Jim Kane - J P S Brown

by J P S Brown

  "And you won't?" Kane asked him.

  "No. Never."

  "Good." Kane exaggerated a sigh of relief.

  "Then you think you'll do it? How soon do you think you can get the cows down here?"

  "I don't know."

  "Let me know as soon as you can so that I can have everything ready, " Chavarin said, no longer in the mood to patronize.

  "OK," Kane said in English.

  "Do you think you can let me have some money now so that I can fix my corrals and stock up on some feed?" Chavarin asked, trying a full test of Kane's air.

  "I don't think so. Not right now," Kane said.

  The Lion had finished unloading the cattle and was walking toward them.

  "You let me know as soon as possible when you have the money so I can begin preparations," Chavarin said softly.

  "OK," Kane said softly.

  "Don't say anything about this to the Lion," Chavarin said more softly, as softly as an ambusher of a lion would speak as he saw the lion approaching upwind and almost in range.

  "OK," Kane whispered.

  "Feed them ten bales, Güerito," the Lion moaned. "And in the morning get your nephews in the corral and gather up all that baling wire that is scattered around in there. A person can't walk in that corral without hobbling himself in baling a wire.

  "Sí, sí, sí, sí," Chavarin said, not wanting Kane to see he took orders from the Lion.

  "Ten bales. I say ten," the Lion said, looking for Chavarin's attention.

  "I'm going to feed them right now," Chavarin said.

  "Before they bed down again," the Lion said.

  "Sí, sí, sí, sí, sí," Chavarin said impatiently.

  Kane and the Lion got into Kane's car. Chavarin came up to Kane's side of the car and put his hands on the door. The door was closed well but Chavarin opened it and slammed it shut keeping his thumb on the button of the door handle so that it would not latch. He slammed it in this way again, and then again. Kane took the door from him and closed it himself

  "Be careful of that door. It does not close well," Chavarin said.

  The door had always closed well.

  "Are you going to take Jim to Teresita's, Lion?" he asked.

  "Of course."

  "That is all right then. He should be well cared for while he is hurt like he is. I was going to suggest he stay here with my sister and me."

  "No‘ necessity of that," the Lion growled.

  "This is your house whenever you wish to stay here and save a hotel bill, you know that now," Chavarin told Kane with feeling.

  "Thank you," Kane said.

  "The cattle, Güero. The cattle. I charge you with the cattle," the Lion said.

  "Right away," Chavarin said. .

  "Thank you. We'll see you in the morning, " the Lion said and backed the car into the street. "He will wait until we are out of sight and then he will feed five bales and throw the wire for five more bales into the corral," the Lion said as he drove toward Teresita's.

  "He wants to start a dairy. Is he a dairyman?" Kane asked.

  "No, he is not a dairyman."

  'He wants me to buy some milk cows. He wants me to go into the business of milking cows with him."

  The Lion laughed. "You must realize that you would have to do all the milking if you went into the milk business with him. In that case you would not need him unless you need a boss."

  The Lion drove to Teresita's.

  13

  The Patriarch

  The roosters of Rio Alamos tuned up each night before midnight.

  This first crowing was unprecise, a clearing out of dusty, unmusical croaks. The crows sounded continuously for three quarters of an hour through the settling dust of Rio Alamos dry, starry darkness. Two hours later they began again and rolled across town in strong, staccato song. At 4 A.M. the calls were only dutiful and weary. At dawn they brightened with authority to awaken the town. Kane believed that at least ten thousand full-grown and twenty thousand half-grown roosters reigned in Rio Alamos and their crows seemed all to be directed at Teresita's restaurant and converged on the top floor in Kane's ear.

  Kane and the Lion went each day to the ranches to trade for and receive cattle. The formal procedures and mechanics of each trade were the same. They followed a certain ritual that was common to every trade. After receiving a bunch of cattle the buyers would ship them on trucks to Chavarin's corral and go to another ranch to start the ritual of another trade with another owner. .

  They drove up to a ranch somewhere in the middle of the brush and stopped in front of a squat house shaded by a long portal. Saddles, armas, bridles, reatas, and hemp saddle pads hung in the shade of the portal..Ancient horcones, Y-shaped hardwood log columns, supported the portales. The adobes of the houses washed away and could be replaced. The horcón remained solid and whole long after erosion had claimed adobes. The portales provided solid shade in the day, cool sleeping shelters at night. Horcones outlived several, of the houses and portales they supported. Old men of the ranches whose shelters were supported by certain horcones remembered that their ancient grandfathers had said that their ancient grandfathers had said that they could remember someone saying that certain horcones had been in the houses when they had been born.

  Parked in front of one of these ranches, Kane and the Lion sat in the car and waited while the people inside decided who Kane and Lion were. When the decision was that they were the cattle buyers known to be in the country, one of the women came out and invited them to come to the shade of the portal. The woman offered them chairs. She picked each chair up and set it in a new place for the visitors with her own hands. The rancher was at home and not out campeando, looking after his cattle in the brush. He greeted Kane and the Lion and ordered them to sit down.

  "Sit," he said. "Bring coffee, old woman," he ordered his wife. "Now, how may I serve you?" he asked Kane and the Lion.

  This man was not fat. He was sparse and dried out and the color of fresh jerky. He was thin of hair and his hands now were perpetually clenched and encrusted by work.

  The Lion introduced himself and introduced Kane. The rancher introduced his bothers, sons, nephews, and grandsons, and all took seats. The buyers and the rancher sat at a table. The sons, brothers, nephews, and grandsons sat away from the table. Everyone lit cigarettes. Kane offered American cigarettes and watched them disappear.

  "Let us see," the rancher said when he took the cigarette, "Very fine," he said, puffing as he lit the cigarette. "Very good," looking at Kane. "Thank you." Then he sat back, relaxed and at ease as though he had expected something so new as an American cigarette might have had an adverse effect on him. Finding he enjoyed the cigarette, he smiled and made a relieved joke.

  "Bueno." he said. "Is it true what they say, that American cigarettes make a man steril? I think not, no?"

  The Lion laughed. "¿Quién sabe, who knows? Ask our American friend."

  "I have never heard that theory," Kane said.

  The rancher decided to educate the American on what he had learned about American smoking habits.

  "They say that Americans not only lose their fertility but also their potency because of the small napkins they insert in the tip of their cigarettes," he stated. "They say that Americans are so afraid of contacting other harms through smoking that they sacrifice their manly potentialities by imbedding the small filter napkin in the cigarettes?

  "I hope not," Kane said.

  "¡Pues, dicen! Well, it is said this is true! ¡Lo que es el vicio! The way the vice of the cigarette can govern a man! We Mexicans are very addicted to our cigarettes but we smoke the pure, common tobacco and it does not seem to harm us except for the cough."

  By this time all the sons, brothers, grandsons, and nephews had taken a long look at the deadly thing smoking in their hands and let off puffing them so enjoyably. Everyone fell silent while all dutifully finished smoking the cigarettes the American had made as presents to them and when the patriarch had smoked his until the filte
rs were burning they all put the cigarettes out.

  "So you buy cattle," the patriarch said. `

  "Yes," Kane and the Lion said, impatient to begin business after having spent a half hour discussing cigarettes.

  "Right now I have nothing to sell," the patriarch said.

  "Right now the cattle are very thin and will bring no price. My cattle are dying right now. My custom is to sell after the rains in September, October, and later when they are in good flesh. Right now it would be very hard to sell. My old cows and bulls are very poor."

  "We are buying only two-year-olds and only male cattle," Kane said.

  "It would be very hard to sell right now. It is not my custom to sell my young cattle. I prefer to wait until they are larger and worth more money."

  '`Don't you think it would help to thin out your younger cattle?" Kane asked. "Your older cattle would get more to eat."

  "It is not my custom. My younger cattle, my ganado chico, are not worth anything right now."

  "Don't you have any two-year-old bulls with good horns? Cattle old enough to have finished horns? I want the llavudos, the ones with the big keys," Kane said.

  "In quantity. But that is all there is in this country, man," the patriarch said.

  "How many do you have?"

  "Maybe three or four. " The patriarch looked for confirmation to his sons, brothers, nephews, and grandsons. Some of them nodded and some just looked at him, startled and embarrassed that they had been addressed. "Three or four," someone answered, and someone else said, "there is the brown and white paint, and the brown bull. I saw them yesterday at the mezquital. They were together." Another said, "There is the novillo colorado, the big red steer. He is very fat." Someone else said, "Also the black torte, young bull."

  "There are quite a few, hay algunos," the patriarch stated comfortably.

  "Just four?" Kane asked. .

  "Four, " the patriarch said.

  "¿Hay no está el pinto negro?" "Isn't there the black-and-white?" another asked in the way the ranchers of that region have of accenting a statement of negative fact in the tone of a question and making it by this tone into a statement of positive fact.

  "Do you buy black-and-white cattle?" the patriarch asked Kane.

  "Depending on the quality," Kane answered.

  "Other buyers have not wanted the black-and-white at any price. ¿Bueno? Why is that? What does the black-and-white have?"

  "Perhaps the buyer did not want dairy cattle."

  "But how can a black-and-white bull be dairy cattle?"

  "They' might not have wanted any cattle that had dairy cattle characteristics."

  "Oooooooo . . . where would these cattle from this region ever get dairy characteristics?

  "I don't know, " Kane said.

  "These cattle are corriente, of the worst kind of the common native."

  "Those," the Lion interrupted, "those are the kind of cattle we buy. "

  "And why would you want corriente?"

  "We send them to the other side. The gringos like them," the Lion said.

  "What for? To fatten them?" the old patriarch asked.

  `" Brothers, sons, nephews, and grandsons laughed quietly at this question.

  "¿Quién sabe?" the Lion said.

  "Yes, with the pure little odor of good pasture they fatten. The Americans won't need to turn them out on good feed. The Americans will need only to drive a truck full of the good American feed around these corrientes and the odor will fatten them." More laughter from brothers, sons, nephews, and grandsons.

  "Those are the kind we need. The kind that are cheap to buy and cheap to maintain," Kane said."

  At the mention of value everyone subsided for a while and Kane and the Lion and all the rancheritos sipped their coffee. Then the patriarch said craftily, with the Mexican rancher's cunning that is so obvious and common to every trade but the procedure that must be adhered to in every trade so that a buyer is obliged to follow it and be fooled by it to ever do business with the rancher, "Well, it is not my custom to sell my younger cattle."

  "We believe it would be to your advantage to sell," the Lion said.

  "No. I have no necessity to sell. I don't need money at present."

  "We pay good money for these cattle."

  "What could they be worth? All my cattle are thin right now. What price do you give?"

  "This depends on the cattle. We must see the cattle," Kane said.

  "More or less. Don't think my cattle are very bad. My cattle are of a better class. More or less what price do you have?"

  "How much do you want?"

  "Like I say, I have no need to sell right now but if you have a good price I might let you buy a few. Three or four."

  "We have been paying four hundred pesos, even four hundred fifty pesos a head." `

  "Ah no!" the patriarch said, emphatically shaking his head. "Don't think my cattle are bad cattle. Manuel Padilla told me you paid him five hundred pesos for his cattle. How am I going to sell you my cattle which are very much better for four hundred fifty pesos. Manuel Padilla has very bad cattle. No, no! I won't sell at that price. I have no necessity to sell now anyway. You want very cheap cattle."

  "We paid Manuel Padilla four hundred and four hundred fifty."

  "No. You paid live hundred?

  "Well, let's do this," Kane said. "We'll come and look at your cattle and if they are worth five hundred pesos we will pay it. "

  "I have to think about it. Right now it is hard to gather the cattle. All my people are occupied. When are you going to be coming back this way? In case I resolve myself to sell."

  "We don't know. When could you have something for us to see?"

  "Maybe next week if it is possible to get people to work."

  "What day more or less?" Kane asked.

  "Wednesday or Thursday," the old man said.

  "If we come Thursday would you have the cattle in?"

  The patriarch looked around at his sons and brothers.

  "You think that by Thursday you can have three or four of the toretes up?"

  "I have to go to Rio Alamos Wednesday," one said.

  "Thursday is the feast day of my sister, your daughter," another said.

  "Better Tuesday. I will be unoccupied until Wednesday," another said.

  "Why not Friday?" another asked. "We will all be unoccupied Friday."

  "Yes, Friday. I think Friday will be best," the patriarch said. "Can you come on Friday?"

  "Yes, we can."

  "Well then, we'll agree to that. We will see what we can have for you here on Friday. And we will see if by then you have resolved yourselves to give us your best price."

  "We only buy merchantable cattle," Kane said. "We don't want blind cattle, swaybacks, cripples, bobtails, broken horns, crooked horns, cow-horns, or cattle so thin they can't be shipped."

  "Very good," the patriarch said, no longer listening.

  Of course the old man knew the buyers had been in the country and knew that Manuel Padilla had recommended him to them. He could have gathered the cattle himself and sent word to the Lion at Teresita's that he had the cattle to sell and in that case he would have been reasonably sure to sell the cattle on the first day Kane and the Lion came to the ranch. But that would have eliminated the formal procedure of the buyers wooing of him, the absolutely essential formal preliminary to any trade in that region.

  When Kane and the Lion returned on Friday with a truck, the cattle were in the corral. Kane and the Lion were led straight to the corral. The trancas, the poles that were slid through holes in thick gate posts, were untied and the buyers went into the corral with the rancher.

  "They are all bulls?" Kane asked.

  "Yes. In this county we do not castrate," the rancher said.

  "Why is that? We could give more money for steers," Kane said, hoping to make clear that he didn't like to buy bulls, a trading point that might bring the rancher's price down.

  "You would be buying inferior cattle for more money in
that case," the rancher said.

  "It has been proven in my country that steers do better than bulls. Their meat is better, they grow better. The castration changes their minds from love to grass."

  "That is funny and may be true in your country but we have never had that custom in this country. A bull grows better, fills out better, and resists the hardships of this country better. Bull meat is more favored here. It is stronger and more nourishing. The flavor is much better than the meat of the fat steer and is much preferred. Also here we do not have facilities against the screw worm. This is another reason we do not castrate. If an animal gets wormy it goes crazy and hides. This brush makes the care and curing of such an animal very difficult." `

  This settled, Kane and the Lion inspected the cattle. The black bull was tied by his horns to a snubbing post in the middle of the corral. The post had been worn and burned by a thousand reatas. The bull was lean and shrunk from his ordeal in the sun. As the men approached him he drove off quick, thin, hind legs, his tail wringing, his lean flanks quivering, the corners of his eyes showing white half-moons.

  "What do you think of him?" the patriarch asked.

  "He's very thin," Kane said, looking at the shrunken sides of the black, at the tick enclustered cods swinging between his weak hind legs.

  "He looks thin because he has been tied that way since Wednesday. He is very bronco. If we had let him run loose in the corral he would have jumped the trancas and got away. He got away twice that way. He will fill up and be back to his normal hair as soon as he is released and fed. All we have been able to feed him here is a little tasol, cornstalks. Feed is very scarce this time of the year, particularly this year. Alfalfa from the Rio Alamos valley is very expensive."

  "Yes, alfalfa is expensive, y no dado, and not given, it is even more expensive," the Lion grumbled.

  "Ha, ha, ha, the patriarch said.

  A big red star was lying complacently in one corner. He was what the Mexicans call a "legitimate steer," having been castrated as a young calf before the bull characteristics could appear. He was by far the best animal in the corral. A brown-and-white bull and a brown bull were standing with their heads together in another corner. They kept their tails to the men.