It was evident by the look on Henry’s face that he was really struggling with the idea. “I don’t know, Jess. I mean…”

“I know, Henry,” she smiled. “You’ll both do fine. Really, you will.”

“But who’s gonna tend to you?”

“Mrs. R. said she can come by in the mornings for the next few days,” Jessie said confidently. “I’ll be all right.” She paused, and then smiled coyly. “Please?”

“Honest, Jess…I’m not goin’ to know what to do with him to not screw him up.”

“Don’t worry, Henry. We’ll do it together, just like we have been since we started,” she smiled. “The only difference is now you’ll be the one doing the work, and I’ll be the one watching. If you have any trouble, or something doesn’t look or feel right to you, stop and come and talk with me about it and we’ll get it figured out. Okay?”

Henry hesitated for a long time. He had closely watched the kind of work Jessie had been doing and witnessed the results. It was like nothing he had ever seen and certainly like nothing he had ever done. The way he had always worked with horses was much more direct, and faster, but also certainly harder. Because of it, his horses didn’t always end the day as soft and quiet as the colt did with Jessie. Her way was different—there was no question about that. Still, the longer Henry thought about it, the more he began to think that different may be just what he needed. In the end, he agreed to give it a try.

The colt was leery of Henry when he entered the paddock carrying the halter and lead rope. Henry had caught and worked with him in the past without a problem, but that was before the night the dark presence showed up on the ranch. Something hadn’t been right that night, and it still wasn’t as far as the colt could tell. The woman hadn’t been around at all since then, and the man had only been around long enough to throw hay over the fence and check the water tank. Regardless of how much handling the colt had had up to that point, his instincts were still firmly intact, and right or wrong, they were now telling him to stay away from the man with the halter.

Henry quickly found he was only able to get within about five feet of the colt before the colt would turn and walk away, always staying just out of his reach, but at the same time not using any more energy than he had to do it. Henry followed him, as he had seen Jessie do, but the colt kept walking. He walked from one end of the paddock to the other and back. He walked up toward the gate, and then down to the bottom of the pen. Finally he walked over to where the other horses were standing and parked himself in amongst them, stopping only to look at Henry as he kept approaching. Seeing that Henry wasn’t stopping, the colt turned and, this time, trotted away, taking the rest of the horses with him. Still, Henry followed. The horses made a lap all the way around the sizable pen with the colt before, one by one, they all began to drop off until the colt was the only one moving.