Page 14 of The Reckless Rookie

She stops at the far rail and throws her head and starts back the other way. Down and back. Down and back.

“Yeah,” I tell her, quiet, because nobody’s around to hear me talk to a horse. “I know.”

Then she’s not walking anymore. She’s up.

It happens fast, the way I imagine it always happens with something that big. One second she’s pacing and the next she’s reared and coming down hard, and there’s a fence post between her and me that suddenly does not look like enough fence, and she slams a shoulder into the rail hard enough that I feel it in my boots.

“VICENTE.” That’s from across the yard, a voice I’ve spent all day learning. “Bonita’s up…”

Catalina’s already moving. She comes across that yard at a dead run, and what I notice, even now, even with a thousand pounds of unhappy horse trying to come through a fence, is that she doesn’t run scared. She runs like a woman going to fix a problem she’s fixed before. No panic in it. Just speed.

“Get back from the rail,” she says, not slowing.

I get back.

Every part of me wants to argue with the order. The mare is caught half into the boards, fighting the pressure and making it worse, and standing still while something comes apart feels like its own kind of failure. But I know exactly nothing about horses, and Catalina does.

Vicente reaches us at a run and goes over the rail without wasting breath. Catalina ducks through the gate on the other side.

“Tell me what I can do.”

“Watch,” she says. “Stay where you are.”

It’s the worst answer she could give me. It’s also the first useful thing I learn.

She approaches Bonita from the shoulder instead of the front, one hand flat against the mare’s neck. Vicente takes the opposite side. Neither of them grabs the halter. Neither raises a voice.

“Easy, hermosa. Easy.” Her tone is low and certain, nothing like the one she uses on men.

Bonita strikes at the dirt. The rail shudders. Catalina doesn’t flinch or rush the next move.

Vicente works the trapped board while she keeps the mare’s head turned just enough to stop another lunge.

“Now,” Catalina says.

The board comes free. Bonita stumbles sideways, catches herself, and blows hard through her nose.

Nobody touches her for a beat. They let her find her own feet.

I notice things because there’s nothing else I’m allowed to do. Flat hand. Shoulder, not face. No grabbing. No standing where a thousand pounds can come through you.

For the first time in my life, watching doesn’t feel like doing nothing. It feels like the work before the work.

Catalina checks the mare’s legs and shoulder. Vicente runs a hand along the loosened rail, already finding what failed.

Bonita’s sides are still heaving when she turns her head toward me.

She crosses the paddock slowly and stops at the fence, one dark eye fixed on mine.

I stay where Catalina put me.

“Flat hand,” Catalina says from behind her. “Neck, not her face. Let her come the rest of the way.”

I reach through the rail and put my palm against the wet heat of Bonita’s neck.

The mare shoves her nose into my chest hard enough to rock me back. Not friendly. Not mean. A test.

I hold my ground without reaching for more.