in any way that didn’t allow for easy legal refutation should that need later arise. But then of course they would as always keep their own secrets and they sensed that Wells knew it. And sensed too that what mattered to him wasn’t whether a man kept secrets but that he knew which secrets to keep.
“I’d say call me Jim,” Wells said, “but my momma raised me to respect my elders and I expect yours did likewise.”
He did all the talking for the next quarter hour. He told them Evaristo wasn’t coming because he hadn’t received their invitation. Rather than go to Evaristo after leaving the twins, Anselmo had gone to Wells. He had once worked for Wells as a stable groom, and though they hadn’t seen much of each other since then, Anselmo believed Don Santiago was the only one who could help him. He told Wells what happened at a smuggling site called the Horseshoe and that he was sure Evaristo would kill him for not bringing him the money for the whiskey. He was willing to be arrested and put in jail where he might be safe. Wells said that wouldn’t be necessary and let Anselmo take refuge in his carriage house. But what to do about Evaristo? Anselmo hadn’t told them Evaristo was a lawman, had he? Well he was. A constable. A constable who had become a problem. “And there’s nobody to blame for that but myself,” Jim Wells said, “since I was the one to recommend him for the job.” A constable was an elected office but a Wells recommendation so surely determined an election it was tantamount to an appointment, and his deputy recommendations were routine hires. The legion of law officers who owed their jobs to Jim Wells included sheriffs, police chiefs, and even Texas Rangers.
But in South Texas a constable had a special duty. Wells said that, loosely speaking, the Cameron County sheriff took care of trouble on the ranches, the police took care of trouble in the towns, and it fell to a relative handful of constables to take care of trouble among the countryside Mexicans—most of whom lived in squalid little settlements called colonias, places you’d never find on any map on account of they weren’t official settlements. What’s more, few colonia residents could speak English, and most Texas lawmen, like most Texans, didn’t know more than a few words of Spanish, a lack that was of major hindrance in dealing with trouble in the colonias. Which was exactly why almost everybody Jim Wells ever recommended for a constable’s post was Mexican—because next to the necessary sand for the job, the chief requisite was Spanish. It was a hard job but it had its advantages. For one thing, because a constable had to work so far out in the brush so much of the time, so far from towns and courtroom, he had a lot of leeway in how he operated. It was no secret that for most crimes short of murder a constable was a lot less likely to arrest a bad-acting Mexican than to fine him and send him on his way with a warning, and then pocket the fine. If the man didn’t have enough money for the fine, he might pay with something else of worth. Because a bad actor would usually rather pay a constable than go to jail, it worked out for both of them, and for the county too, since it didn’t have to cram its jail full of Mexican troublemakers and burden its courtroom with their cases. Of course, if a fella did something just
Evaristo had been a constable for four months now, and Jim Wells said the mistake he’d made in getting the man a badge had nothing to do with his being a smuggler. Along the southern Rio Grande a smuggler was about as commonplace as a carpenter and at least as beneficial to the community, and the only real difference between the smuggling business and most others was the rather more serious consequences of rival competition. No, the problem with Evaristo was that he was a rank bully with the people he was supposed to protect. Since Evaristo’s appointment, Wells had received a load of complaints from various colonias about Evaristo beating up fellas for no good reason and taking gross liberties with women and stealing stock and so on. The folk were begging Wells to make him stop.
“Why not just take back his badge?” James Sebastian said.
“I could see to that,” Wells said. “But then he’d like as not be meaner than ever with the folk on account of they complained on him. And it’s not just him. Anselmo mention the two sidekicks? Evaristo calls them his deputies although they got no more legal standing as deputies than I do as brother-in-law to the Pope. One’s named El Loco and the other Bruto, to give you some idea the kinda fellas we’re talking about. Besides being his so-called deputies, they do most the smuggling jobs for him, one or the other usually working with Anselmo. The fella who got the machete throwed through him—
Blake said, “This is interesting, sir, but, well, what’s it got to do with us?” But they had been studying his eyes and were pretty sure what it might have to do with them.
“Why, son, I thought it might behoove you to know something about the fella you wanted to meet with this morning to, ah—how did Anselmo put it?—to try and make an arrangement with him about his using your land. And, as Anselmo says, to talk about the money you took off his recently deceased cousin. Have I been misinformed?”
“No, sir,” said Blake. “We wanted to let him know that if he wants to keep doing business on our land, we think it only fair he give us a certain percentage of his profits.”
“And to let him know the money from yesterday would be a sort of good-faith binder,” James Sebastian said.
Wells smiled at one of them and then the other. “You don’t believe for a minute he’d agree?”
“Well, sir, that’d be up to him,” James said.
“I see. What will you do when he tells you to give him his money and go jump in the lake?”
“Tell him it’s not his money anymore and we’d ruther stay dry,” Blake said.
“I see.” Wells beamed. “I have to say, you boys aint lacking in self-confidence.”
In that moment, the Wolfe brothers and Jim Wells recognized in each other something they would none of them have known what to call except perhaps an affinity of outlook. An understanding that prompted James Sebastian to say, “If you don’t mind my saying so, Mr Wells, it seems like the best solution to your problem with this Evaristo would be if he decided to light out to a new life somewhere else.”
“Oh you’re right, son, that’d be a blessing for sure.”
“Well, it’s the sorta thing happens all the time,” James said. “A man just up and goes one day. Without so much as an hasta la vista to anybody.”
“I’ve heard that some men do that, yes,” Wells said.
“And of course if Evaristo lit out, he’d be taking leave of his river business,” Blake said. “Be an opportunity for somebody who was looking to get into the trade.”
Wells smiled at them. “I have to tell you, boys, I admire your, ah, eye for opportunity.”
“When do you reckon Evaristo might head out in the brush again?” James said.
“Can’t say. But if I was him and neither of my smugglers come back last night, first thing I’d do today is go to their house to see if they’re there. If they weren’t, and neither was the wagon—which it isn’t, since it’s at my house where Anselmo brung it—then I’d likely go out to that Horseshoe place to see what I might find there.” Wells consulted his pocketwatch. “It’s my guess he’s probly already been to their houses and is on the way to the Horseshoe this minute.”
They met them coming back on the Boca Chica road, less than a mile from the turn-off that led to the Horseshoe. They saw each other from a long way off on that open road and both parties reined their mounts from a lope to a trot as they advanced on each other. The short shotgun was slung muzzle down on James Sebastian’s saddle horn and he had removed his coat and hung it from the saddle horn too so that it covered the gun. He patted his horse’s neck and then slipped his hand under the coat and cocked both hammers. Blake’s revolver was in his waistband and covered by the flap of his open coat. When the two parties closed to twenty yards, the twins slowed their horses to a walk and the other riders did the same and they reined up with less than ten yards between them. Evaristo was easy to recognize by Anselmo’s description of his leanness and the droop of his mustache. The other wore his hat pushed back on his head and his grin seemed more permanent state than response and his eyes spoke of some restless eagerness. El Loco. Both men with revolvers on their hips. His eyes bespoke his recognition of them, los gringos cuates. And he had surely heard too of the house they had built somewhere out here.
“Buenos dias, senor,” Blake said. “Que bonito tiempo, verdad?”
Evaristo grinned to hear his Spanish. Yes, he said. The pity about fine weather, however, is that it never lasts long enough.
“Lo mismo como la vida,” James said, reaching to pat his mount’s neck and then sliding his hand under the
