Chapter 23 The Magic Explained
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You didn’t deserve that. It was an honest observation.”
“Maybe this isn’t the time,” he said, backing away from the conversation. He had hit a nerve, and he believed that it was better not to crowd her. In his experience with horses and cattle and pretty much all living, breathing creatures, it was best to give them space to make their own way at their own pace. Sometimes they had to be pushed a little to get past a certain point, but he had already made that push with Alexandra when he opened the conversation.
“No, Evan,” she said. “I’m wearing another man’s ring, and you have every right to know what that means. Four days ago, it meant something totally different than it does now. I don’t know what to expect with us. I don’t know where this is going. I don’t know how I feel about Cameron anymore. My whole life changed in just a few days. Not a little bit, but dramatically. It is almost like I have been brought to life. I thought I was living before, but my eyes hadn’t been opened, and I didn’t know the difference until now. It has happened so fast that I don’t know what to do. What should I do?”
“You should leave that ring on your finger,” he said. It wasn’t what he wanted to say, but it was the right thing to say. “You need to figure on going on with your life the way you had it planned. There isn’t any reason you should change it for the likes of me.”
It wasn’t a speech to draw upon her pity; it was the best, honest advice that he could give. He realized when he said it that he was working against himself, but he also realized that, though he wanted her in his life, her happiness was more important than his selfish desire.
“If you weren’t wearing that,” he continued. “I’d be tempted to put a rope on you and never let you leave, but that isn’t what is best for you either. You need to live and be free, but you need to make your own mind up on that. Maybe your life with Cameron is what you want, and maybe it ain’t, but you have to make that decision based on what you want, not because of me.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t mind having your rope on me,” she replied.
“Maybe not, but that’s gotta be your decision, not mine.”
She thought back to the morning when she had watched him in the round pen with the colt. He had worked a sort of magic that she didn’t understand. In that magic, she had been set free as well. What was it? There was a secret to it.
“A couple of days ago, when you were working with that colt,” she began. “What did you do that was so magical? What was the trick?”
“Trick?” he asked, raising one eyebrow. “I didn’t do any tricks or magic.”
“But I saw how you took that wild thing and made it want to come to you,” she said. “To be honest, the same magic worked on me. It was after I watched you that my eyes were suddenly opened. What did you do?”
“We just had a conversation and concluded that we could trust each other and work together, but we still have a long way to go. That was just an introductory meeting.”
“Huh?” she asked. His response was not anything like what she expected. “How did you have a conversation without saying anything?”
“We said a lot of things,” he replied. “It was mostly sign language, much of it pretty subtle.”
She considered the sign language that she had seen when watching an interpreter. What he had done was nothing like that. She smiled at him. “If it is some deep dark secret, it’s okay, I promise not to use it to become a better horse trainer than you.”
“You probably could become a better horse trainer,” he smiled. “There really isn’t much to it. No secrets or magic; you just have to know and understand the nature of horses.”
“Okay,” she said. “So tell me how it works.”
“It’s basic psychology, mostly,” he began. “Every creature, including humans, reacts in self-defense when they are afraid. There are two basic reactions: fight or flight.”
The waitress interrupted his dialogue as she brought their breakfast to them. She asked how Evan had been getting along, and he answered her questions patiently. The waitress eyed Alexandra, fishing for an introduction, but Evan had a stubborn streak to him, and he didn’t want to give her any information for local gossip. She finally gave up on priming him for information and moved on to another table.
“What was that all about?” Alexandra asked. “I can’t believe you didn’t introduce me.”
“Nope,” he said. “I’m not going to feed the gossip. She was fishing for something to gossip about, and she wanted so badly to know who you are. Let her wonder. It won’t hurt her any.”
“More psychology?” she giggled.
“Yep,” he smiled. “Human psychology.”
“Tell me more about horse psychology,” she said. “Fight or flight?”
“Right,” he said. “To a horse, humans are predators.” He saw her make a face as she considered eating a horse. “Humans smell like predators because we eat meat. We look like predators because we have eyes in the front of our faces, and we also go directly toward things in a straight line of pursuit; in other words, we chase things.”
“I never considered that,” she said.
“Consequently, he was afraid of me and had a choice of either fighting or running away,” he continued. “By raising my claws and hissing,” he said, demonstrating the motion. “I sent him into flight, but all he could do was run away in a circle. As I kept my eyes focused on his, it made him continue to run. Once he ran far enough, he started to slow down. For good measure, I turned him in the other direction and sent him away again. When he slowed again, he was sniffing the ground and, I don’t know if you saw it or not, he was licking and chewing.”
“Yeah, I remember that,” she said. “Why was he doing that?”
“Because those are signals of submission,” he continued. “When he gave me those signals, then I backed off from looking him in the eyes, which was a signal to him that I was no longer a threat. When he stopped, I folded my arms, like a mountain lion or a wolf would do if they were going to take a nap, and I also turned away from him. Now, instead of being a predator, I became an object of curiosity. So, he approached me and extended his nose like a handshake. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” she said.
“Anybody can do it once they understand the signals,” he said. “Once the fear was gone, his eyes were opened to new possibilities. I didn’t have to force anything on him. As long as the things I do don’t appear to be harmful to him, we’ll never have a problem again.”
“Why did it affect me too?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” he answered. “I’ve heard of that sort of thing happening, but I’ve never heard anybody explain why. Maybe that part is magic.” He laughed and looked into her eyes. “I think you’ve been looking for a way to be set free, and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
“Now you’re using a little too much of that psychology,” she laughed. Maybe he was right. Maybe she had been looking to be set free, why she’d set out to drive to Glendale on her own when she had never done anything like that before, and why she’d taken that shortcut. Perhaps some sort of fate had brought them together.