Jim Kane - J P S Brown (20 page)

"
That's all of them, I guess," the driver
said.

"
Yeah, that's twelve head. That's what you've
usually been hauling," Kane said;

"
No, that's the total. We won't be hauling any
more.
Se acab
ó
el ganado
. No more
cattle."

"
I thought there were going to be five hundred
head. This only makes one hundred twenty."

"
Don David says that's all he's going to sell at
this time."

"
To finish me off!" Kane said..

"
The
gringo
said he couldn't pay the price they had originally
agreed on because the cattle are too wild. So Don David opened the
gate and turned the rest of the cattle out."

Kane opened a gate and let the steers into a big
pasture with the other cattle. The pasture was surrounded by a
six-wire fence and completely shaded by
álamos
trees. That evening Kane went to the hotel to see Mulligan. He found
him in his room sitting on the bed in a pair of pink silk pajamas.
The white bare feet peeked out from under the too-long pajama
trousers.

"
Those cattle just ain't livestock, Jim,"
Mulligan said.

"
They were tearing down the corrals and tearing
themselves up, too. I don't know what's going to happen when we turn
them loose on the desert. We'll probably never see them
again.

"
Well, Shorty, I'm shipping tomorrow no matter
what shape they're in. I can't afford to keep them for the thirty
dollars you are paying me," Kane said.

"
Go ahead," Mulligan said. "Sorry it
turned out this way, but I've got to answer to Potter and I just
couldn't take any more of those cattle at that price. We'll go ahead
with our deal on your little cattle and you'll make enough to feel
good again. The feed on the desert is really good and Potter will buy
a lot of cattle from you next year if he likes you."

Kane went to the railroad office the next morning and
ordered the cars. Then he looked up the
vaquero
truckers he always hired and told them what to expect.
He didn't intend to drive those snuffy cattle through the town of Rio
Alamos to the railroad yards. Mr. Potter and Mr. Mulligan were going
to have to pay for trucks.

On the morning he shipped, it took Kane and five
vaqueros
several hours
to get the cattle into the corrals. Train time was getting close.
Finally all the cattle were in the pens and they started loading the
trucks.

A big red steer about eight years old with a huge
spread of horns kept circling the corral and ducking back every time
a bunch was driven into the crowding pens off the loading chute. He
would circle the corral; looking over the top crosstie at the shady
álamos. As the cattle began to thin in the corral he became more
frantic. He was standing at a water trough along the fence when he
decided to jump. He cleared the trough and the top tie without
touching either.

Kane's horse, Pajaro, was standing saddled outside
the corral. Kane tightened his cinches, mounted, and took out after
the steer.

Big Red High Horns threw his tail up and ran for the
back fence of the pasture. He never hesitated when he came to it. He
jumped it, but he misjudged his distance and jumped from too far
back. His front feet cleared the top strand of wire but his hind feet
went under it and over the second strand. He was trapped by the hind
feet like a pilgrim in a penalty stock. Kane roped the big horns just
as the wires snapped and the steer broke free again. Kane had him
caught but he and the steer were on opposite sides of the fence. Kane
led him down to a gate, unlatched the gate without dismounting, and
rode through to the steer's side of the fence.

The big steer tried to hook Pajaro. Kane jerked him
down and tied him to a tree. It was too near train time to try to
lead him back to the corrals and load him. He tied the steer with
plenty of slack so he could get up when he cooled off.

Kane rode back to the corrals in time to see a black,
humpy bull jump the fence on the opposite side of the corrals from
Kane. He jumped into another of Kane's pastures, a large one, full of
brush. He was out of sight in an instant. They would have to get him
later.

Kane opened the gate and rode into the corral. The
big bull that had got the tail treatment in the first truckload had
armed himself to fight and was defending the chutes. He didn't want
to go back into the loading chute. His tail was scabby now and he was
looking for revenge. None of the other cattle would pass by him and
he turned back the ones that were inclined to enter the chute.

Kane roped him and threw the coils of the rope to one
of the truckers. The trucker passed the rope up the chute into the
truck and out the front end. All the truckers got on the end of the
rope and pulled the bull around so he faced up the chute and then one
of them stood in the truck at the end of the chute and waved his hat,
taunting the bull. When the bull charged, Kane and the other
vaqueros
hazed the other cattle after the bull and they followed him into the
truck.

One bull remained to be loaded. He had charged back
through the gate out of the crowding pen when Kane had entered to
rope the armed bull.

He was standing alone in the big corral now. When the
men all turned their eyes on him he jumped the fence into a lane that
separated the corrals from a neighbors salflower field. The fence
around the field was overgrown with thick, leafy vines that were
solid cover around the field. The lane curved round the field and out
of sight toward the Alamos River. The bull threw a number 9 in his
tail and charged down that lane toward the river.

Flaco Cota was coming up the lane around the corner
from the corrals. He was carrying a bucket of milk. He was happy in
the morning walking. He was singing loudly. Then
un
toron
ó
n
of
a bull, bent on escape, his thousand pounds in full velocity, rounded
the corner and bore down on him. The happy sounds of Flaco Cota
stopped in mid-phrase of the poem he sang and the sounds of terror of
Flaco Cota took over. The bull's head lowered to the ground in order
to get the tip of the horn as low as possible and drive it deeply
into the slender obstacle which it must lift and toss out of the way,
maybe destroying it satisfactorily. Flaco's arms raised. One hand
held the full milk bucket. The movement of the bulk of the bucket
caught the bull's eye and he drove his left horn, his best horn, at
it. He drove it so hard his front feet left the ground, his spine
stiffened and his head jerked sharply up.

It seemed to Flaco it rained milk for five minutes.
He could not believe there had been that much milk in that little
bucket. The smell of the milk was suddenly, inordinately, sharp in
his nostrils. He became aware of how warm it still felt, though it
was drying and getting sticky now. He was surprised that he even had
it, sticky, in the small creases of his throat and under his chin. He
was sitting there marveling blankly when Kane rode up..

Kane had heard Flaco's approaching song and had seen
the milk bucket in flight over the vines in the lane and had been
badly frightened for Flaco.

"
Are you all right, Flaco?" he asked.

"
Yes."

"
Are you really all right?"

"
What was that demon?"

"
A bull, Flaco."

"
Oh."

"
I was really scared. I thought he'd killed
you."

"
Well, no, he didn't."

"
Come on over to the corrals and I'll give you a
trago
for the
susto
,
a drink for the fright."

Kane started to ride away. He stopped and turned
back.

Flaco was sitting there, his legs spread out in front
of him, his palms turned up on his lap. Milk was splattered all over
him.

Flies were arriving lazily. Flaco smiled at Kane.

"
You coming, Flaco?"

"
Yes," said Flaco Cota and got up on his
feet.

The last truck was pulling out when Kane got back to
the corrals. He got out a liter of the
mezcal
lechuguilla
from the glove compartment of his
pickup and left it with the cowboys. He told them to drink it with
Flaco for his
susto
.
Then he and Benigno, the cowboy that worked steady for Kane, got in
the pickup and followed the truck to the railroad pens.

While they were loading the last railroad car, a
two-year-old steer slipped on the ramp between the dock and the car
and fell through an opening beside the ramp to the ground. Before
anyone could rope him or turn him back he was gone down the tracks.
Kane and Benigno chased him in the pickup. The steer followed the
tracks paralleling a big canal. When he got to a highway crossing,
some loafers who were refreshing themselves at a soda stand jumped up
and waved their arms at him. The steer turned off the tracks and
across a bridge spanning the canal. He scattered bicyclists off the
bridge. He left the highway and went into the backyard areas of
houses that faced the highway. When Kane and Benigno got to the
bridge they had lost the steer. Kane stopped the pickup on the
bridge.

"
And the steer?" he called to the loafers.

"
Rumbo a las cases
,
toward the houses," one shouted.

They were very excited and laughing. A bull had
blessed their morning.

"
Vámonos,
let go,"
Kane shouted and three of them got in the back of the pickup.

They heard a shriek and a woman burst out into the
street from behind a house shouting, "
¡Auxilio!
There goes a bull with the rabies."

Kane got to the woman just as the steer broke from
cover down at the end of the block. The steer was really running now.
An old woman was sprinting after him waving a broom
and
shouting, "Now you'll see who you scare. Now you'll see!"

The steer ran skidding across the highway, not
looking back. Across the highway he found the great, smooth,
uncomplicated openness of the municipal airport.

Kane gunned the pickup after him. He pulled up beside
the running steer. The steer was hot, he had but one purpose, to get
away from houses and to get to the brush he could see across the
airport. He would not turn away from the brush. Benigno grabbed the
steer's tail and pulled it over the windowsill and pulled down on it.
Kane drove the pickup on by and the steer was neatly tailed over.
Kane looked back and saw the steer rolling on his back with all four
feet up in the air. Kane braked the truck, jumped out of the cab in a
cloud of dust, and bulldogged the steer as he was getting up. There
was no fight left in the steer. They tied him up and loaded him in
the back of the pickup.

The switch engine was hooking on to the lead car
whenthey got back to the railroad yards. The trainmen waited while
Kane and Benigno loaded the steer.

Kane looked in the cars. The big cattle were caught
now. They stood silently together. Their dark, almond, Brahma eyes
looked out through the slits between the boards. Well, they'll be
free a little longer once they get on the desert, if they get to the
desert, Kane thought. My hand in their unhappiness is over.

That afternoon he went back to the place where he had
the big steer tied. The steer hadn't been up on his feet since Kane
left him. He was lying in the sun now and had made no
attempt
to rise and walk around to the shady side of the tree.

"
You must have missed fifteen or twenty roundups
in your life, old steer," Kane thought.

"
You brushed up and watched the cowboys go by
with your buddies all gathered together and being driven down the
road. You knew you'd never see them again. Then all of a sudden you
got real scared at how close you had come to getting caught too and
you ran off back in the brush until you couldn't smell or hear the
herd anymore.

"
How many cowboys must have been right on your
tail, just waiting till you ran through a little clearing so they
could rope those big horns of yours, and you found a deep, thick,
spiny clump and you knew a trail through it and when the vaquero
thought he had you, you turned sharply at right angles to his path
and slipped through the brush and you were alone again.

"
I wonder how they finally caught you. They
probably starved you for water. They cut you off from your regular
easy-to-get and easy-to-get-away-from watering places. Then they
trapped you in a corral or waterlot when you just couldn't stand the
thirst anymore. It took them years, though. I bet they haven't seen
you ten times in your life. I bet you spent many, many nights
smelling and listening to a watering place before you went down to
drink. I bet it's been years since you watered in the daytime. I bet
no one ever roped you on their little horses. You would have given
them a hot sleigh ride through the stickers. .