“Well, my eyes are glazing over,” Peter interrupted, “so I’ll leave you two avid equestrians to talk while I get myself a hamburger.” He stepped away.
Kelly asked, “Is he like that at the Bachelor Officers Quarters, too?”
“I wouldn’t know. I live off-base. And I don’t spend that much time with the officers. I’m just here because the lieutenant knew that I’m a Christian, and he thought that I’d enjoy the company.”
“You love the Lord?” Kelly asked in a more serious tone.
“Oh yes, with all my heart. I was saved when I was twelve.”
Kelly blinked and said, “Coming here with Peter, I just assumed that you were an officer, too.”
“No. I’m just a lowly E-4.”
“Is that like a corporal in the Army?”
“Yeah. It’s the same pay grade.”
Kelly smiled and said, “My dad was a corporal in the Army. He was in the Field Artillery. He drove a multiple rocket transport thingy. He didn’t like the Army much.”
Joshua liked Kelly’s smile, and her expressive blue eyes. She was above average height, slender, and had a fairly plain face. There was a two-inch-long jagged upward-curving white scar on her chin and left cheek that he later learned was from when she had been thrown from a horse onto a barbed wire fence. That had happened when she was ten years old. Her hair was dark brown, worn in a ponytail, mostly hidden by a brown suede baseball cap. The hat had a stylized horse’s head and shoulders with a flowing mane embroidered on it. She was twenty years old, but looked a bit older since she had spent so much time outdoors.
Kelly wore Wrangler jeans, scuffed Durango saddle boots, and a turquoise short-sleeve plaid shirt. In keeping with her no-nonsense style, Kelly wore no jewelry other than a fairly ornate silver belt buckle.
“How long’ve you been a rider?” she asked.
“Since I was old enough to walk.”
She grinned. “Me, too.”
They stared at each other’s face for a while, smiling.
Joshua was so caught up in the moment, he asked, “Would you like to go for a ride somewhere tomorrow after church?”
Kelly laughed, and said, “Whoa there, cowboy. Could we get past some preliminaries first, like your family name, and the church you attend and such?”
Over lunch, they plunged into a wide-ranging two-hour conversation. As the picnic gathering broke up, they scheduled a horseback ride at Buffalo Jump State Park, ten miles south of Great Falls.
At just before two the next afternoon, Kelly Monroe pulled her pickup and trailer into the dusty extension lot at the park, beyond the pavement. There were seven pickups with horse trailers there. She could see that Joshua already had his horse saddled and waiting.
She said simply, “Hi!” and stepped out of the cab. Joshua led his horse over to the front of Kelly’s horse trailer, and fastened his mare’s reins to a tie-down.
“I’d like you to meet Shirley Temple,” he said.
Kelly approached the big chesnut mare and exclaimed, “Oh, she’s a beauty. The waves in her coat are just amazing.”
“And that’s just her summer coat. You ought to see her in the winter. It has little ringlets.”
Kelly walked around and sized up the mare. She said simply, “Wow.” Then she added, “Her eyes have a strange look to them. Kinda sleepy-looking.”
“Yeah, that’s a trait of American Bashkirs. Slanty eyes. Just like us Nipponese.”
They both laughed.
Kelly asked, “How much of the Russian blood does she have?”
Joshua shook his head and said, “Oh, now I must warn you that you’re veering off into myth, legend, and Breed Association marketing hype. Truth be told, and after all the genetic tests were run, the American Bashkir Curlies were proven not related at all to the original Russian Bashkirs. They just both happen to have the same genetic abnormality that produces a curly coat. Near as I can figure, the real root stock of the American Bashkir is just a Morgan Horse having a bad hair day. But of course that reality doesn’t stop the breeders from playing up the Russian angle.” Joshua chuckled. “Ready to unload?”
After so many years of practice, it took just a minute for Kelly to unload her gelding, Fritz. Tacking him up was also remarkably quick, as she worked with practiced precision. Joshua was impressed by the way Kelly had set up the inside of the front door of her horse trailer with a peg board with hooks for hoof care tools and grooming supplies, two leads, a quirt, and two sets of hobbles. The items were all in neat rows and bundled with rubber bands. After buttoning up the back of the trailer, Kelly said, “Okay, let’s roll.”
They mounted their horses and started off at a loose-reined walk. Since it was a hot afternoon, they never advanced the gait beyond a trot. And, as they both desired anyway, a walking pace was more conducive to conversation. They stopped frequently to drink, to check hooves, and to let the horses rest.
Kelly’s horse was a seal brown, a deep brown with lighter points—what was sometimes called a “copper-nosed” brown. Fritz was just half a hand taller than Shirley. Shirley’s height was considered atypical of American Bashkirs, since the mares were rarely more than fourteen hands tall.
A couple of times the horses were startled by darting ground squirrels which were present in large numbers at the park. Kelly commented, “It’s a good thing my dog isn’t here. She’d be going crazy.”
They rode all of the trails that were open to horses that afternoon, ranging around three sides of the dramatic jump cliff at the 1,400-acre park, staying until just before the park closed at 6 p.m. They watered their horses before loading them back into their respective trailers.
Part of how Joshua and Kelly apprized each other was through horsemanship. Both of them were favorably impressed. Kelly took particular note of Joshua’s quiet humility. He wasn’t a braggart or a show-off. Kelly liked that. She also thought that he had a remarkable vocabulary for someone without a college degree. Joshua felt himself drawn to Kelly like no woman he had ever met before. He felt blessed to have found a young woman who was a fellow Christian, and with whom he had so many things in common. And seeing Kelly astride her horse, handling him so expertly, greatly impressed Joshua.
Joshua’s next short duty day was the following Friday. It was Kelly who had suggested a rendezvous. As well-educated Christians, they both disliked the word “dating,” since both properly saw their meetings as courting for marriage. As Kelly put it, “I never get beyond the ‘howdy-dos’ unless I think a man is fit for marriage.”
They met for dinner at Jaker’s steak house. The attire there was casual, so both Joshua and Kelly dressed up only to the extent of wearing freshly laundered jeans and nicer shirts.
Two items of clothing never seemed to change, regardless of Kelly’s wardrobe: a brown and black horsehair western belt from Deer Lodge, and her embroidered brown suede horse logo baseball cap. Whenever she wasn’t wearing the baseball cap, she habitually carried it clipped on a mini-carabiner on a belt loop—the same carabiner where she carried her key ring. She refused to carry a purse.
When Joshua noticed that Kelly wore no makeup, his estimation of her went up immensely. Here at last was an honest-to-goodness rancher’s daughter with no pretensions, even when out on the town for a dinner and talking about marriage. There was something about Kelly that Joshua couldn’t pin down. It was something beyond her smile and her figure. It was also something beyond the common ground that they found in their faith in Christ. Joshua couldn’t say just what it was, but she definitely had it. And whatever it was, Joshua was thoroughly smitten.