Eureka Spills

Shea Rafferty ran away from home when he was 16, his only destination "out west". Until, after almost 2000 miles of walking with only his pit bull, Fergus, and a black kitten, Clancy, for companionship, he saw in New Mexico 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, come 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 stallion. He was strangely colored with a brown face and belly, a long black mane and tail and a body of grayish-roan, covered with black speckles. Seeing Shea, he reared and screamed a defiant challenge, before racing off to catch up 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 to be 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 he’d heard in church had ever reached him but the combination of mountains and meadows and horses, having nothing to do with man, touched a deep place in his soul that he hadn’t even been aware existed. He hesitated to call it God but it was....reverence.