The World in Pancho's Eye - J P S Brown Read online

  THE WORLD IN PANCHO'S EYE

  J P S Brown

  2007

  For

  George and Patsy McCullough

  gracious friends in Pancho's eye.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I started writing this book in longhand in 1995 and finally sold it ten years later. I finished a 960-page first draft in 2000. I had not published anything since 1994, so I was not confident that I'd done anything good. I asked partners Chuck Bowden and Mary Martha Miles of Tucson to give me their opinion of it. They are good writers and everybody knows it. Mary Martha told me she liked it. Chuck liked it because it's not sentimental. Twelve agents showed no interest in subsequent drafts of Pancho. I found out that Al Hart, who had been my publisher at Dial Press in New York for my first three books, now ran the Fox Chase Literary Agency in Pennsylvania. I contacted him and he said he was not taking on new clients, but would represent Pancho if he liked it. He liked the first draft enough to tell me it was too long and I needed to cut it. I cut it to about six hundred pages, sent it back to Al, and kept only the small remnant that remained of my heart. He said, "It's too long; cut it."

  Although I trusted Al's opinion, I could not cut another word. I sat on it a while, read it again, and still could not cut it. I only knew one person on whom I might impose the job, but she is a former wife. Jo Baeza of Pinetop, Arizona, and I were sweethearts as kids, then married nine years, then divorced. We barely spoke, but she had coached and loved me through the publication of my first three books. She would be honest, maybe have pity on me and assume the task, and she would defend my precious words. When I asked if she would do it, she said, "Of course." "Please be gentle," I said. She said, "Prepare to die." Then she cut it to its present form and I didn't die.

  Jo left me with a lot of stories I can still use. I like the lean Pancho as much as I liked the fat one, maybe more. After Max Evans read and recommended it, the lean version sold to the best publisher of Western Americana in the world, Luther Wilson of the University of New Mexico Press. So there you are. I have these five people to thank for the good time you will have with this book, so I guess you do too.

  ONE

  LA POTRANCA

  A potranca is a filly. To a horseman the term recalls more than only the picture ofa young, female horse. At the sound of the word, he recalls the leggy, lithe, headstrong traits of great mares he knew when they were young. It recalls the deeply tender looks they gave. It recalls the unconscious grace of princesses and their regal acceptance of homage.

  Michael Paul Summers was born into a family of cattlemen in August of 1930 as the Great Depression and drought choked Arizona ranches. His mother was Maggie Summers, daughter of Bert and Maude Jane Sorrells. From 1890 until 1918 Bert and his brothers Roy and Ray controlled more than one million acres of cattle country and ran thirty thousand mother cows in southern Arizona and northern Sonora. Bert died in the flu epidemic of 1918 and by 1930 his three sons and Michael Paul's father, Paul Summers, were about to waste the last of his legacy on whiskey. Maggie knew they were doing wrong, but she was too wild and volatile to stop it.

  People in Santa Cruz County said that Maggie did not arrive on earth the way other people did. They said she hit the ground running. The cattle people called her La Potranca. They admired her as they would a racehorse, but she was bronky and did not allow reason to curb her actions. She was quick to love, but also quick to start a fight. She loved contention as much as peace. She liked to run and play, was decent with a fine moral sense, could do hard work as though tapping for a dance, but she could be as mean and ungovernably ill-tempered as she was decent and good. Paul Summers was a cowboy who had worked for Bert and Maudy Jane and was best friends with Maggie's brothers. He loved to cowboy, ride broncs, get drunk with his friends, and be Maggie's husband as long as it was fun, but he tried not to get serious about any of it. When Maggie reminded him that he would have to stop running and playing and be a responsible man, he only grinned.

  The women in Mikey's family should have worried about the amount of alcohol their men used, because the very atmosphere they breathed was permeated with the fumes. However, when they were young they seemed to think that drinking was only entertaining, insignificant, family mischief.

  The failures of the men were blamed on the recklessness and love of fun with which the women thought they had been born. Nobody thought their lives might be better if they stayed sober. Drinking was not frowned upon by most border people as much as it was by most people who lived north of Tucson. The border between Mexico and the U.S. was called "the line." Americans were not permitted to buy whiskey in the stores in 1930 because the U.S. government enforced Prohibition, but people in Nogales could go across the line and drink all they wanted in full view of federal lawmen. Customs inspectors on the line massed no attack on the influx of booze into Arizona, either. If a rancher wanted mezcal, he could intercept one of the burro trains that passed regularly through his ranch. He could buy his booze cheap from a smuggler by the barrica, the twenty-liter keg. The smugglers were so confident in their business that they figured even burros could outrun the kind of pursuit the feds might send after them.

  Cowboys were notorious for getting drunk when they went to town. A cowboy worked for months out in the country with no whiskey, no music, no companions, and nobody but an old cow or a mean horse to hear him howl when something distressed him. He and everybody else figured he ought to get drunk when he was in town. At least, nobody blamed him if he did.

  About the time the Sorrells women came to realize the deadliness of the sickness in their men, cowboy recklessness had cost five fortunes and their families had split and scattered. If the livers and stomachs of the men had not been so hardy, their heads not so thick, perhaps they could have died of alcoholism early and saved a lot of money and grief. As it was, they drank on healthily until their entire quota of whiskey was gone and then they drank everybody else's, too. Nobody ever worried they would die that way. As men who did cowboy work, they rode in acres of accidents all the time. Drunk, they survived wrecks most horrible. They did not die of their accidents or the effects of alcoholism until after they sobered up.

  On the night Mikey was born, Paul and his cohorts arrived at the railroad cattle pens on the outskirts of Nogales, Sonora, with a herd of two thousand cattle they had driven up from Magdalena. As soon as the cattle were penned, they rode the cacharpa bus to the International Bar on the Mexican side of the line to drink tequila with lemon and salt. The cacharpa was an early 192os model truck with a canvas cover and passenger benches bolted down in the back.

  Paul did not think to call his mother-in-law's house to ask about Maggie, even though he knew it was time she gave birth to their first child. He could not easily break away from his cronies to find a phone on the line. In the summer, the International Bar's doors were left wide open twenty-four hours a day so people only had to take one step in off the street to have a drink, but the place had no phone. Paul and his cronies had too much of a thirst to think of anything else for a while.

  At eleven o'clock, Bill Shane, who lived next door to Maudy Jane, Maggie's mother, came to work as a customs service inspector at the Morley Avenue garita, the station house on the line. He saw Paul in the International Bar and walked over and told him that Dr. Gustetter was with Maggie and his child was about to be born. Paul and his cohorts commandeered another Mexican cacharpa and arrived at Maudy Jane's just before Michael Paul was born. They did not stay long. Maggie was in no mood for a visit with a bunch of cowboys. She said that Paul and his partners smelled as bad as coyotes who had spent the night with their heads inside an old dead carcass, and that made her afraid to even have the
m in the house. Paul's cronies tried to make him stay home, but as soon as Michael Paul was born and Dr. Gustetter said that mother and son were well, Paul fled. He knew his wife. No one could get along with a catamount who had just given birth. He returned with his cohorts to stand at the International Bar for the rest of the night. At dawn, they took the cacharpa back to the cattle pens, caught and saddled their horses, and drove the herd down the Nogales Arroyo to the line. They were about to sober up when they reached the border at sunup, which made them gaze toward the International Bar like barn-soured horses. Paul was the only one undisciplined enough in his drinking to break ranks. He made a dash for the International and bought two bottles of tequila. After he gave everyone a swallow, he stashed the bottles in Herb Cunningham's saddlebags to be smuggled across the line. Herb also worked as a line rider for the customs service, except when he worked as a cattle buyer and trader with Paul, and his brother customs officers would never inspect his saddlebags for liquor.

  After crossing to the American side, the herd was driven through the middle of town and then out on the Tucson highway. The cowboys worked hard to keep cattle off people's yards. The steers were inclined to eat everything in sight and the front yard lawns and flowers would have been a banquet for them. The Tucson road was paved in sections, and bars of thick tar connected the sections. The tar softened as the day warmed and the cattle tracked through it and spread it around. The road was shaded by tall cottonwood, mesquite, poplar, evergreen, and willow trees that grew on the edges of the front yards and buzzed with locusts. The day was still and new thunderheads appeared and began to climb, pile, and roil toward their highest perches in the sky.

  When the steers reached Maudy Jane's house, she helped Maggie out to sit on the front porch with Mikey, then stood in her front yard with a broom to protect her grass and flowers from the steers. The hoodlum cowboys straightened in their saddles so Maggie and Maudy Jane would not see how drunk they were. Maggie wanted Mikey to watch the cattle and horses go by. People not raised around cattle seldom take pleasure in the way they look. City people wonder what cattle people see in cattle, and cattle certainly do not consider people to be much good. Mikey's family liked the way they moved, the way they were made, their sounds and odors, and his parents wanted to know what his first impression of them would be.

  The sound of cattle, from the click of their hooves to the rattle of their horns when they are close together, even their bellowing, called "bellering," is good to cattle people. They love to hear their cattle bawl, as they love the voices of their children. Cattle are their work, play, and subsistence. People are grateful to cattle because they give up their lives to preserve families.

  Cattle people love the look in the eyes of cattle and the way they perk their ears. They laugh at their comical ways and feel sorry when they have to be shipped away to market. They see grace and cleverness in them. They have peaceful, happy dreams about cattle and dreams that make them sad. They are able to grow close to cattle because cattle teach them new lessons every day. Cow and horse manure is inoffensive to them. Cattle people like the smell of manure and do not feel dirty when they get it on them. When cattle show great heart and courage, which is often, they justify the dedication of the people who care for them.

  Paul was anxious to see if his son would enjoy cattle as much as he did and he was happy to parade a herd by Mikey so soon after he was born. He was happy to imagine that Mikey liked what he saw. Who knew what he saw? A cowman's infant might see, hear, and enjoy more than anybody could guess. At least he was being exposed to what Paul believed was best about the world on the first day of his life.

  Maggie liked cattle too, but would not admit it. Her parents never told her to love livestock in so many words, so the nuns of St. Joseph's Academy in Tucson had tried to teach her that good people should love music, cleanliness, religion, culture, and humanity a whole lot, but that cows only gave milk and provided staple ingredients for soup. A lady could get cattle on her person and that could be malodorous and painful. A Catholic girl should carefully avoid closeness with beasts. The soul of any girl who gave the impression that she could be in concert with cows was lost. In spite of what the nuns taught, Maggie was glad to hold her son close to a herd of two thousand steers as it rumbled by only thirty yards away, even though he could barely open his eyes to the glare of the day.

  Paul's laugh made other people happy, but Maggie seldom laughed with him when she wanted him to behave. She could see that he was about to act silly, so she did not smile.

  Paul was a showoff and wilder than a woIf. Encouraged by a smile from Maggie, he might try to jump his horse over the house. He figured that everybody is a showoff, but it's no good unless the showoff has a lot of style. No matter how much of a flash a man could be, he would look bad if his horse's tail was too long or too short because he is no horseman if he does not know how to groom his horse's tail to its proper hock-high length.

  Paul did not ride peacefully up and down the herd as it passed by his wife and son that day. He spurred his horse into a run to turn miscreant cattle back into the herd, reined him into a long slide to stop him, then spun him on his hind legs toward the cattle to show him off.

  The horse was a wiry, brown gelding with a diamond on his forehead. Paul called him Ice because of the diamond. He had been a green bronc when Paul took him down to Mexico. Now he turned back through his own tail to stay ahead of cattle. When the herd was so intimidated by Paul and Ice that it streamed by Maudy Jane's house without even looking at the lawn, Paul showed the horse some flat stepping stones that crossed the lawn to the front door. "Hold Mikey up so he can watch this, Honey," he said. He touched Ice with his spurs and checked him softly with his rein at the first stepping-stone. Ice would have climbed Granny's chimney if Paul wanted him to. When he tried to take a step, Paul checked him and did not let him put his foot down unless it stepped on a stone. When he figured out what Paul wanted, Ice dropped his nose to the ground and walked carefully across the stones to the front porch where Maggie stood.

  "Ha, ha, ha," Paul said. "How do you like that, Honey?"

  Maggie did not look at him. "Slick trick for a worthless pair like you and that horse. Is that all you've had to do while you've been gone, teach a darned old bronc to walk on rocks?"

  "Ha, ha, ha," Paul said. "Well, have to go. Adios." Divots of turf flew off Ice's hooves as Paul backed him off the lawn. "Paul, you've ruined mama's lawn," Maggie shouted, but Paul raced down the road to turn the leaders of the herd away from the Shanes' lawn.

  After the herd passed the Dalton Dairy on the open highway, Paul and Buster, Maggie's brother, pushed their remuda of saddlehorses ahead to the Rock Corral Ranch that belonged to Maggie and Paul. Buster went in the house to cook dinner. Paul wrangled Maggie's Little Buck out of the horse pasture, saddled him, and turned Ice loose. Little Buck was a four-year-old Steeldust-bred Buckskin. His yellow hide was dappled, and a black line covered his spine. In the summer when the sun caught the clear highlights on his coat, it turned the color of dappled gold. The hair of his mane and tail was as black and glossy as an Apache girl's. When Paul broke him, he did not buck a jump and he took to cattle like a bulldog takes to cats.

  Bud Parker had given Maggie the horse. Bud and his brother Dink raised Steeldust horses long before anyone but cowmen knew their worth, long before anyone called them "Quarter Horses."

  Paul spent two years making Little Buck into a cow horse. Now that he was a made horse, Paul was forbidden by Maggie to ride him. The horse was smart enough and snooty enough about himself to know he was Maggie's pet. Paul might be in charge of the work, but Maggie supervised all the petting on the ranch and Little Buck knew he was Maggie's main patty pet. Maggie was not there that day to stop it, so Paul was glad for a chance to saddle him and put him to work. He was a luxury of smoothness to ride. A few hours of discipline could only do him good. As long as Maggie stayed in Nogales to recuperate from Mikey's birth, Paul was almost sure that she would not find out that
he defiled Little Buck with toil.

  Paul left the horse to soak under the saddle and went to the house to see if Buster had fixed any chuck. He found a pan of hot biscuits and a fried steak on the oven lid. Buster was asleep on a cot out on the screened Arizona room with a nice breeze on his whiskers. Paul ate the steak with a biscuit, saw that two hours of light remained in the day, and went out to ride circle on his cows. Paul kept his cattle gentle. No cow was ever allowed to trot away at the sight of him. He always rode around to the front of her and stopped her, held her a while, then turned her back the way she had come before he went on. Out in the open he put miles on the horses he trained and made sure he saw every one of his cows at least once a week. If he missed one, he tracked her down to make sure she was all right.

  Paul said he did not worry that he would go to hell because he was a good cowboy. Being a good cowboy was his religion. The closest he had ever come to his grandmother's Catholic faith was the time he saw a rosary in her cedar chest when he was a child. His folks in Pecos, Texas, where he was born had not thought enough of him to teach him about prayer, so he never learned what the beads were for. When he was twelve, his uncle Billy Coyle shipped a herd of cows to Quince Leatherman, whose ranch was outside Nogales. Paul left Texas on the train with the cattle and never looked back.

  He had stepped up on that train with a smile and a wave for his friends and relatives who happened to be at the shipping pens, and he stepped off in Nogales with a smile and a handshake for Quince Leatherman. Quince hired him without asking why such a little button had come so far away from home to look for work, and Paul said nothing about tribulations in Pecos. He seldom said anything about his life in Texas. Maggie only found out he was not an orphan when she and Paul applied for their marriage license and he stated that his mother and father were still alive.

  A good rain had fallen on the Rock Corral Ranch. The washes had run. Paul's native Mexican corriente cattle had held their own in his absence. He was not a worrier and he enjoyed doing everything God gave him to do, work or play. He did not doubt that rain would fall on his ranch again. He believed any amount of rain that fell would be enough. He was happy that he and his partners would turn their Mexican steers out on a place that had been favored with its first summer rain. The market had been down so long, it would have to go up pretty soon. Smart steer traders bought on a down market and sold on a high one, so Paul believed he and his partners were about to do well. Surely the market was as down as it would ever be.