A serrano is an inhabitant of the Sierra Madre. He is a mountain man. He is very much more his own man than the city man is. He has to do so much more with only his own faculties, his own hands. I know serranos who have to walk seventy miles to get to a store that stocks axes. Automobiles will never be available to him. He doesn't miss them. He can make better time in his mountains on foot or horseback.
The serranos lead very uncomfortable lives compared to what people in Brentwood, California, believe is comfortable. Serranos live at all times on the sides of the real mountains. They hang their corn crops on vertical slopes. They herd their cattle around rocky, brushy cliffs where, if they should slip and fall, they would starve to death and the buzzards would eat them before they hit bottom. There is no level plain upon which the strolling is good. The streets fall through the villages and are so steep that they have been washed deeply by the fast water of the summer rains and only the bedrock of the
mountain remains.
The serrano's life is not cluttered with possessions, nor with luxuries such as "fine" foods, liquors, bedding, entertainment, or roomy abode. He has little use for money, which is probably the reason he always has a little. He is a rich man as a rule, not only because he has little use for money, but because he has such a superabundance of what he needs.
The little Cessna 170 bucked and yawed and fought to clear the oak-topped peak in the high wind of the Sierra Madre. It cleared the oaks by yards, pointed itself down the other side of the peak, and leveled off. It landed on the side of a hill going uphill on a narrow strip of rain-washed red earth by a rock wall that swept past the right wing. It rolled to the top of the hill and stopped.
Kane and the lion stepped to the ground. The leather-jacketed pilot unloaded two boxes of oranges, a bundle of blankets and a new radio and set them on the side of the strip. He looked impatiently down the hill at a group of whitewashed buildings that shone in the clear mountain air at sunup. He walked back to the plane and opened the plane's cowl and checked the oil. A cold wind uncombed his long hair and he put both hands on the hair to hold it down. He ran a pocket comb carefully through the hair and patted it back down.
"Too much wind," he said.
A vaquero spurred a black mule up over the hill. The armas over the vaquero's knees flapped in the wind. The mule shied at the shiny contraption parked on top of the hill, too much gleaming metal for his comprehension. The vaquero spurred the sidestepping mule around the pile of provisions the pilot had stacked by the runway.
"Where is the dona and the little girl?" the pilot asked.
"They are on the way," the vaquero answered.
"Please go back and tell them to hurry. There is too much wind," the pilot said.
The vaquero spurred his mule into a running walk and went back down the hill and out of sight.
"When shall I come back for you?" the pilot asked the Lion.
"Day after tomorrow," the Lion said.
"Please be here early in the morning. We should have come much earlier than this. Too much wind."
A young woman riding a mule came over the hill. A metal suitcase was tied behind the cantle of her saddle. She wore a large straw hat with the brim pulled down. A white cloth under the hat protected the back of her head and neck and was tied under her chin. She was bundled in coats and sweaters and long skirts. She sat the mule sidesaddle but when she dismounted she uncovered a common, goose necked vaquera saddle. She was very light-skinned and her face was pinched by the cold wind. A little girl rode up behind her on a small corriente pony. The woman helped the little girl dismount.
The pilot loaded the woman's blankets and her suitcase and helped the woman and the little girl into the plane. The woman took off her hat and white cloth and shook and fluffed her long brown hair. The pilot started the plane's motor. The tail swung around. The plane taxied over the hill out of sight.
The plane roared, came back, lifted into the air past Kane and the Lion, and banked around the oak peak toward Rio Alamos.
"Come on," the Lion said. "No need for us to wait here and freeze in this wind." He winked at Kane. "We'll wait for Arce at my father-in-law's
house."
They climbed over the rock wall and stumbled down the steep, frost-hard, rocky hill toward the little town. They stopped at a white adobe house. The pine shingles on the roof of the house were hand-hewn. The Lion knocked on the door and roared.
A small, whiskered old man, his face dry and darkened by sun, mountain cold, and wood smoke, answered the door and quietly welcomed the Lion. Inside, the earthen floor was packed hard and clean. The white plastered walls were washed. A fire in an adobe oven warmed the room. Kane and the Lion sat on rawhide-covered chairs at a scrubbed, slate-boarded table. A large woman in a shapeless cotton dress, an immaculate flour sack bandana tied around her hair, her face clean and shiny and smiling, served them hot, black, syrupy coffee and white cheese.
The Lion lost his roar in that house. His speech became quiet, controlled. He and the old couple discussed the Lion's errand in the Sierra. A young man entered and respectfully, wordlessly, shook hands with the Lion. The old man sent the young man to the plaza of the little community to watch for Arce. Later the boy came back and told them Arce had arrived.
The town lay in a hollow. Houses had been built on the edge of a small, open plaza. The boy led Kane and the Lion across the plaza to a large store. The proprietor of the store told them Arce was on his veranda. Kane and the lion passed through the store, up a short flight of steps, and out onto a long, open veranda that overlooked a deep canyon behind the house.
Arce was drinking coffee at a small table. When he turned in his chair Kane noticed he wore big serrano spurs on his black dress shoes. He had turned the spurs around so that they rested on his instep, allowing him the freedom of walking without dragging the spurs on the ground. He was glad to see the buyers. He stood and smiled and the thick coffee filmed his teeth a tawny yellow.
Arce was very gracious and introduced Kane and the Lion to the proprietor and asked them if they needed anything from the store before they left for Arce's ranch. They said they did not.
