Henry then went to the house and fixed Jessie a breakfast of toast, eggs and orange juice and brought the tray to her room. Much to his surprise, he rounded the corner to her room to see her standing by the window, dressed in a working shirt and jeans. Jessie turned slowly toward him and smiled, but not without the unmistakable look of discomfort showing through.

“What are you doing out of bed?” There was a genuine concern in Henry’s voice as he placed the tray on the table.

“Loafing around in bed for two weeks is about all I can stand,” she said, still very short of breath. “I was starting to feel if I didn’t get up soon, maybe I never would.” She smiled again. “Don’t worry, I’ll take it easy.”

“Okay.” Henry went to her and helped her back to the bed. “But have your breakfast first. Get out of bed later.”

Henry stayed with Jessie in her room all morning, chatting with her about things he saw around the ranch. The two of them realized, but never said, how much they enjoyed each other’s company. It was something they were beginning to do more of lately, and they each not only looked forward to their daily visits, but also began to rely on them.

That afternoon found Henry back at the colt’s paddock, standing by the gate. In the past two weeks since he had started working with the colt, he had grown to like him very much. The colt had a lot of try in him; he worked hard at doing whatever was presented to him, although whatever that might be was often very foreign, not to mention very frightening. After the work they’d done that morning, Henry was feeling confident about the colt accepting a saddle soon. As Henry propped his foot up on the bottom rail of the gate and looked down at the gray colt grazing amongst the geldings, he began to think about how the colt’s first saddling might go.

The colt was munching happily on the few sprigs of dry grass down in the bottom of the paddock when the image came to him. The picture was so clear and strong at first he thought it might be coming from the woman. But the more the image came into focus, the more he realized it wasn’t her at all, but rather it was somehow coming from the man. What he was getting was a picture of Henry standing next to him in the round pen. Henry was holding the saddle blanket, which he rubbed the colt with several times, then he slipped it up on his back. Henry then got the saddle, let the colt smell it, and then put it, too, on the colt’s back. The image was so clear that the colt found he had to raise his head to see if the man was nearby.

At the top of the hill, Henry watched as the colt stopped eating, raised his head, and looked directly into Henry’s eyes. The two of them stared at one another for a long moment, and when Henry finally left the pen a half-hour later, he had an overwhelming feeling that somehow, everything was going to be just fine between them.