The corral was made of tree limbs that were almost straight. I lifted the poles of the gate and shoved them away and walked inside with the oats in the palm of my glove. The older horses were sleeping on three hooves with their heads hung out of the wind. Two mares blew air hard and clopped away from me on frozen ground, but a gelding came up to sniff my hand and raise his lips for the oats. Then another horse nosed him away and the gelding balked and made believe there was grass in the snow. A three-year-old with a blaze on its face took what I had in my hand while Grat climbed the fence behind the other horses. They were insulted and shied away but by then I had the lead horse walking forward to shovel at the feed bag. I backed outside the corral and wiped my nose on my sleeve and shook the bag. The horse looked at me like I was stupid and it had better things to do, but some others in the corral were smelling the air and murmuring and pushing each other out of the way, and the leader consented to walk into the feed bag and a bridle. Grat slipped a bit on a filly and we pulled them out to the road as the sun rose.

Bob was hunkered up in his coat on the road. “My feet have turned into stones,” he said.

The two of us waited for Grat who came riding up last, having propped a spade against the front door; then we ran up the road in a racket.

We galloped toward the river and broke through the ice and waded the stolen horses east to the bowl of a dry creek bed that was all yellow leaves and snow. There we built a roaring fire and warmed up under blankets and I tampered with the brands where I needed to, burning new letters through a wet towel.

By afternoon, Grat and Bob were riding into Annie Walker’s tent camp where rustlers and buyers congregated. A dog slept in the breath of some tied-up horses. A blood-smeared man was ripping his knife through a milk cow, butchering. Her stomachs fell out like laundry and steam rose up in the cold. A man stood under a tent flap in long brown bear hides, smoking a pipe. He was the middleman for the transactions, and he acknowledged Bob by backing inside.