Jim Kane - J P S Brown Page 9

  "¡Válgame!" she said when she saw Kane's stooped, bentkneed walk. "What happened to the Americanito?"

  "I fell off the bed," Kane said.

  "He fought with Juanito Vogel," the Lion said.

  "¡Pobrecito! Poor little thing!" Teresita said.

  "Yes. He hit Jim and kicked him," the Lion said sadly.

  "That Juanito is an animal when he is drunk. When he is drunk he is capable of insulting God. When he is sober he is a love of God," Teresita said.

  "I don't believe I fared so badly, " Kane said. "My knee falsified. " He waited for an affirmation from the Lion. "I would have strangled him if the Lion had not intervened." No affirmation. "I hit him a blow well dealt." Still no affirmation.

  Kane could see that Teresita did not believe Kane had done well. She only politely nodded her head. She believed only the evidence of Kane's black eye and sore knee. The Lion had seen the fight but seeing Kane now wiped out all his recollection of what had really happened. He now believed Kane had received all the worst of the encounter. No doubt about it, Juan Vogel, the Lion believed, had devastated himself a gringo.

  While they drank coffee Teresita and the Lion, at length, reiterated the faults of Juan Vogel until Kane figured the Lion had declared himself a holiday because of Kane's condition and was not going to San Bernardo. .

  The Lion finally said, "I guess you won't be going because of the way you feel so I will take your car and go by myself."

  "The mierda you will," Kane said. "I came for cattle. I've listened to all I want to know about Juan Vogel. Let's get going."

  They were well out on the way to San Bernardo when the Lion said, "I should have told you something more about these cattle."

  '`What is that?" Kane asked.'

  "Juan Vogel owns an interest in this herd we are going to see. He'll be here today. Leave him to me. I don't want you to fight him again."

  Kane laughed. "I couldn't fight him if I wanted to."

  "Good," the Lion said.

  They turned off the highway onto a road through the brush. Kane asked the Lion names of the trees and brush. One day or one month would not have sufficed to identify the thousands of varieties of trees, grass, browse, and cactus. The road followed sandy washes. On both sides of the road the ground was rocky. At places the brush was impenetrable from the ground to the tops of giant amapas, mesquite trees, and the sahuaro-like hecho cactuses. All the vegetation was spiny. Near San Bernardo they left the coastal desert and came into the embrace of the steep mountains of the Sierra Madre Occidental, the Sierra Madre of the West.

  In San Bernardo they stopped at a small store. A stocky, smiling man dressed in clean khakis came out of the store to greet them.

  "¿Qué hubo?" the man called. "The cattle have arrived."

  "¿Qué hubo? Manuelito!" the Lion roared. "Meet my friend, Jim Kane." `

  Kane unloaded himself from the car and looked at Manuelito out of his one good eye.

  "Jim Kane at your service," he said and shook hands with the man.

  Manuelito looked Kane over and turned to the Lion.

  "Have you brought us a buyer?"

  "Yes. This man needs two-year-old horned steers," the Lion said.

  "Has he met my compadre, Juanito?"

  "Look at him again and ask me again if he has met your compadre, Juanito? They met last night, disgracefully."

  "You mean my compadre did this to your friend?"

  "Exactly."

  "Come in. I have some good cheese from the Sierra. I have some very good wine. I just brewed a strong pot of coffee."

  Spare and wiry serranos, men of the Sierra Madre, sat on the cool cement porch in front of the store. They wore peaked, hand-woven palm hats; worn, loose-fitting denim jackets; and tire-soled, leather-thonged huaraches. They watched Kane hobble into the store.

  Tiers of canned goods covered the walls behind the counter in the store. The Lion stepped behind the counter and availed himself of oval cans of sardines, a box of crackers, and cans of tomato juice. The three men walked into another room where Kane drank cool water from a sweating olla, an earthen jug. Sheets of dried beef tied in square bales were stacked in the corner of the room. Manuelito took a heavy cheese from a pile of white cheeses and went on into a big warehouse in the . back of the building. The warehouse smelled of onion, garlic, dried hides, and lye-cured leather. New vaquero saddles with long, goose-necked pommels and high, middle-of-the-back cantles hung from the ceiling with bullhide armas, brush armor, mantling them.

  Manuelito unfolded a cot and placed it in the center of the floor. The cot was the size of a twin bed, its lumber legs axhewn and heavy. It was covered with new burlap. He sat on the cot and sliced the white cheese with a sharp butcher knife.

  "Ah, what good cheese," the Lion growled. He sat across the cot from Manuelito and opened the two cans of sardines and laid them next to the cheese. The meat of the sardines was reddish-brown. The fishes lay in thick sauce. Manuelito went to a dark corner of the warehouse and brought back a five-gallon jug full of a liquid clear as spring water and set it down on the dirt floor by the cot.

  "El garrafón. The big jug, " he said respectfully. "This is the mezcal, lechuguilla from the Sierra, Señor Kane. This is the wine of this region of the Sierra made from the heads of the lechuguilla." He poured a swallow into a cup and handed it to Kane. The stuff was the Sierra Madre in liquid form for man to drink.

  The Lion and Manuelito discussed Kane's fight with Juan Vogel while they ate. Kane listened until he finished eating. Drowsiness bore down on him, caused by the lechuguilla, the heavy cheese, and meat inside him, and the big, tight pain in his leg. When all the whole meat of the sardines was gone and nothing lay in the cans but small bites and the coarsest bones in the thick sauce, Manuelito gathered the remains of the lunch to put away. The Lion picked up the cans and sucked what was left of the sardines and sauce into his mouth, crunching the bones. He walked out to the front of the store with Manuelito. Kane stretched out on the cot and slept. He was awakened by Manuelito's voice saying, "Compadre." He got up from the cot and went out the back door of the warehouse. He crossed a smooth, hard-packed yard to the edge of a corral. The corral was full of quiet cattle. They were thin. They all had horns. Every color that cattle could be was in that corral.

  Among the cattle were a few poor, dusty-backed, rung-horned old cows. The old cows were worn out and had no offspring by their sides, no reserves of energy remaining in their hides and bones. They couldn't even ruminate a cud to chew.

  ‘A few lean-backed old bulls gazed back at the mountains. They were completely detached from the old cows and the younger bulls around them. These old bulls reminded Kane of deposed tyrants who had been recaptured after too many years of being useless in exile. Now corraled, jailed, and condemned, they could think of nothing but their own creature comforts.

  Yearlings walked among them with the curiosity of adolescents looking for entertainment. They investigated the urine of Jim Kane an old cow bringing forth in them thoughts and instincts not yet matured. The movements of a small boy on the fence made them playful but not playful enough to make them use their spare energies to kick and buck like most cattle play. They mock-ferociously lowered their horns at a thin dog that searched the corral for new, warm manure to eat.

  The best cattle in the corral were fifteen head of two-year-old bulls. They were in the prime of their lives. In spite of their thinness they were healthy. Their eyes were clear. Their coats were alive, velvet, brilliantly clean. Their horns were heavy at the base and tapered out to sharp points ahead of them. These horns were the most efficient tools ever provided by a creator for the brute spearing of an adversary, whether it be a tiger or a man. The Spaniard had for centuries maintained control of the mating of the ancestors of these cattle so horns and hearts most efficient for killing had emerged. These cattle had inherited those horns. The hearts of brave fighting stock also had been inherited by these cattle to the extent they survived nobly and hardily in a countr
y hostile to cattle. But the traits of viciousness and love of war had not been strong enough to survive generations in the Sierra Madre."

  These cattle were game cattle and Kane wanted them for rodeo. They were cattle fit to entertain men, not just to satisfy man's appetite for beefsteak.

  Kane was sitting on the top board of the corral when he heard the men who were making the business of these cattle coming out of the back door of the store. He turned and saw that the first man approaching him was Juan Vogel. Juan Vogel's face was puffy and clean shaven. His clothes were even clean. His boots were polished. His hat was brushed clean. He walked up to Kane and extended his hand. Kane took it. . "¿Qué tal, Jim?" Juan Vogel said. "What do you think of mis alacranes, my scorpion cattle?"

  "I like them. How do you feel today, Juan?"

  "Not at all good. How do you feel?"

  "Horrible," Kane said, looking for some mark of his Sunday punch on Juan Vogel's face. He did not see any marks. The only residue on Juan Vogel's face of the bouts he had made the night before was the awakening-from-drunkenness swelling of the eyes.

  "I am rawly hungover. I have a moral hangover too," Juan Vogel said.

  "We had a good fight with the bottle and with ourselves," Kane said.

  "Yes, and we lost," Juan Vogel said. "Let's recoup and see if we can find homes for these cattle?

  12

  A New Country

  Reata. A reata is a rawhide rope. A well-made reata, well-tallowed and uniform throughout its length, is like another live appendage of the vaquero. There are two kinds of reatas. One kind is made by braiding four to eight strands of rawhide together. This is the best kind. If a braided reata breaks, a good maker of reatas can splice it back together so that no one can tell where the splice was made. Another kind of reata is the torcida or twisted kind. This reata is made hurriedly into strands of hardtwist. No matter how uniform the strands are or how well tallowed these twisted--reatas may be, they are always unmanageable and when they break they come un-twisted and are irreparable. The saying "buena reata," when applied to a man, means that he is always ready to serve a friendship. He is never daunted by too heavy a task or too hard a jerk. He splices easily.

  How much money do you want for the fifteen head of two-year-olds, Juan?" Jim Kane asked Juan Vogel.

  "I don't have anything to do with the younger cattle," Juan Vogel said. "The young cattle are for the Lion. The old cows and bulls are for me."

  "Are you going to put them on pasture?"

  "No. I'll kill them for the municipal market."

  "These old cattle won't yield much meat, will they?"

  "In this region we only kill ganado grande, big cattle, or older cattle. We seldom kill cattle that are still producing on the ranches. Here, the custom of the rancher is to sell only cattle that are no longer producing. In the market a kilo of the meat of an old bull sells for the same price as a kilo of the meat of a fat young heifer."

  "How much is Arce asking for the two-year-olds?" Kane asked.

  "I don't know what agreement he has with the Lion. Here he comes. Ask him."

  A slight, middle-aged man was walking toward the corral.

  He wore rimless glasses. He resembled a lean bird. He had a razor-thin line of whiskers on the rim of a purple upper lip that resembled the small, clipped beak of a nighthawk. His hat was tipped back. Juan Vogel, smoking his cigarette and squinting his eyes against the smoke, introduced the man to Kane.

  "This is our savior, Salvador Arce. Jim Kane," Juan Vogel said unsmilingly. Kane and Arce shook hands.

  "Are you a cattle buyer?" Arce asked Kane. ‘

  "Yes, I'm here with the Lion," said Kane.

  "How much will you give for the younger cattle""

  "I'm only here to look at them. The Lion and I will come to an understanding?

  "The Lion has nothing to do with these cattle. These are my cattle."

  "To tell the truth, I'm not interested in any of the yearling cattle," said Kane.

  "There are no yearling cattle here. The youngest are sobreaño."

  "What to you is sobreaño?" Kane asked him.

  "The cattle that will soon be two years old."

  "In that case I agree they are sobreaño but they have eleven months to go to become two years old."

  "I can see you don't know much about these Sierra cattle." .

  "I do know what I want and I don't want the thirty head of younger cattle. They won't be of any use to me," Kane said.

  "Why not?"

  "Their horns are too short, too soft."

  "You must be joking. You mean you are buying horns?"

  Arce laughed.

  "Exactly."

  Arce looked unbelievingly at Juan Vogel. Arce was astounded. He looked at Kane. He backed up and looked at the cattle..

  You are a phenomenal buyer. Do you buy goats too? I have some goats with good horns," Arce said.

  "No. Only cattle two to three years old with horns," Kane said.

  "Why do you want the horns?"

  "We hang them on the walls for the decoration of cowboy bars in the United States. Also it is said that ground into powder and served in bourbon whiskey they give special potency to the American male."

  "And the Americans give them to people they cuckold," the Lion growled as he came walking up. "I have Manuelito's truck coming for the forty-five head of becerros," he told Arce.

  "I need more money for the fifteen head of two-year-olds," Arce said to the Lion.

  "No, no, no, no," the Lion said, bowing his head and shaking it. "You agreed to deliver forty-five head for the money I loaned you. I'm taking them now."

  "All right. But give me more money for the fifteen head of two-year-olds or let me sell them to the American," said Arce.

  "I am going to sell them to the American," the Lion said, laughing.

  "It is not just."

  "Look, Salvador. What is ganado?"

  "Animals like these. Cattle."

  "What else does the word ‘ganado' mean?"

  "Gain. Profit."

  "Well, that is why I loaned you money. To gain and to profit by it."

  Juan Vogel finished his cigarette, lit a new one off the tiny butt of the old one, looked over the fence at the cattle, and laughed.

  "Bueno," Arce said. "I won't argue with you about it.

  A truck backed up to the loading chute at one end of the corral and the Lion went in and separated the younger cattle from the old cattle Vogel was going to take. The cattle were gentle and easy to handle. Serranos carrying reatas helped the Lion load the cattle on the truck. Salvador Arce stood outside the corral and watched.

  When the cattle were loaded the Lion came over to Kane. "Vámonos," he said. Kane got down off the fence. Juan Vogel did not turn. He stood shot-hipped and slack-waisted with his arms on the top board of the fence.

  "I'll see you in town, Juan," Kane said.

  "I'll see you," Juan Vogel said. He did not turn away from his concentration on the cattle.

  Kane and the Lion drove back to Rio Alamos to a house by a small lime orchard and a barbed wire and mesquite post corral. They got out of the car. A light-complexioned man, his face deeply tanned and creased by the sun, walked up buttoning his shirt. Kane recognized him as Güero Chavarin, one of the men he had met at Teresita's restaurant the day before.

  "How are you, Güero?" Kane asked.

  "Fine. How are you?` Chavarin laughed, and automatically lifted a hand to hide his rotten teeth.

  "We've got forty-five head coming in from San Bernardo, Güero," the Lion said. "Have you any feed for them?)

  "I have a few bales left of the alfalfa you brought Friday night," said Güero.

  "Have you got ten bales?"

  "I think so."

  "You ought to. I unloaded thirty-five bales here Friday."

  "I'm sure I have enough."

  The truck from San Bernardo rolled in and the Lion went over to direct the unloading. Chavarin stayed close to Kane. He appraised Kane, laughed,
and said, "How do you feel?" mocking Kane.

  "Bueno," Kane said.

  "Are you going to be in Rio Alamos a while?" Chavarin kept a silly, patronizing smile on his face. He didn't show his teeth though.

  "Yes," Kane said. He didn't feel well enough to carry on a conversation.

  "Buying cattle?"

  "Yes." Kane watched the Lion unloading the cattle. He hoped Chavarin would shut up.

  "With the Lion?" Chavarin laughed, hiding his mouth with one hand.

  "Yes."

  "Be careful he doesn't devour you," Chavarin mocked. Kane looked at him. "He won't. We have always dealt well with each other."

  "I can buy cattle cheaper for you than the Lion can. All you have to do is give me a commission?

  "I already have an agreement with the Lion for buying the cattle."

  "How many are you going to buy?"

  "Five hundred head."

  "So many? It will be impossible for the Lion to buy them all for you."

  "Then I won't buy five hundred, will I?"

  "Probably not. Do you like dairy cattle?"

  "I don't know anything about them."

  "I do. That is my business."

  "It is?"

  "Yes."

  "Where is your dairy?"

  "I don't have one at present."

  "Oh."

  "I am ready to stock a dairy at present. Milk is the best business here in Rio Alamos. If you will buy the cattle, American cows to stock my diary, we will make more money than five thousand of these chango, monkey, corrientes would and I won't steal from you."

  "You won't steal from me?"

  "No."

  "I'm glad to know ,that."

  "I am honest. I don't want to take an American like most of these people do. I have always liked Americans. People like the Lion and Juan Vogel will take advantage of an American because he has money."