He glanced toward the barn. Their remaining cows would be standing inside in their drowsy, stand-up sleep, their udders full and ready for milking. Then he remembered: Off in the far stall Bucky would be munching on his last trough of hay before their grandfather’s friend came with his trailer to take him away.

Nate thought about Junie—the look on her face the day their father had brought Bucky home to surprise her; her tears, long after their mother had tucked her in last night. “I want my dad,” she had wept when Nate came in to comfort her. “If my dad was here, he’d never let them take Bucky.”

Nate recalled his promise to bring Junie to Warm Springs to see their dad. Maybe more than getting his father back for himself, even, Nate wanted his father back for Junie.

That was when he spotted her. At first, in the hazy semi-darkness, he thought it was the Laffertys’ old dog, Festus, ambling across the yard, but then he saw it was his sister. She was dressed in her jeans and Keds, the Dale Evans shirt she loved, and the fake chaps Uncle Harold had given her last Christmas. It was too dark to make out the expression on her face, but she had a determined stride, an air of purposefulness.

She pulled open the barn doors. For Nate, that was easy enough, but for Junie, it took several tries, even with both hands and the whole weight of her body pushing. She disappeared into the barn then, and he stood there puzzled, looking out into the early morning quiet.

A few minutes later she emerged carrying Bucky’s bridle and reins, which she kept on a hook inside the door. Now she was moving toward the place in the field where her pony stood grazing. She walked very slowly, as if the ground were made of thin ice and one wrong move might cause her to fall through. She knew that a single sudden movement might make the pony bolt.

But Bucky just stood there, even when Junie reached him at the spot inside the paddock where he stood munching on grass. As their father always said, Junie had horse sense like no one else he’d ever known. The way Poppa could study the milk a cow produced or the curve of her belly and know what she needed in her diet or that she’d gotten into clover the week before, Junie knew how to handle a horse.

She leaned her head close to Bucky’s and stroked his neck. Nate couldn’t make out the words, but he could see her speaking softly into her pony’s ear. She stroked his withers and ran her small hand over his side.