Mare’s Death Prompts Outpouring : Sympathy: Two people, moved by the fatal fall of the animal during a rescue attempt, offered an Arabian and quarter horse to Scotch’s owners.

Less than a day after their horse was killed during an attempt to fly it out of a remote ravine, an Orange County family was offered two free horses Saturday by people who said they were moved by the tragedy.

After the death of their mare, Scotch, was covered by media, the Wheatley family received a flood of phone calls and the two offers, one for another quarter horse, the other for an Arabian horse.

“They’re horse people, and horse people kind of stick together,” said David Wheatley, 40, who spent Saturday night searching for Scotch’s still-missing body in a canyon of the San Bernardino Mountains. “They offered me a horse because they know how close a man gets to his horse. They understand that bond.”

One of the people who offered a horse could not be reached for comment Saturday, while the other, a Banning man and friend of the family, asked that he not be named.

The Wheatley family lost Scotch, a quarter horse, when her harness broke Friday during a helicopter airlift attempting to free her from a ravine near the San Grogonio area.

Scotch was trapped in the ravine when a misstep on a narrow mountain trail sent her skidding more than 800 feet down a jagged, slate canyon wall. Her rider, David Wheatley, managed to jump to safety as the horse fell. He and his father, Joseph, 64, were riding on the trail assisting the search for a 12-year-old missing Boy Scout at the time of the accident.

In the week after the fall, David Wheatley made five trips back to the horse--a trek that included a 30-minute mountain hike and a rope climb down into the ravine--to deliver food and water to the battered horse. Finally, the Wheatley family persuaded the U.S. Marine base in Tustin to assist by committing a helicopter to Friday’s rescue attempt.

Witnesses said the horse fell several thousand feet from the harness.