In 1950, a Reno executive secretary followed a trail of blood dripping from a truck full of terrified, injured and dying mustangs.
When she caught up with the truck and saw the tortured animals, the woman’s life veered in a new direction—one that ultimately resulted in federal protections for wild horses. A 1971 law banned the then-common practice of rounding up mustangs by chasing them with aircraft and shipping them to slaughterhouses to become dog food.
Horse Girl: How Velma Bronn Johnston Became Wild Horse Annie and Outsmarted the Mustang Killers of the West, by award-winning Nevada author Terri Farley, is the result of six years of research and writing. It traces Johnson’s path from her birth in rural Nevada to her victory in the halls of Congress. In between, she battled polio, worked as an executive secretary, married a cowboy, started the Double Lazy Heart Ranch in Storey County, and fought a relentless 20-year crusade to save the free-roaming mustangs of the West…