In the years that followed that single long day at the corral fence, Thaddeus Cain came to believe that his own doubt had been hitched to considerably more than he realized at dawn, tangled up with an old business betrayal, a skepticism he had let bleed into every corner of his life, including his marriage, and that Josephine's patient afternoon with Judas had somehow untangled both the horse's fear and his own in a single day. He said as much to her once, years later, on an evening when a new colt had arrived, too wild for anyone else on the ranch to handle, and Josephine had gone out to gentle it with the same unhurried patience she had shown that very first day. Watching her from the fence, an older man now, Thaddeus remarked that he supposed some lessons only needed teaching once, provided the teacher was patient enough to make them stick.
Thaddeus and Josephine Cain ranched together in the Bitterroot Valley for thirty-three years. Josephine gentled a good many more difficult horses over that time, and Thaddeus never again doubted a claim of hers before watching her prove it, having learned in the span of one long afternoon exactly what his new wife was capable of when given the space and patience to show it. Their eldest son inherited his mother's gift almost entirely and considerably less of his father's early skepticism, having grown up hearing the story of Judas and the single-day wager told at nearly every family gathering until it had worn as smooth and familiar as a favorite saddle. He liked to say that his father's greatest achievement was not the ranch he built, but the doubt he learned to set down one long afternoon at a corral fence and never quite pick back up again.
Sometimes the surest way to change a stubborn mind is not an argument at all, but simply patience applied steadily in full view until the doubt has nowhere left to stand.