We were heading home from the cabin, nearing the junction where we saw the elk, when I caught sight of it out of the corner of my eye.

A grey canid. Dashing off to the south.

Okay, a coyote. No biggie.

'Course, is was just a few miles from here where one of the bosses of the outfit saw a wolf last November....

So I made the turn onto the south road and pulled over on the low rise to glass for the canid.

Didn't find it. Just a few feral horses.

One of them laying down. A white one. With its top two legs in the air.

Somethin' wrong here.

So the heelers and I take a hike in the cold. Hazing the three surviving horses away from their deceased comrade. They had beat the dirt around the carcass to dust, staying close to the mare. Their matriarch, perhaps?

But she was dead.

Been that way for a day or two, at least. Hard to tell, as cold as it's been. Eyes had been eaten out, making it look like she'd been gone a long time, but the canid had been eating away at her ass end, as they are wont to do, and the flesh there was still fresh and pink.

First thing I noticed was her right rear hoof. Curved, elongated and deformed. Often a symptom of selenium poisoning, a not unusual malady for horses and antelope in this desert. Some soils here are rich with selenium. Enough that it crystalizes out (see a future entry for more on that).

Obviously made it hard for her to get around, but certainly not enough to kill her.

Perhaps she died giving birth. Found a mummified mare over by Bastard Butte that had died that way one cold spring. Her foal still hanging halfway out, mother and offspring both partly consumed by scavengers.

Can't tell if that happened here or not, but by the bulbous mass back where the canid had been having breakfast, I would guess she was pregnant. Still, no reason to believe that's why she died.

Up on her neck, there's a small hole. Tempting to say it looks like a bullet hole, but bird scavengers will make holes that look exactly the same. There is blood oozing out the hole, but that's just a result of the carcass getting thawed and warmer, and the expanding pressure pushing fluids out.

Bodies leak.

But another hole up on her side has me wondering.

There's blood and fluids leaking out of this hole, too, and they're flowing downhill towards her spine. Which would be up on the horse's body, but down to gravity.

No surprises there.

The surprise is all the smeared blood on the hairs around the hole. Blood that appears to have dripped towards the horse's belly. As in, against gravity.

Now, perhaps there is some scavenger out there that I don't know about that pokes holes in dead things and then smears the blood around. I'll accept that possibility. But you look at those bloodied hairs close, and the blood dripped towards the belly. Which is uphill right now.

But would be downhill if the horse was still standing.

Only way I can figure it... the horse was standing up when blood came spurting out that hole.

Which most likely means bullet, not scavenger.

Add to that all the new vehicle and ATV tracks on the roads nearby, and the potential for someone to be up to no good.

So, this is a crime scene. Federal crime, even. Had several horses shot in this desert last fall. I gather the heelers up, and we hike back to the rig. Stalking and photographing a mountain plover along the way. Once in the truck, I check the cell phone.

No bars. No service.

What a surprise. But if you put the bag up on the dash, that sometimes helps. Got me one bar. Twisting the antenna into perfect verticle got me two. I call the federal office. Their ranger is out, but the gal, a neighbor I recognized by her voice, gives me his cell number.

Wherever he was, he must have had less than two bars of service. Worst cell phone conversation I've ever had. Doesn't help that he's new, and knows practically none of the landmarks out here. But eventually we get things explained, and I relay the UTM coordinates..

Yes, I'm positive the dead horse isn't even in his area of responsibility. The boundary is the fenceline about eight miles east. But I don't know the phone number to that office, nor hardly any of the people. And him being new, we needed to get introduced anyway. I'll let him worry about relaying the report to his compadre to the west.

Never did figure out what species of canid I saw.