So methods for obtaining slaughter-bound horses vary. There are the auctions where most horse sellers are assuming they're selling animals to horse lovers — not horse killers. Unlike other livestock auctions, not many suspect that the pound on the hoof is the target.

There are kill buyers, like dog and cat USDA "B" dealers in vivisection circles, who promise a family's backyard horse a life of leisure on non-existent farms and coax below-market sales, turning profits by herding the animals onto double-decked cattle trucks bound for one of the 11 foreign-owned killing plants in the U.S.

Why the secrecy? "It's an industry that involves killing pets," explains Jim Weems, [former] Administrative Vice President of Great Western Meat Co. in Morton, Texas ["Meat's Hidden Industry," Jane Kelly; Meat & Poultry, Sept 1991]. "Of course, horsemeat companies are publicity shy. Our buyers go at these auctions to bid against people who are interested in buying a pony for their child."

Great Western Meat Co. sends a special chill along my spine. Last year, 60,000 horses were trucked to that slaughterhouse, eight percent of them right here from California — and 60 were dead on arrival, from who knows what. I stroke the dapple-grey Arabian's dished face and his ears and look into his liquid brown eyes as he shoves his head against me to ask for a scratch. Great Western Meat Co., I think again. That's exactly where he's headed.

It isn't that people haven't tried to protect horses from slaughter in the United States. Try they do. Still, both federal and state legislation fails. Horses have not yet been officially classed as either companion animals or livestock, so, when in doubt, they fall under guidelines issued by the Department of Agriculture. But, like most livestock animals in the United States, whatever laws exist governing their protection, they are seldom, if ever, enforced.

In a sworn statement before Cook County, State of Illinois, a former employee [name withheld] of Cavel International, a horse slaughtering plant, testified the following:

"The horse industry is accountable for these atrocities," says Linda Moss, co-founder of Equus Horse Rescue organization. "But to stop the slaughter, we need to change the nature of our industry. Breeders are going to have to cut back. Trainers won't be able to unload horses they've wrecked. If we're going to race horses, we should have more races for slower and older horses. You can't just throw away these animals; you have to find the right place for them to be" [Ride! Magazine].

Day is turning to dusk and an almost cold wind picks up. I leave the kill pen for the car, hoping to find a sweater or jacket into which I'll crawl. Along the way, I pass the kill buyer. He's leaning in the barn's breezeway, on a payphone, and he smiles a little at me as I walk by. Despite his friendliness, I can tell, by the tone in his voice, that he is irritated. "This isn't right," he keeps saying into the receiver. Seems cattle are more on the move this week and he's having a great deal of trouble finding a truck for this week's load of horses. He can't keep the horses here for long; they're costing him to feed and he has more than enough for one more truckload this month. "This isn't right," I hear him say again, and I can't help but agree with him — from a slightly different perspective.

Still, I find the irony. He's merely the middleman. He is not the enemy. The enemy is the bigger picture: the breeders of horses, the people who acquire them and then abandon them to any fate.

I pull the collar around me, lean onto the fence again to watch the dapple-grey Arabian. He sees me and shifts his weight; I know he's going to turn in my direction now, to approach and stand by me, perhaps in his horsey way, to ask me to free him.

I scratch his neck and he loves it, but in the middle of our momentary liberation from the doom around us, headlights shatter the encroaching darkness. I turn my head and watch the truck make its slow journey across the pot-holed dirt driveway. It is coming for him. There are tiny lights along every edge of the trailer, and it is lit up like a Christmas tree. It is empty now, too, but it is a different kind of truck. There is ample room for horses in it, partitioned stalls that separate the animals from each other to prevent injury; there are padded walls and rubber mats on the floors; there is hay and sweet grain in the feed troughs.

The truck stops and Linda Moss gets out. "Is he ready?" she asks. I scratch the dapple-grey Arabian one more time and feel my heart warm. "He's come to the gate," I said. "I think he's ready."

So was the big, white blind mare. And two of the Charros' "toys." Then we squeezed in an Arabian filly just for good measure.

It was nightfall when we arrived at the temporary sanctuary (we're looking for something permanent). Barn lights shattered the darkness, horses whinnied a welcome, and a volunteer crew emerged to help unload our cargo.

It is a wonderful feeling, a feeling beyond words, to actually remove other living beings from the jaws of death, and — in this case — to prepare them a room of their own with fresh water and alfalfa hay, wood shavings for bedding, and a bucket of sweet grain.

It is a wonderful feeling for the horses, too. The dapple-grey Arabian called to me when I left the barn to observe the outside activities. He knew so soon that I had come to save him. He KNEW it — even before I did, I think. I named him "Shilo" after Neil Diamond's song, the one he wrote about his only dependable friend. [For more about this horse, read Shilo.]

I thought about my brand new friendship with Shilo — that rare kind of bonding you have only with an animal — as I leaned in the barn's doorway and watched him grab a bite of alfalfa and molasses then check to see if I was still there. Outside in the lit night, the irony of it all had shadowed us. It is all we can afford: The Equus Horse Rescue Sanctuary is shared by a group of Charro cowboys.

They drink beer, smoke cigarettes, and sit on the fence; they train their rodeo horses in the arena and practice their lassoing techniques. If the cowboys are at all amused or annoyed with us, it's hard to tell. They feed carrots to the wounded ponies who had once been chased and injured in one of their rodeos; they offer to hold a filly for a volunteer while she medicates her; they unload a bag of grain from the truck bed for us.

I do not understand the human race ... and for now that would have to suffice; inside the barn, bedded and fed and groomed, a dozen horses prepare for a long and enriched life that only a few hours earlier had been doomed to the slaughterhouse. For a few, it would be a good night.