200 People made a low sound. A few of them laughed and down at the public rail, a 9-year-old girl looked up and asked her mother out loud whether that man was going to kill the black horse. Catherine said yes. And then she heard herself say the other thing. He isn't mean, she said.
He's hurt. She did not say it to anybody. She said it the way a person reads a sign aloud without meaning to. But there were three men standing at arms length up the rail from her and one of them turned around and then the other two did and one of them laughed and that laugh went up the fence and reached the stand. Thomas Hammond looked down the rail and found a woman in a gray dress with her hand on his fence and a child beside her and he lifted his chin and he was delighted.
We have an authority, he said, and the whole yard heard it. Gentlemen, there is a horse trainer standing at my north fence. 200 Faces came around in a wave. Catherine felt the heat of it climb the back of her neck and settle. She did not move.
Moving is what they are hoping for. She had known that for years. Go on, Hammond said. Say it again where everybody can hear it. Tell these men what ails my horse.
He's hurt. He's hurt. He repeated it slowly, tasting it, holding it out so the crowd could see it. 40 Years I have been raising horses in this basin, and it turns out I have been doing it wrong, and the Lord has sent me a woman off the county road to put me straight. They laughed.
It went along the rail in pieces and kept starting over. Aida moved in against her mother's leg and Catherine put a hand on the back of her daughter's head and kept it there. Left shoulder, Catherine said. Watch what he does when somebody walks up on his near side. All four of those men went at him from the left.
I will watch nothing. His voice flattened out. I will tell you what I see. I see a woman who has not eaten in two days standing on my rail with her hand on my fence in front of my buyers. And then a voice came from over by the chute.
Misty Hammond. It was Luther Weaver, the horse doctor hired for the day, 38 years old with a coat too warm for the weather. He had a bad feeling and a contract, and he was trying to hold both. There is a swelling on that near shoulder. I would like to put my hands on him before he goes anywhere.
You would hold up my sail for a bruise. I would do my job. Your job is signing papers. Stand there and look like a doctor. Weaver's face went red to the ears.