Jim Kane - J P S Brown (13 page)

The Lion stopped the car. He pulled Kane off and held
him while Juan Vogel got out of the car. The Lion got out and held
Juan Vogel. Juan Vogel held onto the door and argued with the Lion.
Kane went out the door on the side opposite them, ran around the back
of the car, came up behind the Lion, and, still on the run, hung a
Sunday on Juan Vogel's jaw. Juan Vogel went down. Jim Kane had been
in too much of a hurry. He had shot the Sunday from too far away. He
had been off balance and his bad knee went out and he fell beside
Juan Vogel on the ground. Juan Vogel got up. Jim Kane got to his
hands and knees but could not get up. Juan Vogel aimed an inaccurate
and drunken kick at Jim Kane's head and missed. The Lion pulled him
away from Kane.

Kane pulled himself to his feet against the car. The
galling pain of the swelling knee sobered him. Juan Vogel and the
Lion were arguing and Kane was asking himself what he was doing there
on that dark street. What had he done for himself? He had crippled
his knee again. This was not a bad break. This was another nothing
venture. Now Juan Vogel was staggering down the street cursing Kane.

The Lion took Kane back to a room in Teresita's. He
went to his own room and came back with a dust-covered bottle full of
a muddy-looking, rank-smelling fluid.

"This will cure it. By morning you won't know
you were ever hurt," the Lion said.

"
What is it?" Kane asked. He sat on the
edge of the bed in his underwear watching a scar on his knee swell
until it shone from stretching.

"It is volcanic oil. The best remedy for any
bone or muscle injury."

"
You are crazy."

"
You will see. I put this on and rub it in and
all your broken and decomposed places will compose themselves by
morning."

Kane looked at the swelling knee and knew it was
ruined again. He knew from experience that he would hardly be able to
walk for at least two weeks. He felt extremely sorry for himself for
being in the hands of this ignorant animal. The Lion was an
irrational hulk of unreasoning adobe. This big savage was telling him
that an ugly oil he was slopping on the knee was going to
miraculously, for reasons unknown, overnight, remove the soreness.
This was the same man who was going to help Kane advance his fortunes
in Mexico. A big, drunken tear formed in Kane's eye and rolled down
his nose.

"
No llores
. Don't cry
now. Don't cry," the Lion said, distressed, and picked up a
dirty towel from the foot of the bed and pushed it into Kane's face.
He saturated Kane's knee with the volcanic oil until the skin was
dyed dark brown, then rolled Kane into the bed, turned off the light,
and left the room.

He was back in the room at 4:30 A.M.

"
You are nocturnal," Kane accused him.
"Have you no human qualities at all?"

"
Old Lions have no time to sleep. You and I have
a long way to go to see cattle today. We are going to San Bernardo at
the foot of the Sierra where my friend Arce is holding the cattle.
The men that were with Juan Vogel yesterday brought them down from
the Sierra," the Lion said and left the room. Kane wrapped his
knee in an elastic bandage and hobbled down to Teresita's kitchen.
Loud early morning ranch music from a large radio in the kitchen
entertained the listless survivors of Carnaval who sat over hot bowls
of menudo, the beef tripe soup everyone believes is tonic for the
reveler before he retires from a celebration and returns to his
normal bed. Teresita sat at the head of one of her tables dictating
to the Lion. The Lion was working her accounts for her with pencil
and paper. The kitchen was warm and steamy from the great pot of
boiling menudo on the stove and smelled of boiled bovine innards,
hominy, and green herbs.

"
¡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 country
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.