A mare and colt cast shadows on a barn in Montana. The state is also home to the Pryor Mountain herd, a group of wild free-roaming horses which were once protected as "living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West" through the U.S. Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971. Many of the act's protections were abolished by a December 2004 law that legalized the slaughter of wild horses.
(Photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "C.M. Russell: Cowboy Artist" January 1986, National Geographic magazine)
