by J P S Brown
He looked down at Gato’s thick, graceful neck and the lights in his coat and realized how well the horse filled his legs. The horse moved e as though the two-hundred-pound man he carried was not even there. Kane would have to ride a week before he found his old seat on the horse. This colt owned the power and the action to unseat him with one breath, but he stayed under the man, careful of every step. He made no quick moves and gave Kane his every consideration, as a gentle veteran would.
A three-year-old could be expected to panic, lunge, and fall when his foot slipped on smooth rock, but Gato did not. At the slick places he shifted into lower gear and crawled like a tractor until he left them behind. He knew what happened when feet skidded on high trails, and he did not like it. Kane’s top horse Pajaro had been like that. Pajaro was the only other horse that Kane ever knew that learned it on his own. He had been so surefooted that he negotiated every laja, smooth rock slab, of every trail of his entire life, in the dark, in rainstorms, in snowstorms, on downhill runs, on steep uphill pulls, without a slide or a fall.
The horse that had fallen off the cliff with Kane had skidded on a slab of smooth, steep bedrock that Pajaro would have stepped over and not even touched. The horse had slipped a little, then panicked, then lunged, then fallen. Those four predictable steps that could befall an ordinary horse on a high trail had been realized, to Kane’s misfortune.
Kane had been positive that he would never see another mountain and rock horse like Pajaro. If Gato turned out to be as good, he would be another miraculous gift from God to Jim Kane. Gato was from the same stock as Pajaro. Pajaro’s sire was Gato’s great-grandfather, the great chestnut stud called Tiger that had belonged to Kane’s father.
Kane and Vogel paused on the ridge of Guasisaco and looked down into the canyons, ravines, and cordons of mountains below. Their horses stood on the high spine that marked the border between Chihuahua on their right and Sonora on their left. They sat their horses in pine forest at five thousand feet and could see the Mayo River at only five hundred feet above sea level at least twenty miles away. A flock of green parrots skimmed the canopy of trees below them at Rancho El Limon, where the buildings of the Vogel family’s first hacienda had been erected in 187o. Kane and Vogel rode down the steep slope past El Limon to the trail above Arroyo de Teguaraco, on through verdant tunnels that had been slashed by machete through vainoro thickets to Gilaremos, then made a detour over long stretches of smooth rock in the canyon below Guazaremos to see if their cattle had salt. They rode back out and stopped at Guazaremos to visit with the branding crew that was glad to see Kane horseback again. They forded the blue water of the Mayo River at midafternoon and followed it upstream into the Sierra de la Golondrina. An hour after sundown, they reached Puerto la Golondrina, the gateway to the ranch, and rode down into the bowl where the Lupino hacienda lay.
They waved to a one-armed watchman who sat on the porch of his house high on a promontory below the pass. The hacienda was surrounded on three sides by a five-hundred-foot escarpment of sheer cliffs. The sentry waved back and called them by name. His wife and small children came out and waved too.
"He's got Toribio up there now," Kane said. "Since when?"
“I guess the old watchman Balbanedo got too blind to watch," Vogel said. ”Toribio only has one arm from the horse fall, so he’s a watchman now. See, Jim, you could have lost your arm like Toribio."
"The nosedive that horse and I took off the trail could have been worse, no? Maybe then you could have retained me at El Trigo."
"We’ll never see that day, compadre."
The swallows of La Golondrina that nested in the escarpment were at work and play in the sky above the bowl. The trail widened and the men rode side by side. They passed an acre of a newly sprouted verano, vegetable garden, and a large field of young corn.
Lupino hailed them from the veranda of his house in the bottom of the bowl. "Hua. Aaanhuuuaaa!," he howled. The partners could see his smile a quarter mile away.
"Why does the old thing act so glad to see us?" Kane asked.
"Because nobody else ever visits him," Vogel said. "He hasn’t got another friend in the world."
"I’ve always wondered, how come we’re his only friends?"
"Because after all the years that he has entrusted us with his cattle, he considers us part of his family, as he considers his horses and cattle to be close family. I think he loves his Arabian horses more than he does his daughter and four grandsons."
"He does love his Arabians. I’m sure we’ll be given another tour of the stable"
"How many times have we driven his young bulls away from here without paying for them, Jim?"
"Not for a long time, but in the beginning, many times."
"We always come ready to pay, but to help us he always tells us to first find out what we can get for them, then to pay him what they are worth. Right?"
"He’s tried to be good about that, even though we only took his cattle on the credit a time or two when we were young. We always take the cattle on faith, but send him his money within a day or two."
"That’s right. He’s wanted to keep the transaction a kind one between friends. He’s wanted to trust us. You ever wonder why?"
"Of course. His livestock has to be sold every year, but he hates to see it leave home. It eases his heart to put it in our hands."
"Exactly. He trusts us, and every year he makes sure of us by offering to let us take his cattle on faith. It eases his betrayal of his darlings, his consentidos. He feels like a traitor for sending them away to market. He likes us for doing it for him, but he has to like us, or it would hurt too much."
"Well, we’ve always known that we weren’t the only ones who hated to see our livestock sold and driven away."
"No, Jim. You and Nesib Lupino are the only ones I know who almost cry when your calves and colts leave the ranch."
"Don’t tell me that, Juan. You’re more sentimental about the livestock than any of us. You think I haven't watched you gentle down more every day as you drive them closer to market? You’re gentler to your calves on market day than a mother cow with an udder full of milk. You practically snuggle up to them when it’s time to say good-bye."
"You’re old and sentimental, Jim. Are you sure that horse didn’t fall on your heart? Is it sore and oh-so-very sensitive now from that fall?"
Vogel chuckled at his own wit.
At that moment, Kane saw something very different in the landscape ahead. "Ay, look," he said. "Stop here and light a cigarette, and I’ll show you something"
"Why? What for?"
"Just stop to light a cigarette, and I’ll show you something the old Lupino would never want us to see"
Vogel stopped. While he took cigarettes and matches out of his pocket, Kane said, "Now, while you light your cigarette, look ahead from under your hat and tell me what you see ten meters from here on your side of the trail."
Vogel lit his cigarette and looked over his cupped hands. "Ahhh," he said. "It’s already so tall? I thought the old man planted his poppies later. That is a sprig of an amapola, is it not?"
“That’s what I see. It might be too early in the season for his crop to be that size, but he didn’t plant that sprout. Somebody accidentally dropped a seed there."
"You’re right, but why hasn’t the old villain cut it down, or transplanted it inside the rest of his crop?"
"Why would he have to? Nobody visits him."
"I guess you’re right. See, he trusts us not to tell anyone what we see when we come to get his cattle, as he has trusted us for twenty years to help sell his horses."
Twenty years ago, Lupino had sent his grandson Ibrahim with a crew to the El Trigo hacienda to build a row of stables and paddocks. At that time he was ready to sell his first crop of Arabian colts but did not want buyers to come on his ranch. Without asking Kane and Vogel, he decided to use El Trigo as a site to show his colts to the buyers. That way he did not have to see the buyers take his beloved horses away, and the
y did not come on his ranch where they might see stray poppy sprouts, or anything else he did not want them to see.
Nesib Lupino had grown poppies on La Golondrina and harvested their opium gum for sixty years. Everyone in the Sierra knew it. Juan Vogel and Jim Kane were the only people he treated as friends. He communicated only with them when he wanted to buy or sell livestock. However, nobody not even Vogel and Kane, ever visited La Golondrina uninvited. Government and state policemen had disappeared when they visited the ranch uninvited. Some reappeared, but in highly agitated states. The serranos, people of the Sierra, knew to stay away from the Lupino empire.
Nesib Lupino’s father had emigrated to Mexico and the Sierra Madre from the Middle East. No one knew why one Arab horseman had fled so far into one of the most obscure regions of the continent before he came to ground. Nesib had only been out of the Sierra Madre six times in the past fifty years. He did not like for his ranch and livestock, especially his Arabian horses, to be out of his sight. He had traveled to the Middle East twice and to Rio Alamos on the coast of the Sea of Cortez in Sonora four times in those fifty years. In the Middle East he bought pure Arabian stallions and mares that he brought home. He had visited Rio Alamos more recently because two of his grandsons lived and ran the family produce, trucking, fishing, aviation, shipping, agriculture, and hardware businesses there.
His grandsons did business all over the world but flew back to La Golondrina every month to report to him. They were millionaires, but they had to land at the El Trigo airstrip in a single engine airplane with their hearts in their throats and then ride eight hours on mules to La Golondrina every week.
The terrain in the bowl of La Golondrina was plenty big and level enough for a two-thousand-meter airstrip, but Lupino vowed that no airplane would ever land there as long as he lived. Horseshoe trails would be the only access to La Golondrina. Horses and mules would always be the prime movers for all Lupinos, no matter how many fishing boats, ocean liners, and flying boxcars they owned.
Lupino’s oldest grandson Ibrahim, who was married, worked as mayordomo of the ranch and was as devoted to it as his grandfather. He had everything in common with Kane and Vogel. He was younger, but had known them all his life, but he remained reserved and formal when he dealt with them.
Lupino had always been hospitable and chivalrous in a way that reminded Kane of Bedouins he read about. He was 100 percent serrano, steeped in the lore of that country, but also well versed in his Arab heritage. He liked to discuss horsemanship and Arab horse traditions that cowboys, vaqueros, and the Moors of Spain and Africa shared. As the partners rode into the yard at the main house, the old man made people scramble to prepare for his guests. Young servant girls and old men and women retainers hurried back and forth on the veranda at his orders.
Softly, Kane said, "I’d like to know where he grows his poppies. In all the years we’ve come here, I’ve never even seen a flower."
"Shhh, he’ll hear you," Vogel said. "I don’t think he lets them flower. He harvests the gum from the bulbs before they bloom."
Then they were too close for Kane to say more. An old retainer held Gato and Negrito as the partners dismounted. "Take their mounts to the stable and fill them with corn and hay, Filomeno," Lupino ordered the old servant softly. He did not look away from the faces of his guests. He opened his arms and embraced them both and patted their backs, then stood back and beamed at them as though they might be the last sunrise he would ever see. They enjoyed the sight of him too, even though they knew the hardness of his heart. He had always been open and hospitable as though he considered himself to be their good friend, and they liked it, especially because they knew that people who met with his disfavor flat disappeared. Nobody could say he murdered them, because none of the desaparecidos ever even left a shoestring behind as evidence to link their corpses to La Golondrina.
A troop of army cavalry usually made an appointment and rode in to inquire at La Golondrina for folk that disappeared in the region. After Lupino made sure that the ordinary soldiers were comfortable and contained in the front yard, he would invite the commander into his home, give him a drink, and offer to give his troop a half of a beef. After the commander stated the reason for his visit, that a visitor to the region had disappeared, Lupino would say solicitously "I will make inquiries and watch for the unfortunate myself." With that, the commander knew it was time to mount his troop, leave, and not look back. To whom would Lupino make inquiries? His nearest neighbors were the Vogels and their crew at El Trigo, thirty miles of horseshoe trail away.
Each small village of the Sierra owned a constable who almost never left the village, but held police authority over thousands of square miles of wilderness. Mounted soldiery patrolled the mountains periodically. News by word of mouth passed through the Sierra quicker than it had when Kane and Vogel maintained a telephone network that covered almost every ranch in their municipality of Chinipas, Chihuahua. The Sinaloa intruders had torn down the telephone line and the partners got used to communicating without it again and did not rebuild it. They were able to receive and send messages to the coast by radio fast enough for their needs. The only discipline of law or behavior that was constant in the Sierra came from the goodness taught the children by their families. This was the discipline that had always existed, before the telephone line, before constables, and before army patrols. People of that municipality were even too isolated to have a church. Priests’ visits to the Sierra were as rare as tours by old ladies from Ohio. The people did not even know the function of a Catholic priest. Maybe once every five years one might visit to tell them that he could legalize their baptisms and marriages, if they wanted it. The grace of the sacraments administered by the Catholic Church would probably visit Saturn before they came to be known and appreciated by the serranos of the municipality of Chinipas.
As Filomeno, Lupino’s servant, started to lead the partners' mounts toward the stables, Lupino looked at them again and said, "Whoa, what bestia, saddle horse, is that?"
"That’s Jim’s horse Gato," Juan Vogel said proudly. As far as he knew, no other horse of Gato’s good looks, except Jim Kane’s Pajaro, had ever walked on the soil of La Golondrina. That included every horse that had come from Arabia and every single one ever foaled and raised at La Golondrina.
"Stop, Filomeno. Bring those animals back," Lupino ordered. The stooped old man patiently turned Gato and Negrito back to face him. "What a fine head and eye. What a color. What do you call that color?"
"Alazán tostado. Toasted sorrel. Or, you could call him a castaño, a chestnut sorrel."
"So, that’s a castaño. You know, that goes to show, we can never know everything about a horse. I have never seen a horse of that dark sorrel color. He looks burnt on the edges. And look at that, only a small and perfect diamond in his frente, in the very center of his forehead. And that, one white sock on his near side, the side on which he is mounted. You know the saying, albo al lado de montar . . . , white hind foot on the near side . . ."
"Ni habar," Vogel said to complete the saying. "Is a good horse, without saying"
"What a fine animal you brought me, Vogel."
"He belongs to Jim."
"Where did you get him, Jim? I have never seen such an animal, such a beauty."
"You mean, other than an Arabian?" Kane said.
"Oh . . . yes, of course," Lupino said. "But I need this horse. This must be the horse I sent for, the one my grandson Ibrahim saw being ridden at El Trigo by Martinillo’s grandson. They told you, and you brought him to me."
"We brought him, but he’s not for sale," Kane said.
Lupino turned to address Kane, but his eyes were still full of the horse. "You want to give him to me? Oh, no. He must be the best of his crop. I couldn’t take him as a gift. I’ll pay for him."
"He’s not for sale, and I hate to disillusion you, but he hasn’t been brought as a gift to you either."
"But he’s the one I want. I sent word to Martinillo that I wanted this ho
rse. Isn’t that the reason you brought him?"
"No, I had no idea you wanted him."
Lupino would not come down off his cloud. "Then why did you bring him?"
"Martinillo had him saddled and ready for me to ride when I landed at the airstrip."
"But you two know a good business transaction when you see one, do you not? Get together with your partner Vogel a moment and think. Deliberate, then name your price. What better transaction could you make? Aren’t you business partners? Doesn’t each of you own half the horse?"
“No, Vogel relinquished his half to me. I couldn’t sell him if I wanted to. He’s a gift from my compadre."
With that, Lupino shut up and Kane thought he would weep. He asked a woman to show the partners to their room so they could wash for supper, but he did not accompany them to the room, as he usually did. He was so distracted he stumbled on his way into the house. Kane figured he had thought that the Gato that Ibrahim told him about was only an ordinary horse, not one that would make him stumble and weep when he could not have him.
The woman led them through the cool hallways of the house to a corner room with a view of the cornfields, the granite cliffs of the escarpment, and the swallows. Kane turned to thank her at the door before she left. Her head was swathed in a black rebozo, a shawl. She had wrapped it across her mouth like a mask, but he recognized the eyes of Fatima, Lupino’s only child and mother of his four dynamic grandsons.
"Fatima, it’s you?" Kane asked.