Of course Henry had no concept of what she was doing, or why. He had always loved horses, as most stockmen do, and had even had pretty special relationships with a couple of them during his lifetime. But mostly, horses were tools to get a job done, and in some cases, just a necessary evil. So of course as he watched Jessie disappear in the mass of horse bodies that surrounded her, he was concerned. It was easy to get hurt around horses, especially that many all at once. All it would take is one of them kicking at another and missing, and just like that somebody’d be hauling her off to the hospital.

Instinctively he started heading for the porch steps but stopped when a few of the horses moved just enough for him to see Jessie’s head and shoulders, and the smile on her face. He saw her talking to each horse as she pet them on the head, or neck or shoulder, and the horses all responded quietly to her touch.

Jessie moved slowly through the herd, and talked to each one as she made gentle contact with them. “Hello Fancy. Dakota, how are you? Well, there’s Zephyr. I haven’t seen you in a month. Amigo, how are you today?”

Dust rose from under the horse’s feet as they moved in a slow circle around her, and the setting sun gave the entire scene a crimson hue Henry had never seen before. He continued to watch for several minutes, almost in awe at the relationship Jessie had with her horses, and it was only after she had made contact with each one that she made her way back through the herd, climbed through the fence and walked slowly back the way she had come.

As soon as Jessie was out of sight, Henry stepped off the porch and nonchalantly made his way over to the pen she had just vacated. He stood outside the corral for several seconds, looked in every direction to make sure nobody was watching, then climbed through the fence and in with the horses. He stood in the same spot Jessie had when the horses first approached and waited for them to respond. The horses barely acknowledged his presence, and then turned their backs to him and walk away as if he weren’t even there.

“I’ll be damned,” he said to himself. He turned and looked in the direction Jessie went when she left the pen, and wondered what kind of magic she used on the herd. He looked back at the horses, and found they had dispersed all over the pen and gone back to eating the piles of hay scattered on the ground. “How the hell’d she do that?”

CHAPTER 20

Most people seem to have one or two landmark days in their lives—days that shape them in some dramatic way, or perhaps send it off in a direction they weren’t expecting. Henry McBride had three such days. The first was when he met his lifelong sweetheart, Annie, the second was when his son Josh was born, and the third was when he lost them both. Henry didn’t know it at the time, but the day after he saw Jessie in the pen with the horses would be yet another.