He looked up when I knocked on the open door. His blue eyes immediately assessed me. Not unfriendly but not inviting either.
“Rachel Grable. The journalist.”
“That's me. Got a few minutes?”
He leaned back in his chair. “Depends on what for.”
“I'm trying to understand how entries work. How stock gets cleared for the lineup. Background for the piece.”
He studied me for a beat, then nodded toward the folding chair across from him. “Sit.”
I sat.
“Every animal that enters the grounds needs a health certificate issued within thirty days,” he said, pulling a folder from the stack without looking at it. “A vet signs off on soundness, vaccinations, general temperament. A certificate travels with the animal, and we log it at intake — name, breed, age, markings, cert number.”
“And who does intake?”
“Handlers check the animal against the paperwork and do a visual confirmation. If the cert says bay gelding, fifteen hands, six years old, and a bay gelding that height and age comes off the trailer—” He shrugged. “It's matched.”
“No one checks teeth? Scars? Specific identifying marks?”
His pen tapped the table twice. “It's not a forensic operation, Ms. Grable. We're running a rodeo, not a crime lab. The assumption is the supplier's reputable and the documentation's legitimate.”
“And if it's not?”
He held my gaze. “Then you've got a problem you won't catch until the animal's already in the system.”
I thought about what Roman said. Nobody checks teeth at intake if the papewok looks good. Dawson was confirming the exact vulnerability Roman had pointed out.
“Can I see how the entries are organized?”
He hesitated, then turned the laptop toward me, angling it so I could see the spreadsheet. It was full of rows of animals, columns for breed, color, age, supplier, certificate number, and intake date.
I scanned without rushing, letting my eyes work the way they did on any document… looking for patterns, breaks, things that didn't belong.
There. Three entries from the same supplier. The clay mare, a buckskin gelding, and a sorrel I hadn't heard about yet. All logged within the same forty-eight-hour window. All listed as six-year-olds. All marked as fifteen hands.
Same age. Same height. Three different colors, but everything else lined up like it had been copied from a template.
“These three.” I pointed. “They’re all six. All fifteen hands.”
Dawson's jaw shifted. He looked at the screen, then at me. “That's not unusual for rodeo-grade stock from a single supplier. They source a type.”
“All three from the same outfit?”
“Yeah.”
“Funny thing is,” Dawson said, his eyes still on the screen, “Mustang Mountain’s always had messy horse records. Old brands, changed hands, family lines that don’t match what’s written down. Most of it’s harmless history.”
I looked at the spreadsheet again. “And when it’s not?”
He didn’t answer right away. “Then someone usually had a reason for writing it that way.”
“And the clay mare? Roman pulled her from the lineup.”
Something crossed his face. Not alarm. Recognition. “He recommended she be pulled. Slade made the call.”
The door behind me opened and Jace Walker filled the frame.
