by J P S Brown
"¡Quéhubo, hijos de la chingada!" shouted El Gringo Milligan, riding in. "Ah, Lico. Good. I'm glad you're here." He dismounted, looked again at Lico and saw the old man was weeping. "What's the matter?" he asked. "You, sorrowing for this Indian?"
"Nada, " drawled Juan Vogel, taking the jug away from Lico. "He hurt his balls or something. You'd better see about them. You're responsible for them, having caused them to grow so large through the years."
"What happened to you, Lico?" El Gringo asked.
"Man, I tell you nothing happened," said Juan Vogel. "La que se hace de noche, de dia aparece. The deeds of night become apparent in the day. Give his belly food. Food will tighten his culo, soothe his balls, and dry his tears."
Manuelito Espinoza shuffled over to the corpse of Miguelito. He wiped the hat off his head and fanned flies off Miguelito's face. He crossed his thumb and forefinger and blessed the body, the four corners of the ramada, the coiled reata, and himself.
He raised his eyes and spoke with a wail that matched the keening of the women:
Pobre el pobre, que al Ciela no va.
La Muelen aqui y lo muelen allá, amén.
Poor the poor man who to heaven won't go.
They grind him on earth and they grind him below, amen.
The first lightning and thunder of a storm that lasted only long enough to hide El Yoco's tracks from Adán Martinillo flashed and sounded. The Sierra's hopes for rain to stop the ruin of drouth were not realized. The rain barely settled the dust.
19
Adán felt weak and lazy the morning after the San Juan's day sprinkle of rain. He now had his excuses for not going after El Yoco. He was sick at home. The jaguar had not been seen, and the sprinkle had washed away his tracks. Adán stepped outside his house, stretched his limbs and coughed, indulging himself. He found his shovel and began breaking the ground in rows for a garden. He went inside for a drink of mezcal and had two drinks. He refilled his glass and took it with him, found his iron bar and went back to his garden. He sank the bar into the earth and turned his soil to air in the sun. He worked swiftly, wasting no motion with bar and shovel, until the ground was ready for planting. He led El Toro Buey with the canvas bota to his spring to clean it out of debris and silt. He came back to the house with the bota filled with fresh water. He went back to his garden to plant squash, pumpkin, beans, potatoes, sweet corn and tobacco, radish and jicama.
He was on his knees sweating and planting when the Mariposa dog barked to tell of someone's approach. He heard a mule walk into the yard. He didn't look up.
"¡Quéhubo, son of your so-and-so mother!" was the profane greeting the visitor shouted down at him. Adán stood up smiling and went to shake the hand of Pancho Milligan, El Gringo, owner of Rancho Quemado and the Contreras ranches.
"Goddammit, is there no coffee?" El Gringo asked. He mixed English profanity with Spanish obscenity.
"Yes, coffee, but not sitting your mule. You'll have to get down and sit at the table like a Christian."
Adán held the mule while the little man, showing only a few brown teeth in a grin and looking at Adán over horn-rimmed glasses said, "No, son of your copulated and disgraced mother, I'm going on. I have business. You think I come to this fornicated and disgraced mother of a mountain to talk to you, Goddammit?"
"Yes, gringo, you're staying for a meal in a home. What are you looking for this time? Dollars gringo, or pesos Mexican? You'll not be bothered by money here. Look what I do have to bother you." Adán offered the glass of mezcal. El Gringo lifted the glass, tilted his face to the sky, and drank.
"I guess I'll rest the beast awhile, cabrón, " El Gringo said. He dismounted stiffly. His tiny feet in miner's boots weighted with iron Chihuahua spurs touched the ground as though they would break. He handed Adán his reins and limped brittlely toward the house. A cloud of smoke trailed from the cigarette he sucked on. Uncombed gray hair thatched out from underneath his shapeless hat.
Adán walked behind El Gringo leading the mule. "If you would learn to ride a mule and not lose your way each time you ride alone you wouldn't take two days to make a half-day's journey, and you wouldn't always be so stiff and miserable when you stop at my house," Adán said. "After a lifetime in the Sierra I think you still look for street signs and white lines to guide you over these trails. Where do you come from this morning?"
"From Guasaremos and it's a mother of a trail because of that little rain. Goats couldn't manage that trail better than I have. It's the mother of a dirty trail. But I'll get to Rancho Quemado by my balls, though my ass is killing me. My buttocks feel stricken by smallpox, my anus is a blossoming rose of hemorrhoids. But I'll make it. That pinche mula is a helluva good mule!"
"You have a good chance to make it. You are only half a day lost out of your way this time. Half a day is about the time and distance you always make when you are lost."
Adán handed the reins to Adancito and told him to unsaddle and feed and water the mule. He escorted El Gringo into his house. El Gringo took a glass of mezcal from Lucrecia and began to launch more loud "mothers," scolding Adán.
"Look, cabrón, " he said. "You know what I don't like?"
"Of course not," Adán smiled.
"I don't like your going off and leaving this fine girl for a mierda of an idea that you are the only man responsible for fornicating that tigre all over the Sierra Madre. I came this way to tell you. Stay home with your wife and family now. Don't always be so jodido!"
Adán coughed and stared at his feet, deciding he would try to show El Gringo that he was taking him seriously. El Gringo was always serious.
"If you had been here the other night where you belonged, son of your tal mother, you would have killed that son of his tal mother," said El Gringo.
"Tell him, vieja, " said Lucrecia from the kitchen. "Scold him."
"Love your wife, Goddammit. Goddammit, Adán. Do you love this fine woman?"
"Yes. How could I not love her?"
"Then why do you spend all your time and manhood away from her on unappreciated adventure? Are you more in love with jaguars?"
"Lucrecia knows why I'm hunting the tigre. "
"Yes, I do," said Lucrecia. "Of course, I do. Oh, I do, Little Jesus. ¡Si, Chuy!"
Adán stifled his cough.
"So he can lose his health and catch pneumonia and die drunk on lechuguilla like all the rest of the Indians. So he can sleep in tombs and swallow the dust of decayed Indians."
Adán swallowed mezcal and looked at no one.
"We need our families, chingado!" persisted El Gringo. "You and I are broncos and we need to be guided and assisted by our nice families. We are also needed by our families."
"I poured a gallon of copalquin bark tea into him last night to keep his fever down and another of palomulato for his cough. He bathed us both in sweat all night," Lucrecia said, begrudging Adán her care while she had El Gringo for an ally.
"And you were drenched in your man's juices and sweats, I'm sure," El Gringo laughed. "You had to stay close to him in bed."
"Well, yes. He could have chilled." Lucrecia blushed. "Give him tepeguaje tea for his cough. I know what I'm talking about."
Adán wanted to cough very much. He decided he could cough as much as he wanted to. He coughed.
"Listen to that!" Lucrecia said. "How can my medicines help him if he won't rest? Why should I care about him coughing himself to death? I nurse him in my bed like a baby so he can get well enough to kill himself running Hgres, drinking lechuguilla, and sleeping with mummies."
Adán laughed.
"Look, Adán, pay attention to this good woman. I know these women. My wife is a sonofabitch about taking care of me. But I love every little piece of the great quantity of her ass!"
Adán laughed so hard he fell over backward in his chair and laughed on his back with his feet in the air.
El Gringo laughed in spite of himself. "Why laugh? Don't you love Lucrecia's ass?"
"Of course, fool," Adán laughed. "But L
ucrecia's ass isn't in little pieces."
"Ay, how is it possible to support you idiots?" Lucrecia laughed.
"Anyway, jodido, " El Gringo said, grinning. "Your El Yoco was seen by Lico at El Manzanillal the day before yesterday and I knew you would want to know."
"Yes?" Adán said, controlling his laughter and straightening his chair. He took a drink of mezcal.
"Ay, what a friend you turned out to be with all your advice, Gringo," Lucrecia said. "I thought you wanted Adán to stay home with his family. Now he'll be lost again until he sneaks home drunk, sick, and tired. Why did you tell him?"
"Hah!" El Gringo snorted. "Lico caught the tigre dragging away a saddle mule that belonged to me."
"But Lico is always armed with that big .30 caliber," said Adán.
"He was armed, but don't forget, Lico is old."
"How old was he this time?"
"Too old. He's always too old for anything but breeding."
"How close did he get to the jaguar?"
"Fifty meters."
"Fifty meters. Did he miss him at fifty meters?"
"No. He said he was admiring him and before he knew it the animal was gone."
"¡Ah, qué cabrón!" said Lucrecia angrily. "He could have shot him and had the rest of his life to admire the hide."
20
Adán Martinillo and Mariposa watered at the spring by the cave of the javelina on Contreras mountain. They walked into the mouth of the cave. No animal had used the cave since Adán had slept there alone. His tracks in the soft deep dust were as undisturbed as they had been five minutes after he had made them. Adán had hoped to go directly to the cave and find sign of El Yoco. Now he could not find the mule or any remains of mules even though vultures wheeling above the cave proved a large carcass was nearby.
He climbed to a ledge and squatted and watched. This was as far as Mariposa could follow and the dog was whining with worry, afraid Adán would go on without him. Adán could see the tall trees in the canyon of El Manzanillal where Lico said he had been near El Yoco. Adán would have needed an entire day to climb from that canyon to this ledge. He watched the beaks of the vultures when they looked down. He looked for a spot on the cliff below him that could be in the center of the wheel of vultures. He decided to leave the dog and search the face of the cliff. He began to descend. When he had to face into the cliff to progress laterally, he found another trail of the ancient Indians. He followed it and found the mule stuffed into a shallow cave. He stepped over the carcass and sat on it. El Yoco had wanted to eat this one or he would not have carried it so far. The head was doubled under a shoulder. He could find no mark of claw or tooth. He saw the brand.
He recognized La Bomba. He marveled at the power of an animal who could drag a full-grown saddle mule up a trail chipped out of rock by miniature people and then stuff it into a place so small its feet were bunched together. He searched under the hair of the mule's throat, jaws, and head and finally found a deep, clean cavity where the poll knot should be between the ears. He hauled the head around by one long ear and saw that El Yoco had cleaned the mule's brains and eyes from the head. The bone was as clean as a dish. He wondered how often this animal had to kill if he chose to sup on only such select meats. "How fastidious a beast!" he muttered aloud. The jaguar had to kill other meat. He could not live long on the brains and eyes of a mule. Adán smiled to himself. He knew mules whose brains would starve a jaguar to death. He knew a few brainless mules who would starve a mouse. He got up and backed out of the cave. He started down the trail of the antiguos. He moved carefully. He did not have to watch for sign. He climbed around a corner on a place where the trail widened and came face to face with El Yoco on his way up the ledge. Adán had both hands on the face of the cliff and was not accustomed to meeting jaguars at a distance of six paces on ledges of cliffs. He turned to get his back to the cliff so he could unsling his rifle. El Yoco crouched steadily, his gaze calmly speculative, with only a slight glance backward to see if flight in that direction was possible if necessary.
Then, between Adán and El Yoco came the freckled, yipping, spinning Mariposa dog flying out of control to rescue Adán. Adán reached out to catch the dog. This gave room for El Yoco to continue on his way toward the cave. Adán caught the dog in one hand and waved his rifle hand to retain his balance. El Yoco passed quickly between Adán and the wall of the cliff and shouldered Adán off the mountain.
The man had noticed a scree slope below him; small fine shale shed into a pile by this mountain. Scree would give with his weight. He jumped an overhang below him so that he could fall clear to the scree. El Yoco's shove, the spring of his own legs, and the weight of rifle and dog all combined to make Adán's flight to the scree a nose dive. He pushed rifle and dog away from him. He had time to think how ignominious it was that the object of all his weeks of brave effort had shoved him out of the way without even a growl, more intent on his dinner than worried about the formidability of a man in huaraches with a crazy dog and a single-shot rifle. El Yoco certainly did not consider Adán important. El Yoco's offhanded putting aside of Adán Martinillo was ignominy enough, but Adán's finding himself in space with all the flight capability of a dying caterpillar took away all his self-esteem.
He skimmed into the scree parallel to the angle of the pile. The heels of his hands made contact first, his forearms next, then his chest, his face. His neck buckled. His ears rang when his forehead was struck like a gong and he thought they would never quiet down. When his momentum had finally stilled he was so comfortable and so glad his danger was past that he settled his carcass and lay with arms and legs to the four winds, his face toward hell, and laughed while Mariposa licked his ear. He laughed while he rejoined his arms and legs and his downhill head to the trunk of his moribund body, while he used more minutes to get his feet downhill so he could stand, while he stumbled in the scree, looking from beneath his swelling brows to find his rifle and his measly scattered extras. He laughed and refused to pursue El Yoco up the mountain. He decided to go on to the Contreras ranch and doctor himself. If he cured himself of his small hurts and his large ignominy he would someday, perhaps, go after El Yoco again. He sat on the scree. He reached into his morral and pulled out his skinny bottle of mezcal. The bottle had not been broken because his morral had been riding on his back when he landed in the scree. He thought, Like all drunks I saved my bottle and my carcass in the accident. He lifted the bottle in salute to the ledge before he drank from it.
"Health, El Yoco," he shouted. He thought, he could have killed me with the same energy he uses to wipe his ear, but he didn't. He should have killed me. The big lump over his eye was put there by my son. I am going to put a small lump of lead into his heart. He drank extravagantly and clumsily, wiped his mouth ineffectively, and sighed resignedly at his sloppiness and foolish voicings against mountains. He wondered if he was always going to be an extravagant, clumsy, ineffective, sloppy, foolish drunk.
21
Long after dark Adán came in sight of the lights of Contreras ranch. He saw them through oak and pine forest from a trail lined with brave and spiny agrarrobo that clawed at him to keep him awake. He was comforted by the white electric light and the sound of the gasoline-powered generator at work. He walked in and saw El Gringo bareheaded and holding a cup of coffee on his front porch. He shouted his greeting.
"Who?" shouted El Gringo, peering over his glasses at the darkness.
"Marti--pinchi--nillo!" Martinillo answered gruffly.
"Come in, then. I'm glad you're here. Your relative just rode in ahead of you."
"What relative?"
"Juan-pinchi-Vogel," laughed El Gringo.
Juan Vogel's bay horse was eating corn and salt by the gate to the patio. He was thin, limber, and spent. Martinillo walked through the gate. He closed it behind him with great effort, leaving the Mariposa dog murmuring small cries outside. "Let the Mariposa come in," said El Gringo. "He's the only human I like." Martinillo left the gate open. Mariposa was cont
ent to lie where he could watch Martinillo through a low window.
Martinillo followed El Gringo into a kitchen warmed by a cast-iron stove. Juan Vogel sat there with his back to the wall, taking up one whole side of the table. He turned his brown face toward Martinillo and said, "Who are you, son of a flogging?"
El Gringo turned to look at Martinillo's face. Martinillo grinned at him through his mask of scabs and cuts.
"I am Martinillo the great hunter," Martinillo said. "In case you really want to know."
"Which of all the possible strange unmotherings has befallen you, Adán?" asked El Gringo.
"I, the great hunter Martinillo stalked to within six paces of the monster El Yoco, but in a noble effort to save my great hunting dog, Mariposa, I allowed El Yoco to escape--The truth being, El Yoco pushed me out of his way and went on about his business with less regard for me than he has for a nit on the end of his nose. I must tell you, however, for a moment he was in grave danger from a great flying dog."
Juan Vogel and El Gringo looked into their friend's eyes and saw madness. They began to joke while they salved and doctored his wounds and gave him lechuguilla.
"The mule wasn't yours, Gringo," Martinillo said after the lechuguilla had relaxed him. "Lico was mistaken."
"What mule was it?"
"The good brown mule, La Bomba."
"My flatulent brown mule?" asked Juan Vogel. "Are you sure?"
"Sure? And didn't I raise the bitch?"
"Poor Bombita!" said Juan Vogel. "She's the reason I'm here. I was going to catch her and rest my horse. So, La Bomba fattened and rested here to make a meal for the devil."
"He has her canned and preserved in a cave. He ate her brains for an appetizer."
"I hope they make him swell until he explodes," Juan Vogel said. "That mule was certainly full of gas. She sure could throw farts. That's why I bought her, remember Gringo?"