Jim Kane - J P S Brown (65 page)

"
The big Pajaro is thinner now," Don Marcos
said. "He is more horse and less what he had been eating before
he came to the Sierra. He is in the pure hair of a horse now."

"
Yes. He has had something to do," Kane
said.

"
As have you, Don Marcos said. Kane reined
Pajaro to leave and Don Marcos said, "Wait. " He went
inside again, was gone awhile, and came back with a Coca-Cola bottle
full of
lechuguilla
stoppered
with a corncob.

"
For when your horse gets tired," he said,
and put the bottle in the morral hanging on Kane's saddlehorn. He
stepped his
huarached
feet
away from the big horse so he wouldn't get them stepped on when Kane
reined the horse by him.

Kane rode down the dry steep trail into the canyon of
El Durazno. The thick brush in the canyon was barren now and Kane
could see more of the ground of the big country than he had been able
to see when he had been to see the cattle at La Haciendita before.

Pajaro stepped surely like a mule and Kane thought in
Spanish, I have a horse, not pig slops. At least I have the tools I
need to get along here. I have this big horse that has turned out to
be a good one in any country. The Pajaro is more useful here than he
would be in any country. He is not wring-tailed or high-headed, and
he knows where the ground is at all times. Besides that, he is as
good or better than any beast native to the Sierra. And Pajaro, under
criticism, stepped off the mountain and didn't roll rocks or shy from
the gorges. . .