A pouch that smelled green and medicinal. Cole walked to Rosie's stall. The mare who had bitten the farrier and expressed her opinion of the local veterinarian through targeted rear kicks stood calmly let Cole approach let him lift the hoof a small puncture freshly cleaned a wound so small he'd missed it four times. Dressed now with something that smelled like pine and chamomile and something else. He looked at Kaya's back at the braids over her shoulders.
How did you Rosie doesn't let anyone. She picked up her bag walked out left him with his miracle horse and his unfinished sentence. Right Cole scratched behind Rosie's ear. I don't know either he told her. Rosie did not find this helpful.
Day eight Voss Braddock. He had a gelding with a recognizable canter heavy like a man who wanted you to hear him coming which was accurate to his personality. Braddock was 40 broad a face that had been decent looking once before too much sun and too many opinions worked on it. Cole was on the barn roof did not come down. Heard you got married Braddock said.
The paw that wanted something put in it Apache they're saying. That's right. You want to be careful Cole. Whole town's talking. People have he found the wrong word concerns.
Cole set down his hammer. Concerns he said about an Apache living this close to "She's my wife." Said the way you say something that ends a conversation. "She lives in my house on my land." The town can bring its concerns directly to me.
He picked the hammer back up. We done? Braddock left, heavy canter all the way down the road. Cole kept working, nailed three more boards, didn't think about it, except when he came down an hour later and walked around the corner of the house, Kaya was there. Standing at the garden, working, but facing the wrong direction for the work she was doing, facing the direction Braddock had ridden from.
She'd heard Cole, looked at her. Her hands moved on the plants. Her face showed nothing at all, which was its own kind of information. "He's a fool," Cole said, simply. "And the town can mind its business."
She kept working. But her shoulders, just slightly, dropped half an inch, like something she'd been carrying got marginally lighter. He didn't point it out. He went back to the barn. That night was different, not dramatically, not in any way you could point to.
Cole was at the table after dinner, Kaya's cooking again, something with rabbit and garden plants that was better than anything he'd made himself in 5 years, which he found mildly humiliating, and he heard her in the kitchen, the sounds of putting things away, then quiet, and then she came back in, which she didn't usually do. Usually, dinner, clean up, bedroom, done. She came back in and sat down across from him. Cole didn't move, didn't want to do anything that would stop this. She looked at the table, at her hands, at some middle distance, then she looked up, met his eyes, said, "Thank you."