Jim Kane - J P S Brown (15 page)

"
I don't think so. Not right now," Kane
said.

The Lion had finished unloading the cattle and was
walking toward them.

"
You let me know as soon as possible when you
have the money so I can begin preparations," Chavarin said
softly.

"
OK," Kane said softly.

"
Don't say anything about this to the Lion,"
Chavarin said more softly, as softly as an ambusher of a lion would
speak as he saw the lion approaching upwind and almost in range.

"
OK," Kane whispered.

"
Feed them ten bales, Güerito," the Lion
moaned. "And in the morning get your nephews in the corral and
gather up all that baling wire that is scattered around in there. A
person can't walk in that corral without hobbling himself in baling a
wire.

"
Sí, sí, sí, sí," Chavarin said, not
wanting Kane to see he took orders from the Lion.

"Ten bales. I say ten," the Lion said,
looking for Chavarin's attention.

"
I'm going to feed them right now,"
Chavarin said.

"
Before they bed down again," the Lion
said.

"Sí, sí, sí, sí, sí," Chavarin said
impatiently.

Kane and the Lion got into Kane's car. Chavarin came
up to Kane's side of the car and put his hands on the door. The door
was closed well but Chavarin opened it and slammed it shut keeping
his thumb on the button of the door handle so that it would not
latch. He slammed it in this way again, and then again. Kane took the
door from him and closed it himself

"
Be careful of that door. It does not close
well," Chavarin said.

The door had always closed well.

"
Are you going to take Jim to Teresita's, Lion?"
he asked.

"
Of course."

"
That is all right then. He should be well cared
for while he is hurt like he is. I was going to suggest he stay here
with my sister and me."

"
No‘ necessity of that," the Lion
growled.

"
This is your house whenever you wish to stay
here and save a hotel bill, you know that now," Chavarin told
Kane with feeling.

"
Thank you," Kane said.

"
The cattle, Güero. The cattle. I charge you
with the cattle," the Lion said.

"
Right away," Chavarin said. .

"
Thank you. We'll see you in the morning, "
the Lion said and backed the car into the street. "He will wait
until we are out of sight and then he will feed five bales and throw
the wire for five more bales into the corral," the Lion said as
he drove toward Teresita's.

"He wants to start a dairy. Is he a dairyman?"
Kane asked.

"
No, he is not a dairyman."

'He wants me to buy some milk cows. He wants me to go
into the business of milking cows with him."

The Lion laughed. "You must realize that you
would have to do all the milking if you went into the milk business
with him. In that case you would not need him unless you need a
boss."

The Lion drove to Teresita's.
 
 

13
The
Patriarch

The roosters of Rio Alamos tuned up each night before
midnight.

This first crowing was unprecise, a clearing out of
dusty, unmusical croaks. The crows sounded continuously for three
quarters of an hour through the settling dust of Rio Alamos dry,
starry darkness. Two hours later they began again and rolled across
town in strong, staccato song. At 4 A.M. the calls were only dutiful
and weary. At dawn they brightened with authority to awaken the town.
Kane believed that at least ten thousand full-grown and twenty
thousand half-grown roosters reigned in Rio Alamos and their crows
seemed all to be directed at Teresita's restaurant and converged on
the top floor in Kane's ear.

Kane and the Lion went each day to the ranches to
trade for and receive cattle. The formal procedures and mechanics of
each trade were the same. They followed a certain ritual that was
common to every trade. After receiving a bunch of cattle the buyers
would ship them on trucks to Chavarin's corral and go to another
ranch to start the ritual of another trade with another owner. .

They drove up to a ranch somewhere in the middle of
the brush and stopped in front of a squat house shaded by a long
portal
. Saddles,
armas
, bridles,
reatas
, and hemp
saddle pads hung in the shade of the
portal
..Ancient
horcones
, Y-shaped
hardwood log columns, supported the portales. The adobes of the
houses washed away and could be replaced. The horcón remained solid
and whole long after erosion had claimed adobes. The
portales
provided solid shade in the day, cool sleeping shelters
at night.
Horcones
outlived
several, of the houses and
portales
they supported. Old men of the ranches whose shelters
were supported by certain
horcones
remembered that their ancient grandfathers had said that
their ancient grandfathers had said that they could remember someone
saying that certain horcones had been in the houses when they had
been born.

Parked in front of one of these ranches, Kane and the
Lion sat in the car and waited while the people inside decided who
Kane and Lion were. When the decision was that they were the cattle
buyers known to be in the country, one of the women came out and
invited them to come to the shade of the
portal
.
The woman offered them chairs. She picked each chair  up and set
it in a new place for the visitors with her own hands. The rancher
was at home and not out
campeando
,
looking after his cattle in the brush. He greeted Kane and the Lion
and ordered them to sit down.

"Sit," he said. "Bring coffee, old
woman," he ordered his wife. "Now, how may I serve you?"
he asked Kane and the Lion.

This man was not fat. He was sparse and dried out and
the color of fresh jerky. He was thin of hair and his hands now were
perpetually clenched and encrusted by work.

The Lion introduced himself and introduced Kane. The
rancher introduced his bothers, sons, nephews, and grandsons, and all
took seats. The buyers and the rancher sat at a table. The sons,
brothers, nephews, and grandsons sat away from the table. Everyone
lit cigarettes. Kane offered American cigarettes and watched them
disappear.

"
Let us see," the rancher said when he took
the cigarette, "Very fine," he said, puffing as he lit the
cigarette. "Very good," looking at Kane. "Thank you."
Then he sat back, relaxed and at ease as though he had expected
something so new as an American cigarette might have had an adverse
effect on him. Finding he enjoyed the cigarette, he smiled and made a
relieved joke.

"
Bueno
." he
said. "Is it true what they say, that American cigarettes make a
man steril? I think not, no?"

The Lion laughed. "¿
Quién
sabe
, who knows? Ask our American friend."

"
I have never heard that theory," Kane
said.

The rancher decided to educate the American on what
he had learned about American smoking habits.

"
They say that Americans not only lose their
fertility but also their potency because of the small napkins they
insert in the tip of their cigarettes," he stated. "They
say that Americans are so afraid of contacting other harms through
smoking that they sacrifice their manly potentialities by imbedding
the small filter napkin in the cigarettes?

"
I hope not," Kane said.

"
¡Pues, dicen!
Well,
it is said this is true!
¡Lo que es el vicio!
The way the vice of the cigarette can govern a man! We
Mexicans are very addicted to our cigarettes but we smoke the pure,
common tobacco and it does not seem to harm us except for the cough."

By this time all the sons, brothers, grandsons, and
nephews had taken a long look at the deadly thing smoking in their
hands and let off puffing them so enjoyably. Everyone fell silent
while all dutifully finished smoking the cigarettes the American had
made as presents to them and when the patriarch had smoked his until
the filters were burning they all put the cigarettes out.

"
So you buy cattle," the patriarch said. `

"
Yes," Kane and the Lion said, impatient to
begin business after having spent a half hour discussing cigarettes.

"
Right now I have nothing to sell," the
patriarch said.

"Right now the cattle are very thin and will
bring no price. My cattle are dying right now. My custom is to sell
after the rains in September, October, and later when they are in
good flesh. Right now it would be very hard to sell. My old cows and
bulls are very poor."

"
We are buying only two-year-olds and only male
cattle," Kane said.

"
It would be very hard to sell right now. It is
not my custom to sell my young cattle. I prefer to wait until they
are larger and worth more money."

'`Don't you think it would help to thin out your
younger cattle?" Kane asked. "Your older cattle would get
more to eat."

"
It is not my custom. My younger cattle, my
ganado chico
, are not
worth anything right now."

"
Don't you have any two-year-old bulls with good
horns? Cattle old enough to have finished horns? I want the
llavudos
,
the ones with the big keys," Kane said.

"
In quantity. But that is all there is in this
country, man," the patriarch said.

"
How many do you have?"

"
Maybe three or four. " The patriarch
looked for confirmation to his sons, brothers, nephews, and
grandsons. Some of them nodded and some just looked at him, startled
and embarrassed that they had been addressed. "Three or four,"
someone answered, and someone else said, "there is the brown and
white paint, and the brown bull. I saw them yesterday at the
mezquital
. They were
together." Another said, "There is the
novillo
colorado
, the big red steer. He is very fat."
Someone else said, "Also the black
torte
,
young bull."

"
There are quite a few,
hay
algunos
," the patriarch stated
comfortably.

"
Just four?" Kane asked. .

"Four, " the patriarch said.

"
¿Hay no est
á
el pinto negro?
" "Isn't there the
black-and-white?" another asked in the way the ranchers of that
region have of accenting a statement of negative fact in the tone of
a question and making it by this tone into a statement of positive
fact.

"
Do you buy black-and-white cattle?" the
patriarch asked Kane.

"
Depending on the quality," Kane answered.

"Other buyers have not wanted the
black-and-white at any price.
¿Bueno?
Why is that? What does the black-and-white have?"

"
Perhaps the buyer did not want dairy cattle."

"
But how can a black-and-white bull be dairy
cattle?"

"
They' might not have wanted any cattle that had
dairy cattle characteristics."

"
Oooooooo . . . where would these cattle from
this region ever get dairy characteristics?

"
I don't know, " Kane said.

"
These cattle are
corriente
,
of the worst kind of the common native."

"
Those," the Lion interrupted, "those
are the kind of cattle we buy. "

"
And why would you want
corriente
?"

"
We send them to the other side. The
gringos
like them," the Lion said.

"
What for? To fatten them?" the old
patriarch asked.

`" Brothers, sons, nephews, and grandsons
laughed quietly at this question.

"
¿Quién sabe?
"
the Lion said.

"
Yes, with the pure little odor of good pasture
they fatten. The Americans won't need to turn them out on good feed.
The Americans will need only to drive a truck full of the good
American feed around these
corrientes
and the odor will fatten them." More laughter from
brothers, sons, nephews, and grandsons.

"
Those are the kind we need. The kind that are
cheap to buy and cheap to maintain," Kane said."

At the mention of value everyone subsided for a while
and Kane and the Lion and all the
rancheritos
sipped their coffee. Then the patriarch said craftily,
with the Mexican rancher's cunning that is so obvious and common to
every trade but the procedure that must be adhered to in every trade
so that a buyer is obliged to follow it and be fooled by it to ever
do business with the rancher, "Well, it is not my custom to sell
my younger cattle."