by J P S Brown
"There’s been some drunken talk, but I haven't paid attention, compadre."
"Have you seen any strangers in El Datil?"
"Some of those shaved heads who call themselves Los Lobos have cruised through here in their car."
"Your comadre Vicenta got word that someone will try to shoot our Gato horse during the race."
"How does she know, compadre?"
"Some of her cronies in the bawdy house told her. One of them is the favorite woman of Rafa Lupino. You know this race is against a Lupino horse, don’t you?"
"Ooo, everybody from Sinaloa to Chicago knows, I think."
Kane laughed. "Why Chicago?"
"Isn't that where all the Mexicans have gone?"
"What do you mean? Have only Mexicans gone there, no Mayo Indians like you?"
"Yes, only Mexicans. They’ve left Mexico to us poor brutes."
"We have to keep our horse safe. What can you do to help me? I think if a sniper wants to shoot him during the race, he’ll have to hide in the brush along the west side of the highway."
"That would be indicated, for that is the only place by the racetrack where anyone can hide with a rifle."
"I haven't been in that thicket for a long time, but you have."
"I go in there every evening after my daughter Concha’s milk cows. That’s what I’m good for. I cut and carry in the forage for the cows in the afternoon, go find them and bring them in and feed them at night, milk them and drive them out to pasture in the morning. I pasture them there, because it’s so brushy nobody minds. They’re safe in there. Nobody bothers them and nobody can find them in there but me."
"I need you to do something for me now, compadre."
"Ya sabes. All you have to do is tell me what it is."
"I need you to lead me unseen into that brush to watch for the sniper. Can anybody find a place in there to shoot my horse without our knowing it?"
"That is one thing no one can put over on me. I know every trail, every hiding place in that thicket. Nobody can shoot a horse from in there if I don’t want him to."
"We need to go into that brush."
"I heard that you bet a million pesos on this race, compadre. How will you spend it if the sniper shoots you?"
"If somebody doesn’t shoot our horse, we’ll win, and no gun can keep me from spending that money. No gun can fill me with enough holes to stop me from collecting it and spending it the way I want to."
"So, you finally admit that you want money? You always told me that you run horse races to see who has the best horse. Now you’re doing it for the money? How come?"
"By God, to have some fun again. Remember how much fun we had when we were young? We had fun fixing a wagon wheel out in hundred-and-twenty-degree heat. Remember that? I want to have plain old fun with my friends and compadres like you, and to afford to have
the music."
"Not me, compadre. I don’t enjoy my life anymore. Each swallow of mezcal puts another spot of poison on my liver. I am damned. I’ve come so low that I’m condemned to suffer hell before I die. My wife is gone. My self-respect is gone. How can I even call myself your friend? I honestly am not sure that I can take you into that brush and do what needs to be done."
"You want to know why I call you my friend, compadre? You’ve always been good to me. You’ve loved me with a generous heart."
"I’m a borracho, compadre."
"So what? For you, la borrachera is no worse than a pair of dirty socks. All you have to do is take them off and wash them and you’ll be all right. Haven’t we been brothers for sixty years? Who knows you better than I?"
"No one."
"Then believe me. You’re the man to help me stop a coward from shooting my horse."
"I guess we’ll see."
"Are you ready to try?"
"Of course. Yo no me rajo. I might fail, but I won’t back out."
’All right then. Wait here for me and keep watch. I’ll be back after we’ve taken the horse to the track."
Kane and Vogel drove along in the pickup with a host of mounted Mayo Indians from Chihuahuita as Cody Joe and Marco Antonio led Gato to the racetrack. Chief Cepeda posted motorcycle cops at both ends of the cavalcade, and it marched down the center of the highway.
Gato traipsed along as though all this attention was only his due. The walk to the racetrack from La Escondida was only a good stretch of the legs for him. He glided along, looked all around, and enjoyed every step, as though he knew he had been born a prince and soon would be a king.
As Gato neared the racetrack, the entourage grew. By the time he reached the track, a horde of people accompanied him afoot and horseback. He arrived at the track at 4:oo p.m., but Auda had not arrived. Kane asked Marco Antonio and Cody Joe to keep him away from the press of people. What better way to get near enough to hurt a horse with a knife or a pistol than to sidle up to him inside the press of a crowd? With $1oo,ooo and his father’s best stallion at stake, Rafa Lupino certainly did not want the race to be run.
On the track Gato began to realize that he had become the center of attention. He enjoyed the sights and sounds of the promenade of people, the cars, a band of mariachis, and the other horses. Kane had never seen a horse with more grace and good looks. The curve of his neck when he turned his head could stop a horseman’s heart.
Kane went to the top of the grandstand on the highway side and looked into the thicket. More people arrived and took seats. He worried that his horse might be the cause of a bullet finding someone in the grandstand. He walked away from the racetrack, crossed the highway, and walked up the road that was lined with the date palms of El Datil. He found Placido resting in the shade on the side of the road. "We won’t get to see the race, will we?" Placido said.
"We will if we do what we have to do and catch the sniper before it starts," Kane said.
The thicket lay on five hundred hectares of land between El Datil and the edge of town. Kane and Placido slipped into the brush and out of sight. Placido led the way on a trail that tunneled through the thicket. Used all the time by cows and horses, it was the only way into the thicket. Short, dim trails branched off to dead ends, but the two men followed the main one toward the highway. A sniper would have to use another trail that paralleled the highway and racetrack. He would have to stay on the edge of the highway because if he moved more than six feet inside the brush, he would be unable to have a clear field of fire to the track. When he settled in his spot to shoot, he would not be able to see more than twenty feet behind him either.
Placido led Kane off the trail. They crouched and sidled and pushed their way through the brush, but kept in sight of the trail that the sniper would have to use. They moved slowly watched and listened. Now and then they could see through the brush to the racetrack and hear the voice of an announcer. Auda arrived and the grandstands filled.
Kane suddenly realized that Gato had never been so close to so many noisy people. That might do more to determine the winner of the race than the fleetness of the horses. The horse least distracted by the crowd might win. Crowds had been known to scare a racehorse right off the track. Kane knew better than to try to run a race with a green horse that had never been near a crowd. He could only hope that the Mayos of Chihuahuita who attended Gato’s training sessions had been many and loud.
Placido froze and motioned Kane to move back, then turned and hurried him to a hiding place that happened to be on the tiny bedground of Concha’s cows. When Kane and Placido dropped into their boudoir, the cows only looked up in surprise, then continued to chew their cuds comfortably and did not stand. The men knelt among them in total concealment, smelled their cud, and waited.
A man dressed in a T-shirt and khaki trousers appeared on the trail that paralleled the highway A faded red baseball cap and dark glasses concealed his features so well that he was almost faceless. He stopped only twenty yards away He could not see Kane and Placido, and he did not seem worried about anybody else being in the thicket. He positioned himsel
f directly across the highway from the starting line of the racetrack.
If he was the sniper, he had a clear field of fire all the way to the finish line, except for the cars that passed in front of him on the highway The man carried a scuffed leather case. He looked around, knelt and opened it, and took out a bolt-action Springfield rifle with a scope, the piece that Marine Corps snipers preferred to use in Kane’s time. The varnished stock gleamed with the care the man had given it. He loaded it with cartridges that also gleamed.
Gawkers slowed their cars to watch the goings-on of the racetrack and began to clog the highway between the sniper and the track. The sniper was calm and relaxed. He watched the police hurry the traffic along. A motorcycle cop ran by him and could have seen him if he turned his head, but he was intent on moving ahead to stop traffic during the race. Kane drew his colmillo and started toward the sniper on his hands and knees. The bedground did not have one inch of spare room for two men and two cows. Kane moved a cow’s head aside so he could get beyond her. He kept his eyes on the sniper. The sniper turned and looked right at him. Surprised at Kane’s sudden familiarity with her horns, the cow stood up, saw that everything was all right, then stretched. The sniper turned away, unconcerned.
The announcer ordered the horses to the starting line. The cops stopped all traffic on the highway Kane left his hat behind and began to move his old bones along the ground. He would have to make it all the way to the sniper on his belly He hoped he did not encounter a snake, or a centipede, or a man-eating scorpion. If he tried to make a run at the man, he would fail. He could not outrun a fat woman. He could crawl a lot more efficiently The sniper could shoot at any moment. Now was the time to shoot Gato, as he slowed and was contained with the business at the start ing line. The eyes of at least five thousand people were on the horse. The man would never have a better opportunity for a sensational hit.
The sniper seemed to read Kane’s mind. He wrapped the sling of the rifle on his arm, assumed a target shooter’s sitting position with elbows squeezed between his knees, then put his eye to the telescopic sight. Kane scurried the last five yards, grabbed the end of the rifle barrel, and jerked it up as it fired. He jerked the rifle so hard that he almost lifted the sniper off the ground as he dragged him into the concealment of the brush. The sniper’s hands were still on the rifle above his head. Kane sliced through his upper arms with the colmillo and lifted the rifle free. The man wailed, rolled on his side, and kicked and cried in pain. Blood sprayed from the big smiles in both the severed triceps that Kane’s comillo had cut to the bone. The sniper could not even lift them t look at them. Kane emptied the rifle, threw the bolt away, and dropped it out of the man’s reach but in plain sight.
Traffic poured by as the police released a stream of cars. The sniper’s eyes were masked by his dark glasses. Kane took them off and gently backhanded the baseball cap off his head so he could see his face. Shock and bleeding had blanched out all its color. A moment ago the man had thought himself to be the consummate assassin. Now he was only a skinny cripple, probably maimed for life. For the rest of his life, he would have a tough time pulling on his boots, if he ever got to put them on again. He might bleed to death in the next few minutes.
Kane took hold of the sniper’s hair and forced his head back, put the point of his blade under an eye and twirled it there until the sharp edge touched the nose, then sliced off the end of the nose. "That’s so you’ll have a face for me to recognize, if I ever see you again," he said.
"This too," he said and notched a two-inch swallow fork in the man’s left ear.
"Don’t kill him, compadre," Placido said.
"I’m through with him now, compadre," Kane said. He started to cross the highway toward the racetrack.
"No, compadre," Placido said. "They’ll see you. This way." He turned Kane around, handed him his hat, and headed him down the trail to El Datil. "Wait, the rifle"
"Leave it," Kane said. "It’s against the law for him to have it, so the traffic cops will have good reason to arrest him if they find him in time."
Kane and Placido hurried back past empty homes to Placido’s ramada. Everybody in the Rio Alamos region seemed to be at the horse race. Placido washed the blood off Kane with cold water, then they hurried to the racetrack. As they arrived, Kane saw Dolly Ann, Luci, and Alicia and Mari Vogel in the grandstand together, their attention on the horses at the starting line.
Lupino and Kane had agreed on a lap and tap start. Vogel stood on the starting line and directed the two jockeys to ride off the end of the track. Side by side they rode away from the line. On Vogel’s signal they were to turn back head to head and run at the starting line. If the starter saw daylight between the horses when they crossed the line, he would call them back to start again. If he could not see daylight between them, he would shout "Santiago" and the race would be on.
The horses had made several runs at the starting line, but Vogel had called them back. He ordered the jockeys to ride away from the line again, then ordered them to turn back. The horses ran at the starting line. Kane saw Cody Joe hold Gato back before he crossed the line so that Auda caught up and passed him. Vogel shouted "Santiago" and Auda jumped out four lengths ahead. Cody Joe leaned over and shouted into Gato’s ears. Cato exploded, caught Auda quickly, and came on. "Go, Cody, go," screamed Dolly Ann above the crowd’s roar.
The rest of the race was a gift for Kane as he was given three of his favorite sounds in all the world: the jockey's shouts of encouragement into the ears of his horse; the furious blast of his horse’s lungs and nostrils with each stride; and the pound of his horse’s hooves as they sounded the doom of his rival. Gato outran Auda that day as far as big, husky Rafa Lupino could throw a rock, but the race was all over in less than twenty-five seconds. Up in the grandstand, Dolly Ann, Luci, and the Vogel women engaged themselves in a joyful cluster hug.
Someone began to yell for help on the highway. Auxiliooo!" a woman yelled. "A man over here has been hit by a car. Both arms are broken. Policiaaa, socorrooo. Call the Red Cross. A man is bleeding here with broken arms."
People hurried toward the woman who had stepped out of her car and was anxiously waving her arms. A motorcycle cop turned on his siren and threaded his way through the crowd. Kane and Placido tried to see the unfortunate victim but already knew the manner of hit and run that had befallen him. But they could not see him, so they went on to congratulate Cody Joe and Gato.
The crowd of spectators stopped both horses on the track. Kane found Chief Cepeda and asked that his officers clear the press of people away from Gato. He did not want his enemies to knife his horse. If they would hire a coward to shoot him, they would hire someone to sneak up in the crowd and gut him for winning the race.
Chief Cepeda moved the crowd away from the horses so the jockeys could walk them and cool them down. Marco Antonio rode up beside Gato on Paseador and put a halter on him so Cody Joe could switch to Negrito. Kane asked the group of Mayos to stay close to Gato on their horses so the crowd could not get close, and more riders joined the escort. Kane found Vogel and was surprised to see that Nesib Lupino and Abdullah were with him. Kane shook hands with them. Lupino’s eyes brimmed with tears, but he looked Kane in the eye. "You beat me in a good race, Jim. A fair one too," he said.
"My horse won, but nobody beat you, don Nesib," Kane said. "You're a gentleman and so is your horse. Neither one of these horses was used to the crowd."
"No crowd nor absence of a crowd could have changed the outcome of the contest," Abdullah said. "The race has been run, the race has been won. Your horse is the best of the two. Maybe better than any other horse in this country."
"We only brought Auda down from the Sierra day before yesterday," Lupino said. "We didn’t want him to be here until today, because we were afraid for his safety. We weren’t afraid of the loudness of the crowd, because we have run him here before. We heard that gamblers intended to harm him."
Rafa Lupino rode up on Auda, his head a mass of scabs wit
h a seam of black stitches along the bridge of his nose. His legs flopped on the horse’s sides. His trousers crept above the tops of his jodhpurs to show his hairy legs. The stirrups on the jockey saddle were too short. He had strapped a heavy pair of sharp-roweled spurs on his heels. Kane saw that he must be full of the chemical. He slouched on his tailbone and wallowed on Auda’s kidneys.
"Eh, meestair meestair! Where’s your horse? Get your horse. We’ll run another one. This time for one million dollars, but you ride yours and I ride mine."
Kane ignored him and turned back to Vogel and the two old men.
"Meestair . . . meestair." When Kane ignored Rafa again, he jerked Auda around and jabbed him in the flanks with the spurs. The little horse almost jumped out from under him, but Rafa hung on and held him down to a trot that bounced him on his butt. He jerked Auda around and jabbed him again, but this time held him on such a tight rein that his mouth gaped open. He jabbed the spurs into the horse’s flanks at the same time that he held tight on the rein. In effect, he signaled the horse to hurry away at a run, and at the same time held him up. The horse did not know whether to stop or to go, so he began to prance in place and dance. That was what Rafa wanted, to make Auda dance while he bled from spur wounds, bled from Rafa’s heavy hand on his bit, bathed in a nervous sweat, and his eye showed the abuse. Kane could not stand it. ”Your Rafa makes an obscene fool of himself again, don Nesib," he said. "You don’t deserve it, and the little horse doesn’t deserve it."
Lupino did not look at Kane or at Rafa. "He does as he pleases. I don’t have a say in what he does," he said.
Abdullah met Kane’s gaze.
