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energy. We had next to no runaways. The success still warmed me. I had shaken the dice and thrown them on the table. Lucky me. They had come up a seven.
    “Herd behavior modification training I called it,” I said to Les. “And I think it might just work on a herd of wild horses.” I scooped up the pencils and returned them to the jar.
    A pause filled the phone line. I could almost see Les’s questioning expression. Maybe he was thinking about herds of mustangs having lived their whole life wild. Would they respond to such a program? You could argue that we wouldn’t be training the horses from the time they were colts. Or argue that we could bait them with grain. But when horses are full, fat, and happy, they won’t follow a feed truck. And what if you have to lead them across a river? How do you bait them then? We needed to make friends with the horses like we did with the cattle so they would do our bidding.
    Finally Les said, “Call me a Missourian, because you’ll have to show me that one.”
    His reaction came as no surprise. Cowboys, neighbors, friends, and colleagues all hailed from Missouri when I told the gentling cattle story. One neighbor south of Lazy B had the wildest bunch of cattle that time and time again ran away. After each incident, this frustrated guy would pound in a piece of fence here, another piece there in an attempt to contain the animals until pretty soon he had the most nonsensical fencing ever created. I went to him and explained the program, how it was foolproof, and how he could do it. “That’s a bunch of shit,” he said.
    Telling Les about the herd behavior modification program increased my confidence that wild horses would respond to it. Cocky me. For all I knew, Dayton and I were standing on the drawbridge of an air castle that was about to dump us in the swampy moat. Maybe Les thought so too, but he didn’t let on. He told me who to call in the BLM ’s Wild Horse Division. They would be the ones with information about the current state of affairs and the ones who could authorize a sanctuary. At least that’s what he thought.
    “I’ll give them a call and let them know that you’re mostly a reasonable man.” He chuckled and hung up with a promise to let me know when travels brought him near Lazy B. I promised to introduce him to our gentled cattle.
    The conversation with Les set off a chain reaction of activity. I felt like a spider flinging out filaments that would somehow get woven into a web. I half expected my partners to resist the far-out idea of creating a wild horse sanctuary, but they readily stamped their approval on it. Phone calls to the BLM were being returned, conversations lengthening, and support growing. Dayton Hyde made friends in the South Dakota state tourism office. They liked his idea of putting two or three hundred wild horses on his small ranch and opening it up to tourists. The BLM chimed in with a desire to partner with the state. Over many meetings and cups of coffee, we hammered out a document that gave birth to the Institute of Range and American Mustang, a nonprofit organization designed to ensure the longevity of a sanctuary, protect the horses, and preserve the land.
    Then there was the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Of the thirty-five thousand acres that made up the old Arnold Ranch, nine thousand were leased, half from the Rosebud Sioux Indian Tribe and half from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which meant we needed permission from each group to graze wild horses on their land. I decided to first pay a visit to the person I knew best, Stan Whipple, the range conservationist employed by the Rosebud Sioux Tribe who was responsible for relations with our ranch. He loved our plan, circulated it to the right people, and within a week the tribe had granted us approval. Stan followed up with a fair warning. “Don’t be surprised if you get static from the BIA . They never agree with anything we do.” I decided it best to drive the short part of an