by J P S Brown
Thank God we still have "The Star Spangled Banner," Kane thought as he went to bed.
He was back in San Bernardo by evening the next day. He walked up to Poncho and handed him the cigarettes. "I guess that proves you've been to gringolandia," Poncho said. "The Pardito isn't even rested yet."
"It's a shame I had to ride him so hard, but your government is very exacting of gringos, with good reason, I guess.
"You mean with mostrencos, unbranded mavericks like you," Poncho said, laughing. "The Pardo hasn't been hurt, don't worry. I have bad news for you, though. Pablo killed himself the evening after you left."
"No! I can't believe it. You mean he committed suicide?"
"He shot himself through the roof of the mouth."
"The wife?"
"They had a fight and he killed himself. She sent Chonito the hunter to Chinipas where they wired for the plane. The plane picked her up at Avena at sunup yesterday. She left her baby with the maids at San Rafael. They say she didn't even say good-bye."
23
The Brown-and-White
Spotted Aristocratic
Corriente
In Mexico the word corriente means common or plain. The word is used to describe the usual run of the cheap and mediocre.
When applied to cattle, corriente means native cattle. The corriente is a descendent of the cattle the Spaniard brought to Mexico, the same cattle the Texas Longhorn descended from. But corrientes are not defunct like the Texas Longhorn. The Mexican corriente still abounds in spite of hunger, drought, deprivation, and degeneration.
Since he is common and cheap to buy, people think he is inferior, a butt of jokes. A joke circulates among cattlemen in Mexico about a cattle buyer who went to see a bunch of cattle and after he looked them over he told the owner he didn't want them after all.
"Why?" asked the owner, "I told you they were corriente before you came to see them and you said you didn't mind it if they were corriente."
"Yes. I said that," said the buyer. "But your cattle are mucho muy corriente, very much too much corriente."
"What the devil! Common is common. I said they were common. How can any common thing be too common any more than any aristocratic thing be too aristocratic?" said the owner.
"Now you have it," said the buyer. "I want aristocratic corrientes."
The cow was poor.
Someone had tipped· her big horns back with a saw. The swelling rings on her old dead horns showed she had a lot of age on her. Along her backbone, which was very prominent, with each vertebra clearly distinguishable, her dark brown hide was faded and bleached and stretched to a golden brown. She stood in a wash that fell off a mountain of the Sierra Madre of Chihuahua, her belly tight and swollen. It was time for her, the sixth time for she was seven years old, to have her calf
The brown cow moved slowly out of the still heat of the open wash into a tunnel of vainoro, the thick spiny brush that grew solidly along the sides of the wash. She probed her way through the unyieldy thorned branches to the dark uncluttered shade next to the trunks. There in the private depths of the vainoro she dropped her calf, a brown-and-white spotted bull calf.
She licked her calf clean. He staggered on weak legs with each swipe of her rough tongue. She nudged him onto her sparse teats and he took the vital first milk, the milk that gave him his mothers resistance to disease. When he had nursed she left him full and sleeping, the tiny head flattened to the ground, the large clean ears down flat against the head, and left the tunnel of vainoro to feed and water.
Later, when the calf awoke alone, he raised his head. Instinct kept him quiet. He moved only his head, ears twitching at the insects that came to investigate his new live warmth. Then his tail began to wring spasmodically on the ground as he examined each new wonder in the vainoro and longed for his mother. Once, the heavy steps of a large animal passed in the wash below and the calf lowered his head to the ground, stretched his neck out along the ground, and stilled his ears and tail.
A few days later it became necessary for the cow to range away from the vainoro and she took the calf out of his tunnel. He trotted out on long knobby legs close at her side, shying at the marvel of a butterfly, a lizard, or the smell and sign of an old bull.
During the ranging the vacuero Manuel Rodriguez saw the cow had calved and, with the help of his dog, drove her to the corral of his camp at El Naranjo. He took the calf from his mother. He tied him down. He took out his sharp knife and seized a stiff healthy ear and earmarked the calf. He carved a round hole, called a balazo, or bullet hole, in the center of one ear, and he sliced off the whole curve of the underslope of the other ear. The calf now bore the official mark of all livestock of the El Naranjo ranch. Manuel shut the calf in a small corral with several other calves. He then turned the brown cow out into a pasture where she joined other cows that were being milked.
Each morning the cows would call at the gate of the corral, bawling for their offspring. Manuel and his son let them in, roped them, hobbled their hind legs, and released the calves to let them suck. When the cows were letting down their milk freely, the men caught the calves and tied them to the fence and milked the cows of all but a small portion of their milk. Then the calves were untied and allowed to strip the cows of the last of their milk. The brown-and-white spotted calf slobbered ravenously over his mother's little udder, butting it in consternation when it went dry, his long black tongue curved around a teat, the pure eyes half closed in delight.
During this time the calf learned to respect the men. He learned the rope around his neck had an end to it and would jerk him back sharply when he ran against it. He learned to undergo patiently the hunger that was to dominate him for most of his life. He found his corral had bounds but he never respected them. He was always hunting a way out of the corral.
The brown cow was milked for a month and then was replaced by another cow and released to take her calf back to her querencia, her favorite range. The calf was now dead of hair and weak from having been robbed of the greater part of his early nourishment. He was stunted and potbellied. With the milk that had been robbed from the calf Manuel Rodriguez's wife had made cheeses and fresh curd panelas which they sold. These cheeses paid the biggest part of Manuel's wage and was the reason he worked for the owner of the ranch of which the brown cow and her calf were units of livestock.
Hunger was the rule in the Sierra Madre. El Naranjo was small and overstocked. This part of the Sierra Madre was not cow country, not grass country. Grass grew only from July until the middle of October and had dried up and been eaten up by November. Then hunger took over again and got worse each month until the July rains began again.
The owner of El Naranjo was Juan Vogel. He could not live on his ranch because he could not make a living there. He paid Manuel Rodriguez a small wage and gave him the right to milk the cows for the cheeses. Juan took what his ranch and livestock produced as a supplement to his living in town and rarely returned anything to the ranch for its improvement.
Summer had begun when the brown cow was released from the milking: The land and foliage of the Sierra Madre were brown. Cattle moved little in the heat of the day and browsed at night on brush, pechita beans of the mesquite trees, leaves of the tuna, prickly pear cactus, and the cholla cactus. Mother cows eating the fierce needle-like spines of the cholla would get their cheeks, muzzles, and foreheads covered with pieces of stalks of cholla. The spines festered on the cattle and prevented them from browsing and grazing normally. Gradually these cactus eaters became addicted to cactus, as they could eat nothing else. The tips of their tongues split, their mouths filled with thorns until they constantly frothed, expelling valuable fluid. These cattle were able to eat less each day until they became so thin they resembled racks with dusty skins stretched tightly over them. They became bellyless, wild, and covered with parasites. A cow man wondered what sort of soul or spirit kept them alive, certainly nothing requiring food or drink.
Then, when it looked as if there was not another b
ite of feed anywhere in the Sierra and cattle ranged like goats up on the cliffs in country apparently impossible for a bovine, and every inch of the Sierra had been picked over, the summer rains began and grass sprouted.
The brown cow ranged far from Manuel Rodriguez' camp. She and her calf summered in a tiny meadow on a stream of clear water surrounded by straight pines high on the border of Chihuahua and Sonora.
When winter came the feed was gone in the meadow and the two moved down into the brush country where the spotted calf had been born. Here they ranged until the spring when the browncow had her seventh calf, a black heifer calf. The spotted calf was a yearling now. He had been weaned by his mother but he still ran by her side.
One day Manuel Rodriguez came for the brown cow again and she and her heifer calf and the spotted yearling were driven to the corrals where the cow was taken for milking again. The spotted yearling stayed close to his mother when ever she was turned out of the corral but he was becoming accustomed to ranging farther away each day looking for better feed, as there was not enough for him near the camp of Manuel Rodriguez. One evening he stayed away from his mother for the first time in his life. Gradually his visits to his mother became fewer as the rustling for feed became more difficult. He began to hunt new ranges and when his mother was turned out again the brown-and-white spotted yearling was on his own.
His pointed little horns were growing fast, nearly an inch a month now. The short hair under each eye was black and formed black crescents, a natural protection against the glare of the sun. He was light brown and white over his head, neck, and foreparts, but along his flanks and rear the spots changed to a reddish brown and were small and numerous, like reddish brown grains. He was almost a roan on his hindparts but he wasn't a roan. He was a granizo, with a multitude of distinct freckles on his hindquarters.
The yearling was learning to be alone. He found it natural to hide when a man passed near him. Alone, it was easy for him to climb high in the Sierra and feed in places his mother had not been spry enough to take him. He traveled silently on small rock-trimmed hooves. He picked his way patiently and surely over vertical slopes of smooth rock. He never wasted energy in being curious or calfish for he had none to waste, his process of making a living in that country took every bit of his nerve and guile. He never passed up a chance to eat, his every waking moment was dedicated to feed. He became as crafty and wild as the pumas, jaguars, and ocelots he encountered in their pursuit of a living.
Once, during the rainy season when the grass was good in the high pine country and the acorns were thick under the oak trees, the spotted yearling had been grazing two days without water on the new grass in a shaded ravine. In the evening he finally headed for water. He topped out over a sharp ridge covered with pines and walked down over needle carpeting into the steep shade of late afternoon. He could smell the deep cold water in the spring of an arroyo far below him. He rounded a bend in the trail and came upon more cattle on their way to the spring. He followed them on the narrow trail. The trail rimmed a precipice of sheer white rock.
The cattle slowed as each negotiated a slab of slanted rock in the trail that was the top of the precipice. Cattle were gingerly picking their way across the slab, placing their hooves flat and shifting their weights carefully, using the friction of their hooves to keep them standing on the smoothly polished rock. Three young bulls were on the slab. An old bull just ahead of the spotted yearling was getting ready to step on the slab when directly above them and so close they could smell his breath, an old lion raised up and screamed. The hooves of the first bull at the head of the file flashed out from under him. He slammed against the rock on his side and began sliding off the slab. Just as he reached the perpendicular, he found footing on a tiny shelf and he regained his stand, but he lost his hold again and cartwheeled off the mountain. The second bull had lost the footing of his hind legs and he slid off the mountain looking frantically up into the eyes of the lion, pawing at the slab with his weightless front feet. The third bull had managed to turn and head back toward the trail where the yearling and the old bull stood frozen, but the blast of the lion's scream had turned him involuntarily down the mountain and he never regained his footing. He rolled off. The lion crept stiffly off the rock above the trail and looked down into the .gorge where the three bulls had fallen, ignoring the old bull and the yearling. Then he took the trail down to the bottom of the gorge.
The spotted yearling's companion was a very old black-and-white muley bull. The old bull's hornless head was dome-shaped on top with a large thatch of hair topping the dome and a triangle of white hair on his forehead. His eyes bugged like a Jersey milk cow's. He was narrow between his front legs, long and slightly swayed in the back, high and bony in the hips. He stood on daintily slim white-stockinged legs. He was incredibly old, having seen eleven summers, and had missed being gathered in ten roundups.
Now Old Bull and the yearling stood on the trail above the sweet water they had anticipated, but which now was impossible to get. The terror died out of them. Old Bull eyed the polished rock in the trail ahead. He had never liked this place because of the danger of a careless step, an unprovoked slip. He disliked it even more now after having seen his three partners fail on it. Old Bull had ranged with them for the protection of their young horns and had paid for their company by a merciless bullying from them. Now they were a mass of pulp feed for an old toothless lion in the gorge and Old Bull wasn't going across the place ahead that had been avenue to their deaths. He turned in the trail and became aware of the yearling standing quietly behind him. When he started back up the trail the yearling followed closely. Together they went off in search of new country, new water.
The two stayed together for the next year, a bad time, a dry and hungry year, in which they ranged far and did not fare well. During this year the brown-and-white spotted yearling grew into a two-year-old bull with high proud horns. His horns were black tipped, ivory white at the base. They were reminiscent of the horns of the bulls of the fighting caste of Spain, his ancestors. But he was thin, and tick-and lice-ridden. He looked like a scorpion. The beautiful thick horns on the thin little body resembled the pincers of a scorpion. The root of the tail and the anus peaked out like the tail end of an ant. Down between the hind legs hung the scrotum with the two great eggs. He consisted only of horns, genitals, and appetite.
One morning he and o1d Bull were standing on the side of a hill warming themselves with the first of the day's sun when they both smelled man. They stood quietly smelling him, gradually gathering their faculties and their strength, noting the extent of their capabilities but not wasting an ounce of them, waiting to see what they would need. They were too weak for instant flight. They must locate the man and see what he would do. They did not raise their heads. When the man came near he was above them. He was afoot in huaraches. He shouted at them and they moved smoothly, effortlessly, waiting for an advantage, a chance to hide or get above the man. Near the bottom of the hill they hit a trail and began trotting, hoping to outdistance him. They came to a wash at the bottom of the hill and were temporarily out of the sight of the man.
They trotted down the wash. They found a way out of the wash and climbed back up toward where they had been sunning themselves. They kept in the brush, climbing steadily and unhurriedly. The man, from above the wash, watched a place in the trail on the other side of the wash where the two bulls would have to appear. When they did not show he struck for high ground, anticipating that the cattle would double back. He was swift. He did not look at the ground. He watched above him until he saw two spotted coats flash through a brief opening in the brush above him. He noted the angle of their climb and he made a wide circle toward the top of the hill to intercept them without their seeing him until they should meet with him. The man climbed faster than the cattle. He did not sweat nor draw a long breath. He shook out a loop in the recently tallowed rawhide reata in his hand. He reached the crest of the hill at exactly the same time the old spotted bull did. Th
e old bull did not pause or flinch from the man. He lowered his head and dove down the other side of the hill. The brown-and-white spotted two-year-old had been surprised by the appearance of the man and he stopped, for once not following unquestioning after Old Bull. The man, like the old bull, did not pause but instantly began swinging the loop over his head. The brown-and-white spotted bull whirled in fright, shocked into flight at last by the long-remembered whirr of the reata and charged back down the mountain. The man sprang after him, headed him off, and roped him. The bull bucked and bulled his neck, dragging the man behind him through brush and rock. The man gave slack, ran to a tree, and took a wrap on a branch. The spotted bull hit the end of the reata and bucked in circles around the tree. He plunged through the brush, careless of rock or cactus until he crashed to his knees into a young spiny mesquite bush. The man let him rest there for several moments until the spotted bull freed himself of the bush and stood clear. He shook his horns in an effort to free them of the rawhide that encircled them. The man unwrapped the end of the reata from the tree and tried to drive the bull down to the trail again but the bull was too intent on freeing himself of the reata and paid no attention either to the man or the ground over which he floundered. He lunged for higher ground, tossing his horns as high as he could and shaking them. He passed through a cholla bed and came out with the thorned stalks clinging to his head and sides. The man secured him to another tree and cut a short green post which he tied around the spotted bull's neck so that it dangled between his front legs. He took the reata off the horns and turned the spotted bull loose. The bull made an effort to gain the crest of the hill again but when he tried to run the big post banged against his front legs, tripping him. He needed to walk slowly and carefully in order to be able to move at all. The man walked him off the hill, down the trail, and into a holding pasture with several other cattle. The man roped him again and removed the post. That afternoon Old Bull was brought in, too.
