LAS VEGAS - As helicopter blades whirled close overhead, a band of wild horses kept government cowboys at bay for an hour during an emergency roundup to save the animals from dying of thirst and starvation.
''We have some horses in deteriorating condition,'' Billie Young, president of the National Wild Horse Association, said as Saturday morning's roundup began in temperatures already pushing 100 degrees.
''It's apparent if we don't act now, we will have dead horses,'' she said.
After the band of six refused to enter a makeshift corral where more than a dozen already had been captured, cowboys on horseback chased them across the rugged terrain and roped them one by one.
Only the band's leader, a palomino stallion, managed to evade the posse. He will be left to rejuvenate the herd.
Jim Hicks, a veteran chopper pilot in horse roundups, said the band was a stubborn bunch because the horses had become accustomed to people and vehicles and couldn't be scared into the corral.
''You're going to run into those now and then,'' he said.
Despite the chase over miles of rocky desert dotted with sage bushes and Joshua trees, Hicks said the evasive stud horse ''was still fresh.''
''A tired wild horse will outrun a good saddle horse any day,'' he said.
About 30 wild horses were rounded up Saturday near Tunnel Spring.
Bureau of Land Management officials, who supervised the roundup with help from the horse association, said some of the older horses will be returned to the Red Rock Herd Management Area, while younger ones will be put up for adoption Oct. 8 in Las Vegas.
Older horses that can't can survive on the will be hauled to a long-term care facility in Oklahoma.
BLM officials said the dry spell - a week away from breaking the 150-day record of no measurable precipitation set in 1959 - has caused at least two springs to dry up.
Coupled with sparse vegetation, the death toll could have totaled 50 horses had not the BLM and volunteers from the horse association and rural communities refilled troughs near the springs with thousands of gallons of water hauled in by trucks since the beginning of May.
When finished, the emergency roundup will cost about $30,640, according to BLM spokesman Phillip Guerrero.
''That's a small price to pay to keep these horses from dying,'' he said.
