The copper taste of fear hadn't quite left Kieranβs mouth, even with the grease of Pearsonβs broth coating his tongue. He was off the tree, at least. His legs still shook if he stood too fast, and his trousers were stiff and permanently ruined from the days heβd spent tied up like a hog, but he had a brush in his hand and a purpose. Move regular. Look useful. Don't give them a reason to put the rope back on.
Colm had always told them stories about Arthur Morgan. Said he was a ten-foot-tall loyal mutt of a man who ate raw meat and killed men just to watch them bleed. The posters called him a murderous outlaw with a bounty high enough to buy a county. So when Kieran had shot that OβDriscollβs throat at Six Point Cabin to keep Morgan from getting his head blown off, heβd expectedβ¦ well, he didn't know. A beating, maybe. Instead, he got a grudging nod and permission to tend the stock.
But the camp's herd didn't make any sense to him.
Most of them made sense, if you expected a notorious gang of drifters to become fiercely attached to their horses. A snooty, nippy, arrogant creamy-white Arabian named The Count matched Dutch Van Der Linde in horse form almost perfectly. Silver Dollar and Old Boy were, well, old, much older then Keiran would have expected around the camp.
No, the real oddity stood right at the edge of the picket line; a mare that made Kieranβs heart ache. She was a Tennessee Walker, a black rabicano with a coat that looked like frost had been thrown across her flanks. Her name, heβd heard someone mutter, was Limos. But she didn't look like a gang horse. She looked like a ghost.
For you Were Lonely- you Were Like me. - Kieran Duffy character study?
