High Country Cowgirl

by Joanna Sims

  “Are you ready?”

  Gabe had put a rope halter on Jasmine and had her standing next to him on a grassy spot near the driveway.

  “Can you get in it and come toward us like your mom would?”

  “Okay.”

  It was disturbing, sitting in her mom’s first electric wheelchair. In light of her genetic test that confirmed Bonita carried the familial ALS gene, it wasn’t inconceivable that she could one day end up using a similar chair. But regardless of her discomfort, helping Gabe train Jasmine to accept the wheelchair was more important than any negative feelings Bonita was experiencing.

  Bonita moved the chair from the hidden position, around the corner and down the driveway toward Gabe and Jasmine. Jasmine, as she always did, tried to get away. Gabe, in his calm and controlled manner, went to work. Instead of trying to get the horse to stop moving, the cowboy made the mare move more. Every time the horse stopped moving the right way, according to Gabe, he took the pressure off her and asked Bonita to stop where she was.

  Little by little, repeating the steps, rewarding the horse by allowing her to stop moving when she was unreactive to the wheelchair, Bonita inched closer to the horse.

  “I can’t believe I’m this close.” Bonita stared in amazement at Gabe.

  Jasmine was standing next to him, her ears perked forward, ten feet away from the wheelchair.

  “Horses work off of pressure. Remember—everything we do is pressure to them. So a look can be pressure, where my body is in relation to their body can be pressure. The way horses learn what we want them to do is by releasing pressure at the right point. That’s the trick.”

  Shaking her head in disbelief, she said, “You are amazing, Gabe.”

  That brought Gabe’s bright blue eyes directly to hers and for the first time since he’d been working, he held her gaze for several seconds. As it always did, that moment of locking gazes with the cowboy struck a chord in her that was foreign. She had never felt before the way she felt when Gabe looked her directly in the eye and held her gaze.

  “Well.” He almost appeared embarrassed by her praise. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ve got to get that chair, and you in it, right up next to her.”

  “Do we do that today?”

  Gabe reached over and rubbed the mare between her ears. The mare lowered her head into a more relaxed position in response to his gentle touch.

  “I think we’re gonna get it done today, yes.”

  It took two hours of work—sometimes slow and painstaking—but by the end of the session, Bonita moved the electric wheelchair up to where Jasmine was standing and held out her hand for the horse to smell.

  Tears of joy and relief were on her cheeks as she reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a peppermint.

  “There you go, sweet girl.” Bonita held out the candy in the palm of her hand for the mare to take.

  “I think that’s enough for today.” Gabe didn’t seem to be uncomfortable in the face of her tears.

  “Thank you, Gabe.” She wiped the tears from her face. “You have no idea what this will mean to my mom.”

  Gabe turned Jasmine loose in the nearby pasture. Bonita stood up, turned toward the large wall of windows from which Evelyn watched the world and looked to see if her mom had born witness to the breakthrough with Jasmine. In the window, she could see her mother. Bonita waved her arms in the air and then blew her mom several kisses.

  “I tell you, I’m running a bit late for my next client. I’d like to come by tomorrow, work with Val and then be here when your mom comes down.”

  “That would mean a lot.” Bonita offered him her hand. “Thank you, Gabe.”

  He looked at her hand kind of strangely, but he took it, and they shook hands. “You can pay me tomorrow,” he said as he got into his truck.

  They agreed on a time that would work for both of them, and then Gabe was getting ready to pull away. Once again, they locked eyes. Again, the cowboy seemed to want to add something or linger in the moment right before he finally moved on.

  It wasn’t her imagination—there was a strong connection between herself and the cowboy. Bonita couldn’t understand it and she couldn’t define it—but she could feel it. And she had a strong sense that Gabe felt it, too. There was something there between them.

  * * *

  As promised, Gabe showed up at the ranch the next day, on time and ready to work. He greeted her with a tip of his hat and a smile in those blue eyes, but he wasn’t in the mind-set for too many pleasantries. She knew that he had fit her into his schedule for the day, so it was understandable that he had to focus on the horses.

  Gabe made the decision to work with Val first, and Bonita was sincerely relieved to have someone to talk to about her new horse—someone who might have a solution to some of the problems she was having with the giant Oldenburg.

  Using the rope halter, a training halter that worked on pressure points on the horse’s nose and behind the ears, Gabe led the Oldenburg out to the round pen. Bonita stood outside, keenly attuned to the man and the horse. Gabe started to put the Oldenburg through his warm-up exercises, asking him to back up and move his front feet and then his back feet.

  “I guarantee this horse hasn’t had this kind of training,” he said. “So it’s going to take him a couple of sessions to learn his job. And even then, he’s going to need to practice to keep the skills. I can’t do it today, but we’ll set up some sessions and I’ll teach you to do what I’m doing now.”

  Bonita watched Gabe put the seventeen-hand-tall horse through some sending exercises, where he directed Val from one side of the pen to the next. The idea of having the Oldenburg cantering that close to her while she was on the ground made her feel anxious. It was difficult to imagine that Gabe was ever going to be able to teach her his techniques; they were so foreign to her years of experience.

  Gabe removed the rope halter and set the horse’s pace, asking Val to walk, trot and canter, first to the right and then to the left, forcing him to go in the opposite direction on command. When the cowboy wanted the horse to slow, he didn’t use a voice command. Instead, he used his body, letting out a breath, relaxing his shoulders—subtle changes—and to Bonita’s amazement, the horse always slowed. As with Jasmine the day before, Val walked up to Gabe in the center of the round pen and stood quietly with him. After a moment, the cowboy reached over and rewarded the gelding with a rub on the neck.

  “All a horse wants is a strong leader and you need to be that leader. Like I said yesterday, you need to be the lead mare. If this horse—or any horse for that matter—feels any weakness in you at all, they are going to try to take the lead position and boss you around. That’s their nature. We’re asking them to live in our worlds in an unnatural way but we need to understand how they communicate, what their motivation is, if we are going to be safe with them.”

  Gabe stepped away from Val, and to Bonita’s surprise, the Oldenburg began to follow him. If Gabe turned right, Val followed. If he halted, so did the Val.

  “You want the horse to look up to you. When the horse is willing to follow you, that means they see you as the leader,” Gabe explained while he was walking. “The more you work with him, the more he sees you as a leader, the more cooperative he’s going to be.”

  “I’ve never seen someone do that with a horse before,” Bonita said, doubting that she could ever replicate what Gabe was modeling.

  He halted and put the rope halter back on the Oldenburg. “What’s he like to ride?”

  “Same as he is on the ground. Resistant.”

  Gabe tossed the lead rope over the horse’s neck and left him standing in the center of the round pen.

  “Do you want me to hold him?” she asked him.

  “Nope,” he replied as he came out of the round pen. “He’ll stand there.”

  As was typically the case when it
came to horses, the cowboy was right. Val just stood there quietly, awaiting Gabe’s return.

  Bonita shook her head at the horse. “Who are you and what have you done with the real Val?”

  Gabe returned carrying his Western saddle on his hip and a bridle slung over his shoulder.

  “I don’t think he’s ever had a Western saddle on him before!” Bonita exclaimed anxiously. God only knew how the Oldenburg would react to such a different kind of saddle. She was certain that he had only been broken with English saddles, which were totally different in weight and feel than Western.

  Gabe didn’t seem concerned. He threw the saddle pad onto Val’s back and then swung his weathered, dark brown saddle on top of the pad.

  “Horses don’t care about the type of saddle,” Gabe told her. “To them, it’s just different dead cow.”

  Bonita didn’t necessarily like the phraseology the cowboy used, but she got his point.

  He moved Val out without the bridle on, with the heavy leather stirrups dangling down. “I like to leave the stirrups down,” he told her. “Gets the horses used to not reacting to something bumping them on the side.”

  As Gabe had predicted, Val didn’t care about the type of saddle. In fact, she had to admit that he looked pretty sharp with a Western saddle.

  “A Western saddle is going to creak a little bit more than an English one, so I’ll let him get used to the sound of it before I get on him.”

  Val settled down quickly, virtually ignoring the novelty of a type of saddle he’d likely never had on his back before. Gabe put the bridle on him and then led him out of the round pen toward the indoor riding arena.

  Why she had doubted Gabe for a second was beyond her, Bonita thought as she followed him into the arena. The man truly was a horse whisperer and she was feeling very grateful for having him as a resource for both of their horses.

  “He’s impressive.” Her father joined her at the side of the arena. “Your mom and I have been watching him from the window.”

  “He’s doing everything I would do in my warm-up for dressage in a Western saddle,” she said quietly. She had wrongly assumed that because the man rode Western, he wouldn’t know the first thing about how to make a horse supple, or lateral work or collection.

  Gabe rode Val over to where they were standing.

  “What do you think?” she asked him.

  “He needs more work on the lateral. A lot of people think that you walk in a circle and that’s working on the lateral. You have to start by pulling his nose all the way back to the tip of your boot, to the right and then to the left. That’s a place to start with him. Most horses will bite at your boot.” He smiled at Val. “Like he is now. That’s just their nature.”

  “He feels like he’s fighting me every step of the way when I ride him.”

  Gabe gave a little nod. “He doesn’t have a great work ethic.”

  That was not what she wanted to hear. It was like a parent hearing from a teacher that her kid was a low performer or a daydreamer. A $750,000 horse with a bad work ethic was never good news.

  The cowboy dismounted and led the horse out of the arena. “I think we’ll finish here. There’s plenty to work on with him, but we need to get to the next.”

  “Can you get him in the wash rack at least?” Bonita asked. “He acts like he’s never been in one before and I need to be able to rinse him off after I ride him.”

  Of course, Val walked right into the wash rack like he did it all the time and stood quietly next to Gabe.

  “Like this?” Gabe asked her.

  “Well.” She frowned at the Oldenburg. “He doesn’t do it like that for me.”

  Gabe rinsed off Val, squeegeed off the excess water and then handed the lead rope to her. “Be the head mare.”

  * * *

  Gabe wasn’t often emotionally touched by the experiences of other people. Perhaps he was jaded, but that’s just how he was. But he was touched by what he had managed to accomplish for Evelyn, George and their beautiful daughter, Bonita.

  First, he had Bonita go through a practice run with the spare electric wheelchair to make sure that Jasmine was still desensitized to the sound and the motion. When Jasmine did her job, not reacting to the wheelchair motion and letting Bonita move into her space, Gabe was convinced that the Thoroughbred mare was ready for real performance.

  “If this works, you have no idea what it will do for my mother,” Bonita said quietly as they waited for George to return from the house with Evelyn.

  When he didn’t know what to say, Gabe just kept quiet. But when it came to how a horse might respond, he could speak his mind just fine. Standing next to her, he could feel the anxiety and worry coming off of Bonita’s body like a magnetic field.

  “If you’re doubting she can do it, you’re putting that doubt off on the horse.”

  Bonita turned her deep, brown eyes up to his—eyes that had been in his dreams of late—took a deep breath in and let it out slowly as she nodded her understanding. He could see how important this was for their family and he felt proud to be a part of a solution.

  “Please work,” he heard Bonita whisper beside him as her mother and father came into sight.

  When Evelyn and George came within earshot, Gabe said to Bonita’s mother, “Expect her to succeed. Just come on over like you do it every day.”

  Gabe had worked at several facilities that used horses for therapeutic riding with individuals with disabilities, so this wasn’t his first time training a horse to work with a wheelchair. Bonita hadn’t told him the reason Evelyn was confined to a wheelchair, but to him, she was just another client with just another horse.

  “Good girl, Jasmine,” Evelyn said in her slurred, slow speech.

  Instead of backing up or trying to escape Evelyn as she had before, the Thoroughbred stretched her neck forward and smelled her owner’s hand. Bonita’s mother struggled to lift her hand but managed to touch the soft leather of Jasmine’s nose.

  George was standing behind his wife and Gabe could see that he was fighting a rush of emotion, while tears freely flowed down his wife’s cheeks. Bonita quickly moved to her mother’s side, wiped the tears away from her cheeks with her hands and placed a kiss where the tears had just been.

  “I have a treat for her,” Evelyn said.

  “Here, Mom,” Bonita was quick to say. “Let me help you.”

  Bonita found a peppermint, Jasmine’s favorite treat, in her mom’s shirt pocket. Evelyn’s fingers were curled under from atrophy, so Bonita stretched out the fingers, put the treat in the palm of her mother’s hand and let the horse take it.

  Gabe watched the family as they accomplished something so seemingly small and yet it was an enormous event for them. Evelyn feeding a treat to Jasmine was a hallmark moment. Bonita was laughing through her tears and George was praising Jasmine, patting her on the neck and laughing. Evelyn was, as much as she could, smiling with her mouth. But mostly, Gabe was touched by the joy he saw in Evelyn’s eyes.

  George paid him for his work both days plus a hefty tip before he took his wife back to the house. They turned out Jasmine into the pasture and then Gabe was once again alone with the woman who had occupied much of his thoughts for the last week.

  There was something about Bonita that he couldn’t get off his mind. There was sadness in her he wanted to fix. When he was with her, he didn’t want to leave her. And when he wasn’t with her, he thought about getting back to her. It had been a long time since he had fallen in love and gotten burned to a crisp. He wasn’t completely sure, but what he was feeling for Bonita felt an awful lot like falling in love.

  Bonita walked back to him, her eyes red from crying. Normally she shook his hand when they said goodbye, but this time, she forwent the handshake, crossed into his personal space and hugged him. It wasn’t a long hug, but it was a hug that had some heart behind it.


  Her arms crossed in front of her body, Bonita said to him, “I owe you an apology, Gabe. I do. I had no idea when I met you, that you were the one—”

  Bonita’s voice caught and he wanted to hug her again.

  “The one who could give my mom such a beautiful gift.” The pretty heiress turned her brown eyes to him and held his gaze. “My family—I—am forever grateful.”

  Chapter Nine

  Hugging Gabe seemed as natural as breathing to Bonita. It had happened spontaneously, from the heart, and she meant that hug. Gabe had been stiff and hadn’t hugged her back, but she didn’t take offense. Gabe was a bit physically standoffish. Her family, especially her father’s family, was very touchy-feely and hugged and kissed all the time.

  “I know you’re running late because of us.” Bonita had caught him looking at his watch. “So, again. All I can say is thank you for everything.”

  Gabe gave her his typical simple nod. “Pleased to have been a help.”

  They walked together to his truck, but instead of opening the driver’s door, he stopped and looked down at her as if he still had something to say. Usually he didn’t say a word in that moment, but this time, he did.

  “Do you want to come with me?” he asked her. “My next client needs me to get their mule to load in their trailer.”

  Bonita laughed—somehow, he could always make her laugh. “I have to tell you, that’s the strangest offer I’ve ever had. Why do they want to get the mule on the trailer?”

  “They compete in mule dressage shows.”

  Now she was laughing even harder. “Mule dressage? Is that real?”

  “Apparently it’s a thing.”

  They laughed together for a second or two.

  “That’s just silly.” She smiled at him.

  “I don’t judge.” Gabe smiled back at her. She liked his laugh. She liked his smile. And she liked his clear blue eyes. “I just work through the problem.”

  “And how could I possibly help you?”