Some people claim that horses began in North America; some dispute that the modern day horse was not -- the primitives being closer to Eohippus than Equus. Then there are the stories of Conquistadores, and everyone knew that the Indians ran herds of them years later.

Not that the large, tanned boy gave a shit... mainly because he didn't know any of that. Horses were horses, and catching a wild mustang meant you could grow twice as much and get around twice as fast. It didn't take much math'in to figure that was a good deal.

The down side?

They're wild.

A hoof can split a man's skull like an overripe watermelon, and getting rolled under a horse is enough to crush a man to death. They scream like the devil, too, with eyes full of hate and anger. Scream. You'd never know it until you heard it.

Large brown eyes watched and listened to the leathery old man tell him what to do; you always listened to Pa. If you liked your teeth where they were, that is.

He took the whiskey bottle and jumped into the make-shift pen, rolling, dodging, grabbing the rope and reeling himself in to the mustang's head. Lifting. Slamming the bottle down on the rock-hard skull, shattering it and spilling the water it was filled with.

Wild means stupid.

That water? Feels like blood. The horse thinks they're dying, and either knows you're the one that kilt it, or you're the one that's saved it.

You show that wild mustang Jesus at the bottom of a whiskey bottle.

Break it. Tame it.

Break it.

Tame it.

He was screaming before his forearm touched the red-hot lip of the Campfire-in-a-Can.

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