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else?” demanded my daddy, glancing at the scratches.
    Willie Thomas followed his look. “Well, them there, they’ll heal all right. It’s jus’ that leg I ain’t so sure of.” He turned to my daddy. “It’s my boy Mitchell done this, Mister Edward, and I know there ain’t no way t’ make it up t’ ya if this here horse don’t heal right, but I jus’ ’bout t’ put a strap t’ Mitchell my own self ’bout what he done. I’m gonna put a strap t’ him right now, matter of fact!” With that said, he positioned his whip and turned toward Mitchell.
    â€œBut it wasn’t Mitchell!” I blurted out, stopping him and surprising myself. After all Mitchell had put me through, I shouldn’t have cared if he got whipped or not. “Wasn’t Mitchell rode that horse! It was me!”
    Willie Thomas’s whip stopped in midair and my daddy’s gaze turned from Willie to me. Mitchell, though, stood stock-still. He didn’t look at his daddy, he didn’t look at my daddy, and he didn’t look at me. He was gazing off somewhere else.
    â€œYou?” questioned my daddy. “Paul, you did this?”
    â€œYes, sir,” I said, looking straight at him. “I did.”
    My daddy took a breath deep, then walked around Ghost Wind, inspecting him long and hard this time, before he came back and stood right in front of me. “Paul,” he said to me, “you’re a good horseman, one of the best I’ve ever seen, and you know how to handle Ghost Wind. Now you going to stand here and tell me you rode this horse and let this happen to him?”
    I looked straight up at my daddy and lied again. “Yes, sir.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œSir?”
    â€œHow’d it happened?”
    I glanced at Willie Thomas, still holding the strap, and at Mitchell, still looking off to God knew where. Then my eyes turned again to my daddy. “He . . . well, he just got away from me, Mister Edward,” I said. “Ghost Wind . . . he . . . he was just too much horse for me, I reckon.”
    After I said that, there was only silence. My daddy’s look pierced me; then he moved back to the stallion and stooped to take another look at his leg. He motioned Willie Thomas over. “Looks like to me,” he said, “the leg’s not that torn up. It should heal in time.”
    Willie, too, again studied the leg. “Yes, suh, I believes so,” he agreed. “But not time ’nough for them races you was plannin’ on.”
    My daddy straightened and nodded. “You just do what you need to do to make him right.”
    â€œYes, suh.”
    â€œAnd, Willie . . .”
    â€œYes, suh?”
    â€œPut that whip away. Paul says he rode the stallion. That’s all I need to know.”
    Willie Thomas bit his lip, looked at Mitchell, then back at my daddy and said quietly, “Yes, suh.” My daddy nodded as if an understanding had just been struck, and watched as Willie Thomas hung the whip back on the wall.
    Then my daddy turned to me. “Paul, you come with me,” he said, and left the barn.
    I glanced again at Willie Thomas, but he didn’t look at me. He turned his attention instead back to the stallion. I looked then at Mitchell, and for the first time he was looking at me, but I couldn’t read his eyes.
    â€œPaul!”
    I hurried after my daddy. When I caught up with him, I walked alongside him in silence until we were almost at the house before I said, “I s’pose you real mad at me.”
    â€œNot real happy with you.”
    â€œWell . . . I’m sorry about riding Ghost Wind that way. I . . . I won’t do it again.”
    â€œYes, I know you won’t.”
    â€œYou going to whip me?”
    My daddy stopped and looked at me. “No,” he said. “I’m not going to whip you, Paul. No, your punishment is that you’ll never get to