by B. TRAVEN
“Are you looking for something?” he asked.
“Yes, the sugar!” And he passed me the enamelled bowl.
“I didn’t mean that,” he said, smiling. “What I meant was, would you like to earn some money?”
“I always like earning money,” I replied.
“Have you ever cut out cattle?”
“I grew up on a cattle farm.”
“Then I’ve got a job for you!”
“Really?”
“A thousand head of cattle, sixty heavy bulls among them, to be driven three hundred and fifty miles overland.
“Agreed!” I shook his hand. “Where shall I meet you?”
“Hotel Palacio. At five. In the lobby.”
These cattle couldn’t be transported by rail for there were no facilities for that. And as to overland drive there existed only few roads, many mountain ranges had to be crossed, swamps by-passed, rivers forded. Grazing pasture and water had to be found every day.
“Three hundred and fifty miles?” I asked the rancher when we met to talk it over. “As the crow flies?”
“Yes, as the crow flies,” said the rancher. Mr. Pratt was his name.
“Dammit, boss, that might turn out to be six hundred.”
“Not so unlikely, but as far as I’ve figured, it might be possible to keep a fairly direct route.”
“What about pay?”
“Six pesos a day. I provide horse, saddle, and equipment. You got to cook your own food on the way. I’ll send six of my men to whom the animals are well used along with you. Indians. The foreman, a mestizo, will also go with you. He’s quite a good man. Reliable. I might perhaps trust him with the herd. But no. If he sells the herd on the way, and bolts, I could do nothing about it. His wife and children live on my ranch, but that’s no security!—you could search for the likes of him forevermore in this country. Besides, I wouldn’t like to give him so much money to carry about. On the other hand, I couldn’t send him off without money. There are so many expenses on the drive, it’s not fair to tempt any man that way. As for me, I can’t stay away from the rancho that long … the bandits’d be around the place before you could say knife. That’s why I’d like to get hold of a gringo like you to take over the drive.”
“Well, I don’t know if I’m as honest as you think. Not yet, anyhow,” I said with a laugh. “I, too, know how to bolt with a herd. After all, you’ve just picked me up in the street.”
“I judge a man by his face,” Mr. Pratt went on. Then, after a pause: “To be perfectly honest, I’m not trusting entirely to luck. I know you.”
“You know me? I can’t imagine how.”
“Didn’t you work for a farmer Shine?”
“Yes.”
“I saw you there. And I have Mr. Shine’s word that I can rely on you. So you’ll have the contract, you’ll drive the herd, and I’ll advance you money to pay your daily expenses.”
“Very well! But what about the contract bonus?”
Mr. Pratt was silent for a while, then took out his notebook, made a few calculations, and said: “I’ve leased pastureland near the port, two miles from the main terminal market. It’s well fenced. There, I can wait for cattle-buyers to come to me, and I’ll probably get orders for several shiploads. If not, I’ll sell the herd in small lots. I’ve got a good and very reliable agent there who’s been working with me for years, and has always got good prices …”
“That’s all very well,” I interjected, “but what about my contract and bonus?”
“All right, for each head that you drive through, sound from horn to hoof, I’ll pay you sixty centavos extra. If your losses are less than two per cent, I’ll give you a hundred-peso bonus on top of that, plus your pay.”
“What about the losses?”
“I’ll deduct twenty-five pesos for every head lost above two per cent,” said Mr. Pratt.
“Just a moment,” I broke in. I made a few quick calculations myself on the margin of a newspaper. “Sold,” I agreed. “Let me have a note of the contract.”
He tore a leaf out of his little notebook, wrote the conditions of our contract in pencil, signed it and handed it to me. “Your address?” he asked.
“My address? That’s an awkward point!” (I really didn’t have an address.) “Let’s say right here, Hotel Palacio.”
“Okay. All right.”
“How do matters stand at present? Has the herd been cut out?”
“No, not a single head has been cut out, yet. There’ll be a few yearlings, but most of the herd’ll be two- and three-year-olds. Yes, a few four-year-olds, too. I’ll help you cut them out.”
“All branded?”
“All of them. No trouble there.”
“What about the leader bulls?”
“That’s your problem. You’ll have to see about them.”
“All right by me. I can manage to pick them.”
Mr. Pratt got up. “Now let’s have a drink, and then you’re going to have dinner with me. Afterwards, I’ve got some private business to attend to, before we leave for the ranch.”
What his private business was, that was no concern of mine. I’m not curious when it comes to private business. One of the many reasons why I am still alive.
The following morning, after breakfast on his ranch, we saddled up and rode out to the prairie to see if I could pick out a horse for myself. These horses were born, bred, and raised out in the wide open; there was no horse stable on Mr. Pratt’s ranch, and so these horses were wild. They were shaggy, long-maned and long-tailed, though rather small; and they galloped off at the mere scent of man.
Two or three times a year these horses were rounded up, and driven into a corral close to the ranch. Here they were fed, and watered, so as to get used to man; they were tied up, bridled, saddled, and eventually mounted before being turned loose again on the range. And thus, with patience and care, the horses were kept this side of remaining wild. The trainers were careful never to break the horse’s spirit, nor hurt his pride, nor curb his natural mettle.
I picked out a horse, neither the wildest nor the tamest, but one which looked as if it would stand the strenuous trek. We closed in on him, lassoed him, and took him back to the ranch, where I left him to his peace, tied to a tree. Later, I threw him some grain, which he ignored. Then some fresh grass, which he likewise declined. So I let him go hungry and thirsty overnight. In the morning, I brought him more grass; but he shied off, to the end of his rope. Then I put some water in front of him, which he immediately tipped over as he wasn’t used to drinking from a bucket, for he’d drunk only from streamlets and rain pools.
In time I made him, or rather his hunger made him, feed and drink; and so he came to associate food with my presence. Within two days I could come up to him and pat him gently on the back. He trembled, but after a while the trembling ceased. I could not, of course not, spend all my time with the horse, only moments when we came to the rancho for meals; meanwhile we were very busy cutting out the herd.
When the horse had become used to me, I put a bitless bridle on him, with a bridle strap fastened outside around his mouth. If a horse hasn’t been ruined by rough handling, you can ride him without any iron in the mouth. In fact, he responds wonderfully; the assumption that you can master a horse only if you tear its mouth open, or dig its sides raw with a spur, is utterly false.
At last I saddled him. And every time I came to the ranch to eat, I tightened the straps. At the same time I pressed the saddle and put weight on it as if I was going to mount. Then I let down the stirrups, so they dangled freely and knocked against his flanks. Now I moved about as if to mount by putting a boot in the stirrup. At the first attempt, he kicked and danced away; but in a few days he was well accustomed to the knocking and dangling of the stirrups. Then I jumped on, got one leg over the saddle, and jumped off again.
All this time, the horse had been tied, sometimes on a long rope, sometimes on a short one. At last I ventured to mount. I blindfolded him and got into the sad
dle. He stood still and trembled all over his body. Quickly I jumped off, patted his neck and back, and kept up a flow of smooth talk. I mounted again. He turned, quivered, but danced and bucked only slightly; now he bumped against the tree, and so stopped altogether. I remained in the saddle and pressed my heels into his flanks. He became restless, but by now he realized that there was nothing to be afraid of, so I removed the blindfold. He looked about him. I, still in the saddle, spoke to him, patted him, reassured him.
Next, I had to discover whether or not he was suitable for riding. From the first day I had been tapping him gently on the rump with a switch, to accustom him to this signal. One day I mounted him, and winked to a boy nearby to untie him. The horse stood still, having no idea of what was expected of him. I tapped him with the switch. Nothing doing. Then he got a good sharp blow, and lo! he started off. I kept him under control, out on the prairie, where he could run freely. He ran, and even galloped, but I kept holding him back more and more, until he realized that this was a signal to stop or fall into a different gait. Through all this time of training, I managed to keep my patience, never to break his pride, and so this strong, shaggy three-year-old became a good horse. I called him Gitano, which means Gypsy.
Whether in the long history of mankind a colt had ever been trained for riding in a similar way before, I don’t know. Anyhow the way I had done it produced lasting results so my training system cannot have been so very wrong, after all. And now the herd had to be cut out. I possessed not the slightest notion what was meant by that and how it had to be done. Never in my life had I driven even as few as fifty cattle from one pasture to the next. Now, since Mr. Pratt was hawk-like, watching every move I made preparing the herd for the long march, I was forced to show off here and there. If you wish you may call it bluffing shamelessly. Perhaps you are right. If I had never tried bluffing at some critical occasions in my existence on earth I would have lost my life long, long ago.
My idea (if it was good or wrong, this I did not know) was to form a little group of the animals, sort of a family center of the whole transport around which smaller groups might gather and thus keep together more naturally—since cattle belong to the species of animals who for many good reasons prefer to live in groups or herds, as do dogs, horses, wolves, elephants, antelope, zebras, also fish.
Meantime, we had started cutting out the herd. First, I cut out the bulls, looking for a leader bull. We cut and drove into the cattle corral the bulls I had picked, and I let them go hungry. I continued putting the herd, the two- and three-year-olds and the oxen, as well as the rest of the eighty bulls, into another enclosure. I examined every one to make sure that it was healthy enough for the long trek; and all these were fenced into a field so that they might get the herd feeling. When I had three hundred head in that enclosure, I believed the bulls were ready.
We drove them into the field with the picked herd, and the battle for leader began. The bulls who were indifferent to the honor got by themselves as far out of the way as possible, and the battle soon centered on five of them. The victor, still bleeding profusely, charged towards one of the cows in heat who pushed her way towards him. We attended to all the wounded bulls immediately; and after the victor had spent himself and returned to his herd senses, he too got his medicine. For if the wounds weren’t treated promptly, they’d soon be full of maggots, and it’d be a long and tedious job getting them out.
Worms, maggots, and ticks are a big problem with any herd, anywhere, but worst of all in the tropics. And if cattle start losing weight, their skin dries out, and deadens, and the lean cattle are in danger of being eaten alive by worms and ticks. Healthy animals, however, are attacked only by limited numbers of pests which can easily be kept under control.
Once we had cut out the thousand head of cattle, Mr. Pratt, a very generous man, gave me five extra healthy ones as replacements for those five in a thousand who were certain to fall sick or fail to survive the long drive.
Then I was given a hundred pesos cash in silver for transport expenses, besides some checks I could cash in case of emergency, and I was also given the delivery note to the terminal pasture. Then Mr. Pratt handed me a map.
The less said about this map, the better. You can put anything you like upon a map: roads, rivers, villages, towns, grasslands, water pools, mountain passes, and plenty more. Paper is patient, it won’t refuse anything; but though a river or a bridge appears on a map it doesn’t mean that you’re going to find it where it is supposed to be.
It was a real joy to hear Mrs. Pratt swearing; every other word was “son-of-a-bitch,” “bastard,” or “f——ing,” and more in the same beautiful strain. On a rancho like theirs, it could be damned lonely, and the nights were long, so you couldn’t blame her for living her life as intensely as existence on a cattle rancho permitted. How else was the poor woman to use up the surplus energy, which, had she lived in a village or town, would have gone into chatting and gossiping with the neighbors all day? To her, everything was son-of-a-bitch; her husband, I, the Indians, the fly that dropped into her coffee cup, the Indian girl in the kitchen, her finger that she cut, the hen that fluttered on the table and upset the soup pot, her horse that moved too slowly; yes, every object between heaven and earth was to Mrs. Pratt a son-of-a-bitch.
They had a phonograph and we danced nearly every evening. For a number of reasons, I preferred to dance with the Indian kitchen-maid; but Ethel, Mrs. Pratt, danced far better and we got onto such good terms that one night she told me quite frankly in her husband’s presence that she’d like to marry me if her husband should die or divorce her.
She was a fine woman, Mrs. Pratt, she certainly was, and I wouldn’t hear a word against her. A woman who can handle the wildest horse, swear to make a sergeant major wince, a woman before whom tough Indian vaqueros trembled and with whom bandits kept their distance, a woman who in the presence of her husband (whom she seemed to love) could quite soberly declare that she’d like to marry me if he died or left her—damn it, a woman like that could stir you even if you didn’t care much about the so-called weaker sex.
As we were leaving, Ethel Pratt stood on the long veranda and waved good-bye. “Good luck, boy! You’re always welcome on this rancho. Hey, Suarez, you dirty dog, you filthy son-of-a-goddamned-old-bitch, can’t you see that black one is breaking out, the son-of-a-bitch of a bull. Where are your f——ing eyes? Well, boy, good-bye!”
I waved my hat, and Gitano swept off with me.
Yes, we were off. We broke out. The yelling, the shouting, the calling, the high-pitched shrieking of the Indians; the sound of the short-handled whips cutting through the air; the trampling of hoofs and all the uproar as a column of beasts shied off, rushed away and had to be blocked in, lest it lost contact with the main herd.
The first day is always one of the hardest, so Mr. Pratt came along with us. The herd is still only loosely knit and a sense of belonging together does not develop until the transport has been under way a few days, until the herd knows the leader bull and gets the smell of mutual kinship. Then the family feeling, rather the herd feeling, emerges and the animals want to stay with their herd.
But they didn’t stay together like a flock of sheep kept in order by a shepherd and a dog. For these cattle, born and raised on vast ranges among Mr. Pratt’s twelve thousand-headed herd, were accustomed to space, and they wanted to spread out, run loose. The dogs we took with us couldn’t make much of a showing, for they tired easily and could be used only for small jobs. Thus, it was a constant galloping back and forth, shouting and yelling.
I had a police whistle with me as a signal for the boys, the foreman had an ordinary whistle, easily distinguished from mine. I put the foreman at the head and I took the rear, as it afforded a better view of the field of transport, and it seemed easier to me to direct operations from there.
What more beautiful sight could there be than a giant herd of healthy half-wild cattle! There they were ahead of me, trampling and stamping, the heavy necks, the ro
unded bodies, the proud, mighty horns. It was a heaving sea of gigantic vitality, of brute nature herded along by one single purpose. And each pair of horns represented a life in itself, a life with its own will, its own desires, its own thoughts and feelings.
From saddle-height I surveyed the whole of this ocean of horns and necks and rumps. I could perhaps have walked on the broad backs of the animals across the entire herd up to the belled bulls in front.
The animals bellowed singly and in chorus. They quarrelled and pushed each other around. Shouts and calls went up. The bells clattered. The sun smiled and blazed. Everything was green. The land of perpetual summer. Oh, beautiful, wonderful land of everlasting springtime, rich with legend, dance and song! You have no equal anywhere on this earth.
I couldn’t help singing. I sang whatever came into my head, hymns and sweet folk airs, love songs and ditties, operatic arias, drinking songs and bawdy songs. What did I care what the songs were about? What did the melody matter? I sang from a heart full of joy.
And what magic air! The hot breath of the tropical bush, the warm sultry sweat of the mass of moving cattle, the heavy vapors from a near-by swamp, wafted to us by the wind.
Thick droves of buzzing horseflies and other insects circled over the trotting herd, and dense clouds of glittering greenflies followed us to settle on the dung. Blackbirds accompanied us in whole flocks, lighted on the backs of the beasts to pick ticks and bugs from their hides. Untold thousands of creatures lived off this mighty herd. Life and life! … everywhere nothing but life.
Our march took us over country roads for a few days, with fields and pastureland on either side fenced in with barbed wire. Of course such pastures can’t be used without the owner’s consent, so our herd had to graze along the roadsides, which proved to be ample, and there were sufficient water pools still filled from the rainy season.
When cars or trucks or pack caravans passed along the roads there was quite some performance, for we had to push the herd to one side; but the cattle would break away, wheel around, and hightail it singly or in groups for several miles. Then we’d have to give chase and round them up, drive them into the herd again.