Tug had also mentioned to the two hands to keep an eye out for the older saddle horses he had turned out that spring. There had been four mares and six geldings, all in their mid teens that were still good using horses but too old for steady, day in and day out ranch work, in Tug’s eyes. Had it been up to him, he would have just hauled them all off to the sale barn the previous fall, like he used to do with the old horses when the Johansson’s owned the place. But Tom and Terri both had a soft spot for those old horses, most of which were born and raised on the place. And not quite understanding the tradition, as well as the practicality of ridding the ranch of old livestock, they wouldn’t let Tug haul them off. Rather he had been ordered by Tom to literally turn them out to pasture.

Cat and Ben didn’t come across the herd until they were nearly back to the ranch headquarters almost a week after they had finished repairing the river fence. They had taken a much more direct route back to the ranch, and had come out of the pine forest and into a large open grassy field surrounded by barbed wire fence with the open gate in one corner just four days after the horses had. The field was a welcome sight to the two men after being out on the range for nearly two and a half weeks. It meant they were only two hours from home, good grub and a soft bed. The men, riding their favorite horses, led three pack mules—one loaded with their camping gear, one with food and medical supplies and the third with fencing materials and tools—through the open gate. As had been instructed before the two men left, Cat got off his horse and closed the wire gate behind them before watering their animals at the tank near the windmill and continuing for home. If some of the neighbor’s livestock or any of the wild horses that surrounded the ranch did wander through the opening by the river, Tug didn’t want them on some of his best pasture, which is what the fenced in area was. He wanted that two-mile square piece of irrigated ground left for an emergency, mostly in case he had to bring the pairs in during the winter due to exceptionally bad weather. Those times were thankfully rare, and Tug knew it. But he also knew from experience that it was better to be safe than sorry.

Over the last three days, the gray colt had watched the members of the domestic band disappear one by one over a little rise to the north, like watching ships disappear over the curvature of the earth when going out to sea. Even though the herd had wandered out of sight, the gray colt still had not moved very far from the water tank and the open gate. After initially going through the gate, for three days and three nights the colt stayed. He didn’t like the look or the smell of the place. The fence, water tank and windmill were one thing, but there were too many odd sounds and too many strange odors hanging in the air for him to feel comfortable. There was the faint odor of food cooking, of diesel and gasoline fumes, grease, oil, leather, cattle and more worrisome than any of the rest, the smell of humans. When the wind was right, he thought he could actually hear the humans talking, and he could hear vehicles driving down Highway 318, just a mile and a half over the little wooded ridge to the east. All of this was not only new to the colt, but it made him even more uneasy than he had even been around the little herd of horses he’d taken up with, and he had been plenty uneasy around them.