Jim Kane - J P S Brown (45 page)

Vogel rode out of sight. Pajaro, deciding on his own
next probable action, snorted, looked back to assure his getaway
path, and returned his attention to the puma.

The puma crouched when he heard Pajaro snort. The
tail lay flat and immobile. The head was facing down the trail but
the animal's attention was behind him now. Pajaro was stilled again
by what he was seeing. The puma was not sure he knew what was behind
him. He was upwind from Kane and couldn't smell him. He was downhill
and at a disadvantage. He didn't want to turn his head. He was hiding
by trusting only to his camouflage.

The puma flattened his ears and waited for Kane to
move. Pajaro didn't move an ear or an eyelash. Kane watched the puma.
Now he wasn't sure the animal was a puma.

The animal's head and shoulders were massive. The
hind quarters were narrow. Unlike most pumas, this one had no heavy
belly. He resembled a greyhound in his middle. He was yellow rather
than tawny. A dark brown stripe marked his backbone. He looked like a
prehistoric lion. He seemed to be a more feral breed of cat than the
puma.

"
You better move," Kane said out loud to
him. "Before someone else comes along and moves you with a
thirty-thirty."

The animal jumped to the top of a rock overhanging
the steep uphill side of the trail. His big claws scraped and held
there for a moment but he lost his grip on the slick rock and
scrambled back to the trail. Pajaro snorted and ran backward. This
must have eased any fears the animal might have had about a dangerous
foe behind him and he turned and looked at the horseman for the first
time. He ignored the horse and looked Kane in the eye. He saw he had
plenty of time to get out of the trail and go on about his business.

When he moved again Kane saw he was an old feline,
one who had lost most of the spring in the big paws but,
nevertheless, was still confident of his strength. This time he moved
toward Kane and Pajaro to a place where he could get off the trail
without clumsiness or loss of dignity. This move scared Pajaro into
another fit of running backward. The old cat walked off the trail,
paused on a rock, rolled his coarse, old whiskers in a peeved
half-snarl, and went on about his business.

Kane pressed Pajaro to pass the place where the beast
had crouched. The horse, who only lately had been tired and lazily
conservative of each step he took, was now electric hot-wired in
every fiber.

"
Did you see that big lion?" Kane called to
Juan Vogel when he caught up with him.

"
What lion?" Juan Vogel asked.

"
Well, maybe he was a lion. He was a big, dun
animal. He had a dark stripe down his back and a big head. He crossed
the trail between us." '

"
I didn't see him," Vogel said. He had been
riding now for six hours. He was tired and he had two more hours to
ride. He didn't feel like turning in his saddle to look at Kane when
he talked to him. He didn't feel like talking about anything to
anyone. He kept riding.

Kane and Pajaro were no longer tired. A predator
beast had freshened their trail for them.

"Well, he sure was there," Kane said.
"Pajaro and I saw him, didn't we, Pajaro?" Pajaro was now
again doing the going down of the trail that was expected of him but
with more impulse in each chamber of him than before.

A few hours later Kane and Juan Vogel rode into
Macarena. They dismounted in front of Antonio Almada's store and were
invited to sit with him under the
portal
that shaded the back of the store. Antonio Almada was
schoolmaster, mayor, postmaster, and
comisario
of Macarena, Chihuahua. His wife brought
mezcal
and lime halves to chase it with while Almada pumped
Kane and Vogel for news of Rio Alamos. Pajaro and Vogel's bay horse
were being fed t
asol
and
corn in a courtyard below the porch where the men were resting. .

"
The
alazanón
is one of the largest horses I have ever seen," the
schoolmaster said. "A good horse.
Bueno
,
is he
fino
, a horse of
fine blood?"

"
He is what we call
quarto
de milla
, a quarter horse," Kane said.

"
A boy who came off the trail ahead of you told
us that Juan Vogel was on his way here to Macarena accompanied by a
giant gringo riding a big sorrel horse that wore horseshoes weighing
a kilo apiece."

"
As you see, Jim Kane is no giant. He could not
be much longer than two meters and the
alazán
wears shoes that weigh only a pound a piece," Juan
Vogel said. Now that he was in off the trail and resting he could
smile and be pleasant.

"
I would like to mount such a horse one time,"
the schoolmaster said.

"
He is well-educated," Juan Vogel said.
"Jim roped calves for us at Gilaremo when we branded. The horse
works alone while Jim gets down afoot to handle the calves he has
roped."

"
I've heard of horses who work that way. The
Texans have such horses. Are you a Texan, Senor Kane?"

"
No. I am from Arizona but Texans and the
vaqueros
of Arizona
work cattle more or less in the same way."

"
I would like someday to mount such a horse,"
the schoolmaster said again.

Kane did not offer the man his horse. Instead, he
sipped the
mezcal
the
man had given him.

"
Jim says the horse is a one-man horse. He
doesn't work for other men," Juan Vogel said. s

"
Ah, well. Justly so. We of Chihuahua say that
we never loan our pistol, our woman, or our horse," the
schoolmaster said.

"
In Sonora they say the same thing," Juan
Vogel said.

"
We of Arizona believe the same," Kane
said.

"What did the big horse do when you saw the
lion?" Juan Vogel asked, laughing.

"
Not much," Kane said, studying Vogel's
face for foolishness. "You don't believe I saw a lion, do you?"

"
I don't say you didn't see a lion. I only say I
didn't see a lion," Juan Vogel said, keeping a sober face.

"What lion? Where?" the schoolmaster asked.

"
Jim and the big horse saw a lion that did not
look like a lion on that long descent into the canyon of Los Sauces,"
Juan Vogel said.

"
What do you mean, 'the animal didn't look like
a lion'? Was it a lion or wasn't it?"

"
It must have been a lion," Jim Kane said.
"But it was not like any other lion I have ever seen. It was
bigger than an ordinary mountain lion. It was lighter in color and
had a much larger head. It moved heavily but was not big-bellied."

"
Maybe it was an
onza
,"
the schoolmaster said.

"
I've heard of the
onza
but I thought it existed only in legend, " Kane
said. `

"The
onza
is
fable to people who do not live in the Sierra. To us of the Sierra
the onza is real."

"
Well, the man saw him so he was not a legend.
just another old lion." Juan Vogel said.

"
We call
onza
the animal who could be the cross between the
tigre
,
or jaguar, and the
leon pardo
,
or puma. He is bigger than the puma. He is yellow-dun in color with a
long-haired dark strip down his back. Some say he is a hybrid like a
mule and cannot reproduce. I don't know if this is true but I have
seen
onzas
myself,"
the schoolmaster said.

"
When did you see an
onza
?"
Juan Vogel asked skeptically.

"
Seven years ago Tino Sierra's
vaqueros
killed two half-grown
onzas
and brought them here," the schoolmaster
said."Believe me, they were real
onzas
,
Señor Kane. At least they were specimens of the animal we know as
the
onza
in the
Sierra. No known specimen of the
onza
exists anywhere in any museum or zoo in the world. I
know this because I investigated in Chihuahua City that year when
Tino's
vaqueros
brought
those animals in. I know something else about them . . ."

"
And what would that be?" Juan Vogel said.

"
The animals Tino's
vaqueros
brought in had only one gut from their throats to their
anuses. They had no stomachs."

"
Ah, now you have gone too far, Antonio. You
can't expect us to believe animals of such simple digestive systems
could survive in the Sierra. They would have no stomach for it,"
said Vogel, laughing at his own wit.

"
And another thing," the schoolmaster said.

"
What now?" Vogel said.

"
The guts of those young
onzas
were full of grass."

"
Enough. You'll finish me off with your
discoveries," Vogel said, laughing as hard as he could to make
the schoolmaster stop looking so sober and believable.

"
We know the
onza
thrives in the Sierra, " the schoolmaster said,
refusing to smile. "Many of us believe they do very little harm.
Maybe they do us no harm because this is the only terrain left to
them in which they can survive."

A boy of about fifteen came in carrying a carton of
canned beer.

"
With your permission,
profesór
,"
he said to the schoolmaster, "my father sends this
cartoncito
to Señor Vogel and the Americano with his compliments?

"
What else did Tino Sierra say when he sent you
with the beer, Amador?" Juan Vogel asked the boy, laughing and
opening three cans of warm beer.

"
He said he would send more beer when this
carton was finished."

"What else?"

"
He said he would continue to send beer and if
you got drunk on his beer before you came to our house he was going
to find a club and come over here and beat you with it," the boy
said, smiling.

Vogel roared, laughing. "Tell Tino Sierra we'll
be over when we finish this carton," he said.

The boy left. The schoolmaster, Kane, and Vogel drank
the ten cans of beer in the carton. The tall and sturdy wife of the
schoolmaster set a table with clean linen and silver and  served
them a supper of jerky, potatoes, beans, and flour tortillas.

When they had finished supper and were smoking and
Kane was thinking he was ready for his bed, the boy, Amador Sierra,
appeared again with another carton of beer.

"With your permission, profes
ó
r
. . .the boy began.

"
¡Ah, cómo chinga ese Tino Sierra!
"
Juan Vogel said.

"Come on, Jim. We'll do well by going over to
visit him now and getting the errand over with, otherwise he will
bother us all night."

Tino Sierra was a man sixty years old. He was the man
who had matched Kane and Vogel in the arm wrestling in Teresita's
restaurant the day Kane had arrived in Rio Alamos in search of the
Lion. Tino was an Indian. He owned a store in Macarena. He worked
several gold mines and he also bought gold from individual miners in
the Sierra. He owned a cattle ranch and he took cattle on trade in
his store.

Kane was told by Juan Vogel that no one had ever seen
Tino Sierra wear a coat or a pair of shoes. He disdained the
tire-soled huarache. Instead, he wore a sole of thin leather on his
huarache
. He slept on
the floor in his store between the counter and the door. He could not
sleep on a bed for he knew no boundaries in his sleep and was so
bronco
he bucked off a
bed in the night.

Juan Vogel said that about twice a year Tino Sierra
took his gold to Guadalajara to sell. He took two gold bars weighing
a kilo a piece in his pockets and walked the hundred miles to San
Bernardo where he caught transportation to Rio Alamos and
Guadalajara. He covered the one hundred miles from Macarena to San
Bernardo afoot in two days, the same time the buses took to carry him
the thousand miles to Guadalajara. Juan Vogel said Tino Sierra
carried his
huaraches
in
his hip pockets on those hundred-mile walks to San Bernardo so he
would not wear them out.

Tino Sierra always got drunk in San Bernardo when he
returned from Guardalajara. This drunk that he always celebrated in
San Bernardo was the cause of his always going afoot across the
Sierra. He was incapable of staying aboard a horse when drunk. He
could not ride from Macarena to San Bernardo because he would have no
way of returning the horse to Macarena.