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it?"
    Casey laughed, briefly this time. "Oh, yeah. Everything Ken touches seems to turn to gold. Speak of the devil."
    As we watched, a small white Cadillac pulled into the driveway of the big house up on the hill and a man got out of the car. A short, crisp man in his fifties, with close-cropped gray hair and a conservative light blue shirt tucked into navy blue slacks. He carried a briefcase as he walked to the front door, unlocked it, and let himself in. Ken Resavich in person.
    Lights came on in the big house as we stared out the window of Casey's mobile--curtains were drawn. Casey said nothing. I thought about the little I knew of Ken Resavich, which wasn't much, and wondered if Casey liked him, hated him, was indifferent to him. It would have been hard to guess. Casey was a difficult person to read emotionally, and Ken Resavich was even more so. I'd only met Ken a couple of times, but his face had seemed almost wooden-expressionless-though not in any way hostile. I had no idea what he was like, other than he was rich and not an extrovert.
    "Ken doesn't look much like a farmer," I said conversationally. "He looks more like a C.E.O., or a colonel in civvies. Was he ever in the army?"
    Casey shrugged, his face as blank as his boss's could ever be; something about the inward expression in his eyes made me wonder again if he wasn't hurting pretty badly. I tried a tentative question. "Are you all right?"
    "I'm doing fine." His tone was clipped and he took a long swallow of his beer and looked away from me. The message was plain-leave it alone.
    Melissa was still painting her nails, ostentatiously absorbed; it didn't take a lot of brains to guess that she was involved in some sort of silent feud with Casey. In fact, all the unspoken vibes in the room were starting to make me feel tense and uncomfortable. No matter what I said it was sure to be wrong.
    Finishing my Budweiser quickly, I rose to go. Melissa looked up as I said a brief "Thanks for the beer," to the room in general, and smiled brightly in my direction. Maybe she was trying to let me know it wasn't me she was mad at.
    I smiled back. "See you guys later."
    I was headed for the door when Casey called after me, "I'm showing that mare tomorrow. Shiloh. In Los Borregos."
    It wasn't exactly an invitation, but there was something in his voice that struck me as a request.
    "Why don't you come?" Melissa chimed in with another friendly smile. "Casey could use the support."
    It sounded as if there were a barb in her words, but Casey didn't respond, just nodded affirmatively, if laconically, from the living room. "Come on," was all he said.
    Melissa insisted on giving me detailed directions before I left, and I took them down, agreeing halfheartedly that I might go.
    As I said good-bye and stepped out the door, I wondered how long it would be before Casey told Melissa he'd taken a rugged fall this afternoon-hours, days, maybe never? What was going on between them-some kind of a power game in which guilt trips were a weapon?
    None of your business, Gail, I reminded myself, as I shut the door behind me. Keep your mind on your own life. My own life, my own horse. Shiloh might be wonderful, but she wasn't mine. I drove back to Soquel, up Old San Jose Road, and turned in Kris Griffith's white-board-lined driveway.
    Kris lived about a mile from me as the crow flies, but our two places were a long way further apart than that, economically speaking. Her five-acre parcel was all wide, sunny meadowland, and the big house and barn which sat on a knoll overlooking the creek were brand new-natural wood with a gray stone chimney for the house, white-board-fenced pastures surrounding the barn.
    It was the barn I pulled up to, and waving at a glimpsed motion through a house window-Kris or her daughter Jo, no doubt-I headed toward the small corral where Gunner lived, Blue stumping stiffly along behind me, stopping to water trees where necessary.
    Gunner's head was over the fence, ears pointed