Intorducing Armondo

Armondo would rather cook!

A few weeks back, Clay came out and said that he had a guy sitting down in Hay Canyon with a couple of flat tires. He handed me a bag of food and a 1/2 gallon of very warm milk, and I asked him, "you know this milk is warm?" He said, "well he's been sitting down there for quite a while now, so I brought his food up for him."

So Clay gets in his pickup and goes to get Armondo and his vehicle from the bottom of Hay Canyon on one of the hottest days we have had so far, I was thinking that I hope he is at least somewhere that has some shade. A few hours later Clay drives past our house with out the Vehicle, but has Armondo and his belongings with him. For some folks you might think this is an unusual arrival to your new job, but we are use to it because most try to get out here with street tires and no 4x4 so we almost always have to go fetch them.

The next morning Clay sends his hired man back down with the trailer to get Armondos vehicle, this was my first chance to meet Armondo. He seemed to be a polite and very quite man. I was hoping that he was patient and had a good sense of humor because you need it out here most of the time. When the hired hand got back with the vehicle, Armondo was laughing at the few rubber strings that were now hanging off of his rims, so the sense of humor was there!!!

We got in one of our gentler and bigger horses and put some shoes on him for Armondo, this was when he mentioned that he had never rode a horse before! I asked him if he had some form of balance, he said yes.....well there you go, you will be able to stay on just sit in the middle and you will be fine. He just sorta looked at me and laughed. The next morning came and the fun began.

Fergie I am getting on.

He watched me put Fergie through her morning routine, then we loaded the horses in the trailer and off we went. By the time we arrived down in Meadow Creek Armondo was completely lost and I think he was a bit worried, but we just did our thing and started loading the saddle bags and tied of jackets on the back of our saddles. I am sure that he was wondering why we were loading so much stuff on our horses, but he just watched. Then I handed him the reins to his ride and off we went, this is when he finally asked his first set of questions, "where are we, where are we going, are we walking, and why did you bring a gun?" I am not one for talking in the mornings, so I just replied, "no". After leading Fergie to the brush were it is safe to mount her, I told him to go ahead and get on...Armondo just stood there looking at us. I am sure that after watching me get on Fergie he was thinking that walking wasn't such a bad idea after all, but the hired man went over and helped him mount is horse, and then he climbed on Jason which is always taking your life in your own hands with Jason. Armondo just watched as we got our horses headed in the right direction, but I am sure he was thinking that this would be the death of him for sure, especially after watching Jason fling his passenger across the brush.

Since we ride several miles  everyday it really doesn't bother us any more, but for a new person it hurts like heck after the first few hours. Now I am not really sure why, but this always seems to quite humorous to us, especially the first few steps off of the horse for those  'oh so sore legs'. Armondo went along with us and stayed behind the cows, he did leave the gathering to us but he pushed the cows and stayed behind the 'swichie' things eating the dust and dirt while sweating like crazy. Once we got the cows headed up Rock Springs Canyon, I told Roger to go back and take the truck around and come back down from the top. Armondo is a very alert man because he really took in the conversation about which canyon 'I thought it was from the top' that we had had on our trip down to Meadow Creek. This got another question out of him, "Does he know where we are going?", I calmly replied, "I doubt it, but we should be able to find the truck". Armondo said, "I hope so". Then he took in the next conversation between Roger and myself about bullets, but never said a word until after Roger had left, then Armondo asked me, "why do you need bullets?". Not until I answered this question did I see fear in his face, "because we always see bears in this canyon and last fall we met a very mean bear that had just killed a cow up here, but that's why I bought that big white dog today".

About 20 minutes later all the cows stopped and was watching something in front of them, Buddy takes off with his hair standing up in his back, and I immediately call Button back and downed her. In all this new activity, I hear a thud beside me, I look over and Armondo is laying on the ground. Now since mounting Fergie takes all the skill I have, I really didn't want to get off to see why he was on the ground, but since I am a nice person I did it anyway. I asked Armondo, "what happened?", he said in is broken English, "I thought I needed to run, I saw that bear". Now for all of you that know me you should know that I busted out laughing - a pee your pants kind of laugh, I guess he thought he would do better on his feet than on the horse at out running the bear except for the fact that he forgot to take his feet out of the stirrups so he was hanging there next to the horse.

Up we go!!

After I got Armondo back in an upright state, I said told him that we could walk up the trail for awhile because it would be easier on the horses, I noticed that he was right on Fergies butt most of the time. Fergie don't really like things touching her behind and I was surprised that she didn't kick him, but she must have known that he was pretty much scared to death. By the time we made it though the thick trees, I had gotten Armondo to walk up one side of the canyon while I covered the other side. When we got out into the sagebrush I really wanted to get back on and ride, so I take Fergie back out into the brush and get on. Armondo was watching me and then he said, "you have to help me". What are you kidding, you want me to get back off of this firecracker to help you get on your horse!!! Once again being the nice person that I am, I climb off of Fergie saying some not so pleasant words under my breath and go help him get back on his horse. In my moment of being not so happy I didn't notice that he didn't put a reign on each side of his horses neck, but I helped him on and he rode the rest of the way with the reigns on one side of the horse.

He says they are amigos!

When we made it back to the truck which was a long ways from the canyon that we came up, I helped Armondo off of his horse and loaded his Bay and Fergie in the horse trailer. Roger wasn't there because he sorta misjudged the canyons and decided to wander off so we had to wait for him to come back. Armondo was snoring in the back seat by the time we headed home, he could barely walk the next day but was laughing about it all.....we were too!!