Jim Kane - J P S Brown (8 page)

The only assets he took away from the Montezuma that
were truly his own were his saddle, blanket, bridle, and spurs. These
tools had been kept well-dusted in the suite by the maids. The
well-dusted aspect was the only new aspect about his assets that he
took away from the border. He had never been one to fuss with his
gear and tack and the money he had used in his big trades had been
mostly borrowed money, He had gone away from the Montezuma luckier
than most border traders, unluckier than a very, very few. He had
also been smart enough to know never to come back to the Montezuma.
Men like Eligio Gavilan, Pedro Villasenor, and Bob Stacy were the
kind that endured on the border but they endured staying broke.
Eligio, through some genius of politics in him, had acquired complete
control of the quarantine corrals the Mexican government had built in
Frontera, Sonora. More than fifty thousand cattle passed through his
corrals every year and his fee for use of the corrals was one dollar
a head besides all the feed he poured through the mangers at 300 per
cent profit, plus all the cattle that disappeared from their rightful
owners and appeared much later in his hands.

The Mexicans called Eligio "
El
Parsignado
," the pious one, or, more
literally, the man who covers himself with signs of the cross. In the
scale house where cattle were weighed for their customs duties before
crossing the border, Eligio had hung a picture of the Virgin of
Guadalupe.

Every morning on arriving at the corrals he would go
directly to the scale house and bless himself and say a short,
fervent prayer before the Virgin. It occurred to his
vaqueros
that Eligio was not quite as devout as he
made himself out to be. They replaced the Virgin with a picture of
Pedro Infante, a Mexican movie star, and Eligio went on for days with
his ritual without noticing that it was Pedro and not the Virgin who
was recipient of his praise.

Though he always showed the pallid, harried face of
the lost bankrupt and seemed unable ever to meet a financial
obligation of any kind, one day it occurred to all his friends and
creditors that he was living in an $80,000 home in Frontera, Sonora.
Eighty thousand dollars in Frontera, Sonora, is one million pesos.

A Mexican politician friend of Eligio's, a man who
had been instrumental in gaining for him control of the Mexican
quarantine corrals with the understanding between them that they
would share equally the vagabond and carefree money that would be
found when cattle streamed through the corrals, heard of Eligio's new
house. This politician was a fine and generous man who helped
everyone, hoping that everyone he helped would help him back, and
thus, was chronically down at the heel. He went to see if Eligio,
after three years of overseeing and watching for the blithe gold
attached to the horns of the cattle that passed through the corrals,
had gleaned enough to be in a position to help him.

Eligio met the politician at the Montezuma. They
ordered brandy together and the politician paid for it. They ordered
the second brandy and before they left the bar, tired of out-waiting
Eligio, the politician paid for the second. On the way back across
the border in Eligio's chartreuse Cadillac Eligio stopped at a
hamburger drive-in and ordered two hamburgers with French fries and
the politician paid for them. Eligio's great house on the hill did
not look so great in the darkness. Not a light shone around it. Not a
person met them at the door. Eligio led his patron through the house,
lighting each room and showing it briefly and unlighting it as they
passed through. Finally, they came in the dark house to a small den
that smelled of unswept manure, body odors of steers, vaqueros, and
horses, and Eligio's own nervous stink. Eligio had brought his patron
a long way without being dunned so he felt he could point to one
accomplishment.

"
Don Pancho, one advantage of my house that I
insisted on when it was constructed, and I had little to say in its
construction," Eligio said humbly, "is its sound-proofed
rooms."

"Yes, I can understand your need," said the
politician. "You need the sound-proof rooms so as not to hear
the voice of your conscience."

Kane was thinking this same Eligio was the man in
whose hands his Jalisco horses abided. The feed bill on the horses
must be quite formidable because Eligio had not said anything about
the horses since Kane had joined his party. He probably didn't want
to ruin Kane's drink or spoil the contented good humor of the
gathering.

Another of Eligio's companions was a middle-aged,
curly-headed Mexican cattleman named Pedro Villasenor. Pedro owned
and was trying to stay on top of two hundred sections of desert ranch
country north of Puerto Libertad in Sonora. He had all the tools with
which to run his ranch efficiently: horses, vaqueros, one windmill
(he admitted this was inadequate), a good complex of corrals, a nice
house to live in, a generator that provided electricity, and a
refrigerator with plenty of capacity for cold beer. He did not have
any cattle.

Pedro was in Frontera now looking for someone who
would put up the money to stock his ranch with cattle. He didn't have
any grass for any cattle either. His ranch was as dry and barren and
hot as the wrong side of the moon but he had hopes it would rain this
winter because it rained on his ranch once every ten years and it had
been nine years since it rained last. He also had high hopes it would
rain because he had been overextended at the bank now for three years
and the bankers had told him positively no more credit, and they were
going to foreclose on him after one more season.

Pedro was wooing Bob Stacy, an elderly Arizona trader
in steers, who was the third companion at the bar. Bob Stacy didn't
own the cattle Pedro needed. But Bob Stacy was alert. He was always
on the smell to ferret out a dollar in commissions among his
connections no matter how hopeless a deal appeared to be at the
start. He had been making his living many years bringing together the
man with the bed and saddle with the man with the ranch and cattle or
the man with a bankroll. To such men he provided an introduction and
won commissions without ever leaving the bar or lobby of the
Montezuma.

Bob Stacy was not a thief. His word was good. He only
had to make sure the two men he introduced could produce. He himself
was not a producer. He was the coyote who was too old to hunt for
himself but not too old to follow the hunter and the game. Now he had
to be increasingly sure that the game was fat and that there would be
a reasonable surplus of meat in any deal for him or he wouldn't roam.
He was not particular or persnickety. He didn't require the choicest
cuts of meat. He would be content with the less desirable bites such
as the heart, the brains, the tripe. He got indigestion anyway from
too much bulk. He would take what the hunter did not like. He would
take suet if only suet was left to him. But whatever he gleaned had
to be fresh and not contaminated by a poor hunter or diseased or
badly treated game. He only entered into deals in which his portion
of the game did not perish. You see, he was an old and crafty coyote
and a fat one and he had enough reserve saved up to enable him to
pick and choose. Kane bought a round for his three friends and then
went and telephoned Will Ore.

"
Have you ordered the trucks for my immigrant
horses? Have you latched onto the buyer I sent to you who was
interested in the horses?" Kane asked Will Ore.

"
Where are you, Jim?" Will Ore asked.

"
At the Bar Montezuma. Come and exult with me."

"
I'll be there in a minute," Will Ore said.

Kane ordered another round for his companions and
drank with them again. He felt happy. His companions were for him and
he was for them. He was glad to see Will Ore when he came rolling in
and then Will Ore said, "Your horses had glanders this time."

"
What in the hell is glanders?" Kane asked,
still exulting. Glanders didn't sound like another catastrophe.

"
Glanders is a lung disease contagious to
humans," Will Ore said in a voice like lead falling in an
abandoned mine shaft.

"
And?" Kane asked.

"
We are quarantined?

"
We can't go through that again. Why didn't
glanders or whatever it is (he found the word describing the new
catastrophe too easy to repeat) show up in the first tests?"

"
I don't know."

"`What did the vets say?"

"
They don't know why either. They only knew they
had to kill your blue-and-white polka dot stud, disinfect the corrals
again, and clean out all the manure again."

Kane shut up for a while. He gave a moment of silence
to his banker. The banker had been good to him.

"Did the buyer show up?" Kane asked
finally.

"Which one? The Californian that wore his hat
wrong?"

"
That sounds like him. Was his name Grace?"

"
Grace showed. He didn't buy the horses."

"
Didn't he even make an offer?

''He offered seventy-five dollars a head. He figured
you were hard up and needed the money so bad you'd fall for it."

"
Hell, he was the one who said he would give me
three hundred dollars a head when I called him from Phoenix."

"
He changed his tune when he heard about the
quarantine. He figured you'd take seventy-five dollars to get out
from under the horses." `

"Why that chicken-pluckin', cow-milkin',
bib-overalled son of a bitch," Kane said, blaming all his
misfortunes on the poor counterfeit Californian.

"That ain't all, Jim Kane," Will Ore said.

"
What else?" Kane asked him.

"
You know that little filly, daughter of the old
swollen-eyed mare?"

"
You bet. The daughter of my old cinnamon mare."

"
The California gunsels ran her into the fence
and killed her when they decided to take a special look at her. She
was a fine-looking little filly. They were especially interested in
her. "

"
Did Grace pay for her?"

"
Hell no. He just said that he believed in the
old saying that them that has must lose."
 
 

6
The
Banker

A
Señor Caballo
is
a good horse, a big horse, a lordly horse, noble and rich. I
shouldn't call my own horse a
Senor Caballo
,
that would be bragging in an ugly way; a friend of mine should
mention it to make me feel good. There are plenty of
Señor
Toros
, honorable and aristocratic bulls, in
this life too, thank God. There are Señor signatures too, signatures
accepted by anyone at face value without question. A signature that
helps someone else, unreservedly, is a
Señora
Firma
. A
Señora Firma
is given by as rich man, a big man, not
necessarily a man of material means, but a man who is full of his
meaning.

A
letra
is a personal note. A sight draft. When a
letra
comes due it can
be cashed in any bank in which the giver of the letra has an account.
It is only worth as much as the man's
word
who gives it and, of course, the paper it is written on.

On the next day Jim Kane dressed up in clean clothes
and went to see the banker. In the office of the boss's secretary,
the anteroom of the boss's office, under the great horned steer
mounted on the wall and the paintings of other great, gaunt steers
that had given up their freedom though the years to help this bank
help cowmen make their living, Kane sat and waited for the boss's
secretary to come back and give him an audience with the boss.

Miss Toots was the boss's secretary and the number
two man in the bank by seniority but the number one woman in the bank
by popular acclaim. Miss Toots was a small, erect,
not-yet-middle-aged woman, who walked on the finest set of legs and
had the thickest, shiniest, brown hair in the State of Arizona.

"
Aha, I knew you would show up any day now, Jim
Kane, Miss Toots said when she came into her office.