C) Alienate
All the other choices don't make sense...
You should continue to look at the rubric as you as write
The correct answer is: Option A. Adopt the horses.
Given the context in the excerpt stating the individuals that would be "taking possession of the new horses" are official U.S. Marines, it can be inferred that this practice will take place within legal bounds, and therefore "stealing the horses" is out of context in this case. The intent of this activity is to use the horses as part of the Marines' activities, and as such, it is clear the Marines are planning to "adopt" the horses, not "borrow" them.
In 1887, Hamlin Garland traveled from Boston to South Dakota to visit his mother and father, whom he had not seen in six years. According to his own account, the trip through farming country was a revelation. Although he had been brought up on a farm, he had never realized how wretched farmers’ lives were. The farther west he traveled, the more oppressive it became for him to see the bleakness of the landscape and the poverty of its people. When he reached his parents’ farm and found his mother living in hopeless misery, Garland’s depression turned to bitterness, and in this mood he wrote Main-Travelled Roads, a series of short stories about farm life in the Midwest.