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knew in her mind that he would someday be gone, in her heart she assumed he would always be there for her, like the hills, when she needed him.
    â€œI called Doc Boser,” he said after he had eaten for a while. “He’ll be out a week from Monday to cut them mustangs.”
    Grandpap kept speaking, but Bobbi could not at first comprehend what he was saying. She heard only cut, mustangs, and the palms of her hands pressed against the table top to keep her upright; for the first time in her life she felt faint. “Cut” meant geld. Make the studs into geldings. Castrate them.
    â€œHe’ll want to do it in the stalls,” Pap was saying. “We got to get them halter-broke and stall-broke by then.”
    â€œYou can’t geld Shane!” Bobbi burst out.
    She saw her grandfather’s eyes widen in surprise, as well they might. Nearly every year of Bobbi’s life there had been a horse gelded at the Yandro place, and she had never objected before. Nobody with any sense kept a stallion unless they intended to breed it, and had the special stalls and corrals meant for studs. Stallions were considered too unreliable and just plain dangerous to use as pleasure mounts around mares.
    Bobbi knew these things. But—that was all before she knew Shane.…
    Pap sat astonished by her outburst, but, oddly, he did not rear up and roar. Bobbi had spooked him with so many surprises in the past two days that perhaps, like a mustang snubbed to the hitching rail, he was growing tired of struggling. Or perhaps he was learning, out of necessity and quickly. He asked quietly, “Why not?”
    He was really asking. He was really ready to listen. His tone touched Bobbi so that she nearly opened her mouth to tell him. But she couldn’t … how could she share what she had so long kept secret, tell him about the weird things she saw? Her reasons were too strange for words. As crazy as her screwball mother. Suddenly doubt numbed her. Thinking what she did about Shane, was she—was she crazy? Ever since she could remember, ever since the first time she had visited her mother in the awful, screaming, urine-smelling psychiatric ward, she had been afraid of going ga-ga like Chantilly.
    â€œYou just can’t,” she said to her grandfather, but all the fight had gone out of her.
    â€œNo reason?”
    â€œShane’s …” But he would know she had gone off the deep end like her mother if she told him. And, anyway, how could she feel so sure? She faltered, “Shane’s … different.”
    Grandpap said, “I can see you and that horse got something special.”
    It was a struggle for him to say it, she could see that, after he had been so set against her getting the black mustang. But fair was fair, and Grant Yandro was always fair. He added, “You planning to breed him, maybe?”
    Pap was really trying to understand. Bobbi felt her eyes prickle with hidden tears.
    â€œNo,” she said, “I wasn’t planning on it.” She had to be at least that honest with him. He was trying to be honest with her.
    â€œI was going to say, ain’t nobody going to breed to him, not with those walleyes. He’s a real nice horse,” Grandpap added hastily, “aside from that. Real light on the forehand for the way he’s built. Moves nice.” There was a grudging but genuine admiration in the old man’s voice. He was recalling the way Shane had dodged his rope. “Faster on his feet than any horse I ever seen.”
    Moves like a cat burgler, Bobbi thought. Or a gunfighter with Indian blood. Or a drunken gypsy, for the gypsies only danced better and with greater splendor and defiance as they became drunk. Or a swordsman—no, a Jedi knight.
    â€œFlashy. Good flex to his neck.” Grandpap was still trying to be nice, but then the horseman in him took over. “It’s plenty muscled up, Bobbi, maybe even a little too thick. You