After about five minutes of this strange ritual, three of the males and one of the females, a dark brown mare with a wide blaze down her face, turned and kicked at him, moving him first one way, then the other. Because of his bad shoulder it was everything he could do to get out of their way, but three of the kicks made contact, although none did any damage. As quick as he could, the colt retreated back up the hill with one of the males and the mare with the blaze on her face following close behind. Neither one seemed too interested in hurting the colt, and even though they could have easily outrun and overtaken him, they simply moved him up the hill a few hundred feet and left him alone.

The strange thing was even though it was clear the herd didn’t want the colt in amongst them, they also didn’t go too far away from him once the two horses had moved him up the hill. The band seemed perfectly happy to let him graze only one or two hundred feet away, and let him go down to get water in the little stream near the bottom of the hill when he needed to drink.

The colt was unsure of what to think of this strange little band. While there was no question these creatures were horses, there was still something very different about them. They had a completely different feel to them than any of the horses he had ever encountered during his short lifetime out on the range. There was an unfamiliar energy to them. Not bad, necessarily, but very different. In the band he came from there had always been a sort of sharpness to life, an alertness that never went away. Everything was always very clear to all members of the band and everyone had a defined place within the herd and that place was adhered to with strictness. But with this band, there seemed to be a sort of dullness to their life, a lack of urgency in everything they did. Things were much slower here and much less refined. Everybody still had a place in the herd, but that place seemed to be negotiable depending on the day, or even the time of day. That was never the case in his previous band.

Another thing that troubled the colt was he had never seen so many adult males and adult females living together, and he certainly had never seen a herd without babies and youngsters. There was something unnatural about this little band, and it made him uneasy.

These concerns alone were enough for the colt to keep his distance, these along with the knowledge that though his body had gotten stronger, he was not at all strong. If one of the members turned on him and attacked, he wasn’t confident he could defend himself so he stayed away, never approaching the herd directly, but still always within sight of them.