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41 Tamale Ridge by: Chuck Cusimano

“I bet you’re glad to be out of that stink hole.”

“Well, I sure hated to write for you to have to come and get me out of jail,” he said,

“I knew you would come.”

I had found out that they were holding his horses and the rifle that he carried and what we

needed to do to get them back.

“That blue and that sorrel gelding belong to my friend,” I told them. A slight built young man

came to the corral and roped the two horses out of the herd.

He introduced himself as “Gilberto Martinez” and in Spanish he told Jim that he’d been riding

the blue horse and wanted the big man to know what the “Potro” could do. He saddled the

young horse and took him out to some soft dirt and rode him around. First at a walk then a trot

and finally at a lope. After the young horse was warmed up, he was allowed to run full out.

He ran the blue in a straight line and pulled ever so lightly and the colt slid to a stop and the rider

began to spin the horse. He had a handle on that colt, like a fine edge on a knife. We watched

Gilberto go through the different patterns and paces and I’d never seen a horse do some of the

things Gilberto made that young horse do. I returned the borrowed horse to the man in San

Carlos where we bought a meal and made our way to the Railroad yard.

When we boarded the train for New Mexico, we needed fare for two horses and three men. I

hired Gilberto on the spot and gave him the title “horse trainer.”

“I have wanted to go to the United States,” he said in Spanish. He told me he had a brother

that lived on a big ranch near Las Vegas, N.M.

“We’re going right through there,” I told him. He became excited to find out he might get to

see his brother in a few days.

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