Letters from the Horse Latitudes — C.W. Smith

In the "horse latitudes" of the Gulf of Mexico, that zone where periods of high pressure keep winds away, becalmed sailors sometimes tossed the horses overboard to conserve water. In these unapologetically traditional and realistic stories, characters find themselves in circumstances which demand similar difficult and undesirable acts.
Because the stories are set in the Southwest and Mexico, from about 1920 through 1990, they often hinge on the suspicions, antagonism, and ignorance that the region's different cultures, races, and classes bear against each other.