COUNTLESS LIVES HAVE BEGUN AND ENDED HERE, known to none but their wild companions, the mountain, the desert, and the endless, open sky. Those horses you see here represent generations of survivors and hope for an enduring future. But each year familiar faces will disappear and new foals will be born, hopefully to continue in their ancestors’ hoofsteps.
Old age in the wild comes all too quickly. Even so, some of the wild Pryor Mountain horses live into their 20s. Flash (opposite) at 26 is the oldest horse on the Range. As Nature continues to shape the herd, some fare better than others, their excellent condition testifying to their outstanding natural suitability to the habitat.
FEW IMAGES AROUSE MORE ROMANCE than that of the wild stallion. He epitomizes power, wisdom, loving kindness, and murderous instinct, all bound in muscle and bone. Yet even the most extravagant visions fall short of the real thing. Wild stallions are much more: complex, driven, and passionate, they are the very spirit of the wild.
The stallions you see here are as individual as any domestic horses you may have known, but unlike domestic horses their minds have not been shaped by man. They are the very essence of instinct, living in the ancient ways. Though acclimation in recent years has led them to tolerate the presence of humans — somewhat — they remain wild animals, potentially dangerous to two-legged intruders. In their own world, they are nothing short of magnificent.
BACHELORS, LIKE TWO MOONS (left) and friend, depend on each other for companionship until they establish bands of their own.
STALLION FIGHTS FLAIR at the peak of breeding season. Sandman (right) defends his band from the young bachelor Red Cloud, who is intent on stealing his first mare.
A CONTENTED FAMILY MAN, Cloud has a rare color, a light palomino roan, that makes him easy to spot.
HE GENTLY REPRIMANDS an errant youngster from another band and sends her home. The foal’s tucked tail and mouth gestures are signs of submission.
A SOLITARY STALLION waits intently for an opportunity to steal a mare.
IN A FURIOUS EMBRACE, Sandman (left) challenges Trigger, patriarch of the Range’s largest band. Fights are as psychological as they are physical, and usually one horse backs down before severe damage is done.
BAND SIRE BAJA, age nine, rests in the mountain sunshine. Given his superb condition, battle scars heal quickly.
BAJA FIRMLY ADMONISHES his brilliantly marked 2005 dun foal Freedom, named by a soldier who had just returned home from duty in Iraq.
BAND SIRE LAKOTA is known for his calm cunning as well as for his gorgeous dark grullo coloring.
WITH LOWERED HEAD, Lakota “snakes” his band away from the restless commotion atop the mountain to find more peaceful grazing.
AT 17, RAVEN has retreated — battered, bleeding, and beaten — down the mountain to rest and heal, after another stallion contest. Here at the water hole he recuperates. Will he ever recover his mares?
LEAN AND SCARRED, young Bo has just won his first mare, and is keeping an eye on a stallion in the distance.
TETON, AN ESTABLISHED BAND SIRE, is half-brother to Cloud. Both were sired by the incomparable Raven, for years one of the most dominant stallions on the Range.
FIGHTING STYLE DEVELOPS with practice, according to the individual. Red Cloud (left) crouches, conserving energy, while Duke paws the air dramatically.
SO MUCH IS COMMUNICATED by a gesture. Trigger (right) acknowledges Star’s challenge. Whether he heeds it or not is another story. Mares look on, their family structure depending on the outcome.
BAND SIRE CLOUD heads back to his mares. A “stud pile” near the road is a communications center. Stallions sniff and deposit, staking their claims to territory.
BIGFOOT DOGS TRIGGER’S BAND relentlessly, keeping as close as he dares. His left knee is badly swollen and he limps excruciatingly, but the drive to capture a mare is more powerful than pain. Further frustrating his desire, Red Cloud, a higher-ranking bachelor, runs him off repeatedly, as he too stalks Trigger’s mares. Bigfoot flees on three legs, only to return and try again, and again.
CHESTNUT ROAN MARE War Bonnet at age 11.
IF STALLIONS ARE THE SPIRIT OF WILD HORSE EXISTENCE, mares are most surely its heart. Though they may appear gentle, detached, almost peripheral, mares are as unique and opinionated as their male counterparts. They seem to know, at their core, that the decisions they make every day can be a matter of life and death. They are always alert. They hold a pecking order within the harems that only the band sire himself is above, as the mares bemusedly observe his antics.
Little alarms or deters them. They are quiet and certain. They hold the secrets of untold future generations and bear each year’s new foals with hope and promise. Their role is simple: prolong the race.
BAJA’S MARE, BACARDI, strikes out towards water, while her foal bounces after her. Instinct tells him to stay close to his mother.
MUTUAL GROOMING between mares (Blanca, left, and Quelle Colour) is one of the many ways in which loving, lasting bonds are forged.
DAPPLED WITH GOOD HEALTH, Blanca leads her rambunctious foal.
BROKEN BOW displays dramatic shoulder stripes. Her hooves are kept healthy by her daily travels.
COMPANIONABLE MARES Broken Bow and Demure scan the horizon. Local people and the Bureau of Land Management staff name the horses.
THIS UNUSUALLY COLORED MARE’S name, Quelle Colour, could be translated as “what color?”
Unlike bachelor stallions, young mares do not normally live alone in the wild. When female foals mature, they are taken from their mother’s band by a stallion to start their adult lives as harem mares. They forge strong bonds with other mares, often remaining together when their band stallion dies or is deposed by another stallion.
DAILY LIFE, AND DEATH itself, revolve around the water hole.
