by J P S Brown
"When will they stop killing Yaquis and Catholics, Cabo?"
"Ah, the government's mothers and fathers have stopped them from killing Catholics. They won't stop killing Yaquis until they are all dead, or have flown to the United States/'
"The way the government cavalry kills them where it catches them, it's a wonder a family got as far north as Los Molinos."
"They came down from the mountain route to hide and rest with the Caballero family at Los Molinos because you and El Cabezon were not in your mountain camp to receive them. Don Juan Caballero gave sanctuary to many of the people while you were gone, until someone informed on him."
"The poor people. What did the government do to don Juan?"
"Nothing. As you know, don Juan's skin is very white. I don't think he has a drop of Indian blood. They got all they wanted when they butchered the Yaqui family."
"Now what will the people do?"
The Cabo winked at Mikey. "I thought you might know, Pol. I think that is why you are here again."
"Ah, maybe good whites like you—Catholics—will help them, Cabo," Paul said.
The Cabo laughed and pointed at Paul. "Tú, Pol. You vaqueros who work and move in the mountains are the ones who can help them. I'm on the wrong side. They don't try to get out through my garita."
Paul laughed. "Me? How can I help anybody escape the government? Haven't you heard? I'm only good at helping Mexicans drink mezcal."
"Yooou, Pol. You and Gato Canez, Del Mercer, El Cabezon, and the Caballeros are the ones the Yaquis thank when they reach the United States. Why else would you come here in times like these? To work cattle? Nooo. Cattle are not worth anything in your country or mine right now."
"We are only here to build El Cabezon's herd, Cabo."
"That sounds good, but no one believes it."
"Believe it," Paul said.
"Tourists and cattlemen prefer to use the good international highway through Nogales, not this garra de camino, this trashy road in its ditch of rocks."
"Ah, but we have to use this wild road now because we're going to work the Sierra de San Juan for wild cattle."
"Sure. Pablo Ligero, the great Fast Paul, is only in Mexico to hide his light and catch wild cattle in the mountains. I believe it and hope it goes well."
"Thank you, Cabo. Here, take this for the cigarettes." Paul gave him a dollar. The Cabo stood back and held the bill loosely in his open hand as Paul and Mikey drove away.
Paul drove to the end of Sasabe's rocky street and stopped at the hotel next to Soony Jaquez's bar. Soony and Paul were friends. Paul registered for a room in the hotel, and then took Mikey out the back door, across the urine-soaked backyard of the bar, and through a tapia gate to Soony's patio. Soony's Saint's Day was being celebrated. A fifty-five-gallon barrel of mezcal with no lid stood in the middle of the patio. A long-handled dipper was hooked on the brim of the barrel. A band of mariachis with trumpet, violin, guitar, and guitarrón, a potbellied guitar, arrived.
Paul and Soony sat in the shade with a cup of mezcal between them, pushed their hats to the backs of their heads a media cabeza, laughed, and Mikey knew Paul was planted. Soony's wife led Mikey into her kitchen for supper with Soony's kids and Monche Cañez, Gato Cañez's son. Gato was Paul's partner on Cabezon Woodell's crew. After supper Monche and Mikey went out into the street to play Mostrenco, Mustang, with a gang of boys Monche's age. The boy who was "it" carried the reata, the lariat. The rest of the boys were mustangs. The boy who was "it" had to rope a mustang and lead him back to a corral where he became "it."
Mikey was the littlest kid, so he did not get roped. He would never have been able to catch the bigger boys. Everybody was barefoot, so he took off his new boots so he could run. He was fast
for a five-year-old, but those boys were lightning.
About nine o'clock, Lina, Soony's pretty fourteen-year-old daughter, came out to the street. She wore a cotton dress over bare legs and feet. Her light brown hair was 1ong and wetly combed. The boy who was "it" made a run at her and roped her. She did not complain about being surprised and blindsided. With no expression on her face, Lina swung a lop and ran at Mikey. Mikey whirled and ran with his head down to get away, but she reached out with a 1ong throw and caught him. She reeled him in, gave away the reata, picked up his boots and socks, put her arm over his shou1der, and took him home. He was fed a pastry called pan de huevo with café con leche, coffee that was half hot milk and sweetened with wild honey. In the dark, lamplit room with the music and the warmth of the fire in Señora Jaquez's kitchen stove, he fell asleep before he thought to get out of his chair.
In the night he awoke in the hotel room to the sounds and a smells of scorched bedbugs. Paul had overturned his cot so he could scorch the springs and the mattress with a torch of twisted newspaper. Bedbugs had gathered in clusters like elderberries on the underside of his bunk. The torch huffed hot wind. It roared and threw sparks as Paul wiped flames on the bugs. Some of the bugs popped when they sparked into flame, then became black spots on the mattress.
Bedbugs did not bother Mikey, so he turned his face to the wall to sleep. Paul's sleeping habits were Spartan. Before he climbed into any bed except Maggie's he sprinkled it with sand and gravel so he would not sleep too soundly. Mikey wondered why his dad went to so much bother to get rid of the bedbugs. They would probably have done a better job of keeping him from a sound sleep than the sand and gravel.
As they drove the next day, the road south across the desert crossed a hundred wide, sandy washes. Paul and Mikey stopped at the Arroyo del Sasabe and ate lunch under the shade of a Chino tree. The shade was so solid and cool, it seemed wet enough to drink. In late afternoon, Paul turned off the main road and climbed east toward the mountains over a narrower road. They reached Rancho El Carrizal, Cabezon's base camp, an hour after dark. Mikey was in a dead coma.
He awoke in his bedroll on the kitchen floor the next morning. A young woman introduced herself as Balbaneda Valenzuela, the cook and housekeeper for El Carrizal. She kept her back turned while Mikey got out of bed and dressed, then she led him to a washstand, poured warm water into an enamel basin for him, and tested its temperature with her fingers. He washed his hands and face and dried with a towel that Maggie had packed in his bedroll with his clothes. Balbaneda gave him café con leche and he headed out to catch up with Paul at the corral.
Granny had given Mikey a black beaver hat that she bought by mail. The smooth, shiny beaver hair was still on it and a white band encircled the crown. That day was the first time he wore it.
Paul had taken Pancho with him when he joined Cabezon the previous fall. Mikey was anxious to see him again. The corrals were a hundred yards away on the downwind side of the house. A waterlot outside the corrals was full of cattle. Dust rose out of a pen full of horses and mules, and Mikey saw Paul toss a wide, overhand loop into a corner and catch a mule around the neck. In that way he roped all the horses and mules that would be used on the mountain. He caught the mules first and vaqueros led them away to be saddled with patisales, packsaddles. Mikey stayed outside the corral and kept quiet until all the bestias, the saddle horses, had been caught.
Mikey's saddle, blankets, and bridle were lying on the ground outside the corral beside Paul's and Gato Cañez's. Mikey could not see Pancho, but when he saw Paul pick up his bridle, he jumped into the corral and ran over to be ready to saddle his horse.
At first, Mikey did not recognize the horse that his father handed him. He was Pancho, but his black coat was full and slick from the green feed he had put away with the work he was doing. His coat was dappled now, and the lighter hair was bluish gray.
He also acted differently. He did not amble up to the corral to be caught the way he did at home. He did not stand with his ears lolling and his eyes drowsy. His ears worked back and forth on the alert, and he watched Mikey to be sure he was where he ought to be.
Before he had recognized Pancho in the bunch, Mikey had admired him as a quick and ready young tough who was
wise to the trick of ducking his head when he heard the whistle of the reata. Now, the horse watched Mikey out of a wary eye the way a top horse should.
Mikey found himself a bench, put his saddle and blankets on it, then climbed up and saddled his horse. Pancho did not want to stand for it as he did at home, but a low word from Mikey fixed him in his tracks. Gato watched Mikey saddle his own horse and bragged on him to the rest of the crew. The boy knew he still would not be able to tighten his cinch enough. He was not strong enough to tighten it all the way, but as Pancho's belly shrank, he would draw out enough of the slack in his latigo. In this way he would keep his saddle in place and steady over the horse's good withers throughout the day.
The crew breakfasted and then packed beds, provisions, and camp gear on the mules with block salt for cattle and sacks of grain for the horses and mules. The remuda and the pack string were driven out of the waterlot and then the cattle were driven out. Two vaqueros drove the remuda and then two more drove the pack string with one man in the lead and one in the drag. The cattle were easy to handle and anxious to move. Paul, Gato, Del Mercer, and Manuel Valenzuela headed the herd into the mountains.
Mikey rode in the drags. With Pancho under him he did not worry that he would make a hand no matter which way the cattle headed or if they tried to get away. Nobody on any cattle drive could ever expect that he would not have to turn the herd by himself at one time or another. Mikey was ready for his chance. He was finally at work with no immediate threat of having to return to town, and he would never have to worry about what to do with himself for as long as he lived.
Paul was riding a bronc he called Chamaco, Kid, a horse that bit, struck, kicked, and bucked, but who was a ground-pounding demon for travel. He was a horse about whom Gato said, "Donde lo soltaban, allí se metiá, which meant that he dove suicidally headlong into any task for which he was loosed. The best thing about him was that he ate cattle. The worst thing about him was that he ate people.
The herd was driven east up an ancient trail called La Vereda del Aguaje, the Trail of the Spring, and was out of sight of El Carrizal ten minutes after it left the waterlot. When it reached the end of the El Carrizal home pasture after a drive of only ten miles, Paul counted it through a gate and let it go to thrive on lush foothill pasture that had been saved for fall use.
An old man and his wife lived at the spring. The crew stopped to eat lunch in the shade of their house. Mikey liked the fresh coolness and smell of the shade under the adobe walls. The yard was fenced in with rods of live ocotillo cactus planted side by side and was alive with green leaves. The fence was impenetrable for anything but a lizard. Verdolaga, wild parsley that grew with the summer rains, was lush on the ground inside the patio of the house and was also abundant on the verano, the summer vegetable garden.
The old couple served coffee in china cups before the crew mounted its horses to leave. Mikey was used to people bragging about his being hand enough to ride with his father on excursions near home, but he had never been this far from home and isolated to the life of the vaquero before. That night he would not go home to his mother. He sat still and smiled while the crew and the old people bragged that he must be a good cowboy to be starting his life's work so young. In those days it was not hard on him when people bragged to make him feel proud. He was a little feller who belonged with his father and it was not wrong for him to believe that he was good at cowboy work. Later, after his father was gone, no one ever acknowledged that he was a good hand. In fact, he found himself trying to work with people who could not open the same gate for the kind of cattle that Paul and his crews could have driven up the side of a house, across the roof, down the chimney, through the front room, and out the front door without breaking a lamp. Those people tried to tell him he would never be able to believe he was any good at cowboying, because his father was a drunk and his brag about his little son could not have been true. As the crew went back to the trail and left the valley floor behind, Paul rode up beside Mikey. "How does the verdolaga resemble a cow, son?" he asked.
"It's gordita y delicadita, a delicate fatty," Mikey said.
"That's true, son, but also, tiene la semillita metida en la orquetita. Its little bull's seed lies inside its little forked place."
"What is the bull of the verdolaga like, daddy?"
"Aw, we don't get to see him. He comes and goes on the wind in the night."
At the foot of Cerro de Los Leones, the Mountain of the Lions, the crew tied the remuda and the pack mules head-to-tail so they could be led up a narrow trail to where the first camp would be made. Paul led the mules, Gato led the horses, and they reached the crest of the mountain at midafternoon. They stopped to water the animals in a spring and have pinole, cornmeal mixed with panocha, brown cane sugar. They mixed the meal with spring water in tin cups. The vaqueros carried their cups tied to the saddle strings under the flare of their chaps. Paul carried the pinole and corn for his horse in a morral that he hung over his saddlehorn. He and Gato each also carried amphoras, slender half-pint bottles of mezcal, in their morrals. They took swallows of mezcal in the evenings when their horses got tired and their bones ached, or to ward off heatstroke, and they poured it on wounds as antiseptic. In the late afternoon, after Paul's bones started to ache, he made Mikey ride just ahead of him so he could watch him and speak to him. He kept asking the boy how he felt because he did not want him to go to sleep and fall off Pancho. Mikey had long since discovered that complaints would not soften the trail or get him to camp any sooner. Complaints made it so Paul would think twice before he invited a kid to ride with him again. Once Paul and Uncle Buster had left him behind in camp all day because he made the mistake of saying he was "a little" tired. This would not happen again.
Before the pack train and remuda were haIfway to El Aguaje de Santa Brigida, Saint Brigit's Spring, where they would pitch camp, the sun was on the horizon and Mikey began to doze and jerk awake. He could sleep and keep his seat on Pancho on an ordinary trail, but that trail into the Sierra de San Juan was rough and steep and crossed large slabs of smooth rock. If the boy fell off, he might land on his head under his horse or a hundred feet beneath the trail.
The crew reached a cattle bed-ground and Paul told Mikey to turn Pancho off the trail and wait, then rode up beside him, took a swallow out of his amphora, and handed it to the boy. "Take a little swallow, son," he said.
Mikey swallowed about a dram without mishap, handed it back, and then felt the fumes pour out his nose and the pure spirit seep immediately into his whole spine. "That's not for you, little man," Paul said. "It's to revive Panchito, smoothen his pace, and rest him."
The vaqueros pitched their camp in an oak grove at Santa Brigida long after dark. Two ten-foot tents protected their beds and provisions and a ramada sheltered their cook fire. A stout new corral of mesquite poles lay in a draw below the campsite. A kiln had been built so that limestone could be cooked and used to mortar a rock trough inside the corral. Pipe had been packed in so the trough could be filled with water from the spring.
Mikey's camp job was to wrangle the horses in the morning, sweep and sprinkle water on the campground to settle the dust, dry dishes and put them away, carry water in buckets from the spring, and help prepare the meals. Paul made Dutch oven biscuits every other day and Gato made flour gorda tortillas every other day. Bull, deer, and javalina jerky was the staple meat. Maverick bulls were often castrated, earmarked, and branded on the spot when they were caught. The nuts were hung by their cords from the vaqueros' saddle strings and eaten at the next meal. A fire was built wherever the vaqueros found themselves at noon. Coffee was made. Bean or potato and jerky burros, the criadillas from the bulls, and any other fresh meat Manuel Valenzuela or Gato might catch with their .22 rifles, were cooked for lonche.
One evening, after the crew was all in camp, Paul came to the fire with an armload of wood. Just as he reached the campground, he cussed, dropped the wood, brushed and batted crazily at the side of his head, and scraped of
f a big straw scorpion that fell at Gato's feet. Mikey would not have thought Gato was afraid of anything in the world, but he jumped back as if a rattlesnake had struck him. "Ay, me mata. It will kill me," he cried. Later he explained that he was shy of all scorpions but deathly allergic to the sting of the straw scorpion.
"He stung me on the ear," Paul said. Then he squashed the bug under his boot heel, took out his pocketknife, sliced off a third of his ear, and handed it to Gato. Blood poured through Gato's fingers as he pressed a handkerchief against the ear. Gato pressed a wet dishtowel against the wound, sat Paul under a tree, put Paul's hand on the towel to hold it in place, then walked away from the camp with a shovel and buried the ear. Mikey sat down next to his dad. Paul turned his head until he could see the boy out of the corner of his eye and grinned.
"Daddy, why did you do that?" Mikey said.
"The scorpion stung me on my ear, son."
"But will you be able to hear out of it?"
"You're darn right I will. I didn't cut off the whole thing."
Mikey was so pale from the sight of his dad's blood that his freckles turned black.
Gato came back and asked Paul how he had found the courage to cut off his own ear.
"The poison might have deafened me or poisoned my brain," Paul said.
"You certainly took no chance of that, did you?"
"I had no reason to." Paul turned back to see how Mikey was doing. Mikey had slumped headfirst in a faint to the ground. When Mikey recovered, Paul showed him the wound so he could tell him how it looked. Mikey did not think it looked bad at all. Paul now had a devil's ear because he had sliced off the outer curve. The ear was still normal in length with a sharp top and an untouched base.
Gato made a paste from the leaves of yerba el pasimo and bandaged it on the wound. The wound did not give Paul any trouble after it stopped bleeding. lt did not swell up, and he claimed it never hurt. He said it stopped hurting when he cut off the stung part. The scorpion's sting had hurt a lot more than his sharp knife. He quit bandaging it after three days.