DICKINSON - A wild horse named Bashful took a six-foot jump up and nearly out of the sales ring into the auction arena, injuring one elderly man and sending a jam-packed crowd scrambling for safety.

Bashful was about 1,000 pounds of dashing stallion and one of 78 wild horses rounded up at Theodore Roosevelt National Park earlier this week and sold at public auction Friday at Stockmen's Livestock in Dickinson.

He was among the final 20 or so horses in a sale that had been going very well, bringing extraordinary prices, until in the blink of an eye he was nearly out the sales pen and his hooves pushing William Friedt of Dickinson to the side and eventually to the floor.

Friedt was taken outside and tended to by his wife and others until an ambulance - weaving behind the livestock sales barn through the crowded parking lot and evacuated bystanders - could arrive. He was responsive, but bleeding from lacerations when he was loaded onto the gurney.

The frightening and bloody scene - the horse sustained minor injuries - marred an otherwise enthusiastic and crowd-pleasing sale that drew at least 350 people and 44 buyers, who spent more than $17,600 for the horses. One horse, a 3-month-old strawberry roan named Badlands Bill, sold for $1,425.

Larry Schnell, family owner of Stockmen's Livestock, moved the sale outdoors after the incident, selling the remaining older horses from their enclosure pens, inviting only buyers to proceed into the penned area.

He was clearly shaken by what had happened.

"We've never had a horse in that situation, ever. They've jumped up a little bit, but never have they gotten that far. He took a flying leap ..." Schnell said, shrugging at the obvious.

He said he was grateful to the cowboys who jumped into the arena to help, including one who took a pretty good bite to his leg and said later he grabbed the only thing he could think of - the belt off his blue jeans - to tie the stallion's rear leg to the cable it had caught in.

If the leg hadn't slipped through the double cable around the ring, the horse would have been loose in the crowd and the outcome could have been much worse. The horse was freed from the cable and safely removed from the sales barn. He sold later for $30.

Schnell said the sale itself went far beyond expectations, especially compared to previous wild horse sales. He didn't expect horses to go for much more than $25 to $100.

People came from eight states and one Canadian province to see the horses and some to buy them.

Schnell said he won't do another wild horse sale, and had been reluctant to do this one because he's busy with cattle sales and because of the issues that go along with sometimes inexperienced buyers ending up with wild horses.

One pair of buyers were Bill Schlichter and his wife, Eileen Norton, of San Diego, who purchased three summer-born studs, spending $3,000 at the sale, including the top price of the whole sale for little Badlands Bill.

The couple makes a hobby of photographing and helping to catalog the park horses, and Norton, through the Internet and specialty magazines, has been working to find buyers for them.

Schlichter said his wife was on a national campaign to drive prices higher than the killer market would pay, and it appeared to be successful. Schnell said that was the fate of only a few of the very oldest horses.

Bruce Strinden of Mandan kept up with Norton's bid for the roan colt until dropping out at $1,400.

He said his wife was going to be disappointed - she'd had her heart set on him after picking him out of a photo lineup on the Internet.

He bought a different "park baby," as he called it, sure his wife would love it, too.

"They play, run and live in rough ground here. They're sure-footed," Strinden said.

Father and son Dale and Cody Weflen of Tioga bought a yearling stud, a handsome gray roan, and planned to take it home like they had two other wild park horses years ago that "broke out easy."

After the sale, they were standing in shock looking into the trailer where the horse had been loaded just minutes before.

It was dead, either from shock of enclosure in the trailer or, they thought, from an earlier head injury from bashing into a metal pen.

Dale Weflen tried to take it in stride. "It can happen with livestock," he said.

Instead of taking the yearling home, they were making arrangements for its disposal.

Frank and Leo Kuntz, who've been buying park horses for years, trying to preserve a heritage of a breed they call "Nokota" horses, had mixed emotions.

They were pleased at the high prices, saying the money people were willing to pay justified their own efforts to save the horses.

The scene inside infuriated Frank Kuntz, who said the wild horses, especially older ones, should never have been subjected to - for the horses - such a strange and stressful environment as the crowded ring.

The park introduced contraceptive vaccine into the horse herd this year, hoping that if it's successful, wild horse auctions will be a thing of the past.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 701-748-5511 or lauren@westriv.com.)