By mid afternoon, he had come across a small creek with little more than a trickle of water running through it. Still, he stopped and drank his fill having not had any water in almost twenty-four hours, and not knowing when his next drink would come. He also took time to graze along the creek bank on the short grass that grew there before starting out after the band once again. He was spending more time walking now than trotting and even though he wanted to go faster, his body simply wouldn’t allow it. Following the scent of the herd that seemed to get stronger with every step he took, he walked long into the night.

About an hour before dawn, hungry, thirsty and totally exhausted, the colt finally stopped just below the crest of a hill covered in pine trees. He rested there until mid morning when, with some of his energy returning, he lowered his head and grazed until he wasn’t hungry anymore. Having eaten his fill, he continued on his way. It took him less than an hour to get to the top of the hill he was on, and another half hour to get to where the hill started to drop down into the valley below. As the colt emerged from the trees and began his slow descent to the valley, suddenly, the band of horses he’d been following for the past two and a half days came into view, grazing quietly down in the valley.

The colt stopped dead in his tracks, raised his head, pricked his ears and called as loudly as he could. In unison every horse in the band came to attention and looked up at the gray colt standing by himself on the hill, but none called back. He called again, this time even louder than the last, and the band instinctively let out a chorus of calls back to him. Out of curiosity more than anything else, one by one the horses in the band started toward him, walking at first, then trotting and finally cantering as a group, calling and nickering as they went. The colt started toward them about the same time, picking up a painful canter before falling back to the trot.

The horses of the band got to the colt before he made it off the hill and swarmed around him like bees around a hive, some of the horses were trying to smell his flanks, others were trying to exchange breath with him. Some squealed and pawed at him, and he at them with nobody ever really making contact. Necks were arched and tails were raised and everybody seemed to be posturing, but nobody really doing anything about it. The colt had never seen this kind of behavior in horses before. He had come from a band where anytime an intruder showed up near the herd, the stallion went out alone to challenge or run him off. If the intruder posed a danger, the lead mare would take the rest of the herd to safety. He hadn’t ever seen an entire herd approach an intruder before, and had certainly never seen this kind of posturing from a group before. It was as if nobody knew who was supposed to be protecting the herd, or leading it for that matter.