David Thornwood had been tracking the black stallion for three weeks when the late spring storm broke the mountain open and sent the wolves down with it. He crouched now behind a wet pine, rifle across his knees, watching the horse he meant to tame. The stallion stood in a clearing below him, favoring one hoof, ribs showing through a rough winter coat. David had promised Elna a wedding gift worthy of her, and this animal was it. He had six months of savings tied up in the stretch of range beneath his cabin, and every free hour spent learning the stallion's routes. He could not afford to lose the horse now, and he could not afford to shoot it either. A silver rabbit with one folded ear broke from the brush at his boot and shot across the clearing. The stallion's head snapped up. That was when David saw the wolf. It came down the slope on the far side, low and unhurried, silver fur wet against its ribs. A second wolf moved behind it, then a third, spreading wide the way wolves do when they mean to finish something. The stallion wheeled and tried to run and stumbled on the bad hoof. It would not outrun them. David had maybe twenty seconds to decide whether the horse he wanted lived or died, and the rifle in his hands only held four shots. He fired the first into the dirt in front of the lead wolf. The animal flinched and did not stop. He fired the second into its shoulder. It dropped and thrashed and went still. The other two broke off and circled, then charged together from the left. David stood up so they would see him. He shot the nearer one through the chest at thirty feet. The third wolf skidded, changed its mind, and vanished back up the slope. His hands were shaking when he lowered the rifle. The stallion had not run. It stood at the edge of the clearing, sides heaving, watching him the way a thing watches whatever just decided its life. David did not move for a long minute. Then he set the rifle down and walked back through the wet timber to the log house at the foot of the ridge, where his cart of trade berries sat covered under the eave. He filled a basket with the sweetest of them and carried it back up the trail. The stallion was still there when he returned, still favoring the hoof, still watching. David set the basket down at the far edge of the clearing and stepped back. The horse did not come forward. But it did not leave either, and for the first time in three weeks, David Thornwood and the animal he wanted stood in the same open ground and looked at each other without a hunt between them.

The stallion came back to the clearing three mornings in a row, but it would not let David inside twenty feet of it. Each time David stepped forward, the horse wheeled and bolted into the timber, favoring the bad hoof. David left berries on a flat stone and watched the horse eat them only after he was gone. He could not build trust across a treeline. He needed walls, or rails, or something that held the animal in one place without breaking it. He rode down to the valley that afternoon to find the man people spoke of when a horse would not be handled. Colt Merriweather was saddling a bay in front of his refurbished barn when David rode up. David explained the stallion, the wolves, the bad hoof, the bolting. Colt listened without stopping his work. When David finished, Colt tightened the cinch and said, "You can't gentle a horse in open country. He has too many exits." David asked what he needed. "A stall he can see out of. Open rails, not a box. He has to choose to stay, and see that he chose it." David asked if Colt would come up and help build one. Colt shook his head. "I'm going after a mare in the high country. Been gone three weeks. She's more scared than yours." He paused. "But I'll draw you the stall before I ride out." Colt took a stick and drew in the dirt. Six posts. Rails set wide enough that the horse could put his head through and see the ridge. One side open to a small paddock so the animal never felt boxed. Feed trough at the far rail so the horse had to stand still to eat. "Put it where he already comes," Colt said. "Don't make him learn a new place and a new man at once." David memorized the drawing. Colt swung up on the bay and rode north into the pines without looking back. David worked four days on the ridge above his cabin. He cut posts from the timber the stallion already knew and sank them at the edge of the clearing where the berries had gone. He set the rails wide, the way Colt had shown him. On the fifth morning he filled the trough with oats and berries and walked back to the trees. The stallion came at dusk. It circled the rails twice, ears flat, then put its head through and ate. David did not move. When the horse finished, it stepped inside the open side on its own, stood a moment in the frame of posts, and walked out again into the clearing. It did not bolt. David had his safe ground. Now he had to stand inside it with the horse and find out what the animal would do when the man it feared was on the same side of the rails.

David woke before dawn with the stall waiting on the ridge and the stallion somewhere in the trees above it. He pulled on the same coat he had worn since the storm. Halfway up the trail he stopped. The wool still carried the smell of the two wolves he had gutted that night, and his hands, no matter how he scrubbed them, held it under the nails. He climbed the last of the trail anyway, telling himself the horse would come to the oats. The stallion was already inside the rails when David reached the clearing. It ate from the trough with its head low. David set one boot on the open side and the horse's head snapped up. Its nostrils worked. It backed hard into the far rail, spun, and put its shoulder against the wood. The trough tipped. Oats scattered. David stepped out and the horse stood shaking, eyes rolled white, staring at his coat. He walked back down to the cabin and stood in his front room. The wool coat, the wool shirt beneath it, the trousers, the gloves — all of it carried the kill. Soap at the basin would not be enough. He crossed the yard to the small timber hut behind the lodge and lit the stove inside it. He stripped everything he had worn that night and hung it from the rafters where the smoke and heat could work. He sat on the cedar bench and sweated for an hour. When he came out, his skin smelled of pitch and hot wood and nothing else. He pulled clean clothes from the chest at the foot of the country bed. Wool he had not worn in a month. He rubbed his hands with crushed pine needles from the woodpile until the beds of his nails burned. Then he went to the cellar and took down the basket a neighbor had left him at the end of harvest. The apples were still firm. He cut two into quarters and set them in a cloth. His herding dog followed him out of the yard, blue and brown coat bright in the morning sun. David spoke to it once and it dropped and stayed at the edge of the timber. He did not want a second animal near the rails. He walked into the clearing slow. The stallion was grazing beside the stall. It lifted its head, held, and did not bolt. David reached the open side and stepped in. The horse watched him. Its ears came forward. David set a quarter of apple on the flat of his palm and held it out at the length of his arm. The stallion crossed the stall in three steps and took the apple from his hand. Its lip brushed his skin. David did not move until the horse had eaten all four quarters. Then he walked out. He had stood inside the rails with the animal, and the animal had chosen to eat from him. The bad hoof was still bad. But he had his hand on the work now.