Wolves At Our Door

by J P S Brown

  "They're not wolves."

  "What do you mean?"

  "They don’t look like wolves to me. They’re more like dogs. My compadre Vogel might know what they are by now. He said he would try to find out more about them?

  "If they’re not wolves, what do you think they are?"

  "Some animal somebody thinks are wolves. They don’t look like the ancient savage that I know as a wolf."

  Juan Vogel appeared at the end of the airstrip on his mule, single footed on to the wall where his friends waited, stopped, lit a cigarette with a kitchen match that he struck alive on his saddle horn, and said, "What chingado kinds of destruction have you three plotted while you waited here for me? You, Marco Antonio, tell me what my compadres have cooked up."

  "Nothing, Godfather. They’ve been good."

  "I told Jim about the wolves," Martinillo said. "Did you find out where they came from, compadre?"

  "Maybe," Vogel said. "The secretary of the Union Ganadera de Chihuahua told me that somebody raises them in Parral and sells most of them to somebody in the U.S. They’re a mix of wolf and some other animal. The animals you saw might come from Parral. Anybody can buy them.

  "And you, Jim. What did you do, track me in that airplane to Las Parvas Mountain? Do you think you could have come any closer to me with the buzz saw on that machine? Did you have to look right down into the bottom of my tracks?"

  "I only wanted to see if you still had cigarettes."

  "If I hadn’t, would you have circled back and given me a package?"

  "I gave it some thought."

  "Malhaya. You blew hot air into my mule Negrito’s ear."

  "Didn't you notice how considerate I was? I cut all sound before I passed you by so as not to bother your mule. Quiet as a snake, I was."

  "Except for the quiet little scream you made . . . the little wind that screamed as you slipped by. That was not good."

  "I had to see if you were all right"

  "Next time, I’ll wave to you from a league away. ¿Qué tal? What’s going on? What do you want to do now? Shall we ride to Lupino’s tonight, or wait until tomorrow?"

  "You’ve been on that mule, how long, six hours?"

  "I started early so we could go on to La Golondrina today. Lupino expects us, but it’s up to you. It’s eight hours from here. You and I have ridden farther than that hung over, but that was before the horse landed on you. Can you ride that far, or don’t you plan to go with me?"

  "I can ride and I’m going"

  "Then you’ve been on a horse since your accident and you’re in shape for an eight-hour ride? What will you ride?"

  Kane pointed to Gato.

  "I saw him there, but can you ride a bronco after that other bronco rearranged your gizzards for you?"

  “Of course."

  "Gato’s gentle," Marco Antonio said.

  "But he’s a three-year-old and he’s never carried a man eight hours, has he?"

  "He can do it," Marco Antonio said. "He won’t tire. He won’t even draw a long breath."

  "Nesib Lupino wants to buy the horse, so you might as well ride him to La Golondrina if you can, Jim," Martinillo said. .

  "What's this I hear from Martinillo?" Kane asked Juan Vogel. "You gave me your half interest in Gato when I was in the hospital?"

  "I gave him to you the first time I went to see you. Don’t you remember?"

  "I’m sorry, I don’t."

  "Lupino wants to buy him, so if you want to sell him, you can get a lot of money. Lupino is desperate to have him. He expects you to bring him the horse, so I told Martinillo to have him here for you to ride. When Lupino wants something he does not worry about the price. After all, he has more money than the treasury department."

  "He wants everything he sees. I bet he saw Gato once, then heard Marco Antonio was breaking him, so he wants him now. The minute he sees something good of ours, he wants it. He wants my horse? I’ll have some fun and dangle him under his nose, but I’ll never sell him."

  Adan brought your mule Paseador, if you’d rather ride him. It’s up to you. He’s a lot more gentle."

  "No, I can ride the horse."

  "Well, if you’re in shape to ride, Jim, let’s go."

  Kane had not said that he was in shape. He only said that he could do it. Eight hours on a green horse would hurt, but he wanted to do it. He had to start making a hand again, or have a look at the end of his life. He tightened the cinches on his saddle and led Gato in a circle. He led him to the rock wall, climbed clumsily on the wall, and mounted him. "Pardon the way I get on," he said. "I can either embarrass myself by getting on the horse the easiest way, or I can embarrass myself more by reaching for the stirrup from the ground on weak legs and hauling myself into the saddle with weak arms, grunts, and gasps."

  "No hay cuidado, no problem, Jim," Vogel said. "You’re with the three people who worried most that you would never mount another horse."

  "Maybe I’ll do it better in another week," Kane said.

  "No, how can you say a week?" Martinillo said as he fussed with Gato’s bridle. "A chore that would take someone else a week to do will take Jim Kane only a day or two."

  "Ay Jim," Vogel said. "Are you sure you want to do this? Your joints must creak like an old wagon,"

  "It’s only because they’re rusty," Kane said. "How can that be a problem? I’ll have three hundred leagues of rock wall between here and La Golondrina to stand on when I want to mount my horse. It’s only the getting on that’s hard. Once I'm on, I'm good. Don’t you want to get off Negrito and rest awhile before we go, compadre?"

  "Not necessary," Vogel said.

  "Let’s go, then."

  TWO

  Martinillo and Marco Antonio said they would ride along with Kane and Vogel as far as Vogel’s headquarters at El Trigo. Vogel had scraped a jeep road from the airstrip to his hacienda with oxen and a Fresno, so the trail was wide enough for riders two abreast. Kane and Marco Antonio rode side by side behind Martinillo and Vogel.

  Kane knew that Marco Antonio probably wanted to ask him about his granddaughter Dolly Ann Kane, who was about his age. He might start by asking about her brother Cody Joe.

  "Nino Jim, I guess you noticed that I’m riding your mule Paseador," Marco Antonio said. He called Kane "Nino" because Kane had sponsored him when he received the sacrament of confirmation in the Catholic Church.

  "I’m glad you are," Kane said.

  "We needed to bring him in case we found that you were still too damaged to ride Gato. My grandfather said that you would want to ride Gato, so I put your saddle on him. Paseador was the only other animal in the corral for me to ride. I told my grandfather I would rather walk than presume to ride your mule. I never ride him. My grandfather does."

  "Ride him. He has to earn his keep. The best way to ruin a mule is to make a consentido of him, a pet. A mule that isn’t worked regularly will spoil on his own juices, and the man who goes sweet on him deserves the kick in the slats a juicy mule will give him."

  "I’ve saved some money and would like to buy Paseador, if you would consider selling him, Nino."

  "I ought to give him to you, Marco Antonio, but he was a gift from don Nesib Lupino. As much as I would like you to have him, I wouldn’t want don Nesib to hear that I would rather have money than his gift."

  "I understand. I thought you and Nino Juan bought these mules from don Nesib."

  "No, he gave me Paseador and gave Negrito to your nino Juan at the same time. He said he wanted to make sure we would have a way to visit him at La Golondrina."

  "I understand."

  "But ride him all you want when I’m not here. I’ll tell your grandfather that he’s yours to ride from now on."

  Kane thought, Now the young button will have worked up the courage to ask about Cody Joe. By doing that he hopes he might find out if he will get to see Dolly Ann this summer. How well I remember the way a boy thinks. How he must long to find out about the girl of his dreams. All of a sudden he finds himself side
by side with the one person who can tell him everything about the girl. He thinks I ’m ignorant of his awful desire for news of her, that I don’t realize how blessed I am to know everything about her. He’s sure he’ll have to trick me into giving him information about her because I need to protect her from young men. He wants news of her so much, his heart is about to wring itself out of his chest, so let’s see how long he can stand it before he comes right out and asks for all the real news of her. She's been gone from the Sierra a year and a half so he’s probably dedicated all his bedtime thoughts to her for at least the past five hundred nights.

  "And . . . will Cody Joe come to the Sierra this summer?" Marco Antonio asked. The flush on the kid’s cheeks was shot through with bloodless streaks, as though the question had pinched the pink out of his face.

  "Cody Joe has joined the military service, but he’s been given a month's leave. He’ll come home to the 7X ranch in a few days to help brand the calves. After that I’ll bring him here. Today is the fifteenth of May?"

  "¿Sepa la fregada? How the heck would I know?" Marco Antonio growled softly, then smiled. Nobody in the Sierra kept track of the days of the week, or the dates. Kane liked the boy’s answer. So what if he did not know the day or the date? He knew the work he had to do and how to do it. Kane relented. "I’ll bring Dolly Ann too. She wants to come and visit your sister Luci. Do you think that would be all right? I guess they exchanged letters all this time."

  "Do you speak of La Muñeca?" Marco Antonio asked, as though Dolly Ann had not been in his thoughts at all.

  "Yes, when I say Dolly Ann, I mean La Muñeca. Don’t you think the name fits the girl?"

  "¿Sepa la fregada? That person’s been gone from here so long that I probably don’t know her anymore. She might have grown hair on her face by now, for all I know."

  "Ah, believe rne, she has not grown hair on her face. Didn’t Luci read you her letters?"

  "No, hombre. I saw only the outside of the letters, was only privileged to carry them to Luci from time to time. Luci and La Muñeca together are strangers to the rest of the world. What has La Muñeca done with herself, besides write letters to my sister and exclude me from her life?"

  "She wants to be a professional boxer. She’s good at it, but I hope she doesn’t make a career of it."

  ”A boxer? Did you say boxeadora? How can she be a boxer? She’s a girl."

  "It's my fault. I’ve taught Dolly Ann and Cody Joe how to box since they could make fists."

  "I know you were a boxer, Jim. My grandfather saw you fight in Navojoa. He said you knocked out all your opponents except the Buffalo"

  "A long time ago."

  "But why teach a girl to box?"

  "Girls’ boxing is popular as a sport in the United these days, but I didn’t teach La Muñeca so she could compete. I taught her so she could fend herself from cowards who attack girls." People in Mexico commonly referred to the United States simply as "United," so that is what he said too.

  Marco Antonio smiled. "I don’t know boxing, but it’s hard to believe La Muñeca could stop any man from hurting her if he really wanted to. The last time I saw her she was only a skinny long-legged little girl with arms like sticks."

  "Well, she’s filled out, and make no mistake, she’s learned to wing punches from every angle. She can hit a man five times with all her weight behind it before he can even blink an eye."

  "Imagine that," Marco Antonio said, still smiling. “I might believe it of some of the mud hens I know, but never of the blonde doll."

  Kane realized that the boy knew only a little more about boxing than Kane knew about medieval sorcery. In that part of the Sierra Madre children only had their lariats to play with and knew little about organized sports like baseball, boxing, soccer, or basketball. Most had never even seen a sporting contest.

  "Where will La Muñeca go to fight, if she becomes a boxer?" Marco Antonio asked. "Will you and Cody Joe help her do that? I would think you would try to prevent it."

  "What can I say? She wants to be a champion in the sport, and I think she’s good enough. If she makes it a career, I guess her brother and I will have to help her."

  "Where are her parents? What do they think about it?"

  "I thought you knew. They died in a plane wreck twelve years ago. I guess you were too little to remember. I’ve been her father and mother these last five years since my wife Adelita died."

  "No wonder she’s a boxer. I wonder what my Nina, my godmother, Adelita would have thought of La Muñeca becoming a boxer/"

  "Don’t get the wrong idea. The doll can cook, look beautiful, and be a lady too."

  "Won't she have to get tough as a javelina to be a boxer?"

  “I won't let that happen."

  "What if something happens to you and Cody Joe? Who will protect her, look out for her?"

  Kane thought about it. Where would the girl be safe, here in the Sierra with Kane, the wolves, and the drug growers; at the 7X ranch on the border with Kane and the drug and human traffickers; or as a boxer alone in a big city? How safe was a girl boxer in New York, Los Angeles, or Las Vegas? "That’s a good question, boy," he said.

  After Adelita died and left him alone to raise their grandchildren, Kane had found that he was not good at it. They were too smart and quick for him. He was too soft and vulnerable to their little cruelties to be their taskmaster. He discovered that they needed a taskmaster of the kind that Adelita had been. He could not make them do his bidding as he had his own son, their father. They kept him on a tether and worked him like an old, gentle mule.

  One day they had discovered his boxing scrapbook and after that wanted him to watch and explain boxing on TV and kept after him to coach them. He knew it would be a way for him to control them on the kind of gentle rein that he needed to hold if he was to raise them the way he wanted, so he put them in training. He had boxed twenty-two years, in grammar school, high school, university the Marine Corps, and as a professional. Boxing had always been a refuge for him, a discipline that kept him ready to meet any kind of travail, not only opponents in the ring. He had gained and kept full control of his two hoodlums after that, and they did not even realize how he did it, did not seem to know that he had become the maestro of their fates. He loved that, but so did they.

  With Kane’s help and boxing, his grandchildren learned self-respect and respect for everyone else who deserved it. They had learned self-confidence and the real value of courage. They had learned that life is full of everyday contests that can bloody and often defeat a person, unless he or she could find the strength to throw one more bucketful of effort into the fray to gain a victory, or at least to survive. They also learned that they could get up and try again when their last bucketful had been thrown in and they had been felled. They learned that they had to get a bloody nose to learn boxing. They learned that everyone had the option to stay in a conflict until it was over, whether or not they remained standing at the end. To stay in until the end of the contest was always preferable to being a quitter. Boxing had been Kane’s way of showing them how to do right, and they loved the training. It helped his lot as a grandfather even more when they proved themselves to have talent and developed into first-class fighters with verve, class, and style.

  The only trouble that Dolly Ann faced in becoming a champion boxer was the dearth of opponents available to her while she developed her talent. Cody Joe was her only sparring partner. He had found plenty of opponents in grade school and high school and would find more in the Marine Corps. He had already won several amateur championships and outstanding boxer awards.

  Dolly would bloody his nose if he did not watch it. He had to be careful not to bloody hers, and that put his nose in more danger. She could always outpoint him, not only because she was a better boxer, but because he held back and did not use his power on her. He knew his range and was in command of it. He could unleash a straight right hand or a jab with power and speed that would only tap his sister way out on the tip of her nose.
He did not find it as easy to hook her without hurting her when she was in range of bent-arm blows, and he could not keep her at arm’s length forever. She was extremely canny about slipping inside his straight-arm blows and peppering him with combinations of hooks and uppercuts, and she never held back. He told her not to hold back, and then she made him sorry.

  Kane had only been able to find four lady opponents for Dolly in Arizona and New Mexico, but he and she had run them down and put on exhibitions with them for Elks Clubs, Veterans Clubs, and church fund-raisers so she could have the necessary ring experience in front of crowds of people. To put on exhibitions was a good way for her to stand up and show her stuff the way all boxers have to do, because it was the final discipline for her display of poise, patience, and pace. Exhibitions forced her to control her power. Nobody won an exhibition and no one should try to use it to do anything but put on a good show of the "Sweet Science." Participants should come away from an exhibition feeling equally victorious for the show they put on.

  Now that Kane found himself horseback in the Sierra again, he remembered how far away in another world his grandchildren were and how lonesome he could be without them. Their increasing ambitions, activities, sweethearts, and institutions kept them away from him. Kane counted himself lucky that he would have them for the next month. Since his wife Adelita had died, his days were good only when he was with his friends and animals or his grandchildren. Kane counted far too much on keeping them close.

  Adelita would know how he felt, would stand in the way of her granddaughter becoming a professional boxer, all right, but she would probably tell him that for now he should try to make a hand again with this man Vogel. He would have to stop crippling along in his thoughts. Put all that boo hoo lonesome and worry about little girls becoming boxers behind. Pay attention to the fine animal he rode today after a year and a half of lying on his back. Think and act healthy as a horse again. He looked up and his daydream had carried him past Rancho El Trigo and the Martinillos had already turned back. He began to think like a cowboy again and appreciate where he was. He sat aboard the best animal in the region, maybe in the whole Republic of Mexico. He rode in the company of the best man and the best friend of his life. He was lucky to find himself again inside the heartbeat of the mountains he loved best and knew well, even though they were unknown to almost all other men. He knew how to be a man, have some style and a lot of fun, and that had got him here. The big hole in him from the horse fall would heal shut. He would perform his duties one by one, as they came. First, sit up on the horse and pay attention to him.