Sam hefted the training saddle, eased it onto the horse. Jones jerked his head, gave a quick buck.

“It’s okay. It’s okay.” He wasn’t mad, wasn’t mean, Coop thought. He was a little scared. He could feel it, he could see it in Jones’s eyes. “It’s just a saddle. I guess it feels funny at first.” Under the afternoon sun, with sweat he barely noticed dampening his T-shirt, Coop talked and talked while his grandfather cinched the saddle.

“Take him out on the lounge, like I showed you. Just like you did with him before the saddle. He’ll buck some.”

Sam stepped back to let the boy and the colt learn. He leaned on the fence, ready to intervene if need be. From behind him, Lucy laid a hand on his shoulder.

“That’s a sight, isn’t it?”

“He’s got the touch,” Sam acknowledged. “Got the heart and the head, too. The boy’s a natural with horses.”

“I don’t want to let him go. I know,” she said before Sam could respond. “Not ours to keep. But it’s going to break my heart a little. I know a true thing, and that’s they don’t love him like we do. So it breaks my heart knowing we have to send him back.”

“Might be next summer he’ll want to come.”

“Might be. But oh, it’s going to be quiet between times.” She heaved a sigh, then turned at the sound of a truck. “Farrier’s coming. I’ll go get a pitcher of lemonade.”

IT WAS the farrier’s son, a gangly towheaded boy of fourteen called Gull who, in the late-afternoon shadows of the barn, gave Coop his first-and last-chaw of tobacco.

Even after he’d finished puking up his breakfast, his lunch, and everything else still in his system, Coop remained what Gull assessed as green as a grasshopper. Alerted by the sounds of retching, Lucy left her work on her kitchen garden to hustle to the back of the barn. There Coop, on his hands and knees, continued to heave while Gull stood, scratching his head under his hat.

“Jesus, Coop, ain’t you done as yet?”