The World in Pancho's Eye - J P S Brown

by J P S Brown

  Mikey never knew and did not care what day it was. He did not know a Sunday from a Wednesday. He knew sunup and sundown, and he knew where to look after the second sleep for the early morning guia star that rose in the east to tell him he could sleep a little longer.

  Paul and his partners had built traps everywhere that cattle watered on the Sierra de San Juan. Each major spring had been fenced inside a lot that covered about five acres. The only entrance to the lot was through a chute, the sides of which were made of poles laid one upon the other and tied together. The sides were hung inside the corral from a large frame at the entrance and they sloped toward the ground inside the corral, but did not touch the ground. Inside the corral the ends of the poles were sharpened to points. The sides of the chute could be swung and left wide open, or closed so that the sharpened ends came together in a V. Heavy rocks were wired as anchors loosely to the bottom of the pointed ends. When the trap was set, the thirsty cow would go through the chute and her sides would open the sharpened ends and she would see daylight to the water. She pushed the sides of the chute apart as she went in to drink, but the sharpened ends closed behind her when she stepped out of the chute. After she drank and licked salt and turned to leave the corral, she found no exit. The pointed ends could only be opened by the next cow that came through the chute.

  Paul and his crew had six of these traps in rough country that were all within ten miles of the camp at Santa Brigida. The vaqueros split up and rode to check them every day. When cattle were found in a trap, the vaqueros gentled them before they tried to drive them back to camp. All the cattle were wild and were either ladinos, cattle that were wise to man's ways and had gone wild after they were branded and counted, or were mostrencos, mavericks that had never been touched by human hands, had never even seen a man on a horse.

  To break the cattle so they could be driven, the vaqueros worked them horseback in a corral inside the waterlot. They penned the cattle in a small corral and let them run along one side, then stopped them and turned them back, stopped them against the fence again and again, and kept turning them back on one side and then the other. They did this by the hour until the cattle wanted to stand and rest after they were stopped. After a while they settled down and would not move unless a horseman made them move. When the cattle became that unafraid, but still respectful of a man on a horse, they were left in peace. Cattle in the trap would attract more cattle when the vaqueros were gone.

  When cattle had been gentled enough so they could be controlled, they were driven to a holding pasture at Santa Brigida. If the vaqueros saw that a certain animal would give them trouble on the drive, the animal was tied neck-to-neck to another one like him, or a heavy green pole was suspended from his neck so that it dangled between his front legs. Those devices slowed the troublemakers so they could not make mad runs away from the herd. Cattle that were found in the traps were branded, earmarked, and castrated while they were worked and gentled, and their wounds were watched for screwworms. Screwworms were doused with Peerless, a compound of chloroform, to kill the worms and their eggs. The wounds were also covered with pine tar thinned with mezcal to protect them from the flies that laid the eggs that became screwworms.

  To be branded, the grown cattle were roped by the head and heels, and the little calves were caught and dragged to the fire by the heels. All the cattle had their turn being manhandled by men on foot. That treatment made them respect a man on foot or horseback so they could be managed when they were driven out into the open or moved about in alleys and corrals. Cattle got hungry while they were held in the trap, but they were all slick and shiny with good feed that fall and they would have plenty of feed ahead of them after they were driven out of the mountains. Hunger in the cattle helped the vaqueros manage them when they were let out of the traps. They were not as likely to try to run away if they had to keep their heads down to eat on the drive to Santa Brigida.

  One afternoon, on their way back to camp from the traps, Gato and Mikey stopped at a seep by the side of a trail to get a drink. With his big hands Gato dug a hole in the sand the size of the crown of his hat and waited for the water to seep in so they could drink. A herd of javalina had been there before them and their neat hooves had chewed up the ground. After he drank, Mikey sat on a rock above the seep and rested while Gato drank and Pancho and Gato's horse, Saino, drank. The javalina had left the strong smell of their musk at the spring.

  "The javalina stink, Gato," Mikey said.

  "Which javalina do you mean, the four-legged or the two-legged?" Gato asked.

  "The four-legged."

  "The gentle javali don't smell so gentle, do they?"

  "The water is sweet, though."

  "I have always wondered about that," Gato said. "All my life l've waited for something bad to happen to me when I drank after the javalina. So far nothing. What do you think about that, Polito?"

  Mikey laughed. "I know what would happen if I didn't drink."

  "There you are. You're like me. You don't care what happens to you. When you need to drink and eat, you drink and eat."

  "What's a javalina de dos putas, of two feet, Gato?"

  "A Yaqui. Haven't you seen his track?"

  Mikey looked around, but he could see no Yaqui tracks. He found a deer track on the beaten trail. "I see the print of a deer," he said.

  "You think you see a venado track? Well, maybe not. It might be the print of a Yaqui dancer."

  Mikey only looked at Gato.

  "When a Yaqui eats or drinks, he feels like dancing. When he dances he turns into El Venado, the deer. When he runs for his life, he turns into El Javali."

  "I don't see any people tracks except our own."76 j. H S. BROWN

  "Believe me Polito, the people tracks are ours, but the deer and javalina tracks could be Yaqui. No lo dudes. Don't ever doubt it."

  Mikey hoped he would get to see Yaquis. The other vaqueros showed him other signs of them from time to time. The whole Yaqui nation loved Cabezon Woodell and Paul and sooner or later runaways from the reservation were bound to call on them for help. Once, a Yaqui boy had come to ground at Cabezon's camp at Santa Margarita only minutes ahead of a troop of government cavalry. Cabezon hid him and sent the troop on its way. He kept the boy, fed him, doctored him, and returned him safely to his family. Before that, the Yaqui people had been welcome to eat and rest in his camps, but he had wanted them to leave as quickly as they were able. After he had made the choice to protect the Yaqui boy against the soldiers, he made it known to the Yaqui nation that his camps would always be sanctuaries for them.

  Cabezon also made the government patrols believe they were welcome. He reasoned that they would not be so apt to harm Yaquis if they left his camps with their bellies full of beef, beans, and tortillas. He had been known to hide whole families of Yaquis only a few yards away while the soldiers ate, drank, and slept in his camps. When the crew awakened in camp at Santa Brigida the next morning, the Yaqui everybody called Agonia, Agony, was squatting under the ramada. He had already built a fire and put on the coffeepot. He served as a guide for families who fled to the north. He shook hands with the vaqueros as they arrived at the fire. He did not look into their faces. He was sunbaked to the bone, but the palm of his hand was limp and moist. Mikey stared at him.

  "Are you alone this time, Agonia?" Paul asked.

  "No, I'm bien acompanado, well accompanied."

  "Do you know where the guachos are?" The soldiers were all short, squat, southern Indians that the Sonorans called guachos.

  "No," Agonia said. "Where are they?"

  "Didn't you know they killed a family of the gente, the people, at Los Molinos a few days ago?"

  "Yes, a family of five. The Durazos."

  "I thought the government had recalled Lieutenant Urbalejo. He is the one who does the most killing, is he not?"

  "I think the generals only sent for him to promise him more bounty for our ears, then sent him back to kill more of us." Agonia looked into Paul's face and smiled
. "Now it won't matter what kind of Christian he kills. He gets fifty pesos for two orejas prietas, dark-skinned ears, no matter who they belong to. He won't be made to distinguish a Yaqui ear from a Mexican ear. I see you are missing an ear now. Did they catch you and only get one ear, Pol? Did they stop cutting on that one ear because they thought you might be a white man? Do you know that you could pass for a white man?"

  "Ah, don't you know I'm called Fast Paul?"

  "Ah, correcto. That is correct. I forgot. I never saw them cut one ear and not get the other. Who is this little gente, who comes with you this time? How has he escaped the guachos?"

  "My son."

  "You better keep him close to camp. His ears are too dark. Urbalejo will think he is javali, like me. His ears are not clear like his eyes."

  "His name is Miguel Pablo, but he is called Mikey and Black Man by his mother and his uncles, and Polito by these vaqueros here. So you see, he already has aliases, like you."

  "I can see he is your son by the green eyes, but of what tribe is his mother?"

  Paul turned to Del Mercer and Manuel and they laughed with him. "I never asked her," he said.

  Agonia left the clearing and after a while came back with two Yaqui men, two women, and five children. They came slowly to spare their resources. They squatted in a close bunch underneath a white oak. The women kept looking at Mikey's face and then smiling into each other's faces when he turned toward them.

  One of the men climbed a butte above the spring to watch for the soldiers. The Yaquis liked to stop at La Brigida. It was on the cordón, the spine of the Sierra de San Juan. A lookout on the butte could see the whole world.

  The older Yaqui woman was the mother of the young one. To keep their hands free on the march, the women wore every article of clothing they owned, and some of the men's clothing. They walked in teguas, rawhide-soled, ankle-high moccasins. Their long hair was entwined in cloth and wrapped in great coils upon their heads. The children were also over-clothed. The older woman was gray-haired, but she was straight and lithe. The young woman's belly was as full of a baby as it could be. The hair, skin, and clothing of the women were bright with cleanliness.

  The men were dark and dried, almost charred, by their efforts in the sun. The women were dark, but their russet skin glowed. The young woman's face was delicately beautiful, especially her brow. Mikey wondered at the childlike, vulnerable brow with which she headed into the world. A thick swath of her hair had strayed from a coil and been caught and held down by sparse sweat on her forehead.

  Manuel, Paul, and Mikey rode into the holding pasture and brought back a fat, barren heifer. Paul caught her on his reata as she ran through the gate into the corral. The cattle that came in with the heifer streamed back out to pasture while Paul, without dismounting, snubbed her close to a post in the center of the corral.

  The Yaqui men, women, and children swarmed on the heifer to hold her still and she bawled her death song. Almost gently, Agonia plunged a slim blade into her jugular, sliced her throat open, stopped the song, and emptied her life's blood in a single instant. The women caught the blood in a five-gallon lard can as the heifer slumped to the ground at their feet. After the quick pain of the knifing, she relaxed quietly toward the ground until she went still on her side. When she stopped breathing, her head was still held haIfway up the snubbing post by the reata, her body had stretched her neck as far as it would go, and the reata had disappeared under the hair of her throat.

  The Yaquis skinned, dressed, and quartered the heifer on her hide. They cut the pulp of the meat into sheets for jerky and salted and peppered it with black pepper. They broke and cracked some of the bones and put them in a five-gallon can with salt and pepper to boil with beans. They broke and cut the shells off the hooves and put the knuckles in another can with more broken bones to boil. They opened up the paunch, washed it, and cut it up into squares to cook with the knuckles. They ate small slices of raw liver and bites of marrow gut as they carved the meat. They sent the loin to be broiled on the bed of coals of the cook fire under the ramada. Gato boiled the blood, and then fried it with the brains, onions, and potatoes and the crew shared it with the Yaquis at a late almuerzo, lunch. For supper, the four vaqueros and the ten Yaquis finished the heart, liver, sweetbreads, and the tongue menudos with broiled steak. Other menudos, the hooves, paunch, and bones were eaten with boiled, parched corn the next morning for early breakfast.

  The Yaquis stayed at Santa Brigida until all the fresh meat was eaten and all the pulp of the muscle had been carved into sheets and dried and cured in the sun. The jerky had been folded tightly in flour sacks and tied with string. One morning the crew rose to find the Yaquis ready for travel.

  The expressions on the Yaqui faces were the same on full bellies as they had been on empty, but their eyes were more content. Agonia separated himself from his people, squatted close to Mikey, and looked into his face. With much gravity, he said to Paul, "We'll take this boy with us, if you want. Es muy vaquero. He is much of a cowboy, but do you know, he is titiritero, a shaman. Don't look into his eyes and then try to tell me he is not. We'll train him as a curandero, healer, and learn from him while we do."

  "I know what he is." Paul laughed. "But I need him, too."

  "What other thing can I do to show our gratitude?"

  "You can tell the Polito why you are called Agonia. How long have we known each other, three years? Well, the boy's been asking me about your nickname and I don't know how to explain it."

  "You want me to tell him the reason I am called Agonia? Ah, because when I was his age, General Alvaro Obregon killed my father and all my eight brothers and sisters. My mother and I were left destitute. The rest of our people were also pursued and driven away in different directions from our home at Santa Margarita in the Sierra Madre.

  "My mother and I wandered, hid, and begged for months. One day we arrived at the edge of the town of Guaymas. The yoris, the ordinary Mexicans, were not our enemies. We only watched and hid from the soldiers as we skirted the town. My mother knew only one person in Guaymas who might have food. She had been told that one of her sisters lived near a cemetery and kept pigs. Her name was Eva, but she had not been called by her Christian name for many years. She had been nicknamed Cuauhtémoc because her ways were the same as that Aztec chief's.

  "The journey to Guaymas had been very hard on my mother. By the time we came in sight of a cemetery, she was finished. She rested in the shade of a brea tree and sent me on to find her sister. "I went to the campo santa, the cemetery that we had seen from far away, but found nothing but the monuments of the tombs. I went on and approached two vaqueros as they day-herded their cows.

  "They did not know I was upon them until I spoke to them. 'Por favor, can you direct me to the cemetery?' I asked. They leaped at the sound of my voice and then stared at me in astonishment.

  "The drover nearest me said, 'If you did not know your way back to the cemetery, why did you leave your grave?'

  "I was so desolate and hungry, I could only ask the man to pardon me for frightening him.

  "'No need to ask for pardon. Now we can say we have seen someone who suffered an agony worse than Christ's. Jesus, at least, enjoyed a last supper before He was given up to die.'

  "'Jesus is my name, too,' I said. 'I am a Christian like you.'

  "'Well, I know why they called you Jesus,' the other drover said. 'When you were born, your mother looked down, recognized the face of agony, and was forced to say, Jesus!'

  "The drovers were good Christians. One of them drove his horse and cart with me to get my mother. We stayed with them through las aguas, the rainy season, and helped them milk their cows and make cheese. They never called me by any other name except Agonia, and I have been Agonia ever since."

  "And your mother's sister, the one they called Cuauhtémoc?"

  Gato asked.

  "We found her months later, but she was too coda y agarrada, stingy, to be of service to anyone but her pigs. Thank God that He gave u
s the drovers instead."

  "Why did they call the woman Cuauhtémoc?" Gato asked.

  "For the reason that she was so tight," Agonia said. "She was older than my mother, a spinster, and she never gave anyone anything. As you know, Cuauhtémoc was the Aztec chief that the Spaniards burned because he refused to give them his treasure. As a spinster, people said that she treasured her virginity so much that she would have submitted her body to be burned rather than give it to someone who might have loved and cared for her. So she was called Cuauhtémoc/'

  Agonia led the Yaqui family in single file past Cabezon's crew so everyone could shake hands, and then led them back on the trail to the north.

  FIVE

  LA VAQUEREADA

  La Vaquereada, cowboy work, is the same in Sonora as it is in Arizona, and the name connotes a certain decency, responsibility, and keen skill in the vaqueros who practice it. The same kind of people do the work in both countries. Both are affected by the work, whether they know that vaquereada means to cowboy, or they speak so little Spanish that they don't know the word vaquereada from the word for beans. They are cowmen, and as such, most are decent persons. Almost everyone who occupies himself with the husbandry of livestock at least learns something about how to be decent.

  In November, Cabezon's crew moved camp across a high saddle and up Amol Mountain to El Aguaje del Encino, the Spring of the Oak Tree. Mustang cattle and ladinos that ran in that country felt safe on the edges of its cliffs and steep aprons of smooth rock where horsemen could not follow. They were in good flesh on the black grama grass and the red-stemmed sacate de raíz, root grass, and the short sacate liebrero, the grass of the hare, which had begun to cure in the fall. Those grasses would be juicier with the summer rains in July, but they were at their strongest in October and November when they dried and cured. The juanimipili, a sweet legume, was still lush and strong in those mountains that November.