Country of the Bad Wolfes (45 page)

Then the service was over and everyone—including Father Benedicto, the old priest who had performed the ceremony and was known to have an affection for tequila—set off to the reception, which was being held in a mansion only a block away and owned by a friend of Díaz. On the walk there in the fading light of early evening, Sófi looked about for Louis Little but didn't see him anywhere. Nor did she see him in the ballroom. She kept an eye out for him even as she waltzed with one young officer or another. During respites from dancing, she sat at a table reserved for the bridesmaids and their escorts, next to the dais on which the bridal couple shared a table with General Díaz and his wife. Sófi wanted to ask Gloria about the byplay with Louis Little in the church, but with all the other people at the table and all the coming and going between the table and the dance floor and Julián Salgado almost constantly at Gloria's side, there was no opportunity for such private talk.

When the reception was in its second hour and there was still no sign of Louis Little, Sófi concluded that, for whatever reason, he wasn't coming. Then an officer came to their table and told Julián there was a civilian in the parlor who wished to speak with him. Julián asked who it was but the officer said he didn't know, he was just delivering his message. Sófi watched Julián heading toward the parlor hallway on the other side of the room, then turned to her sister, thinking she at last had a chance to talk to her—and was startled to see Louis Little standing at the table and
Gloria smiling up at him. His eyes were dark blue, Sófi saw, his face sunbrowned, his smile confident. In his fractured Spanish he asked Gloria if she would honor him with a dance. She said it would be her pleasure, and he took her offered hand and escorted her onto the floor.

A few minutes later Julián was back and looked annoyed. Sófi asked what was wrong and he said there hadn't been anyone in the parlor waiting to see him. He asked where Gloria was and Sófi pursed her lips and shrugged. He scanned the other tables. Then the dance floor. Then spied them. Talking and laughing as they waltzed round and round. He caught Sófi looking at them too and asked who the gringo was. She said she didn't know. He sat down and poured a glass of champagne and watched them until the waltz concluded. But they remained on the floor, talking in evident earnestness, and then another number struck up and they again began to dance. Julián stood and Sófi's heart jumped as he started toward them, sidestepping dancing couples as he went.

Gloria saw him approaching and said something to Louis Little. They stopped dancing as Julián came up, his face tight with anger. Louis Little looked at him without interest, and then in his faulty Spanish thanked Gloria for the dance.

“It was my pleasure,” she said. Her use of English was as galling to Julián, who did not speak the language, as the smile she was giving the man.

As Louis started to walk away, Julián said, Hey, gringo. Louis stopped and turned. Don't bother to ask her for another dance, Julián said. I won't permit my fiancée to take any further risk of contracting fleas.

“Julián!” Gloria said.

“The only fleas I ever had,” Louis Little said in his soft southern English, “I got from your mama.”

Julián needed no translator to comprehend “mama” and that he had been insulted.

Watching from the edge of the dance floor, Sófi saw him give Louis Little a hard shove rearward—and a woman cried out as he unsheathed his saber faster than Sófi would have thought possible. Just as suddenly, Louis Little was brandishing a massive knife drawn from under his coat. There were startled squeals and the couples nearest the two men backed away from them as they began to circle each other with weapons ready. Some of the officers shouted bets on Lieutenant Salgado but could get no takers. A Bowie knife was no match for a saber in the hands of a cavalry officer and they all expected the lieutenant to drop the gringo with his first sally.

Díaz stepped between the two men and they froze.

Put up your blades and come with me, he said. They traded hard looks as they followed him to a side door, where Díaz paused before a clutch of officers and said, “Pistolas.” Several ranking officers beckoned their aides, who came at a trot from their posts near the doors, each them with a revolver on his belt. The guns were unholstered and held out butt first for Díaz's inspection. He took one and unbuttoned his tunic and slipped the pistol into his waistband and then selected two
more, one in each hand. He told the officers at the door to make sure everyone else stayed inside and then ushered Lieutenant Salgado and Louis Little out into a large lamplit garden. An officer shut the door behind them. Up on the dais, Edward Little stood with his hands behind him and his eyes on the garden door. Only the two young women at the table could see he was holding a gun.

The orchestra was told to resume playing but nobody wanted to dance—they were all too tense about the imminent duel. There was loud debate about its outcome, a flurry of wagers offered and accepted. The odds were in heavy favor of Lieutenant Salgado not only for reasons of partisanship but because he was known to be a good shot, while no one knew how well the gringo could handle a gun. It was said he had fought in the American Civil War, but even if true, that fact revealed nothing about his ability with a pistol. Some of the older officers, more experienced with the ways of duels, bet that there would be no winner. The combatants would either kill each other or, as in most duels, both be wounded but neither fatally.

Sófi sat with her sister and found out what had been said in the confrontation. Gloria's eyes were as bright as when boys had fought over her in girlhood. Sófi could not have denied that her own dread was laced with a strange elation. It wasn't every day a pair of men fought a duel over your sister.

Out in the garden Díaz picked a spot that would put the two men in equal illumination at a distance of some thirty paces and where an errant bullet was unlikely to hit anything other than a tree or a wall. He asked if either of them wanted to end the contention with an apology. Neither one did.

Very well, Díaz said. He showed them that both revolvers were fully-loaded Kerr single-action five-shooters. Then made them stand back to back and handed each of them a pistol. He told them to begin pacing when he began to count. When the count reached fifteen they could turn and fire at will.

If either of you turns before I call fifteen, Díaz said, drawing his own pistol,
I'll
shoot you. Understood? He backed up a few feet from the line of fire and began a measured counting.

The two men paced away from each other until Díaz called “Quince!” and then they whirled and fired. But even as he spun around, Louis Little—who had been a guerrilla fighter with Bloody Bill Anderson's wildwood Missourians in the war of the American states and thereby learned everything on earth there was to know about pistol fighting—dropped to one knee and Salgado's bullet passed above and to the left of his head as his own round hit the lieutenant in the chest and staggered him rearward into a tree. Julián collapsed to a sitting position with his back against the tree trunk and the revolver yet in his hand, and Louis Little, still crouched, shot him three times more, cocking and firing as fast as he could, the first of these bullets passing through Julián's head and pasting the tree with blood and the next two striking his unbeating heart even as he was toppling onto his side.

Captain Anderson had always said to make sure they were finished, that he'd
seen more than one man killed by another assumed to be dead.

Louis Little stood up, the revolver cocked on the remaining round, and he studied Julián's still form. Satisfied the man was dead, he uncocked the Kerr and went to Díaz and handed it to him. The general tucked it and his own pistol into his pants.

Your father tells me you are from Louisiana, Díaz said.

Yes.

They must have some interesting duels in Louisiana. Here the rule is that a man must stand his ground during the exchange of fire and the rule is understood to mean that he should stand it upright. You stood your ground, yes, but somewhat, well, gymnastically, let us say.

Louis Little stared at him. He had not known Díaz very long and wondered if he was one of those bossmen who purposely didn't tell you all of the rules just so he could have the pleasure of charging you with breaking one that you didn't know about. He'd had a bossman like that in a timber camp when he was sixteen years old, his first job after leaving home following his mother's death. The bossman had not liked him for some reason and made things hard for him at every turn. One day the man upbraided him loudly in front of a crew of witnessing timberjacks for breaking some rule Louis hadn't heard of. The bossman said ignorance was no excuse, that Louis would have to pay him a fine of a day's wages and if he argued about it he'd give him a hiding to boot. The contretemps concluded with the bossman on his back and his head in bloody mud with Louis's timber axe wedged in his skull to the sinuses. Louis then mounted the bossman's horse and galloped off to places unknown.

The War Between the States was then in its second year and he was soon riding with William Clarke Quantrill and his confederate guerrillas, whom many regarded less as military irregulars than as a band of outlaws using the war as pretext for their depredations. When dissension broke up Quantrill's company, Louis chose to ride with Bloody Bill. Then the war was lost and so he went west and roamed without purpose and here and there took employment as a marshal and once as a train guard and on various occasions killed men either for the bounty to be collected or over an insult of some sort or, most often, in some drunken argument whose particulars he would not remember. Finally he did as a few other die-hard rebels had done and went to Mexico. The republicans were still at war with Maximilian and there was no shortage of opportunity for a man of Louis's skills. Because the imperialists were invaders, he saw them as akin to Yankees, and he hired on with Juárez. But he had got there at the tail end of things and had been in Mexico but six weeks when the war ended.

One afternoon, shortly after the liberation of Mexico City, he was drinking in a cantina and wondering what he might do next when he overheard the name of Edward Little mentioned in a group of American roughnecks at a nearby table. He bought a round for the bunch and asked about Edward Little and learned that
he was General Díaz's chief scout and was at present in the central hospital with a bad chest wound.

An hour later he was at Edward Little's bedside. He introduced himself as Louis Welch and asked if he remembered a woman in Louisiana named Sharon Welch. “It was a long time ago,” Louis said. “Momma said you were on your way to Texas and yall didn't know each other but the one night, so you might not recall. She told me about it when I was twelve. Said she wanted me to know who my daddy was, even if she didn't hardly know more than your name. She said she liked you an awful lot.”

Edward Little remembered young Sharon Welch. She was sixteen, as was he, on the cold evening she sneaked out of the house and into the barn where her daddy had permitted him to spend the night. In the years since, he had at times thought of her. He was sorry to learn she was dead but was glad to make the acquaintance of the son he had not known they created. He offered his hand and the young man accepted it. The next day he introduced Louis to Porfirio Díaz, who seemed more amused than surprised to learn Edward had a son. That had been two weeks ago.

Don't worry, kid, Díaz said. I didn't specify what the rules were, did I? You were free to use the rules of Louisiana. And I have to say, you handle a pistol very well.

Louis smiled back. Thank you, general.

Díaz went over to Julián and retrieved the other revolver. I feel sorry for this one's fiancée, he said. A widow before she was even a wife.

In his bad Spanish, Louis Little said he intended to make things right for her.

Really? Díaz said. Tell me. I would like to hear about this intention.

Louis told him, not sure if the way Díaz smiled as he listened was because of what he was hearing or the way it was being said. But he listened carefully, and when Louis finished explaining what he had in mind, Díaz said, I have only one question. Do you want to do this because you feel guilty for killing her man? Louis assured him it wasn't guilt. It was what he wanted the minute he saw her. He gestured at Julián Salgado and said maybe now what he wanted would be easier or maybe impossible. Díaz clapped him on the shoulder and laughed. There's only one way to find out, my friend. Goddammit, I should have known by the way you looked at her when you were dancing. “Pero que cosa fantástica es el amor, no?”

In the ballroom, the first two shots—which all of the woman and even some of the officers in the room had taken for one, so closely together did they sound—had stopped the music and hushed all talk, and Gloria squeezed Sófi's hand so hard it would ache the next day. Almost immediately behind those first shots, there came three more reports in rapid sequence, and one of the officers said, Well, I'll bet somebody just killed the hell out of somebody.

There followed long minutes of buzzing speculation before the garden door finally opened and Díaz and Louis Little reentered the room. There were low groans from the bet losers and chuckling from those few who had backed the gringo. No one saw Edward Little return his gun to its holster under his coat.

Díaz handed the guns to one of the officers and gave low-voiced instructions to some others and they nodded and went out to the garden.