Mustangs

The Mustangs are the free-ranging horses Mike and Rafo discover on the mesa near Janasco, and their appearance redirects the journey from simple passage into a difficult pursuit. The men try to catch and sell them for money, but the herd’s elusiveness and Porfirio’s account of its decline make the animals more than a source of income. Against the background of Mike’s rodeo career, they expose the difference between staged mastery and the uncertain work of living alongside animals that remain difficult to control.

Identity and Discovery

The Mustangs are initially a rumor Mike finds hard to believe. When Porfirio identifies a horse as a wild animal from the Janasco area, Mike asks Rafo to translate and reacts with surprise at the possibility of Mustangs in Mexico. He remembers an agricultural notice about wild horses multiplying on eroded tablelands in the United States, where they were also reported to be starving and subject to capture or killing. That memory makes the claim plausible, but Mike arrives on the mesa expecting to find a herd and instead sees signs of absence.

The first evidence is a field of bones: one skeleton near a dead mesquite tree, then others, including a broad scatter of perhaps fifty or sixty. Mike considers whether some died in fights and whether others succumbed to disease or drought. Seeing no living horses, he doubts Porfirio’s account and supposes that the animal previously offered to the men was merely an unbranded stray. The apparent absence briefly turns the mesa from a place of possibility into a place of disappointment.

That conclusion changes at night. Mike and Rafo hear calls and run outside, where they see three horses first, then a larger herd racing across the moonlit horizon. The animals appear and disappear over successive ridges, making their presence unmistakable but not easy to approach. The contrast between the bleached remains and the moving herd establishes the Mustangs’ central condition in the story: they are present, yet exposed to the possibility of disappearance.

Capture and First Training

Mike’s first attempt to catch a Mustang is an improvised pursuit. He and Rafo drive the truck toward the herd, whose members scatter when the headlights approach. Mike directs Rafo to follow a white horse. When the truck draws alongside, Mike jumps onto its back and holds on as the animal continues running and tries to throw off the weight. The capture depends on timing and physical endurance, not on the controlled setting of a rodeo arena.

Catching the horse does not mean that it has been trained for ordinary riding. Mike recognizes that he cannot fully break it in the time available; at most, he hopes to put a bridle on it. He assembles one from what is at hand: a long bolt from his tool kit for a bit, rope for the reins and other pieces, and wire to join them. Rafo watches closely, asks questions, and offers suggestions as Mike tries to handle the horse.

The first four attempts fail. The Mustang struggles against its tether, damages the truck’s remaining rear door, and bites Mike’s forearm. On the next approach, however, it stands quietly and accepts the bridle. The change is practical rather than a declaration that the animal has become tame: the horse can now follow the truck toward Janasco, but the episode preserves the difference between catching a wild animal and making it reliably rideable. Rafo’s astonishment at the horse’s eventual acceptance registers how little either man could predict the outcome.

The Herd, the Work, and the Trade

The first success does not make later captures straightforward. The herd seems to have left the mesa after one animal is caught, and Mike and Rafo spend a day and night without seeing another Mustang. When four appear together on their third day in Janasco, Rafo cannot bring the truck close enough; the group scatters before they can catch one. Mike changes tactics and decides that the next attempt should use a lariat rather than a close vehicle chase.

At dawn, a larger stampede gives them another opportunity. Mike anchors the rope to the truck’s chassis rather than its bumper and lays it out about a hundred yards from the vehicle, hoping the distance will keep the horses from being alarmed. He waits without moving. A small gray Mustang is roped and runs until the line tightens; after resisting, it settles enough for Mike and Rafo to bridle it. Mike rides it for nearly two hours, then takes it to Jiménez, who buys it for two hundred pesos.

The sale establishes a repeatable livelihood, and the price soon becomes familiar. Mike later catches two sorrels by himself before dawn and, with Rafo, ropes a bay stallion. Jiménez inspects the three horses for health and lesions and pays six hundred pesos. The work gives the pair money and gives Rafo a part in the pursuit, but the animals’ market value is tied to the same process that removes them from the open herd. The story does not present capture as a simple victory: each sale also makes the Mustang a traded animal.

Decline and Conflict Over the Mustangs

A later capture sharpens that conflict. Mike and Rafo take a particularly beautiful chestnut Mustang to Jiménez, who refuses to buy it because Porfirio has intervened. Porfirio confronts Mike and indicates that he wants six horses. Mike initially treats the dispute as a matter of bargaining and says they will leave the next day. Porfirio instead explains that the herd is not plentiful: every winter there are fewer horses, they have little to eat, and some eat black cactus and die.

Porfirio’s warning changes the meaning of the sales. The animals are not an inexhaustible supply waiting to be gathered; their numbers are already being reduced by difficult conditions. The earlier field of skeletons and the empty days on the mesa acquire a shared context in his account of hunger and decline. Mike’s trade with Jiménez and Porfirio’s concern therefore pull in different directions: earning money requires capturing Mustangs, while the reported scarcity makes continued capture harder to regard as harmless.

This tension resonates with Mike’s earlier work inspecting farms, where he had come to question the killing of sick animals when some might be cured. During the anthrax outbreak, he witnesses large-scale destruction and burial of horses. Those animals are not Mustangs, and the episodes are distinct, but together they frame his unease about human decisions over animal lives. The Mustangs bring that concern into a different setting: they are not sick livestock awaiting official disposal, but a dwindling wild population pursued for sale.

Meaning in Mike’s Journey

The Mustangs also revise the heroic image attached to Mike’s old profession. At Polk’s Cow Stadium, his photograph shows him mounted on a rearing bronc, and the rodeo presents the cowboy as a public attraction. The Ride-Out makes a spectacle of riding until horse or rider yields. Mike has spent much of his life in arenas where physical dominance is displayed and applauded; the free-ranging horses on the mesa cannot be reduced to that performance. Catching one demands improvisation, patience, and acceptance that the animal may resist or escape.

That contrast does not make Mike’s pursuit innocent. He captures horses and sells them because he needs money, and the Mustangs are still treated as a potential commodity. Yet their repeated vanishing, the effort required to approach them, and Porfirio’s warning prevent the story from equating capture with uncomplicated mastery. They embody both the attraction of the open landscape and its material limits: horses can still run across the mesa, while hunger, loss, and trade bear on whether that freedom will endure.