The Kill Pen Mare Who Won the County Rodeo

The Run

I have watched that run in my head a thousand times since.

Ruby went through that gate like the arena belonged to her. Josie sat down deep in the saddle, the way she’d practiced every morning all summer, and that red mare ran for the first barrel with her ears pinned flat and her tail straight out behind her.

She dropped her hip and rolled around it tight, dirt flying up off her hooves in a fan. Josie’s braid swung out sideways. Her white hat stayed on, though I’ll never know how.

Second barrel, clean. Ruby leaned into the turn so hard I could have reached out and touched the ground under her belly. She came out of it already running for the third.

I was leaning so far over that fence my cap nearly came off. I wasn’t yelling. I couldn’t. I just held on to that hot pipe rail and watched my daughter ride.

Third barrel. Ruby came around it like she was on a string, and then she flattened out for home, and Josie leaned up on her neck, and they crossed the timing line with Ruby’s blaze stretched out ahead of them like a white flag.

The arena went quiet for about two seconds, the way it does when everybody is looking up at the clock.

“Sixteen point nine eight,” the announcer said. “Folks, that’s a new leader. Josie Vold, fourteen years old, on a mare called Ruby.”

The grandstand came up out of their seats. I heard Ferris down the fence say “Well, I’ll be,” in his low gravel voice.

I put my face down on my arms on the rail, and I stayed that way a little while.

Two more girls ran after that. Neither one of them got under seventeen and a half.

At the Fence

When it was over, Myrtle had placed second, two tenths of a second back, on a horse worth twenty-five times what we paid for ours.

Josie had won the youth barrels at the county fair rodeo on a kill pen mare that had been waiting on a slaughter truck in March.

They called the girls into the arena for the buckle. Josie rode Ruby in at a walk, and the mare’s sides were heaving and dark with sweat, and Josie was patting her neck over and over with her whole hand.

I looked down the fence for Paige.

She was standing right where she had been, near the end of the rail, by the alley. Her arms weren’t crossed anymore. They were just hanging at her sides.

Two of her training clients were standing a few feet from her, and I saw one of them lean over and say something to the other and nod toward Ruby.

Everybody in that grandstand had watched Paige Hendry’s daughter ride back to the alley and help a scared horse through the gate. Everybody had watched that horse beat her.

Paige had to stand there in front of all of them, in the sun, and I don’t think she’d ever had to stand anywhere so long.

I didn’t go over to her. I want to be clear about that.

I didn’t wave, and I didn’t smile at her, and I didn’t say a single thing. It wasn’t mine to say. The run had already said it.

I turned around, and there was Dusty, coming across the grass from the parking lot in his feedlot coveralls, still with manure on his boots, walking fast. He’d missed it by four minutes.

“Well?” he said.

“She won,” I said. “Your daughter won.”

He didn’t say anything. He just stood at the rail beside me with his big hand on my back and watched Josie take that buckle from the fair board president, and I saw his jaw working the way it does when he’s trying very hard not to let anybody see his eyes.