THE BLUE FEATHER
339
The Cottonwood trees had an abundance of broken-off limbs
to fuel their campfire lying in the grass. They walked along
picking up the long ago discarded branches.
As they walked back Tital told Bardala, “A large herd of horses
are located northeast of here. They will be the first herd we
transport back to Vivia. We will use the river to help herd them
to the cave entrance. The river can act like a fence, as it is deep
enough that the horses will run alongside of it, rather than cross.
We want to keep just a light pressure on them, from behind the
herd. When we locate the lead stallion, we might need our
special powers to guide him to the cave entrance. The rest of the
herd will follow him.”
“How many horses are there in this herd?” Bardala asked,
while she dropped the dry firewood next to a circle of rocks Kuó
and Viviana were completing.
“According to Huracán, approximately twenty-five hundred.”
“That seems like quite a lot.”
“Not really, we are going to see herds of up to six thousand
horses.”
“It’s hard to believe that there are so many unwanted
horses.”
“It’s even worse for the burros. They are sometimes just shot
and killed for target practice.” Tital stopped to break up some big
limbs into smaller ones, so that Moka and Eegh could help carry
some more of the firewood back to the campsite.
“That can’t be, that’s cruel.”
“I can tell you from a personal experience, that one time
when I was riding Centella in the mountains, I came across a
young burro standing perfectly still. It was across a barbed wire