Whether in the long history of mankind a colt had ever been trained for riding in a similar way, I don’t know. Anyhow, the way I had done it produced lasting results, so my training system cannot have been so very wrong.
And now the herd had to be cut out. I possessed not the slightest notion what was meant by that and how it had to be done. Never in my life had I driven even as few as fifty cattle from one pasture to the next. Now, since Mr. Pratt was hawk-like, watching every move I made preparing the herd for the long march, I was forced to show off here and there. If you wish you may call it shameless bluffing. Perhaps you are right. If I had never tried bluffing at some critical occasions in my existence on earth I would have lost my life long, long ago.
My idea (if it was good or wrong, this I did not know) was to form a little group of the animals into sort of a family center of the whole transport, around which smaller groups might gather and thus keep together more naturally, since cattle belong to the species of animals who for many good reasons prefer to live in groups or herds, as do dogs, horses, wolves, elephants, antelope, zebras — also fish.
Meantime, we had started cutting out the herd. First, I cut out the bulls, looking for a leader bull. We drove the bulls into the cattle corral I had picked, and I let them go hungry. I continued putting the herd, the two and three-year-olds and the oxen, as well as the rest of the bulls, into another enclosure. I examined every one to make sure that it was healthy enough for the long trek; and all these were fenced into the field so that they might get the herd feeling. When I had three hundred head in that enclosure, I believed the bulls were ready.
We drove them into the field with the picked herd, and the battle for leader began. The bulls who were indifferent to the honor got themselves as far out of the way as possible, and the battle soon centered on five of them. The victor, still bleeding profusely, charged toward one of the cows in heat, who pushed her way toward him. We attended to all the wounded bulls immediately; and after the victor had spent himself and returned to his herd senses, he too got his medicine. For if the wounds weren’t treated promptly, they’d soon be full of maggots, and it’d be a long and tedious job getting them out.
Worms, maggots, and ticks are a big problem with any herd, anywhere, but worst of all in the tropics. And if cattle start losing weight, their skin dries out, and deadens, and the lean cattle are in danger of being eaten alive by worms and ticks. Healthy animals, however, are attacked only by limited numbers of pests which can easily be kept under control.
Once we had cut out the thousand head of cattle, Mr. Pratt, a very generous man, gave me five extra healthy ones as replacements for those five in a thousand who were certain to fall sick or fail to survive the long drive.
Then I was given a hundred pesos cash in silver for transport expenses, besides some checks I could cash in case of emergency, and I was also given the delivery note to the terminal pasture. Then Mr. Pratt handed me a map.
The less said about this map, the better. You can put anything you like upon a map: roads, rivers, villages, towns, grasslands, water pools, mountain passes, and plenty more. Paper is patient; it won’t refuse anything. But, though a river or a bridge appears on a map, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to find it where it is supposed to be.
It was a real joy to hear Mrs. Pratt swearing; every other word was “son-of-a-bitch,”
“bastard,” or “f—ing,” and more in the same beautiful strain. On a rancho like theirs, it could be damned lonely, and the nights were long, so you couldn’t blame her for living her life as intensely as existence on a cattle rancho permitted. How else was the poor woman to use up the surplus energy, which, had she lived in a village or town, would have gone into chatting and gossiping with the neighbors all day? To her, everything was son-of-a-bitch; her husband, I, the Indians, the fly that dropped into her coffee cup, the Indian girl in the kitchen, her finger that she cut, the hen that fluttered on the table and upset the soup pot, her horse that moved too slowly — yes, every object between heaven and earth was to Mrs. Pratt a son-of-a-bitch.
They had a phonograph and we danced nearly every evening. For a number of reasons, I preferred to dance with the Indian kitchen maid; but Ethel, Mrs. Pratt, danced far better, and we got onto such good terms that one night she told me quite frankly in her husband’s presence that she’d like to marry me if her husband should die or divorce her.
She was a fine woman, Mrs. Pratt, she certainly was, and I wouldn’t hear a word against her. A woman who can handle the wildest horse, swear to make a sergeant major wince, a woman before whom tough vaqueros trembled and with whom bandits kept their distance, a woman who in the presence of her husband (whom she seemed to love) could quite soberly declare that she’d like to marry me if he died or left her — damn it, a woman like that could stir you even if you didn’t care much about the so-called weaker sex.
As we were leaving, Ethel Pratt stood on the long veranda and waved good-bye. “Good luck, boy! You’re always welcome on this rancho. Hey, Suarez, you dirty dog, you filthy son-of-a-goddamned-old-bitch, can’t you see that black one is breaking out? Where are your f—ing eyes? Well, boy, good-bye!”
I waved my hat, and Gitano swept off with me.
23
Yes, we were off. We broke out. The yelling, the shouting, the calling, the high-pitched shrieking of the Indians; the sound of the short-handled whips cutting through the air; the trampling of hoofs and all the uproar as a column of beasts shied off, rushed away, and had to be blocked in, lest it lost contact with the main herd.
The first day is always one of the hardest, so Mr. Pratt came along with us. The herd is still only loosely knit, and a sense of belonging together does not develop until the transport has been underway a few days, until the herd knows the leader bull and gets the smell of mutual kinship. Then the family feeling, rather the herd feeling, emerges and the animals want to stay with their herd.
But they didn’t stay together like a flock of sheep kept in order by a shepherd and a dog. For these cattle, born and raised on vast ranges among Mr. Pratt’s twelve-thousand-headed herd, were accustomed to space, and they wanted to spread out, run loose. The dogs we took with us couldn’t make much of a showing, for they tired easily and could be used only for small jobs. Thus it was a constant galloping back and forth, shouting and yelling.
I had a police whistle with me as a signal for the boys; the foreman had an ordinary whistle, easily distinguished from mine. I put the foreman at the head and I took the rear, as it afforded a better view of the field of transport, and it seemed easier to me to direct operations from there.
What more beautiful sight could there be than a giant herd of healthy half-wild cattle! There they were ahead of me, trampling and stamping-the heavy necks, the rounded bodies, the proud, mighty horns. It was a heaving sea of gigantic vitality, of brute nature herded along by one single purpose. And each pair of horns represented a life in itself, a life with its own will, its own desires, its own thoughts and feelings.
From saddle-height I surveyed the whole of this ocean of horns and necks and rumps. I could perhaps have walked on the broad backs of the animals across the entire herd up to the belied bulls in front.
The animals bellowed singly and in chorus. They quarreled and pushed each other around. Shouts and calls went up. The bells clattered. The sun smiled and blazed. Everything was green — the land of perpetual summer. Oh, beautiful, wonderful land of everlasting springtime, rich with legend, dance, and song! You have no equal anywhere on this earth.