Brock Sterling stopped beside the mare and looked at LaVonne.
She expected him to be annoyed. A lot of young trainers would have been. An old woman climbing down off the fence to tell his client something, in the middle of his session, at his rate.
Instead he took off his cap.
"Ma'am," he said, "you're Brynn's grandmother. The one with the buckles."
"I am."
"Brynn told me you ran barrels in the seventies. Won state." He glanced at Brynn, then back at LaVonne. "If you've seen something I haven't, I'd like to hear it. I've been at this mare for three days. I'm out of ideas, and I'm not too proud to say so."
Brynn stared at him.
LaVonne liked him a great deal better all of a sudden.
"It's not the horse," she said. "It's the rider."
Brynn's face went red to the ears.
"Honey, don't look like that. It's the same thing I did when I was sixteen. Exactly the same thing." LaVonne put her hand on the girl's boot in the stirrup. "When you come around the first barrel, where are your eyes?"
"Up," Brynn said. "Looking at the second barrel."
"No. Looking past it. Across the arena. At where you're going. That's why your first barrel's so pretty." LaVonne pointed at the second barrel. "But three strides out from that one, you look down at it. Right at it. Every single run. Your chin drops, your shoulders come forward, and your weight goes onto her front end."
"I don't."
"You do, honey. I watched you do it eleven times."
Brock was very quiet. He was looking at the second barrel, and then at Brynn's shoulders, and LaVonne could see him running all eleven runs back through his head.
"And Sugar feels that," LaVonne said. "Your weight goes forward, and she thinks something's wrong. She thinks you're scared. And she's a good mare, so she does what she thinks you want. She gets you away from it." She patted the palomino's neck. "There's nothing wrong with this horse. She's been listening to you perfectly."
Brynn didn't say anything for a long moment.
"Why do I look at it?" she said finally, very small. "Only on that one?"
"Because you're afraid of hitting it."
Brynn's eyes filled up. "I hit it at the district finals last year. I knocked it over and got a five-second penalty and lost by half a second. The whole grandstand saw it."
"I know, honey. I was there." LaVonne squeezed her boot. "And you've been staring at that barrel ever since, trying not to hit it. But a horse goes where you look. You look at the barrel, you get the barrel. You look past it, you get past it."
Brock let out a long breath.
"I've been fixing the horse for three days," he said. "New bit, tie-down, vet, the whole thing. And it was the rider the whole time." He shook his head slowly. "I've seen that a hundred times in clinics. I just didn't see it here. I was so sure it was something in the mare."
"You were looking at the barrel too," LaVonne said, and Brock laughed out loud.
"So how do I fix it?" Brynn asked.
LaVonne took off her jacket. It was an old red barn jacket, faded, with a Wellington Co-op patch on the shoulder. She walked across the arena, past the second barrel, and kept going until she was standing at the far fence, a good forty feet beyond it.
"My daddy did this for me in 1973," she called back. "You come around the first barrel, and you look at me. Not the barrel. Me. You keep your eyes on this red jacket all the way through the turn. And you trust that horse to know where the barrel is. She does. She's known it longer than you have."
Brynn looked at Brock.
"Do what your grandmother says," Brock said.
Brynn took Sugar back to the alley.
She came into the pattern at a lope. Around the first barrel, clean and tight. Across the arena.
LaVonne stood at the far fence in her red jacket and didn't move.
Three strides out from the second barrel, Brynn's eyes started to drop. LaVonne saw it. Then she saw the girl catch herself and drag her eyes back up to the red jacket, chin up, shoulders back.
Sugar never even hesitated.
She dropped her hip and wrapped around the second barrel so tight that Brynn's knee brushed the steel, and came out of the turn driving, and flew across the arena to the third barrel and around it and home.
Brynn pulled her up at the gate and sat there on the mare, breathing hard, with her mouth open.
"Again," LaVonne called.
They did it nine more times. Sugar didn't duck once.
Three weeks later, at the Sumner County rodeo, Brynn Watts won the high school barrel race with a time of 16.2 seconds.
LaVonne didn't stand at the fence for that one. She sat in the stands with Jen. But she wore the red jacket, and when Brynn came around the first barrel, LaVonne saw her granddaughter's eyes go straight to the stands and find it.
Brock Sterling drove up from Oklahoma to watch. Afterward, he asked LaVonne if she'd come down to his clinic in May and teach a session on rider position.
He said he'd pay her his rate. She said she'd think about it.
That evening, after the rodeo, Brynn found her grandmother sitting on the top rail of the practice pen in the low sun.
She climbed up and sat beside her. She was holding a new silver buckle in her hands.
They sat on the fence for a long time without saying much, watching Sugar graze along the far side of the pen, with the buckle on the rail between them.