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There were four horses, a gelding and three mares — Bass Reeves’ and Tomoatooah’s mounts and remounts. They looked mighty fine to my eye, all four of ’em, and it filled my mouth with sick water just catching wind of their warm, horsy scent. I wanted to go run and throw my arms around their necks, I’d missed horses so damned much. And I wanted to go punch each of ’em in the throat for what had happened to my da.

I knowed that was stupid, and my hands shook with not trusting myself not to take out on ’em what wasn’t their fault — and what wasn’t even the dumb animal fault of the colt that killed Da.

Da would always say you don’t blame an animal for being an animal. Not when we’re men and God gave us reason and made us custodians. And then he’d usually mutter something uncomplimentary about folk who didn’t use that God-given gift, and who still thought they had the right to boss around God’s other creatures.

Every time I started to get killing mad at that colt, I tried to remember him saying that. It helped, mostly. The colt lived past me, anyway.

But it occurs to me now that maybe I was being a bit two-faced when I said earlier that I didn’t understand coveting after revenge. I guess in honesty it’s more that Mama and Da raised me to think things through before I did ’em, mostly. And mostly, I do.

So I bit my lip and made myself look over the horses without flinching or making faces.

The gelding and one of the mares were big for my taste, but Bass Reeves is a big man. They both carried good muscle. The gray — the gelding — had a neck that made me sad he was gelded, and if he was a bit straight behind he had the muscle to make up for the lack of leverage. The sorrel shoved a soft nose at me as soon as she saw me, and nibbled around my pockets for a treat. I pretended like I’d forgotten to bring any, and looked at her shoulders, which were strong and sloped just right.

I thought the gray was probably a pretty light-colored horse, in his own right, but judging by the streaks he was starting to show from the raindrops, Marshal Reeves had blacked him up a bit with soot so he wouldn’t show so much in the darkness.

The other two mares were Indian ponies, and some people use that to mean scrub horses, but those people is just plumb ignorant. Mustangs was what the Pony Express used, and nobody — not the fanciest eastern racehorse farmer or the canniest western cutting-horse rancher — knows more about breeding than the horse tribes do. When Indians don’t have good horses, it’s because their good horses was killed by the army or taken away when the Indians was moved on. Their ponies are smart and strong and though they’re little, nothing makes a better cutting horse. My da used to itch to get his hands on Indian ponies.

He would of traded his eyeteeth and his last pan of biscuits for these. One was a sturdy-looking paint, a black tobiano with one brown eye and one china blue. She had the smartest ears I’d ever seen, perked up and touched almost tip to tip, and a dished face that made her look like a Barb. She might be, partways. There’s Barb blood in those Indian ponies, because they come from the Conquistadores’ horses and those come from when the Moors conquered Spain. She also had a big chest, for a mare, and clean, straight forelegs. All four of her hooves was dark. I don’t hold with the idea that a white-footed horse is necessarily worse than one with dark hooves, though I know some do. But I could see that her hoof edges was clean, though she’d never known shoes.

The other was a dun — the kind of dun the Indians get, with the stripe down her spine and the stripes on the lower part of the legs, like maybe her grandaddy was a zebra. It wasn’t the prettiest color I’d ever seen — dull in the gaslight and like somebody had rubbed red earth all through a gray horse’s hide — but she grinned at me like a mule when I came up to her. It might of been a mean expression, except her ears stayed up. I’ve knowed a few horses learned to smile back at people. They always seem to be the damned smart ones.

My Molly was a grinner.

I finally “found” the carrots and parsnips in my pockets and broke bits off for everyone. Until I felt the whiffle of whiskers across my palms, the nibble of soft lips, I didn’t realize how much I needed it. Something tightened up in my chest. But something bigger eased — a band cracked open. Like the iron straps that coop a barrel together, it split, and everything I’d been holding in came boiling up, trying to get out and splash all over. Like that beer flood over in London you’ve heard of, near on forty years before I was born, where all the people drowned in cellars when the brewery’s vats exploded.

It would of been about that much of a mess, too. I could feel my lip quivering, my eyes starting to burn. I was going to collapse in the mud in a second and be no use to Priya or Miss Francina or Aashini or Marshal Reeves or anyone. And it was all down to that warm snuffle on my palm, such as I hadn’t felt since I had to sell off my father’s stock. And give up Molly. I still can’t help but feel like I betrayed her, though I found her the best home I could and it was better for her than starving with me would of been.

That stock money didn’t go near as far as I expected, in a place like Rapid City. And weren’t many willing to hire a girl of fifteen to break horses for ’em or even as a stable hand.

And that’s how I wound up seamstressing for Madame Damnable.

“Miss?” Marshal Reeves said behind me. His hand on my shoulder was warm and solid, and somehow I used its weight to pull myself together instead of crumpling completely. It were a near thing, though. “Miss Memery? Second thoughts?”

I couldn’t bear to have him think me a coward. I jerked my head up as if I could toss the tears back into my eyes, sniffed hard — hoping it sounded like disdain — and said, “No sir.”

I wanted to tell him that my da had horses. That I grew up in the saddle. But if I’d been going to tell him that the time to mention it would of been when I’d told him I could ride.

I hadn’t said a word about how I hadn’t touched a pony in more than a year. It wouldn’t do anything for his confidence in me to bring it up now.

“What’s her name?” I asked, of the piebald mare.

“That’s Scout,” he said. “The dun is Adobe. The sorrel’s Dusty, and this here gelding is Pongo. You’ll be on Scout.”

I nodded. I was glad she seemed friendly, and I could see from the condition of her lips and the easy bit she was wearing that she reined well — and that Tomoatooah had a gentle hand. “I’m looking forward to it,” I said, and it was half a lie and half the bitterest truth I ever mouthed. I scratched behind her ever-so-pointy ears and gave her another bite of parsnip. “Good horse.”

His teeth flashed in the dark. “You’ll have to give her back when you’re done with her.”

“How’re you going to catch me?” I asked, grinning back. I kicked my shortened skirt up and swung into the rig before I could think about it too much more. Scout stepped right once, then steadied. She was little — I was looking over her ears, not between them — but she didn’t so much as duck under my weight.

“You’ll do,” he answered, forking his own rig — the one the sorrel wore. “Come on. I got our stakeout all selected. There’s some cover, and it’s even out of the wind.”

I followed on the clopping of the hooves leading me toward the pier. Adobe’s rein was looped on Scout’s saddle biscuit, and he trouped along with his nose on her shoulder like they did this daily. That seemed likely, actually.

My da wouldn’t of approved of that name — Adobe. He’d say you couldn’t yell it well enough, and every horse, dog, and child should have a name you could holler clearly through a hurricane. But it suited the horse and she wasn’t my horse, so I weren’t in any hurry to rename her.