4Author's Note: What would you have me do? Give out? Give up? Give in? -The Lion in Winter, James Goldman
Disclaimer: Not owned, but owed.
Nick was tireless. Or rather, he was very tired, but kept on anyway.
There was no nice way to say it: the purple horse was mean.
"He's mine!" Nick's heart replied stubbornly. Mine.
When a thing belonged to Nick, he loved it. Outlaw was objectively a beautiful animal, but even had he been as ugly as Mariano's mother's old donkey El Pollino, he would have been beautiful to Nick, the middle Barkley son brooded, just because he was his own.
He felt a newly familiar ache and rubbed his breastbone in an effort to sooth it. Anything worth having is worth working for, Father always said. He just had to be patient.
Outlaw was his, but he was not gentle.
He was spirited.
Mean-spirited.
If he could just get the stallion to trust him... Nick spent all the time he could with the big gruella with just that goal in mind. He abandoned the huge wood paneled bedroom he'd fought so hard to be given and had all but moved into the barn.
His reward was that he'd finally convinced the temperamental equine to accept a hackmore. A bridle was out of the question: Outlaw considered a bit, if anything, several degrees more vile than a saddle.
He could snap a lead rein onto Outlaw's hackamore, mount Coco, and the three of them would ride like the wind.
Those were the times Nick was happy, racing along the north ridge with the two big animals, laughing and free, as if the horses had wings and the three of them were flying.
...but then he would think of what Father had said, and he wanted to ride the purple stallion and be a man.
And he couldn't.
He couldn't ride Outlaw.
No matter how badly he wanted to, nor how hard he tried.
Really, he was no use as a horse, in the conventional sense: he couldn't be ridden.
He was a test, or a goal, or... or some other word Jarrod would know but Nick didn't.
He would ride the purple stallion, Nick vowed, if it was the last thing he did.
Jarrod, home from college for the "short" break between terms, stroked the stallion's pink nose.
Outlaw whuffled his approval.
Nick refused to be hurt by it, but touched his breast over his heart, as though the big muscle that pumped blood through the young cowboy's body were tender. It doesn't mean anything, he thought, but felt his brows lowering, felt himself frowning as he watched his older brother fondling his, Nick's, own stallion that Father had given him.
Mine!
Nick raised his own black gloved hand to fondle the white face and pink nose as Jarrod was doing, and got nipped for his pains. "Darn it!" He pulled off the glove in order to suck on his stinging fingers. "I hate it when he does that!"
Outlaw tossed his head and whinnied.
Seeing it, Nick's breath caught. "Look how beautiful he is, Jarrod. How fine."
"I see." The older boy's lack of additional comment said everything, if Nick had had the ears to hear it.
The younger boy kept trying, as if he thought the stallion could understand his praise. "He would make an excellent horse god, if we were back in Greek or Roman times, don't you think so?" Nick's knowledge of mythology was weak, but Jarrod knew about those kinds of things. Book-learning… and the stallion was merciless, like a god.
Jarrod nodded. "From what Mother says, I'd say he'd be a fit stallion for the Mares of Diomedes."
Nick had never heard of them. "Fine breeding stock, were they?"
Jarrod's smile was wry as he patted the smooth lavender neck. "They were wild horses who fed on human flesh."
The gruella's blue eyes shot his young owner an inscrutable look, perhaps considering how his flesh would taste.
It was probably the unseasonably cool breeze that caused the younger Barkley boy's shudder.
"What nonsense," Nick blustered. "Horses don't eat meat!" Clearly, Pappy was just jealous.
