Robbie looks wistful and nods. “Yeah, to me, too.”

Lance dares to ask a question that he’s had on his mind since Robbie brought him to the ranch on Saturday morning. “What made you stop training?”

Robbie tucks a strand of hair behind his ear, his expression faraway.

“There were a lot of signs that it wasn’t for me. It was hard for me when people took a horse home and didn’t get along with it like I had. Which happened a lot of the time, you know? Every rider feels different to a horse, so they never work exactly the same for two different people. Especially if the second rider doesn’t put the time in with them. It made me anxious, always wondering if a customer would be happy or not. And even though forty-nine out of fifty people were happy, it was always the unhappy one who I couldn’t forget about.”

He steps out of the stall and Lance follows.

Robbie keeps talking. “But I could have dealt with the unhappy people. It was the unhappy horses I couldn’t stomach in the end.” He shoots Lance a sad, strained smile. “The last straw was this nice red mare named Sienna. The young couple who owned her bought her as a foal, and they loved her, even though they were beginners and she was pretty high-strung. I had a lot of fun with her, but I told them all along that I wasn’t sure she’d turn into something they’d get along with. They were inexperienced, and she was a lot of horse for someone without a quiet hand and a lot of confidence. But she and I—well, I like any horse. But every once in a while, I just click with one on another level, and Sienna was like that.

“She went home after about four months, and it took a good six months after that before I got over not seeing her looking over the stall door at me every morning. I never heard a word from her owners. Usually, I considered no news to be good news, but I had this feeling about all of it...and, I really couldn’t get her off my mind. So, one day, I called to see how they were doing with her, and maybe ask if they’d consider selling her to me.”

Lance leans against the stall wall, not taking his eyes off of Robbie, his heart speeding up like his body has already sensed what’s coming even though his imagination hasn’t quite put together how the pieces of this story end in disaster.

“The guy answered, and he was real short with me. I knew right away something was off. But he said he’d be happy to sell her. Rattled off a price that I was sure I heard wrong; seemed like it was missing a zero. He said I was just in time because they’d been planning to pack her off to the auction house, but if I could come that day, I could have her. He told me that, a few days after they brought her home from here, they took her out on a trail ride. His wife was riding, and she had some trouble and got thrown. She wasn’t hurt, but they were upset and scared. So, they sent Sienna to a trainer who some friend of theirs said would get her ‘good and broke.’” He pauses to roll his eyes. “But that didn’t work out, either, he said. She was hopeless, he told me, and they just wanted her gone.”