BOONE
It was not often Boone was approached by mares: usually it was the other way around. Something about him seemed to put them on high alert, like hares with noses waggling and long ears twitching at the hawk that circled overhead. But even once he saw that the approaching stranger was a mare, the surliness in his frame did not ease. Ears pinned back into his nest of a flaxen mane, Boone fixed the mare with his sharp blue eyes long enough to see her startle; then, turning back, he kept his ears twisted back in her direction, his neck long and low over the grass, his lips pressed together in a firm line.
"That makes two of us," she said, and Boone said nothing to that. His gaze flicked idly across the horizon, tracing the jagged line where the trees met the stark blue sky. Their limbs quivered and sighed in a breeze, which also gave Boone a moment's respite from the prickling heat as it lifted his mane from his neck and slid across his skin. He leaned down to nip at where another fly bit at the tender flesh above his chestnut.
His ears twitched. In spite of his warning, it did not sound as though the mare was making to leave. Sure enough, she prattled on. Boone ground his teeth, doing his best to ignore her. She would lose interest if he did that for long enough. Then:
"Why aren't you at home?"
There was a sickening twist in Boone's gut, and he swung to face the mare fully. His white face was lined with exhaustion and irritability, his blue eyes glassy yet wide with incredulity. His ears—the left with a notch missing from it—flicked forward briefly. He studied her, his mouth parted just slightly, his eyes dropping from her face to graze the swollen fullness of her belly. No, he did not know her, but that didn't mean anything. A lot could have happened in the year since he'd left the gang; it was perfectly conceivable that Ira had found some new toy and sent her to recover him just like he'd been sent to recover August. She did not smell of the gang, though, and the surprise in Boone's face fell away like a wall had been slammed down, replaced once more by his mask of lazy hostility.
"You're mixin' me up with someone else, lady," Boone said, and made to turn away again.