Jim Kane - J P S Brown (40 page)

The cattle slowed as each negotiated a slab of
slanted rock in the trail that was the top of the precipice. Cattle
were gingerly picking their way across the slab, placing their hooves
flat and shifting their weights carefully, using the friction of
their hooves to keep them standing on the smoothly polished rock.
Three young bulls were on the slab. An old bull just ahead of the
spotted yearling was getting ready to step on the slab when directly
above them and so close they could smell his breath, an old lion
raised up and screamed. The hooves of the first bull at the head of
the file flashed out from under him. He slammed against the rock on
his side and began sliding off the slab. Just as he reached the
perpendicular, he found footing on a tiny shelf and he regained his
stand, but he lost his hold again and cartwheeled off the mountain.
The second bull had lost the footing of his hind legs and he slid off
the mountain looking frantically up into the eyes of the lion, pawing
at the slab with his weightless front feet. The third bull had
managed to turn and head back toward the trail where the yearling and
the old bull stood frozen, but the blast of the lion's scream had
turned him involuntarily down the mountain and he never regained his
footing. He rolled off. The lion crept stiffly off the rock above the
trail and looked down into the .gorge where the three bulls had
fallen, ignoring the old bull and the yearling. Then he took the
trail down to the bottom of the gorge.

The spotted yearling's companion was a very old
black-and-white muley bull. The old bull's hornless head was
dome-shaped on top with a large thatch of hair topping the dome and a
triangle of white hair on his forehead. His eyes bugged like a Jersey
milk cow's. He was narrow between his front legs, long and slightly
swayed in the back, high and bony in the hips. He stood on daintily
slim white-stockinged legs. He was incredibly old, having seen eleven
summers, and had missed being gathered in ten roundups.

Now Old Bull and the yearling stood on the trail
above the sweet water they had anticipated, but which now was
impossible to get. The terror died out of them. Old Bull eyed the
polished rock in the trail ahead. He had never liked this place
because of the danger of a careless step, an unprovoked slip. He
disliked it even more now after having seen his three partners fail
on it. Old Bull had ranged with them for the protection of their
young horns and had paid for their company by a merciless bullying
from them. Now they were a mass of pulp feed for an old toothless
lion in the gorge and Old Bull wasn't going across the place ahead
that had been avenue to their deaths. He turned in the trail and
became aware of the yearling standing quietly behind him. When he
started back up the trail the yearling followed closely. Together
they went off in search of new country, new water.

The two stayed together for the next year, a bad
time, a dry and hungry year, in which they ranged far and did not
fare well. During this year the brown-and-white spotted yearling grew
into a two-year-old bull with high proud horns. His horns were black
tipped, ivory white at the base. They were reminiscent of the horns
of the bulls of the fighting caste of Spain, his ancestors. But he
was thin, and tick-and lice-ridden. He looked like a scorpion. The
beautiful thick horns on the thin little body resembled the pincers
of a scorpion. The root of the tail and the anus peaked out like the
tail end of an ant. Down between the hind legs hung the scrotum with
the two great eggs. He consisted only of horns, genitals, and
appetite.

One morning he and o1d Bull were standing on the side
of a hill warming themselves with the first of the day's sun when
they both smelled man. They stood quietly smelling him, gradually
gathering their faculties and their strength, noting the extent of
their capabilities but not wasting an ounce of them, waiting to see
what they would need. They were too weak for instant flight. They
must locate the man and see what he would do. They did not raise
their heads. When the man came near he was above them. He was afoot
in 
huaraches
. He
shouted at them and they moved smoothly, effortlessly, waiting for an
advantage, a chance to hide or get above the man. Near the bottom of
the hill they hit a trail and began trotting, hoping to outdistance
him. They came to a wash at the bottom of the hill and were
temporarily out of the sight of the man.

They trotted down the wash. They found a way out of
the wash and climbed back up toward where they had been sunning
themselves. They kept in the brush, climbing steadily and
unhurriedly. The man, from above the wash, watched a place in the
trail on the other side of the wash where the two bulls would have to
appear. When they did not show he struck for high ground,
anticipating that the cattle would double back. He was swift. He did
not look at the ground. He watched above him until he saw two spotted
coats flash through a brief opening in the brush above him. He noted
the angle of their climb and he made a wide circle toward the top of
the hill to intercept them without their seeing him until they should
meet with him. The man climbed faster than the cattle. He did not
sweat nor draw a long breath. He shook out a loop in the recently
tallowed rawhide
reata
in
his hand. He reached the crest of the hill at exactly the same time
the old spotted bull did. The old bull did not pause or flinch from
the man. He lowered his head and dove down the other side of the
hill. The brown-and-white spotted two-year-old had been surprised by
the appearance of the man and he stopped, for once not following
unquestioning after Old Bull. The man, like the old bull, did not
pause but instantly began swinging the loop over his head. The
brown-and-white spotted bull whirled in fright, shocked into flight
at last by the long-remembered whirr of the
reata
and charged back down the mountain. The man sprang after
him, headed him off, and roped him. The bull bucked and bulled his
neck, dragging the man behind him through brush and rock. The man
gave slack, ran to a tree, and took a wrap on a branch. The spotted
bull hit the end of the
reata
and
bucked in circles around the tree. He plunged through the brush,
careless of rock or cactus until he crashed to his knees into a young
spiny mesquite bush. The man let him rest there for several moments
until the spotted bull freed himself of the bush and stood clear. He
shook his horns in an effort to free them of the rawhide that
encircled them. The man unwrapped the end of the
reata
from the tree and tried to drive the bull down to the
trail again but the bull was too intent on freeing himself of the
reata
and paid no
attention either to the man or the ground over which he floundered.
He lunged for higher ground, tossing his horns as high as he could
and shaking them. He passed through a
cholla
bed and came out with the thorned stalks clinging to his
head and sides. The man secured him to another tree and cut a short
green post which he tied around the spotted bull's neck so that it
dangled between his front legs. He took the reata off the horns and
turned the spotted bull loose. The bull made an effort to gain the
crest of the hill again but when he tried to run the big post banged
against his front legs, tripping him. He needed to walk slowly and
carefully in order to be able to move at all. The man walked him off
the hill, down the trail, and into a holding pasture with several
other cattle. The man roped him again and removed the post. That
afternoon Old Bull was brought in, too.

A few days later, the cattle in the holding pasture
were gathered and shut up in the corral together. The corral was not
new to any of the cattle. As calves they had all endured hunger in
this same place during the time their mothers had been milked. Here
they had known loneliness, fer, and anger. The cattle were well
acquainted with this corral. Now they had been gathered in the corral
to be sold.

The men caught the brown-and-white spotted
two-year-old bull and branded and vaccinated him. During that day and
the next the cattle were run back and forth a hundred times in the
corral as each bull was roped and branded. In the evenings, the
cattle were surrounded by
vaqueros
and driven to a stream and watered. Then they were shut
up again for the night in the corral, the gate poles, the
trancas
,
were tied in their slots with rawhide, and the cattle were fed
tasol
,
cornstalk fodder. The spotted two-year-old bull learned to hook
short, twisting thrusts with his horns so as to miss no time eating.
Old Bull stayed by his side. The
tasol
in the corral never lasted long. One day the
tranca
s
were let down and the cattle were counted out the gate and headed up
a trail. They were driven for days across the Sierra Madre. They left
the Mother Mountains they knew and hit new, wider, trails, the track
of thousands of cattle that had gone out before them.

During the night the herd was watched over by the
vaqueros
on the
sabanas
, the
bedgrounds. These grounds were chosen for their openness and for
natural barriers that detained the cattle in the night but allowed
them freedom to graze. Each days drive between
sabanas
was a
jornada
,
a journey.

The brown-and-white spotted bull arrived at each
sabana
weaker and more
footsore. He was hungry, too, but hunger was a dull state he was
accustomed to. It was spring, the driest time of the year. Feed was
meager. Many herds had passed over the trail before this one. The
sabanas were grazed clean, but the spotted bull and Old Bull always
found something to eat; the bark of a tree, a leaf of a prickly pear,
a bud on the end of a young twig.

Each night Old Bull took his companion and made an
attempt to escape, but they were always turned back. Old Bull was
increasingly sad. He missed his old haunts. He wanted to be back in
his
querencia
. One day
he sat down in the trail. The herd was driven on without him, but a
small boy was left to watch him. Small Boy chattered constantly at
Old Bull who rested, enjoying his stay in the pine shade. Small Boy
found a stick and poked in astonishingly tender places, interrupting
the pleasure of the stay. Old Bull passively stayed down. Then Small
Boy got two short sticks, stood on Old Bull's tail, grasped the
sticks in both hands with a stick on each side of Old Bull's tail,
and rubbed the sticks up and down with Old Bull's tail squeezed in
between them. Old Bull got up. Old Bull and Small Boy caught up to
the herd at the
sabana
that
evening.

On the eighth day of the drive the herd arrived at a
corral in a village at the foot of the Sonora side of the Sierra
Madre. The cattle were driven through a chute. At the end of the
chute the brown-and-white spotted bull shied at a pool of water. He
didn't want to step into the water but the bulls behind him pushed
him into it. The pool was shallow. He trotted through it. He came to
a longer pool. The bull ahead of him, fooled by the small pool
behind, had stepped confidently into the long pool and had submerged
completely out of sight. He had come up swimming. The brown-and-white
spotted bull stood on the slick cement at the brink of the long pool,
loath to step into the dark water. It smelled bad. He was crowded
from behind. A sharp horn drove into his hams. He leaped as far as he
could from his last step on the cement and plunged to the bottom of
the stinking mess. When he surfaced he turned his nose skyward,
nostrils cringing, horns bobbing above the water. He swam for his
life. At the end of the pool his feet struck a rough good step and he
emerged, thoroughly violated by the malodorous bath, but disinfected
of lice and ticks. He had undergone his first dip of insecticide.

During the night the herd in the corral diminished as
trucks came and vaqueros loaded them with cattle. The brown-and-white
spotted bull ate nothing that night. He was far from even the odor of
cattle feed. The first cocks were crowing when he was packed on a
truck with other cattle. All night he slid and fought for his balance
on the deck of the truck. The deck was slick with manure and urine of
the cattle that had been hauled before. The road was rough and steep.
The spotted bull was crammed by the other cattle on every curve,
every hill.

In the morning he was
unloaded into another chute and given another foul dipping. Then he
was fed the first good feeding of his life. He had arrived at a
market, had become merchandise. He rested.