Jim Kane - J P S Brown Read online

  "`What did the vets say?"

  "They don't know why either. They only knew they had to kill your blue-and-white polka dot stud, disinfect the corrals again, and clean out all the manure again."

  Kane shut up for a while. He gave a moment of silence to his banker. The banker had been good to him.

  "Did the buyer show up?" Kane asked finally.

  "Which one? The Californian that wore his hat wrong?"

  "That sounds like him. Was his name Grace?"

  "Grace showed. He didn't buy the horses."

  "Didn't he even make an offer?

  ''He offered seventy-five dollars a head. He figured you were hard up and needed the money so bad you'd fall for it."

  "Hell, he was the one who said he would give me three hundred dollars a head when I called him from Phoenix."

  "He changed his tune when he heard about the quarantine. He figured you'd take seventy-five dollars to get out from under the horses." `

  "Why that chicken-pluckin', cow-milkin', bib-overalled son of a bitch," Kane said, blaming all his misfortunes on the poor counterfeit Californian.

  "That ain't all, Jim Kane," Will Ore said.

  "What else?" Kane asked him.

  "You know that little filly, daughter of the old swollen-eyed mare?"

  "You bet. The daughter of my old cinnamon mare."

  "The California gunsels ran her into the fence and killed her when they decided to take a special look at her. She was a fine-looking little filly. They were especially interested in her. "

  "Did Grace pay for her?"

  "Hell no. He just said that he believed in the old saying that them that has must lose."

  6

  The Banker

  A Señor Caballo is a good horse, a big horse, a lordly horse, noble and rich. I shouldn't call my own horse a Senor Caballo, that would be bragging in an ugly way; a friend of mine should mention it to make me feel good. There are plenty of Señor Toros, honorable and aristocratic bulls, in this life too, thank God. There are Señor signatures too, signatures accepted by anyone at face value without question. A signature that helps someone else, unreservedly, is a Señora Firma. A Señora Firma is given by as rich man, a big man, not necessarily a man of material means, but a man who is full of his meaning.

  A letra is a personal note. A sight draft. When a letra comes due it can be cashed in any bank in which the giver of the letra has an account. It is only worth as much as the man's

  word who gives it and, of course, the paper it is written on.

  On the next day Jim Kane dressed up in clean clothes and went to see the banker. In the office of the boss's secretary, the anteroom of the boss's office, under the great horned steer mounted on the wall and the paintings of other great, gaunt steers that had given up their freedom though the years to help this bank help cowmen make their living, Kane sat and waited for the boss's secretary to come back and give him an audience with the boss.

  Miss Toots was the boss's secretary and the number two man in the bank by seniority but the number one woman in the bank by popular acclaim. Miss Toots was a small, erect, not-yet-middle-aged woman, who walked on the finest set of legs and had the thickest, shiniest, brown hair in the State of Arizona.

  "Aha, I knew you would show up any day now, Jim Kane, Miss Toots said when she came into her office.

  "I guess my note is a week overdue. I should have been here a week ago but I was busy helping gather a bunch of wild Brahmas for Bob Keys and the Brahmas didn't care if my note was due," Kane said.

  "Never mind. You're here now. Are you going to be able to pay the note?"

  "No, Miss Toots. My horses are still quarantined. I don't know what I'm going to do about the note."

  "Go in and talk to the boss. Tell him about your quarantine. I'm sure he knows all about it anyway. If you can't pay, you can't pay and that is all there is to it. There is no use getting bats in la belly about it, is there?"

  "No, Miss Toots. I won't if you won't."

  "I won't. I've seen too many of you cowboys get out of this kind of trouble. You just tell the boss about it. He won't leave you in la lurch."

  Kane walked in the boss's office.

  "Can you pay the interest on your note, Jim?" the boss asked him when they had shaken hands and sat down.

  "No," Kane said. "I don't have any money."

  "How many horses have you got now?"

  "Forty-four. "

  "When will they cross?"

  "If they show two clean tests they should cross in six weeks."

  "The week after New Year's?"

  "Yes."

  ""I suppose we can carry you until then without collapsing.

  "I appreciate it, sir."

  "I still believe you are on the right track with your horses. I've seen them and they seem to be just as you described them when we made you the loan. Maybe when you bring out the next bunch you should stop them someplace further south and bleed them yourself. Or maybe you should test them before you buy them. There must be a practical way to handle the horses before you fall into the hands of the U. S. Government, don't you think?"

  "Maybe there is, sir. Maybe the most practical way would be to leave all Jalisco horses in Jalisco."

  "Maybe so. It would seem a shame to quit. You have paid a large fee for your first lesson in buying horses in Mexico. You might still find a way to profit by the education."

  "Let's see what kind of shape you and I are in when the venture winds up," Kane said, rising to leave.

  "Maybe this venture won't work and the next one we take on together will work. You take care of me and I'll take care of you, and someday maybe one of our deals will click for us."

  "That sounds like the best kind of deal," Kane said.

  "These horses no longer have a chance to make anything for us. Their corral fees, feed, sanitizing fees, burial fees, death loss, duties, and brokerage make the situation such that they would have to be made of pure gold to pay their way out and still leave us any profit. These just won't make it for us because they have never been given a chance. I wish we could keep them for a while so they could produce and get us out of the hole but I guess that would take too long."

  "Personally, I would rather liquidate this bunch and help you on some new venture. Let's sell them as soon as possible and start over again," the boss of the bank said.

  Out on the street again, Kane went to the flower shop and ordered a bouquet of roses sent to the bank. On the card he wrote, "To all the girls of the Valley Bank, attention Miss Toots."

  7

  Gunga Din

  Kane was alone on the Keyses' desert ranch on Christmas. He was alone except for his horse, Pajaro, the Mortgage brothers, Warwhoop, Whiskey Talk, three Brahmas that were still loose on the ranch, and a paint burro he called Din.

  On this morning Din, as was his custom, had stationed himself outside the door of Kane's shack, had formed his muzzle into the shape of a megaphone, and was braying forth his special dawning fanfare to awaken Kane. Kane swung his feet off the board shelf his mattress and blankets were on, lifted the chimney off the lamp on the broken chair by his bed, and struck a match to the wick. He put on his hat, drew on the stiff Levis, stomped his feet into the boots and spurs, stood in them, and put on his shirt. He forced Din the burro away with the door as he stepped outside. He walked around the shack to his kitchen, built a fire in the stove, and put his coffee on to boil. He found a biscuit and gave it to Din on his way to the corrals. Din followed him to the corrals. Kane gave each of the horses under his charge an extra coffee can of oats for Christmas. Din followed him back as he carried a bucketful of oats back to his kitchen. He poured the oats into Din's pan by the open side of the lean-to that was the kitchen. He got his bottle of Presidente brandy from behind the stove and poured a swallow into his coffee, dunked a biscuit in the coffee, and put the biscuit into Dirfs grain pan.

  "Noël, Din," Kane said. Din ate the biscuit and turned his nose up at the grain, turned his nose inside out agai
n and looked at Kane. Kane gave him another coffee and brandy biscuit.

  "Noël, Noël, Din," Kane said. Din ate the biscuit and started on the grain again, grinding it slowly and sparingly so as not to waste any. When he had finished the grain, he began talking to Kane in that strange, rasping, whistling choke that is the voice of the burro.

  "He must have liked you. I like you," Kane said. "So why did He make you so ugly, Din? You are in all the pictures of the Nativity. His mama rode you with Him in her arms to Egypt when Herod was killing all the babies. You were around when He amazed the doctors in the temple as a little boy. In that story you bumbled along carrying people back and forth so He could give a lesson to the doctors before His folks found Him. He rode one of your white ancestors on Palm Sunday, the happiest day of His life, or at least the day the largest consensus of humans were for Him. So then how come your ears are so long and the hair on your back doesn't shine, your tail is so inadequate, your head so big, and your butt-end so peaked? And that voice! Like the true voice of one crying in the wilderness!

  "You have been unjustly treated through the centuries, Din. But you don't seem to realize it. You go along in that little ugly shell of yours, doing what they prod you to do. They make you do what your little carcass finds impossible to do. They poke you with sticks demanding always more of you and instead of quitting them and refusing them absolutely you go along at your own pace no matter how much the poking hurts . so that you'll have enough energy left in your carcass to do I them another job tomorrow. You were not created to be servant for Great Societies, that's a cinch. The Great Societies are begrudging you the few cactus leaves you eat. You aren't fast enough or beautiful enough to serve them. You aren't going to make anybody any money. You aren't going to be a warhorse. Yet, at your own pace, you carried the Man everywhere He needed carrying and He always seemed to have enough time to do the job He did. No one can argue about the good quality of the job He did and no one can say He didn't get results.

  "And look at you with a face only He and His mother and yours could love! Even I treat you like a burro and neglect your noble soul because you are so ugly. I lead you out, find a devil of an escaped Brahma, rope him from my good horse, tie his neck to yours, and ride away and leave you with him kicking at you and hauling on you with the live hundred pounds he outweighs you. And sooner or later one morning you are standing in my camp with a gentled Brahma by your side. You come back because you have to. I have made you a slave to grain and a slave to Kane because Kane has fingers with which to free you from the Brahma. If I was you I'd kick up my heels, leave a few hard turds at Kane's kitchen door, and run braying away the first time I was untied from a Brahma. I might just give Kane a kick in the slats for good measure. Isn't that the way Kane has been acting, his own way of doing?"

  Din walked into Kane's kitchen to get closer to Kane's voice and Kane's coffee and brandy biscuits.

  Gunga, Din," Kane said. "Gung away outside my kitchen. No room in the inn, Din." He dunked another biscuit, pushed Din out of his kitchen, rubbed Din's ears, and gave Din his biscuit.

  "Noël, Noël, Noël, Din. And that's all your Christmas this year," Kane said.

  8

  Afoot

  By New Year's Eve Kane had gathered and delivered all the delinquent steers. His colts were gentle and needed a rest. His saddle horse, Pajaro, was ridden down. Din the burro was gaunt and too gentle. Kane was gaunt and too cranky. He turned the livestock out to pasture and went to Phoenix to the Adams Hotel.

  In his room he poured himself a glass of whiskey. He took off the clothes that in another day would have grown to his hide. He turned on the hot water in the shower. He sealed up the bathroom with wet towels. He sat on the toilet seat and drank his whiskey and steamed and sweated in an abundance of comfortable moisture. He poured pitchers of cold water on himself. His whole hide drank. He showered. He shaved with a mirror. He examined his teeth in the mirror. He washed his head with mange cure. He turned on the television. He got in bed between fresh sheets. He drank another glass of whiskey. He slept an undreaming, sunken peace with no spurs on. He awoke and ordered up rare roast beef, a mountain of mashed potatoes, a great tossed salad, and a pitcher of black beer. After he ate he slept again. He awoke again and dressed in clean dress shirt and sweater, clean starched Levis, his drinking hat, his drinking boots, and went down the street to the Cow Palace Bar to celebrate New Year's.

  He was back in camp with a hangover on New Year's Day. He knew his body was back at camp because he could see his hands and feel his feet. The legs swung and jarred his feet against the ground. His mind was still numbly away from camp but close enough so that the messages from the eyes to his brain were received clearly. Startlingly, painfully, achingly, sometimes faintly, but always clearly. The messages must remain simple. Complicated messages physically shocked the receiver, the brain.

  He walked out into the pasture with a morral of grain and caught Pajaro, mounted him bareback, and drove the colts into the corral. The day was bright as goodness. The fine heat of its bosom punished him. In the corral he slid off Pajaro and gagged. He stuck his head up to his neck in the cold water of the horse trough and held it there as long as he could. He came up for air and did it again. Came up again and did it again. Each time he looked around more calmly at the world around him under the water upside down. The cool world under the water was a much finer place for the reunion of his mind and his body. When he rose from the trough the reunion had been made but his brain still ached as his mind shifted around in there accommodating itself.

  Kane decided he would ride his colts one more time and turn them out. He caught the black paint, Warwhoop, saddled him, and rode out. The effort of saddling had worn him out and he was happy when he finally found himself astride the colt and being carried.

  He rode straight down the road toward the highway. This morning he would Indian it. He would not school his horses. He would let them give him hours of sun and movement and self-denial. They would make him well from the sickness of having too much fun. He did not smoke, cough, or smile. He just rode along watching Warshoop's ears twitch and search.

  Kane saw that Warwhoop was looking at something off the road. A buzzard flew out of a wash. Kane rode over to the wash. A cluster of buzzards flapped off a carcass when they saw the horseman. Kane rode down to the carcass of Din, the paint burro. Blood had soaked up a spot in the sand underneath him. Din had been shot. He had been standing here in this wash, a gentle burro thinking maybe someone was coming with a pan of grain for him, and he had been shot: one, two, three, four, five, six, the son of a dirty bitch had reloaded, seven, eight, nine--who knows how many times. Kane's heart began to ache and crowd his throat now. Din had been shot once in the eye, several times in the ribs and abdomen, several times in the penis. One shot hadn't done enough noticeable damage to the penis for the trigger man's satisfaction so the had tried to blow the burro's sheath completely off.

  Kane searched the ground around the carcass and found the tracks of the one who had shot Din. The tracks in the sand were plain. The person had not known how to walk in sand. He had walked from the highway, made his kill, and had walked directly back toward the highway. Kane saw where the killer and another person had dismounted and later remounted a jeep by the gate. They had left the desert ranch and shut the gate. Kane had been through the gate in the darkness of that morning and had not noticed the tracks. He followed the tracks of the other person. These tracks had gone and come back a different way. They had headed toward the place where Kane had found his horses that morning. Kane's feet and legs began to want to hurry but he did not wish to hurry the colt he was riding. He wanted to concentrate on the tracks and on the colts he had penned that morning at camp.

  Had he penned Whiskey Talk? Had both the Mortgage brothers been there? He couldn't remember for sure. Had he ridden Pajaro this morning? Or had his penning of the colts been some days ago before he had run onto these tracks. The hangover and the shock of finding his paint burro and
the hurrying fear for his horses had eliminated the element of time for him. What had already happened might still be going to happen. His bringing in of the horses might have been dreamed some other time. Maybe if he ignored the back track to the jeep he would catch the coward down here carrying his manly pistol in its girl holster and make him eat it. He would have faith that the tracks that returned to the jeep were not there, he would believe the person was ahead of him and a miracle would happen, time would disappear. Sooner and later would disappear. He would not be too late to catch one of the killers. He had his rope. He would rope the killer and drag him through the cholla. The person would know he had not got away when he was being dragged through the cholla. `

  Kane found the spot where the tracks turned back toward the jeep and he became sane again. He sighed. He walked the paint colt back to camp. Yes, his Pajaro was still there. All his colts were. He had known it all the time. He unsaddled Warwhoop for the last time. Warwhoop had graduated from Kane's school. Kane went up to his camp and made his first cup of coffee of the day and lit his first cigarette.

  He went back and rode Mortgage Maker and Mortgage Lifter, and all the new colts. One at a time he turned them out free to the pasture after he had ridden them, unsaddled them, rubbed their ears for them, and said good-bye to them. They had all acted like gentlemen. He had not ridden back down the road by the tiny carcass of Din. He was over his hangover now and he wanted to eat. He decided he would ride Whiskey Talk in the corral only a few turns and stops and backing-ups. Then he would be finished for the day, finished with the colts, and finished with the desert ranch by Phoenix, Arizona.

  Kane and Whiskey Talk were concentrating. They were working well together. The colt was responding perfectly. What a fine horse Whiskey Talk would be for Jimmy Keys! They made a turn by the saddle house. A big tourist in an orange coat jumped up on the fence and shouted "Hi there."

  Kane had not been so startled he could have controlled the colt for he had complete control of the colt up until the sight of the tourist scared him. Kane was looking over his shoulder at the big, ugly tourist when Whiskey Talk started bucking. Whiskey Talk had never bucked before and Kane would never have expected him to buck, but the colt was bucking very hard and he had all he could do to catch up and start riding. The colt bucked into the comer of the corral and Kane caught up with him but the colt turned back so fast he slammed sideways into the corner and the toe of Kane's boot caught in a square of hogwire and when the colt bucked out Kane's bad knee popped like a rifle shot. The whole leg numbed as though it had been shot off at the knee and then it hurt so much that Kane could not believe the pain was true. He rode Whiskey Talk two more jumps and bailed out and lay there clawing the dirt in the corral and wanting to chew himself up. His leg lay out there like something that didn't belong to him and he dragged himself to the fence so that he could get up on his feet to try to stand on it. He thought maybe if he stood up the leg would be reminded of its function and when this first pain went away it would be all right.