Pamela Morsi by Sweetwood Bride

up his courage and tended the animal If his hands trembled slightly as he laid the hay out in the trough, nobody would ever know. And if he had winced and caught his breath when the big horse nervouslysidestepped, he would never have to admit it.
    For his valor and perseverance, Rans hadn’t expected any thanks or praise. Somehow that sort of thing never came his way. But he hadn’t imagined that faultfinding and ingratitude would be his wages.
    “What the devil are you doing?”
    Moss Collier’s voice was not harsh, but Rans thought it accusatory.
    “I’m feeding your horse,” he answered, immediately defensive.
    “You’re feeding him,” Moss said impatiently. “Have you watered him?”
    “I … I was going to do that next,” Rans insisted.
    “You don’t water a fine saddle horse
after
a feed,” Collier told him. “That’ll give even an old plowing nag the colic.”
    He grabbed the horse’s mane and pulled his head away from the feed trough.
    “Colic can kill a horse,” the man said. “If you don’t know anything about the animals, then stay away from them,”
    Rans felt the sting of embarrassment stain his cheeks. If Eulie’s new husband had said, “You’re stupid!” he couldn’t have felt more humiliated.
    Moss Collier slipped a rope around Red Tex’s neck. He opened the gate and led the big horse out. The jenny followed as they made their way down the slope toward the river. Rans trailed after them, his hands in his pockets, silent and angry.
    A small trail was worn into the ground near the river where for countless years animals, both wild and domestic, had easily gained access to the water. The horse and mule dipped their heads eagerly to havetheir fill. Moss Collier stood beside Red Tex, stroking and patting the horse proudly. As if, Rans thought unkindly, drinking water were some kind of special trick only a fine saddle horse could manage.
    Rans bent down and perused the ground around him for a few minutes until he found a nice flat round stone. He wiped the dirt from it with his thumb and forefinger testing it for smoothness. It suited him perfectly. He rose to his feet and, with a sideways sling about waist-high, he sent it sailing across the water.
    Plop … plop … plop.
Three times it grazed the water before dropping in.
    The old jenny didn’t even notice. But the big red horse jerked his head up and skittered back away from the water.
    “What the devil are you doing?” Collier hollered at him as he moved to quiet the animal.
    “Sorry,” Rans said, guarding his grin with a mask of innocence.
    He felt a good deal better after watching the man’s efforts to quiet the spooked horse. When Red Tex was drinking again, Rans sided up next to Collier.
    “Most folks just let their animals roam. Then they can get their own grass and water as they need it,” he said.
    The man didn’t even bother to look his way.”
Most folks
don’t own any animals as valuable as Red Tex. He gets plenty of spring grass, some cowpeas and shock, and a bucket of oats every day.”
    Rans tried to hide his surprise. No work animals with which he’d been familiar ever ate so good. On the old place that they’d sharecropped for his father, any oats or cowpeas that they’d managed to harvest wouldhave been next seen in the dinner plates of him and his sisters.
    But Rans had already discovered that on Moss Collier’s place, a person could live on store-bought canned peaches. That was amazing. Rans had never tasted anything so fine in his life. But he flatly refused to feel beholden about it. Moss Collier had opened up those peaches, he assured himself, because he’d wanted to sweeten up his new bride. It had obviously worked. When he’d wandered back to the place and seen the light in the kitchen, he’d thought his sister was still cleaning.
    He’d only gotten one glimpse, but it was surely an eyeful. Moss Collier may not have wanted to marry Eulie, but he’d overcome any contempt for her in a