The mare had already put two trainers in the dirt and one in the hospital, and Clay Hollister was the last name on Mark Delaney's list.
"I'm not going to lie to you," Mark said, walking him down to the paddock. "She's going on a trailer to the Saturday sale. I've got the hauler booked. I only called you because my wife made me."
"My wife made me come," Clay said. "So we're even."
That was true. Kaylee Delaney was in Marlene's Sunday school class, and on Sunday Kaylee had cried through the whole lesson. Marlene had come home, set Clay's hat in his hands, and said, "Go look at that horse."
Mark Delaney was a dentist. He had moved his family out from the Columbus suburbs two years ago and bought fifteen acres and a big red barn that had never seen a cow. Last spring he had paid fourteen thousand dollars for a retired barrel horse so his daughter could ride.
Her name was Juniper. A nine-year-old sorrel quarter horse with a white blaze and a short, pretty head. On the seller's video, she ran a perfect cloverleaf pattern and stood like a statue while a little kid brushed her.
She had been at the Delaney place six weeks when she kicked the first trainer through a gate.
"The last guy said she's just mean," Mark said. "Said some horses are born that way."
Clay didn't answer. He leaned on the fence and watched.
He watched for an hour. Mark got bored after ten minutes and went up to the house. Clay kept watching.
Juniper grazed along the fence line. When a crow landed on a post to her right, she lifted her head and looked at it. When a truck went by on the road to her left, she jumped like she'd been shot, spun, and stood blowing hard, ears pinned.
Clay rubbed his mustache.
After school, the bus dropped off Kaylee. She was twelve, small for her age, with a ponytail and a too-big barn coat. She walked straight down to the paddock without even going up to the house.
"Are you the cowboy?" she asked.
"I'm a cowboy. Don't know about the."
She climbed through the fence. Clay almost said something. Then he didn't, because Juniper lifted her head, looked at the girl, and nickered.
Kaylee walked right up to her, humming some song Clay didn't know, and the mare dropped her head into the girl's arms like a big dog.
"She's never once hurt me," Kaylee said, scratching under the mare's chin. "Not one time. Dad says I'm just lucky."
Clay watched the girl walk Juniper along the fence. She walked on the mare's right side. Coming back, she went around the front and walked on the right side again. She hummed the whole time.
"You always walk on that side?" Clay asked.
Kaylee shrugged. "The barn door's on that side."
"Uh-huh."
Mark came back down the hill. "So? Am I crazy, or is that horse dangerous?"
"You're not crazy," Clay said. "Give me till Saturday."
Marlene came along the next morning because, she said, somebody had to drive him to the hospital when this went wrong.
Clay went into the paddock slowly, hat in his hand, talking low. Juniper watched him come. Her ears were up. She let him rub her neck. She let him run his hand down her right shoulder.
So far, so good.
Clay kept his hand on her and walked slowly around her back end, the way he had done ten thousand times with ten thousand horses. He came up along her left side.
He stopped talking for one second to watch her eye.
"Clay!" Marlene shouted.
Juniper exploded. She spun on her back legs and her shoulder hit him square in the chest.
Clay went down hard on the frozen ground. The breath went out of him all at once.
For a long moment he lay there looking up at the gray November sky, with the mare's hooves thudding away across the paddock and Marlene's boots running toward him.
He tried to move his left leg.
It wouldn't.