Winter weather in the Jalisco highlands traditionally arrives after harvesting is finished in mid-October, a bit later if the rainy season is bountiful. And frequently there are some cabañuelas in January – brief soakings that are popularly believed to forecast the next temporada de las aguas.
But this dry season turned cold and rainy when Christmas hangovers were still brand new, surprising a lot of people. At the campesino ranch where I frequently work in the early morning, corn and cornstalks were still spread out on roofs to dry. That, and the cold – making old sprains, fractures and other forgotten injuries, ache – sent up a clutter of inventive swearing to meet the clouds over Rancho Santa Cruz.
I had just returned from entertaining a clutch of medical folk at Houston’s Texas Medical Center – and the constant banal babble of one half of thousands of grotesque electronic conversations. Like many people of a certain age, my exultant days of recklessness – abides, of rodeoing, motorcycles, riding the rails, bar-crawling, car wrecks and decades of surfing – were catching up. Life’s iron truism, “There is no free lunch,” never lets loose.
The Houston docs put me on a short leash. So about the third thing I did when I got back was to ignore that advice and went to the campesino ranch where I frequently work in the mornings. Animals react emphatically to climatic change. It was still dark, and Angel Diaz, a young wrangler, helped me catch and saddle the hammer-headed bay gelding that I ride. I’d gone gimpy from the cold and too many weird and pricey pills. But that spooky bay didn’t even get a chance to bite agile Angel. After a jolting, cow-hopping start, I set out to ride fence, checking for downed barbed wire and knocked over posts where cattle had broken out. To loosen up my cold arms and hands, I threw a couple of loops at some still green hoja ancha weeds. Missed every one. Too many hours sitting around with physicians and trying to ignore television in waiting rooms.
The high ridges above the ranch were soaked by more water than any ancient Nahua god ever promised for this time of year. The harvested milpas (corn fields) facing east made the mountains look shorn, as if a brief battle had taken place. The western slopes, facing away from the first gauze of a false dawn, remained indistinguishable in the purple grasp of night. But dawn is a fast phenomenon, and when I topped the first ridge a thin slice of reddish light lanced through a fissure in the sky’s low cover of clouds. That bit of nature’s magic – a solar incision in the cold dampness – made being home in the campo (countryside) seem like a sudden gift. It also showed a hole neatly cut in the barbed wire and the tracks of set-free cattle heading eastward. Those tracks were escorted by foot prints of two human beings and one horse.Though the slice of sun was now covered, I swung away from, but parallel to the huelas that had overturned rocks and pocked the mud. These rustlers weren’t being a bit careful. I thought about what that meant. This wasn’t an era in which to confront brazen lawbreakers unarmed. Too many people harboring such inclinations were enamored with cuernos de chivo (AK-47s) these days. Happily, the rain had soaked the dead and dying leaves underfoot. They made little sound under the bay’s hoofs. I eyed the ground ahead for loose rock, calmed the gelding, and went quietly along.
It started to mist up again. About a half hour later, my three weeks of lollygagging in doctors’ offices and examining rooms, caught up with my back. The bay could go forever, but he had a rough lope. Seeking a place to rest, I headed for a small line of mesquite trees. Almost there, I saw a slight movement and the profile of bronc’s head behind some leaves. Damn! As I jerked the gelding around, I heard a hiss, a whispered, “Oye, Señor.”
Chago Muños (a pseudonym) stood beside his horse in darkness under the big mesquite. He motioned for me to come quietly to his side. I was grinning, pleased to see him. And I was eager to sit against the tree. Those doctors‘ pills, if they didn’t make you dizzy, they made you hurt all over. I climbed down slowly, shook Chago’s hand and sat. Chago did too. He held something about three feet long wrapped in canvas across his knees.
“They went that way.” He pointed down the trail. “They had your cattle, but those cows ran off. So did the two rustlers when I shot at them.”
“How many balas did you fire?”
“Three. I wasn’t trying to hit anybody. You shoot somebody, you have to kill them. Then the police come, and have to jail somebody ... they don’t care who.”
“Did these abigeos shoot back?”
“I came on them by surprise. They had a cuerno. One pointed it, but I think it jammed. Then they ran. They might be hiding in those huisache bushes. See, on the left. If we let them run, they won’t come back.”
I squinted at his canvas covered package.
“My grandfather’s old rifle from the Cristero War.”
“Hard to get ammunition, no?”
“Oh, before the government closed the last gun stores in the 1990s, our families began buying up big crates of bullets. They were cheap then, just before the economy went to hell.”
“Thanks for finding my cattle.”
“It was an accident. I was looking for one of my dogs that likes to go hunting on his own. Trouble is, he likes to kill calves for comida.”
“Too bad he doesn’t like eating rustlers,” I said. Chago grinned.
Though dawn had come, clouds kept everything pretty gray. But we could see fresh clouds curling over the mountain tops to the north. They were a fine sight even on a soggy day.
“Think they’re gone by now?” I slowly stood.
Chago nodded and untied his horse.
As I climbed into the saddle my body ached as if I never ridden a horse before. We went slowly, toward the tall huisachi bushes. Making a wide circle, Chago to the right, me to the left, we came at the bushes from behind. The cattle thieves had gone, leaving behind two crimped rounds that had jammed the AK-47.
“If you’re going hunt you got to take care of your weapons, I was told as a kid.”
“Don’t think they be back,” Chago said, feeling the crimp in one of the bullets.
“Cattle thievery doesn’t seem like their line of work.” I grinned.
“No. Lucky for us.”
There was a pale spot in the clouds when we found the cattle. Chago’s run-away canine was with them, stretched like a guard dog where a half-filtered ray of sun touched the drying wild grass. Two widely spaced hawks were balanced above us on still, spread wings waiting for prey to come into the day’s first warmth. They were looking for field mice whose cover was vanishing as the dry season stripped all low-lying brush of foliage. Dryness would soon leave them unprotected in a world where they’d grown used to an array of flourishing security.