Free Jim Kane - J P S Brown by J P S Brown Page B

along watching
Warshoop's ears twitch and search.
    Kane saw that Warwhoop was looking at something off
the road. A buzzard flew out of a wash. Kane rode over to the wash. A
cluster of buzzards flapped off a carcass when they saw the horseman.
Kane rode down to the carcass of Din, the paint burro. Blood had
soaked up a spot in the sand underneath him. Din had been shot. He
had been standing here in this wash, a gentle burro thinking maybe
someone was coming with a pan of grain for him, and he had been shot:
one, two, three, four, five, six, the son of a dirty bitch had
reloaded, seven, eight, nine--who knows how many times. Kane's heart
began to ache and crowd his throat now. Din had been shot once in the
eye, several times in the ribs and abdomen, several times in the
penis. One shot hadn't done enough noticeable damage to the penis for
the trigger man's satisfaction so the had tried to blow the burro's
sheath completely off.
    Kane searched the ground around the carcass and found
the tracks of the one who had shot Din. The tracks in the sand were
plain. The person had not known how to walk in sand. He had walked
from the highway, made his kill, and had walked directly back toward
the highway. Kane saw where the killer and another person had
dismounted and later remounted a jeep by the gate. They had left the
desert ranch and shut the gate. Kane had been through the gate in the
darkness of that morning and had not noticed the tracks. He followed
the tracks of the other person. These tracks had gone and come back a
different way. They had headed toward the place where Kane had found
his horses that morning. Kane's feet and legs began to want to hurry
but he did not wish to hurry the colt he was riding. He wanted to
concentrate on the tracks and on the colts he had penned that morning
at camp.
    Had he penned Whiskey Talk? Had both the Mortgage
brothers been there? He couldn't remember for sure. Had he ridden
Pajaro this morning? Or had his penning of the colts been some days
ago before he had run onto these tracks. The hangover and the shock
of finding his paint burro and the hurrying fear for his horses had
eliminated the element of time for him. What had already happened
might still be going to happen. His bringing in of the horses might
have been dreamed some other time. Maybe if he ignored the back track
to the jeep he would catch the coward down here carrying his manly
pistol in its girl holster and make him eat it. He would have faith
that the tracks that returned to the jeep were not there, he would
believe the person was ahead of him and a miracle would happen, time
would disappear. Sooner and later would disappear. He would not be
too late to catch one of the killers. He had his rope. He would rope
the killer and drag him through the cholla. The person would know he
had not got away when he was being dragged through the cholla. `
    Kane found the spot where the tracks turned back
toward the jeep and he became sane again. He sighed. He walked the
paint colt back to camp. Yes, his Pajaro was still there. All his
colts were. He had known it all the time. He unsaddled Warwhoop for
the last time. Warwhoop had graduated from Kane's school. Kane went
up to his camp and made his first cup of coffee of the day and lit
his first cigarette.
    He went back and rode Mortgage Maker and Mortgage
Lifter, and all the new colts. One at a time he turned them out free
to the pasture after he had ridden them, unsaddled them, rubbed their
ears for them, and said good-bye to them. They had all acted like
gentlemen. He had not ridden back down the road by the tiny carcass
of Din. He was over his hangover now and he wanted to eat. He decided
he would ride Whiskey Talk in the corral only a few turns and stops
and backing-ups. Then he would be finished for the day, finished with
the colts, and finished with the desert ranch by Phoenix, Arizona.
    Kane and Whiskey Talk were concentrating. They were
working well together. The colt was responding