Changes of Heart (27 page)

Maggie laughed. “Like I said, the girl’s a blessing, Sarah—to all of us.”

Sarah glanced at her watch. “Whew! I’ve got to run. Big day tomorrow, and I’ve still got some things to do. And I promised Tessa I’d pick up a new pair of jeans for her.”

“The new surgeon—what’s his name?—is working out well?”

“Steve Ridley. Yeah. He’s excellent. Nice guy too—a little arrogant, but a nice guy. The nurses flock around him like bees to honey.” Sarah moved toward the door. “How do you think Tessa will do tomorrow?”

“Well, Turnip’s ready. He’s been burning up the pattern and leaving the barrels standing up. Tessa might be pushing too hard for that extra half second she can save by jamming the barrels too closely. If she keeps cool, she’ll do real well.”

“Thanks to your training.”

Maggie laughed. “Nah. Tessa belongs on a fast horse. She’s a natural. I’ve guided her a bit, but all the raw talent was there before I met her, before I had anything to do with her riding.”

“I guess we’ll see tomorrow.”

“We sure will. And even if she takes down all three barrels and runs over a judge, she’s still our Tessa.”

That evening, when the sun had lost its power for the day but was still providing gentle, dusky light, Maggie left the barn and walked the fence line of Dancer’s pasture. The other horses were in their stalls, but Dancer needed all the exercise he could get, and his evening meal was scheduled later than those of his barn mates to give him as much time as possible outside.

Maggie stopped and whistled a short note—and then immediately grimaced as Dancer wheeled his body toward the sound and placed much of his weight on his left rear leg as he turned.
Nothing to worry about
, she chided herself.
Danny says he’s as fit as he was before Thanksgiving
.

Dancer, gregarious as ever, galloped across the pasture to where Maggie stood, sliding to a decidedly show-offish stop.
Maggie started toward the barn, and the colt, on his side of the fence, tagged along after her like a puppy, snorting every so often as if to hurry her somewhat unhurried pace to the feed barrels.

Maggie saw Ian in her mind as she walked, remembered him sacking Dancer—rubbing the colt’s body with an empty grain sack, beginning to flap it gently around the horse’s neck and face to acclimate him to the hurried moves of humans. Dancer had been clearly bored by the process.
It’s going wonderfully—perfectly. They’re learning at the same time. The bond between Ian and Dancer is... is like a partnership—or a good marriage. There’s so much for each of them to learn, but they have all the time and space and love they need
.

Maggie stood outside Dancer’s stall, listening to him grind sweet feed between his teeth and the occasional grunt that indicated his joy at eating. After a minute, she picked a handful of carrots from the treat basket and went stall to stall to give each horse a carrot, a scratch between the ears, and a few low words of love.

As she walked toward her house after securing the barn for the night, she stopped midway. The light in the second bedroom—the office—was on. Maggie took a deep breath of air that smelled of fresh grass and the humid sweetness of a Montana summer night.
This is all good
.

Maggie continued on into the house, leaving her boots on the mat in the kitchen. She started up to the second floor, her thick socks quiet on the stairs.

Ian was hunched over the keyboard, unaware of her presence in the doorway as he worked on the coming Sunday’s
sermon. He was a good typist and a quick thinker and writer. Maggie focused on the cadence of his fingers as they tapped out letters, words, sentences. The simple gold wedding band on his left ring finger that matched the one Maggie now wore and had barely become accustomed to glinted as it caught the light from the desk lamp.

This tiny moment in time, Maggie somehow knew, was a picture of joy and love that would be in her mind and her heart forever.

“Hey,” she said quietly. “I’ve been standing here watching you work.”

Ian leaned back in his chair and turned toward her. “That doesn’t sound terribly interesting for you.”

“It all depends on one’s perspective,” Maggie said, moving to embrace her husband. “I find it fascinating.”

A Note on Barrel Racing

Barrel racing is a fast, hard-riding, intensely exciting sport that pits women and tautly muscled, precisely trained horses against a merciless and unforgiving clock. Since its inception in the 1940s, barrel racing has become a favored event in the Professional Rodeo Association’s shows and competitions, and a woman with a strong and competitive horse and a whole lot of personal grit and determination can earn prize money that rivals that of male calf ropers and rough stock riders.

The sport works like this: three empty polystyrene fifty-five-gallon drums are set in an arena. The distance between the barrels varies, but the rules call for a minimum of one hundred feet and can go longer, depending on the size of the arena. A safety zone is provided to allow the contestants to slow and stop their mounts, which are galloping at top speed after completing what is called the cloverleaf pattern. Although the majority of riders opt to take the
righthand turn first (since most horses turn more strongly to their left), taking the left barrel first is allowed. The pattern looks like this:

Consistently winning barrel horses must have a tremendous ability to accelerate and the ability to handle acutely tight turns in both directions at a full gallop. Equally important is that the horses must be as competitive as their riders and must love the contest with equal fervor. There are many fast horses but very few top barrel horses. There must exist a communion between horse and rider to shave seconds—and tenths of seconds—off the clock. It’s that partnership that makes barrel racing the very special sport that it is.

Breeding, raising, and training barrel-racing horses is a large and competitive business, and the price asked for a finished (completely trained) horse can easily top twenty-five thousand dollars. But part of the beauty of the sport is that a horsewoman with enough drive, ability, and patience on a five-hundred-dollar grade horse that wants to win as badly as his rider does can be counting her prize money while her colleagues glumly load their multi-thousand-dollar mounts into their trailers.

Paige Lee Elliston
reflects her keen understanding of the horse/rider relationship in her writings. She has written many novels in the general market and is the author of numerous short stories and articles. She lives in Rochester, New York.