Country of the Bad Wolfes (95 page)

O
n an early Saturday afternoon they ford the river a few miles west of town and then ride into Brownsville. Four red-eyed horsemen as gray with dust as their mounts, each man of them wearing pistol and knife, each horse hung with rifle and machete, one saddle horn with a stinking gray sack of black-stained bottom attended by a drone of flies. The fighting has made chaos of rail travel, but they managed to bribe their way onto a flatcar of one military transport train after another, moving northward stretch by stretch—to Jalapa, to Tampico, to Ciudad Victoria, where the northward rail line had been destroyed and they bought horses to carry them the last two hundred miles to the border.

Market day. The town abustle. Their horses bare their teeth at honking puttering automobiles amid the wagon traffic. None of the four men speak English but through casual queries of an assortment of Mexican locals they learn everything they need to know. Learn of the Wolfe properties and residences and that the twins are longtime constables of celebrated feats who in the course of doing their duty have killed many bad men. Of course they would be lawmen, Juan Lobo thinks. Of course they would have a home on the seashore and own a great tract of land and call it Tierra Wolfe. Of course.

A Ford touring car is parked alongside one of the Levee Street houses, Marina having come to town earlier today, driven by Harry Sebastian, to have an aching tooth attended by a dentist. They plan to return to the beach in the morning. No neighbors are in sight as the men dismount and lead their horses to the car and tether them to it. Dax and Sarmiento go around to the back and Juan Lobo and Pori to the front.

Harry Sebastian answers the knock at the door. A fat man in dirty clothes, hat in hand, says he is sorry to disturb anyone but he has an important message for Blake and James Wolfe. Harry says neither of them is in town at the moment and there is no telephone where they are, but he will be seeing them tomorrow and will be glad to take the message. Fat Pori brings a revolver up from behind the hat and cocks it as he puts the muzzle to Harry's forehead and backs him into the parlor. Juan Lobo follows them inside and closes the door. Marina enters from the kitchen, drying her hands with a dishcloth and asking who it was, then freezes, seeing the strangers and the gun to her son's head.

Go back in the kitchen, Mother, Harry Sebastian says, thinking of his folded knife in his pocket, his pistol in the other room.

Juan Lobo tells her to stay where she is. Then takes a look into the bedrooms and returns with Harry's gun in his belt and goes into the kitchen and says something to someone at the rear door. Then is back and standing before Marina. She meets his eyes and it is all she can do to hide her fear. Listen, she says. I am Marina Wolfe. You better leave right now and go somewhere far away before my husband hears of this. Juan Lobo grins and says, Which one is he? James Sebastián Wolfe, she says. Poor bastard, Juan Lobo says, married to such a hag.

Don't talk to her like that, you son of a bitch, Harry Sebastian says. Pori drives a knee into Harry's crotch and the boy falls down and clutches himself and vomits. Marina starts to scream but Lobo clamps a hand over her mouth and seizes her to him from behind. He nods at Pori who draws his knife and goes down on one knee and thrusts the blade into Harry's heart.

Marina is wild-eyed, her horrified cries muffled under Lobo's stifling hand as she fights to free herself. And then her struggle slackens and she can make no cry at all for her slashed throat. Lobo lets her fall and puts up his knife and he and Pori leave.

She crawls through her blood to Harry and puts a stoppering hand to his wound as though the force of her love might save the dead boy before her own slowing heart's last stumble.

There is a sign, small and low to the ground, the letters carved into it and burned black—Wolfe Landing. An arrow under the name points down a winding road leading through the high grass and mesquite stands into a riverside palm grove and the town within it, its charter not two months old, with a resident population of eight. Only the tops of the tallest trees are still touched by sunlight at this late afternoon hour as the four horsemen turn onto the narrow road. The sky has gone strange, with clouds bunching overhead and to westward but not in the east, out over the sea.

The road takes them into a large clearing amid the palms and moss-hung trees. The place is but a hamlet, comprising a large two-story house and a few smaller
residences, some outbuildings, a stable and corral holding horses and mules. There are several dray wagons. A pier with a moored pair of rowboats. The men ignore the barking dogs that have converged around them, but the irritated horses snap down at them.

Beside a house, Anselmo and Pepe pause at their work of planing a board on sawbucks and watch the horsemen approach. Lupita comes in view at a window, drying her just-washed hair with a towel. The horsemen rein up and Anselmo says, “Buenas tardes, caballeros. A su servicio.” Beside him, Pepe orders the dogs to shut up but they persist in their commotion.

Juan Lobo smiles and says he wishes to speak to James and Blake Wolfe.

I am sorry to say neither one is here, Anselmo says. His rifle is leaning against the side of the house ten feet away and he curses himself for not having retrieved it as soon as these men came in view. Up close the stink of them is terrific and he sees now the flyblown sack dangling from the saddle horn and feels a stir in his stomach. He tells the man the brothers have gone into town and he should look for them there.

Juan Lobo looks at the woman in the window and she moves out of sight. He had known the twins would not be here, that they are at the beach house as he had been told is their weekend custom, but this place, this so-called town, is theirs, a part of them, as were these people, and he would not pass it by.

A dog nips at his mount's leg and dodges the horse's kick that jostles Lobo in the saddle. Lobo draws his pistol and shoots the dog in the eye and its head hits the ground ahead of the rest of its body.

The gunshot frights the birds from the trees and the other dogs sprint away into the brush as Anselmo yells, You son of a—and the next bullet passes through his head.

By the time they are back on the Boca Chica road and heading east again, the night is fully risen and its only light is from the flaming hamlet. The glow is visible for miles but the only witnesses in range of it are the four horsemen themselves and a trio of Mexican shepherds a half mile south of the river, and even the shepherds cannot see the smoke against a sky so black with clouds. The gunshots and screamings have carried unheard into the uninhabited countryside. The horsemen feel invigorated, two of them having taken their pleasure with Lupita Xocoto, the other two with Selma Fuentes. The remains of the entire population of Wolfe Landing—all eight residents, including two boys, ages six and three, and an infant girl but seven months old—are charring in the flames.

They ride to the end of the Boca Chica road and onto the beach, the enormous dark undulation of the gulf before them. In the eastern sky the clouds have broken and the lowest of the stars demarcate a vague horizon. The men head south along
the smooth beach, the breeze briny, the swash of the breakers muting the jinglings of harness. After a time they see small glowings of light in the distance ahead. The house. When they close to within a hundred yards, they can tell by the lights that it is a two-story on the crest of the sloping beach. They ride up into the dunes and out of sight of the house and then turn south again. Their horses strain for footing in the soft sand and the men dismount and lead them by the reins. They traverse a road of logs packed over with a mixture of gravel and dirt, the trail to the Boca Chica road, the turnoff onto which they could never have found in the dark. When they reckon they are near the house they hobble the horses and crawl over two low dunes and reach the crest of a taller one. And there the house is, fifteen yards from them. Atop the dune they are still below the level of the roofless porch and the windows of the lower floor are much too high for them to see into the house. But the breeze carries to them the sound of laughter. They can make out the garage just south of the house, and a few yards behind it a shed. Lobo and Dax scurry to the shed in a low crouch. By matchlight they find the store of lamp oil for the house—three barrels, one tapped. On a shelf are several empty paint cans, and they fill three of them with oil. Then they roll the three barrels, each in turn, from the shed to the house, setting one against a piling at the rear southwest corner and the other two against the pilings at the east side front corners. They retrieve the open cans of oil and set one beside each of the barrels. Then rejoin Sarmiento and Pori on the dune. And wait for the moon to come up.

Although Juan Lobo has imagined the pleasure of presenting the twins with their brother's head just before he kills them, the fact of the matter is that such a moment cannot be had without first capturing them, and to try to capture them is to give them more of a chance to make a fight of it. No. Not these two. The least chance possible for them. If they die without knowing who is killing them and why, so what? Even if they knew, they would no longer know it when they're dead, would they? The dead are without memory and so have no regret. Lobo well understands that the great failing of revenge is that the moment you kill a man you deliver him from pain and regret and can no longer get even with him. But. You can remember the occasion of getting even with him. You can remember it for the rest of your life. So. The thing of importance, Juan Lobo has told himself, the thing to keep in mind, is that these Wolfe twins will die because
he
, Juan Lobo, wills it. He who will know he was the instrument of their death and will take pleasure from that knowledge for as long as he has left to live.