Page 66 - Ninety Miles From Nowhere

Snow On Our Desks - Chapter 15
Anabel and Blue
In the fall of 1934 I went to teach at a place called Sanchez (still in Socorro County) where my post office was Scholle - another ghost town now, on U.S. Highway 60, west of Mountainair. It was near the Abo Pass and near Dripping Springs General Store and Filling Station.
I boarded with a couple named Bill and Ella - I don’t remember their last name. We lived a few miles from the school so I drove
in my car. Later I bought a horse, a young, light-footed, blue roan gelding, and rode him to school. He wasn’t a gaited horse but he had the easiest trot I ever rode. And he was so surefooted I could ride him in a gallop through a prairie dog town and he’d never stumble or miss a step.
Rose Conrad come to see me while I was there, and I was very glad to see her. I hadn’t seen her since she visited us at Dad’s cabin at Thanksgiving, 1932.
Sometimes Rose would ride to school with me and stay all day; sometimes she would stay at home all day; and at still other times she would walk to school late, just in time to ride home with me.
One day on such an occasion, she had some exciting tales to tell me about seeing a wolf on the way, and how she was almost chased by a bull. On the way home she pointed out the things she’d seen - the wolf (a German shepherd dog), and the bull. I laughed and told her it was not a bull but a cow. “Oh, yes it is a bull!” she exclaimed. “That animal has horns, and cows do not have horns!”
In the afternoon after school, we would both go for a ride on Blue. Once I was already in the saddle, and Rose started to step in the stirrup to get up behind me, when Blue shifted his weight from one foot to another, “Wait!” she cried. “Wait until I get in!”