When Shea Rafferty ran away from home at 16, his only destination was "out west". After almost 2000 miles of walking, with only his pit bull, Fergus, and a black kitten, Clancy, for companionship, he came upon a sight in New Mexico that changed his life: a band of about 40 wild horses, mostly gray and white and roan and buckskin with a few bays and sorrels, manes and tails flying, came thundering over a ridge. Having crested the ridge line, they surged across the meadow and disappeared behind an outcropping of rock. Drawing up the rear, in the lookout position, was a strangely colored stallion - brown face and belly, a long black mane and tail, a body of grayish-roan, covered with black speckles.
Seeing Shea, he reared and screamed a challenge, before racing off to catch of with his herd.
"Eureka," Shea whispered to himself. His heart was pounding at the magnificent sight of horses, running free and wild, led by a stud that seemed to Shea of represent the epitome of macho male defiance.
He walked on, scarcely noticing his surroundings. Shea had never had a spiritual bone in his body. No sermon in church had ever reachrf him but the combination of mountains, meadows and horses touched a deep place in his soul that he hadn't even known existed. He hesitated to call it God but it was....reverence.
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