by J P S Brown
He allowed the fire to grow until it was so hot he had to move. He rose and walked to the tree. The trunk was smooth to a high fork. He climbed to the fork by bracing his feet against the cliff and his back against the trunk. He felt weak, dizzy, and weary. He felt like sleeping in the fork with the fire warming his face. He roused himself and caught himself around the neck with the loop of his reala. He tied the tail end of the reata to a branch. The heavy honda of the reata was so well made, the reata so alive, that he had to hold the noose tight so it would not fall open. Eyes on the fire, he slid off the branch. He kept his eyes on the fire, his hand on the honda of the noose. He landed with his feet and legs slack and broke his ankles and hips on a rock by the fire. He scattered the fire as he skidded through it. He fought at sparks that glowed through his shirt. He rolled and moaned off live coals, his trunk twisting away from his legs, his feet remaining dead in the coals. He dragged himself to a cool spot. He looked up at the branch and saw the reata hanging slack but still tied. He had given himself too much reata. No matter. He had not expected his death would be easy to meet again.
"What chingados do you think you are doing?" a voice from the darkness asked him.
His first sound in answer was a moan. He swallowed and held up his trembling head to see who had spoken. He could barely see through a new mist on his eyes. "Who?" he asked.
"Who do you care, idiot?"
"Don't come close to me. I'm sick. Stay there."
"Of course you're sick. You need help. I've come to help you. I am your death."
"My death is a lot of work."
"You are a fool. You could have summoned me without breaking yourself up. I didn't want you before when you were all broken. Why should I want you now?"
"I thought I wanted to die."
"You did not think. You ruined yourself with your carelessness. Can't you come to me in a respectable manner?"
"I can. Don't worry." Miguelito pulled himself toward the tree.
"On your belly. You should be stepped on like a snake, a grass snake. You have no fang, no colmillo, or brains with which to defend yourself."
"I can defend myself."
"You're helpless. I'll have to help you. You are going to die in an upright manner in spite of yourself."
A shadow came laughing and blocking the heat of the fire. Miguelito chilled. The shadow dragged him by the reata to the base of the tree. He was so small and light the dragging did not choke him. The shadow sat him against the tree and climbed the tree, grunting. The fire warmed Miguelito again. The reata tightened and his buttocks swung clear of the rock. He almost strangled, but he settled to the rock again. The shadow and the chill returned.
"¡Chingado! " the shadow laughed. "You're not dead yet? After all I've done to help you? Die then, but quickly."
Miguelito was lifted by the feet and swung away from the tree. He swung like a hammock until he strangled.
"¡Chingado! Didn't you leave anything at all for me to swallow?" asked Chombe Servin, panting over the corpse. He went through the pockets, found a handful of hard orange peelings and a small bottle of lechuguilla. He drank the wine, smashed the bottle against the rock, propped Miguelito against the tree, and went away laughing.
18
Lico, the mayordomo for the ranches of El Gringo Milligan, rode around the bottom of Contreras mountain listening to the belled animals. In his ride from Rancho Quemado the day before, he had been within continuous hearing of bells. The people of the Sierra were hanging bells on their livestock because of El Yoco. They believed a jaguar would not harm a belled animal.
Lico smiled cynically. He knew about tigres. What could these people know? Tigres were the monsters his people in Sinaloa lived with, not some old toothless lion that was probably starving about in these mountains. If this animal was a jaguar, Lico was the man who carried the equipment to get him. He carried a bule gourd, and a resined string, and El Gringo's .30-30 rifle with a telescopic sight. The string drawn through holes in the gourd threw out a sound exactly like the moan and growl of a jaguar. He had but one cartridge for the rifle; but one was enough for El Lico to dispense with any tigre of this region. He rode into the canyon of El Manzanillal and went straight to the highest trees in the bottom. The large trees grew thick and tall enough to keep back the underbrush. He picked a guasima easy to climb. He tied the mule, La Bomba, and unsaddled her beneath the guasima. He gave her enough rope so she could graze. He smiled again. The mule had been left on Contreras ranch by Juan Vogel so she could graze and recuperate after the heavy work of the roundup at Gilaremos. Lico had saddled her this day because he liked her generous pace. She was a refreshing change of mount from his lazy dun mule. La Bomba could rest here as well as anywhere. The grass was good here.
Lico climbed into the guasima like an ape with no pause for breath or foothold. He stopped climbing when he was so high the branches were becoming too thin to hold him. He sat in a comfortable fork and smiled with assuredness. He could see all the ground about him except the ground directly beneath the tree and the canyon behind him. He strained around to locate the mule. He could see her grazing far below him, unaware of him, in peace. He hung his water bule, loaded his rifle, and laid it across his lap. He lit his pipe of tobacco and threaded the string through the gourd. He looked around again and drew a deep, excited breath, the breath of an animal who has set his lure for the killing of another animal.
He drew the string and sounded the gourd softly. He strummed the deepest tones, the rarest, the most savage, the tones he imagined would most interest El Yoco. He paused and remained still in his lofty trap and listened for a change in the sounds of the canyon. He looked for La Bomba. She had turned away. He could only see her hips, but he could tell she was not grazing. She was very still, listening, afraid, even though she had probably never seen or heard a jaguar.
He played the siren for El Yoco all day. He strummed the gourd at long intervals until the wind changed and the sun was setting. Lico discovered he was tired and stiff. He looked down at the route he would take to descend from the tree. The trail back to his camp was not plain because it was not often used.
He had come early, wanting to work his lure until late at night, but he was tired now and dreading the ride to his camp through brush in the dark. He drew his string again, expertly, as he had done all day. He looked down at his route of climb again and decided he would leave and ride out before dark.
He heard the short, quiet rattle of rocks that a band of unshod mares makes when it is on the move to escape and is not pausing to graze, nurse, or drink. He felt the frightened silence of the band picking its way, hushing all careless noise, mouths closed and nostrils flared for quiet breathing, colts concentrated close under their dams. He saw the band as the mares moved down a hill and into the canyon with the burro mezo of Juan Vogel herding them from behind. The burro mezo, El Güero, stopped on the hill, turned and searched the trail behind him. He came on quickly, fleetly, almost daintily, with his head up. He was handsome as a stallion in his movements and no longer seemed to be the sunburned, paddle-footed, heavyheaded, lopeared jackass he was when among humans. Then Lico heard a rhythmic grunting moan behind the mares.
Lico was happy for a moment. What if a big jaguar had heard his siren and was moving the band toward Lico, thinking Lico was another of his own kind. El Yoco might be hoping to find a mate. He would be sending a band of mares as a dowry. Suddenly, Lico realized he should not be feeling comfortable and happy. He knew the jaguar drove his prey, channeled it, and then went ahead to wait and kill. El Yoco could be ahead of the mares by now. If he was ahead of the mares he was near Lico. Lico began to feel vulnerable in the back of his neck. He no longer felt that he was so great a trapper. He began to feel he should admit to himself that he knew little about tigres.
This, actually, was the first time in his life he had ever tried the gourd and string method of luring a jaguar. He had been in these mountains fifty years since deserting the army. He had only played with th
e gourd and string as a child with other children in the alleys of his pueblo. Now he was an old man of seventy alone in the top of a tree with night coming on. He looked down into the tree again, picking his escape route, but also watching the route of approach a jaguar would have to take to get El Lico. He set the gourd aside and took the rifle in his hands. He slumped into the fork to hide better, but he was so high he could not hide. He listened and heard his own heart and breathing. He no longer felt himself to be the cunning, hard-eyed hunter. Sounds in the thicket below him agitated him now. The sway of the tree no longer seemed supple. Its movement seemed jerky and afraid. The tree had become rigid, its bark and leaves were drying, its sounds had changed from healthy sighs to groans and creakings.
Lico's eyes grated with dryness and he closed them. He wanted tears in them. He could not believe he was finding himself dangerously high above the ground in an ancient tree with darkness near to bring the bright-eyed killers who hunted in the night. He could not believe the years of his life had pushed him on to this moment. He had never believed the devil jaguar who had chased him in his childhood make-believe games and made him giggle with excitement could be truly finding him now because of his favorite toy. He was an old man now who only loved to sit by the fire, ridicule his fellows, and puff on his pipe. He had never been a hunter. He had been a braggart. He had never been a soldier of the revolution, a bodyguard, a workingman, or even a reasonably intelligent man, as he had bragged throughout his life. He admitted this because at this moment, for the first time in fifty years, he felt he was about to lose his life.
The mule, La Bomba, made one rasping call to the band of mares and Lico shut his eyes tighter. The damned mule would discover him to a killer. He heard the mule fighting to free herself. He reasoned he should speak to her to calm her, but he did not. This was not a moment of reason. He was afraid for no reason. What reasonable man could believe that he, at a random point of his life, in this desolation, could climb a tree and call a jaguar to himself? No man who knew Lico could. Suddenly, exactly as Lico expected, the mule shrieked her death scream, fully and terribly. When her thrashings had stilled he opened his eyes. He looked down between his legs to watch the alley bordered by his thighs, which would be the way a barehanded killer would come to get him. He would not look away from that alley. He would not move. He would protect only himself by watching the way to his own throat. Then at the base of the tree he saw the serpentine lines of smoothly waving spots, the heavy head, the immediate, undeceived gaze of El Yoco. The gaze penetrated the space between Lico's legs, castrated him, raped him, and found his throat with such ease that Lico nearly fainted in surrender. El Yoco paused, made sure of his conquest, and moved on toward the mares, certain he had cleaned away all antagonists behind him.
The mares ran. El Güero, their master mezo, ripped their hides with his teeth and stopped them on the bare spot by the trail before they got out of the canyon. Over the hill, running downhill, they would have streamed out and scattered. He would have lost them. He circled them and drove them into the center of their own milling circle. He kept their heads in the center, their hindquarters on the outer circle until each had nowhere to run except into the heart of her own band. He kept himself between El Yoco and the band as El Yoco prowled and tried to force the band to panic. Lico watched, conscious of the rifle under the sweat of his hands. The rifle was too heavy for him to lift.
A mule colt scrambled out from under his dam and was pushed outside the band's protection. Finding no way to reenter, the colt looked for the source of his danger. El Yoco closed with El Güero, took both his shoulders in his claws and tried to roll him off his feet. El Güero had the advantage of being uphill. He struck El Yoco's jaws with a front hoof and wheeled away to kick at him. El Yoco went under the hooves and cut the mule colt away from the band. The colt ran over the hill with El Yoco at his flank. El Yoco was back before El Güero gained full control of the band again. El Güero left the band to charge El Yoco with his teeth. El Yoco dodged him easily and cut a mule filly away toward the thicket. He ran her to Lico's tree. He killed her there and relaxed over her, embracing her as he began to devour her. El Güero hurried his band away. In the night Lico listened to the jaguar feasting under the guasima. In the darkness Lico felt that he was part of El Yoco's repast. At times he fed and other times he was fed upon. At no time did he consider firing his rifle down into the darkness to show his displeasure. He was a willing accomplice of El Yoco's. Lico had no formal religion, but in that night he mumbled entreaties for his life to any power, good or bad, who would make El Yoco's feet take El Yoco's claws and jaws away so Lico could get down out of the tree and walk on the ground in peace. He became the complete supplicant, head bowed, knees aching, spine bent, eyes crying, voice begging, and ears giving testimony of the enormity of the appetite of the power below him. The feeding stopped before dawn. Lico began to voice his entreaties loudly and more exactly into the silence. He gathered all the dry branches near him, held them in bundles and lit them. He held these small torches before him like vigil lights and felt safer with fire to keep away badness, though the perimeter of his safety narrowed for him because he could not see past his fire. When he could no longer hold the flame, he waved the coals to make intricate patterns of fire in the night. When his supply of dry wood ran out he held his matches to his straw hat and sacrificed it with other parts of his clothing until the wind of dawn blew away his fire.
At dawn he watched for the emergence of El Yoco. He heard the sounds of dragging and saw El Yoco dragging La Bomba. El Yoco hauled her up Contreras mountain, concerned only with the obstacle of the mountain and the weight of La Bomba and not at all with Lico. When he was out of sight, Lico dropped the rifle to the ground and climbed down. He was stiff, shaky, and weak and just as he released his last hold to drop to the ground he caught his groin on a dead stub of a branch. He hurt so, he rolled near the remains of the colt in agony. After the pain subsided he took the trail down the canyon without looking back.
Lico followed the trail down to the Vogel camp at Guasaremos. Entering the basin of Guasaremos, Lico heard the high wail of keening women in mourning that fit the scream he had suppressed in the night and still carried in his breast every hurrying step he made. Juan Vogel and his vaqueros were at the ramada of Miguelito, the Guarijía. Miguelito had been washed and changed and laid out in the shade of the ramada. Lico went straight to the olla of fresh water and drank. He looked at the demijohn of lechuguilla between Juan Vogel's feet. Juan Vogel was looking at him with the same yellow penetration El Yoco had used on him the day before. Lico decided not to ask for the drink. He reached for the jug, and Juan Vogel moved his leg politely out of the way so he could take it. He drank a swallow and did not let it hit his stomach before he sent another after it. A woman brought him a chair and he sat down, hugging the whole demijohn of spirits to himself.
"Are you drunk, Lico?" asked Juan Vogel, dismantling him with his gaze. "Good morning to you, Lico. Can you speak?"
"An animal shocked me to make me this way," said Lico. He looked around him, craving comfort. He drank again.
"What animal?" asked Juan Vogel. The vaqueros were not leaving, though their mounts were saddled and ready. They stood in the shade of the ramada staring at Lico.
"A tigre. The largest I have ever seen."
"Where?"
"At El Manzanillal. He put me into a tree, and I watched him kill two of your mule colts and a full-grown saddle mule. He kept me in the tree all night."
"Which saddle mule?"
"I couldn't tell," lied Lico, and saw that Juan Vogel knew he was a liar. "At dawn I saw him dragging the mule toward the top of Contreras."
"And your rifle? Did you shoot him?"
"I only had one bullet."
"And?"
"Well, you know how expensive ammunition is here."
"What is it for, if not to kill a tigre cebado?
"I was admiring his strength so much I didn't have time to shoot before he was go
ne. I only had one shot-and the rifle, the caliber seemed so small. When I decided to shoot he got out of sight of me."
The vaqueros laughed. "The caliber of your anus was too small," said Neli Pesqueira. They laughed again.
"No," protested Lico. He watched them laugh at him without showing any rancor toward him. "Ah!" he huffed. "I have more brains than to take a shot that might only wound an animal like that when I don't have another to finish him to protect myself."
Juan Vogel, examining Lico, did not laugh. "How is it the Martinillo hunts with a single-shot .22?"
"Poor Martinillo. I don't say it because he isn't present, but he's a fool. He doesn't know about tigres. I do. Tigres are what we have in my country in Sinaloa--"
Juan Vogel laughed at him. "Yes, you have often told us about your tigres, " he said. His eyes were not laughing. "So you admit you saw a big tigre in our country, so far away from your country of the big tigres. "
"Yes."
"You watched him kill three head of my stock while you held a powerful rifle with a telescopic sight in your hands?"
"Yes, as I say, I never had a good clear shot, Juanito."
"But you did not shoot."
"No."
"What happened? You were too culón, too loose-boweled and invalidated from cowardice to shoot."
"Believe what you like. I admire the tigre. He is the most powerful and beautiful animal in the Sierra or anywhere. In my youth--"
"In your youth and again yesterday and again today you grew big lazy balls. And you became culón, you grew a large loose anus."
"And that's another of my misfortunes."
"I'm sure it's been a misfortune."
"No. Seriously. I injured my testicles climbing the tree. Even now they are swollen and aching."
"Why not? Your balls have always been the biggest part of you. They're so heavy they have kept you on your ass all your life. Sooner or later they had to catch on something when you tried to do anything."
