Dave was one of those men Henry had seen but never really cared to know. He was young in Henry’s eyes, in his early thirties, although he did look much younger. The poor excuse for a mustache he tried to grow to make him look his age, a scraggly, light-brown, sickly little caterpillar of a thing that dusted his upper lip, actually had the opposite effect. The fact that he was also so uncoordinated that he couldn’t (as Topher had put it on many occasions) seem to find his own butt with both hands, also added to his teenage-like awkwardness.

On this particular morning, every time he tried to put his foot in the stirrup, his horse, a nice little red dun gelding, kept spinning away from him. Apparently trying to discourage the horse’s behavior, Dave took one of his reins and began violently slapping the horse on his neck and shoulders. The gelding turned circle after circle until, not knowing what else to do, he finally tried backing up.

“Damn you!” the kid yelled. “I’ll teach you to back away from me!” He raised his hand in the air, and just as he was about to come down and strike the horse for what seemed like the fiftieth time, Henry’s hand grabbed Dave’s arm and stopped it from coming forward.

“That’ll do,” he said quietly, but firmly. “You made your point.”

“Hell, Henry.” The horse was still trying to back away from the seemingly mindless beating. “It’s just a damn horse. You went and got all soft on us since you quit drinkin’?” The kid let out a chuckle at the weak joke he had made, and looked around to see how many of the men were joining him in the laugh. None were. They knew what the kid didn’t. Henry was more serious than the kid understood and while at this point no harm had actually been done, that could change in a heartbeat if the kid pushed his luck.

“You hit this horse again, and I’ll show you just how soft I am,” Henry growled.

“Jesus.” The kid’s tone changed. Now he understood, too. “Okay…hell, I was just kiddin’ around.”

“You’re pullin’ his damn head around every time you put your foot in the stirrup,” Henry said bluntly, turning the kid loose, turning and walking away from him. “That’s why he keeps movin’ away from you, you damn idiot.”

Dave turned and looked at Topher, who had been sitting quietly on the big paint mare not far from the situation the entire time. “Damn,” he said almost under his breath. “I think I liked him better when he was a drunk.”

The horse Henry rode that day seemed to carry inside him the signature of every man who had ever ridden him. These signatures showed themselves in the way the horse responded any time Henry requested anything of him. He would jerk slightly anytime Henry asked him to move forward by putting a leg on his sides, which told Henry that someone had used spurs on him inappropriately. When asked to stop, the big gelding would jut his nose out and lean on the bit. Someone—probably a number of someones—had been hard with the bit, yanking on the reins, or holding on to his mouth unnecessarily, and for long periods of time. His neck, jaw and mouth were tight from defending himself against such acts, and while the gelding did absolutely everything Henry asked of him that day without hesitation, he was not at all soft when he did any of it. Henry thought it a shame that while the horse had the signatures of numerous riders all over him, he unfortunately didn’t seem to have much of his own signature left anymore.