Vernon
That was when Vernon Pike walked over from his trailer.
He had come to ride, the same as every year, on his big gray gelding. He walked across the gravel with his hat on and his hands in his jacket pockets, and he stopped beside Deanna, not in front of her. Beside her.
“Morning, Deanna,” he said. “Morning, Virgil.”
He took his right hand out of his jacket. He was holding a white envelope, a little bent, the way paper gets when it has been carried a while. I knew that envelope. I had handed it to him myself.
He held it out to me.
“Those are the papers for one of your heifers,” he said. “I’m not keeping her. I gave fifteen hundred for that horse, and one bred heifer is more than square. She’s in my side pen eating my hay, and Loren can come get her Monday.”
“Vernon,” I said. “We had a deal.”
“We had a deal,” he said. “And I’m telling you what I’m willing to keep out of it. I’m not getting rich off Virgil Coble’s horse.” He looked at Dad. “I should have called you that day. I should have picked up the phone and called you myself, and I didn’t. That’s on me.”
Dad shook his head. “You didn’t know.”
“I knew enough to wonder,” Vernon said. “I just didn’t.” He turned to Deanna. He was gentle with her, the way you are with a heifer that has had a hard calving. “Deanna, I lost Zula on a Tuesday, sitting in her own chair. Nothing I did or didn’t do would have changed it. I’d have given every cow I own for one more trail ride with her.”
Deanna pressed her hand over her mouth.
“Let him ride,” Vernon said. “Ride with him. I brought my granddaughter’s old mare. She’s twenty-four and she’s never done anything faster than a walk in her life. She’s tied to my trailer right now with a saddle on her.”
I had not known that. I do not think anybody knew it. He had hauled a second horse up the forest road on the chance.