What-The-Black-Decided
By August the herd was gentled and Della was not, and the two facts had everything to do with each other.
She had meant to keep him a stranger. But a ranch is small at supper, and Sam had a way of fixing the things she hadn't asked him to — the dragging gate, the pump that had groaned since spring — and of never mentioning that he'd done it. He talked to the horses more than to her, and when he did talk to her it was sideways, the way he stood with the black, never head-on, never crowding. And slowly, the way the gelding had, Della found herself taking one disbelieving step and then another toward a man who seemed to be asking nothing of her at all.
The night before the September sale, she found him at the round pen in the dark, saddle slung over his shoulder, his own horse already tacked.
"You're leaving."
"Sale's tomorrow. You don't need a breaker after a sale." He didn't turn. "I leave before. It's cleaner. I've learned that much."
"Cleaner for who." Her voice came out worse than she wanted, the way it had the first day. "You waited two weeks for that black to trust you and now you're going to ride off the night before it has to load into a stranger's trailer? It'll think you lied to it, Sam. It'll think the whole thing was a trick to get it close."
He went still. When he spoke, it wasn't about the horse, and they both knew it.
"I've been twelve years not staying