“Maybe he could keep him for breeding. You don’t find color like his very often.”
“But people ’round here don’t want mustangs. It’s hard enough to sell registered horses these days. You know that better than I do. Why not break him yourself and ship him overseas? You were in the money when you were doing that.”
“Isn’t that exactly what everyone had such a problem with? That I was exploiting my heritage for money?”
Although they also raised cattle, their primary business was horse leasing. Running a business that depended heavily on the tourist trade, the ranch had always experienced the constant ebb and flow of a fluctuating economy, until Keith’s popularity had opened new opportunities abroad. But no one besides Tonya wanted to acknowledge that his prosperity had helped to keep them afloat while others floundered. He still deeply resented the judgment he’d suffered over it.
“What else can you do with him?” she asked. “I’m wondering why you picked him up in the first place. I thought you didn’t want anything more to do with horses.”
“It was a moment of weakness,” he said.
“More like madness.”
“Maybe.” Keith sighed. “If Kenu doesn’t want him, I’ll figure something out. In the meantime, I’ve got to unload him from this trailer.”
“C’mon,” Tanya said. “There’s an empty corral you can just back up to.”
*
Keith waited on a stump outside the sweat lodge for almost two hours before his grandfather emerged, wearing only his breechcloth. Steam rose from his body into the frosty air like a mist over a winter lake, but he seemed completely unaware of the cold.
Keith offered him a blanket and a pouch of loose tobacco. His grandfather accepted both with a nod, betraying no emotion. Although clouded by cataracts, his gaze seemed just as sharp and penetrating as when they’d first met.
“I knew you would come,” he said after a time. “I saw it in a vision.”
“I brought you another gift,” Keith said. “A spirit horse from the Paiute lands.”
“A spirit horse?” Keith instantly perceived that he’d breached a wall. Horses were the common love that had brought them together so many years ago. The old man nodded his gray head. “I will see this gift.”
“A beautiful animal,” Kenu remarked as they approached the corral where the horse paced, “but his spirit is much agitated.” The animal greeted them with flattened ears and a broad backside. Kenu eyed the horse again with a slow shake of his head. “I cannot accept your gift, Two Wolves.”
“Why not?” Keith asked, his chest tightening. He’d hoped to put an end to his rootless existence, only to be turned away again, his gift rejected.
“Because this gift is as incomplete as the giver.”
Keith wanted to gnash his teeth in anger and frustration. As he’d feared, his peace offering had been appraised and found lacking. Just as he had been.
“Why did you take me in when I first came here?” he demanded, prepared at last to hear the brutal truth. “Was it only because you lost your son?”
His grandfather met his gaze, but this time there was a difference. Pain flickered in Kenu’s black eyes. “I never could have survived losing my son had you not come, Two Wolves. You were a gift I did not seek, but I knew you were never meant to remain.”
“But I want to stay,” Keith insisted. “Why won’t you let me?”
“Because your place is not here, Two Wolves.”
Keith gave a deprecating laugh. “It’s not out there either.” He’d thought coming home to Wyoming would be the easiest path. He didn’t want to forge a new one on his own. Not again.
“Then you have not looked hard enough,” Kenu replied. “The easiest path is not always the answer.”
“I do belong here,” Keith insisted. “I know I screwed up. Why won’t you let me make amends? Give me a chance to prove myself.”
The old man shook his head sadly. “It is not for you to prove anything to me, Two Wolves. It is for you to find your purpose. A man with no purpose is a man with no soul.”
Did Kenu really believe he lacked a soul?
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with my life. In all this time the answer has never been revealed to me, so how am I ever to know it?”
Kenu once more regarded the horse. “Did you ever consider that this animal might be the answer? Perhaps it is he that is meant to show you.”
In that moment Keith understood. The truth was indeed brutal, piercing like an arrow to the heart, but not in the way he’d expected. He wasn’t being sent away for lack of love, but because of it.
*
Keith was loaded up and headed for Rock Springs to return Mitch’s trailer when his phone rang. “Keith, it’s Mitch. I know you just got back a couple of days ago, but I’m in a bit of a tight spot.”
“How’s that?”
“I just got a call asking if I can haul a load of horses from Gunnison.”