Otis Marsh, beside him, remarked quietly that he had worked this ranch for eleven years, and had never once seen Thaddeus Cain stand still at a fence for this long over anything that was not directly costing him money. Without taking his eyes off his wife and the horse, Thaddeus said he supposed this was costing him something after all, just not the kind of thing Otis was accustomed to counting. The final hour before sundown drew nearly the whole valley to Thaddeus Cain's corral fence. Ranch hands and neighbors and even a few curious wives who had heard through whatever channel such news travels fastest that the new bride at the Cain place had spent a full day gentling the horse everyone had quietly written off as unbreakable.
Josephine removed the lead line entirely as the light began to gold and lengthen across the valley and walked slowly toward the center of the corral and stopped and waited, the same patient stillness she had opened the day with at dawn. Judas stood at the fence line for a long moment, unridden and unled, entirely free to walk away from the woman who had spent an entire day earning his trust one careful hour at a time. The crowd at the fence went quiet, watching to see which way two years of fear would finally break. The gelding walked forward slowly and stopped beside Josephine's shoulder, exactly where he had walked all afternoon on the lead line, except now there was no line at all, only a horse who had decided of his own accord that this particular person was worth staying close to.
The crowd at the fence broke into genuine applause, and Thaddeus Cain, standing among them, found that his throat had gone tight in a way he had not expected, and did not entirely know how to name, watching his new wife stand in the last gold light of the day, beside a horse that four capable men and two years of effort had failed entirely to reach. Josephine walked Judas in one final slow circle, unled, and brought him back to the gate where Thaddeus stood. With the first real smile he had seen from her since the wagon pulled into the yard that morning, she said, "I believe that settles the wager, Mr. Cain. Though I confess I was never truly racing the sundown. I was only waiting for him to decide I was worth trusting, the same as I imagine I have been waiting for you to decide the same thing about me since I stepped off that wagon." Thaddeus Cain looked at his wife and at the horse standing calm and unrestrained beside her.
"I decided somewhere around the third hour, Mrs. Cain, though I confess my pride kept me from admitting it until just now. You have not merely won a dress. You have won considerably more than that, and I intend to spend a good deal longer than one afternoon proving I understand it." Kit Farrow, still standing at the fence with the rest of the small crowd, said to Otis Marsh, quietly enough that only the foreman could hear it, that he had ridden over, expecting to see a new bride, embarrassed in front of half the valley, and instead found himself watching something he suspected he would be telling his own grandchildren about someday. Otis told him that was likely true and that he ought to pay close attention because he doubted he would see anything quite like it again in this valley.