Seven horses—a little cavvy—swayed likewise, in their own time, out into the corral. The palomino first, the chestnut last behind the cob, the gang in the middle biting on each other’s necks. They bunched at the fence and sniffed new air. The little mare followed, a pony, small-framed to begin with, bought at the cannery auction and never fully past the effects of starvation. She lumbered between the crossties, stepped out past Ginny after the herd. She was a mixed breed, brown, with her big belly swinging. Any fool could see Shaw’s Percheron had got her. What’s monogamy to a horse, after all? A rare discipline in the animal kingdom. For millions of years, grazing on these same fields, the primal inhabitants of the Great Plains spared it not a thought. Fretting over infidelity about as much as Horse, Rhino, Sabertooth concerned themselves with the continental plates pushing patient below the earth. In millennia since, we’ve learned that both the earth and a good fuck can turn around and get you killed if you’re not keeping a close eye. But what’s the earth to a horse, after all?

“How could you do it?” Dan said to the barn wall. “You fucked me over.” Ten years married. Ten years in love before that. A young man still.

“Settle down now,” Ginny was saying, following the mare out into breaking day. “I can’t help you if you kick me.”

Dan caught a fly in his palm. He would tell Ginny about the fly, a private joke. The yard will fill with flies when the sun gets in, easy easy, soon, a few hours, but the Mormora Mountains still cast their long blue shadow and these flies were young, cold, dumb from smoke. The last calves shouldered through the gate. Another black, another white, then the acorn calves, more heifers, not impatient or impolite. Dan slapped their rumps and they romped and kicked across the field to find their mothers. The haze sat on the ground waiting for a breeze. He should forget about the fly.

“We’ll get that foal out of you,” Ginny was saying. “I promise.”

Now the horses. Pacing and pawing. The little mare after. Dan turned the first seven out to the south field, the cob going first this time, the chestnut last again, always last, the Old Man, and Dan closed the gate after them. The mare hung her head over the top rail. She watched the herd break free into morning, trotting then halting, drifting by boulders, tossing heads, flicking tails. The young ones galloped the sidehill to the creek. He ran his hands across the mare’s belly, withers to stifles, which bulged under her great weight. He listened at the enormous bulge.

“Still two heartbeats,” Ginny said.

“I’ll burn Shaw’s house down if this comes out badly.”

“You’re not some caveman.”