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Abe Peña's  "From the Past"  newspaper column

All material used with the kind permission of the author, given to me personally.

"Monday, July 28, 2008 7:02 PM MDT

Blackie: small in stature but big in heart

Blackie lived to the ripe old age of 31. Blackie was a horse. A small black horse with a heart as big as the country he loved so will. When the children, grandchildren, cousins, nephews, nieces, and friends of Pablo and Pablita Pena are asked what their most vivid memory of the Peña Ranch is, the invariably answer “Blackie.”

We all rode him. Sometimes as many as four mounted the small black horse and earned the memory in which he's remembered.

However, Blackie was more than a kid's horse. He could do a day's work and never complain. He simply kept going. He was a good roping horse, an alert cutting horse, and could maintain a fast pace all day. In Spanish, we called it sobre paso. He was the favorite of many ranch hands. As far as we could tell, Blackie had traces of long-lived Andalusian stock that came from Spain with the Spanish explorers in the 16th century.

In 1968, at age 28, he was retired and turned loose to pasture. He had earned his retirement. He knew every acre of the 22,000-acre ranch. For two years or so, he returned from time to time to the headquarters and we fed him grain. Then he'd disappear for weeks and then months in the deep canyons and high mesas overlooking the Ambrosio Lake basin.

But let's go back to the beginning. Roman Marquez of San Mateo, now living in Albuquerque, purchased the black yearling in 1941. Roman said, “I first saw the yearling running with some mares in El Monte de los Indios and I liked him. I learned it belonged to Rosenda Armijo, the daughter of Don Vidal Armijo, and I made her an offer. She wanted a gentle horse for her boy and I traded her a gentle horse that Willie Price, my step-father, gave me to trade.

“We had a devil of a time catching him; he was smart and he was fast. Blackie simply outran every horse in the village. Finally, several of us cornered him in a deep box arroyo and put a rope around him. It took several weeks to break to the saddle the spirited animal. He'd buck everyone off except me. I usually rode him bareback because I didn't have a saddle. I was in my teens,” he said.

In 1943, during the thick of World War II, Roman volunteered for the Air Force and went to war. He said, “When I returned, Willie Price had sold Blackie to your father. Willie did not like Blackie because he'd buck him off. I guess that's why he decided to get rid of him. I went off to do other things but I always remembered Blackie.”

The horse thrived and won the hearts of everyone on the Peña Ranch, especially Silvestre Maestas. Silvestre was a sheep herder and caporal and trained Blackie to be gentle and patient. They became close pals. When children visited Silvestre's camp, he offered them a ride on Blackie.

Ramona, our oldest daughter, said, “Blackie was special and a lot of fun. He was very patient and kind of small; it was easy to get on him and he never got excited. I recall riding him bareback with Paula, Cecilia, and Marco back of me. We'd ride him to the windmill to drink water. Sometimes we got him to trot back to the corral. He was easy to ride and I don't remember ever falling off him. I remember falling off some other horses.”

Viola, their mother, said, “He's the horse I could get on. He was kind of small and I could get on him.” Viola has a weak left knee and couldn't put much weight on it. We kind of had to push her up on the horse. She had injured her knee when our daughter Paula and our son Marco were teaching her to drive a motorcycle.

One time, the kids talked Viola into riding Lolita, a small Welsh pony mare. The children were holding the pony and with determination she flung her right leg over the top and flew to the other side. My father and I were relaxing on the porch watching the scene and he yelled “Muchacha.” We ran like 60 to her aid. She was on her back laughing and scratching on the ground trying to get up. “Let me back up on her. Get me back on her.” Lolita had spooked and run off.

One night in the 1960s, I got a telephone call from our neighbor “Red” Crossland that his son Dwight had gotten lost in the Zuni Mountains. “Can you help us?” It was around midnight in Grants and snowing. I drove to the Peña Ranch and loaded Blackie and headed for the Zuni Mountains some 70 miles away.

Arriving around 4 a.m. at our cabin at Valle Largo, where the Crosslands were making camp and preparing for the upcoming deer season starting at daybreak, “Red” and several others were sheltering from the early snow and waiting for daylight to search for Dwight. There were about eight inches of snow on the ground and still falling. I knew the country well and I told “Red” I was riding out. He told me the boy had disappeared north of the cabin late in the afternoon when the snow started falling and was very lightly dressed. I bundled myself up and took off. Blackie also knew the country well. The falling snow muffled my calls as I kept calling “Dwight, Dwight,” hoping he could hear me.

We kept going north and at daybreak we were on the Continental Divide, the highest point on the mountain. By now, there were 10 inches on the ground. After several false starts, I was able to get a fire going. I warmed up a bit and we took off again. The snow started to blow and visibility was almost zero. My thinking was, “I know the country well and I'll find my way back.”

I was wrong. I kept turning Blackie in the wrong direction until I was completely lost in the blinding snowstorm. Finally, I did the right thing. I gave him his rein and he took me home. When we got back to the cabin around noon, Dwight had showed up in another hunter's camp some three miles away, none the worse for wear.

In 1971, Blackie did not return and we never saw him again. We could find no trace for several years. Sometime in the 1980s, a cowboy found some bones in a remote cave near Las Piedras Blancas, the White Rocks, up on the high mesas. We're all pretty sure they were Blackie's remains.

So ends the story of a memorable horse that played a great part in the operation of a working ranch and also worked his way into our hearts.

Abe Peña is a local author and historian whose award-winning books Memories of Cibola and Villages & Villagers are available at bookstores throughout New Mexico."