by J P S Brown
A few days later, the cattle in the holding pasture were gathered and shut up in the corral together. The corral was not new to any of the cattle. As calves they had all endured hunger in this same place during the time their mothers had been milked. Here they had known loneliness, fer, and anger. The cattle were well acquainted with this corral. Now they had been gathered in the corral to be sold.
The men caught the brown-and-white spotted two-year-old bull and branded and vaccinated him. During that day and the next the cattle were run back and forth a hundred times in the corral as each bull was roped and branded. In the evenings, the cattle were surrounded by vaqueros and driven to a stream and watered. Then they were shut up again for the night in the corral, the gate poles, the trancas, were tied in their slots with rawhide, and the cattle were fed tasol, cornstalk fodder. The spotted two-year-old bull learned to hook short, twisting thrusts with his horns so as to miss no time eating. Old Bull stayed by his side. The tasol in the corral never lasted long. One day the trancas were let down and the cattle were counted out the gate and headed up a trail. They were driven for days across the Sierra Madre. They left the Mother Mountains they knew and hit new, wider, trails, the track of thousands of cattle that had gone out before them.
During the night the herd was watched over by the vaqueros on the sabanas, the bedgrounds. These grounds were chosen for their openness and for natural barriers that detained the cattle in the night but allowed them freedom to graze. Each days drive between sabanas was a jornada, a journey.
The brown-and-white spotted bull arrived at each sabana weaker and more footsore. He was hungry, too, but hunger was a dull state he was accustomed to. It was spring, the driest time of the year. Feed was meager. Many herds had passed over the trail before this one. The sabanas were grazed clean, but the spotted bull and Old Bull always found something to eat; the bark of a tree, a leaf of a prickly pear, a bud on the end of a young twig.
Each night Old Bull took his companion and made an attempt to escape, but they were always turned back. Old Bull was increasingly sad. He missed his old haunts. He wanted to be back in his querencia. One day he sat down in the trail. The herd was driven on without him, but a small boy was left to watch him. Small Boy chattered constantly at Old Bull who rested, enjoying his stay in the pine shade. Small Boy found a stick and poked in astonishingly tender places, interrupting the pleasure of the stay. Old Bull passively stayed down. Then Small Boy got two short sticks, stood on Old Bull's tail, grasped the sticks in both hands with a stick on each side of Old Bull's tail, and rubbed the sticks up and down with Old Bull's tail squeezed in between them. Old Bull got up. Old Bull and Small Boy caught up to the herd at the sabana that evening.
On the eighth day of the drive the herd arrived at a corral in a village at the foot of the Sonora side of the Sierra Madre. The cattle were driven through a chute. At the end of the chute the brown-and-white spotted bull shied at a pool of water. He didn't want to step into the water but the bulls behind him pushed him into it. The pool was shallow. He trotted through it. He came to a longer pool. The bull ahead of him, fooled by the small pool behind, had stepped confidently into the long pool and had submerged completely out of sight. He had come up swimming. The brown-and-white spotted bull stood on the slick cement at the brink of the long pool, loath to step into the dark water. It smelled bad. He was crowded from behind. A sharp horn drove into his hams. He leaped as far as he could from his last step on the cement and plunged to the bottom of the stinking mess. When he surfaced he turned his nose skyward, nostrils cringing, horns bobbing above the water. He swam for his life. At the end of the pool his feet struck a rough good step and he emerged, thoroughly violated by the malodorous bath, but disinfected of lice and ticks. He had undergone his first dip of insecticide.
During the night the herd in the corral diminished as trucks came and vaqueros loaded them with cattle. The brown-and-white spotted bull ate nothing that night. He was far from even the odor of cattle feed. The first cocks were crowing when he was packed on a truck with other cattle. All night he slid and fought for his balance on the deck of the truck. The deck was slick with manure and urine of the cattle that had been hauled before. The road was rough and steep. The spotted bull was crammed by the other cattle on every curve, every hill.
In the morning he was unloaded into another chute and given another foul dipping. Then he was fed the first good feeding of his life. He had arrived at a market, had become merchandise. He rested.
The cattle were rested and fed well for ten days by their buyer before they were packed into a boxcar on a train and shipped north along the Sonora Coast to Hermosillo. This trip took 20 hours. In Hermosillo, the cattle were unloaded and inspected for ticks in individual compartments in a chute. One bull was found to have a live tick and the cattle were dipped again and put aside for eight days in quarantine corrals. Here they were fed dry milo maize fodder, poor nourishment for weak cattle, but good feed was scarce in Sonora that year. In the Hermosillo corrals the brown-and-white spotted bull came in contact with the contagious that could make him "unmerchantable," unmarketable. His load of stock came out of the eight-day quarantine at Hermosillo with wart virus and ringworm from cattle that had passed through there before them. The cattle were dipped again and loaded on the train and shipped 250 miles and 30 more hours north where they got a deadly break in their luck. They were waylaid by a thief. Jim Kane, the buyer of the cattle, had the cattle sold to a cattleman in Wyoming. He was required to deliver the cattle to the Wyoming rancher on the American side of the border. Before he could deliver, the cattle needed to pass a sixty-day quarantine period. This period was imposed on all cattle passing out of the fever tick zone south of Hermosillo. No tick zone cattle could be exported without being quarantined sixty days in the clean zone north of Hermosillo.
Jim Kane had shipped 1030 head of cattle from Rio Alamos, his headquarters, to the town of Norteña in northern Sonora. the ranch outside Norteña on which the cattle were to spend their quarantine had been rented by Kane's partner. The owner of the ranch was trusted completely by Kane's partner. The man was so trusted that Kane's partner had not found it necessary to see the ranch or be present to receive the cattle as they arrived.
Kane had been completely occupied in the mountains of the Sierra Madre, buying and bringing the cattle out. He did his work slowly, on horseback. He came out of the mountains with the cattle. He doctored and fed them at his pasture in Rio Alamos and from there he shipped them as they were ready and strong for shipping. He had not been able to see the quarantine ranch. He had taken good care of his cattle and had shipped them from Rio Alamos, confident that they were passing into good hands.
After Kane shipped the last load of cattle, he spent a week winding up his Rio Alamos business. During this week he sent 10 tons of cottonseed meal, 20 tons of cottonseed hulls, and 3 carloads of alfalfa hay to Norteña to supplement the dry pasture the cattle would be ranging on. He realized this was not enough supplement, but it was all he could acquire in the droughty state of Sonora that year. He had hoped to feed the hay to the weakest cattle and to the cattle he would castrate during their ten-day hospitalization period.
Kane caught up with the brown-and-white spotted bulls load of cattle at the end of their eight days of quarantine in Hermosillo. He accompanied the load to the unloading point in Norteña. The ranch was 15 miles from this little town. The owner of the ranch lived in the town. Kane located him and introduced himself. The owners name was Armando Espil. He was a tall, blue-eyed Mexican. He invited Kane to breakfast. He was very polite. He introduced Kane to his plump, working, silent wife and to his tall, blue-eyed son, who stood around and watched, and listened silently, and who silently disappeared when he heard Espil invite Kane to go see the cattle. Espil loaded Kane into a factory-new-smelling Chrysler sedan, turned on the air conditioning, and rolled up the air-tight, sound-tight windows. The car shockproofly, soundproofly, bumped over a rough dry street to Espil's new corrals at the edge of to
wn.
Kane got out of the car. He had expected to see only one load of cattle. He saw the corrals were full of his cattle and sensed the first nudge of disappointment. It is the feeling any husbandman senses when he sees his charges have fallen into the hands of a thief. During that first moment at the corrals Kane didn't want to believe his cattle had been exploited. In the next moment he was convinced they had been.
"Why are the cattle here?" he asked Espil.
"These cattle were in terrible shape when they arrived here. They would have died at the ranch. I kept them here for a few days to rest and feed them. Kane, you shouldn't have shipped cattle in that condition. I have already spent three thousand dollars of my own money in feed keeping them alive."
"We rented your ranch, Espil, not your corrals. Is there no feed on your ranch?"
"Much, much feed. Yes. But I didn't want to turn them out until they had all been castrated and allowed to gain back their strength."
"Some of these cattle, the strongest, are two loads of bulls and oxen. There they are over there. You have them separated, I see. I castrated the bulls on my place in Rio Alamos. They are the first, cattle I shipped you. They've been here over a month. Why have you kept them here?"
"Those bulls and oxen were in very bad shape. Very bad. Six of them died here in spite of all I did to save them." Kane remembered the big fine oxen and bulls he had brought down from the Sierra early in the spring. He had rested them for three weeks on good alfalfa pasture after the bulls had been castrated. The bulls had healed and gained weight on the pasture. The oxen had filled out and put on flesh. Kane climbed over the fence into their corral. They were emaciated. He counted them. There were 26 cattle short. Nearly a load. The cattle had nothing to eat. They moved gently out of Kane's way or lay still as he walked through them.
"Where are the rest of these cattle?" Kane asked.
"They are all here or in the other corral. Six died, I told you. I have the hides in the warehouse.
Kane saw that a big brindle ox, the best of the lot, was missing. He remembered buying him from Tino Sierra in Guadalupe Victoria. Kane walked through the gate into a big corral where the remainder of his cattle were kept. The corral held smaller cattle, yearlings, two-year-olds, and three-year- olds. They barely had room to lie down. They were in worse condition than the older cattle. They staggered when they walked. Their hind legs interfered with one another. Their . thin necks were unable to hold up the heavy horns. The brindle ox was not in the bunch. Not a leaf a stalk, a semblance of feed, was in the troughs. The brown-and-white spotted bull shuffled away from Kane. He had just been unloaded from a 500-mile train ride and a week on short rations and he was stronger than any of the cattle that had been kept by Espil to be "strengthened."
"When do you feed my cattle? What do you feed my cattle, Espil?"
"We feed very early, very early. While you still are sleeping peacefully in your cool motel room enjoying your rest."
"And what do you feed them?"
"Cood alfalfa hay from this region."
"What part of the alfalfa? The pure little odor? ¿El puro olorcito?"
"Ha, ha, ha. You are funny. You speak very good Spanish. You have become more Mexican than even I am. How long have you lived in Mexico, Jim?"
Kane climbed the fence out of the coral.
"What happened to the meal and hulls I sent you?"
"Oooooooo, I fed it last week. You sent very little. Imagine! You only sent ten tons of meal. That is only twenty pounds apiece for a thousand cattle."
"And the twenty tons of hulls?"
"I fed it with the meal."
Kane was sure the man was a liar and a thief now. Cotton seed hulls are very linty. If you feed a bucketful of it there will be traces of it in the trough, in the corral dirt, in the manure, for months.
"Where did you unload that feed?"
"In the warehouse, where else?"
Kane walked over to the warehouse. Espil walked behind him. Kane slowed up so that Espil could catch up and walk abreast of him. Espil stayed behind.
In the warehouse Kane found not one hull, not one speck of lint, not a trace of the greenish brown dust or strong warm odor of cottonseed meal. The six hides were stacked in a corner. Kane uncovered each dry crackling hide. No brindle.
"Let's go back to the motel. I have some telephoning to do," Kane said.
At the motel he telephone his Mexican lawyer at Frontera and asked him to come to Norteña. He then got into his pickup and went to the railroad office to see if his alfalfa had arrived. The alfalfa had been on the rails for over a week. At the depot he found the feed had arrived. He arranged for trucks and took the hay to Espil's corrals. He filled the troughs all they would hold. They held 300 of the small, light, Rio Alamos bales. He left his vaquero, Cruz Gastelum, who had come along with the last load, to watch over the cattle. Then he got in his pickup and went in search of the Lion.
In Norteña Kane stopped at a gas station and asked for the Lion. The mid-afternoon sun made the white floury dust on the streets white hot. No one was in the streets.
"Where is the Lion?" Kane asked the boy who took care of the gas station.
The boy smiled. "Who knows where the Lion prowls now. He is a lion."
"Where does he live?" Kane asked.
"The Lion lives everywhere. Sometimes here in Norteña. Sometimes in the brush. All depends on what he is hunting."
"Where is his woman? His sons?"
"Which woman? The legitimate? The legitimate is in the town of Iglesias, about thirty kilometers from here. The querida, the lover, is here in Norteña."
"Where does she live?"
"In front of the old Hotel Cuatro Milpas."
Kane drove to the hotel and parked the pickup. He crossed the baking street to the door of the house. Lolita answered the knock.
"And the Lion? Where is he?" Kane asked.
"Ooooohhhh, Meestair Kane," roared a voice from inside. The girl smiled and opened the door. "Pase, come in," she said.
"What the chingaos are you doing here," asked the Lion.
"I'm trying to clean some cattle so I can take them to the States."
"Where are you cleaning them?" the Lion asked, laughing.
"I thought at the Espil ranch."
The Lion laughed harder.
"Why are you laughing? Kane asked.
` "At my compadrés ranch?" the Lion managed through his laughter.
"Is he your compadre?"
"Seguro que sí. Surely he is."
"That finishes me off. Here I come to get you to help me and find he is your compadre. Who baptized who?"
"My compadre is godfather to my oldest son."
"Sonofabitch!" Kane said in English.
"Hee, hee, hee," said the Lion.
"Well, I've got to get my cattle out of his high-priced corrals and get them something to eat before they all die or get eaten by Mexicans."
"You should see how good that meat is," said the Lion. He pointed to a clothesline outside the window. Meat was drying on the line. "My compadre brought me a hind quarter, a large hindquarter. He said it was from a fat heifer he butchered, but I knew by the taste it was from one of those 7X branded corrientes of yours I've been seeing arrive this month."
"I bet you ate my brindle ox," Kane said.
"Probably."
'Sonofabitch. "
"Not only that but I found my compadre a trucker to take nineteen head of fat cattle to Mexicali for the butcher."
"Is Espil fattening cattle?"
";N0, h0mbre!" .
"Has he got any cattle at all?"
"¡No, hombre! Shut your mouth! The bank embargoed his ranch and his cattle six months ago. He has no cattle he can sell or butcher. He built those corrals after he sold the cattle in Mexicali."
"He owns no ranch?"
"Didn't I just tell you? The bank owns the ranch now."
"Sonofabitch!" Kane said. "Do you, Lion, know anything about what happened to some feed, some cottons
eed hulls and meal I sent up here?"
"No." No one can say no like a Mexican looking away from you or looking at a space two inches from your nose. "Didn't you see any meal around Espil's corrals?"
The Lion remembered something. He made a decision. He leveled his eyes at Kane.
"Hombre," he said. "Of course! I rode horseback past my compadrés new corrals about a week ago late in the evening. I saw a truck loaded with cottonseed meal. I needed a sack of meal for my milk cow in Iglesias so when I got here I took my truck and went back to get it. What do you think?"
"Mierda! What?"
"No meal. The truck was gone when I got back." The Lion roared with laughter.
That afternoon the Lion helped Kane find a thousand acres of Wheat stubble. The fields were well shaded and had plenty of grass on their irrigation ditch banks. Acres of wheat in thickly bordered areas had been left intact by the combines. Kane was sure his cattle would do well here during their quarantine period if he supplemented the stubble with stronger feed.
The next morning Kane's lawyer arrived at the motel. He was a young, slightly built, clean-cut boy just out of school, very formal. He accompanied Kane to Espil's corrals. The troughs, still, held more than half the hay Kane had fed the day before. The cattle were full. Kane explained the cattle's problem as they returned to the motel. The lawyer took off his coat and tie and sat in the corner of the room with a news magazine when Espil came into the room.
"Espil. I'm taking my cattle out of your corrals today," Kane said.
"It is about the right time now although I think we should wait until they rest up on a good feed before you move them to my ranch."
"Yes? Well they aren't going to your ranch after all. I bought some wheat stubble for them."
"What about my ranch?"
"I'm not going to use your ranch, Espil."
"Oh, yes, you are. Your partner and I have a deal. Those cattle stay with me until I hear from him."
