Chapter 5: The Horn

Ramiro's POV

Lyle Kimbrough called me into his study at dawn on Sunday, and I went, because the Warden always goes.

The room smelled of leather and old coffee.

Elk antlers hung over the desk, and on the walls were photographs of Lyle shaking hands with every alpha in Arizona.

The horn hung on its own peg beside the window, black and curved, with a brass band at the mouth.

I did not look at it.

"Sit, son," Lyle said.

He poured me coffee himself.

"I wanted to thank you for last night."

"I only said the law," I said.

"You said it well," he said, smiling.

"It was a fine show," Lyle said.

"My boy eats with the dogs till July, and every family on that hill watched me allow it."

He tilted his head.

"Do you know why a father allows it, Ramiro?"

"No, sir."

"So they all see how reasonable I am," Lyle said.

"A man who is reasonable in small matters is believed in large ones."

He sipped his coffee.

I understood that he had just told me the truth, kindly, because he did not think it mattered what I knew.

I sat very still.

"Now, the gather closes at nine," he said.

"The Warden blows the horn, and the families go home."

He folded his hands.

"You have done it eleven years," he said.

"Yes, sir."

"Then take it down."

I got up and crossed the room, and I lifted the horn off its peg.

The brass was cold.

The weight of it was exactly the weight I remembered.

I put it to my mouth, and I breathed in.

My hands began to shake.

I tried to blow, and my throat shut, and nothing came out but air.

The sound I could not make lived in the back of my head, long and low, with a woman running ahead of it.

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