Chapter 4: Rule Two

Hayes walked down the aisle toward me without hurrying.

"You all right?" he said.

"I'm fine."

He looked at my jaw, where Boone's hand had been, and didn't say anything.

"Let's go load your filly," he said.

Boone was waiting at the back of Hayes's horse van in the gravel lot.

He'd put his hat back on, and his face was shut.

"She's not something you can buy at a sale, Hayes," he said.

"No," Hayes said. "She bought me. Weren't you watching?"

"Thirty years," Boone said. "And you do this to me at my own supper."

"You sold her mama's farm at your own supper, Boone. I just said yes to something."

Two grooms loading a colt nearby had stopped pretending not to listen.

Boone stepped closer to Hayes.

They were nearly the same height, and for a second I thought one of them would swing.

"If you hurt her," Boone said.

"Put your hand on her face like that again," Hayes said quietly, "and you and I will have this talk somewhere without witnesses."

He didn't raise his voice at all.

Boone looked at me over Hayes's shoulder.

Then he walked to his truck and drove out of the lot too fast, spitting gravel.

Hayes rubbed the back of his neck.

"Well," he said. "That went about how I figured."

We got the filly home to Ransdell Hill by dark.

Hayes's barn was nicer than ours, all oak and brass, with fans in every stall.

I put her in the end stall and stayed with her until she started eating.

When I slid the new door shut, the latch caught the heel of my hand.

It was a sharp, cheap latch, and it opened my palm.

I swore and closed my fist, and blood ran out between my fingers.

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