That sentence.
I don’t understand.
She was ready.
“You have five minutes to saddle your horse,” he said.
Clara swallowed.
“My father spent six years being called a murderer.”
“He ran.”
“He was threatened.”
“By who?”
She looked toward Amos Cross’s portrait.
Jedediah went very still.
“No.”
“My father left me a letter before he died.”
“No.”
“He said Thomas’s accident wasn’t an accident.”
Jedediah pointed toward the door.
“Get out.”
“Someone cut halfway through the girth strap.”
His face emptied.
Clara’s voice broke.
“And somebody had drugged the mare.”
Clara had reached the stable when the screaming began.
Not human screaming.
A horse.
Diablo.
She ran.
Flames were climbing the north side of the hay barn.
Someone shouted for water.
Another man dragged two frightened geldings from their stalls.
Smoke rolled across the yard.
Clara saw Diablo’s corral gate hanging open.
Empty.
“Where is he?”
Nobody knew.
Then came the crash.
Diablo burst through the rear doors of the barn.
Firelight turned his black coat red.
A length of burning rope dragged behind him.
He was blind with terror.
And he was running directly toward Jedediah.
“MOVE!”
Jedediah turned.
Too late.
Diablo reared.
For six years, Jedediah had seen Thomas whenever a horse rose above him.
This time the vision froze his legs.
Thomas falling.
Thomas bleeding.
Thomas dying.
“JEDEDIAH!”
Clara hit him from the side.
They crashed into the mud.
Diablo’s hooves struck where Jedediah had been standing.
Clara rolled to her knees.
The stallion wheeled.
Men shouted.
Someone raised a rifle.
“PUT IT DOWN!”
Clara screamed.
Diablo spun toward the open pasture.
The burning rope struck his flank.
He bolted.
Clara ran after him.
Jedediah grabbed her.
“You’ll get killed.”
“He’ll break his legs in the ravine.”
“Let him go!”
She tore free.
Then Jedediah saw something that chilled him more than the fire.
At the far end of the yard stood Silas Rourke.
Watching.
Not helping.
And in Silas’s hand was a narrow strip of braided rawhide.
The same width as the scars beneath Diablo’s mane.
Silas saw Jedediah looking.
Their eyes met.
Then Silas dropped the rawhide into the flames.
They found Diablo near the river.
He had tangled the rope around a cottonwood root.
Clara approached him first.
The stallion trembled so violently his knees shook.
Jedediah stayed twenty feet behind.
“Easy,” Clara whispered.
Diablo’s eyes rolled.
Clara stopped.
She had spent ten days teaching Jedediah that silence could be an act rather than an absence.
Now he watched her use it.
No commands.
No force.
Just waiting.
Eventually Diablo lowered his head.
Clara extinguished the last ember on the rope.
Then something happened.
Far across the darkness, from the direction of the ranch, came three soft notes.
A whistle.
Diablo exploded.
He struck backward, almost knocking Clara down.
Jedediah caught her.
The stallion pulled so hard the rope cut into his neck.
Clara seized the line.
“Stop!”
She turned toward Jedediah.
“Did you hear it?”
“The whistle?”
Diablo thrashed again.
Clara’s face went pale.
“Do it.”
“What?”
“Whistle those notes.”
“I don’t know them.”
“You do.”
“How?”
“I heard you the first morning.”
Jedediah frowned.
Then remembered.
He had been walking toward the corral.
