Jim Kane - J P S Brown (21 page)

"
Now you are caught and you can't face getting
up. You would rather lie there and die. You probably will unless I
can figure a way to get you up."

Kane had brought a quart bottle of rum mixed with
warm water and sugar. He hooked the steer's dry nostrils with thumb
and forefinger and jammed the bottle in the corner of his mouth,
pouring the toddy down his throat. He and Benigno got hold of the
tail together and hauled up on it but the steer refused to stand on
his hind legs when they cleared the ground. The stick treatment was
just torturing him for nothing. The big steer just moaned softly and
hooked the big horns weakly into the ground. Kane left him alone. If`
he wanted to die, why not let him. He would never be merchandise.
Maybe the toddy warm in his stomach would give him hope.

Kane and Benigno went to the corrals and saddled
their horses. They rode out in the brush pasture to look for the
black bull that had got away at shipping time.

The pasture was about fifty acres of thick brush cut
in two by a wide right-of-way for a power line that passed through
it. Benigno and Kane each took half of the pasture and started
looking for the bull.

Kane always liked to ride in the brush. If he looked
carefully and rode slowly he could find the trails used by the stock.
They hadn't turned any of the Brajcich cattle loose in this pasture.
They would have been too hard to find and drive out.

He hit the bull's tracks and followed them into a
corner of the pasture. Big mesquite trees grew there and the ground
was in solid shade. It was almost evening. Kane found tracks where
the bull had nooned under the mesquite. He cut for tracks around the
perimeter of bare ground shaded by the mesquite and found where the
bull had left the corner and gone down the fence toward the
right-of-way of the power line again. He followed the tracks down the
fence and suddenly lost them. He circled away from the fence around a
thicket of
jócona
, a
straight, thorny, white tree. He couldn't} find where the bull had
come out. He rode around the
jócona
again, searching in the deep shadows. When he got back
to the fence again he saw the bull. The bull was standing in plain
sight of the fence. He was black in the shadows. His head was turned
away from Kane. He was standing absolutely still and dark, only his
ears showed he was aware of Kane. The big, leafy, Brahma ears were
bent back, the holes pointed directly at Kane. They twitched a little
when Kane stopped to watch the bull. The ears moved slowly to where
Kane's progress might have continued and when they heard nothing
there they turned to the last place they had heard Kane and stopped
again. The tip of one ear twitched a fly away. Kane didn't move. The
ears examined the terrain in front of the bull, then returned again
to Kane. The head turned slowly and one eye glared, unblinking lest
movement attract, at Kane.

"
Boo!" said Kane.

The black bull moved gracefully through the
jócona
.
Kane skirted the thicket so as to head the bull down the fence. When
the bull hit the trail on the fence, Kane spurred Pajaro at fullspeed
after him, got his rope off the swells of the saddle, and built a
loop.

"
¡Ahí te va
!
He's coming to you!" he shouted to Benigno, but Benigno was late
and the bull broke out into the right-of-way and back into the brush
ahead of him.

Kane told Benigno to wait again in the right-of-way
by the fence and rode after the bull. He tracked him into the corner
where he jumped him again. He drove down the fence but the bull
sensed Benigno in the right-of-way this time and cut away in front of
Benigno, taking the same route back toward the corner.

Kane stopped to let Pajaro breathe.

"
He takes that same trail down the fence pretty
well," he said to Benigno. "Let's build a trap there. I'll
go start him again. You go down the fence from the right-of-way and
build a trap on the trail." Then Kane rode after the bull again.
Benigno rode back to the fence, got off his mare, took down his
reata, and walked up the fence. It was so quiet in the
monte
.
There was complete silence and loneliness. No one may walk this trail
again for years, he thought. A
palo fierro
,
ironwood tree, stood on the edge of the trail. It had a fine trunk.
Benigno wondered if anyone had ever noticed it before or if anyone
would ever use it again for anything but firewood. Two sets of the
bull's tracks marked the trail between the fence and the tree.
Benigno tied the tip of the 70-foot rawhide
reata
to the trunk. He noticed how the wraps of the
rope knocked off the little loose fringes of bark leaving the trunk
smooth, used now. Then he spread a big loop vertically from the
branches of the tree over the trail. He was fixing the bottom of the
loop so that it was about three feet clear of the ground so it would
catch near the bull's brisket, when he heard the bull coming swiftly
through the
monte
.

The time he took to look up and see if he could spot
the bull almost cost him his life. The bull was on him. Benigno took
the quickest way out of there and the best running was straight down
the trail. Black bull swiftly closed on running
vaquero
,
both sprinting for their lives. Benigno felt the heat of the bull
behind him. Benigno caught his breath, strained, and kicked in
another bucketful of speed but just then he heard the
reata
snap tight. He turned in time to see the bull's jaws
bulge as the head snapped back, the throat latch squeezed tightly by
the rigid band of the
reata
,
the belly turn up, the hind legs clear the ground, the tail whip,
then the whole bull together again suddenly, all at once, slam down
on his back.

Kane rode up. Pajaro was sweating, blowing. Benigno
had the bull by the tail and was holding him down. Kane had not seen
any of the action of the bull's being caught.

"
We got him that time didn't we?? Kane said.

"
Just like the grownups do," Benigno said,
smiling, with sweat running down his face.

"
Easy. Fácil," Kane said, dismounting and
tying together a front foot and a hind foot on one side so the bull
could walk but not run.

 "
Yes, easy," Benigno said, still
smiling. "Easy runs the urine. He almost got me. I've got urines
down both legs."

"
Didn't I give you enough time?"

"
Yes, but I got to dreaming about how alone it
is in the brush."

They led the miscreant back to the corral and fed him
there. Kane took a toddy to the red steer. He found him dead. He and
Benigno skinned the steer and hung the hide to dry on the fence. They
drank the toddy while they worked.

The next few days they looked for the gray bull that
had frightened Flaco Cota. Finally they got word that he was in a big
forest of
álamos
trees, an
alameda
,
bounded by a nearly 360-degree bend in the Alamos River.

They took on Alejandro Pesqueira for help. Alejandro
was riding the skinniest old bald-faced sorrel horse Kane had ever
seen saddled in his life. Alejandro's saddle must have been fifty
years old, but didn't look a bit older than the horse under it. The
saddle was black, stiff and there were half-circles in the skirts
where big rats had eaten on it.

Alejandro was rawly hungover. He was almost still
drunk and almost sober and the pain, both physical and moral, was
looming too close. He got down in the knee-deep clear water of the
river as they were fording and scooped up handfuls to drink.

The
alameda
was
completely shaded by the big trees. The first moments of riding in
the shade on the soft ground pleasured Alejandro's brow but he knew
the pleasure would not last long. It was too early and he had been
very, very drunk. .

A woodcutter told them the bull had taken up with a
bunch of cows. He knew exactly where the bull was at that moment. The
bull had badly disquieted the woodcutter. When they found the bull
and the cows, they separated.

Benigno and Alejandro circled the cows from opposite
sides. They would drive the little herd toward Kane. Kane chose a
spot hidden from the trail where he could charge the bull and drive
him toward a small clearing. He waited a long time. The animals began
to stir around him. A little flock of parrots alighted in a tree
overhead, arguing. One wasn't saying anything. The others were giving
him hell. The persecuted parrot looked away from them, then flew
away. They followed furiously, still arguing. After awhile, Kane
heard the cattle coming. They came softly, at their own pace, unaware
of him. Kane moved Pajaro so that he stood on all four feet. He shook
his rope out. Pajaro listened intently to the cattle. The bull came
by ahead of the others. Pajaro set himself, trembling on his hind
legs, and charged. Kane's rope snagged on a limb and he missed.

The bull left the herd. The men worried him all
through the morning and afternoon. They had nearly spent their
horseflesh. Alejandro was a ruin. Kane and Benigno were tired. They
finally trapped the bull where he was surrounded by impenetrable
thicket on three sides. Kane and Alejandro waited separately on two
trails the bull had to take to get out of the thicket. Benigno went
in and flushed him out.

The bull came out on Alejandro's trail. When he saw
Alejandro he threw up his head and unhurriedly made for Alejandro.
This was no obstacle. Hadn't he hooked the milk right out of the last
one? Alejandro was swinging a long, long loop and shouting at the
gray bull. The little horse was backing away down the trail. When the
bull was very close, the horse turned tail to the bull and carried a
grateful Alejandro away. Then the bull was gone again in the
monte
.

The men crossed the river and rode into San Isidro
for a beer. They sat under a big mango tree and drank the pale beer
from a pitcher. Alejandro ordered another, he said he was very
thirsty. They all were, and the beer tasted the way Kane remembered
it tasted the first time he got to drink beer as a boy.

They were a little tight when they got back on their
horses after the third pitcher. It was dark when they got back to the
lane by the corrals.

"
It sure is dark in here," Benigno said.
"Like for ghosts, Alejandro?"

"
You believe in ghosts, don't you, Alejandro?"
Kane asked.

"
No, I do not believe in ghosts," Alejandro
answered solemnly.

"
How can you not believe in ghosts? You're
riding one, aren't you?" Kane said. `

"
Say anything you like to me, but don't insult
my horse. This horse has seen good days, too. This horse was once
nearly as large as Pajaro and he was a much better horse than
Pajaro."

"I'm sure he was, Alejandro," Kane said.
"We just wanted to know if you were afraid of ghosts."

"
I do not believe in ghosts," said
Alejandro. "I do believe in big, gray bulls and so does my
horse."

The next day Potter called Kane. He was drunk on the
phone. "Did you gather those steers, Jim Kane?" he
demanded.

"
Gathered one. One's out. One's dead."

"
What's the matter? Can't gather the livestock?"

"
It ain't livestock. It ain't even
merchantable."

"
Well, the seventeen head that died between Rio
Alamos and the desert sure ain't merchantable."

"That many?"

"
Yeah. That many. Cowboy. "

"Pard, you took great pains to buy them. They've
been yours ten days now. You're their husband, pard, not me."

"Sell those you got left and send me the money.
You bought any more of those little scorpions you sent me?"

"
No. Mulligan said you didn't want any more."

"
Well, at least somebody is trying to keep me
from going broke. Of course, he has to. He'd starve without me."

"
The cattle I sent you are sure a helluva lot
better and cheaper than any you big executives bought down here,"
said Kane.

"
Sure they are. They're winners. Yah, yah, yah,
yah,yah."

"
Well, what do you want? What did you call me
for, Potter? I'm busy."

"
Sure you are. You're a big businessman, ain't
you? I wanted to talk to a big businessman. That's how I keep making
money and you big businessmen stay broke."

"What else, Fats?"

"
That's all. Good-bye, big businessman. Cowboy."

"
Don't forget, Fats. In fifty days you pay me
for my steers."

"Sure, big businessman. But that's Mulligan's
deal. You see Mulligan about that. Forty-four head might break me but
I think I can manage to pay off a big businessman like you."

The dunning was enough to make Potter hang up. Kane
would remember that. He might want to get rid of Potter again
sometime.