Jim Kane - J P S Brown Page 4

  Kane led the paint across the highway and through the right-of-way gate. The colt was through running for the day. He was easy to handle on the way back to camp. He'd had enough escape for the time being.

  "Warwhoop, you are going to be a good horse," Kane told him at the corrals.

  He unsaddled Warwhoop and went to his shack and had lunch. After lunch he saddled Whiskey Talk.

  The little horse was a blood bay with a white streak the length of his face and two white-stockinged legs. He stepped out looking for new scenery when Kane let him out of the pen. He was interested in everything around him and a little scared but he never offered to buck. Kane rode him as near as possible to a bunch of cattle. The Keys were running three hundred head of big, Mexican Brahmas on the desert ranch. They were wild as deer. Kane took Whiskey Talk as near to the bunch as he could without running them off. The colt watched the cattle and paid no attention to Kane. Kane rode him back to camp and unsaddled him, thinking there must be some truth to the Mexican saying about horses:

  The horse with one white foot, good,

  Two white feet, better,

  Three white feet, bad,

  Four white feet, worse.

  Kane caught Mortgage Maker, the tight, hard-twisted buckskin. He saddled him, boarded him, circled him in the crowding pen, and swung open the gate. Mortgage Maker braked, sidled, and shied at one side of the gate, banging Kane's good knee on the other side as he went through. Mortgage Maker was insolent. His large ears hung indolently. He stepped out with a balky, swinging step that had no rhythm to it. He was interested in nothing but Kane and Kane only slightly interested him. He would not walk in a straight line. He tended to wander in the direction he was watching Kane. He stopped and seemed to taunt Kane that he had the legs and if Kane wanted to go on he would have to force Mortgage Maker and Mortgage Maker knew who was the bigger. Kane used his quirt to keep the colt moving to the sandy wash. He loped the colt up and down the wash. After the third trip the length of the wash the colt balked. He had decided Kane was too heavy to carry in sand at the pace Kane was demanding. Kane warped the heavy quirt down the colt's flank and the wreck was on.

  The colt could buck and he grunt-bawled with every jump. He was kicking high behind and when he hit the bank at the end of the wash he sucked back away from the bank and cowkicked both Kane's spurs. Kane pulled his head around to turn him and he bit at Kane's foot. Kane kicked at the colt's muzzle to keep from getting bitten and the colt struck at Kane's foot with his front feet. The first few jumps weren't bad but then the colt started teaching himself how to buck. He had plenty of bottom and plenty of cunning. He started spinning and Kane could feel a bad case of the round-ass coming on. He gave the colt his head so he would line out and buck straight and the colt swapped ends again and spun out the other way. He bucked straight and hard into the bank. Kane was sure he was going to knock himself down on the bank so he loosened all holds and got ready to fall clear. The colt kept his feet and ironed Kane up against the bank. Kane had been unhorsed again. He staggered to the mouth of the wash and let the colt buck with the saddle in the end of the wash. When the colt finally stopped bucking Kane regretfully noted that he still hadn't drawn a long breath.

  He caught Mortgage Maker again. He loosened his cinches and reset his saddle. He was tightening his cinch when the colt jumped and cowkicked at Kane's hand. He missed but when Kane recoiled from the kick the colt got hold of one of Kane's buttocks with his teeth. The teeth sounded like a crocodile's when they snapped off Kane's hide. Kane rubbed and cussed for five minutes. He stood at the colt's shoulder and pulled him around. He put his elbow on the colt's cheek. so he couldn't bite, got his toe in the stirrup, his knee in the shoulder, and swung on. The colt balked. Kane gave him the quirt down his flank. Mortgage Maker humped up and wet through his sheath in random, angry drops that ran down both legs. Kane gave him the quirt under the tail and the colt squealed and started trotting stiff-leggedly down the wash. Kane headed him toward camp.

  When they crossed the yard by his shack Kane figured the colt had surrendered for the day but the colt shied at something strange to him there and blew his plug again. He bucked between the windmill and the water tank. Kane had to duck a three-inch pipe that extended between the windmill and the water tank. But he was sitting up there just like a country gentleman on a Sunday ride when he lost sight of Mortgage Maker's head. Two jumps later he was standing on his own head watching the colt's legs kick over the top of him. The colt bucked to the corral and stopped and looked back and watched Kane cussing him and himself for having forgotten to finish tightening his cinches in the wash when the colt had kicked at him. Mortgage Maker had bucked Kane off saddle and all, this time. Kane had to get untangled from his saddle and blankets before he could get up.

  He caught Mortgage Maker, saddled him again, rode him back to the wash, up and down the wash several times, and back to camp.

  The sun was down when Kane dragged himself up to his camp to cook supper.

  4

  The Stampede

  When cattle stampede, they run. The herd instinct is so great in the bovine that he can pass from a state of watchful relaxation with his fellows to running berserk with them in an instant. This is probably the only ignoble act he is capable of and he can't help it. He is only a poor cow brute who has no mother and no father and never went to school.

  Jim Kane had been riding Whiskey Talk, Warwhoop, and the Mortgage brothers for a month. He was getting along with them very well. The colts were ready to start work with cattle and Kane was going to catch the other four colts and start breaking them. He thought of taking a few days off and going to Frontera and seeing to his horses. Their quarantine would soon be up. But one morning Bob and Jimmy Keys drove in to Kane's camp and told him that the Mexican Brahmas on the ranch had been sold. Bob wanted to start gathering them that day.

  Kane saddled Pajaro and rode out with the Keyses after the big Brahmas. Bob shut the gate to the big waterlot at Kane's camp on the way out so any cattle that came in to water would not drink and leave while the men were away. The desert ranch had no high ground, no canyons, no place but the brush for the cattle to hide. The three men went to the back side of the ranch and worked the cattle toward the waterlot, the only watering place on the desert ranch. By mid-afternoon they had penned most of the three hundred cattle, enough so that they made a load which could be shipped the next morning. Only ten head had not been gathered. They were expected to come to water on their own by shipping time. Bob Keys went to town to order trucks. Kane and Jimmy stayed and ate an early supper. Kane had saddled the little bay Whiskey Talk to ride in handling any cattle that might come to the waterlot during the evening.

  The desert was quiet at dark. Most of the cattle in the waterlot were lying down. Even the traffic on the highway seemed to have subsided. Kane and Jimmy Keys talked quietly.

  A sound rumbled toward the desert camp. Headlights shone on the road. A motor sputtered and growled between roars. When the car got closer, Kane could. hear voices shrieking above the sound of the motor. The car was a hopped-up, stripped-down little convertible. It roared into the yard of the camp. Its lights shone on the cattle bedded in the waterlot. The cattle got up and moved away from the sounds and bright lights. The car circled in front of the camp, its rear wheels skidding on the smooth desert sand. It headed almost into Kane's cookshack and slid to a stop, motor throbbing proudly, its voices piling out around. it.

  "Hey, Jimmy boy!" the voices called. "We've come to see you on your lonesome prairie." Four girls and three boys in sweatshirts, highwater jeans, tennis shoes with no socks, and long hair, walked into the lamplight of the cookshack. "Can't you guys leave a feller in peace?" Jimmy asked them, laughing. He was glad to see his friends.

  "Whoopee! Look what we brought you, man," a heavy-weight, blond kid with his long hair curled like Shirley Temples shouted. He waved a jug of wine over his head. He found Kane's four cups in the chuckbox and filled them from the jug.

&nb
sp; "See? See what we brought you?" the big kid shouted. "We also have Slinky the virgin with us. See, man? We brought Slinky for you, man." He grabbed a skinny blonde around the waist and sat her down on Jimmy Keys's lap.

  Jimmy pushed her off and introduced his friends to Kane. They ignored Kane until one of them offered him a cup of wine. He refused it.

  "You kids would be doing Jimmy and me a favor if you kept quiet," Kane said. "We've got a bunch of steers out there that might run if we made too much noise."

  The kids ignored Kane.

  "Come on, Jimmy. Drink up. Drink deep and catch up with us," a kid said.

  "You wild men are going to have to be quiet," Jimmy Keys said, still laughing at them. "You could cause a stampede? Kane could tell that Jimmy didn't believe in stampedes but was trying to impress his fellows with how Western he was.

  "Stampede! Stampede!" the kids chanted. "Let's have a stampede!"

  Kane tried to catch Jimmy's eye but the boy had joined his friends completely now and he was also ignoring Kane. Kane left them and walked down to the corrals. Whiskey Talk was in a stall. He bridled him and led him out. He mounted him and rode around the waterlot to the gate. The Brahmas were on their feet, their horns thrust high, eyes wide and nostrils searching the sights and smells of city kids. Kane knew how flimsy the waterlot fence would be if those tall, heavy steers decided to run. Four steers had come to water and were waiting outside the gate. Kane dismounted and opened the gate so he could pen the cattle that were waiting outside. Steers in the corral, startled by some new terror they had perceived in the kids, ran toward the gate. Kane thought then he'd better leave the gate shut until the kids left. He had all night to pen the four steers. He picked up the gate to shut it. A loud, braying bawl slapped him in the face. Every muscle and sense in the herd was shocked motionless. Kane had time to realize that the sound had been the horn of the jalopy. He knew the herd was going to run. He thought of closing the gate. He thought of whipping a kid. He thought of dropping the gate and running. Then he thought of mounting his horse. But his feet, flat on the ground, his hands holding his reins and the wire gate, were paralyzed by that sound and the conviction that the herd was going to run.

  Then the juvenile at the horn of the jalopy gleefully released its voice again in a succession of bellows that creamed the herd instinct of the jumpy Brahmas into stampede. In one instant the steers passed from complete immobility to complete exertion. They did not begin running one by one when the thought occurred to them as individuals. As one, by instinct, they were running like racehorses toward Kane. Kane swung on Whiskey Talk and reined him with the herd. No rein, no spur, no shout or whip, could have made the colt run faster. Kane and Whiskey Talk were in the barrel of a shotgun. Kane heard the pop of staples as wire in the fence stretched in a flash to breaking. He knew of a pile of rolled wire his colt ran through without stumbling though steers on both sides of him tangled in it or caught the rolls on their horns and spiraled them high in the air. He knew of a deep, wide ditch the colt soared over while Kane saw steers fall into it and scramble in panic to regain their feet while the stampede caught them. The colt's clearing of the wash put Kane ahead of the stampede. He checked the colt to protect him in the cholla fields. The cholla slowed the stampede and Kane turned it off the south fence of the pasture. The herd ran toward the highway and Kane shouted at the leaders and rode close to them to turn them off the highway fence. A big steer with thick, banana-like horns ran in the lead. Kane shouted at him to tum him and the steer jumped ahead, would not turn, and ran through the highway fence as though it were a spiderweb. More steers followed the big steer through the wire but the sounds and sights they made hitting the fence helped Kane turn the rest of the stampede away from the highway. Now he knew the best he could do was stop running Whiskey Talk, knowing the herd would keep going for most of the night anyway. The next fence, the north fence, was eight miles away and the steers might be tired enough when they got there to be turned back by it.

  Kane would not risk ruining Whiskey Talk even if it were possible to turn the cattle and put them back into the waterlot by himself in the night and he knew he had about as much chance of containing the cattle alone as he had of flying the colt to New York. He stopped the colt and watched the herd run by. The steers on the tail end were limping and hurt. They would not stop. They did not want to be alone and lost from the herd with their fear and their hurts. Kane rode Whiskey Talk at a slow walk back to his camp.

  At the corral he got his flashlight out of the saddle house and found two pieces of a shovel handle and began pulling cholla stalks off Whiskey Talk's chest and legs. The kids were still in camp. Kane could see them when he felt like looking at them. The noise of them continued. They were at his kitchen table passing their jug of wine unaware of what they had caused. Kane finished doctoring Whiskey Talk and unsaddled him. He had put his saddle on the rack and was coming out of the saddle house when Jimmy Keys walked up.

  "Jim, you want some wine?" he asked. He carried one of the Keyses' desert ranch cups in his hand.

  Kane took the cup and drank down the wine. It warmed him. He shined the flashlight beam on Whiskey Talk's front legs. The cholla had let a lot of blood out of him.

  "What happened?" Jimmy asked.

  "You mean you don't know we've got troubles?" Kane asked.

  "What kind of troubles?"

  Kane turned Whiskey Talk loose in the corral. He got hold of Jimmy Keys's elbow and led him over to the waterlot. He shined the flashlight on the empty lot. He couldn't see posts or wire on the side the cattle had run through.

  "What happened?" Jimmy asked.

  "Now what the hell does it look like?"

  "Did they stampede?"

  "Stampede, stampede, stampede, pard," Kane mocked the juvenile tone. "Ho, ho, hee, hee, and giggle, giggle, giggle.

  "My God. I never thought they'd stampede. Do you think we can gather them in the morning before Dad gets out here with the trucks?"

  "Little man, we'll be lucky if we gather those cattle in thirty days."

  "You mean we won't be able to get them back in time to ship tomorrow?"

  "I mean they are probably not even on the ranch anymore. We have to get hold of your dad and cancel the trucks he has ordered and get some help to gather the cattle before they get completely out of the country. You think your buddies can give us a ride to the telephone?"

  "Sure they will."

  "Well, let's go to the phone."

  When Kane and Jimmy Keys walked into the light of the kitchen one of the couples was coming out of Kane's bunk shack. Jimmy Keys was pale in the face.

  "Whose jalopy is that, Ace?" Kane asked the heavyweight

  "Mine, why?"

  "We're going to town."

  "You need to go, Jimmy?" the ace asked.

  "Yeah," Jimmy said. "Right away."

  "The keys are in it."

  "No. All of us are going to town," Kane said.

  "Listen, man, who in the hell are you to tell us what to do?".

  "I'm Jim Kane, boy. We're going to town in your car."

  "H0, ho, ho, funny, funny, Jim Kane. Don't put me on. My party ain't over yet."

  "Party's over. Let's go, Ace."

  The ace's Shirley Temple curls danced. He filled his tin cup out of a new jug. He grinned at his partners. The girls-tittered. He lifted the cup in a mock salute to Kane. Kane was standing across the table from him with his hands on the edge of the table. The kid reached over the table and poured wine on both of Kane's hands. The kid has imagination, Kane thought. He has a feeling for ritual. Thanks, kid, for the ablution and the anointing. Kane smiled at the kid. As the kid started drinking from the cup Kane hit it on the bottom with the hardest straight right hand he could throw.

  The kid went over backward in his chair. Kane pushed the table aside and grabbed up the blond locks with both hands, led the heavy head up, and slammed the face of it into his knee.

  "No, please," the kid begged.

  Kane laugh
ed at him and gave him the knee again.

  "Oh, please, " the kid cried.

  "Stop him! Stop him! He'll kill him," a girl cried.

  Kane released the boy and watched him collapse slowly to the floor. He turned, grinning toward the rest of the kids. Jimmy Keys was watching over them with an ax handle in his hands.

  "Let's go now, " Kane said. "Pick him up, girls, and let's go."

  Jimmy helped load the ace into the back of the jalopy and got in back with him and the girls. The two other big boys got in front, one behind the wheel. Kane walked over to the driver's side.

  "I'm driving," he said.

  The kid looked straight ahead and reached to turn the ignition key. Kane thumbed him hard in the ribs and shoved him over on top of his partner. Kane drove the jalopy to Frog Turpin's Frontier Bar on the highway. He and Jimmy got out of the jalopy and the kids roared off to town and new adventures.

  Frog was tending his bar. Kane went to the pay phone and called Bob Keys and told him about the cattle. He left out the part about the juveniles. Then he went to the bar, and ordered a double Old Crow.

  "Jimmy has been telling me your Brahmas ran tonight," Frog said.

  "They ran and ran and ran, Frog," Kane said.

  "Four or five big steers came by here on the highway about an hour ago. They were going north."

  "Was a big banana-horned steer with them?"

  "One like that was in the lead. He was big as a horse."

  "We'll get them in the morning. Right now it is time to get drunk. Jimmy will drink beer. I will drink Old Crow. Please keep our glasses full, Frog."

  "With pleasure," said Frog, pouring Kane's second double.

  "Don't you think we'd better go a little easy, Jim?" Jimmy asked.

  "How do you go easy, pard?"

  "I mean we have a lot of work to do in the morning. A lot of riding. Those cattle are on the highway now. If there is an accident and we are found here drinking we might get in trouble."