The people wave their hoses at the plane. Water arches in sun, nozzles glint. Always the same: their eyes water. They dab sweaty wrists. The plane dips its wings, a friendly stranger. The lines of fire are pretty and memorable. This is modern aviation. The plane banks toward the Saint’s Head Ridge, aims for the Gunsight.

“Quiet, I’m thinking,” Dan said and shaded his eyes. “How’s about I bash him with a baseball bat.”

“You don’t own a baseball bat.”

“I’ll poison his well.”

“You’ve never been mean.”

“I’m mean now.”

On the hills smoke still skimmed the ground. Only lazy ranchers burned this late in the day. Here was an oak that could still remember the settlers’ wagons. Arms out and tired in the air. The mare fell in its shade like a sack.

“Get her off that root,” Ginny said.

Dan sat on a low branch. “She doesn’t feel that root. That root is nothing.”

“Comfort isn’t nothing.” Ginny tried rocking the mare then sat with her.

“Don’t talk to me about comfort.”

They waited for the foal, nothing else to do. A bell rang down at Shaw’s. The villainous Percheron made an appearance at Shaw’s fence. Ginny’s hand was up inside the mare’s back end.

“Almost crowned.” She wiped her hand on her pants. “Come on, darlin’. Come on out.”

“Grab a leg.”

“Not yet.” The sun went on rising and the morning shadow shrunk. Dan threw rocks at the stud, but his aim was poor. The Percheron only flicked his tail.

“Sure, throw rocks if it makes you feel better.”

“Nothing makes me feel better.”

The Percheron kicked the gate. The new steel clanged, coped and fitted, full welds, new J-bolt hinges, all busted in where a truck had rammed it. HORSES KEEP THIS GATE CLOSED hung on the top rail. The stallion was gray and enormous, eighteen hands, a ton and then some.

“Percherons were bred for war,” Dan said.

“Cut it out. Concentrate.”

She pulled her flannel shirt off to a T-shirt. Her hand went back up the mare.

“The French beat the Arabs. Took their horses back to France. Bred them to free French stock. A thousand years.” The gate clanged.

“Task at hand, Dan.”

The mare arched. The stud’s molars were noisy from thirty paces, chewing last year’s dried-up mats, since Shaw’s people, way back, were from Chicago and they did not burn their fields in Chicago.

“This foal’s residual from war and theft,” he said. “What do you think of that?”

“I could use a hand.”

“Grab a leg and pull.”

“Where’s this blood from?” It was her hand she was talking to.