FREMONT COUNTY — The sunlight had barely broken above the horizon of the small park when Carol Stires started calling for the wild horse she’d befriended.

“River! Pretty boy!” she yelled into the otherwise quiet morning.

For a few minutes, nothing happened. A breeze lifted through the cottonwoods, and a few geese called. Then, a black horse strode between the trees, beelining for Stires. She spoke softly to River as he approached.

“Pretty boy, you’ve been rolling in the mud,” she said on the late August morning.

For two years, Stires, 64, has been caring for the abandoned wild horse that’s living on a sliver of public land on the Arkansas River, between Florence and Penrose. At the beginning, she couldn’t get near him. Now, after nearly two years of spending time with River, the mustan

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