Jim Kane - J P S Brown (41 page)

The cattle were rested and fed well for ten days by
their buyer before they were packed into a boxcar on a train and
shipped north along the Sonora Coast to Hermosillo. This trip took 20
hours. In Hermosillo, the cattle were unloaded and inspected for
ticks in individual compartments in a chute. One bull was found to
have a live tick and the cattle were dipped again and put aside for
eight days in quarantine corrals. Here they were fed dry milo maize
fodder, poor nourishment for weak cattle, but good feed was scarce in
Sonora that year. In the Hermosillo corrals the brown-and-white
spotted bull came in contact with the contagious that could make him
"unmerchantable," unmarketable. His load of stock came out
of the eight-day quarantine at Hermosillo with wart virus and
ringworm from cattle that had passed through there before them. The
cattle were dipped again and loaded on the train and shipped 250
miles and 30 more hours north where they got a deadly break in their
luck. They were waylaid by a thief. Jim Kane, the buyer of the
cattle, had the cattle sold to a cattleman in Wyoming. He was
required to deliver the cattle to the Wyoming rancher on the American
side of the border. Before he could deliver, the cattle needed to
pass a sixty-day quarantine period. This period was imposed on all
cattle passing out of the fever tick zone south of Hermosillo. No
tick zone cattle could be exported without being quarantined sixty
days in the clean zone north of Hermosillo.

Jim Kane had shipped 1030 head of cattle from Rio
Alamos, his headquarters, to the town of Norteña in northern Sonora.
the ranch outside Norteña on which the cattle were to spend their
quarantine had been rented by Kane's partner. The owner of the ranch
was trusted completely by Kane's partner. The man was so trusted that
Kane's partner had not found it necessary to see the ranch or be
present to receive the cattle as they arrived.

Kane had been completely occupied in the mountains of
the Sierra Madre, buying and bringing the cattle out. He did his work
slowly, on horseback. He came out of the mountains with the cattle.
He doctored and fed them at his pasture in Rio Alamos and from there
he shipped them as they were ready and strong for shipping. He had
not been able to see the quarantine ranch. He had taken good care of
his cattle and had shipped them from Rio Alamos, confident that they
were passing into good hands.

After Kane shipped the last load of cattle, he spent
a week winding up his Rio Alamos business. During this week he sent
10 tons of cottonseed meal, 20 tons of cottonseed hulls, and 3
carloads of alfalfa hay to Norteña to supplement the dry pasture the
cattle would be ranging on. He realized this was not enough
supplement, but it was all he could acquire in the droughty state of
Sonora that year. He had hoped to feed the hay to the weakest cattle
and to the cattle he would castrate during their ten-day
hospitalization period.

Kane caught up with the brown-and-white spotted bulls
load of cattle at the end of their eight days of quarantine in
Hermosillo. He accompanied the load to the unloading point in
Norteña. The ranch was 15 miles from this little town. The owner of
the ranch lived in the town. Kane located him and introduced himself.
The owners name was Armando Espil. He was a tall, blue-eyed Mexican.
He invited Kane to breakfast. He was very polite. He introduced Kane
to his plump, working, silent wife and to his tall, blue-eyed son,
who stood around and watched, and listened silently, and who silently
disappeared when he heard Espil invite Kane to go see the cattle.
Espil loaded Kane into a factory-new-smelling Chrysler sedan, turned
on the air conditioning, and rolled up the air-tight, sound-tight
windows. The car shockproofly, soundproofly, bumped over a rough dry
street to Espil's new corrals at the edge of town.

Kane got out of the car. He had expected to see only
one load of cattle. He saw the corrals were full of his cattle and
sensed the first nudge of disappointment. It is the feeling any
husbandman senses when he sees his charges have fallen into the hands
of a thief. During that first moment at the corrals Kane didn't want
to believe his cattle had been exploited. In the next moment he was
convinced they had been.

"
Why are the cattle here?" he asked Espil.

"
These cattle were in terrible shape when they
arrived here. They would have died at the ranch. I kept them here for
a few days to rest and feed them. Kane, you shouldn't have shipped
cattle in that condition. I have already spent three thousand dollars
of my own money in feed keeping them alive."

"
We rented your ranch, Espil, not your corrals.
Is there no feed on your ranch?"

"
Much, much feed. Yes. But I didn't want to turn
them out until they had all been castrated and allowed to gain back
their strength."

"
Some of these cattle, the strongest, are two
loads of bulls and oxen. There they are over there. You have them
separated, I see. I castrated the bulls on my place in Rio Alamos.
They are the first, cattle I shipped you. They've been here over a
month. Why have you kept them here?"

"
Those bulls and oxen were in very bad shape.
Very bad. Six of them died here in spite of all I did to save them."
Kane remembered the big fine oxen and bulls he had brought down from
the Sierra early in the spring. He had rested them for three weeks on
good alfalfa pasture after the bulls had been castrated. The bulls
had healed and gained weight on the pasture. The oxen had filled out
and put on flesh. Kane climbed over the fence into their corral. They
were emaciated. He counted them. There were 26 cattle short. Nearly a
load. The cattle had nothing to eat. They moved gently out of Kane's
way or lay still as he walked through them.

"Where are the rest of these cattle?" Kane
asked.

"
They are all here or in the other corral. Six
died, I told you. I have the hides in the warehouse.

Kane saw that a big brindle ox, the best of the lot,
was missing. He remembered buying him from Tino Sierra in Guadalupe
Victoria. Kane walked through the gate into a big corral where the
remainder of his cattle were kept. The corral held smaller cattle,
yearlings, two-year-olds, and three-year- olds. They barely had room
to lie down. They were in worse condition than the older cattle. They
staggered when they walked. Their hind legs interfered with one
another. Their . thin necks were unable to hold up the heavy horns.
The brindle ox was not in the bunch. Not a leaf a stalk, a semblance
of feed, was in the troughs. The brown-and-white spotted bull
shuffled away from Kane. He had just been unloaded from a 500-mile
train ride and a week on short rations and he was stronger than any
of the cattle that had been kept by Espil to be "strengthened."

"
When do you feed my cattle? What do you feed my
cattle, Espil?"

"
We feed very early, very early. While you still
are sleeping peacefully in your cool motel room enjoying your rest."

"
And what do you feed them?"

"
Cood alfalfa hay from this region."

"What part of the alfalfa? The pure little odor?
¿El puro olorcito?
"

"
Ha, ha, ha. You are funny. You speak very good
Spanish. You have become more Mexican than even I am. How long have
you lived in Mexico, Jim?"

Kane climbed the fence out of the coral.

"
What happened to the meal and hulls I sent
you?"

"Oooooooo, I fed it last week. You sent very
little. Imagine! You only sent ten tons of meal. That is only twenty
pounds apiece for a thousand cattle."

"
And the twenty tons of hulls?"

"
I fed it with the meal."

Kane was sure the man was a liar and a thief now.
Cotton seed hulls are very linty. If you feed a bucketful of it there
will be traces of it in the trough, in the corral dirt, in the
manure, for months.

"
Where did you unload that feed?"

"
In the warehouse, where else?"

Kane walked over to the warehouse. Espil walked
behind him. Kane slowed up so that Espil could catch up and walk
abreast of him. Espil stayed behind.

In the warehouse Kane found not one hull, not one
speck of lint, not a trace of the greenish brown dust or strong warm
odor of cottonseed meal. The six hides were stacked in a corner. Kane
uncovered each dry crackling hide. No brindle.

"Let's go back to the motel. I have some
telephoning to do," Kane said.

At the motel he telephone his Mexican lawyer at
Frontera and asked him to come to Norte
ñ
a.
He then got into his pickup and went to the railroad office to see if
his alfalfa had arrived. The alfalfa had been on the rails for over a
week. At the depot he found the feed had arrived. He arranged for
trucks and took the hay to Espil's corrals. He filled the troughs all
they would hold. They held 300 of the small, light, Rio Alamos bales.
He left his vaquero, Cruz Gastelum, who had come along with the last
load, to watch over the cattle. Then he got in his pickup and went in
search of the Lion.

In Nort
eña
Kane
stopped at a gas station and asked for the Lion. The mid-afternoon
sun made the white floury dust on the streets white hot. No one was
in the streets.

"
Where is the Lion?" Kane asked the boy who
took care of the gas station.

The boy smiled. "Who knows where the Lion prowls
now. He is a lion."

"
Where does he live?" Kane asked.

"
The Lion lives everywhere. Sometimes here in
Nort
eña
. Sometimes in
the brush. All depends on what he is hunting."

"Where is his woman? His sons?"

"
Which woman? The legitimate? The legitimate is
in the town of Iglesias, about thirty kilometers from here. The
querida
, the lover, is
here in Norteña."

"
Where does she live?"

"In front of the old Hotel Cuatro Milpas."

Kane drove to the hotel and parked the pickup. He
crossed the baking street to the door of the house. Lolita answered
the knock.

"
And the Lion? Where is he?" Kane asked.

"Ooooohhhh, Meestair Kane," roared a voice
from inside. The girl smiled and opened the door. "
Pase
,
come in," she said.

"What the
chingaos
are you doing here," asked the Lion.

"
I'm trying to clean some cattle so I can take
them to the States."

"
Where are you cleaning them?" the Lion
asked, laughing.

"I thought at the Espil ranch."

The Lion laughed harder.

"
Why are you laughing? Kane asked.

` "At my compadrés ranch?" the Lion
managed through his laughter.

"
Is he your compadre?"

"
Seguro que s
í
.
Surely he is."

"
That finishes me off. Here I come to get you to
help me and find he is your compadre. Who baptized who?"

"
My compadre is godfather to my oldest son."

"
Sonofabitch!" Kane said in English.

"
Hee, hee, hee," said the Lion.

"
Well, I've got to get my cattle out of his
high-priced corrals and get them something to eat before they all die
or get eaten by Mexicans."

"
You should see how good that meat is,"
said the Lion. He pointed to a clothesline outside the window. Meat
was drying on the line. "My compadre brought me a hind quarter,
a large hindquarter. He said it was from a fat heifer he butchered,
but I knew by the taste it was from one of those 7X branded
corrientes of yours I've been seeing arrive this month."

"I bet you ate my brindle ox," Kane said.

"Probably."

'Sonofabitch. "

"
Not only that but I found my compadre a trucker
to take nineteen head of fat cattle to Mexicali for the butcher."

"Is Espil fattening cattle?"

"
;N0, h0mbre!" .

"
Has he got any cattle at all?"

"
¡No, hombre!
Shut
your mouth! The bank embargoed his ranch and his cattle six months
ago. He has no cattle he can sell or butcher. He built those corrals
after he sold the cattle in Mexicali."

"
He owns no ranch?"

"
Didn't I just tell you? The bank owns the ranch
now."

"
Sonofabitch!" Kane said. "Do you,
Lion, know anything about what happened to some feed, some cottonseed
hulls and meal I sent up here?"

"
No." No one can say no like a Mexican
looking away from you or looking at a space two inches from your
nose. "Didn't you see any meal around Espil's corrals?"

The Lion remembered something. He made a decision. He
leveled his eyes at Kane.

"
Hombre," he said. "Of course! I rode
horseback past my
compadrés
new corrals about a week ago late in the evening. I saw a truck
loaded with cottonseed meal. I needed a sack of meal for my milk cow
in Iglesias so when I got here I took my truck and went back to get
it. What do you think?"