Dakota Sterling's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The gelding took her commands on the lot now, but Dakota still had no idea what he'd be asked to do. The championship ran a set course. Judges scored each pattern. She'd never seen it drawn. She couldn't drill a horse on turns she couldn't name. Without the layout, she'd walk in blind and bleed points on every corner. She knew one man who might have it. A retired judge sat in the stands most evenings, watching the bull riding with his hands flat on his knees. Hank Cordell had called rides for thirty-one years. He'd judged this event before a director pushed him out. Now he watched from a seat and said nothing when the men below missed calls. Dakota climbed the bleachers and sat beside him. "I need the course," she said. "The championship pattern. You judged it." Hank kept his eyes on the chute. "I did." "Can you draw it for me?" He was quiet a long moment. Then he reached into a canvas bag at his feet. He pulled out a folded sheet and pressed it into her hands. She opened it. A blueprint. Lanes, corners, measured distances, all inked in a clean hand. "Kept my copy," he said. "They never asked for it back." Dakota stared at the lines. Lane one. Lane two. Corner A. Corner B. Every turn the judges would score, laid out to the meter. "Why give it to me?" she asked. Hank looked at her then. "You ride the gray bull's event. Somebody down there ought to ride it right." He turned back to the arena. He didn't say more. She drove to the old training corral before the light went. The fence stood weathered but solid, the sand raked flat. She spread the blueprint on the top rail and weighted its corners with stones. Then she opened a bundle of survey flags, bright cloth on wooden sticks. She paced the sand and read the measurements aloud. Ten meters to the first turn. She pushed a red flag into the ground. Twenty to the second. A green one. She walked the whole pattern on foot, planting flags at every corner the judges marked. When she finished, the course stood before her in color, matched to the sheet. She brought the gelding in and mounted. "Walk on." He stepped out. She turned him at the first flag. He followed. She pushed him to the second, then the third. He balked once at a tight corner. She squeezed and he gave. By dark she'd run the full pattern twice, clean. Dakota swung down and folded the blueprint. She had the course now. She had a ground to drill it on and a horse who'd take the turns. But the flags stood in soft, raked sand. The championship ran on cracked asphalt, under backfiring trucks. Her gelding knew the pattern here. He'd never run it where the noise could break him.