Khyber Run by Amber Green

with the tack while Oscar goes through all the greeting? Can you believe he feeds them cigars? They love it."
    In the heavily secured and rather cold tack room, I was happy to see an array of McClellan saddles instead of the adjustable aluminum-framed robo-saddles some of the guys talked about.
    I'd learned to ride bareback. Although my uncles made money building the ornate wooden saddles used for the big-money goat-pulling tournaments, they weren't made for someone as small as I was then. In the US, I'd ridden western.
    My mother couldn't send four boys through the endless procession of riding events she'd competed in as a kid, but we were encouraged to ride. The fancy tack she had won as a barrel-riding teenager had been kept in pristine condition, and the neighbors who could afford horses were happy to trade labor for riding time.
    "You like the MOLLE-gear saddlebags? Or do you want the local wool ones?"
    "Wool,” I said instantly. “That other stuff rustles.” I picked up two saddles to carry outside.
    Echo dropped a tangle of straps and bits about my neck and draped aromatic horse-wool around my shoulders, then loaded himself at least as heavily. “You belong with us, all right. We ride gray horses in winter and dun in summer, because it's camouflage.” He snorted. “Same saddles, though. Like a saddle floating over rocks without a visible horse under it won't catch attention."
    But a saddle is a whole lot smaller than a horse and has fewer moving parts to catch the eye. For camouflage in summer in Afghanistan, you couldn't beat a dun.
    Kahar , I reminded myself abruptly. The words my father used for horse colors were perfectly acceptable here. The snooty girls in their English getup who'd taunted me for not knowing fifty different ways to say brown horse were thousands of miles away. And if they were here, they were no longer flaunting thousand-dollar custom saddles.
    And the grays were kabood.
    None of the horses would win any conformation show points in the US, that's for sure. Maybe they could show with mustangs, though they didn't have the weedy look and heavy heads of most mustangs I'd seen. The first question here would always be whether a horse could do the job, and second, whether he could survive.
    My mare eyed me with evil intent, and I returned the look. She danced out of reach a few times, but I knew that game. I herded her into a nook probably designed to trap, until I could block her in against a boulder and let her get used to my presence for a moment. I eased the bridle over her head, the bit into her mouth. She tossed her head, mouthing at the bit, and eyed me as if wondering whether putting up with me as a rider was going to be worth the relief from boredom.
    While she was chewing the idea, I ran a hand over her back, feeling for any swelling or heat. She wasn't all that far behind her last currying, and that back had more muscle than the rough coat showed. With the saddle on her back, she danced again, cocking a rear leg as if contemplating a good kick. But she didn't kick.
    She didn't snake her head around to bite me, which was good. I'd have bitten her back, but biting is something I think of as a stallion thing; a mare doing it unnerves me. She had plenty of opportunity as I buckled and cinched.
    She sniffed my shoulder and hair then, but her rib cage didn't expand or shrink. Ah, she was holding her breath—one of those tricky mares who knew that what her groom thought was a tight girth would become loose once she exhaled.
    I waited. When she could no longer hold out, her ribs caved in. I cinched the strap tight. So far, so good.
    Oscar was already in the saddle, testing his mare's responsiveness to the reins and checking for any unusual reactions. From what I recalled and what I'd seen on YouTube, these would have mouths a lot harder than I'd become used to.
    She planted herself, bracing against my pull a few times. I let her. That wouldn't last. She rolled her eyes at me, ears back. But she