Jim Kane - J P S Brown (57 page)

"
Now what?" Kane asked him, smiling through
his injuries.

"
I was just thinking how funny it is that you
put yourself in jail."

"
How do you figure I put myself in jail?"
Kane asked him.

"
All you had to do this morning was offer to pay
one hundred dollars in a kind way before the Ministerio Público was
forced to put a price on Chavarin's hurts. Then he would have only
asked for two hundred dollars and you wouldn't have had to go to
jail."

"
The only trouble with that idea is that I
wouldn't have given two hundred dollars. I wouldn't have given a
veinte
centavo
piece."

"
Ah, you wanted to go to jail?"

"
Now how do you figure I wanted to go to jail?"

"
You went, didn't you? You could have paid to
get out

before you got in. He had the jail for you when you
went in to see him. He always has the jail. Didn't you know he only
wanted money to keep you out of his jail? Didn't you know he was
Chavarin's uncle?

"
I knew he was Chavarin's uncle all right."

"
Then you went to jail because you wanted to,"
Juan Vogel laughed.

"
Ah, these Americans and their philanthropy,"
the Lion sighed.

"
What philanthropy? I was blackmailed."

"
What philanthropy. See how generous you are?
You don't even realize the good you have done this day. First, you
spent a solid day in public lamentation for the harm you did a poor
working man. Second, you donated a fortune in gold for the poor man's
future well-being. And third, you have remedied a shame that has
plagued him for years," the Lion said.

"
What shame?" Kane asked.

"
You know how he has always hidden his mouth
behind his hand when he laughed? Now he can smile without ever again
having to hide his teeth from the world. Now he has Jim Kane's smile.
A brand new set of teeth, even and white. You paid for them. His
smile will be even more brilliant than yours.
 

32
The
Drive

Santiago Brennan flew Jim Kane and the Lion to
Chinipas. The plane flew close over Kane's cattle by the river,
cleared some big
guamúchil
trees,
and landed on the short, crooked, dippy, uphill strip.

Kane had cleaned up all his business in Rio Alamos.
He and the Lion had shipped the last fifty head to Hermosillo, the
cattle Chavarin had waylaid. They were in the hands of the rancher
who would be quarantining them. Room and board and telephone bills
were paid in full in Rio Alamos. Kane had left the town without
looking back.

Santiago was going on to Creel to tell Batista to
meet Kane's herd with his trucks at Cuiteco on the new railroad in
fourteen days. Kane and the Lion watched Santiago take off and then
walked to Chinipas.

Ezequiel Graf was not at the store. The Lion borrowed
Juan Vogel's bay horse and saddle and Kane saddled Pajaro. They rode
out to see the herd. The cattle had rested and filled in the four
days since Kane had left Chinipas.

The
vaqueros
started the cattle on the drive for Creel the next day.
Kane was happy to be making tracks. Each track Pajaro made was
carrying Kane farther away from some demand on him in Rio Alamos; the
honorable claim on him by a polite man who would like Kane to do
right by his daughter; a girl who wanted Kane to provide for her in
his future; a legal system which was probably planning new ways to
make Kane provide for future meals for the new teeth he had bought
for Chavarin.

Kane and the Lion were the only men on the drive who
were going horseback. They led two packmules with the blankets and
provisions. The ten
vaqueros
worked
the herd afoot. The cattle were driven in three separate bunches and
allowed to graze the whole way. The drive started south along the
Otero River and would head east on the third day. Two of Don Marcos
Aquilera's bulls, a brindle and a black, kept trying to turn back.
They wanted to go back to their home ground. They constantly,
persistently, pressed more work on the vaqueros as they tried for
escape. The brindle would amble slowly and stubbornly at right angles
to the path of the herd. The black was a fence crosser. Every time
the herd neared a fence he got on the other side of it and separated
himself from the herd.

Finally the Lion roped the black to bring him back
from across a fence. Kane told him to hold the black while Kane roped
the brindle. The brindle had wide horns that spread out straight from
the sides of his head. When he separated himself from the herd again
Kane cut in behind him and rode to him. Kane caught only one horn at
the base. He stopped Pajaro and the brindle kept running. The nylon
rope stretched, held fast to the horn, the brindle twisted his head
slightly and the rope came off his horn, snapped back like a rubber
band, and hit Kane on the cheekbone, unhorsing him. Pajaro ran a few
steps and stopped. He turned and looked back surprisedly at Jim Kane
as if to say, "Now I know that wasn't right." Kane heard
the roar of the Lion laughing at him.

One of the vaqueros led Pajaro back to Kane.

"
You are supposed to catch both horns,
jefe
,
chief,  the vaquero said solemnly. Kane sat on the ground
rolling a spur rowel with his finger while he waited for his eyes to
uncross and the numbness to go out of his legs so he could get back
on his horse. The
vaquero
picked
up the nylon rope and held it up to Kane's face.

"
The cable left its signature firmly on your
face,
jefe
," he
said. Kane felt his cheek and cheekbone gingerly with the smallest,
most tender tips of his fingers and with them sensed ' a four-inch
length of broken skin far away on the edge of his numb face.

"
A perfect imprint of each coil of the hard
twist,
jefe
. The
chavinda
almost
unmothered your face," the
vaquero
said sympathetically. Kane thought, a lot is happening
to unmother me lately.

"
What is this cable used for ordinarily?"
the
vaquero
asked,
comparing the nylon with the soft coils of his well tallowed
reata
.

"Ordinarily for roping bulls by both horns,"
Kane said. It is called a nylon rope."

"
Ah, s
í
,
s
í
, s
í
,
s
í
. The lasso would
be very heavy for me."

"
The nylon can be very heavy on the headbone,"
Kane said and got back on his horse. He caught the big brindle and
led him back to where the Lion was holding the black fence-crosser.
The
vaqueros
brought a
mancuerna
, an iron
swivel with a ring on each end, and tied the two bulls to the rings,
necking them together. The black and the brindle bucked and strained
against each other, then went straight for the center of the herd and
stayed there.

The first night's
sabana
,
or bedground, for the cattle was in a rock corral under a sheer cliff
on the edge of the river. The
vaqueros
shut the cattle in the corral at dark and laid their own
beds around the outside of the corral.

The Lion had elected himself cook for the drive. He
had made sure all the fresh provisions were packed on the mule he was
leading. His saliva began flowing as he unpacked his mule. It
increased as the intended dinner gathered momentum with his slicing
of the meat into thin steaks and with Kane's building of the fire.
His appetite grew larger and manifested itself in a low, grumbling
laugh as he warmed the cooked beans he had bought that morning from a
woman in Chinipas. His tastes burst forth into grunting, gasping
laugh when he salted the meat, bunched coals away from the fire, and
laid the steaks on the coals. He unwrapped a bundle of flour
tortillas from clean flour sacks, unfolded big sheets of tortilla,
and laid them on the coals, grinning at Kane for approval for his
foresight in buying the tortillas from the Chinipas woman. When a
tortilla was warm and smoking in spots from the coals, he picked up a
steak with the tortilla and handed it to a vaquero. There were no
dishes on the drive. Tortillas were used to pick up and hold meat and
wipe up beans from a common bowl. Each vaquero carried his own cup
for coffee and his own knife.

Breakfast was coffee, beans, and tortillas. Lunch was
sardines, canned fruit, and tortillas. When no fresh meat was
available supper was canned meat, beans, tortillas. The Lion made the
tortillas on the trail, the tortillas called
gordas
,
thick tortillas of corn meal or flour. When the herd was near a ranch
where he could borrow a stove or a large flatiron he made big,
sheetlike tortillas.

Kane had never seen men work so hard requiring so
little food and clothing. The
vaqueros
dressed in thin cotton shirts, baggy jeans pegged at the
bottom,
huaraches
, and
straw hats. Each carried a water gourd slung on a string or net from
his shoulder, and a
reata
.
The
vaqueros
smoked
coarse, home-grown tobacco rolled in com leaf. They lighted the
cigarettes by striking white rock to the steel of their knives and
livening the spark in pieces of yesca, the spongy pulp from the
center of dead oak.

The cattle were never out of sight of the
vaqueros
,
neither on the high, rocky, brushy trails over gorges, nor on smooth,
open plain. The men never relaxed their attention to the cattle. They
could read a bull's mind and always be one step ahead of him. In the
nights, the
vaqueros
rolled
in their  blankets and slept on the ground with their feet to
the fire, their hats lolling on the sides of their heads, their heads
pillowed by their arms. They rose early, before the coming sun pushed
the cold air of the night over them at dawn, and stood wrapped in
their blankets by a new fire. In the days, they went effortlessly by
the cattle, saving their own and the cattle's energies. They never
rushed themselves or hurried the cattle.

As the drive progressed the cattle walked in an
accustomed rhythm that matched the erect, attentive pace of the
vaqueros
. The cattle
knew instinctively where the
vaqueros
were
at every moment and a bull knew without looking at his herder when he
had made one step out of the grazing boundaries of the herd.

After a few days the black bull and the brindle
walked, drank, and ate together as one in this rhythm of
vaquero
and herd. They were untied from each other but they
stayed together for the rest of the drive as though they were still
necked together.

At the end of the fourth day's
jornada
,
or journey, the herd arrived at the ranch of Carlos Esmit, the ranch
called El Término. Kane and the Lion ordered the
vaqueros
to hold the cattle off the ranch while they went ahead
to ask Esmit for permission to pass through his ranch.

The two men rode over a high trail through oak
country to a basin where the headquarters of the ranch lay. The basin
was rimmed by a squat, rock fence. The basin covered about a
half-section of land. It had been plowed and cultivated in contours
on the slopes and planted in corn the previous summer. The cornstalks
were so thick the ground could not be seen and the basin glared
yellow in the sun. The headquarters lay in the center of the bottom
of the basin. The main house was a square, stuccoed house,
whitewashed and clean. A log barn stood by the wide, rock corral. A
tight log stable stood by the barn. A stream of clear water ran
through the basin and filled a lake held by a rock dam below the main
house. A four-wheel-drive pickup truck was parked in front of the
house.

Kane and the Lion tied their horses outside the
corral and walked to the door of the house. An elderly lady answered
the door. She wore a plain cotton dress, long, thick hose, and laced,
low-heeled shoes. Her long hair was neatly combed and braided in a
thick coil at the nape of her neck. She recognized the Lion and
invited the two men into the house. She made coffee and warmed a
batch of sourdough biscuits for them while they told her the reason
for their visit. They heard a dog barking and went outside.

A tall, thin man was dismounting from a black mule at
the door of the stable. He wore starched Levis, a clean Levi jacket,
a good Stetson hat. The only apparel he used that was not the same as
that of an American cowman was the
huarache
on his naked foot and the heavy Chihuahua spur on the
bare heel. The man studied Kane and the Lion closely as they walked
toward him. He unsaddled the mule and turned him loose in the
cornstalks. The Lion introduced Kane to Carlos Esmit. Esmit did not
tip his hat for Kane as was the custom of the Sierra. He had blue
eyes and a light complexion.