Jim Kane - J P S Brown (9 page)

"
I guess my note is a week overdue. I should
have been here a week ago but I was busy helping gather a bunch of
wild Brahmas for Bob Keys and the Brahmas didn't care if my note was
due," Kane said.

"
Never mind. You're here now. Are you going to
be able to pay the note?"

"No, Miss Toots. My horses are still
quarantined. I don't know what I'm going to do about the note."

"
Go in and talk to the boss. Tell him about your
quarantine. I'm sure he knows all about it anyway. If you can't pay,
you can't pay and that is all there is to it. There is no use getting
bats in la belly about it, is there?"

"
No, Miss Toots. I won't if you won't."

 "
I won't. I've seen too many of you
cowboys get out of this kind of trouble. You just tell the boss about
it. He won't leave you in la lurch."

Kane walked in the boss's office.

"Can you pay the interest on your note, Jim?"
the boss asked him when they had shaken hands and sat down.

"
No," Kane said. "I don't have any
money."

"
How many horses have you got now?"

"
Forty-four. "

"
When will they cross?"

"
If they show two clean tests they should cross
in six weeks."

"
The week after New Year's?"

"
Yes."

""
I suppose we can carry you until then
without collapsing.

"
I appreciate it, sir."

"
I still believe you are on the right track with
your horses. I've seen them and they seem to be just as you described
them when we made you the loan. Maybe when you bring out the next
bunch you should stop them someplace further south and bleed them
yourself. Or maybe you should test them before you buy them. There
must be a practical way to handle the horses before you fall into the
hands of the U. S. Government, don't you think?"

"Maybe there is, sir. Maybe the most practical
way would be to leave all Jalisco horses in Jalisco."

"
Maybe so. It would seem a shame to quit. You
have paid a large fee for your first lesson in buying horses in
Mexico. You might still find a way to profit by the education."

"
Let's see what kind of shape you and I are in
when the venture winds up," Kane said, rising to leave.

"
Maybe this venture won't work and the next one
we take on together will work. You take care of me and I'll take care
of you, and someday maybe one of our deals will click for us."

"
That sounds like the best kind of deal,"
Kane said.

"
These horses no longer have a chance to make
anything for us. Their corral fees, feed, sanitizing fees, burial
fees, death loss, duties, and brokerage make the situation such that
they would have to be made of pure gold to pay their way out and
still leave us any profit. These just won't make it for us because
they have never been given a chance. I wish we could keep them for a
while so they could produce and get us out of the hole but I guess
that would take too long."

"
Personally, I would rather liquidate this bunch
and help you on some new venture. Let's sell them as soon as possible
and start over again," the boss of the bank said.

Out on the street again, Kane went to the flower shop
and ordered a bouquet of roses sent to the bank. On the card he
wrote, "To all the girls of the Valley Bank, attention Miss
Toots."
 
 

7
Gunga
Din

Kane was alone on the Keyses' desert ranch on
Christmas. He was alone except for his horse, Pajaro, the Mortgage
brothers, Warwhoop, Whiskey Talk, three Brahmas that were still loose
on the ranch, and a paint burro he called Din.

On this morning Din, as was his custom, had stationed
himself outside the door of Kane's shack, had formed his muzzle into
the shape of a megaphone, and was braying forth his special dawning
fanfare to awaken Kane. Kane swung his feet off the board shelf his
mattress and blankets were on, lifted the chimney off the lamp on the
broken chair by his bed, and struck a match to the wick. He put on
his hat, drew on the stiff Levis, stomped his feet into the boots and
spurs, stood in them, and put on his shirt. He forced Din the burro
away with the door as he stepped outside. He walked around the shack
to his kitchen, built a fire in the stove, and put his coffee on to
boil. He found a biscuit and gave it to Din on his way to the
corrals. Din followed him to the corrals. Kane gave each of the
horses under his charge an extra coffee can of oats for Christmas.
Din followed him back as he carried a bucketful of oats back to his
kitchen. He poured the oats into Din's pan by the open side of the
lean-to that was the kitchen. He got his bottle of Presidente brandy
from behind the stove and poured a swallow into his coffee, dunked a
biscuit in the coffee, and put the biscuit into Dirfs grain pan.

"
Noël, Din," Kane said. Din ate the
biscuit and turned his nose up at the grain, turned his nose inside
out again and looked at Kane. Kane gave him another coffee and brandy
biscuit.

"
Noël, Noël, Din," Kane said. Din ate the
biscuit and started on the grain again, grinding it slowly and
sparingly so as not to waste any. When he had finished the grain, he
began talking to Kane in that strange, rasping, whistling choke that
is the voice of the burro.

"
He must have liked you. I like you," Kane
said. "So why did He make you so ugly, Din? You are in all the
pictures of the Nativity. His mama rode you with Him in her arms to
Egypt when Herod was killing all the babies. You were around when He
amazed the doctors in the temple as a little boy. In that story you
bumbled along carrying people back and forth so He could give a
lesson to the doctors before His folks found Him. He rode one of your
white ancestors on Palm Sunday, the happiest day of His life, or at
least the day the largest consensus of humans were for Him. So then
how come your ears are so long and the hair on your back doesn't
shine, your tail is so inadequate, your head so big, and your
butt-end so peaked? And that voice! Like the true voice of one crying
in the wilderness!

"
You have been unjustly treated through the
centuries, Din. But you don't seem to realize it. You go along in
that little ugly shell of yours, doing what they prod you to do. They
make you do what your little carcass finds impossible to do. They
poke you with sticks demanding always more of you and instead of
quitting them and refusing them absolutely you go along at your own
pace no matter how much the poking hurts . so that you'll have enough
energy left in your carcass to do I them another job tomorrow. You
were not created to be servant for Great Societies, that's a cinch.
The Great Societies are begrudging you the few cactus leaves you eat.
You aren't fast enough or beautiful enough to serve them. You aren't
going to make anybody any money. You aren't going to be a warhorse.
Yet, at your own pace, you carried the Man everywhere He needed
carrying and He always seemed to have enough time to do the job He
did. No one can argue about the good quality of the job He did and no
one can say He didn't get results.

"
And look at you with a face only He and His
mother and yours could love! Even I treat you like a burro and
neglect your noble soul because you are so ugly. I lead you out, find
a devil of an escaped Brahma, rope him from my good horse, tie his
neck to yours, and ride away and leave you with him kicking at you
and hauling on you with the live hundred pounds he outweighs you. And
sooner or later one morning you are standing in my camp with a
gentled Brahma by your side. You come back because you have to. I
have made you a slave to grain and a slave to Kane because Kane has
fingers with which to free you from the Brahma. If I was you I'd kick
up my heels, leave a few hard turds at Kane's kitchen door, and run
braying away the first time I was untied from a Brahma. I might just
give Kane a kick in the slats for good measure. Isn't that the way
Kane has been acting, his own way of doing?"

Din walked into Kane's kitchen to get closer to
Kane's voice and Kane's coffee and brandy biscuits.

Gunga, Din," Kane said. "Gung away outside
my kitchen. No room in the inn, Din." He dunked another biscuit,
pushed Din out of his kitchen, rubbed Din's ears, and gave Din his
biscuit.

"
Noël, Noël, Noël, Din. And that's all your
Christmas this year," Kane said.
 
 

8
Afoot

By New Year's Eve Kane had gathered and delivered all
the delinquent steers. His colts were gentle and needed a rest. His
saddle horse, Pajaro, was ridden down. Din the burro was gaunt and
too gentle. Kane was gaunt and too cranky. He turned the livestock
out to pasture and went to Phoenix to the Adams Hotel.

In his room he poured himself a glass of whiskey. He
took off the clothes that in another day would have grown to his
hide. He turned on the hot water in the shower. He sealed up the
bathroom with wet towels. He sat on the toilet seat and drank his
whiskey and steamed and sweated in an abundance of comfortable
moisture. He poured pitchers of cold water on himself. His whole hide
drank. He showered. He shaved with a mirror. He examined his teeth in
the mirror. He washed his head with mange cure. He turned on the
television. He got in bed between fresh sheets. He drank another
glass of whiskey. He slept an undreaming, sunken peace with no spurs
on. He awoke and ordered up rare roast beef, a mountain of mashed
potatoes, a great tossed salad, and a pitcher of black beer. After he
ate he slept again. He awoke again and dressed in clean dress shirt
and sweater, clean starched Levis, his drinking hat, his drinking
boots, and went down the street to the Cow Palace Bar to celebrate
New Year's.

He was back in camp with a hangover on New Year's
Day. He knew his body was back at camp because he could see his hands
and feel his feet. The legs swung and jarred his feet against the
ground. His mind was still numbly away from camp but close enough so
that the messages from the eyes to his brain were received clearly.
Startlingly, painfully, achingly, sometimes faintly, but always
clearly. The messages must remain simple. Complicated messages
physically shocked the receiver, the brain.

He walked out into the pasture with a morral of grain
and caught Pajaro, mounted him bareback, and drove the colts into the
corral. The day was bright as goodness. The fine heat of its bosom
punished him. In the corral he slid off Pajaro and gagged. He stuck
his head up to his neck in the cold water of the horse trough and
held it there as long as he could. He came up for air and did it
again. Came up again and did it again. Each time he looked around
more calmly at the world around him under the water upside down. The
cool world under the water was a much finer place for the reunion of
his mind and his body. When he rose from the trough the reunion had
been made but his brain still ached as his mind shifted around in
there accommodating itself.

Kane decided he would ride his colts one more time
and turn them out. He caught the black paint, Warwhoop, saddled him,
and rode out. The effort of saddling had worn him out and he was
happy when he finally found himself astride the colt and being
carried.

He rode straight down the road toward the highway.
This morning he would Indian it. He would not school his horses. He
would let them give him hours of sun and movement and self-denial.
They would make him well from the sickness of having too much fun. He
did not smoke, cough, or smile. He just rode along watching
Warshoop's ears twitch and search.

Kane saw that Warwhoop was looking at something off
the road. A buzzard flew out of a wash. Kane rode over to the wash. A
cluster of buzzards flapped off a carcass when they saw the horseman.
Kane rode down to the carcass of Din, the paint burro. Blood had
soaked up a spot in the sand underneath him. Din had been shot. He
had been standing here in this wash, a gentle burro thinking maybe
someone was coming with a pan of grain for him, and he had been shot:
one, two, three, four, five, six, the son of a dirty bitch had
reloaded, seven, eight, nine--who knows how many times. Kane's heart
began to ache and crowd his throat now. Din had been shot once in the
eye, several times in the ribs and abdomen, several times in the
penis. One shot hadn't done enough noticeable damage to the penis for
the trigger man's satisfaction so the had tried to blow the burro's
sheath completely off.

Kane searched the ground around the carcass and found
the tracks of the one who had shot Din. The tracks in the sand were
plain. The person had not known how to walk in sand. He had walked
from the highway, made his kill, and had walked directly back toward
the highway. Kane saw where the killer and another person had
dismounted and later remounted a jeep by the gate. They had left the
desert ranch and shut the gate. Kane had been through the gate in the
darkness of that morning and had not noticed the tracks. He followed
the tracks of the other person. These tracks had gone and come back a
different way. They had headed toward the place where Kane had found
his horses that morning. Kane's feet and legs began to want to hurry
but he did not wish to hurry the colt he was riding. He wanted to
concentrate on the tracks and on the colts he had penned that morning
at camp.