He was getting impatient. He wanted her to be his. Officially. Permanently. He just needed a little more saved up, so that he could ask James for his permission with pride instead of self-consciousness.
James looked at him for a long moment and when he spoke, his deep voice was calm but full of genuine emotion. ‘I’m proud of you, Benji. Diablo wasn’t an easy horse to take on, but you’ve done him justice. More than I ever could have done myself.’
James couldn’t know that those few words, so simple to him, wereeverythingto Benji. ‘Thanks,’ he managed. But because his own voice was far from steady, he shucked his head in the direction of the barn, indicating that he’d put the horse in for the night.
Instead of leaving him to it, James hopped off the fence with the agility of a far younger man. He walked at Benji’s side towards the barn, his towering presence somehow comforting instead of intimidating. Always.
As they drew closer, Benji saw Ava’s truck parked outside next to Mav’s Jeep. He frowned. ‘We have a family ride scheduled?’
Family rides were something that Ava had started when he and Mav had been in their teens. If they’d been restless or destructively bored at home, she’d barge into the room and say, ‘Get your butts up! Family ride!’
She wouldn’t take no for an answer, so they’d all trek to the barn, saddle up, and ride Hunt Ranch as a group. As a family. Occasionally, as kids, Mav or Sierra had grumbled about it, but Benji was always out the door like a shot the moment a family ride was suggested. Because it wasn’t just a ride for him. It was time with a family that he was far closer to than his own. It was just a few hours where he felt like he belonged.
The rides had turned into a tradition, so that now James just shrugged and replied, ‘Let’s go find out.’
They walked into the barn side by side, but while James kept walking, Benji stopped in his tracks, forcing Diablo to bump into him from behind.
All he could do was stare.
Ava, Mav, Sierra and all the ranch hands were there. They stood beneath a banner that read:Happy Got You Day, Diablo!And that’s exactly what they shouted as Benji gaped.
The picnic table was laden with food.
The cooler on the floor was bursting with beers and sodas.
James came forward then, except now he carried a black, leather halter that had clearly been custom made. The brass nameplate on the cheek band read, ‘Diablo’ followed by the horse’s government-issued ‘freeze mark’, the same mark that was seared on Diablo’s neck.
