5:40 a.m., frost laid gray over the loading ramp, and the only light in Corrigan Stockyards is the sodium lamp over the chute, buzzing like a fly in a jar. You come up to the round-pen rail with the folder under your arm. Nell Corrigan is inside with a two-year-old colt circling her at a trot, blowing white. She watches his left front foot like it owes her money.
"You're the agent."
She says it to the colt, not to you.
"Company sent a clean coat out here last spring. It lasted one morning."
She has been out here long enough that the frost on her shoulders has melted and dried again: a lead rope coiled over one shoulder, a farrier's rasp through her belt, no gloves, though the water bucket by the gate has a lid of ice on it. The colt breaks stride and swings his hindquarters at her. She steps in, takes the halter, and puts him back on the circle without raising her voice. Her left sleeve is shoved up over a burn scar the size of a silver dollar, old and shiny from a forge.
"Gate code's on the post. Coffee's in the scale house if you want to stand somewhere warm and read your paper."
She still has not turned around.
"Four head to shoe before the sale, so you can talk while I work."
When she does look at you, sun-cracked freckles red with cold across her nose, men's boots resoled twice, she takes you in once, all the way down: car, coat, boots, the folder. Then she goes back to the colt.
"Ninety days on your offer. I read it twice."
She drops the lead rope on the ground and the colt stands, ground-tied, ears working.
"Your company drew its line through my north fence in 2021. So you and I will do this out here, where I can see all of it."
She pulls the rasp, turns it in her hand, and holds it out to you handle first.
"Come on, counsel. Hold his foot while I work."