Rosemary Sanguinetti, left, Charlotte Meyer Cardon, Alice Clapp, Jane Page and Jean Hamilton were members of Desert Riders in the late 1930s. The group rode the same horses as the UA ROTC cavalry.

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They rode with the cavalry. Well, sort of. Beginning in 1928, girls at the University of Arizona rode on the same horses as their male counterparts who were doing ROTC training for the U.S. Cavalry.

"We exercised the horses for them," says Charlotte Cardon, 89, who belonged to the women's riding honorary known as Desert Riders.

Outfitted in spiffy English riding boots, navy blue shirts and white riding breeches, the girls also performed in horse shows, rode in the Tucson Rodeo Parade and regularly galloped through the nearby desert and out into the Foothills.

Ina Gittings, director of women's physical education at the UA and an accomplished horsewoman herself, sponsored the club.

Fewer than a dozen girls belonged at a time, with two new girls taken in every spring and fall.

Initiation was held on a late afternoon in the spring at the end of Alvernon Way, where a trail led to a cave in the hillside.

"They blindfolded us for the last 500 feet, then took off the blindfold," says Cardon, who joined up in the spring of '38.

After the blindfolds were removed, a horseshoe on a ribbon was placed over the heads of the initiates. "And then we had a picnic," says Cardon.

Not that initiation was over. "The next day we wore our outfits to class. We looked quite cute," says Cardon.

Oh, yes, they also had to take their horses with them, letting them take a drink out of the Old Main fountain and cleaning after them with a broom.

A California girl, Cardon transferred from Berkeley to the UA in January of 1937, after accompanying her father to Tucson.

"We stayed at the Desert Willow. They offered me a job. They had a school for children with asthma. I went to class at the university in the morning, and after lunch the children and I had afternoon horseback rides."

After she joined Desert Riders, she took part in several horse shows, doing jumping exercises and taking a ribbon in Western riding.

In the early years, trick riding was also popular, with girls jumping through a hoop of fire, or jumping over a tea table — with seated guests.

But there was no trick riding by the time Cardon got there. "I think they may have had some accidents."

She, too, would have an accident — one that would introduce her to her future husband: Bartley Cardon, future dean of the UA College of Agriculture.

"I was waiting to ride in a horse show when this captain from Fort Huachuca went up to Bartley, who was in the ROTC cavalry, and said, 'Go help Charlotte get up on her horse. She's a very nice girl.'

"I never needed help. I think he wanted us to meet."

Ever the gentleman, young Bartley went to help. "He lifted my arm with such a heave I fell over the side. Of course I was upset. I swore I would never speak to him again."

They were married for 65 years until Bartley's death in 2005.

The war took the young couple away until the mid-1940s. By the time they returned, both the cavalry and the Desert Riders were gone, as were their horses.

The days of the mounted cavalry were over.

Old minutes of meetings for the Desert Riders indicate that a lack of horses and lack of riding equipment forced the honorary to disband sometime during the 1946-47 school year.

No more jumping over tea tables — or watering your horse at the Old Main fountain.