Jim Kane - J P S Brown (61 page)

"
If I'm not back to Chinipas in ten days take
the Pajaro back to Rio Alamos and I'll send you money so that you can
take him back to the border for me."

"
Bueno," the Lion said. "Don't worry
about him. Worry about yourself now."

Kane handed the Lion some money he had separated from
his saddlebags.

"
No. Keep it this time, Jim," the Lion
said. "Use it to come back this way and we'll look for the
Jesuit gold."

"
Well then, thank you, amigo." ·

"
We are friends. We'll see each other again,"
the Lion said. Kane got into the truck with Elfigo Batista.
 

35
The Cuidadores

Elfigo Batista's truck was first in the line of
fifteen. At the first level stretch of road above the valley of
Cuiteco Kane asked Batista to stop the caravan. Five of the eighteen
head of bulls in Batista's truck had lost their footing in the climb
out of the valley. Kane climbed in with the cattle and tailed the
five bulls back to their feet.

Each of the other trucks carried an extra man besides
the driver. This extra man served as cuidador. He was in charge of
the cattle on the truck. Some of the
cuidadores
carried
electric hotshots or prodpoles which they used to urge fallen cattle
back to their feet. Kane saw that down the line of trucks the
cuidadores
were doing their jobs.

Cattle that suffered most in the shifting press of
weight down the uneven road in the steep hills were cattle standing
by the tailgates of the trucks.

All of the 265 head were leg-weary and footsore after
fourteen days on the trail. They would never become adjusted to the
constant shifting balance of footing in the eighteen hours on the
trucks from Cuiteco to Creel.

Cattle, at times, were lifted completely off their
feet by the press of the load in the climbs, dips, and descents
through the mountains. Few level places gave the cattle time to
regain their balance. The road passed along the edge of the Barranca
del Cobre, the deepest canyon in Mexico. The government had built
trestles for the railroad that were as high as 900 meters from
the bottoms of the gorges.

On descents, the cattle would fall toward the front
of the trucks and cattle in the rear that had been lifted off their
feet against the tailgate would fall back to the floor without
regaining their footing. On climbs, these cattle would be trampled as
the load was pressed back over them. On level stretches, the trucks
would stop and the
cuidadores
would climb the racks of the
trucks to survey the mélée. They would find cattle lying on top of
other cattle that were lying on their own heads, cattle with their
hooves stuck through the spaces between the boards of the racks,
cattle in the corners with their heads twisted over their backs and
held fast by horns wedged through the racks. The
cuidadores
would untangle the mass and the trucks would go on again.

In the evening, at a farm in a small, grassy valley,
a place called Los Tascates, Kane unloaded a red bull that had been
so trampled and gored that he would never get to Creel alive. Kane
gave the farmer a bill of sale for the bull. Kane knew he would never
return for the bull because it would cost more than the bull was
worth to take him alone to market. If the bull continued on the trip
he would never be good for anyone. The farmer, wordlessly, without
smiling, took the bill of sale.

Long after dark the caravan came to a campfire in a
high stand of pine where a half-dozen Tarahumara Indians were
roasting a string of squirrels on a spit. These Tarahumaras seemed to
have had more exposure to Mexican ways. Whatever business they had on
the road was not disclosed but they were dressed in the baggy jeans
and
huaraches
of the
serrano
. They wore the wild hair
of the Tarahumara with bangs carefully trimmed over their brows. They
had a quantity of
mezcal
and a hollow, lutelike, stringed,
toneless instrument one of them played tunelessly. The truckers
warmed tortillas at the fire of the Tarahumara, joked with them as
they ate their supper, checked the cattle again, and went on.

Two bulls in Kane's truck had become so weak and
injured by midnight that Kane slung them with ropes on the sides of
the racks so they wouldn't be trampled. After midnight the
cuidadores
and the cattle were so exhausted that no more could be done to keep
the cattle on their feet. The trucks went the last three hours of the
trip into Creel without stopping and backed into the pit
embarcadero
at the dipping vat before dawn. Many of the cattle were down in the
trucks. The truckers unloaded the cattle and turned them loose in a
pasture by the dipping vat in the darkness.

All the cattle walked off the trucks under their own
power except two in the last truck. These two were the brindle and
the black Kane had necked together on the first day of the drive.
They probably had been weaker than the rest because of the extra
exertion they had made adjusting to each other the first days they
were necked together.

Kane was exhausted from lifting on tails and horns,
from climbing over and down off the racks of the trucks countless
times, and from having slept cold fourteen nights on the trail drive.
He could not lift himself again to help unload the last truck. He sat
on the frosty ground under a tree by the truck and watched the
truckers unload it.

Two
cuidadores
dragged the brindle and the
black to the open tailgate. The two men giggled hysterically from a
combination of fatigue, relief at seeing they only had two more bulls
to unload, and their own clumsiness in the manure-slippery darkness
of the truck.

"This one looks like you, Loco," one
cuidador
said to the other as he embraced the horns of the
black bull and lifted on the front end. "He has horns as big as
yours, he is black as you are, and he turns his eyes inside-out the
same way you do when your old lady holds your head next to those big
bosoms of hers. The only difference between you and this bull is that
not everyone can see your big horns. Only I know they exist."

"You wish your old lady had bosoms instead of
those two fried eggs she has plastered on her chest, Loco," the
cuidador
lifting on the tail of the black bull said.

"My old lady doesn't need big bosoms as long as
your old lady has big bosoms, Loco," the one embracing the horns
said. "As long as I can visit your house three times a week. "

They couldn't get the black to stand on his own feet
so they dragged him to the edge of the truck and rolled him off He
landed on his head, horns in the ground, neck bent, hindquarters
lying on his head and front quarters. "Be careful of those
horns, Loco," the man who had been on the front end said. "They
look just like yours and I don't want anything to happen to them. I
have been a long time making you a pair of horns like that, three
times a week for three years has made you a beautiful set of horns."

The two men turned back in the truck and stood over
the brindle. "This one is lying awfully flat, Loco," the
man who had the wife with the big bosoms said. "He looks like
you do when my old lady is through with you on Fridays." They
dumped the brindle off the truck on top of the black. Another
cuidador who had been inspired by the two in the truck walked over to
the brindle and pulled him off the black. He lifted on the tail until
the brindle's feet were on the ground and then he put himself up
against the bull's rear end and made the humping motions of a bull on
a cow, his arms stiff down the brindle's sides. "Here is one
bull whose cods will never again serve him. I'm going to have him
while he is still warm and good for something. Maybe the
injection of my syringe will revive him. " The
bull-humper giggled. The brindle couldn't stand the weight and
collapsed on his side. The bull-humper fell on top of him giggling.

Kane sat completely rendered out of his will and
watched the
cuidadores
clown over the dying forms of his
cattle. After all, he thought, what would my getting angry do to
revive the cattle? They are past being teased, or hurt, or driven.
They don't resent being made sport of. How could I educate a Creel,
Chihuahua
cuidador
at dawn to bring the brindle and the black
back to life? The
cuidadores
wish them no harm, they are only
pointing out the cattle didn't make it any further out of the rough
old Sierra, ha, ha, ha.

The trucks were pulling away and heading toward
Creel. Elfigo Batista stood in front of Kane.

"We have a hotel in Creel," Batista said.
"I'll take you to the hotel and bring you back in the morning. "

"Where can I buy alfalfa hay for my cattle?"
Kane asked. "We have no alfalfa in Creel," Batista said.
“There is wheat straw in that barn." He pointed to an old
lumber barn by the dipping vat. "Urrea, the storekeeper who
introduced us the day you came to Creel, owns the straw."

"Help me drag the brindle and the black to the
barn," Kane said.

"The barn is locked," Batista said.

"I'll unlock it and we'll feed the cattle. You
be a witness and count the bales we feed, " Kane said.
 
Kane and Batista dragged the bulls to the barn. Kane unscrewed
the hasp off the door and they laid the two bulls on the warm, loose
straw inside the barn. The two men broke sixty bales of the straw on
the ground outside the barn. When they were finished feeding, Elfigo
Batista said to Kane, "You had better come with me to the hotel.
It has good beds. You will rest well there today. "

"I'd better not leave this barn alone with the
door open," Kane said. "The owner might make me pay for
every bale if someone comes to steal. I'll sleep here."

"I'm going then," Batista said.

"Thank you," Kane said. He threw his
saddlebags down for a pillow and rolled in his blanket on the straw.

Kane dreamed he was a Chinaman and he owned a store
in the Sierra. One night he was sleeping on the ground and he heard
tanks of war coming down the road. Jim Kane, whose name in the dream
was Chan Kane complete with pigtail and silken cap, had many
thousands of pesos in gold coin hoarded in the walls of his store but
he always slept outside on the ground so that the ground would warm
him if there was any danger to his Chinese heart.

Now this war tank warned of a revolution that was
appropriating all business and wealth of foreigners and Chan Kane got
up from the ground and hired Elfigo Batista to take him to the coast
with his gold. He and Elfigo Batista loaded all the gold on mules and
they started down off the Sierra. Elfigo Batista led the pack string
and Chan Kane rode in the rear. The first mule in the string carried
only a pack saddle and a large, empty, canvas pannier.

They came to the Fuerte River and Elfigo Batista said
that federal troops were camped over a hill on the other side of the
river. He told Chan Kane to hide in the empty pannier so the troops
wouldn't see him. The federals were accustomed to seeing Elfigo
Batista lead his pack string over this crossing and would not
question him. Chan Kane got into the pannier and Elfigo Batista laid
him over the mule, sewed up the mouth of the pannier over Chan Kane's
head, and tied the pannier on the saddle. In the middle of the river,
when the mule began to swim, Elfigo Batista cut Chan Kane's pannier
off the mule and Chan Kane went to the bottom ofthe river like a
stone. The current was bumping him over the stones on the bottom and
Kane was drowning and he woke up. Pistols Urrea, the Creel
storekeeper, was standing over him prodding him in the back with the
toe of his boot.

"Wake up. It is day now. Wake up, man,"
Pistols said.

Kane was so wrapped in the blanket with his arms
folded on his chest he 'could not unwind.

"You touch me again with that boot and I'll show
you how awake I am," Kane said.

"Well, get up so you can pay me for the hay you
fed your cattle. I must see your papers and make a new inspection and
we must dip these cattle today," Pistols said and walked
outside. Kane sat up and unraveled himself from the blanket. The scab
from the rope whip on his face was dry, peeling, and sore. The
brindle bull that had been the cause of the scab was lying dead at
Kane's feet. The black was not in the barn. Kane got up and went
outside. He noticed for the first time that the soles of both of his
boots were worn through. Even his socks were worn through. The black
was eating wheat straw with the rest of the cattle. He counted
them—263 cattle were around the wheat straw resting, eating, or
drinking from a stream of milky water that ran through the pasture.
He had left the red bull with a farmer. The brindle was dead, the
first dead, and he wasn't paid for yet.

"How many bales did you feed`?" Pistols
asked Kane.

"Elfigo Batista and I fed sixty bales,"
Kane said.

"You should have asked my permission to feed
that hay."

"I did not feed hay. I fed wheat straw. Batista
said there was no hay in Creel." `

"Stealing hay is a serious matter in Creel,"
Pistols said.

"If you want to call it stealing I stole some
straw. What is half a ton of straw worth?"

"Bales of wheat are worth two dollars a bale in
Creel. We have had a bad season here."