by J P S Brown
"Well, we need her. She's fat, and meat is high in Rio Alamos. Try and get her today."
Adán finished his coffee and went out to find the saddle horses and mules. The remuda was running with the buckskin mare and her filly. The mare carried a bell on her neck and he had no trouble locating her. The animals lined out at a trot toward camp in anticipation of the ration of tasol and corn they would be given. They rattled rocks off the trail into camp and streamed into the patio where they slid on their hind legs to stop against a fence. They turned back with their heads high, whinnying. Adán was proud to see that Adancito had folded the blanket and left their bedground.
He caught the buckskin mare and led her outside the fence to feed her. The filly followed. He went to the fire where the big olla was boiling full of beans. Juan Vogel was boiling potatoes in their skins in the bean water and frying eggs for breakfast. They had no meat. Adancito had already been served and was sitting at the table with his hat on, sleep in his eyes, his feet sticking straight out from the chair, his toes wiggling. He was using pieces of tortilla to pick up egg, potatoes, and beans.
Adán sat down with him and ate his breakfast. When they had finished he saddled the mare for Adancito. Adán was sending the boy home with the mare and filly. The stores at Gilaremos did not hold enough tasol or corn to feed Adán's animals. He would work the roundup afoot. He was more efficient afoot in the broken country where the healthiest cattle ran.
He stood in the patio and made a cigarette while he watched the boy ride away. The boy had not said a word all morning. He had been concentrating on the responsibility of his piloting their livestock to Las Animas.
Adancito Martinillo was not afraid of the long ride home alone. He was making the ride by himself for the third time in his life. He was not afraid of the mountains. He was used to seeing mountains rising to peaks straight over his head, smooth cliffs falling away to deep space inches from his feet. The boy had never seen or walked on a plain.
He was afraid of ghosts. His mother enjoyed sitting at the table after the supper dishes were put away, to talk of ghosts and spirits and shapes that moved and mourned when night was darkest and people most alone. He thrilled, listening to these stories. He never told anyone how much they frightened him for fear his mother would not tell them any more. But he so feared a meeting with a ghost that he trembled and hurried when he had to go out on errands away from the house in the dark.
He was a boy who spoke seldom and cried rarely. When he cried he moved away from other people and fought crying alone. If he could not get away he closed his eyes in misery and looked at no one. Being afraid had often made him cry. Now that he was nearing Limón where the ghost of Tio Pascual might be hovering, he felt the ache in his throat that preceded crying. He wished he could race the mare through the lonesome old hacienda and not stop until he was far away on the other side, but he was disciplined to spare his mount and hold a slow mountain pace. He must pass through a gate, lead the mare through, and close the gate--a vulnerable chore. The gate poles were heavy. The mare was tall and he would have to dismount to heft the poles. He could open the gate without dismounting, but he could not close the gate without getting off the mare and giving any ghosts all the time in the world to manifest themselves while he was tiny on the ground.
Adancito, approaching the buildings, was so careful about noise that the unshod animals he guided made no great sound in the sun-heavy morning. The first harsh sound he made was when he let the top gate pole fall to the ground. It seemed never to stop booming. The noise effected a scare of raucous, crackle-voiced chachalaca from the pool where he had shared pinole with his father. He calmed himself before the wild chickens alighted. They settled quickly in the top of a lime tree. The boy jumped off the mare, tied her, and ran to the rock corral while the chachalaca were still busy with their footing. He unwrapped his slingshot as he ran along the wall inside the corral. He could not see the birds from the corral, but he could hear them speaking. He wanted to kill a chachalaca. They might be fat on limes and vainoro berries.
He had trapped chachalaca here in the fall with his father. They had taken five birds. The traps were folded away inside the hacienda. Adancito remembered picking out their feathers. How clean they were with a smooth white powder protecting their skin. The flesh and innards were sheathed in yellow fat. Adancito's mouth began to water. He remembered how pleased his mother was when his father placed the heavy bag of birds on her table. She would be proud of Adancito if he took her a chachalaca. He did not consider that this time of year was the nesting season and his father would not approve of killing them.
Adancito climbed the corral wall and dropped behind the crumbled adobe walls of a saddle house. He chose his rocks as he moved. He stepped inside the saddle house. The chachalaca were across the stream from him. He hid in shadow and laid a rock in his sling. The birds were not looking for him. They were watching the horses and were unafraid. They were swinging and flicking at inches of air for balance while they searched the topmost branches for limes. Adancito chose the bird he wanted, swung his sling, snapped the thong, and let his rock fly. The rock shot through the lime tree without touching a bird. They beat their wings into a quick glide and stopped close in the vainoro. Adancito stalked them on his hands and knees in the vainoro. He followed their sound and the vague flitting of their wings. They were too quick and too smart for him. They allowed him to get close enough so he felt he was a threat to them, but they never left the inside of the vainoro. They never winged out to fly above the brush. The boy's sling was useless in the thicket.
Near the end of the canyon the chachalaca finally left the vainoro. They flew clear of the thicket and back toward the lime grove. Adancito watched them go with no rancor. He relaxed his hunt and left the vainoro. He jumped into a wash in the canyon. He looked to the head of the wash and saw the jaguar climbing out. The chachalaca had made him forget the ghost of his father's Tio Pascual. The spirit of the hunter was high in him. El Yoco was the finest target any hunter would ever have in his life. Quickly he swung a rock in his sling, afraid the target would get away. El Yoco did hurry when he caught the gaze of Adancito. Adancito snapped a fine heavy, jagged rock just as El Yoco stopped at the brink of the canyon to look back. The rock struck him in the outer corner of an eye, hurting him.
Adancito was sorry as he watched the perfect animal spin and cry out with hurt. He was sorry for marring the person and beauty of so fine an animal, an animal who had meant no harm to him. Adancito felt mean and small for what he had done. El Yoco recovered and looked for Adancito. He waved his head back and forth because he could not see with the injured eye. Adancito backed down the wash. El Yoco roared a rebuke, fully menacing him. The sight of the wide head, the open mouth, the leveled gaze that forgot the hurt in the eye, scared the boy. Adancito slung another rock and swung it overhead to menace El Yoco while he backed away. He snapped it free and turned to run without seeing if it went true. The rock stung El Yoco's side. He sprang along the brink of the canyon above the boy.
The mare and the filly had smelled and heard the jaguar. The mare fought against the lead rope. The filly caught her mother's panic and ran away. Adancito knew better than to untie the mare before mounting. She would jerk away and leave him afoot. He jumped from a gate pole to his saddle, hung there by the saddle horn while the mare strained and reared. He calmed her with his reins long enough to untie the lead rope and drop two gate poles. The mare vaulted the bottom poles and Adancito let her run. He pointed her up the trail toward Rancho Quemado. He whipped and kicked her every step up the mountain and when she reached the top he stopped to let her blow in the shade of a pine. She shook with cries for her colt. Adancito rested to see if the filly would catch up. He took off his hat. His head was streaming with sweat. He wiped his face with a small hand. He was weak and tired. He reined the mare to the trail and made her gallop toward Rancho Quemado. The sight of the thick, strong two-story rock walls of the house made him feel safe enough to slow the mare to
a trot. He stood in his stirrups, searching for Lico, the caretaker, or Ophelia, his wife. He rode the mare off the trail and down stone steps to the patio. He called and the mare danced in the patio. He called impatiently again and reined the mare around, intending to go on.
"Quéhubo?" he heard a man grunt.
"Lico!" Adancito called again.
"What is it?"
"Lico, please!"
"Wait on yourself. One moment." Adancito heard the man's steps scuffing along the cement floor in the house. Lico appeared behind a screen door stuffing his shirttail inside his trousers. He came outside buckling his belt. He looked at the boy. The boy had interrupted his rest and comfort.
"What is it? Who are you?" Lico looked at the mare.
"Why are you killing that mare?"
"I'm Adán Martinillo. A tigre. A tigre--" He could not speak and began to cry.
"Ah, Adancito. I know you now. I thought I recognized the mare. Get down off that poor animal."
"A tigre chased me," cried the boy, shouting at Lico.
"Tigre? What tigre? There are no tigre in this Sierra. Tigre are what we have in Sinaloa where I come from. Gato tigrillo is what you saw. Ocelot are not dangerous, so don't cry. Now, if it was a tigre, that which is the true jaguar, then you would have been in danger."
"I tell you, Lico, it was a jaguar! My father saw him too. Down at Limón. My father says he might be his Tio Pascual and the tigre is angry because I hit him in the eye with a rock from my honda. He scared away the filly."
"How you talk! I've never heard you say a word. When you talk you tell great big stories, don't you? Get down." Lico turned and walked toward the house. "I'll make your lunch. I killed a deer in the orchard last night. What tigre? What a big history!"
Adancito rode back up the steps to the trail. He kicked the mare into a trot. Tears bounced from his eyes with the mare's rough trotting. He could not see. He lost rhythm with the mare and bounced awkwardly on the saddle. He held on to the saddle horn to keep from falling off. The mare started down into the deep trail of Arroyo Hondo and the boy had to stop crying to see. The trail was dangerous with pitches of flat rock. Should a horse slip, the scrambling to regain footing could cause a fall. In places a horse could fall clear for hundreds of feet. Then on a sheet of rock, descending at a steep angle, the mare suddenly whirled underneath Adancito, nearly throwing him. Legs flailing, she fled back up to a switchback before Adancito could stop her. He turned her around. She did not want to go back to the spot where she had shied. She pranced suicidally on the edge of the granite switchback.
Adancito saw El Yoco waiting over the trail below him. The jaguar was lying flat over the trail, looking up into Adancito's eyes. His ears were flattened against his head, his tail whipped. He seemed disgusted at being caught in the open in an attitude of preying. Adancito picked a rock off the mountain by his shoulder and threw it angrily at El Yoco. The mare shied again. When Adancito could look again, El Yoco had descended to the trail, blocking his way completely. The boy chose a bigger rock and threw it down at El Yoco with both hands. The mare bucked and spun. The boy had dropped his reins to handle the rock. He could not reach the saddle horn. The mare kept spinning under him. He swung out over the chasm of Arroyo Hondo. He hooked a leg around the swell of the saddle. In the spin his shoulder and the side of his head struck the granite wall of the switchback and he was slammed back against the mare. He caught the saddle horn and righted himself. He picked up the reins and held the mare. His hat had fallen and landed at the feet of El Yoco. El Yoco smelled it, fell on it, and shredded it. He moved out of sight.
Adancito could not force the mare down the trail. He hurried her up the trail and found another, fainter and more dangerous trail used by shake and shingle makers who went into the canyon afoot.
He kicked the mare into a gallop when he reached the bottom of Arroyo Hondo. Blood ran from a gash that curved on the bone by his temple from cheekbone to eyebrow. The boy stopped the mare when he saw blood soaking his shirt and making the swells and horn of the saddle sticky under his hand. He looked at the palm of his hand. He smelled the blood and fainted. He fell and rolled under the mare. The gentle mare did not move. Her sides heaved and she whinnied for her filly as though her heart would break. She hung her head and smelled the fresh blood of the boy close between her legs, was afraid almost to lunacy, but did not move. The trail was so deep and the next step so high that she could not go on without stepping on the boy. Arroyo Hondo was darkening. The sun had set. Her ears bowed forward at the first sound of a man coming up the trail.
Manuelito Espinoza, talking to himself, urging himself along his way back to Avena, saw the mare's head appear over the rise he was negotiating with Adán's burro. The burro was loaded with shakes, shingles, boxwood, and mezcal heads. He was going to cook the heads so that he and his little brother, Don Panchito Flores Valenzuela, would have the meaty pulp to chew for its rich sugar. The mezcal meat was rich as pineapple, brown as panocha, brown sugar.
At first Manuelito thought the buckskin mare of Adán Martinillo was caught in a trap. She was so still in the legs. She only moved her neck, her head, her ears, and eyes as though she wished to flee but was being held down by the feet. He tied the burro to a tree so he would not wander away and roll on his sides to dislodge the cargo. He walked cautiously to the mare and caught her rein. He tried to lead her and saw Adancito lying beneath her.
"¡Valgame!" he said. "What are you doing down there, lump of a boy?" He put his hand on the mare's neck along her side, keeping his hand on her. "Ho, yeguita! Little mare, ho!" he soothed. He steadied himself with the saddle horn and felt the clotting smear of blood. He looked at his hand, astonished at the gore it had encountered. He wiped the hand on the mare's shoulder and ran it down her zebra-striped front leg. "Ho, La yeguita! Ho!" he commanded softly. He held the mare's front foot off the ground so she would not bolt, and he pulled the boy out by the collar of his shirt. "Ho, my little mother mare," he said. He lay the boy down and brushed his face with both his confused and calloused hands, hands more calloused for the many false starts they made. He smoothed the clotted hair and picked the caked blood away from the pale face while he searched for his own bearings in the tumbling gyro of his tired purpose. He found cobwebs to clot the wound and leaves to wipe the blood from the saddle. He held the boy under his arm and mounted the mare. He sat the boy across his lap. He left his burro tied and rode toward Las Animas. "Poco a poquito, little by little, La Yegua, " he soothed the mare when he was underway. The mare was anxious to get home. She was afraid. "A paso de burrito, at a little burro's pace, we'll get home with no more trouble."
The moon had not risen. Near Las Animas Manuelito could not see the oak limbs and low pine branches he had to pass through in the dark. The mare began to bolt and shy, snorting and prancing at shapes, odors, and sounds Manuelito could not sense at all. She lifted her head and whinnied often, stopping to listen for an answer. Manuelito wondered where the filly colt was. He was happy when he rode around a hill and saw Lucrecia's lamplight shining close. The mare trotted impatiently to the patio. She stopped abruptly on her front feet, nearly dumping Manuelito at Lucrecia's door.
"Hola, Lucrecia!" Manuelito called. "Come and take your son." The young woman came to the door, recognized the horse and rider, and stepped out to take the mare's rein. Manuelito leaned down from the saddle to hand her the bundle of Adancito. The boy's face was away from the light.
Lucrecia recognized the boy's feet. One huarache was hanging by the strap from the ankle. "¡Ay!" she said with a quick, soft breath.
"He's been struck. He is very battered. Be careful. ¡Maldito sea! Damned, but I found him this way on the old trail of Arroyo Hondo, and he has not come to himself yet. He has murmured, so I know he's alive. He's very cold, though."
Lucrecia carried the boy into the house and laid him on the kitchen table. Manuelito unsaddled the mare and put her in the stall beside El Toro Buey. She did not eat or drink. She ran nervously around t
he pen nickering and snorting into the night. Manuelito went into the house and found Lucrecia bathing Adancito. She had stripped him and wrapped him in a blanket. She cleaned away all the blood and tied a moist, warm cloth on the wound around the eye when it began to bleed again. She moistened a piece of the flesh side striffing of a dried deer hide to lay over the wound and hold it closed. She saw the paleness and thinness of her boy. She had not seen him naked for a long time because he was the oldest and he tended to himself. He helped Lucrecia with the dressing and bathing and feeding of his brothers. Seeing him unconscious, naked, helpless, Lucrecia was reminded how small he was. He was only eight years old and was expected to be responsible for his brothers and the livestock when Adán was gone. He never cried any more. He complained, though. He was not too big to complain. She was thankful that her other creatures were safe asleep. She could give all her attention to Adancito.
"What could have caused this blow, Manuelito?" Lucrecia asked. "The mare is gentle. Listen to her cries! Where's the filly?"
"I didn't see the Elly. Some susto, some fright or shock, separated them. Maybe the same shock that injured the boy injured the filly more seriously. What do you think?"
Lucrecia picked the boy up in the blanket. "I think so," she said. "The filly is lost or she would be at her mother's teats now. The same susto happened to them both because if you had not found Adancito he would not be here either. Thank God you found him."
"What meanness could hurt little boys and colts? Only a meanness would separate innocents from their mothers. What could these innocents have committed that would cause them to be harmed and frightened?"