Last Chance Mustang

by Mitchell Bornstein

  He was far from the elixir I needed to cure my ills. Was I even up to the challenge? I was torn.

  Lacking the most basic of skills required to function in the domesticated horse market, Samson’s survival had been cast in doubt the moment that the BLM placed him at auction. Samson now needed time. Time to let his guard down, time to breathe a first sigh of relief. Time to comprehend that he had finally found a true and safe home.

  I counseled Amy to stay out of Samson’s pasture, forget their rocky beginnings, and start anew. Since bullwhips and ropes were the only training aids familiar to this horse, I suggested that they avoid approaching him with any training equipment in hand—no matter how benign. Familiarity, comfort, and understanding would all come in time and with patience. For a horse like Samson, routines would bring stability and stability would bring security.

  “Why don’t you just work with him?” Amy questioned. “I really don’t want anyone coming around here, but I guess I can manage with you.”

  It was a question I couldn’t answer and so I let it go by. “Look—no horse should be locked away in a stall,” I said, climbing into my truck. “Especially him.”

  Amy stood silent and expressionless. Though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, something was off. She appeared nervous, anxious, prickly, and at times awkward. My help had been requested, yet I was left to feel like a trespasser. She was there and conversing with me, yet her thoughts seemed a million miles away. Amy seemed spent. Minus the violence and intimidation, she came across as the two-legged version of her four-legged captive: alone, unhappy, and shut off.

  As I gazed upon her, it was apparent that in her multiple acts of compassion, by making herself a modern-day version of Noah, Amy had thoroughly overtaxed herself and her resources. Her home had evolved into a veritable stockyard replete with geese and chickens, ewes, two sets of triplet lambs, goats, a pregnant mare, a pony, and the three larger horses. A Noah’s Ark, with the flood replaced with fire and a run-down dairy farm standing in for the ark itself. In no time, the fire refugees had overrun Amy’s safe haven.

  With scenes from Wild Kingdom playing out on her front lawn, somewhere between the bloody stallion battles and all the injured amateur horse professionals, Amy’s dream of a tranquil home in the country had turned into a nightmare. I couldn’t be certain, but a part of me believed that though she was the one who’d brought all on board, Amy now resented her animal charges for violating the serenity of her newly acquired rural sanctuary.

  I couldn’t bring myself to agree with Amy’s assessment that she’d have no success in any attempt to find Samson a new home. Just as I didn’t tell her that she and Samson were now stuck with each other. I slammed the door and drove off, leaving her there in the driveway. As I made my way back to the city, I thought of Samson in his milking stall, lonely, all alone, and without a future.

  A description of the captured wild horse from J. Frank Dobie’s book The Mustangs echoed through my head: “When he stood trembling with fear before his captor, bruised from falls by the restrictive rope, made submissive by choking, clogs, cuts and starvation, he had lost what made him so beautiful and free. Illusion and reality had alike been destroyed. Only the spirited are beautiful.”

  Despite all he’d been through, Samson was still beautiful. He hadn’t lost his fire, his pride, or his spirit. It was something to see. It was something to look up to. It was a thought I could not shake.

  This horse was something different. This horse was something special.

  For the first time in my career, I saw a little bit of myself in a horse. Samson had his solitude and contempt, but a lonely life in his dark, cramped stall, his hate of other horses, and his disdain for humans now had him completely shut down. I had my legal career and my work with the horses, but something was missing. We both thought that what we had was working, but it wasn’t.

  My frustrations and injuries over the past months had curbed my desire to continue training. My years as a litigator had taught me to be calm, cool, and detached. But Samson had touched a chord in me, and I thought that, maybe, just maybe, I’d done the same to him. For a brief moment, the flame that had fueled my passion for training rekindled.

  Amy, Samson, and I—we were all in search of something. Perhaps what we each needed was the help of the others.

  {3}

  THE RECONQUISTA

  Wherever man has left his footprint in the long ascent from barbarism to civilization we will find the hoofprint of the horse beside it.

  —JOHN MOORE

  For decades, and despite its storied lineage and historical significance, critics have assailed the wild Mustang as a feral, invasive, and nonnative species. The policy favoring native over nonindigenous species can be traced to a 1963 report to the North American Wildlife Conference that directed government conservation efforts to only those animals that were present at the time of the Conquistadors’ arrival—leaving all remaining nonnative and imported species to be considered “undesirable.” As a result, state and federal agencies now follow a legal mandate that protects all native wildlife and natural ecosystems from all nonnative, invasive species.

  Deemed by government officials as “reintroduced” rather than native, the North American wild horse has long since been considered one of these invasive species. It is now labeled by many as a feral interloper, a designation that not only defies logic but further disregards present-day molecular genetics studies that have established conclusive genetic equivalency between the equids that walked the continent prior to the Ice Age and the modern horse.

  Wild or not, returned or reintroduced, the horse was one of North America’s original inhabitants. In order to fully comprehend the debate over wild horse protection and conservation efforts, one has to first understand the history of the horse.

  The first horse, “dawn horse”—otherwise known as Eohippus—walked this planet some 55 to 60 million years ago and bore little resemblance to the wild Mustang who remained locked in his stall. Fossilized remains unearthed in 1931 from Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin depict the dawn horse as a twelve-pound animal measuring nearly fourteen inches in height. Its back arched, eyes centrally located in a small, short face, and with three molars implanted on each side of its jaw, dawn horse looked less like a horse and more like a small dog or fox. Unlike the modern horse, its legs were equally proportionate. With four toes supported by a pad on its forefeet, and three toes on its hind feet, Eohippus was well suited for movement in early Earth’s tropical rain forest–like habitat.

  Over time, Eohippus wandered from its natural environs and migrated across the existing land bridges to South America, Europe, and Asia. Whereas early theories proposed that the modern horse’s earliest ancestors first evolved in Asia, generally accepted principle now dictates that the dawn horse evolved on, and traveled forth from, the North American continent. Like it or not, the first horses and all subsequent descendants were a species native to North America.

  As millions of years passed and the habitat changed, evolution and natural selection were hard at work. Roughly 35 to 40 million years ago, Mesohippus evolved with disproportionate legs, three toes on the forefeet, premolar incisor teeth, and eyes located farther apart allowing for a greater lateral field of vision. With a longer muzzle, a prominent load-carrying toe, greater speed, and measuring close to forty inches at the shoulder, Mercyhippus walked the earth 20 to 25 million years ago and was the first of its kind to bear some resemblance to the present-day horse. Pliohippus, which lived roughly 6 million years ago and has been labeled by many as the “grandfather” of the modern horse, measured forty-eight inches in height at the shoulder, and was the earliest one-toed equid and the species’ first true grazer.

  Equus caballus, the “true horse,” emerged 5 million years later. Standing near 13.2 hh (54 in) at five times the size of the dawn horse, in appearance Equus caballus most closely resembled a donkey. With a field of vision close to 360 degrees and an auditory system that tracked sound the way a t
orpedo zeroed in on its target, this was a living defense and survival apparatus. Able to reach a top speed of nearly 30 miles per hour, it was smarter, faster, and better equipped for life’s rigors than the sum of its earlier versions. Following the path of its ancestors, 1 million years ago Equus caballus traveled across the land bridges to South America, Asia, Europe, and Africa. There, with the passage of time and the operation of evolution, the true horse gave rise to an additional twelve species, including Africa’s asses and zebras and the Middle East’s onagers.

  Nearly 1.6 million years ago, the melting of the land bridge across the Bering Strait announced the arrival of the Pleistocene era. The North American continent was cut off, isolated, and the Ice Age was prepared to claim its victims en masse. Then, roughly ten thousand years ago, countless species, including sloths, mastodons, and Equus caballus fell victim to climate change, food shortage, and a new predator—man. Death and extinction followed for all. With the equine population soon extinct on the North American continent, the species’ survival resided with those horses that had previously migrated across the land bridges.

  In order for the wild and feral ancient horse to survive, primitive peoples had to first alter their perceptions of the beast that danced with the wind. Fossilized evidence indicates that primitive cultures living around 10,000 BC viewed the horse as little more than a source of food. These early horses were run off cliffs or chased into walled valleys and beaten to death. By 9,000 BC, the formerly nomadic primitive populations of Iraq’s Tigris and Euphrates river valleys had shifted to a static, agrarian subsistence. Wild feral horses were then tracked, captured, and penned and soon became an integral part of these agrarian-based societies.

  With the dog previously domesticated in 12,000 BC, sheep in 9,000 BC, and goats, pigs, and chickens by 7,000 BC, domestication of the horse was not far off. One to two thousand years later, and predating the invention of the wheel by five hundred years, horses in Scythia’s Dnieper River region were mounted and ridden. The wild, feral horse had entered a new era.

  DNA tests published in 2009 reveal that by 3600 BC farmers in the Ponto-Caspian region had employed selective breeding to produce herds with predetermined colors, traits, and physical attributes. Horses with desired attributes were rebred; those less desirable were discarded. As the horse settled into its new role as a means of transport and as farmers became more proficient at selective breeding, the equine population skyrocketed. From this era forward, the modern horse was to carry primitive civilization’s advance upon its back.

  By the twelfth century, the horse of the Old World had galloped into its role as the pivotal factor differentiating between victory and defeat on the battlefield. Newly revered and esteemed, it first found preeminence when Genghis Khan and his skilled horsemen warriors conquered northern China mounted atop their trusted steeds. No longer a mere means to get from point A to point B, riding was now a learned, technique-driven skill set. As horses were ridden with increasing frequency and assigned greater responsibilities, the proficiency of those who rode atop their backs correspondingly improved. Preserved Assyrian illustrations depict that by the eighth century riders had transitioned from the “donkey position”—seated back at the loins—to the “modern position,” seated forward at the horse’s withers.

  Initially a wild and feral beast, the Old World horse was now a vessel of sport, achievement, and subjugation. Gliding across foreign lands on four thinly sculpted legs carrying one thousand pounds of muscle and bone, Equus caballus was a conqueror and empire builder all in one. Once nothing more than a next meal, the horse had become a prized possession to kings and emperors alike. Ruins excavated in the 1930s at Siberia’s Pazyryk Tombs reveal that the late-fourth- and early-third-century horse was a significant asset in both life and the afterlife. There archaeologists uncovered five tombs frozen in ice and perfectly preserved. Each tomb contained fourteen horses with braided tails, trimmed manes, bridles, harnesses, saddlecloths, and decorative headdresses.

  Similarly, in perhaps one of mankind’s greatest archaeological finds, excavation at the tomb of Qin Shi Huang—the first emperor of the Chinese Qin dynasty—unearthed a mausoleum containing life-size terra-cotta figures representing 500 chariot and 116 cavalry horses. Discoveries at both sites yielded the unmistakable conclusion that among the kingdoms of the Old World the horse had achieved elevated and preferential status. An essential possession in life, it was now a necessity in death as well.

  While the societies of the Western world were slowly figuring out the complex interrelationship between horse and rider, the desert tribes of the East were busy breeding and inbreeding their herds—creating what was to eventually become the foundation stock for the present-day horse. These small yet sturdy horses—the Arabian and the Barb—bred and raised under the harshest of desert conditions and the strictest of man-imposed standards, proved unrivaled and unmatched in their endurance and strength, soundness, constitution, and conformation.

  Arabia’s Bedu tribes first chronicled the history of the Arabian horse in AD 786, successfully tracing breed pedigrees to 3,000 BC. Bedu legend, however, tracks the reign of the Arabian horse back to Adam, on to the era of King Solomon, then through to Mohammed’s lifetime and beyond. By virtue of its 17 ribs, 5 lumbar vertebrae, and 16 tail bones—contrasted with an 18-6-18 ratio for all other horses—the Arabian, with its short, compact, and concave back and high-set tail, is readily distinguishable and uniquely singular from all other members of its species. In profile, its forehead is convex; the face, concave or dished. The refined Arabian head tapers to a small, delicate muzzle with large, flaring nostrils. Its eyes are richly dark in color yet soulful, expressive, and alert. When the Arabian moves out, it appears to be floating through time and space by way of invisible springs implanted in its legs.

  The Barb horse, first bred by North Africa’s Berbers, originated from a vast area that encompassed modern-day North Africa, Morocco, Libya, and Algeria. Also raised in the desert’s unforgiving climate, the Barb’s defining characteristics were its endurance, strength, agility, speed, and unstable temper. Similar to the Arabian, it required little food and water to sustain itself. Lacking the Arabian’s floating gracefulness and delicate features, this desert steed was the workhorse of the pair. The Barb was easily distinguished from its counterpart by its long, convex head and face. Its shoulders were flat and upright, the chest deep and narrow. Its hindquarters sloped from the high point of the back down to a low-set tail. Crossbred with the Arabian during the eighth- and seventh-century Muslim invasions, the Barb nonetheless retained its distinguishing characteristics.

  Beginning in the Early Middle Ages, these two similar yet different cousins were to immeasurably alter their species. By the arrival of the Early Modern Era, the Barb and Arabian’s hot blood had crossed foreign territories, continents, and oceans and forever transformed the breeding, conformation, and bloodlines of the modern-day horse.

  Following Mohammed’s death in 632, Muslim armies set out on conquests and defeated enemies in the Middle East, the Byzantine Empire, Mesopotamia, Armenia, North Africa, the Indus Valley, and Central Asia. Years later in 711, ten thousand Moorish soldiers riding atop Arabian and Barb mounts crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, conquered the Visigoths, and took Spain. The large, slow-moving Spaniard mounts, European bred to carry armored knights, presented little challenge to the smaller, faster, and agile Arabian and Barb warhorses. Recognizing that their steeds were no longer suited to modern warfare, the Spaniards immediately bred the superior Arabian and Barb horses to larger Iberian breeds such as the Norse Dun.

  The result, the Jennet, was fast, sprightly, and exceptionally intelligent. Over the course of the next eight centuries, the Spaniards continued selectively breeding and refining the highly sought-after characteristics of the two desert warhorses. By 1492, the year in which Spain conquered the last remaining Moorish stronghold of Granada, Andalusia and Seville were synonymous with the production of Europe’s greatest and most sought-af
ter steed—the Spanish horse. The horse destined to be the steed of the Conquistadors.

  Desired by Europe’s royalty and nobility, the Spanish horse would soon occupy a far greater and historically significant role than that of coveted breeding stock. Linked by DNA evidence to the horses that first crossed and then exited the North American continent near 1 million years ago, the horse of the Conquistadors was to follow in its ancient ancestors’ hoofprints and embark on a historic journey. Horse hooves would once again grace North American terra firma. And in much the same fashion that the early equids had ventured across the land bridge and fathered various related species throughout Eurasia, the Spanish horse would father a new breed of horse—the North American wild Mustang.

  When Spaniard Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico in April of 1519, his force included 600 infantry, 250 Indians, and 16 Spanish horses. As the first horse disembarked and deposited its hoof in the soft, wet sand, Equus caballus’ journey had come full circle. The horse of the Old World was now the horse of the New World. Having traveled across continents and oceans, survived inhospitable humans and bloody battles, having persevered through desert heat and mountain chill, the horse had returned to its land of birth and birthright.

  On the hunt for huge stores of native gold, Cortés’ equine force consisted of eleven stallions and five mares. The first sight of these hard-charging eleven-hundred-pound beasts—laden in armor from head to tail—left the native Aztec peoples terrified and bewildered. Mystified by the sheer size and power of the animals who carried the Spanish warriors, the Aztecs presented little opposition to their two- and four-legged invaders. In Cortés’ own words, “next to God, we owed our victory to the horses.”2 Following Cortés’ subsequent conquest of the capital city of Tenochtitlán and the defeat of the Aztecs, the Spanish Conquistadors set their sights on the continent’s virgin interior lands.