Marcus could have shot him. Could have spurred Coal into the dusk and disappeared. Instead, he’d poured two cups of coffee.

Then Marcus swung into the saddle, touched two fingers to his temple, and rode east into the rising sun. Elias stood watching until the white coat dissolved into the white sky.

Marcus, on the right, had won Coal in a poker game three years ago. He was a traveling saddle-maker, lean and quiet, with no land and no roots. He didn’t know Coal’s history, but he knew his now . He knew how the horse would lean into a long, flat gallop across a prairie, and how he’d stop dead at the scent of wild onions. To Marcus, Coal was freedom—a four-legged passport to the next county, the next job, the next night under the stars.

They’d never intended to share. But after that poker game, Elias had shown up at Marcus’s camp with a rope and a broken heart. “That horse is my daughter’s name,” he’d said. “You can’t just ride him away.”

That was the strange truth of it: one horse, two guys, no argument. Because somewhere along the way, they’d stopped dividing the animal and started sharing something else. Not friendship, exactly—too sharp-edged for that. More like a mutual agreement that some things are too alive to be owned by one man alone.