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accept it, though no escape. At the other end of it another door, closed and latched, blocked the way and the light. Stepping inside the shadowy aisle, Bobbi opened the door to the first stall. She did not have to look to see if the black horse was watching her; she felt sure that Shane was always aware of everything taking place around him, both because he was a wild stallion and because he was—himself. Without turning around and without raising her voice, she requested, “Shane, would you come and get into this stall, please?”
    She could hear the black stud walking toward her across the corral. Without looking she could envision his catlike alertness, his desperado grace. She heard his steps steadily approach, then the slightest of hesitations; Shane was put off by her nearness. He thought perhaps she would try to touch him as he went past her into the stall. “Don’t worry,” she said sourly to the wall. “I wouldn’t think of it.”
    He speeded his walk slightly, brushed past her, entered the stall and turned around so that he faced her as she closed the door. Bobbi felt a slight shock as her eyes met the eerie blue ones in the horse’s strong, black face. Almost, she had expected a man’s handsome, headstrong face, dark brows, straight nose.… Shane stood watching her intently.
    â€œI won’t latch it,” she told him quietly. “You can just push it open if you want. But please stay in until Grandpap is done. He’s not a bad man. Even the temper you’ve got him in, you’ll see he doesn’t hurt the horse.”
    She went outside, squinting in the brighter light of the corral. Grant Yandro was still standing where she had left him.
    â€œThe black devil’s name is Shane,” she told him.
    Pap looked at her oddly. “I see,” he said in a quiet, angry voice. “And when I want him in a stall I’m supposed to just hold the door open and ask him nicely, is that it?”
    Bobbi said wearily, “Probably not. I think he just does it for me because I’m a girl.” She went into the house.
    More often than not, Pap made supper, but since he was busy with his horse Bobbi started some sausage frying on the little bottle-gas stove. While it cooked, she watched the corral out the kitchen window. The sorrel was so worn out it was not hard to catch. Grandpap got his horse by the lead rope and maneuvered the animal to the hitching rail near the barn, where he snubbed the sorrel tightly to the strong post. Then, for an hour, standing on the opposite side of the post and rail, he methodically rubbed and patted the sorrel’s head, first one side and then the other, starting at the cheeks and working his way up to the forehead, ears, poll and upper neck. Each time he moved his hand to a new place the sorrel struggled, wild-eyed. Each time, it found that struggling was of no use and ended it by standing still. Sometimes its ears came forward, its expression curious as well as scared as it listened to the sound of Grandpap’s voice.
    From the darkness of the barn, Bobbi knew, Shane was watching, or at least aware, his blue eyes ablaze with hatred in his black face. True, the sorrel was not being hurt. But it was being forced, pushed, shaped.
    Bobbi sighed and started to mix pancakes.
    It was almost dark before Grant Yandro came in for supper. “You didn’t latch the black horse’s stall,” he told Bobbi as he washed his hands. “He could have come out any time he wanted to.”
    â€œI know,” she stated.
    Pap stared at her with eyes as hard and gray as the stones long-ago glaciers had left in his horse pasture. But he said nothing more. He sat and ate in silence.
    In spite of his gray hair, Grant Yandro had never seemed old to Bobbi. Stubborn, and set in his ways, but not old. Nor did he seem young. He simply was, like the mountains, and like them he weathered without seeming to change. Though Bobbi