by J P S Brown
Then he looked up into the eyes of Kane and the Lion as they rode out in front of him and blocked the trail.
"Güero, what kind of idiot are you to fool with my grandchildren?" Kane asked.
"Senor Jim Kane, my heart feels good to see you," Güero said.
"What heart, Güero? You mean your chicken heart? Who are these foolish people who depend on it for guidance? Do they know how cowardly you are?"
"I only guide a poor family of Mexicans on their way to a new life in the United, with your permission."
"You can take them where they’re going . . ."
"I’m grateful to you, Senor Kane."
". . . this time. However, this is the last hike you make across this ranch. The next time I meet you on one of my trails, you’ll have to limp home on one foot, because I’m going to shoot you in the other one."
Güero grinned at Kane to see if he was joking.
"I saw your encounter with my grandchildren. I won’t call the migra, immigration, but I will take away the use of one of your feet the next time I see you on this ranch."
"I’ve intended to stop by and thank you before this for allowing me safe passage, Señor Kane, but you’ve been away from home a lot. You know. I often stop by your home to make sure nobody does it damage when you are gone."
"So, I give you a friendly warning and you answer me with a threat to damage my home? You are only here because you are the bastard son of a Vogel. A lot of people have helped you because of that, but from now on, you’re only another bastard to me, so stay off my trails."
"Look at his clients, Jim," the Lion said. ”Who have you brought us this time, Güero?"
”These are only poor Mexicans looking for work, like all the rest," Güero said.
"You are not Mexicans, are you?" the Lion asked the followers in Spanish. "Speak to me. Where in Mexico are you from? Do you even speak Spanish?"
The people’s eyes went blank, and they looked away.
"They’re Arabs," Kane said, and one of the men looked him in the eye. "Where are you from?" Kane asked him in English.
The Arab turned away and sat on a rock.
"What kind of Arabs are you? Are you Hottentots? Philistines? Babylonians? Egyptians? Dervishes, or Bedouins?" Kane asked. They all sat down.
"I know you speak English," Kane said. "I heard Güero talking to you. Don’t come through this ranch again. You appear to be well-to-do people, maybe even good people, but you aren’t Mexicans." He pointed to the Lion. "That's a Mexican.
"You look prosperous and that means you're not here to do honest work," Kane said. "If you are Arabs, you have a tradition of hospitality, and I’ve been shown wonderful hospitality by my Arab friends, so I’ll let you go on. But don’t come back. Don’t think you can use this ranch until a time comes when you can import camels.
"Güero, I’ve never reported anyone who made his way across this ranch to look for work, and I never will. But now get your ’Mexicans’ out of my sight as chingado quick as you can."
Kane and the Lion backed their horses off the trail and let Güero and his people go by. "Follow them, Lion, so we’ll know where they meet their transportation," Kane said.
"You think he’ll come again?"
"Sure he will. He’s enjoyed special status as a Vogel all his life. I’m sure he believes that l’ve only given him his first little bawling out. I’m sure he thinks he has at least two more coming before I say anything I really mean. That’s the way a bastard thinks."
Kane’s grandchildren came out of the house to meet him when he rode into the yard. They followed him into the corral, and Cody Joe quickly unsaddled his horse. Kane walked out to the middle of the corral and made a show of inspecting the dried sweat on Quarter Moon and Chance.
"What could possibly have put you two in such a breeze that you ran your horses all the way home and put them away wet like that?" he said.
"We went out riding and had a little trouble," Dolly Ann said.
"I see that. Did you have some awful emergency?"
"We went out to see if we could find people who needed food and water, Pappy."
The girl’s mouth and chin became hard to control with the truth, but she managed it.
Kane looked at Cody Joe. "You think that was a good idea, Marine?"
"We both wanted to ride, Pappy."
"Cody didn’t want to do it," Dolly Ann said. "He went because I said I would go no matter what. He didn’t think you would want him to let me go alone, Pappy."
"Do you know who that cannibal is that you ran into and then had to run over to get away?"
"No, Pappy" they said.
"That’s the greediest bastard in Sonora. He would sell you to some other greedy bastard piece by piece and start with one finger, if he could get more money for you that way. Do you now have an idea why I don’t want you kids to ride out alone?"
”Yes, Pappy," they said.
"The only people on this outfit who ride alone are the Lion and me. It’s not smart for us to do it, but we’ve done it so long, we can’t break ourselves of it. You don’t ride alone because you don’t have to. If you ever do it again, I’ll ground you forever. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Pappy."
"Let’s go get dinner. You two have to cook because you’re in the doghouse. And hurry before the Lion gets back and wants to cook. All he knows how to make is spoilt tortilla"
The Lion returned in time for supper and took Kane aside. Güero and his clients had met someone at the abandoned Vincent mine and driven away to the north in a brand-new Hummer.
The youngsters made hands of themselves and cooked supper. The next day the three Kanes and the Lion started the spring roundup.
FIVE
Martinillo returned home to Las Animas and found his wife Lucrecia in a bad mood. Her bad humor did not extend to her grandchildren, only to him. He heard her laugh with Marco Antonio’s sister Luci when he rode into the yard, but he stopped the fun right quick when he called to her. She came out of the house with a smile and a hug for Marco Antonio, but none for him. He knew something had gone wrong and she blamed it on him because he had been gone too long. She did not like to deal with crisis without her husband, and the very elements seemed to turn against the Martinillo family every time he left the house.
Martinillo sent Marco Antonio to the corrals to unsaddle the mules while he sat on the veranda to listen to his wife. Luci brought him a glass of mezcal, and he relaxed on the floor with his legs sprawled out and his back against the wall.
"Adan, you can’t leave us here alone anymore," Lucrecia said. "You or Marco Antonio have to stay home, or move me and Luci to Rio Alamos"
"What happened?"
"Luci and I went to wash clothes in the stream and found wolf tracks. Wolves watered within fifty yards of this house night before last."
"How many?"
"Five. They have to be the five you saw at Guasisaco."
"Four females and a male."
"Yes. Luci and I tracked them to Puerto de las Parvas and caught them lying down sunning themselves yesterday morning. Only two of them got to their feet when they saw us. They acted as though they knew us. The male circled us, no more afraid than he would have been if he had us in a cage."
"Juan Vogel found out from the Chihuahua Cattleman’s Union that fake wolves like these are being raised and sold out of cages in Parral."
"I was more afraid when they showed no fear of us than I would have been if they had growled and threatened. They only lay there and stared, as if to say ’Give us food, or it’s you we’ll eat.’ I think they came down to the stream to size us up, discovered our penned animals, found a woman and girl alone, and decided that we would be their food supply from now on."
"That’s probably right"
"I know it. They only wait for the right phase of the moon to fall on us."
"That’s probably true. Now, will you kiss me hello, or do I have to fall on you and take it?"
"No, the children."
Lucrecia smiled at him, raised her head, and called out, "Luci, do you have the stew ready? Your grandfather needs to eat." She rose, took his glass, wiggled her butt at him, and went in the kitchen. He washed his face and hands at a stand on the porch. He went to the end of the porch and looked up toward Las Parvas.
A four-legged predator had not bothered Las Animas since El Yoco the jaguar had terrorized the Martinillo women, children, and livestock thirty years ago, since the night their Toro Buey, their work bull, took on El Yoco in their front yard and put him in the breeze.
Martinillo knew the wolves would come. The best time to kill them would be when they gave their full attention to the prey in his yard and pens. The best way to kill these cur ones that were used to having their meat carried to them by handymen was to catch them with their heads in the blood of their prey, or when they thought they were about to take their first bite.
Right now, before they learned to kill, before they learned how much fun it could be, his family was not in danger, only his penned animals were. Martinillo remembered his childhood when he and his brothers and sisters trembled at the mention of the black lobo. That savage hunted alone and snatched babies out of their yards and grown men and women off the trails and did not leave a track. That lobo feared nothing. He killed as though he hated his victims, because he did not eat them, did not even play with them. He savaged his victims for the viciousness in him because he was evil.
These fake wolves had chosen Las Animas as a store of meat. Their meat fattened at Las Animas and awaited their pleasure. They could come and get it anytime, no hunting, no tracking, no need for wile. Martinillo ate his supper, then took his new .22 Winchester lever action, magnum carbine from its felt bed under a board in the kitchen floor and loaded its magazine. He took a Remington pump magnum shotgun and loaded it with oo buckshot. He stood both weapons beside the kitchen door, helped Marco Antonio feed the livestock and milk the cows, stepped naked into the #1o washtub in the kitchen, took a bath, and went to bed.
In the night, he heard the fair facsimile of the moan of a hungry wolf. The moan summoned the primordial beast, resonated with its loneliness, but did not ring true enough for Martinillo. He remembered the black wolf that ran alone in the Sierra Madre of his childhood, the phantom of the night that not even the American government trappers could kill with cyanide plugs. The American trappers eliminated the Mexican wolf, the gray one, the one everyone knew, but they did not get the primordial one, the legendary black one, the great-grandfather that ran alone. When that one moaned, a man’s blood lost its color, he sat up in bed and blessed himself, and he became an animal until that sound ceased to resonate in his memory.
The Martinillo family ate their breakfast at four in the morning and sat and waited for first light so they could care for the animals. The chickens had not dropped from their roosts. Martinillo and Lucrecia spoke softly and said little. The grandchildren did not speak. The family drank sweet coffee and milk together while the fiber of their bodies came alive for a fight, and they listened for the arrival of the wolf pack. This was the way it would be every morning until the wolves came. Martinillo had penned El Toro Buey, his work bull, with his two milk cows. Their calves, a newborn and an eight-month-old, were in the milk pen. A direct descendent of the Toro Buey that had whipped El Yoco the jaguar, this toro had grown up to be every bit as strong and brave. Gentle as he was with his people and other cattle, he also served as the family’s first line of defense. Martinillo did not doubt that he would teach the wolves to fly if they got in the pen with him before Martinillo arrived with the shotgun.
Martinillo expected the chickens to sound the first warning. These wolves would start their careers as corsarios, pirates. They probably expected to raid the family’s corral in a gang to kill and bloody themselves, then feast until they were full and did not think the people could do anything about it. People were only the handymen who carried their meat and water to them.
The Martinillos heard their hens grumble uncomfortably. Then a rooster cackled loudly incensed. El Toro Buey bugled one shocked grunt, and the family knew the raid was on. On their way out the door, Martinillo grabbed the shotgun, Lucrecia, the rifle, Marco Antonio, the ax. Luci switched on a powerful battery lantern and ran to the top of the corral to illumine the battleground and blind the wolves with the spotlight.
The family saw a wolf tossed into the air by El Toro Buey. He flew end over end above the retaque, the main corral’s wall of mesquite, and fell back into the corral. As Martinillo went over the corral wall, he saw the bull pin the same snarling male wolf into a corner of the corral. The wolf slashed at the bull’s muzzle and eyes, but the bull hooked him left and right with his horns like a boxer, then pinned him against the ground. The bawl of the cattle and the screeches and screams of the other animals became a bedlam. A bitch wolf took the yearling heifer’s muzzle in her front teeth and held her. One of the heifer’s ears had already been torn off. Another bitch held her by the tail and another had begun to feed under the tail. Martinillo’s shotgun blast blew the heart out of the wolf on her muzzle. The heifer whirled and stood spraddle legged between Martinillo and the two wolves on her rear end. El Toro Buey’s wolf scrambled out from under him and ran straight at Martinillo. Intent on the bull, he did not see Martinillo, who put the next wad of oo buckshot into his ear.
Marco Antonio hurried to the bawling of the calves and went over the wall into the milk pen. Another bitch wolf had already killed the newborn calf and taken the hindquarters of the other calf in her jaws. Marco Antonio brought the butt of the ax down on the wolf’s back but did not dislodge her. The wolf shook and tore at the bawling calf’s hams and paid no attention to the boy. The boy fell on her with the sharp edge of the ax and sliced through the root of her tail. The wolf rolled away from the ax and scrambled through the gate poles into the main corral but left her tail behind.
Lucrecia’s magnum bullet exploded through the heart of the wolf that tore at the yearling’s hindquarters. The other wolf bit through the heifer’s tail and she ran free. The bobtailed wolf and the wolf with the heifer’s tail in her mouth scrambled through the gate poles and streaked across the yard toward the timbered mountain behind the house. Luci held them in the beam of the spotlight. Lucrecia ran into the open yard, stopped still, sighted her rifle with Luci’s beam of light behind her shoulder, held her breath, and killed the wolf with the tail in her mouth as she was about to gain cover in the timber. The bobtailed bitch, now all alone, made it into the timber and used its protection expertly to flee up the side of the mountain.
"Grandmother, kill the other one," Luci shrieked. "She’s gone." Lucrecia turned back toward the main corral and levered another cartridge into the Winchester’s chamber. Martinillo raised up over the top of the corral wall. "We killed four and bloodied the last one," he said. "Not too bad."
Marco Antonio climbed up and squatted on top of the wall with his ax and grinned. Luci shined her light on him. He had blood on his face, blood and manure on his breast.
"Are you hurt, boy?" Lucrecia asked in her low voice.
"No, Grandmother. I slipped and fell in the runny calf manure when I swung the ax at the wolf that killed our calf."
"I thought you cut her, son," Martinillo said.
"I did, but I only got this." The boy held up the tail.
. The family dragged the four wolves to the yard and skinned them, then hitched them to El Toro Buey and dragged them down the canyon for the coyotes. They skinned and quartered the calf to save the meat. The wolf that had fed on the hind end of the heifer had opened a hole into her insides, so Martinillo butchered her too. The family spent the day slicing her meat into sheets. They salted and peppered the sheets and hung them on a wire to dry. They wen
t inside for supper at sundown.
"Which one did I let get away?" Lucrecia asked after the youngsters had gone to bed.
"A female," Martinillo said. "I killed the only male. El Toro Buey had already hooked him on a horn and tossed him, then broke him up against the rock wall of the milk pen. He couldn’t run very well when he broke away from El Toro Buey, and he was more worried about him than he was about me when I killed him. Another three jumps and he would have run me down."
"Too bad. The one who got away will have little ones."
"I don’t doubt that."
"Too bad we didn't get them all. I’m scared for the children and for my old grandmother self. I’m tired of this fang and claw life that’s always only one little mistake, or one little step from hurt, or death."
"I know, my love."
"Remember a long time ago, when we could count on our neighbors? We were never safe, but we knew how to save ourselves and make a living. In a crisis, we could at least reach out to a neighbor for comfort and help. Now, our neighbor releases wolves to plague us. Our other neighbors carry machine guns. How long before new enemies come to plant the seed for the big cash crop anywhere they want to, as they have for the past thirty years?"
"My compadres Kane and Vogel think the Lupinos have caused the trouble."
"Their wolves cost us a calf and a heifer today. Why did they release them on us? If they want wolves, why don’t they release them on La Golondrina?"
"If what my compadres suspect is true, the Lupinos want to do away with all their neighbors, have wanted to for thirty years. They probably thought the wolves would help them do it. Look at you. The wolves made you sick of your own home"
"Bueno, if you know who to fight to make our home safe again, get after them. You know who to stop, stop them. I don’t think you should wait and talk about it. Look, Adan, we’re the only family in the region who even grows our own corn and beans anymore. Everyone else buys their corn and beans. Everyone else raises the big cash crop instead of corn and beans. That business will bring us another war. I don’t want this family to go through another one. I don’t want to lose another of my children."