by J P S Brown
"You have no deal with my partner to feed those cattle in corrals."
"Yes, I have."
"Let's see the deal."
"What?" ·
"Let's see your contract."
"We have no contract. We made a deal by giving our word to one another. That is good enough for me, man."
"Not good enough for me. The cattle go out of there today. The cattle wear my brand. They are inspected here to me and they go where I say they go."
"You are going to pay me what you owe for the feed I've given the cattle before they take one step out of my corrals."
"All right. Let's see what the cattle owe you."
Espil opened a large briefcase, fixed a pair of glasses on his nose and lifted out a sheaf of receipts. He got paper and began adding the receipts. After the careful adding of the numbers of the receipts he underlined the total and handed the paper to Kane.
d "Only three thousand six hundred and three dollars," he said.
Kane took the receipts. Most of them were from a Norteña hay dealer.
"Who is José Nolasco?" Kane asked.
''He is a feed dealer here in Norteña. A fine man. An honest man. He is my compadre."
"All right. I hope he gave you this paper cheap. It was nice of you to feed my cattle so well. But I just can't pay you one cent of the money you say you were out, because for one thing, I don't owe you. We rented your ranch, not your corrals. We had no agreement for you to feed hay in corrals. For another thing, I just plain won't pay you because you never gave the cattle a third of what you are charging me. I don't know how the cattle have stayed alive."
"You are mistaken. I fed them well."
"How much did you feed? How many bales this last week, for instance?"·
"Three hundred bales a day."
"How much did the bales weight?"
"They are heavy bales from this region. They weigh over one hundred pounds."
"So you fed twenty-one hundred bales of alfalfa hay this last week?"
"Yes."
"And sixty thousand pounds of cottonseed meal and hulls I sent you?"
"What?"
"The meal and hulls I sent."
"I fed it week before last."
"I only sent it a week ago, Espil."
"Well, yes. We fed that too."
Kane laughed. "Boy, Espil, muchacho, Espil, we aren't playing marbles. You know how much I fed those cattle yesterday?"
"Mucho, mucho, too much. I saw the troughs still full of hay this morning. Your alfalfa is bad, stemmy. They can't eat it. You fed bad hay."
"I fed three hundred bales yesterday. They weigh forty-five pounds apiece. I fed six tons and the troughs are still full and the cattle are full. You are saying you fed fifteen tons early yesterday and the cattle were out of feed by 10 A.M."
"Some days they fill better than other days. These corrientes are bad, bad class. They fool you. They are no good to anyone."
"My friend, no cattle can live with a thief. Don't you think I can tell when my cattle have been starved?"
"You don't know these corrientes. Man, you are used to those good gringo Herefords. These Mexican corrientes will give you a lesson on how to lose money. "
"You mean Mexican corral owners," Kane said.
"Well, pay me so you can take your cattle out of my corrals. I don't want scorpions around my outfit anymore. They are bad for my reputation." He handed Kane the receipts. .
"Use that paper to wipe with," Kane said. .
"Look, gringo. I don't want trouble. I am an honest man and I don't like fights. If you don't pay me right now I'll have to take you to the judge who is my compadre also."
Kane's lawyer laid aside the magazine and stood up briskly. He took a business card from his wallet, flapped the wallet shut, and handed the card to Espil.
"Manuel Escudero, licensed attorney, at your orders," he said.
Espil scanned the card for a long moment. He removed the glasses and looked blindly at the card. He put the glasses back on and read the card again. He looked up at the lawyer and smiled.
"Thank you," Espil said. "Armando Espil, your servant."
"Now," the lawyer said. "In case of legal action in this problem, I must tell you, Señor Espil, we will demand against you for failure to feed the cattle and for taking the cattle under false pretenses. That is, you pretended to have a ranch which you did not have. And we suspect you will be unable to deliver all of the one thousand and thirty head of cattle that were shipped to you. In that case we may investigate further into any transportation of cattle you have made within the last month."
Espil smiled his best blue-eyed, tanned-face smile.
"No trouble. That is what I said and what I mean. If your ideas don't conform with mine, I bow to your better judgment. Like any friend I want what is best for your cattle. Take them tomorrow or anytime with my full consent. "
"Now," the lawyer continued. "We are prepared to pay you a dollar a head for all cattle removed from your corral for your care and any feed you might have given if you will pay us the cost of any cattle that are missing from the one thousand and thirty head."
"Six died. Kane saw the hides."
"All right," Kane said. "I'll go for six."
"Let's just call it even," Espil said. "You don't owe me a veinte centavo piece. Let's just say I did you the favor from a good heart."
"You say it, Espil," Kane said.
Espil gathered his papers, folded them neatly into his businessman's briefcase, put away his glasses, shook hands, and left.
Kane took the lawyer to his private plane at the airport and then went hunting with the Lion.
Kane and the Lion hired vaqueros and drove the cattle to the wheat stubble the next day. Kane allowed the cattle to rest and fill 10 days and then began castrating and doctoring warts and ringworm. The brown-and-white spotted bull was in the first corral full of cattle the men worked.
The Lion sat his horse in the corral and looked at the brown-and-white spotted bull and laughed in a high mocking voice. The spotted bull stood in a corner of the corral. His hip bones jutted angularly. His head was low under the heavy horns. He had started to move down the fence, had been blocked by the Lion, and turned head and front legs back away from the Lion. But his hind legs had been too weak to turn back and they had not changed course with the rest of the bull. There they stood, still headed down the fence, as though completely independent of the front quarters, waiting a new command. And between them in all their majesty hung the cods a lion was intent on acquiring.
"Are you absolutely certain you want to castrate this animal?" the Lion asked.
"Of course," Kane said. "Why?"
"I'm afraid it will unbalance him and his head will fall to the ground. He is so weak he will never be able to pick it up. Also with such an operation you could be in danger of removing a portion of his brain."
"Very funny. Just catch him for me. That is all you are supposed to do. Not give so much advice."
"Maybe you would like to dehorn him at the same time. In that way you would not only be helping him to maintain his balance but you would help take away the look of an insect he has."
"What do you mean insect? That is a good, sound, corriente bull. He is beautiful."
"He looks like the cross between a scorpion and an ant. Look at those horns. Exactly like the pincers of a scorpion. Look at that tail end. It comes to a point. It protrudes and then it tucks under. Exactly like an ant."
"Ha, ha, ha, funny. Funny, " said Kane. "Rope him."
"But wait. I see now why you love him so. Those bangs of shaggy hair over his horns and eyes. That long, dead hair on his sides. Those skinny flanks. Those bright little eyes. He also resembles a monkey. Could he be a relative of yours? A pariente?"
"Of your mother, ¡Ya basta tus payasadas!" said Kane. "Enough of your clowning!"
"Heh, heh, heh," said the Lion. "We'll see if he can be roped like cattle can be roped. If so I will concede he may possibly be a distant relati
ve to a bovine."
The Lion began to swing a big loop in his reata. He swung the loop counter-clockwise to his side. The spotted bull wavered out of the corner toward the center of the corral. The Lion let go of the loop. It sailed open and arched to the bull. It landed on the bull's hind quarters, caught them, and whipped under his belly from the side opposite the Lion making a trap for the bull's hind legs which he immediately stepped into. The Lion pulled out all the slack of the loop catching the hind legs below the hocks. The bull continued to shuffle along, the tied legs in the loop rubbing together. The Lion dallied the reata around his saddle horn and rode away. The bull sat down. His hind legs were held off the ground by the reata. He lay over on his side giving no battle. A vaquero knelt on his neck and held one front foot while Kane castrated him and scraped and iodined his warts and ringworm. When all operations were completed and the animal was no longer a spotted bull but a spotted steer, `Kane let him up. The steer walked slowly over to join his mates in the corner of the corral. The scraped circles where the ringworm had abided were naked and stained brown with iodine. Kane took the two great testicles and put them in a bucket of water.
"Two kilos of botana," said the Lion.
"Mucha carne," said Kane. "He commences to produce. You see how happy he is now?"
"I was sure he was going to stand on his head."
"Well, you can see he did not. We only changed his mind from love to grass."
Kane and the Lion made camp under a mesquite on the edge of a dirt tank of water and stocked in provisions. The two men worked happily together out of that camp.
One afternoon Kane roped a black bull to doctor him for warts. When the bull hit the end of the rope he stepped falsely and dislocated a shoulder. With only 30 days left in the quarantine the bull would never get well enough to make the 200-mile train ride to the border or the 1500-mile trip to Wyoming. Kane and the Lion walked the bull to the shade of their camp and tied him to the mesquite.
The Lion, savoring the fresh meat he would soon have, gleefully sharpened his big butcher knife and cheerfully, gloatingly, stuck it into the bull's throat. The bull was emptied of his blood in a splash. The Lion held a bucket under the fountain of blood he had opened and he kept the long knife in the throat, twisting the blade to give maximum flow as the blood spilled out. The bull was emptied of his life and became insensate in less than a minute. The Lion took all the blood he could and set the bucket aside. Then he stretched the bull out and skinned him and butchered him on his own hide.
The two men saved the best steaks and the meat of the head, heart, liver, kidneys, and the little marrow gut to be eaten fresh. They put the bucket of blood on the fire to boil. Later they would fry the blood with onion. They cleaned the paunch and sliced it up and put it with the meat of the jaws and tongue and cleaned jellylike hooves with the outer shell removed. This would make menudo, the drunkard's soup.
They lay live coals out evenly on the ground and sliced liver, heart, and kidneys into long thin slices and lay them on the coals to broil. They wrapped the steaks and ribs in several layers of canvas tarp so they would be able to broil them later. Finally, they boned all the rest of the meat and sliced it up in large, nearly transparent sheets, for jerky. They would take a big piece of pulp and start slicing on one side, extending the pulp into a sheet. They salted it heavily, covered it with black pepper, and hung it up to dry. The sheets hung so thin the sunlight could be seen through them.
Three more of the cattle died during quarantine. They had been too needy when they arrived at the stubble field. Kane and the Lion, with vitamins and drugs, the soft loop of their ropes, their eyes sore and red from the glare of the sun on the yellow fields, cared for, and brought the remainder of the cattle through the 60 days.
At the end of the quarantine the spotted steer had strengthened and rid himself of his warts and ringworm. He had found the bearded grain heads where they stood in bunches missed by the combines or where they lay in piles of chaff the machines had deposited in the fields. He also found his old sustenance, the pechita of mesquite and the bark of the palo verde trees growing on the edges of the fields.
His companion, Old Bull, had not fared so well. The teeth weren't good. He did well to survive, for he was getting past his best ability to adapt to new surroundings and feeds. He didn't take to the hard, bearded grain in the glaring fields. He preferred to stay in the shade of the trees and pick at the palo verde bark and pechita.
The cattle were driven to the railroad. They were loaded on freight cars again. They traveled all one night and were left on a siding at a junction to wait for another train that would pull them to the border. The cattle stood on the cars the next day and the next night. During the night at the siding the Old Bull tired and lay down. The car was tightly filled with cattle. The old muley's tired bones chilled. When the train lurched to a banging start in the morning, cattle ground their hooves over Old Bull but he was able to get to his feet. A big red ox leaned on him and Old Bull was unable to raise his head from under the belly of the ox. Had he been blessed with horns he could have made room to lift his head. As it was he stood there stiffly tired and badly injured, his neck stiffening, his head hanging more each mile. But he held his feet through the swaying, staggering, aching day and when the train arrived at the border he walked off the car unaided when the door opened onto a new chute at new corrals in strange surroundings once again.
Old Bull tried to drink the unfamiliar water but the pain in his sides and bones discouraged him. He shuffled to the corner where his companion, the brown-and-white spotted steer, lay, and chose a place beside him. He knelt his sore knees and slowly tucked his hind legs neatly up under his belly, lowered the old hind end softly, passively, to the ground, and closed his eyes for the last time. During the night his head slipped quietly over, the bug eyes half opened, the legs stretched out, he lay flat on his side, and his tough old spirit left him. He was no longer merchandise to anyone. In the morning Kane found him dead that way and remembered when he had first seen the old dome-headed thing at the El Naranjo roundup in the Sierra Madre. The cattle had been two days without feed. Kane had closed the lids on the water trough after the cattle had watered out on unloading the day before. The cattle would not feed or water now until they arrived on the American side of the border after being weighed for the customs duties. The brown-and-white spotted steer was hustled into a chute where boards were shoved in front and behind him, separating him from the other cattle. Men in white coats scratched him over with their fingers searching for warts, ringworm, abcesses, parasites. His eyes were examined. He danced in the chute. He poked his nose through the cracks between the boards of the chute searching for a way out. After his examination he was weighed with ten other cattle. He was dipped again, his last dip, and finally passed for export to the United States.
That afternoon, he was loaded on railroad cars again. The cars were still for hours. When they finally rolled they went only as far as the American side of the border where the cattle were unloaded again and weighed for American duties. In the American corrals they were finally fed and watered. The cattle rolled again after one night's rest. On the eighth day the cattle left the border, the brown-and-white spotted steer was crowded into the corner of a car. The deck was slippery there, and in one jolting start of the car the massive press of the cattle lifted him clear off his feet in the tired crush of their falling weight against him. He felt his sides give, his hip bones slammed and were pressed into the side of the car. A horn went in his flank, his brisket drove into the end of the car, his head bent back to the hip. Mercifully the car jolted again, backward, and the mass of cattle stumbled forward, releasing him. He got three feet on the deck but one front foot hooked over the neck of the steer that had gored him in the flank. The goring steer lost his balance when the train started again and the spotted steer's hind legs skittered on the slick deck. He fell on his side in the corner where he remained in a state of trampled, stood-upon, half-consciousness in a cold urined
mud bed. He had become one of the unfortunates. Later in the passive bovine enduring of his predicament he smelled the pine country where he and his mother had grazed in peace during the spring and summer months of his calfhood. Suddenly, there were no hooves standing on him and he was aware he was alone in the car.
Boy Decker had been standing outside counting the steers off car 2168. According to his list there should have been 50 head of cattle on the car.
"We're one short," he shouted to his father, a stocky man in a Stetson hat, who stood on the loading chute, a grave look on his face. He examined the list in his hand.
"Look in the car, son," he said, watching the cattle as they passed into the corral. I
Boy stepped into the muck of the car. He saw the smudged lump of the brown-and-white spotted steer lying flat in the corner. One dead, the boy thought. He walked over to the comer. The steer's deep eye was clear. It looked at him. The boy called to his father. The big man came stamping into the car. He stood over the steer, his new boots buried in the sand, urine, manure slush. The boy was passing his hand over the steer's eye. The steer blinked at the hand. The big man pulled the tail out of the slop and lifted on it. The boy picked up the head and without speaking the man and his son tried several times to lift the steer to his feet. The steer could not find his legs. Each time they cleared the deck the legs swung numbly beneath him. The only life in the steer was in his eyes. They kept blinking with the effort of trying to find the legs. The man dragged the steer by the tail across the slush, out the door, and down over the boards in the loading chute to the dry dirt of the corral.
"Well, there he is, the last of the thousand," the boy said.
"Try to get him up," the cattleman said. He went away to look after the feeding and watering of the rest of the cattle. The boy bent the steer's knees up under his brisket and lifted his hind end by the tail so that the legs rested under the belly. In this way the steer could sit up with his legs under him, his head off the ground. The head and horns wobbled heavily, barely above the ground. The steer kept his head up. The ears investigated the man above him. The dry muzzle, from which drained the residue of pneumonia, sniffed the pine air. The tongue made a feeble effort to clean the nostrils. The teeth ground in the head.
