This damp morning, 16-year-old Beto Cisneros strode briskly to the covered hay mow. Behind him one of his sisters, 15-year-old Rosita, was walking swiftly to catch up.
Their father, Anselmo Cisneros, had already ridden his gray gelding at a brisk gait in the opposite direction. He had just discovered that eleven of the Cisneros’ cattle, several of them milk cows, were missing. The weather, though presently quiet, had been stormy – fierce rain, jarring thunder heads. Anselmo and Beto wore dark cut-down plastic tarps protecting the pistol and rifle each carried. Rustling was serious business. Cattle of any kind were expensive. Rosita, as was the custom for females, obviously didn’t carry a weapon. She kept a cut-down revolution-era .32 Smith & Wesson well hidden.
Beto and Rosita were combing the high ridges above the Cisneros’ largest cattle pastures, checking if any uphill barbed wire had been cut, looking for other signs of thieves. Beto carried an easy-weight Revolutionary-era Winchester .44 carbine rifle. But no signs of more rustlers were found. This was in the second half of the 1960s, when rustling was quietly popular at the western end of Lake Chapala.
“Quietly,” because the police had little success in dealing with horse thieves. The problem was that criminals were often friends, relatives or being paid off. Thus, the reason for the Winchesters. The so-called “law men” had little taste for facing down angry ranchers out to corral horse thieves.
Fence repair was the job assigned to Rosita and Beto. They were good at tending torn up fencing and posts, and knew the weakest strands. Quickly saddling their mounts, they now made a swift survey of the weakest strands. They found no problems. But they did find unfamiliar tracks. Those were uphill and parallel to the tracks their father had made.
“Got to get a pistol, one of the rifles.” Beto kicked his horse into a gallop. Rosita headed quietly for the back door of the main house. Silently, she eased into, then out of, her room. Rosita long ago had learned to move quietly in her room. She wanted to take a Winchester rifle, but a young girl carrying a rifle would attract too much attention. Rosita holstered her “secret,” ancient .32 Colt, and three handfuls of ammunition. Rosita wasn’t as accurate as she wished. Her problem: finding a secret spot for private target practice.
She’d tied “Seis,” her growing pony, to the bushes next to the house’s back door. Seis was a quiet animal, and they soon moved, without disturbing the house, to pick up Beto.
He was carrying his .44 Winchester. “We can watch Papa’s path by riding between both trails ... and watching for the thieving pendejos,” Beto said. “You still have that little .32 Colt?”
Rosita was shocked that Beto knew about her small “secret” weapon. But she just nodded, and prayed her parents didn’t also know. They’d want to “protect” her by taking it away.
Rosita loved her family, but she also wanted to better her so-called “unfeminine” independent skills. For instance, she gave close attention to her horse’s hooves, prepared to trim growing hooves, even shoeing Seis every six weeks, something unknown in that era. She spent time with a close friend of her father’s who was a farrier. As a consequence, Seis and Beto’s mount were in good health. That was paying off now, as the two of them moved swiftly over the rocky mountain side following Anselmo’s rough path.
Then they heard gunfire. “That’s Papa,” Beto shouted excitedly, kicking his gelding into a faster pace. Squinting ahead, Rosita pulled out her .32.
“They’re still ahead of him. He’s shooting in the air,” Beto panted. “Get closer, mi jefe!”
“He doesn’t want to hit the horses,” Rosita shouted.
“You take the trail above,” Beto cried. “I’ll take the one below. Box them in.”
“Yell louder so he knows we’re here,” Rosita shouted. “Push the thieves away from our horses.”
She saw that the thieves saw them now. They began to split apart.
Anselmo saw his children coming to help him. He fired at the thieves twice more, then kicked his horse into a full run. He intended to get in front of them, Rosita saw. But then what? “Does he plan to kill them?” she asked Beto.
“We’ll have the families of all those thieves on our asses,” said Beto. “A riña (family feud) for everyone,”
Finally, when Anselmo stopped to reload his two pistols and his Winchester for the third time, he yanked his gelding around and trotted over to us. “Hate thieves. Takes too much work keeping them in line.”
His children laughed at that. In a quiet voice, Rosita added that it used way too much ammunition. Anselmo grinned and nodded, saying that the “weirdest thing was trying to find that peculiar .32 caliber stuff.”