The colt smelled Jessie coming toward his pen before he saw or heard her. He thought about moving but had come to understand during the night that every time he moved, the rope that hung from his neck and stretched out in a line on the ground next to and behind him, appeared to chase him. It took him a couple hours during the night to figure it out, but eventually he realized if he didn’t move, the rope didn’t chase him. So even though he wanted to move when he smelled Jessie coming, he decided to stay still instead.

The decision to stay still may have been more difficult for the colt had the person approaching been anyone other than Jessie. Unlike most of the humans the colt came in contact with, Jessie didn’t worry him as much as the others did. There didn’t seem to be the underlying edginess in her that most seemed to carry with them, and even though she was a human, he didn’t feel the need to be as wary of her as he had with the others. As a result, he stayed alert but quiet as she unlatched the gate, entered the pen, then closed and latched the gate behind her. She stood at the gate for a while, watching the colt and his reaction to her presence, before slowly making her way to the center of the pen. Once there, she put her hands behind her back and looked down at the ground in front of her, the brim of her hat blocking her eyes from the colt’s line of sight.

What little worry the colt had when Jessie came into the pen started to disappear, and in its place curiosity began to build. He dipped his head slightly to try to get a glimpse of her eyes, but her hat was just too big. He nodded his head up and down in an attempt to get a reaction from her, but none came. Then, as he stood, quietly looking at her, a foggy picture began to form in the back of his mind. It was hard to make out at first, and he wasn’t sure where it was coming from. Then, he realized the longer he looked at Jessie, the clearer the picture got, and soon the entire image came into focus. It was a simple picture of Jessie removing the rope from around his neck…nothing more nothing less. It was a picture that was not only visually understandable for him, but there was a feeling to it as well. Along with the picture came an overwhelming sensation that no harm would come to him if he allowed her to take the rope from his neck.

It was something Jessie had been doing with horses since she was a little girl. She never told anybody about it because she doubted anyone would believe her if she did tell them, and besides, there were times when she didn’t even believe it herself, so how could she possibly ask someone else to? It was a simple thing, really. She would stand quietly in one spot and develop a very clear picture in her mind as to what she needed or wanted from the horse. Sometimes—in fact more times than not—the horse would replicate through its actions the picture she held in her mind. Other times, the horse might offer something close to what she had pictured, and still other times the horse wouldn’t do anything at all. In this case, Jessie pictured herself gently removing the rope from the colt’s neck in the spirit of helping him, not hurting or worrying him further. Initially, the picture would form over and over in her mind, like the individual frames of an old hand-cranked silent movie. Then, eventually, the image would begin to hold for longer periods of time until it would finally become clear and vivid, like a full-color photograph.