Nobody Could Touch the Wild Mustang I Adopted From a Government Roundup. Then a Flash Flood Hit the Canyon

My name is Joaquin Vega. I’m 43 years old, and I train horses on a small ranch in the high desert outside Elko, Nevada.

I’m not married. I’ve never been married. I tried living with someone once, in Reno, and found out I’m much better with horses than with apartments.

I live alone with eight horses, two dogs and a lot of silence. The waitress at the diner in town calls me “the cowboy from the calendar.” I don’t know what calendar she means. I’ve never been in one. Her friends laugh every time she says it.

Most of my work is fixing horses other people have broken. Rodeo horses that won’t load. Show horses that won’t let anyone near their feet. Ranch horses that buck because somebody taught them to be afraid.

Every year, the Bureau of Land Management rounds up wild mustangs from the open range and offers them for adoption. Most get adopted easily.

Some don’t.

Last March, at a holding facility near Palomino Valley, a woman from the BLM walked me to the last pen.

“This one’s been here two years,” she said. “Three trainers have tried him. He broke one man’s arm and another man’s ribs. If nobody takes him this month, he goes to long-term holding. For life.”

He was standing in the far corner. A big buckskin stallion, golden with a black mane and black legs, scars across his chest. He watched me with his ears pinned flat.

The adoption fee was a hundred and twenty-five dollars.

“I’ll take him,” I said.

She looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

“Sir, are you sure?”

I looked at the horse. He looked back at me.

“No,” I said. “But neither is he.”