Jim Kane - J P S Brown (30 page)

"
Poppies?" Kane asked. "I'll be honest
with you. I know nothing about raising flowers."

"
Maybe you can tell me something else? What is
the American price for
goma
?"

"
Gum? What kind of gum?"

Arce smiled at the Lion to see if his suspicions were
true, that the American was only acting ignorant. The Lion showed him
no expression.

"
Gum of opium," Arce said.

"
Ah," said Kane. "I know even less
about that."

"
I know it is good. The Sierra is ideal for the
growing of
amapola
.
This place is perfect. It is hidden. Disgracefully, it is against the
law to raise opium poppies but a government airplane would have to
pass directly overhead and would have only a very few seconds in
which to see this spot from the air. Gum is grown in small patches
all over the Sierra but, alas, the crops are often spotted from the
air."

"
You would be lucky if you were not spotted,"
the Lion said.

"
Yes, I would plant on the chance that during
the time my plants were in flower a plane would not pass close enough
for the three or four seconds necessary to see my poppies."

"
A slim chance. But what if someone informed on
you?" Kane asked.

"
The people of the Sierra are good. But there
would always be that chance," Arce said, smiling.

"
This place is on a trail to your ranch? Anyone
who was looking for opium poppy growers might accidentally ride by
here and see it and catch you," the Lion said.

"
I would deny the crop was mine."

"
Yes, but could you deny you knew about it? It
is also a crime not to report such a crop, is it not?" asked
Kane.

"Yes, but if I planted it I would make sure no
strangers rode down to my ranch without my knowledge or without a
guide, a guide I would assign to wait in the town in case any
strangers wished to come into this area. Also, I am the
comisario
,
the only law in this area. I would be warned if any lawman was coming
to see me, in which case he would be taken to my ranch over the main
trail."

"
This is all very interesting to me," Kane
said.

"
Is it not?" Arce said, smiling. "That
is why I brought you here. I knew it would be interesting to you."

"
You might say this is a tourist attraction of
the region," Kane said.

"
Exactly," Arce said, smiling. "But
only at certain times of the year and only now when the
trinchera
is barren of any crop. Right now you, the Lion, and I
are the only tourists. I often come here and look at this place and
dream of how one crop would affect my life. I am really the only
constant tourist who comes to this place."

"
How long have you been coming here?" Kane
asked.

"
Three years now, " Salvador Arce said.

The three men mounted and rode out of the box canyon,
over a piney ridge, and into a steep valley. The small settlement of
the Arce ranch headquarters lay in the bottom of this valley.
 
Arce's house was a large, two-story
adobe. The edge of a cliff fell off steeply on three sides of the
house. The men dismounted in a small patio enclosed by a rock wall
that rimmed the edge of the cliff. One of Arce's
mozos
unsaddled the mules and fed them dry corn leaves in the
patio.

One side of the house was a storeroom for the ranch
commissary. Arce unlocked the storeroom, went inside, and opened the
top half of the storeroom door. He distributed  canned goods and
flour to four men who had been waiting at the house when he arrived.
He also filled the pint bottles of the men with
lechuguilla
from a bluish, five-gallon jug. He poured some more into
an enamel cup and handed it to Kane.

"
Here is something for us to drink that will
help us to remember the long trail more kindly," Arce said.
"Bring it with you and we'll go to the field for the shoot."
He led them down off the hill and around to a large field behind the
big house. There, a large gathering of people had formed so quietly
that Kane and the Lion were surprised to see them. Schoolchildren in
their best clothes were being herded by a tall young man. Several men
were waiting at the edge of the field where their mules and horses
were tied under some trees. The hard, flat field was about one
hundred yards long. The men carried old, single-shot .22 rifles.

The children were shepherded to one side of the field
and made to sit in ranks. A young goat, bleating and dragging his
feet, was led to a board fence on one end of the field. The goat's
horns were fastened to the limb of a tree over his head and his legs
were tied to the bottom of the fence. Only the agate-eyed face of the
goat and about six inches of the neck could be seen above the fence.

Each of the men took a shot at the goat's face with
his rifle from the other end of the field. The goat danced a quick
little jig each time a bullet passed by or struck near him. The last
man fired and a piece of one of the goat's horns disappeared. The
Lion showed a long-barreled .22 pistol that he had been carrying in
his belt under his shirt. "Heh, heh, heh," he growled,
smelling innocent blood. "We will see." The meat was
seventy-five yards away and its warm and appetizing bleat was
stirring the Lion. He pointed the pistol and knocked the tip of the
other horn off the goat. He handed the pistol to Kane. "Here. I
spared him for you," he said. .

Kane aimed high and squeezed off the round. The goat
dropped and hung from the tree by his horns. Everyone on the field
ran to see where the bullet had struck. The goat was dead. The bullet
had gone in the throat and hit the spine. Kane was not proud of the
shot. He had hoped to hit the spot between the eyes or shoot over the
goat's head and miss him completely.

"
You hit him in the pure life,
en
la pura vida
," Arce said. A
mozo
stabbed the goat's throat with a wide, sharp knife and
sliced the throat open. The jugular emptied the goat's blood in a
gush into a bucket a child was holding under the wound. The
mozo
carried the goat back to the patio of Arce's house and
skinned it and jointed the meat. The shooting went on and three more
goats were killed.

Women came to Arce's house and cleaned the paunches
of the goats and filled them with diced little squashes, potatoes and
onions, and sewed the paunches up with needle and thread. The joints
of meat were placed in clay pots, the paunches on top. The lids of
the pots were sealed with moist cornmeal. The pots were buried in
pits on beds of live coals. Arce's young wife came over to greet Kane
and the Lion. The girl was heavy-boned, with the plain, light,
healthy features of the white woman of the Sierra. She wore dark
clothing, black stockings, and chaste black oxfords. She invited the
men into her kitchen and served them coffee. Aroe showed his guests
"
el alto
,"
the upper story where they would sleep. They climbed up the notched
log through a trapdoor to the room. Two heavily blanketed cots had
been prepared for them. They washed in an enamel pan with water from
a china pitcher and threw the water out the window to the field
behind the house. A two-way radio in the corner of the room was
Arce's communication with Rio Alamos and Chihuahua City.

When Kane and the Lion had washed they climbed back
down to the kitchen where the lamps had been lit and the table set
for supper. They ate small portions of fried potatoes, fried jerky,
and fried beans with black coffee. They filled up on a pile of corn
tortillas kept hot in floursack napkins on the table.

"
Do you wish to attend the program honoring
Benito Juarez?" Arce asked Kane and the Lion when they had
finished supper.

"
Of course," Kane said.

"
After the ceremonies a dance will be held,"
Arce said. He led Kane and the Lion out of the house. The night was
cold and the wind had not diminished. They walked across a wide
stream to a small plaza. It was surrounded by small homes on three
sides and a mountain several thousand feet high on the other. The
people of the village were still inside their houses.

A stone bust of Benito Juarez in the center of the
plaza decorated with homemade crepe flowers stared with stoic Indian
pride into the wind. Benches were set on the ground around Benito
Juarez. A small board stage was set up behind him.

Salvador Arce started a gasoline generator behind the
stage. Lightbulbs strung around the plaza went on. He tried the
speaker system. It worked falteringly. He found a phonograph and put
on a record. He turned up the volume.

Accordion music of the Sonora-Chihuahua ranchers
blared out over the Sierra Madre, riding the wind to the west across
the black peaks in the cold dark.

People came out of their homes and began forming in
the plaza. The
profesór
marched
his half-dozen students to the stage. The tallest students stood on
the ground in front of the platform. The small ones stood on the
stage. The strident music of the phonograph was shut off. The
children chanted student songs. Then each had a solo turn on the
stage reciting singsong poems of praise to "
El
Benemérito de las Americas
," Benito
Juarez.

When these annual praises had been dutifully sung by
the children and dutifully concurred to by the listening parents and
grandparents, the barbecued goat was brought to the plaza. The meat
was so well cooked that it slipped from the bones leaving them slick,
clean, and shining. The meat was served on tortillas. After the last
polished bones had been thrown to the town dogs, the benches were
carried back and set under the strings of lights. The phonograph
tuned up again and the dance began.

The old people who did not dance wrapped themselves
in blankets and sat by fires laid around the dance ground. The fires
threw quick, indistinct shadows on the sides of the big mountain. The
girls, showing off their best dresses in the cold, hugged the young
men who courted them to the tune of music on the dance ground.

The dance was still going strong after midnight. By
then the cold had long since climbed into Kane's bones from the
ground through his feet. Kane and Arce and the Lion started up the
hill toward their beds. They crossed the stream and came upon an old
man sleeping on the rocks in the path with his wine bottle lying on
his hand. Arce awakened him.

"
Prisciliano, you will freeze here," Arce
said, lifting him by the arms to a sitting position. The old man
gathered himself and sat up by himself, his old, cracked feet in
their
huaraches
coming
to life under him.

"Go to the fire, old man. Don't be dumb,"
the Lion scolded in the tone he reserved for old men, ignorant
foreigners, and dumb Indians. The old man turned a clear, cold eye on
the Lion."

"
I am not dumb, young man," he said,
"
Háblame recio pero no golpeado
.
Speak to me loudly if you will but don't buffet me with your tone."

"
Pardon me," the Lion said, mocking him. "I
thought you were just another little drunk bent on freezing yourself
to death."

"
I am eighty-eight years old, young man, and I
have never been drunk."

"Don't sleep here, Prisciliano," Salvador
Arce said. "Go to the fire. Drink some coffee. Take care of
yourself."

"
Thank you, Salva, I will," the old man
said, patting Arce on the leg and dismissing him.

Arce led his guests on up the hill and into the warm
kitchen of his home. He stoked the fire in the stove to heat the
coffee.

"
Do you know who that old man is?" Arce
asked the Lion, smiling.

"I don't think so," the Lion `answered.

"
That is Prisciliano Guevara. The father of
Saturnino Guevara."

The Lion looked blank for a moment, then
comprehended.

"Ah, sí, sí," he said. "The father
of the assassin?"

"
Precisely." Arce smiled, satisfied the
Lion knew who the old man was.

"
What happened to the son, the
tigre
?
Tell Kane about him," the Lion said.

Arce poured three cups of coffee. He addressed the
story to Kane.

"
This old Prisciliano is a very intelligent man.
He came to the Sierra fifty years ago. The way you saw him there on
the path is the way he arrived in the Sierra, with nothing. He had
been a priest. He left his parish somewhere in the south of Mexico. I
believe he came here in search of the treasures of the Spanish
Jesuits. I think he thought he knew the whereabouts of such treasures
from old maps he had seen. He never acquired any treasure, though. He
worked in the mines as a laborer and spent his earnings on wine. He
worked as a
vaquero
.
He cut lumber. He helped build houses here. All his work has only
been for wine.