Cowboy Spur Maker: The Story of Ed Blanchard

Chapter 1 As I Know the Story

As I Know the Story [ 3 ] T C H A P T E R 1 As I Know the Story by Jane Pattie he stout two-year-old maverick bull stirred up the dust as he charged down the steep mountainside above a wide canyon in New Mexico’s San Mateo Mountains. Hot on his heels rode a wild and reckless cowboy, rope in hand and swinging a big loop. Just as the bull headed for escape down the canyon’s rock slide, the cowboy let his loop fly. He reached way out and caught the animal by a front foot. The bull turned a flip and somersaulted out through space, picking up momentum on its downhill flight. Ed Blanchard had secured the rope’s horn loop to his saddle, and when the bovine hit the end of the rope, it jerked the horse and rider along, too. As the bull shot past a big tree, the cowboy and his horse catapulted by the tree on the opposite side. The horse’s fall momentarily slowed as the rope caught and stretched taut. It snapped, and man and animals bounced on down the rocks. It was a terrible wreck. When the cowboy finally rolled to a stop, he just sat there and shook his head. That had been some ride! Ed was always an accident looking for a place to happen. T Ed Blanchard Country [ 4 ] Ed Blanchard’s family and friends in central New Mexico knew him as a wild, reckless cowboy long before horsemen of the West recognized him as a noted maker of cowboy spurs. His years of herding snorty cattle and cinching his saddle on broncs in the Magdalena and San Mateo Mountains near Socorro had taught him his trade as a cowboy and a spur maker. Blanchard made spurs that fit a cowboy’s boots. He knew his business because he was a cowboy before he became a spur maker. He was a product of the cattle country. The harsh land and the hard men he knew and worked alongside molded him, as did the wild cattle he hunted and the tough horses he rode. He was the son of strong, adventurous pioneers. He was one of the interwoven family of Tinguelys, Blanchards, and Kellys who put down a long taproot in Water Canyon, a slash in the shoulder of central New Mexico’s Mount Baldy. From the top of Mount Baldy, Ed Blanchard could survey his universe : east past Socorro to the Rio Grande as it cut a brown swath southward through the state toward Mexico, northeastward across the Flat toward the old Spanish town of Albuquerque, and southwest through the land of the Apaches, of Geronimo, Mangas Coloradas, and Victorio. He could look down the Alamosa River toward the Currycomb Ranch and the mining town of Monticello and in the direction of the Pankey place near Nogal. To the west, the road led from Magdalena to Datil, on across Arizona to Seligman and Kingman, and finally to Yucca, near the California state line. In any direction he looked, he saw cow country—the land where he left his tracks, Ed Blanchard country. New Mexico was Indian country for centuries before tales of treasure attracted Europeans to the area and long before the land became cow country. In the 1500s, gold, silver, and turquoise drew Spanish explorers northward from New Spain to search today’s American Southwest for the fabled Seven Cities of Cíbola. Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his three companions, one of whom was the Moorish slave Estebanico, were remnants of the ill-fated Narváez Expedition of 1528 and wandered across the wilderness for seven years. In 1536, Spanish soldiers found them near the Sinaloa River in northern Mexico and took them to the military outpost of Culiacán. From there As I Know the Story [ 5 ] they traveled to the city of Mexico, where Cabeza de Vaca made his report to Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, representative of Emperor Charles V. He told the viceroy of the country and the people he had seen during the hardships of his long journey. His eyes must have sparkled when he reported signs of gold and silver in the mountains beyond New Spain and when he repeated the Indians’ stories of seven large, rich cities that lay to the north. The fabled Seven Cities of Cíbola were said to...