Joseph Brown - Jim Kane

Jim Kane

J P S Brown
1970

For my Mother,
MildredRex Sorrels Brown

Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature,
Masterof all or mistress of all, aplomb in the midst of
irrational things,
lmbued as they, passive, receptive,silent as they,
Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety,foibles, crimes,
less importantthan I thought.
Me toward the Mexican sea, or in theMannahatta or the
Tennessee, orfar north or inland,
A rioir man, or a man of the woods orof any farmly'e of
these
States or of the coast, or the lakes or Kanada,
Mewherever my life is lived, O to be sewbalanced for
contingencies,
To confront night, storms, hunger,ridicule, accidents,
rebuffs, asthe trees and animals do.
--Leaves of Grass
WALTWHITMAN
Contents
BOOKI 1 The Flight
2 Bedand Saddle
3 The Colts
4The Stampede
5 Frontera
6The Banker
7 Gunga Din
8Afoot
9 The Sale
10The Commission
11 Rio Alamos
12A New Country
13 The Patriarch
14A Man From the Monte
15 The Weaning
16 Brahma BOOK II 17 The Charreada
18The Dance
19 The Sierra Madre
20Merry Gentlemen Resting
21 The Husbandman
22 The Circle
23 TheBrown-and-White Spotted Aristocratic Corriente BOOK III 24 Onza
25 The Eagle
26 Chinipas
27 Creel
28 Rajn
29 The Tailing
30 The Trago
31 Bullpen
324 The Drive
33 The HorseKillers
34 Cuiteco
35The Cuidadores
36 Quarantine
37Settlement
38 Big Country

BOOK ONE

TheFlight

An arriero is a driver of animals. A drover. If a manherds a bunch of cattle or a remuda of horses or drives a packtrainof mules or one burro loaded with Firewood, he is an arriero , Arrieros usually arehorseback. A person who drives a car is not called an arriero but a good saying has been passed down fromthe time when there were no cars. With this phrase a man might answerpolitely, with meaning, a lady who thanks him for fixing her flattire: " Arrieros somos. En el caminoandamos. Algun dia nos encontramos." " Weare drovers. We travel the road. Someday we are bound to meet."

Guadalajara, Jalisco, is one thousand miles fromFrontera, Sonora, on the U.S. border. Jim Kane hoped that he wasn'tgoing to be rained on every mile of the way. He loved rain the wayany man who had been raised on a droughty ranch in Arizona lovedrain. But Jim Kane was on this road to Frontera in the rainy seasonof September with five truckloads, fifty head, of Mexican Appaloosahorses he had bought in Guadalajara. The trucks had been undercontinuous cloudburst for ten hours from Guadalajara to Acaponeta andnow, at 3 A. M., were stalled in Acaponeta because none of the town'sgas stations were open.

Kane climbed into the back of a truck and tried onceagain to help the old mare to her feet. She was down in six inches ofmud, manure, urine, and rainwater with her head wedged in aforward comer. She was on her side with her legs doubled against therack of the truck. Kane pushed against the mass of horseflesh aroundher to make room so he could drag the old mare out of the comer bythe tail. The black rain redoubled and the whole storm seemed to Kaneto be funneled into the truck onto his bare head and bare back. Thehorses hunched their backs against the storm and bowed their headsunder each other's bellies and would not budge for Kane. He gave upand climbed over the rack and jumped to the ground. He washed manureand mud off himself from a deep puddle of rainwater on the ground bythe truck. He opened the door of the cab and got his dry shirt andleather jacket from under the head of the sleeping driver. He got hishat from the top of the seat and walked over to the shelter of thegas station the trucks were parked by. He sopped the water offhimself with a handkerchief already wet from being in his hip pocket.He put on his shirt, jacket, and hat and lit a cigarette.

A goddam gully-washer, he thought. Just what we need.A toad-chokin', horse-drownin', frog-stranglin', snake-floatin'gully-washer. Cowboys in the dry country would be happy to call arain like this names like that. We went years on the ranch where Igrew up when it didn't seem to rain as much as it has rained on me inthe last hour. I only weighed a hundred pounds when I was fifteenyears old I was so dried out. When we finally starved out completelymy dad traded one hundred and eighty square miles of drought countryfor a thirty-room auto court in the cool pines near streams and lakesof cold water so he could live out the rest of his life in a placewhere he could have a sweet drink of water any time he wanted one.Now I'm thirty years old, weigh two hundred pounds, and agully-washer is putting me out of business.

One of the drivers of the five stock trucks, a tall,energetic young man with mussed hair and eyes that were trying tocome awake too soon, said " Buenos d as "to start his day and came over and began pacing around the station.He stopped by the window of the office and cursed.

" Someone is in there," he told Kane. Hepounded loudly on the door. "He's alive! Wake up!" heshouted, and pounded again.

The master of the nightwatch of the Acaponeta stationcame to the door buttoning his pants.

" What do you want?" he asked.

" Gasoline, what else?" the tall driversaid.

" We are closed, " the master of the stationsaid.

" Well, open up," the tall driver said.

" How much gasoline do you want?"

" The five tanks of the trucks. You sellgasoline, don't you?"

The master of the station finished displaying his actof buttoning his pants before the customers he might or might notserve and turned back into the office and switched on the lights ofthe station. Kane went to the truck he rode in and roused his driver,a short, solemn little man. The driver drove the truck up beside thepumps. The stationmaster came out stuffing a huge .45 automaticpistol into his belt. He shuffled around the truck to the pumps,stopped, looked at the pumps, and turned to Kane.

" Do you want that of a peso or that of eightycentavos?" he asked.

" Peso gas," Jim Kane said.

The attendant turned back, shifted the pistol to amore comfortable position between the belt and the largebelly,cranked the pump, and filled the truck's tank with gas. He keptsquirting the nozzle after the tank was full and gas belched onto thepavement. He squirted the nozzle again for good measure. This lastsquirt also ran out onto the pavement. Now he was sure the tank wasfull. He screwed the cap back on the tank and hung the hose on thepump.

Kane was in the dry cab of the truck and the caravanwas headed up the road again when he felt that he might, possibly, bea fool. He thought, no one rides horses anymore and here I am withall my stake invested on this road in fifty head of scraggy, stuntedstuds, mares, and colts that will look so bad when I get them to theU.S. that no one but me will want them. I am their husband and I'dbetter be in love with them because I'm probably going to be stuckwith them for quite a while until someone else can see how a buck canbe made on them. By that time I will be broke again. I will be a daylate and a dollar short again.

This had been the suspicion eating at him since hehad turned loose the money for the old mare and now it took a bigbite out of him. He did not state this suspicion to himself often butit was an empty-pockets feeling he got when he thought of his futurewith the horses. Not the feeling of being broke a man had when he hada job and was earning only a little money but the feeling of physicalloss a man kept after he had lost a full pocket of money. Kane hadbrought $5,000 with him to Mexico to buy these horses. Now he had thehorses and only $80 in his pocket and the freight paid to Frontera.His dad had once told him because he loved him, "Stay out of thehorse business, Jim Kane."

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