Henry waited for her to say more, but after a few minutes, and when it became clear there was no more, he went back to eating his breakfast. He couldn’t understand how she could have possibly done what she had. It didn’t make sense to him. How could she go in with a wild horse and touch him, much less have the horse come to her and allow her to take a rope from around his neck? He had seen her in with the herd and the way they all gathered around her, and now this. There was something about this woman, something in the way she was with the horses that intrigued him. He had been around horses all his life, been riding almost before he could walk and still he had never seen or heard of anything like what Jessie was apparently able to do with them.

Henry’s focus for most of his life had always been cattle. They had been his passion and he prided himself in his knowledge of the animal and the ease at which he could handle them. Horses, on the other hand had simply been a means to an end, almost a second thought. He realized, eating the breakfast of bacon and eggs his boss had made for him, that for Jessie, horses were much more than a second thought. They were not only her livelihood, they were also her life, and she understood them as well or maybe even better than Henry understood the cattle he worked. Henry was a top-notch stockman and he appreciated the fact that he had gotten that way partly by paying attention to other stockmen better and more knowledgeable than he. It came to him then sitting at that breakfast table, that if he paid attention, the small, handsome woman across from him was going to teach him something about horses.

CHAPTER 24

The early summer storm blew in just after midnight, pushing ahead of it the unmistakable smell of rain, snapping spectacular jagged white lines of electricity across the starless night sky like a horizontal spider web. Each crack of lighting was quickly followed by a powerful blast of thunder so loud it shook the bunkhouse where Henry slept. Within minutes of the storm’s assault, the rain began to fall—lightly at first, and then heavier as the west wind drove the squall across the desert and over the ranch.

The grand demonstration of light and sound, wind and rain lasted for over an hour before the power locked in the leading edge of the storm crawled eastward, leaving behind a soaking rain that was still falling when Henry rolled out of his bunk just after dawn. He knew about freak storms and the damage that could be done to livestock by them, so without making himself a pot of coffee, he threw on his clothes, clamped his hat down on his head, swung into his old slicker and went out into the weather. Within minutes he’d checked all the horses he and Jessie had brought up to the holding pens the day before after hearing the storm was on its way, and where they had cover under the three-sided loafing sheds scattered throughout the pens. All the horses were standing under the shelters, upright and healthy. He also checked on the mustang, which unlike the horses in the catch pen, had no cover from the weather. The colt was soaked and standing with his head nearly to the ground in an effort to keep his face as dry as possible, and other than being very wet, he was no worse for the wear.