Riding Barranca Read Online Free PDF Page A

chair and watch the horses, getting so much pleasure from just seeing them there. I prefer having my boys at home now, but still miss the old, stone corral and adobe outbuildings nestled in at the foot of Indianhead Mountain.
    Dismounting, we walk the horses under the Blackwell’s open-air barn and let ourselves out through the back gate. I tighten Phil’s girth and adjust his stirrups. He wears a Smith & Wesson pistol at his waist, and somehow that gives me some assurance as we head up this well-known drug-runners’ trail. I have ridden this way numerous times and am now more familiar with the route, though it’s always a bit tricky starting out until we find the well-trodden path that runs in and out of the wash. Along the way, through this intimate, wind-protected canyon, we note the scattered water bottles, abandoned backpacks, and other transient debris.
    Recently, I came upon Danny Cantou’s wife, Summer, who was patrolling this trail with another officer. Summer used to ride with the mounted border patrol. She once told me that she was able to contain a large group of illegals by telling them she was riding an attack horse, and the first one who ran would get trampled. Summer was a beautiful, fearless young woman who was also a champion kickboxer and award-winning marksman—shooting targets at a full gallop. But I was shocked to see that her partner was holding a fifteen-pound AK-47.
    â€œYou really should be armed out here,” she told me.
    Well, at least Phil had a gun, though we both knew it would do little to help us if we ran into a bunch of thugs. Gangs from Tucson were coming down to raid the poor guys who did the hauling from Mexico. These “mules” were more apt to be armed now in an attempt to protect their contraband,so violence was increasing. Phil’s theory was that if you wore a gun, you had to be prepared to use it, and if you used it, you had to be prepared to kill. I was not prepared to do that.
    Determined to go as far as we can, we have packed our lunches and tucked them into our saddlebags. This is a beautiful and varied canyon, but a bit like a roller-coaster ride, up and down, dodging mesquite, leaping into the wash and back out. We maneuver along the single-file trail that the horses remember better than we do. Horses have a great sense of direction, perfect memories for what they have and have not seen before—even a new fallen tree can be cause for alarm.
    Phil has a low deep voice, so it is easy to hear him talk as we ride. Stopping to open various cattle gates, I hop off, for I can easily mount and dismount, while he has sustained several injuries from various journalistic assignments in the Middle East. Years ago he won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism, but he doesn’t like to dwell on his past achievements. He’s more concerned about the synopsis for his next book, still in the mulling stage. He describes how hemmed in he feels by having to write out a plot line for his publisher before they will approve the book. Writers like to allow a story to unfold, just as we like to discover where we’re going when entering new riding territory.
    We come to the familiar hillside of red gravel where the path is cut into the mountain. I usually turn around at this point, but now I open another gate and we ride on, wondering where we are headed. Are we riding toward Meadow Valley or north through the Canelo Hills?
    We approach a rather treacherous stretch of smooth, black rock that is very slippery. I assume it is sedimentary since it is within the wash, but we manage to get over it, climbing up the steep parts and sliding back down into the sand of the riverbed, happily surprised to see a little creek runningalongside the trail here. We follow it for a mile or so, but when we come to yet another cattle barrier, one that looks like it would be too difficult to dismantle, we decide to stop and break for lunch.
    I hold both horses while