Jim Kane - J P S Brown Page 3

  When Kane was ready to leave, Uncle Herb was still talking business with the traders so Kane just waved good-bye to him and left. Uncle Herb was so engrossed in his business he hardly noticed Kane leave.

  Kane drove out to his Uncle Herb's corrals. The Mexican bulls Uncle Herb had crossed at E1 Paso were in five big lots in the corrals. They were big-horned bulls, and oxen. They had big frames, plenty of warehouse for plenty of feed, and they were every color of the rainbow. Kane's sorrel horse, Pajaro, was in a small, shaded pen by himself The horse had grown since May when Kane had left him to go to Jalisco. His hair was short and shiny and when Kane climbed into the corral he snorted and bucked and kicked and pranced around the corral. Kane caught him and loaded him in Uncle Herb's trailer and pulled the trailer behind his car to Bob Keys's ranch.

  3

  The Colts

  Caballero se deriva de caballo

  Que este nombre

  Ha dado el caballo al hombre

  Mira en qué principio estriba.

  —Spanish proverb

  "Caballero means gentleman horseman. The word is derived from the horse. The horse gave this name to the man. A fine foundation." No one who was ever raised with horses and learned to do his work horseback will ever feel quite so complete a man afoot as he does horseback. A horseman also believes that the horse is never complete without the work of a man to do.

  The desert was cool when Kane and Bob and Jimmy Keys rode out to bring in the colts Kane was to break. Kane was riding Pajaro. The horse was happy to be working again. His small pin ears flickered from Kane to the trail ahead, anticipating Kane's job for him. The big horse carried his head perpendicular to the ground, his neck bowed with no pressure from the reins. His legs made a V from his forelegs and his thighs to the points where his hooves struck tracks on the ground. The wide, muscular shoulders between Kane's knees glinted with short, red-gold hair in the morning sun.

  The men found the colts and corraled them by midmorning. When the colts had quieted, Kane stepped into the corral and looked them over. He stood in the center of the corral and presented himself to them. Five of the colts were curious. They took hesitant steps toward him, nodding their heads at him, taking as much of his scent as they could stand at a time, getting the sight of him as full and deep into their wide, dark eyes as they could.

  The other three colts watched him out of the corners of their eyes, their heads turned away from him. When they wanted to get more distance between themselves and the man they sidled away from him. They seldom looked at Kane with both eyes at a time but kept one eye fixed on him at all times. These three were: a line-backed dun with sorrel mane and tail, a line-backed buckskin with black mane and tail, and a black and white paint. The paint showed white circles around each small eye. The dun had a long hammer-head and a lazy look in his eye. The buckskin had a small, narrow head with a Roman nose and a mean look in his eye. The colts were all four years old. They were all straight-legged, short-backed and in good shape from fending for themselves on the desert. But the three off-colored colts were more feral beasts than the others. Kane chose the dun, the buckskin, the paint, and one of the solid-colored colts, a bay colt. He roped them, haltered them with rope halters, and tied them to railroad ties in one of the corrals. The paint and the buckskin struck, kicked, and bit at Kane. The bay fought Kane to get away but only because he was afraid, not to do the man injury. The dun was caught, haltered, and tied before he had time to decide he didn't like it. Kane turned the other four colts out. He would get them back after he had ridden the rough off the four he had caught. Kane and the Keyses walked up to Kane's camp at lunchtime. The camp was a board shack. Inside the shack Kane had a shelf for his bed, a chair, and a kerosene lamp. His kitchen was a lean-to off this shack with a wood stove, a table, chairs, and a chuckbox cupboard.

  "We figured you wouldn't have time to get groceries last night so we brought some. We'll be here every day anyway so we'll buy the groceries," Bob Keys said. Jimmy brought two armloads of groceries from their stationwagon. Kane built a fire in the stove and fried steaks and potatoes and warmed canned com for their lunch. Alter lunch they sat and smoked a while.

  "The three off-colored colts you caught are probably the toughest ones in the bunch, don't you think?" Bob Keys asked Kane.

  "That's what I figure. I'll take them while I'm still fresh and rarin' to go," Kane said. "The paint and the buckskin are meat eaters. What do you call them?"

  "We'll let you name them," Bob Keys said.

  "The bay already has a name," Jimmy Keys said. "Dad was in his cups one night and I always hit him up for something when I catch him in his cups. I caught him just right that night and asked him for the bay. Bill Pyle, the trader, was there. Dad felt generous so he gave the colt to me. Bill told me not to believe Dad. He said Dad was just making whiskey talk. The next day when Dad was sober he didn't back down. Since then the horse has been called Whiskey Talk."

  "He's a nice-looking colt."

  "Well, he's Jimmy's," Bob Keys said.

  "His soul may be Jimmy's but his rear end is mine now," Kane said.

  Kane went out the next morning and looked at the colts. They had been through a rough night fighting their halters. When Kane stepped into the corral all four colts fell back against the ties but they immediately lunged forward to ease the pain on their necks. During the night they had learned there was no give to the ties. They had learned that flesh and blood could not stand a fight with the unfeeling uniformity of four well-set railroad ties.

  Kane walked up to the dun. The colt had taken all the slack he could out of the halter rope without taking on too much pain and was standing with his head high, his lip nibbling on the halter that stretched out under his muzzle. He fixed one worried eye on Kane and the closer Kane approached, the more he leaned back against the tie. Kane stopped near him and watched him strain against the halter until his eyes closed and his legs started to buckle and he did a little dance to keep his feet. Finally he shook his head violently and squealed. The combination of tie and halter held fast, no pain there. The colt sat down on the root of his tail and sulled. The combination took no note of his lack of cooperation. After he cooled for a while Kane walked up to him, screamed at him, and wrung his tail for him. The dun lurched to his feet and gave himself slack. Kane lectured him in a low voice until his legs stopped trembling.

  "Now you see, big dun," Kane said. '"You've got to stand up close and stop fighting it. People have plans for you. These plans do not include your escaping from people anymore. People have a combination fixed that does not in any way include your plans for yourself. People want to like you so that you can be useful to them. If you do what you want to do people won't like you. You aren't going to grow up to be like me. You are going to be the Mortgage Lifter."

  Kane was carrying a small pan of grain. He took the dun's rope off the tie. None of the colts knew what grain was yet, but since they hadn't swallowed anything but spit since yesterday morning Kane didn't have any trouble teaching the dun that grain was good and the hand that offered it was not going to hurt him. Kane pulled the halter rope and every time the colt took a step Kane gave him a bite of grain. The colt began leading up to keep his mouth full of grain and Kane started petting him on the head, neck, and shoulders. The colt was overcoming his fear of Kane's hands to get the grain. Kane led all the colts to the water.

  The next day, after he had watered them, Kane tied them closer to the tie than he had the day before. He got a gunny sack and tied ten feet of rope on it. He walked up to the buckskin and began swinging the sack over his head. The colt kept his head down and one evil, fearless eye on the whirling sack. He ran against the tie rope one time, but when he hit the end of it he turned back without letting it jolt him. This one had a sense of self-preservation and he had found out the tie rope had an end to it. Kane let the sack flop against the buckskin's hind legs. The colt let fly at it with both hind feet like a mule. Kane let the sack fall behind the colt's front legs. The col
t struck at it with both front feet. The sack landed on his head behind his ears and he bit at it. The sack fell on his back and the colt let it slide off and cow-kicked it back at Kane.

  "You take dead aim, don't you, young man?" Kane said. "You would like to kick me like that, wouldn't you? Oh, how you would like to do that. Then I would have to mortgage the homestead to buy myself a new set of grinners."

  Kane sacked the colt until he tired of kicking at it. What he really wanted was meat, teeth, something that would crunch satisfactorily, something that would bring out the mortgage papers. Mortgage Maker. Kane fed him his hay and went to the next colt.

  The black-and-white paint went into a sullen, uncomprehending frenzy when Kane started sacking him. He had absolutely no sense of self-preservation. When he hit the end of the rope he bashed his head against the fence. His head was skinned up and beginning to swell. Kane gave him three minutes of the sack and quit him. Maybe tomorrow he would take it better.

  The little bay, Whiskey Talk, was afraid of the sack at first but he wasn't afraid of Kane. He didn't try to harm the sack. He turned his head and watched Kane out of both eyes, trying to figure out what Kane wanted him to do. Kane sacked him until he stopped trembling and then held some grain in the pan for him.

  Kane spent ten days sacking, hand feeding, and leading the colts. At the end of that time he was able to get familiar enough with them so that he could saddle and hackamore them without blindfolding them and trim their feet without throwing them. The only one of the lot who wanted Kane's hide was Mortgage Maker, the buckskin.

  Kane mounted his colts for the first time in a small crowding pen. The colts couldn't get away from him in there. They couldn't run and they couldn't buck. He rode them in the pen for a week. He knew this was cheating them, not giving them a chance to buck. But he was breaking the colts for business and not for fun. Anyway, Kane figured, anyone would say nowadays cheating for business wasn't cheating.

  He rode the colts in the crowding pen until he figured if he didn't take them outside he and the colts would be permanently claustrophobic. The colts were responding well to the hackamore rein and he could get off and on them from both sides without trouble. He was feeding them out of a morral, a feed bag made of a grain sack, and he could catch them with the morral anytime he wanted to. They had graduated from being tied after the first ten days and he let them run loose in the corral now.

  One morning Kane caught Mortgage Lifter. He took him to the crowding pen and saddled him. Mortgage Lifter yawned a few times. Kane led him in circles and looked him over. Mortgage Lifter was bored. The colt dragged his gangly, big-boned legs around clumsily. Kane got on him and trotted him around the pen. Mortgage Lifter's ears flopped uninterestedly. Kane unhooked the gate, swung it open, and rode him out the gate.

  New scenery began to appear to Mortgage Lifter. No pole fence appeared before his eyes after a few steps. His ears began to work. He raised his head and looked at a cloud. He turned his head and looked at a bird. He caught sight of Kane in the panorama out of the corner of his eye. He swung his head around and caught sight of Kane out of the other eye. He hit a fast, scared trot. Every time he got another look at Kane the trot got faster. He had never carried Kane at a fast trot before so that scared him more and he threw his head up, took a fix on a cloud, and had a runaway. Kane took hold of one rein and the dun looked at his cloud and not at where he was going. He ran through a cholla cactus field and Kane gave him slack so he would look down and see where he was going. He ran into a deep sandy wash and almost fell when Kane's weight bore down on him at the bottom of the wash. He looked at the ground finally when he stumbled in the wash and Kane turned him up the wash and ran him in the sand. The end of the wash was a solid wall and into it Mortgage Lifter plowed. He bounced off and Kane circled him in the sand. Mortgage Lifter had his head down now. The head got lower as Kane circled him. The first convulsive symptoms of a bucking horse began to appear and Kane hauled back on one rein. The head came all the way around but the body kept convulsing straight ahead into the wall of the wash. Kane had to give him his head so he wouldn't fall and down the head went between the front legs and Mortgage Lifter started bucking. The big tall colt knew how to buck. Kane could see out of the wash every time the colt fired. He could never tell where the colt was going to land because the colt was so limber he came down in unrelated pieces. Finally Kane saw a whole lot of landscape above the bank of the wash and he lost hold of the death grip he had on the saddlehorn and when he reached for it again he grabbed a handful of sand, then a mouthful, and then it seemed like the whole sandy bed of the wash was making a starry story inside his head. Mortgage Lifter had lifted Kane's butt.

  Kane got up and ran to the mouth of the wash so the colt couldn't get away and stood there and watched him buck in the end of the wash. The colt's jumps got boggy in the sand and finally he stopped and Kane caught him. Kane sat and smoked a cigarette while he and Mortgage Lifter cooled and thought the deal over. Then Kane got on him and rode him in the wash until he was tired. Mortgage Lifter carried Kane back to camp like a good saddle horse and didn't buck anymore on the way. The black-and-white paint responded well to the hackamore rein in the crowding pen. He had a lot of action. He was graceful and nimble on long slender legs. He was shortnecked, clean-hided, lean, and hard. The only part of the colt Kane didn't like was the small eye encircled by white. The look out of the dark blue pupils was one way and that way didn't seem to include Kane. They showed Escape Intended. Kane opened the gate and rode him outside.

  The colt immediately hit a fast trot. Kane headed him up a road that ended at the highway. He wanted to keep the colt out of the cholla fields. The colt wanted to cover the country. He was easy to handle, so Kane let him go. Three seconds later the paint was at a dead run down the road. Kane circled him and stopped him several times but the colt's circles got wider each time. He was not responding so well to the hackamore now and Kane was putting all his weight on the rein to circle him. The paint was warming up and his jaw was getting numb from the pulling. He was no longer coming here to Kane but was more and more getting gone. The road passed through a long narrow lane solid on both sides with mesquite, ironwood, and palo verde trees, all hardwood, and all spiny. Kane let the colt run. There was not enough country free of brush to turn him in now.

  Suddenly Kane saw a big truck on the highway not twenty-five yards away. The next thing he saw was the closed gate through the highway right-of-way fence, and it looked as though the paint was going to go through the gate and butt heads with the truck. Kane tried to let out a warwhoop but only, involuntarily, squeezed out a terrified squeak as the colt sailed over the gate. At the peak of the jump Kane looked squarely into the eyes of the truck driver. The driver seemed more afraid of the collision than Kane, but he was so surprised he didn't brake the truck. When the colt landed on the other side of the gate, Kane was still with him and he took one rein when the colt got his head up and steered him behind the truck and across the highway where their path crossed that of a touring car. Kane gave the colt his head to keep him from slipping on the pavement. The colt had seen enough country. When he got off the other side of the highway, Kane stopped him and dismounted. He sat in the shade of the horse and let his breath catch up. The paint was heaving through wide nostrils and sweat was making puddles under him.

  "Young man!" a voice demanded.

  Kane looked up. The tourists had alighted from their car. The big truck had not stopped. The driver probably had not believed what he had seen. He would probably stop someplace down the road and have a cup of coffee to rest and get the hallucinations out of his head that he sometimes got from long hours on the road.

  "Yes?" Kane answered the male tourist.

  "What the hell do you think you are doing riding your horse across the highway like that? You almost caused a bad accident?

  "What the hell does it look like I'm doing?"

  "What are you doing?"

  "Going horseback riding, that's what."r />
  "I'm going to report you. This isn't a bridle path."

  Kane got to his feet. The tourist pitty-patted around to the other side of his car. Just then a highway patrol car came slowly by and the tourist waved to it. The patrol car stopped and a young officer stepped out. The tourist trotted up to him and gave him his story. Kane stood his ground and the officer walked down off the highway with the tourist following him.

  "What's the trouble here?" the officer asked Kane.

  "My colt got the green eye and jumped that gate with me," Kane said.

  "What's the green eye?" the tourist asked.

  "He ran away with this man. What is he, a bronc?" the patrolman asked Kane.

  "This is his first day outside," Kane said.

  "Couldn't you stop him before you crossed the highway?"

  "Hell, no, I was too busy staying on when I landed on this side of the gate. I almost ran into a truck going the other way. The colt would have fallen if I'd tried to turn him on the pavement so I let him run in front of this gentleman?

  "You scared hell out of my wife, fellow. You endangered our lives!"

  "You can go now, mister," the patrolman said to the tourist.

  "Don't you want my name or anything for the complaint? I want to till, outa complaint. This man scared hell out of us."

  "You go on or wait for a ticket for obstructing traffic."

  The tourist left. The patrolman took out a package of cigarettes and gave one to Kane.

  ‘"Who are you working for, Bob Keys?"

  "Yes," Kane said.

  ''How many colts are you breaking for him?"

  "Four head but this is only the second colt I've ridden outside today. If they are all like the first two I'm not long for this world."

  "Well, be careful crossing the street," the patrolman said, smiling.

  "I'm trying to be careful," Kane said.

  The patrolman walked back to his car and heard a call on the radio. He went back to his business of husbanding tourists.