Claim Attempt

As usual, my uncle didn’t say much when he drove. He never did. His thick hands gripped the steering wheel like it might jump out of the truck and bolt into the snow, and his eyes squinted down the road like the wind had a personal grudge against him. I knew he was a gentle man, but subtleties like these betray his true nature. 

It was early December and the sky was a clear blue, pale and untampered with by the sun. The onslaught of snow from the previous night now layered everything in a thick coat of white. I pulled my coat tighter at the sight of the biting cold awaiting the both of us and looked over at him, half-expecting him to tell me to turn back. He hadn’t wanted to take me in the first place, for it was far too early.

“You sure you’re up for this?” he grumbled, not looking at me.

“Yeah,” I said, though my voice barely made it out over the heater.

He snorted, but that was the closest thing to approval I was going to get. 

We drove north for over an hour, into the old foothills where fences had long since collapsed and horses still ran without brands or barns. My uncle knew the land, for he's practically grown up here. He knows every bend in the dirt roads and which trees leaned which way. I knew none of it still. 

The stallion had been spotted a week ago: a pale cream, with a white streak down his nose. His white face marking wasn't as bold as a full stripe, but instead a whisper of it. Folks said he looked carved from the snow itself, blending into the environment around him if you ogled at him for too long. He's not as wild as a blizzard, just wary like something that had every right to be in the wild.

My uncle pulled up beside the broken fence line and killed the engine.

“There,” he said, nodding toward the tree line.

Sure enough, the stallion stood on a low slope of snow, legs stiff, steam rising off him with every breath. His choppy mane stood rigid ,just like him, and his little tail was gently fluffed about by the breeze.

I opened the door too fast. The click of the latch echoed louder than a gunshot. The stallion flinched and disappeared into the woods like smoke.

“Damn it,” I muttered.

Uncle Ray just shook his head. “He doesn't owe you anything” he said, climbing out slow. “If you want him to trust you, you got to earn it. No rope. No halter. No tricks.”

“How, then?”

“Same way you’d tame anything worth keeping,” he said. “Time, food, and a little heart.”

So that’s what I did.

Every morning, we’d drive out there with a bag of oats and a bucket of apples. I’d sit near the same spot on the fence, not too close, and scatter the food in a wide arc. Sometimes he’d come to the edge of the trees, watching me like he was remembering something painful. Other days, I saw no sign of him at all. The snow piled deeper, and my gloves cracked from the cold.

My uncle never interfered. He’d just lean on the truck and sip coffee, letting me learn the silence. I knew, despite his lack of aid, he was watching over me and that gave me some confidence that I could do this.

It was the twelfth day when he came close enough to eat while I was still there. He didn't look at me. He didn’t get closer than ten feet. But he stayed.

My uncle softly hummed with a nod of approval that I could barely hear over my own heartbeat.

By the third week, he was taking apples from my palm. By the fourth, he’d stand behind me while I sat, close enough that I could hear him breathe. Patience seemed to be key with the stallion.

Then came the storm.

It dropped ten inches in a night. Wind howled through the trees and I almost didn’t go that day. But my uncle was already scraping the windshield when I came out.

“Can’t quit halfway,” he said.

The woods were quiet when we got there. Too quiet. There were not any hoofprints that commonly lined the road nor the rustle of bushes whenever the truck pulled over. We walked into the woods the stallion always came out of and that’s when we found him.

The stallion was tangled in old barbed wire, half-frozen, bleeding from his flank. Panic shivered in every muscle, but he didn’t thrash. He recognized me.

“Don’t you go rushing him,” my uncle warned.

I knelt slowly. I held an apple out until his wide, light eyes settled. It took a half hour to cut the wire without scaring him. Uncle Ray worked with the precision of a surgeon, and I held the stallion’s head, feeding him apple slices with the utmosr care and devotion.

When he was free from his trap, he didn’t run. He just stood there, leaning against me like a tired old friend.

I pressed my forehead to his and whispered, “You’re okay now.”

That was the first time I touched him.

After that, he followed me out of the woods like it was his idea. My uncle only hummed yet again, driving the truck at a slow enough pace that he could follow.

We built him a pen beside the barn, open and wide. Just a place he could come and go if he pleased. And every morning, when I’d come out with oats, he’d already be waiting.