Free Solomon's Oak by Jo-Ann Mapson Page A

only dogs could talk.”

Chapter 3
    N OT SO MANY years back—maybe five—Glory and Dan had driven several hours and paid money to watch one of their former foster sons, Gilbert, give a horse clinic on establishing trust with abused horses. While he lived with the Solomons, Gil spent every waking minute he wasn’t in school or doing chores with their horses. When Gil had saved enough money, he and Dan attended an auction, and Gil brought home a four-year-old gelding that Glory took one look at and knew was out of its mind. They came back with a few new dents in the horse trailer, which Dan backed up to the corral, so the horse wouldn’t have anywhere to bolt except into the fenced area. It took Gil half an hour to convince the horse to back out of the trailer, and when he finally did, the first thing he did was kick in Gil’s direction. He spent the next twelve hours galloping around the corral, flinging himself itself at fences, screaming and rolling his eyes so that the whites showed.
    “Guess I’ll call him Spooky,” Gil said.
    Glory and Dan had watched that crazy horse throw that kid five times a day. Glory would have given up that first day, but Gil saw something past the rope burns, the notched ears, and the bucking. “Just one more week,” Gil, limping into the house to wash up for dinner, told Dan every night.
    When Gil turned eighteen, he found a job with a ranch up north gentling horses, and Spooky was still with him. People called him “the miracle worker” and said his ability to tame whatever a horse had to dish out was something you had to see to believe.
    That Hollywood movie about horse whispering was just a story, but Gilbert had a gift. At the clinic he promised that within two hours the bucking and rearing four-year-old mare would not only accept a saddle, but follow him around like her best friend.
    “Where’s your whip?” someone asked as he shut the corral gate.
    “No whips. No hobbles, tie-downs, and no intimidation. This horse has already been abused. I aim to establish a lifelong rapport based on kindness.”
    “This I gotta see,” the cowboy next to Glory muttered.
    “A warning,” Gil said before he began the demonstration. “Sometimes what I do here brings up emotions. It’s my belief that animals can help a human being travel to the wounds of childhood. The best part is, once you go there, you can fix things. Get on with life.”
    Dan patted Glory’s hand and smiled. Glory had been worried for Gil. You never knew what a horse’s mood would be day to day. All it took was a white trash bag flying in the wind to make Piper start stamping and snorting. Glory could tell that some of the ranchers and horse people hearing all this touchy-feely baloney were just waiting for Gil to fail. Maybe their methods to break a horse to saddle weren’t as gentle as they could be, but they worked—if you called beating a horse to tell him what you wanted successful communication. “Please let everything go okay,” Glory whispered.
    “Have a little faith,” Dan said.
    Glory had watched Gil work with Spooky for a year and a half. Just as she did with her last-chance dogs, Gil had taken his cues from the horse and, one by one, erased his fears. Spooky went from a total nutcase to a mellow, alert cow pony that couldn’t wait to load into a horse trailer to go someplace new. He could spot a snake ten feet away and would stop stock-still until the rider on his back saw that, too. Spooky was up at dawn whinnying for Gil, eager to get his day started.
    Gil had patiently stood in the center of the ring, taking small bites of a carrot with its green top still attached. The tense filly flattened her ears if Gil so much as looked her way and snapped her teeth when Gil came even a foot closer. In response, Gil walked around the fence, once with his hands by his sides, then on the next circuit he put his right hand, the one holding the carrot, against the fence, allowing it to ping against each metal