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23 There is an adrenaline rush while astride a good cow pony in pursuit of a wild horse at full gallop. Timing is critical, as the rider must anticipate each evasive move of the fleeing horse. The cowboy must match the rhythm of the mustang and position himself close enough to dally a lasso against the wind and over the outstretched neck of his intended target. For Velma, her chase would also have to be at full gallop, dodging evasive bureaucratic moves and maneuvering her campaign close enough to bring her cause to her intended objective. The world of catching a wild horse was changing. Gone was the respect for the relationship of horse and rider. A new motivation for catching wild horses was developing on the western rangeland. Even though Velma’s father gathered wild horses in the late 1800s and early 1900s using the traditional method of catching a few of them by roping them from a saddle horse, she got a new lesson in contemporary mustanging from eyewitnesses. When Velma began looking into the reason wild horses were being transported to slaughterhouses under inhumane conditions, she went straight to the source. Using the socially disarming techniques she learned from her experience with polio, she got to know some of the people involved in the industry. On one occasion in 1952, Velma entered the blm office in Reno to inquire about local wild horse roundups. “Mrs. Johnston,” the blm employee confided , “we do not advertise these roundups, for if the people knew about them, they would not stand for it. How did you find out?”1 Much of Velma’s information came through “outfielders” (as she described the whistle-blowers)—people who often worked for the government or even the slaughterhouses. One transportation driver took the time to introduce himself to Velma with a dire plea to keep his identification confidential. She ROUNDING UP NEWSPAPERS AND POLITICIANS 2 24 | W I L D H O R S E A N N I E nicknamed the foghorn-voiced informant “Zeke” and learned to rely on the accuracy of his information about pending roundups. One evening, just as the Johnstons thought they were settling down to a quiet evening at home, Zeke called. He described two men on horseback, positioned behind juniper trees on the public lands outside of Reno. An airplane pilot working with them hazed a band of wild horses toward the mounted horsemen. Shotgun pellets blasted out of the aircraft, peppering the wild horses to keep the frantic animals moving toward the concealed horsemen. Zeke described the condition of the horses when they were hit with buckshot : most of the shot penetrated their hides, and the horses arrive bloodied at the rendering works. He explained that the animals were terribly mishandled , with rope burns on their badly swollen legs until no hide remained. When a horse was tied down, he said, it would often thrash, flailing against rocks so badly that it was blinded. In rapt silence, Velma listened as Zeke described how the horses were bound with a rope until the transport trucks arrived (sometimes a full day later). Zeke paused in his story to be sure Velma was keeping up with him. She took a thoughtful breath and asked who was conducting the roundup. “Lazy cowboys that won’t do anything else,” Zeke replied. It wasn’t long before word of mouth expanded Velma’s network of outfielders to recreational users of the public lands. Casual riders visiting Nevada’s barren but beautiful backcountry provided insight into how wild horses that didn’t make it to the corral traps were left by the mustangers to die. She listened to eyewitness accounts of hikers who found a rope around a leg of a horse carcass; at the other end of the rope was a section of a traintrack rail. The horse dragged the rail from a spring almost ten miles away, and the animal fell from hunger and thirst when the steel caught between two large sagebrush plants. Sometimes the phone calls at home or notes slipped under the door at her office from Zeke and other outfielders described roundups that were still under way. To horsemen like Velma and Charlie, it was incredible that people would treat horses the way the outfielders described, and the Johnstons wanted to see the situation for themselves. One day a roundup was practically in their backyard. As the sun was setting one mid-March Sunday evening, the Johnstons drove...

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