All the King's Horses by Lauren Gallagher

afternoon, after the horses had eaten, I wandered back down to the barn to check on my new horses. Some of them had a more difficult time than others adapting to the new farm, so I was constantly making sure they were okay. That, and now that they’d had a chance to eat and all the boarders and clients were gone for the day, I wanted to try working with Star or Blue. Maybe both.
    Star was no worse for the wear. She came right up to the door to say hello when I came in, and though she was a little head shy, she didn’t mind me petting her. Well, at least until she finished chewing a mouthful of hay and pulled her head back so she could dive into her manger again. Since she was still eating, I let her be and walked across the aisle to Blue’s stall.
    He didn’t approach, but I didn’t expect him to. He was still nervous about me and everyone else, so I just folded my arms on the door and rested my chin on top of them as I watched him eat. If not for the cut on his shoulder and the wary looks he occasionally threw from side to side, it was hard to believe he was the same horse who’d panicked his way into and out of the trailer so recently. He was calm and quiet now, inspecting his shavings with his nose, probably searching for a few stray crumbs of hay.
    “What do you think, Blue?” I said as I picked up his halter off its hook. “Ready to come out and play for a bit?”
    He raised his head, and though he tensed, didn’t freak out as I slipped the halter on. He hesitated before letting me lead him out of the stall, managed to clip my boot with his hoof a couple of times, but settled down as I attached the cross ties to either side of his halter.
    Once the cross-ties were on, Blue stood in the middle of the aisle, and I just watched him for a moment. It always seemed so easy from this vantage point, when there was nothing to set off the horse and bring all the abuse to the surface. It was easy to imagine throwing a saddle on his back, getting on and riding off into the sunset when he was just standing here, eyes half-closed and a rear foot cocked, but I’d been down this trail too many times to believe that. Time and patience, that was the mantra of anyone in this line of work. With horses who’d been through the hell Blue, Star and Chip had been through, that mantra became a hell of a lot of time and an infinite well of patience.
    I stroked Blue’s face. Whatever it took, I’d get this horse back into riding condition. I couldn’t afford the time it would take, especially now that McBride had given me a bigger project than I’d expected, but there was no going back. Blue deserved better than to keep bouncing from place to place until he found someone with the time and energy to reverse everything his original trainer had done to him.
    This was going to be one long road, though. And truth be told, Blue needed someone who could spend a couple of hours a day with him. A couple of hours every day. As it was, thirty minutes every other day was the most I could commit to him or Star, and that was pushing it. It would also cut into what precious little time I had to work with Chip.
    And boy, did all three of these horses need work. All because some jackasses wanted to win. Much as I wanted to make a living in this business, I would go to my grave wondering what possessed people to hurt animals in the name of making a buck.
    Once I’d finished grooming him, I went into the tack room to get the weathered old surcingle and a long pair of ground-driving lines. I set the coiled lines on top of a tack box against the wall in the aisle and put the surcingle on his back. It rested behind his withers and buckled just like the girth on a saddle. When that was in place, I brought out a bridle with a snaffle bit.
    As soon as I tried to put the bit in his mouth, Blue clamped his teeth shut. Big shock. I slipped my thumb into the corner of his mouth to the flat spot on his gums, that wide gap between his teeth where the bit would