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TWELVE

Mac and Jodie were back at Hank’s ranch the next morning. Yesterday’s walkthrough had produced a list of things that needed checking before anyone started hauling panels and building temporary pens. Hank had also offered to store the group’s camping gear for the roundup itself.

The proposed holding site sat on the far side of Hank’s property, well away from the barns and pastures used by his own horses. No one wanted newly gathered animals anywhere near the sanctuary herd, in case the wild ones were carrying disease or parasites.

Jodie had gone off with Willow to check observation points and update some of the horse records, while Mac volunteered to help Hank walk the existing fence lines that would form two sides of the temporary holding area. They needed to know what could stay and where the portable panels would tie in.

They were cutting past one of the sanctuary paddocks on their way to the far side of the ranch when a sorrel gelding spooked at the gate Hank and Mac were carrying between them. The horse had been standing near the fence, watching them with his head high and his ears working. When one end of the steel gate knocked against a fence post with a loud clang, the gelding spun away.

Mac lowered his end immediately.

Hank didn’t call to the horse or follow. He stepped away from the gate and turned partly sideways, giving the gelding room. After a few seconds, the horse stopped near the fence and looked back.

“New one?” Mac asked.

“Had him three months.” Hank kept his voice low. “Owner surrendered him after her husband died. She couldn’t afford to keep him. I take in a lot of horses like that, good ones that’d be up for auction, and God knows what would happen to them there.”

The gelding took one cautious step toward them. Hank ignored him.

Mac smiled to himself. He knew that trick. Frightened animals—and frightened people—usually did better when nobody chased them demanding trust.

The horse eventually wandered closer and lowered his nose to investigate Hank’s shoulder. Hank scratched him once beneath the jaw, then went back to the gate as if nothing important had happened.

Mac picked up his end of the gate.

They started for the far fence line with it swinging between them. Halfway across, Hank angled them wide around a scatter of loose rock Mac would have walked straight over.

Mac adjusted his grip and went where he was led. “Military?” he asked Hank.

“What gave me away? The haircut’s grown out, so it’s not that.”

Mac laughed.

“Army,” Hank said. “You?”

“Canadian Forces,” was all he said.

True enough.

He’d started with the Patricias, third battalion out of Edmonton. Where he’d finished wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have with a man he didn’t know well enough yet.

“Yeah. Figured you for Minnesota or Wisconsin.”

“Alberta.”

Hank nodded.

They set the gate down at the post, and Mac noticed how Hank planted his feet before he took the weight, squaring himself and checking the ground under him first. Mac took his own end up and said nothing. They wrestled the gate into place, only to discover the latch no longer lined up with the post.

Hank stared at it. “Well, shit.”

Mac braced a hand against the gate and shoved. The post moved just enough to confirm the problem wasn’t the latch.

“Post’s leaning. You’ll want to chain the gate.”

“Yeah.” Hank sighed. “And I’m out of the heavy gate chain I thought I had.”

Mac glanced toward the pile beside the barn. “You’re short a couple fittings for those stock tanks, too.”