Toby’s heart hammered against his ribs. He was unarmed. He was small. But he wasn’t alone.
He stood up and placed a hand on Midnight’s withers. “I need you to be loud, buddy,” he whispered. “I need you to be the devil one last time.”
Toby unlatched the stall door. As the shadow poured gasoline onto a pile of hay, Toby slapped Midnight’s flank hard. “Higher!”
The stallion exploded from the stall with a shriek that sounded like a banshee. In the confined space of the barn, the noise was terrifying. Midnight didn’t run away. He charged the shadow.
Harlan Gentry screamed. He dropped the gas can and the lighter, scrambling backward as seventeen hands of angry muscle bore down on him. He tripped over a pitchfork and fell into the manure gutter.
“Help! He’s killing me!” Harlan shrieked.
Midnight stopped inches from Harlan’s prone form, rearing up and striking the air with his hooves, creating a wall of thunder between the villain and the door.
The barn doors burst open. Sheriff Colton and the deputy rushed in, flashlights sweeping the dark. The beams landed on the scene: Harlan Gentry cowering in the muck, smelling of gasoline, with the unrideable horse standing guard over Toby.
“Well,” Sheriff Colton said, his voice dripping with disappointment as he looked at the spilled gas can. “Arson. Attempted murder. Again. Harlan, you really don’t know when to fold them, do you?”
The trial of Gentry versus Miller—Toby’s last name was Miller, a name nobody in the valley had bothered to ask until now—didn’t take place in a courtroom. It took place three days later, right there in the dirt of the main corral, presided over by Judge Whittaker, an old-school Montana magistrate who despised wasted time and loved efficient justice.
The story had gone viral. News crews from as far as Seattle and Denver were lined up along the fences. The title “Stable Boy Wins Ranch from Tycoon” was splashed across every newspaper in the West.
Harlan Gentry sat at a folding table, looking smaller than he ever had. His expensive suit was wrinkled, his face pale. He was out on bail, but his reputation was in tatters. His lawyer, a high-priced shark from New York, was arguing fiercely about intent and hyperbole.
“Your Honor,” the New York lawyer argued, sweating in the heat, “Mr. Gentry’s statement was clearly a jest. No reasonable person would assume a fourteen-million-dollar estate would be traded for touching a horse. It is absurd.”
Toby sat on the other side, wearing a clean shirt Mr. Pendergast had bought him. He looked calm…
