Donny gathered up the spilled pack while Keith rode up beside the rock where Miranda was still perched. He stretched out his hand. “C’mon. You can ride with me.”
Throwing her leg over the horse, she mounted behind his saddle, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist. All her senses immediately fired at the close contact. On the surface they might seem completely incompatible, but under it all, their chemistry was off the charts. She wondered what would have happened had the lion not attacked. How far would it have gone? She shut her eyes and breathed him in, hoping to etch it all on her brain. Once they returned with the foals, her adventure would be over, and even more regretfully, her time with Keith.
*
Arriving back at camp, Miranda immediately accosted Mitch. “How is the foal? The one we put on the helicopter. Is he going to make it?”
“That one’s back with his mama now.” Mitch indicated a pen containing several mares and babies. “It’s still a bit touch and go,” he said, “but I think he’s gonna pull through.”
“Thank God.” Miranda’s heart squeezed at the sight of the pinto foal nursing his mother. She didn’t even know how it had happened, but the fate of the foal suddenly meant a great deal to her. For the first time in her life she felt part of something important. Something that mattered. The last twenty-four hours had changed her, intrinsically and irrevocably, and Keith had been an integral part of that. She watched him wistfully as they completed the process of loading the last of the horses into the stock trailers.
“What happens to them now?” she asked as the steel door slammed shut for the final time.
“We’re taking them all to join the others at the Palomino Valley processing center,” Mitch replied. “That’s where they’ll get vet care and freeze branding for identification. After that, the younger ones will be shipped out to adoption centers.”
Miranda gaped. “That baby’s going to be taken from his mother after all this?”
“Not right away,” Mitch replied. “But he will be as soon as he’s weaned.”
“Why?”
“Because younger horses are easier to adopt out,” Mitch explained.
“What about the older ones? What happens to them?” She suddenly recalled the horror stories she’d read about the hundreds of thousands that were slaughtered for dog food decades earlier.
“They don’t kill ’em, if that’s what you fear,” Mitch reassured her. “It’s illegal—in this country anyway. Most’ll be shipped out to long-term federal holding facilities. You’re welcome to follow us to Palomino Valley. It’s only three hours south of here, just outside Reno, which won’t even be out of your way.”
Keith suddenly glanced her way. “I’ll drive you back to Bruno’s,” he volunteered. “You can just follow us from there.”
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Miranda asked.
He shrugged. “Not at all.”
“Great.” Mitch tipped his hat. “I guess we’ll see you both in a few hours.”
After Mitch pulled out with his last load of horses, Miranda followed Keith to his truck.
“So what happens after this job is done?” she asked. “Are you all heading back to Wyoming?”
“No. Mitch is doing a nuisance gather in Tuscarora.”
“What’s a nuisance gather?”
“It’s usually removing horses that push over fences and invade private property. Sometimes they present a hazard in residential areas as well, wandering onto highways and such. Mitch and his boys can handle it without me. I’m going to be busy hauling a load of horses to the Warm Springs Correctional Facility in Carson City.”
“Correctional facility? Why are you taking horses to a prison?”
“It’s a special program,” he explained. “There are several prisons around the country that let the inmates work with the horses, gentling them for easier adoption, but the prisons can take only a handful of horses at a time. In the meantime, the BLM keeps culling the herds, even though they’ve run out of places to put them.”
“What do you mean ‘run out of places’?”
“At last report, they have about fifty thousand mustangs they’re managing, and there’s at least three more gathers scheduled over the next month in Nevada alone.”
“Did you say fifty thousand?” she repeated incredulously. “That isn’t management. It’s insanity!”
Keith shook his head ruefully. “That’s government bureaucracy at work.”
“What’s going to happen to them all?” she asked.
“Who knows? The BLM is so desperate, they’ve even begun turning to private ranchers for help.”
“That’s got to be less expensive than keeping them at holding facilities, and better for the horses too,” she said.