Team work

The stars are still cold and bright in the sky when Lon Waid walks across the corral to the barn to prepare his team.

Four black Percheron-quarter horse crosses, all related, take their accustomed places in the same stalls their ancestors used. In the predawn darkness, they conjure up images of the mythic horses of Phoebus, impatient to pull the sun across the sky.

Waid slings a tangle of straps over his shoulder and moves alongside the first horse, making swishing sounds with his mouth so the animal makes room. He spreads them over the horse from back to front, the way four generations of Wai...