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54 w i n t e r 2 014 U n tac k e d coVEr storY shoot someone," she jokes. "And you really shouldn't do that, so i thought i would just leave." once again, she packed up puddles and her horses, this time in a trailer, and left the east Coast with noth- ing more than the little money she had in her pocket. "i had no idea what i was going to do. i thought i'd just let the world dictate," she says, shrugging her shoul- ders. "Best thing to ever happen to me. god knew what she was doing. or whoever that is up there." she made it as far as reno before she ran out of both gas and money. And so she stayed. "i couldn't buy a cup of coffee, but i was 30 years old and had my health and a profession—horses," she says, ticking off the three plusses on her fingers. And the permissive, anything-goes cowboy atmo- sphere of the state particularly suited lloyd. "i love the freedom of nevada. you can carry guns openly. prostitution is legal. i love that, i really do. drinking is legal, smoking is legal, gambling is legal. it's all legal!" she says exuberantly. But it was more than that. e landscape itself seemed to be "hardwired," as she's so fond of saying, into lloyd's spirit. "i looked around and thought, 'i have to hunt here,' " she says. eventually, she would buy the 640-acre parcel of land she now shares with 65 horses (45 of which are boarded) and 150 hounds, and make her home a former bunkhouse dating from 1892. she built the kennels and barns herself—literally. "every time i would teach a lesson, i'd buy another 2x4," she says. Just as she knew her life would involve horses, she was equally sure it would never include more traditional pursuits. "marriage and children were never part of my plan," she explains. "i knew, [from] the time i came out of my mother, that i wasn't getting married and i wasn't having children." But lloyd serves as the magnetic nucleus of a huge, warm and devoted family comprised of close friends as well as one of her sisters, Carol, who lives in a hilltop house on the property with her husband. e group even includes a childhood friend from back east whom lloyd just happened to bump into in 2006 while camp- ing in California; her husband is now red rock's whipper-in. you can't make this stuff up. A hunt like no other By 1980 lloyd's hunting goals were well defined, so she approached the members of the los Altos hunt, some 300 miles away near san francisco, for help. she returned to reno with six couple of bona fide, registered english hounds to begin the business of pioneering the first hunt in nevada. she had a bit of a slow start. "i'd let the hounds out of the kennel, and they would go in 12 different directions," she recalls. "i had no staff; i had no help; i had nobody. in this part of the country, we have no scenting and no water. ose poor hounds didn't know what they were supposed to do. ere's so much space. GretCHen PelHAM PHoto "If I wanted to hunt for 20 hours, they'd hunt for 20 hours," says Lynn Lloyd of her American Walker hounds. "They have tremendous try. They are the Thoroughbreds of the hound world."

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