Who’s Shooting All the Pretty Horses?
Wild horses are symbols of the vanished West
They are also living, breathing creatures
May the mark of Cain be upon their killer, as it is upon us
Far out on the fringes of Utah’s deserts, cradled between a chemical-weapons testing range and an army depot, there run the Onaqui wild horses. Blacks and bays, dapples and grays, pintos and palominos. Someone keeps shooting them. “Pyrite bled out just down the road from here,” says the woman standing beside me. This sturdy lady is my souped-up-4Runner-driving guide to the Onaqui’s 200,000-acre range, a lonesome stretch of desert a couple hours southwest of Salt Lake City that is home to a herd of 300 or so wild mustangs. My guide comes out here nearly every weekend to be among the horses. Her eyes can spot the animals hiding in the cracks of the hills. She agreed to show me around on the condition that I don’t use her real name. Snowflakes, wind-kicked from the ground back into the air, flicker all around us. Pyrite, a young palomino stallion, was shot in the first week of November; he survived for another seven or so days, stumbling through the brush, before collapsing on the …
