PITTSFIELD – The slain horses easily could have been anyone’s.

That is why Sarah Brooks drove four hours from her Aroostook County home to join a caravan of outrage over the shootings of two grazing horses in a Pittsfield pasture two days after Thanksgiving.

“It was very important to support this convoy,” said Brooks, who keeps 20 horses as owner of North Woods Saddle Expeditions in Portage, northwest of Presque Isle. “I had to go down.”

More than 80 vehicles, most pulling empty horse trailers, joined Saturday’s 20-mile procession from the scene of the shootings to the Skowhegan courthouse, where the two 16-year-olds charged with the shootings will be arraigned in early January.

Pam Pelotte, who had owned one of the slain horses, said the support had moved her to tears.

“I can’t believe all these people came from everywhere to support this,” Pelotte said Saturday afternoon, adding that she and her fiance, veterinarian Tim Powers, had received calls and letters from as far as California.

“A lot of this had to do with the violence, the way the horses were killed,” she said. “They were outraged that this had happened.”

On a fence at the scene of the shootings, Pelotte had placed pictures of the two animals, and their halters. She had owned Have At It, a 12-year-old Standardbred. Powers had owned the second animal, an 8-year-old quarter horse named Rocket, with his young daughter.

Pelotte said a neighbor had alerted her to the shootings, telling her he had seen two hunters standing on railroad tracks above the pasture, heard shots and then noticed a horse on the ground.

She dashed to the pasture and found Rocket dead. She frantically searched for her own horse and found him standing beneath a tree at the edge of the pasture.

The horse was shivering and had a bullet wound in its side.

“As I got to him, he took a couple of steps, put his head to my chest and never left me,” Pelotte, a veterinary assistant, recalled Saturday afternoon.

“The sad thing is he suffered for 45 minutes,” she said. “He was looking at me saying, ‘Why are you letting me suffer? What happened to me?'”

Pelotte comforted Have At It until a friend from the nearby Somerset Veterinary Clinic euthanized the animal, which she said had bled internally after being shot through one lung.

“He was my pet. He was my friend,” she said. “I have no kids, so he was like my kid, too.”

On Saturday, Pelotte rode in a Dodge Ram pickup truck at the front of the caravan. In the bed, painted on a 4-by-8 sheet of plywood, was the message, “Have At It and Rocket were Innocent.”

With a state police cruiser in the lead, the caravan proceeded at 30 mph along Route 152 through Pittsfield to Route 2 west. It ended on High Street in Skowhegan, as the vehicles passed the District Court building where the two teen-agers are scheduled to appear Jan. 3.

Many of the trucks had been decorated with purple and white ribbons matching one of the horse’s racing colors. Others bore signs reading “Stop Animal Abuse,” and “In Memory of Rocket and Have At It.”

On the back of one trailer, someone had fashioned two halters into hangman’s nooses.

Many of the participants had signed copies of a petition denouncing the act as inhumane and calling for stiff penalties for the offenders.

“We need better laws,” said Jodi Merry of Anson, a friend of Pelotte’s who drove the lead truck.

Karieanne MacDonald, the veterinarian who euthanized Have At It, said she hopes the petitions, with more than 1,500 signatures, will convince authorities to push for the harshest punishment possible if the boys are convicted.

“This was probably the cruelest act I’ve ever seen,” she said.

The two boys, from Pittsfield and Waterville, have been charged as juveniles with offenses that include conspiracy to commit aggravated criminal mischief with a firearm, cruelty to an animal with a firearm, and shooting a domestic animal.

Besides killing the horses, the boys also are accused of shooting at a tractor-trailer as it crossed an overpass on nearby Interstate 95. The driver, who wasn’t hurt, later reported the incident to police.

Some caravan participants said they want to see the youths charged as adults, rather than juveniles, in hope they will receive harsher punishments.

“Killing is killing,” said Marianne Cogswell of Albion, who owns six quarter horses. “I would like to see people be held accountable for their actions, not get a slap on the wrist.”

Virginia Thorndike, a horse owner from Lincolnville, said the procession was about more than wanting to see justice done. It was about raising awareness that animals suffer the same as people, and deserve better treatment.

“To kill a wild animal that doesn’t expect anything from you is one thing,” she said, “but to kill a domestic animal that trusts you is inexcusable.”