PROLOGUE
The night he was born was a wild one. The
wind blew stoplights down, thunder rattled the town over and over,
and rain beat so hard at the windows, the glass was in danger of
breaking. Even with all the turbulence, his mother Lily was calm
when he was put into her arms for the first time. She knew he would
be special. The line of his face was perfect. Smiling faces agreed
with her.
Growing up, they always knew if he
disappeared, they could find him in the stables with the horses.
The stables would frighten his brothers and sisters, but never him.
From the beginning, his knack with horses was uncanny. Boy and
animal seemed to understand each other and it was inexplicable. His
father, Sandy, had a favorite Appaloosa named Anna. Sometimes he
could be found curled up by Anna’s feet, but she never harmed
him—an incredible feat for a horse 15.5 hands high, weighing five
hundred pounds.
He and older brother Jesse would often ride
with their father to check the cattle on their sprawling ranch. His
mother wouldn’t let him sit a horse until he was three, but he was
a natural even then. By the time he was eight, he and the vet
figured out problems with the horses together. For a while, it
looked like he wanted to be a veterinarian. --- But fate had other
plans for him.
Colt Johnson knew that communicating with
and helping horses was all he really wanted to do. And that talent
would take him to many places, familiar and unknown, in his
lifetime. It would be his love of horses that would lead him to
another love.