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As she loaded the last of the horses into the trailer, Mildred wondered how long she would live without them. They were just the last in a long line of beautiful horses -- their muscles rippling when they ran across the field in the early morning, their sleek coats gleaming in the sun. How many had she seen nipping playfully at each other under the shade of the big oak in the heat of the afternoon or whinnying sharply in the fog of the early morning, as she watched them from her porch swing?
"Ma'am, you'll need to sign these papers," said the young woman who had helped her load the horses. Like so many young people today, she was rude and immodest, her tight T-shirt low cut across her bosom, her chest heaving with the effort she'd exerted, for all the world to see. She shoved a clipboard in Mildred's face.
Mildred stared down at the papers flapping in the breeze, trying to read the words. A horse whinnied. Mildred gasped and jerked up her head to see which one. Listening, she heard the wind rustling through the trees of the homestead, fluttering the faded flags she had hung from the sagging porch roof, turning the garden of cheap whirligigs stuck in the dirt near her front door.
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