Jim Kane - J P S Brown (6 page)

When they crossed the yard by his shack Kane figured
the colt had surrendered for the day but the colt shied at something
strange to him there and blew his plug again. He bucked between the
windmill and the water tank. Kane had to duck a three-inch pipe that
extended between the windmill and the water tank. But he was sitting
up there just like a country gentleman on a Sunday ride when he lost
sight of Mortgage Maker's head. Two jumps later he was standing on
his own head watching the colt's legs kick over the top of him. The
colt bucked to the corral and stopped and looked back and watched
Kane cussing him and himself for having forgotten to finish
tightening his cinches in the wash when the colt had kicked at him.
Mortgage Maker had bucked Kane off saddle and all, this time. Kane
had to get untangled from his saddle and blankets before he could get
up.

He caught Mortgage Maker, saddled him again, rode him
back to the wash, up and down the wash several times, and back to
camp.

The sun was down when Kane dragged himself up to his
camp to cook supper.
 
 

4
The
Stampede

When cattle stampede,
they run. The herd instinct is so great in the bovine that he can
pass from a state of watchful relaxation with his fellows to running
berserk with them in an instant. This is probably the only ignoble
act he is capable of and he can't help it. He is only a poor cow
brute who has no mother and no father and never went to school.

Jim Kane had been riding Whiskey Talk, Warwhoop, and
the Mortgage brothers for a month. He was getting along with them
very well. The colts were ready to start work with cattle and Kane
was going to catch the other four colts and start breaking them. He
thought of taking a few days off and going to Frontera and seeing to
his horses. Their quarantine would soon be up. But one morning Bob
and Jimmy Keys drove in to Kane's camp and told him that the Mexican
Brahmas on the ranch had been sold. Bob wanted to start gathering
them that day.

Kane saddled Pajaro and rode out with the Keyses
after the big Brahmas. Bob shut the gate to the big waterlot at
Kane's camp on the way out so any cattle that came in to water would
not drink and leave while the men were away. The desert ranch had no
high ground, no canyons, no place but the brush for the cattle to
hide. The three men went to the back side of the ranch and worked the
cattle toward the waterlot, the only watering place on the desert
ranch. By mid-afternoon they had penned most of the three hundred
cattle, enough so that they made a load which could be shipped the
next morning. Only ten head had not been gathered. They were expected
to come to water on their own by shipping time. Bob Keys went to town
to order trucks. Kane and Jimmy stayed and ate an early supper. Kane
had saddled the little bay Whiskey Talk to ride in handling any
cattle that might come to the waterlot during the evening.

The desert was quiet at dark. Most of the cattle in
the waterlot were lying down. Even the traffic on the highway seemed
to have subsided. Kane and Jimmy Keys talked quietly.

A sound rumbled toward the desert camp. Headlights
shone on the road. A motor sputtered and growled between roars. When
the car got closer, Kane could. hear voices shrieking above the sound
of the motor. The car was a hopped-up, stripped-down little
convertible. It roared into the yard of the camp. Its lights shone on
the cattle bedded in the waterlot. The cattle got up and moved away
from the sounds and bright lights. The car circled in front of the
camp, its rear wheels skidding on the smooth desert sand. It headed
almost into Kane's cookshack and slid to a stop, motor throbbing
proudly, its voices piling out around. it.

"
Hey, Jimmy boy!" the voices called. "We've
come to see you on your lonesome prairie." Four girls and three
boys in sweatshirts, highwater jeans, tennis shoes with no socks, and
long hair, walked into the lamplight of the cookshack. "Can't
you guys leave a feller in peace?" Jimmy asked them, laughing.
He was glad to see his friends.

"
Whoopee! Look what we brought you, man," a
heavy-weight, blond kid with his long hair curled like Shirley
Temples shouted. He waved a jug of wine over his head. He found
Kane's four cups in the chuckbox and filled them from the jug.

"
See? See what we brought you?" the big kid
shouted. "We also have Slinky the virgin with us. See, man? We
brought Slinky for you, man." He grabbed a skinny blonde around
the waist and sat her down on Jimmy Keys's lap.

Jimmy pushed her off and introduced his friends to
Kane. They ignored Kane until one of them offered him a cup of wine.
He refused it.

"
You kids would be doing Jimmy and me a favor if
you kept quiet," Kane said. "We've got a bunch of steers
out there that might run if we made too much noise."

The kids ignored Kane.

"
Come on, Jimmy. Drink up. Drink deep and catch
up with us," a kid said.

"
You wild men are going to have to be quiet,"
Jimmy Keys said, still laughing at them. "You could cause a
stampede? Kane could tell that Jimmy didn't believe in stampedes but
was trying to impress his fellows with how Western he was.

"
Stampede! Stampede!" the kids chanted.
"Let's have a stampede!"

Kane tried to catch Jimmy's eye but the boy had
joined his friends completely now and he was also ignoring Kane. Kane
left them and walked down to the corrals. Whiskey Talk was in a
stall. He bridled him and led him out. He mounted him and rode around
the waterlot to the gate. The Brahmas were on their feet, their horns
thrust high, eyes wide and nostrils searching the sights and smells
of city kids. Kane knew how flimsy the waterlot fence would be if
those tall, heavy steers decided to run. Four steers had come to
water and were waiting outside the gate. Kane dismounted and opened
the gate so he could pen the cattle that were waiting outside. Steers
in the corral, startled by some new terror they had perceived in the
kids, ran toward the gate. Kane thought then he'd better leave the
gate shut until the kids left. He had all night to pen the four
steers. He picked up the gate to shut it. A loud, braying bawl
slapped him in the face. Every muscle and sense in the herd was
shocked motionless. Kane had time to realize that the sound had been
the horn of the jalopy. He knew the herd was going to run. He thought
of closing the gate. He thought of whipping a kid. He thought of
dropping the gate and running. Then he thought of mounting his horse.
But his feet, flat on the ground, his hands holding his reins and the
wire gate, were paralyzed by that sound and the conviction that the
herd was going to run.

Then the juvenile at the horn of the jalopy gleefully
released its voice again in a succession of bellows that creamed the
herd instinct of the jumpy Brahmas into stampede. In one instant the
steers passed from complete immobility to complete exertion. They did
not begin running one by one when the thought occurred to them as
individuals. As one, by instinct, they were running like racehorses
toward Kane. Kane swung on Whiskey Talk and reined him with the herd.
No rein, no spur, no shout or whip, could have made the colt run
faster. Kane and Whiskey Talk were in the barrel of a shotgun. Kane
heard the pop of staples as wire in the fence stretched in a flash to
breaking. He knew of a pile of rolled wire his colt ran through
without stumbling though steers on both sides of him tangled in it or
caught the rolls on their horns and spiraled them high in the air. He
knew of a deep, wide ditch the colt soared over while Kane saw steers
fall into it and scramble in panic to regain their feet while the
stampede caught them. The colt's clearing of the wash put Kane ahead
of the stampede. He checked the colt to protect him in the cholla
fields. The cholla slowed the stampede and Kane turned it off the
south fence of the pasture. The herd ran toward the highway and Kane
shouted at the leaders and rode close to them to turn them off the
highway fence. A big steer with thick, banana-like horns ran in the
lead. Kane shouted at him to tum him and the steer jumped ahead,
would not turn, and ran through the highway fence as though it were a
spiderweb. More steers followed the big steer through the wire but
the sounds and sights they made hitting the fence helped Kane turn
the rest of the stampede away from the highway. Now he knew the best
he could do was stop running Whiskey Talk, knowing the herd would
keep going for most of the night anyway. The next fence, the north
fence, was eight miles away and the steers might be tired enough when
they got there to be turned back by it.

Kane would not risk ruining Whiskey Talk even if it
were possible to turn the cattle and put them back into the waterlot
by himself in the night and he knew he had about as much chance of
containing the cattle alone as he had of flying the colt to New York.
He stopped the colt and watched the herd run by. The steers on the
tail end were limping and hurt. They would not stop. They did not
want to be alone and lost from the herd with their fear and their
hurts. Kane rode Whiskey Talk at a slow walk back to his camp.

At the corral he got his flashlight out of the saddle
house and found two pieces of a shovel handle and began pulling
cholla stalks off Whiskey Talk's chest and legs. The kids were still
in camp. Kane could see them when he felt like looking at them. The
noise of them continued. They were at his kitchen table passing their
jug of wine unaware of what they had caused. Kane finished doctoring
Whiskey Talk and unsaddled him. He had put his saddle on the rack and
was coming out of the saddle house when Jimmy Keys walked up.

"
Jim, you want some wine?" he asked. He
carried one of the Keyses' desert ranch cups in his hand.

Kane took the cup and drank down the wine. It warmed
him. He shined the flashlight beam on Whiskey Talk's front legs. The
cholla had let a lot of blood out of him.

"
What happened?" Jimmy asked.

"
You mean you don't know we've got troubles?"
Kane asked.

"
What kind of troubles?"

Kane turned Whiskey Talk loose in the corral. He got
hold of Jimmy Keys's elbow and led him over to the waterlot. He
shined the flashlight on the empty lot. He couldn't see posts or wire
on the side the cattle had run through.

"
What happened?" Jimmy asked.

"
Now what the hell does it look like?"

"Did they stampede?"

"
Stampede, stampede, stampede, pard," Kane
mocked the juvenile tone. "Ho, ho, hee, hee, and giggle, giggle,
giggle.

"
My God. I never thought they'd stampede. Do you
think we can gather them in the morning before Dad gets out here with
the trucks?"

"
Little man, we'll be lucky if we gather those
cattle in thirty days."

"
You mean we won't be able to get them back in
time to ship tomorrow?"

"I mean they are probably not even on the ranch
anymore. We have to get hold of your dad and cancel the trucks he has
ordered and get some help to gather the cattle before they get
completely out of the country. You think your buddies can give us a
ride to the telephone?"

"
Sure they will."

"
Well, let's go to the phone."

When Kane and Jimmy Keys walked into the light of the
kitchen one of the couples was coming out of Kane's bunk shack. Jimmy
Keys was pale in the face.

"Whose jalopy is that, Ace?" Kane asked the
heavyweight

"
Mine, why?"

"
We're going to town."

"
You need to go, Jimmy?" the ace asked.

"
Yeah," Jimmy said. "Right away."

"
The keys are in it."

"
No. All of us are going to town," Kane
said.

"Listen, man, who in the hell are you to tell us
what to do?".

"
I'm Jim Kane, boy. We're going to town in your
car."

"
H0, ho, ho, funny, funny, Jim Kane. Don't put
me on. My party ain't over yet."

"
Party's over. Let's go, Ace."

The ace's Shirley Temple curls danced. He filled his
tin cup out of a new jug. He grinned at his partners. The
girls-tittered. He lifted the cup in a mock salute to Kane. Kane was
standing across the table from him with his hands on the edge of the
table. The kid reached over the table and poured wine on both of
Kane's hands. The kid has imagination, Kane thought. He has a feeling
for ritual. Thanks, kid, for the ablution and the anointing. Kane
smiled at the kid. As the kid started drinking from the cup Kane hit
it on the bottom with the hardest straight right hand he could throw.