by J P S Brown
Juan Vogel glanced back at Lucrecia. The boys, fearful he might want to acquire them too, moved closer to each other, masking their faces with their hands. They moved by only sliding their toes and heels sideways, the expressions in their eyes dulling in case Juan Vogel should look at them. Juan Vogel moved his chair away from the table and placed it with its back to the wall so he could look at Lucrecia when he talked to her. The boys froze in full view of him. He was not paying any attention to them. Lucrecia filled the coffee cups. The boys watched a daddy longlegs spider crawling shakily in a beeline toward Juan Vogel's boot. They stared in horror as the daddy longlegs' forward feeler leg touched the sole of the Vogel boot and directed the other seven legs to climb upon the foot and disappear under the trouser leg. As the tip of the last leg disappeared, the boys began watching Juan Vogel's face, their breasts swelling with mirth, the mirth rising and cramming into their throats, rising higher and causing tears to fill their eyes. Juan Vogel unconsciously reached to rub the tickle through the pantleg and the boys succumbed. They collapsed with mirth. Only then did Juan Vogel notice them and when he saw they were laughing at him he became preoccupied with the tickle.
"What has me?" he asked. He raised the trouser leg and found the poor lost spider, trastaviado, cross-journeyed like Manuelito. He brushed it to the floor and it wandered, crippled, on to new mistakes. Juan Vogel looked at the boys rolling on the floor with glee, laughed himself, and went outside immediately forgetting them. Adán sat still and enjoyed his sons.
"Hush!" Lucrecia said, smiling.
Outside, Juan Vogel had stopped by the door to whittle a match for picking his teeth. A hen had ruffled her feathers in the dust in the shade of the nacapúl. She had filled her feathers with fine dust and shut her eyes to doze. Now and then she twitched a wing and foot to cause more dust to bathe the skin under her feathers. In the center of the patio in the sun the Governor and Rolando, on hands and knees, were stalking her. They lay flat if the hen showed the slightest purpose. If the hen half-opened an eye they hid their faces behind their arms and stared at the ground. The boys were smiling at themselves for taking on so foolish a mission. Their eyes belied the foolishness. Their eyes showed serious intent and they hid their gazes from the hen. They got near enough to her to spring and capture her. They were side by side. They brought up their legs for the final commitment. The hen sensed them. She opened an eye to some indiscretion the boys committed. She noticed the shapes of them, did not believe them at first, saw their eyes. She closed and flattened her feathers, jerked her head around so her other eye looked at them, believed the boys' intent completely, and squawked away from under their hands.
The boys sat in the dust the hen had loosened. They looked around to see if anyone had been watching. Their smiles showed their embarrassment. They saw Juan Vogel laughing at them. Their smiles disappeared. They looked at each other and looked down, frozen under the man's gaze and laughter.
"¡Tontitos!" Juan Vogel accused the boys. "Little dummies! You should have attacked from different sides. You, Adán. Don't you teach these pups to hunt?"
"They're learning. When they stalk from different sides one pounces too late and one too soon. They bump and tangle each other. Nature will teach them if they are natural hunters."
"Is everyone in Las Animas a hunter, cousin? Have you no musicians, God forbid, or bankers? Oh, that God would give a good banker to the family."
"Ask their mother," Adán smiled.
"I don't need to ask their mother. I know her father and brothers are good hunters, but not as good as Lucrecia. I've heard that Lucrecia can smell the track of an animal."
"That's what they say," Adán said.
"Is it true?"
"Don't laugh if I tell you she knows the direction of a track without looking at it. I've tested her. She says she can't smell an animal, but I've seen her follow tracks over sheer rock for a hundred varas and more, hitting the visible track on ground on the other side as surely as if she had been following it by sight."
"To finish off some poor animal! What chance has a poor animal got if she can catch him without even knowing how she does it? I'd hate for her to be angry at me. You'd better watch your behavior. She's apparently better than you are, and you're the best I've seen."
"I'm a good tracker, but Lucrecia is a savage. I can see a track and follow it at a run. I can outrun Lucrecia, though she is fast, but she can beat me to an animal any time because she stays truly on the track. I often leave a track on instinct to save time. I am most often right in doing so, but sometimes I make a mistake and Lucrecia gains on me and beats me. Sometimes I doubt my own judgement. She never doubts hers."
"Do you often hunt together?"
"Not any more. We hunted often when she was a child. Since we married she has been with child or with babies to care for. She has been too fat, too cranky, or with too many small adornments holding on to her skirts."
"The boys seem to be hunters by nature. Which ones are the best?"
"I can't be sure yet. For perseverance and courage, I think Adancito and Rolando are best. For facility and instinct, the Governor and Memín."
"Do they hunt real game?"
"Adancito goes with me when I don't go far. Any time I leave them for a hunt they all cry like pups. Their only play is hunting. I've never seen one of them play at marbles or tops when I'm around."
"What marbles and tops? They'd have to learn marbles from other children. The nearest children to them are a full day's ride from here. Send them to school, man. They can stay with me in Rio Alamos. They'll turn out to be savages if you don't."
"Like their mother," Adán laughed.
"Ah! Tch!" Lucrecia said angrily from the window.
"These mountains are better than any school. Better they learn to love God and their mother than running in a drove and wearing out good leather on pavement."
"You see?" Adán said.
"Their father will teach them what he knows about books and numbers," Lucrecia said. "I know they are safe here. When they are grown and know how to defend themselves they can go to town if they want to. Not while they're still mine."
"It's true. I believe if they become good hunters they'll always be able to make a living," Adán said. "They have a chance for nature to teach them here."
"Even so, everyone needs formal education, Adán," Juan Vogel said. "Nobody gets by without it these days."
"In the cities, perhaps. Here, the real hunters have an advantage over those who can't hunt, or those who are only shooters waiting for a chance. Bring me a city man, however educated, however able to make money, and I'll watch him starve while he learns to hunt. In this Sierra we don't need money. Take me to the city and I'll starve while I'm trying to acquire the first money I need for eating."
"I don't believe you would be that useless in the city."
"I know what I am and I have no inclination for hunting fortunes in cities as you do. I'm forty years old. Next year I'll be forty-one. Isn't that the age in which they say a man changes and either improves or spoils? I'd spoil in the city."
"Don't ever be forty-one," Juan Vogel joked. "Be forty and then forty-two. They say a man can start longing for love with other men during the forty-first year. At least don't say you are forty-one. The other kind of man might start showing you too much attention."
Lucrecia laughed. "I hope he does start looking at the other kind of man and stops embarrassing me every year."
"No chance," Adán said. "Creo que todavia seguirdá dundo la mata vieja! I think the old plant will keep on giving fruit!"
"What a conversation!" Lucrecia said. "Have you nothing to do? The sun is going down while you talk. Now fruits and old plants have caught your interest. Hurry, sons, catch me the old rooster. We're having him for supper."
The boys spread out to hunt the rooster. A rooster crowed behind the house. The boys stopped. "It is he," Adancito said. He and Memín started for the back from one side. Rolando went around the other with the Governor
following him. They did not waste time talking over a plan.
"Pobre gallito viejo! Poor little old rooster! He's doomed as all us old gallos are doomed," Juan Vogel said. "No matter how good we have been for the hens."
"Poor good little soup," Adán said. "At least we won't be made into a soup for anyone."
3
The two men and the boy rode the trail along the brink of the canyon called Teguaraco. Juan Vogel rode La Bomba in the lead. Adancito rode on the hips of the buckskin mare behind his father. The men and animals worked hard traveling the trail in the sun. Adancito watched Juan Vogel's thick brown neck where sweat curled silver hair under the yellow palm hat. The mare's bay filly colt followed closely by Adancito's bare foot, bumping it familiarly with her head, brushing it with her ears.
Adán did not rest his eyes. He watched the trail ahead of Juan Vogel for tracks. He watched the canyon for any life that might move there, for water that might be tanked and drying in the bottom. The brush on the mountains was in ashes from drouth. The mountains rose sharply and brownly above them. The only green on them was the tall cacti standing like soldiers as though to keep the slain from falling off the mountain. The cool sky was so clear and far away it pained Adán to raise his head to look at it. The animals stamping rock made echos in the stillness.
Adán carried his bolt action, single-shot .22 rifle. The rifle was slung over his back by a piece of strong cord. On his wrist he wore a cartridge bracelet. It contained all his ammunition, four rounds. He carried a bule gourd full of water. The bule was slung over his shoulder by cord netted on its belly.
They heard a man's mountain halloo. "Oooooaaaah! Hooooaaaah!" from the bottom of the canyon. "Las vuaaa-caaaas!" The man was shouting to them.
Adán recognized the voice of Ruelas, the vaquero of Gilaremos.
Juan Vogel rode to a cattle bed ground on a bare ridge where he could see into the canyon. The canyon held pools of blue water in white boulders, and cattle were picking their way unhurriedly among the boulders.
"We see theeeemmm!" Juan Vogel called to Ruelas.
"They'll get away when they get to the mouth of the canyon," Adán said, relaxed, counting the cattle, identifying them. These cattle did not panic when a man was after them. They moved carefully until they got the advantage on a man and then they used ruse, steep terrain, impenetrable brush, and brave, stubborn sure-footedness to escape him.
A small liver-colored dog was following the cattle. He paused to look back for Ruelas. The cattle disappeared down the canyon and the dog hopped and trotted over the boulders after them. Adán dismounted, moved the boy into his saddle, and handed him the reins. He unbuttoned his heavy spurs and hung them with the bule on his saddle horn. He swung the rifle off his back and carried it in his hand. He hurried down the trail, watching and listening for the cattle. His huaraches were surer than any hoof.
Adán and Ruelas were squatting and smoking in the shade when Juan Vogel and Adancito reached the bottom. The cattle, held and intimidated by the men and the sun, were standing quietly in shade. Ruelas smiled a greeting for Juan Vogel. He was spending his life happily searching the brush and mountains for Vogel cattle, and he had not seen his patrón for a year. A thorn had made a deep scratch from one cheekbone across the bridge of his nose to an eyelid. His face was dirty with dried blood and muddy sweat. His hands were scabbed. His hat was bashed, punctured, slashed, and broken, and sat on the back of his head sideways with the front of the brim pointed over one ear.
"What embroidered your face, Ruelas?" Juan Vogel asked, as if he didn't know. "It looks like jerky."
Ruelas smiled and picked at a scab on his knee through a tear in his trousers. "I roped that bronca brown cow on the scree under the cliff of Guisiego. She towed me down over the scree. No toeholds for me. We were going fast when she got off the scree. She jerked me into the top of an algarrobo, pure thorn, no leaf to cushion me. I wrapped the reata on the algarrobo and held her."
"When?" Juan Vogel asked.
"Yesterday--?" He thought again. "No. Day before yesterday."
Juan Vogel laughed. "What's the difference? The days are short for you."
"Ah, yes," Ruelas smiled. "So short and uneventful."
"Why didn't you just let her go off the mountain and catch her on the bottom where it wasn't so steep?"
"It took me six months to get her to a spot where I could get a loop on her. I knew if I let her go it would be another six months before I saw her again."
"A nice place you finally picked. The Guisiego is better suited for lions."
The liver-colored dog lay panting close to Adán. He was thin. His whole frame showed through his hide. Along his back a ridge of hair whorled like a line of whirlpools. He stood and a round puncture leaked blood on his hip.
"Mariposa, the Butterfly dog, has been working," Juan Vogel said. "My God! What happened to his hip? Is my whole crew wounded?"
"Celestino shot him," Ruelas said, smiling.
"¿ . . . sabe? Who knows? Maybe because he belongs to the Martinillo."
"Celestino the cuckold!" Juan Vogel said, exasperated. "Even idiots sometimes need a reason. What could the poor dog have done to him?"
"We were hunting deer with the dog. Celestino missed a shot at a good buck from fifty varas and blamed the Mariposa. He could only have been angry at himself. Mariposa made the shot possible for him."
"Why wasn't the Mariposa home with you, Adán? He's your dog."
"He stayed to help Ruelas. He doesn't like to be idle at home. He would rather hunt or work cattle."
"Celestino makes a bad face at the whole world when he misses his mark. I've seen him go three days without eating after losing control of his temper," Juan Vogel said. "I hope he starves himself sick this time. Have you doctored the wound, Adán?"
"No. He carries the bullet."
"What can we do? He won't be any use to us."
"Take out the bullet, that's all."
Ruelas caught the dog. Juan Vogel built a fire. Adán whetted his long, wide, bone handled knife on a flat rock. Ruelas squeezed the wound gently with his strong, dirty fingers. "The bullet is here, Adán." He smiled and showed the bulge of the slug in the lean thigh of the dog. The dog turned and licked the fingers. He watched Adán, as was his habit. Adán looked kindly at him while he scorched both sides of his blade on coals of the fire. Juan Vogel muzzled the dog and laid him on his side. Ruelas held the hind legs. Adán found the slug, sliced toward it and picked it out. He heated the blade again and laid the flat of it along the wound. The dog, unable to move, cried. The men released him and he bathed the wound with his tongue. Adán rubbed his ears. The dog licked his hand quickly and went back to salving the wound.
"Let's see the slug," Juan Vogel said. Adán had given it to Adancito. The boy, squatting on his heels, opened his palm and Juan Vogel picked the lead out of his hand.
"It struck the bone," Juan Vogel said.
Adán did not look up from his business of washing the knife in the arroyo. He wiped the blade on his trousers. He whetted it on the flat rock and honed it on a stirrup leather. He sheathed it.
"The cabrón is a bad shot," Adán said. "the bullet probably struck the ground before it tumbled into the dog." Mariposa stopped his cleansing of the wound to look at Adán. "The Butterfly will heal now," Adán said kindly to the dog. During the operation he had not unslung the rifle from his back. He was as accustomed to his rifle as he was to his hat.
Ruelas and the dog drove the cattle down the arroyo. The two men and the boy left them and climbed the trail to Limón. The day cooled as they rode through the skeletal brush. They topped the pass of Limón and looked down on the hacienda buildings that had been the first headquarters of the ranch. They stopped their animals to let them breathe. The buildings were far away and looked small but were directly beneath them so that if they wished they could hit them by lobbing rocks off the pass. The men felt sadness as they looked at the remains of Limón. They knew the inscription chiseled in stone on
top the main house. The inscription read:
From this day,
On this Site,
By the Grace of God,
We Live.
Juan Vogel Espinoza,
7 May 1870.
"God, to live here again," Juan Vogel said.
They rode down into the canyon of Limón and crossed the moss-slick rock of a stream to the shade of aliso trees. They dismounted and unsaddled. The drying stream had left them a pool of hot, stagnant water. A translucent film shone on its surface. The trees grew close together on the bank and their shade was solid on the pool. Bald vultures perched on the highest limbs. Rocks by the pool were spattered with their droppings. The vultures did not fly. They were insolent.
Juan Vogel lay a saddle blanket over a rock and relaxed against it, his dusty leggings stretched out on the sand. Adán cleaned a well in the sand until clear water seeped into it. He took a cup, a sack of pinole, and a cake of panocha from his saddlebags. He made a thick paste of the corn flour and the cake of brown sugar with water in the cup and gave it to Adancito. He mixed another in Juan Vogel's cup. When Adancito had drunk the paste Adán mixed one for himself. He washed his cup and walked away to search a grove of lime trees for tracks and signs. He returned to the pool.
"The vultures must come here every day for water," Juan Vogel said, leaning back against the rock to watch the birds.
"This is not a good spot to water and rest. One load of that buzzard cuacha they dispense would flatten a man."
"They're full. They're digesting a cow that died upstream."
"In the stream?"
"Yes, cousin."
"¡Chingado! She picked a fine place to die. She wasn't even good at dying. Which cow?"
"The old white-faced cow."
"Did she have a calf?"