Country of the Bad Wolfes (85 page)

“Nameless Creek. We figure it'd be best to keep the same north boundary.”

Wells smiled from one of them to the other. “That's a smart of property, boys.”

“A hankering for a little more land aint anything needs explaining to a cattleman,” Blake said.

“Well, you're right about that, though I know dang well you aint about to raise cows out there. Fact is, a hankerin for more land don't need explainin to nobody. Some men know what they want it for before they get it and some don't know till after and some just want it to have it.”

“That's right,” Blake said. “And like a fella once said, it's the getting that's the fun.”

Wells grinned. “Well, that aint
exactly
what the fella said but it's close enough. Tell me true, boys, you got a reason for wantin all that ground?”

“Well sir,” James said, “I guess we'd just like to keep the world from crowding us too close.”

Wells nodded. “Good reason as any.” They could see he knew it wasn't the only reason or even the main one. But he'd come to know them well enough to understand they never explained anything to anyone until they were ready to, if ever they should be.

The cost of all that land would of course be great, and they had been forced into debt in order to buy the second Levee Street lot and the building materials. But their financial circumstance had very much brightened since they had taken up the smuggling trade. They'd gone to Matamoros with Anselmo and had him introduce them to the Goya brothers with whom Evaristo had done most of his business. The Goyas expressed no surprise that Evaristo was gone and did not ask to know the circumstances but were pleased to learn the twins would continue his trade at the Horseshoe. Two weeks later the Wolfes made their first transaction, receiving a wagonload of tequila at the Horseshoe and paying the Goyas for it with money they'd received for the
Marina Dos
. It had made them heartsick to sell the sloop but there would be other boats. Anselmo suggested a buyer he knew in Harlingen, thirty miles north. The proceeds exceeded what they'd received for the boat and, even minus Anselmo's share, were sufficient to let them pay off part of their debt and provide their wives with household money for the next several months.

They were confident they would succeed at the “river trade”—Jim Wells's preferred term for smuggling—though they knew it was a volatile business and could not be counted on for steady revenue. Their plan was to use most of the money from each smuggling deal to buy some of the land they wanted, even if they had to mortgage the more expensive parcels. They had spoken with Ben Watson at the White Star Company and he had been able to ascertain the titleholders to some of the land to either side of theirs, but legal ownership of other parcels was tangled up in land-grant disputes that had been in the courts for decades, and he was not optimistic about any of those cases being resolved soon.

When they told him of Watson's outlook, Jim Wells said, “Well, gents, in all modesty, I remind you that you are in the presence of the foremost legal mind in Texas with regard to land-grant law. If you'd like, I'll be proud to see what can be done to speed things up a bit and get them properties available.”

“We were hoping you'd say that,” Blake Cortéz said. They understood that he couldn't guarantee a quick resolution to every case. “However long it takes is how long it takes,” James Sebastian said.

Jim Wells's smile was rueful. “Of course. No press for time when you're young.”

Now, two weeks later, Pauline Wells called to them in the den that supper would be on the table in ten minutes. Jim Wells called back they would be there with bells on. Then said to the twins, “Listen, fellas, we all know how chancy the river trade can be. It wouldn't hurt if you also had a regular income of some sort you could count on for at least family money.”

He took something from his coat pocket and placed it on the low table between their chairs. A pair of badges emblazoned with “Deputy Constable” along the top curve and “Cameron County” along the bottom.

“I spoke with the county bigwigs, and in their wisdom they have seen fit to offer you boys the job of special deputy constables. What's so special is you wouldn't be reporting to the constables' office but to me. Your reports would all be word of mouth and if I thought anything you told me warranted the attention of the sheriff's office, I'd let them know. Nothing else in your reports would go further than me. Now before you get any grinnier about it, I want you to hear me out. I been getting a lot of stories from the country folk about roughneck gangs. Seems all South Texas is crawling with little bands of bad actors. Fellas too dang lazy to work for a living and who think they're pretty tough because they can push around a lot of poor folk with no means of defending themselves. The folk say the constables are scared of the gangs, being outnumbered like they are. For sure they aint been getting the job done. I could ask the Rangers to help out, of course. They'll do me about any favor and they love shooting Mexican bad actors and bringing the bodies into town and laying them out in the market square to be gawped at. However, the Rangers aint kindly disposed to Mexicans of any kind, bad actors or not, and the poor folk got good reason to be as scared of them as of the gangs. I want somebody helping them folk they know is their friend. Somebody who's gonna protect them and attend to any meanness done them, and I do believe you boys might just be the fellas for it. You'll be responsible for all of the colonias in the county—all of them. From now on, the other constables will stick to dealing with the town Mexicans. Another thing is rustlers. They're actually the sheriff's job but if you run into them they're yours. Mexican rustlers were pretty bad all along the border till General Díaz took over down there and his Rurales pretty well put the boot to them, but not even the Rurales can stop them all. Anyhow, as for how you do the job and what profit you make off it besides your salary, that's your business. My only rule is to do right by the poor folk.” He smiled. “So. Interested?”

They picked up the badges and pinned them under their coats. They all three chuckled. “Ought be fun,” James Sebastian said. “Yeah,” Jim Wells sighed. “It's one more reason I envy you.” And they went to join their families at the table.

The residents of the colonias trusted them from the start, having learned that Don Santiago himself had assigned these indistinguishable twins to protect them. The twins of the gringo name and the gringo skin but who spoke borderland Spanish and carried themselves like Mexicans. Los Puños de Don Santiago, the colonia Mexicans called them. The name got around and before long even some of the Anglos were calling them the Fists of Mr Jim.

They spent much of their time in the saddle, riding a circuit of the colonias. The residents of a colonia could take care of most their own troubles but not against gangs or even the armed hardcase or two who sometimes showed up and lingered among them and ruled the place by brute force. Until the twins showed up. Any hardcase who brandished a gun at them the twins killed on the spot. Those who were smart enough to submit to arrest were divested of whatever money they had and the twins returned to its owners any portion of it that had been stolen and declared the rest of it a fine. They ordered the bad actors to leave Cameron County with the caveat that if they saw them again they would shoot off a kneecap. Of all those they banished in the early years, only four returned and all four suffered the promised punishment and were warned that next time they would be shot in the other knee and both elbows as well. Word of these punishments got around fast and not a man thereafter returned to Cameron County after being banished from it.

The kneecap punishment was part of a draconian code they devised for certain crimes and would be rigorous in prosecuting through all their years as backcountry lawmen. Any man who deliberately harmed someone weaker than himself—a woman, a child, an old man, a cripple—would be maimed in one foot and told that next time it would be the other. Thieves were ordered to make restitution and in addition their thumb was cut off. A second conviction cost them the rest of the hand. A third—and there would never be a single case of a third—would cost them both eyes. Captured rapists were brought back to the colonia and turned over to the family of the victim so it could extract its own rough justice without condition except for the obligation to bury the remains. Accused murderers were made to stand trial in the particular colonia where the killing had occurred. The twins sat as judges. If the evidence was insufficient to convict but the accused was nevertheless perceived as a threat, the twins exiled him under penalty of being shot if he came back to Cameron County. The guilty were hanged from the nearest suitable gibbet.

When a colonia reported a raid by a passing gang, the twins went in pursuit. Once they caught sight of the bunch they would keep their distance and hold to the chaparral to keep from being spotted. When the men stopped to make camp the twins moved up closer on foot. If the bunch was a small one of five or six men, the twins took positions with a clear view of the camp and in the last light of day opened fire with the Winchesters and dropped the lot of them before they even knew where the shots were coming from. Larger gangs—few had more than a dozen men—were the more fun for being the more challenging. The twins would
trail them too until they stopped for the night. At a wee hour they would sneak up to the camp and throttle the sentry and make swift work of cutting the throats of the sleeping men—each man waking in turn to the apprehension of his death underway but incapable of voicing his horror or crying an alarm. It pleased the twins to prove to themselves time and again that they yet had the skillful stealth they acquired as boys. Each time they put down a gang they would take whatever money and valuables they found on the bodies, whatever weapons were in good condition, whatever horses and saddles they deemed of salable worth. They sometimes trailed a gang into an adjoining county before it stopped for the night. Local lawmen who followed the black flocks of birds to the remnant carnage always had a good idea of whose work they were looking at but took no umbrage at the jurisdictional trespass. Less work for us, they said. On occasion the twins would track a gang even into Mexico and deal with it down there. As they were leaving the scene of one such incursion, they were set upon by a squad of Rurales and had to outrun them back to the border, riding double the last two hundred yards to the river after Blackie's mount was shot from under him.

In their earliest years on the circuit they did not meet with any rustlers despite Jim Wells's warning that they might. But they heard much about them in the colonias. And about their favored routes to the river and their special fords in the wildest riverside regions of Cameron County and its neighbor county of Hidalgo. So the twins expanded their circuit to include these isolate fords—and began to have run-ins with bands of cattle thieves. The best situation was when the rustlers simply abandoned the animals and sped away. The twins then took the herd across the river themselves and sold it and nobody on the Texas side was the wiser. When they met with thieves less willing to give up the cows but who preferred to avoid a fight if they could, the twins would offer to let them take the herd across in exchange for payment of half its worth. Some agreed and the twins made a tidy profit with no effort at all. But some objected to the rate as exorbitant, whereupon the twins would affect to negotiate, and then, at a practiced signal, pulled their revolvers and started shooting, and in moments the issue was settled. They hated to do it that way because it meant having to round up the cattle spooked and scattered by the gunfire. And because it obliged them to return some of the stolen steers to their owners in order to cover themselves in case the gunfight had been witnessed, or the bodies were discovered, as they often were. They would sell half the herd in Mexico and return the rest to the rancher who owned it. They would tell the man they had run into the rustlers at a ford and got in a fight and dropped most of them, but, sorry to say, a few made it to the other side and got away with some of the herd. They would apologize for their failure to recover all the cows, but the ranchers were always grateful to have even some of them back and were profuse in their gratitude. And they spread the word of the twins' fine work.