Jim Kane - J P S Brown (19 page)

Kane followed Potter up to his room. Fats opened a
big, stuffed briefcase and took out his cattle drafts. He paid Kane
for the 70 head. "Now Kane," he said. "I want you to
buy anything that is cheap around here. Stick to young Brahmas and
Brahma crosses. Don't buy any young
corrientes
like you've got left in your corral. If you buy those
natives, make sure they have good horns so we can sell them to the
rodeo producers."

"
All right, but at what price are you going to
receive these cattle?"

"
I'll receive them at cost. You get two dollars
a head commission. "

"
Are you going to leave me some money?"

"I just paid you $3500 dollars, didn't I?"

"
That's my money for my cattle. I'm talking
about your money for your cattle I'll be buying. "

"
Use your money until you need more, then I'll
see about fixing it so you can draft on me."

"
You going to pay me commission on cattle I buy
for you with my money? I can't do it. I owe every penny you paid me.
I owe it yesterday to my banker. You put it all up and I'll buy for
you."

"
OK I'll fix it so you can draft on me. Right as
soon as you can, go and see old man David Brajcich and see if you can
buy his cattle. I bought them five years ago. He's got good Brahmas.
You can give three pesos a kilo and no more. Try to get calves and
yearlings. I particularly don't want any of those big old outlaw
steers and bulls of his. Too wild."

"
Three pesos won't buy the cattle. He always
wants three twenty-five or three thirty, and he won't sell calves or
yearlings. He's probably got five hundred of those big cattle,"
said Kane.

"
Well, see what you can do."

Kane got up to leave. "Come on," Fats said.
"Stick around a while. Let's party. We got a lot done today and
I'm not leaving until in the morning. There's a bottle of whiskey in
my suitcase over there."

"
Get the son-of-a-bitch out then," Kane
said.

Fats got out a bottle of good American bourbon, split
the seal, and poured two big shots in the hotel water glasses.

"
Kane, I like you. I think you are going to make
me money. Here's to that," Fats said, raising his glass.

When Kane got back to the room at sunup the next day,
there were girls, clothes, empty bottles, pieces of Shorty Mulligan,
and several managers and guests, complaints scattered in the room.
Fats Potter was sitting up on the back of an easy chair, his feet in
the seat, his hair in his gray-white eyes, both hands holding a
bottle of whiskey, shouting, "Yah, yah, yah, I'm King of the
Drunkards."

Kane worked half the morning and then went to see
David Brajcich. He was a Slav who had come to the United States as a
young man. He spoke good English. He was a wine maker. He had
immigrated to Mexico and learned to . make
mezcal
.
His ranch had big
maguey
groves
on it from which he distilled the
mezcal
he called Tigrillo, little tiger. It had made him a rich
man.

On this same ranch he had released good Brahma bulls
with native corriente cows. He sold only when the huge ranch got so
overstocked even a wine maker could tell it. His cattle were wild as
deer but the difference was they could kill a man when he caught
them. They should have been hunted with guns.

David Brajcich thought that because his cattle were
half Brahma they were half made of gold. He priced them accordingly.
He never sold young cattle. He figured the bigger they were the more
money they would bring. He never figured on the amount one big steer
ate or how many weaker animals starved while that big steer grew
bigger, had to range farther for his feed, grew wilder until he
wasn't merchandise any more than a wild bear is merchandise.

Kane tried to convince Brajcich of a buyer's point of
view but still he couldn't buy the cattle. Brajcich didn't ever have
to sell. He would wait until his cattle was worth plenty money. There
was a
gringo
asking
for his cattle so they must now be worth plenty money. All
gringos
were rich. He never put up anything to support the
cattle. They never cost him anything. He only took from them when he
felt like it. He never visited the ranch except to arrive at the
distillery. His cowboys were allowed to milk the range cows and make
cheese. The sale of the cheese paid half their wages.

It shocked him years later when he learned that his
vaqueros
had for a
long time been selling his unbranded calves to a neighbor. This came
as he was about to die and he never felt the loss of the cattle. He
did, of course, feel the loss of his
vaquero
friends whom he had always vaguely admired. He had never
really understood why they worked for practically nothing in the sun
and thick brush with the beasts. Nor why all the cowmen he knew who
lived on their ranches always looked so burned, worn, and tired, and
always seemed so broke. Then on learning about his cattle, which had
never been anything but precious, like jewels to him, mercifully to
him and to everyone concerned, he died.

When Kane got back to the hotel that afternoon he
found Potter and Mulligan had checked out.

He shipped the cattle he had sold Potter to Potter's
ranch on the northern Sonora desert. The train passed through
Potter's ranch and the headquarters had a siding where the cattle
were unloaded.

Kane had bought two loads of cattle for Potter and
was working them in his corrals one day when Shorty Mulligan drove
up. He climbed up on top of the fence and watched Kane work. When
Kane finally turned and said hello he told Kane he and Potter had
bought the big Brajcich outlaws.

"When in the hell did you do that?" Kane
asked him.

"
The night after we left here. We made the whole
trade over the telephone," Shorty said.

"
How much did you give for them?"

"
Three-forty pesos laid in your corrals."

"
I thought you said you didn't want those big
cattle. I didn't offer that much for the calves. I only offered him
three-twenty-live pesos for the calves."

"
I know, but Fats got a wild hair and decided he
wanted those big steers, so he called Brajcich and bought them,"
said Mulligan.

"
He meant to buy them when he told me he didn't
want them, I bet," said Kane.

"
Well, he bought them and wants to know if
you'll receive them for us here and ship them to the desert, "
said Mulligan.

"Shit."

"
Come on. That's the way you've got to sneak up
on these rich Mexicans. You got to fool them into thinking their
cattle are cheap."

"Fool me, you mean. I never got any cattle
bought and Brajcich got more than he would have taken from me for
those big unmerchantables. You hotshots fixed it so I'll never be
able  to buy those Brajcich cattle. He'll never believe what I
tell him now.

"
Well, there are five hundred cattle coming to
your corrals and Fats authorized me to give you a quarter a head to
receive them and ship them to the desert for us, if you want to."

That sure saves giving me two dollars a head
commission.

"Take it or leave it, but if you don't take it
tell me so I can have the trucks unload someplace else"

"When do they start coming in?" asked Kane.

"I'll be back in time to cut the cattle at the
ranch. I'll let you know. Will you help us?"

"
OK."

"How many cattle have you bought for us?"
Mulligan asked.

"
Two loads."

"
Well, that's all we want for now. So don't buy
any more. I guess you can ship them this week while you are waiting
for the Brajcich cattle."

''Yeah."

"Draft on Fats for freight and feed and your
commission on the two loads. Oh, another thing. We'll take the rest
of your little cattle to the desert, if you want. If it will help you
any."

"
You want them?" asked Kane.

"
No. We'll pay the freight and feed on them and
market them for you. You price them, and then when we sell them we
take back the freight and feed, give you back your price, and we
split the profit."

"
Guarantee me forty dollars a head sixty days
from now and I'll ship them to you. I can't wait longer than that.
Then you can pay me half of the profit whenever you feel like it."

"That's OK. We ought to be able to guarantee
forty dollars easy enough."

"
I'll ship them with the rest, " said Kane.

"
Just a minute, Jim. There are some of those
little rats I don't want under any condition."

"
They'll all work, Shorty. "

"
Some of them are too weak. Let's just ship a
load."

"
Well, cut them then."

Shorty got down off the fence and walked among the
cattle in the corral. They were so gentle he could handle them afoot.
He cut out 26 head of the smallest, thinnest cattle.

"Those are the cutbacks of the cutbacks of the
cutbacks," Kane said. "The last of the ten thousand, of the
great empire."

"
They are pretty sorry, " Mulligan said.
"If I were you I'd turn them out someplace where it won't cost
to keep them and I'd just forget about them."

"
I've got some sorghum grass, just enough for
twenty-six head. I'll irrigate it and turn them out on it. "

"You can ship the other forty-four to us. We'll
pay you when we sell them."

They were walking back to Shorty's pickup. He got in.

"
No," said Kane. "Pay me in sixty
days. I'm broke. I mean it."

"All right then. I've got to look at some cattle
in Tesopaco so I'm going to get moving. I'll see you in a week, "
said Mulligan.

"
So long, Shorty. "

Kane spent a week repairing his corrals and pasture
fences. He knew 500 wild beasts that were nothing like normal bovines
were on the way.

When the first truck rolled up to his chutes he
thought it was empty. The bottom half of the rack was solid board.
Kane couldn't see anything in the top half of the rack.

The trucker backed up to the chute. Kane climbed up
on the rack. All the cattle were down in a mass of sullen disorder.
They had that moribund look, that abandonment of will that Brahma
cattle get when they have been choused to their limit. They had quit
in their tracks. Unable to hold their footing in the crowded, shaking
truck, they had cramped up and given up and lain down one on top of
another.

Kane opened the end gate of the truck. The driver was
perched on top of the rack poking a big gray bull with a sharp stick.
The bull just quivered with each poke and growled a deep, gruff
exhalation of his frustration.

"
Leave him alone,
cuñado
,"
Kane said. "He'll stay there forever if you keep that up."

Kane grabbed the horns of the bovine nearest the gate
and pulled head and front legs around so they lay in the chute. Then
he lifted on the tail. The steer jumped up and charged shakily down
the chute looking for an opponent.

Kane had more room now and he began loosening the
pile. Finally the bull the driver had been poking was the only one
left. He was down with his head under him. His nose was half in a
pool of fresh manure. Bubbles rose from under one nostril as he
breathed. His eyes were turned up. He had quit. It was just more than
he could bear. Kane pulled his head over and he lay flat. The eyes
went farther away. They had become orientally passive. The bull was
suspending his animation. He had poured gasoline on himself and set
himself afire and was now going to die inscrutably. He had sent his
being away and made his body impervious.

Kane jumped over the rack, found two sticks, and
climbed back in with the bull. He picked up the limp tail,
straightened it, and stood on the tuft at the end. Then he placed the
sticks on two sides of the tail and squeezed them together with both
hands on the ends. He rubbed the sticks briskly up and down the white
tail. Little downy hairs began to depart from the tail, drifting
lightly in the air. The pink hide began to show in spots. The being
was summoned back to the present, to the here, to the now. It found
sight again and then voice. The bull bellowed and lurched to his
feet, sliding on the slick truck bottom. He whirled toward Kane but
Kane was running through the gate. The bull charged after Kane
through the chute and into the coral.

Every truckload that came in was full of mad, sulled
up, skinned up, on-the-fight cattle. Kane had a man meeting the 
trucks at the scale and Kane stayed at the corrals supervising the
unloading. Mulligan was loading the cattle at the Brajcich ranch.

On the second day, in the evening, Kane had just
unloaded a truck, when the driver walked up to him and handed him the
weight slips.