Moment of Truth by Mandy Magro

Author:Mandy Magro [Magro, Mandy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises, Australia Pty Ltd
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

15

Placing the feed bucket down, Ethan carefully assessed Shooter’s injuries while the young horse started to eat. In response to his gentle touch Shooter lifted his head and nudged Ethan’s shoulder softly. Satisfied the bandages were still in place, and clean, Ethan leant back. One boot up against the wall, he folded his arms. Highly intelligent, alert, patient and intuitive, and with the kindest eyes Ethan had ever seen in all his years of doing this, Shooter was going to make one hell of a horse when he grew older. Ethan was sure of it. He felt blessed to have crossed paths with such a magnificent creature, and took satisfaction in knowing he’d never sell him off. Born into the wild, Shooter already had a strong sense of family structure, the strict law of the pecking order giving each horse a definite place in the mob, and Ethan could tell that Shooter knew his place, even at this young age. By building on this, tuning into Shooter’s natural abilities and showing him how to lead without domination, he would quickly become Ethan’s best mate, bonding with him in a way that a domestic horse, in his opinion, rarely achieved. It drove him mad that close-minded people thought brumbies were inbred, and even disease ridden. His extensive experience with them proved otherwise. Free-ranging horses instinctively knew what they needed in terms of nutrition and foraged for it. As for the inbreeding, that only occurred when large numbers of horses were confined to small areas for grazing, and it was still very unusual, even in a domestic situation, let alone a wild one.

With the bucket licked clean, Shooter lifted his head and neighed. ‘You’re welcome, buddy.’ Ethan pushed himself off the wall. He ran his hand through the mane that had taken him over an hour to tame, and then over Shooter’s back, savouring his horsey scent. In his opinion, it should be bottled and sold as men’s aftershave. He was yet to meet a woman who didn’t like the smell. ‘I’ll be back a bit later to bunker down for the night with you, okay, buddy?’

The horse nuzzled him again, and he ran his hand gently over Shooter’s velvety nose and then down his neck. ‘You’re certainly a lover, and not a fighter, Shooter. I reckon you and me are going to make a good team. See you soon.’ Grabbing his hat from where he’d left it on a tack hook, Ethan tugged it on and stepped back out into the sunshine. Next job was rounding up his girls and locking them away for the night.

A short stroll down a rutted dirt track and he started to call out, ‘Come on, you lot, in you go. I haven’t got all bloody day, you know.’ Ethan shifted from boot to boot as he waited for his chickens to dawdle into the coop for the night. Rebel the Rooster, a name given to the bird by Ethan’s grandfather, was the last one in, his strut as cocky as his attitude.

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