Jim Kane - J P S Brown (44 page)

"
He was the last steer in the last car,"
Mr. Decker said.

"
We had to drag him off. But we got him up and
he stayed up. Now look at him. Winter is here, though. These cattle
have never faced a Wyoming winter. We'll just have to keep them fed
and see what they do. I've got several thousand tons of oat
insulage."

"
They'll do all right," Kane said.

"
Es hijo de la vaca jasca
,"
Juan said.
Criolo mio
."

"
Juan says this steer is son of the brown cow of
his ranch. I know the cow. She has a calf every year. Next spring
we'll ship you another bunch just like this bunch."

"
We'll see," Mr. Decker said. "I'm
just now getting over the scare these gave me when they got off the
train. If we buy we are going to buy earlier next year. Let's see how
these do first and hope the market holds. Sometimes no one wants
Mexican
corrientes
at
any price."

"
I hope they do you a good job," Kane said.

"
They are doing a good job. They've done just
exactly as you said they would so far, " Mr. Decker said. "I'll
tell you one thing. They are gentle. They don't take time off from
eating to spook at anything. "

They drove into a pasture where some Hereford heifers
were kept. The heifers were all exactly alike in color and size.

"What do you think your spotted steer will
weigh, Jim Kane?" Mr. Decker asked.

"
I guess he'll weigh three hundred pounds,"
Kane said.

"How much will the paint of brown steer weight?"
Kane asked Juan in Spanish.

"
One hundred thirty
kilos
mas o menos
, more or less," Juan said.

"
Juan says he'll weigh about two hundred
eighty-six pounds."

"
How much do you think these heifers will weigh?
They will be two years old next spring," Mr. Decker said.

"It has been so long since I judged this kind of
cattle I couldn't say for sure, but I'll guess six hundred pounds,"
Kane said.

"
We weighed them the other day. They weigh six
hundred eighty-five."

"These heifers weigh better than three hundred
kilos and they aren't two years old yet," Kane translated to
Juan.

Juan shook his head in admiration. "Look at such
meat, will you?" he said. ''They are exactly alike. Like beans
in their pod. Ask Mr. Decker how he tells them apart. Tell him they
don't look like cattle to me."

Kane translated. Mr. Decker laughed.

"
I had the same trouble with your Mexicans at
first. You learn to distinguish between them with practice. However,
generally speaking, I couldn't pick one of these heifers six months
from now and say what cow was her mother unless she had a special,
different, characteristic. I have nine hundred fifty of these heifers
in this pasture. They don't vary five pounds from one another."

The cattlemen were driving through the beautiful
woolly Herefords when the first snow of the year began to fall.

The cattle all survived that first and hardest winter
of their lives by keeping their noses buried in the warm oat
insulage. By May the brown-and-white spotted steer weighed , 550
pounds.

In June he was set apart with 24 other steers of the
same size and breadth of horn and rented to a rodeo producer. The
rodeo steers were trucked to town and unloaded in corrals. One
afternoon the spotted steer was run into a chute. He had been through
enough chutes to know that something unpleasant usually happened to
him at the end of them. But he was released from the chute. He found
himself all alone in a big arena. Immediately he was chased by
horsemen to the end of the arena. He had gained a lot of strength in
the meadows. He easily outran the horses, he thought.

The horsemen returned him to the same chute. He knew
what to expect outside now and he anticipated outrunning the
horse-man smelling thing again. He was like a racehorse in a starting
gate anticipating the opening of the gate, the ring of the bell. This
place was so nice to run in. He had never seen a place where he could
just throw up his tail and fly, certainly not in his rocky, steep,
Sierra Madre.

A cowboy nodded and the gate flew open. The
brown-and-white spotted steer threw a number 9 in his tail and
exploded into a run. For the first five or six jumps he was all
alone. He faltered. He slowed up and coasted jauntily. Then from
behind came an awful eruption of hoofbeats. He threw up his head and
sprinted. Before he knew the horsemen were close they bracketed him.
He felt a weight behind his withers, heard the pop-slap of leather,
saw the horses go on by, and was stopped by a man the horses had left
on him. The man pulled down on his left horn until his tail end
started to swing around in an arc. Suddenly the man pulled on his
right horn and shoved his muzzle skyward, twisting his neck around.
He got a good look at the clouds, his feet went out from under him,
and he slammed down on his side with all four feet sticking out. Then
he was released. He found he was completely unhurt. He got up and
trotted, unpursued, free, to the end of the arena. He had been
bulldogged.

He was used in bulldogging events for several weeks.
Most of the time there were many people around. People did not bother
him. People that came near on foot outside the corral looked at his
horns and stayed outside. Only the horsemen ever touched him in the
game they played with him. These men that smelled of horses fed him
well, too. He adapted to the new life of being run once or twice a
week, traveling in a truck once a week, and eating and resting most
of the week. He gained weight.

The spotted steer had long since learned he couldn't
always outrun the horsemen so he began to watch them and seek ways of
keeping them from catching him. He was strong and trim and getting
smart. If the horsemen made one mistake the spotted steer would get
to the corral at the end of the arena free. He tried never to run out
of the chute the same way twice. At times he would wait until he felt
the man shifting his body from the running horse to his back and he
would put on the brakes causing the man to skim along his back. If
the steer lowered his head at the right moment the man would skim on
by, miss the horns, and spill in the dirt in front of the steer. Then
the brown-and-white spotted steer would walk up, shy at the lump on
the ground, and go trotting off down the arena to the free corrals.

Sometimes he liked to take a sharp right turn out of
the chute and run down the right side of the arena close to the
fence. If the horsemen were not extraordinarily fast they never
caught the spotted steer. But as he gained more weight he got lazy
and no longer enjoyed outrunning the horsemen.

One time he tried turning in front of the horse just
as the man was getting on his back but he caused a bad wreck. The
horse had gone right over the top of him and the man had ended up
someplace between the steer and horse. The steer never tried that
trick again. He didn't like the squashing and skinning he got in the
encounter. .

He began to resort almost exclusively to "scotching,"
the first trick of "setting up" just before the cowboy was
settled on his back. If the man managed to get on him and stop him he
would brace himself and stand there while the man twisted on his neck
with all his might. Then when he fell he would try to fall with his
legs under him, "dog fall," and sometimes he would have the
satisfaction of catching the cowboy under him.

.The steer, being a dumb animal, of course had no way
of knowing he was making himself unpopular with the bulldoggers when
he did these things. Cowboys do not like to draw steers that may put
them in the hospital. Also, in order to be able to win any money in
rodeo and thus continue rodeoing, a cowboy must qualify with the
steer he is bulldogging. In order to qualify in the contest the
bulldogger has to wrestle the steer down on his left side so that all
four legs are sticking straight out.

The brown-and-white spotted steer was only run for
the bulldogging a few times after he became a chronic "scotcher"
and "dog faller." He was turned out on a meadow for a while
where he gained more weight. He had been on the meadow for about two
weeks when he was caught again. This time he was taken to an arena,
turned out of the chute, and given a very good headstart. He was
chased again but this time he was roped around the horns by one
horseman, then roped around V the heels by another horseman and faced
back the way he had come. He had practically been broken to lead in
Mexico so after a few weeks of this roping when his horns got sore at
the base from too much jerking he learned not to hit the end of the
head rope so hard. This gave him time to stay out of the range of the
heel rope pretty well. When his heels were caught, sometimes he would
lie down peacefully, lazily. This also disqualified the ropers from
the contest.

The spotted steer kept gaining weight. He was big
enough for the single steer roping now.

One day the men turned him out of the chute with a
good headstart the same as usual. When he felt the rope jerk tight on
his horns he slowed down to ease the shock of the expected yank from
behind. Instead, he felt the rope whip around his right side and
around his hind legs above the hocks. He saw the big horse driving
off to the left front of him. Suddenly, his head was wrenched down to
the right, his right horn went into the dirt clear to the base and
his whole body vaulted on that horn into the air and he slammed down
on his side, his muzzle pointed back to the chutes. Then he was spun
on his side and dragged. He was still being dragged by the powerful
horse with all the air knocked out of him when the cowboy dismounted
and tied him.

The fifth time the brown-and-white spotted steer was
"fair-grounded" in this way he got up with a loose right
horn and a nosebleed. Boy Decker was competing in that rodeo and he
noticed the steer's horn was broken. He spoke to the rodeo producer
and that evening the trucks took the rodeo steers back to the meadows
of the Decker ranch.

The brown-and-white spotted steer was dizzy for a few
days but soon his appetite returned. The August green grass was in
its prime. The steer was in his prime. He dearly loved that green
grass. He felt sound, except for the horn that drooped over his eye.
He was often reminded of how tender it was. He would have to be
careful when he was playing with another steer to hook only with the
left horn now. He could feint with the right horn. However, he really
didn't have much time to bother about playing or hooking anything in
that heaven of green grass.
 

BOOK THREE

24
Onza

The
huarache
is
a sandal. In the southern part of Sonora and in the Sierra Madre
Occidental men use a
huarache
made
of used tire treads. The slab of tire is lashed on to the sole of the
foot by leather thongs. Men who wear these
huaraches
almost never wash their feet, so a coarse
lacquer of dirt, sweat, and body oils form to protect the feet. The
blunt toes become shock proof. The
huarachudo
,
wearer of the
huarache
,
runs through cactus, over rocks, snow, or ground heated by 110
degrees of sun, without looking down.

Wherever you go in
Mexico you see that the average peon wears huaraches. Shoes for him
are unnecessary and impractical. He prefers the liberty of his
huaraches
. Shoes are
hot in the summer, cold in winter, and hurt the feet all year round.

The puma stepped up to the trail behind Juan Vogel
and watched him. ride away. He did not see Kane coming along behind
him. He was intent on crossing the trail unseen behind Vogel and
observing the man as long as he had his chance.

Pajaro stopped while he decided what this animal was
that blocked his path and what he, Pajaro the horse, was going to do
about it. The puma whipped his tail audaciously as though playful at
the idea that he could watch Vogel but Vogel could not see him. But
he was careful to keep the exuberance of the tail from moving the
rest of his body in case it should discover him to Vogel.