The Bride He Kept

I shoe horses for a living. I don't ask questions, and I don't usually get asked any back. Then I took a job at a ranch that didn't want a farrier. It wanted a witness. My truck was disabled by the time I noticed, and the foreman was standing in the barn door with his hands loose and his eyes sorry. He kept me alive for nine weeks. He taught me where the guards didn't look and where the safe was and how to ride out if he didn't come with me. When we went for the ledger, his uncle came home early. I rode out with the book alone. I made the highway, and then I turned the mare around, because riding away from someone who kept you alive is not the same as being free. He's back now. He came back to the town where I've got a route and a truck and a life I built without him. I'm not handing him the reins. I'm just opening the gate.