The twins taught them how to read the clouds and the wind and the different colors of the sea. How to fish for shark. And the beach was a good place for teaching them to shoot and for lessons in how to defend themselves with hands and feet. Marina and Remedios would sometimes sit on the shaded porch and watch the self-defense sessions with narrowed nervous eyes. Though the boys were of course bigger and stronger than Vicki Angel, she was the quickest and very nimble and was sometimes able to trip one of them down. One day she tripped Morgan James, who was the oldest and biggest, and when the others laughed he was furious with embarrassment. He pinned Vicki on the ground with a knee on her chest and tried to force a handful of sand in her mouth but she flung sand in his eyes and broke free and outran him down the beach until he gave up the chase.
When Morgan James turned fourteen, the twins started teaching all their sons the river business. The ways and means of it, the finances and accounting methods, the recording codes, all of which the boys were quick to absorb. They began taking the boys in pairs and by turns on some of the smuggling transactions, instructing them to watch everything very carefully and questioning them afterward to see how well they had observed. They introduced them to the Goyas and to the buyers in Corpus Christi.
The twins never spoke to their wives about this training process, and the boys never said anything of it to their mothers. But Marina and Remedios of course knew it was taking place, as it had to, and if they thought the boys too young to be learning such things, they did not say so.
The following summer the Goyas sent word to the twins that there were two men who wanted to talk to them and it might prove profitable if they did. At the Goya estate the twins were introduced to a pair of well- groomed mestizos who said their names were Yadier and Elizondo and their last names did not matter. They wore good suits in which they did not seem comfortable but they spoke well and were quick to the point. They wanted guns. Rifles. And ammunition of course. As many and as much as possible. The twins smiled. Blake Cortez said it sounded like somebody was thinking of going to war. Against who, I wonder, James said grinning. The two men neither smiled nor answered the question. The word of late from across the river was that Porfirio Diaz’s political enemies were still in mortal fear of him and keeping to the shadows, but there was a growing and bolder discontent in the countryside. Two years ago, Diaz had won reelection for the sixth time and had now been president for twenty-four consecutive years and twenty-eight of the last thirty-two. He was seventy-six years old but not about to step down—or stop using his club on those who rejected his bread.
The Yadier one said they knew the Wolfes had an excellent smuggling point on their property that permitted them to operate in great safety. The question, said the Elizondo one, was whether the Wolfes could get the guns and ammunition. Blake asked what kind of rifles they wanted. They said the new Springfields. Those could be a little hard to get, James Sebastian said. Of course, the Elizondo one said. That is why we will pay well for them. But naturally, we do not want to be cheated on the price. Naturally, James Sebastian said. The twins said they would see what they could arrange. They agreed to meet at the Goya estate again in ten days.
The twins made inquiries that led them to a Fort Brown master sergeant named Leonard Richardson, the NCO in charge of the post armory. Silverhaired and beefy, he was dressed like a rancher when they met at a corner table in a loud and crowded Matamoros cantina. Richardson knew about the twin constables by reputation. He’d heard of their law enforcement methods in the outland and the rumors of their sideline as liquor smugglers. He told them he had been dealing in army weapons for ten years and had suppliers from various army forts and other military installations throughout Texas and all over the gulf coast, every man of them an expert at reworking inventory ledgers to disguise the thefts. He could easily get them Mausers or Krags. The Springfield M1903 was of course a more difficult acquisition but he could do it for the right price.
“Which is?” James Sebastian asked.
Richardson told him—and was quick to admit it was steep, but then he was the most dependable provider they could hope to do business with. “Every delivery I ever said I’d make got made,” he said, “when and where promised.” He let them confer privately for the time it took him to go to the bar to get three more mugs of beer.
When he returned to the table they told him they had a different price in mind. Richardson sighed and started to say the price wasn’t negotiable, but then heard one of them offer to pay ten percent more than what he’d asked—on condition that from then on he would sell Springfields to nobody but them. Richardson grinned and said they had a deal.
“You understand that if we should find out you’re selling Springfields to somebody else, we’ll look on it as a breach of contract,” James Sebastian said.
“Such a breach would be unjust,” Blake said, “and we have a strong belief in justice.”
Richardson looked from one to the other. He had dealt with many dangerous men and was no fool. “I understand you very well, gentlemen,” he said. “I have the same view of justice.”
There were handshakes all around, a surreptitious exchange of money.
Six days later a pair of heavily laden wagons were turned over to them at two o’clock in the morning at the northern city limit. By daybreak the contents of the wagons were cached in the shed at Wolfe Landing.
The next time they met with Yadier and Elizondo the twins brought one of the Springfields for them to examine. The Mexicans were pleased, and they understood that as a matter of precaution the twins’ supplier—Mr Jones, the twins called him—would never deliver more than one wagonload at a time but could deliver as often as every two weeks.
The twins would continue their traffic in booze but their main trade henceforth was guns, a far more lucrative commodity. Most of their arms transactions would be with Yadier and Elizondo, but there would be some with other parties too, few of whom had any political principle in common with each other besides antagonism to Porfirio Diaz.
In the fall of ‘08, John Louis Little and his family arrived on the border. A yellow fever epidemic had struck Matamoros earlier in the year—Brownsville had been quarantined—and one of its victims was Ursula’s father. Ursula and John Louis attended Don Hector’s funeral and were afterward informed that he had bequeathed the cattle hacienda, Las Lomas, to his son Gaspar, and that Dona Martina would continue to live there. To Ursula and John Louis, Don Hector had willed his sprawling horse ranch to the west of Matamoros. It was a fine place, its rich pasturelands nourished by a wide web of creeks, its large house well shaded by cottonwoods.
It was not easy for John Louis to take leave of Patria Chica. He had lived there all his life and for the past eight years had been his brother’s segundo. But he was very happy to have his own ranch. Zack Jack said he hated to see him go but he understood why he must. Zack had an able man in mind to serve as segundo in John’s place until young Eduardo Luis—Luis Charon’s son—was seasoned enough to assume the job. Eduardo was only thirteen but already eager to start learning the estate’s operations. Edward Little, too, told John Louis he would miss him, never mind the infrequence of their time together through the years. They promised to visit each other as often as they could, and Edward wished him luck with the Tamaulipas ranch.
For both Ursula and John Louis it was a return to the region of their birth, though he was less than a year old the last time he’d been there. They named the ranch Cielo Largo. It was managed so well by the foreman and his segundo that there would never be much for John Louis to do except attend to its finances.
He knew he had kin in Brownsville—his Aunt Gloria’s twin cousins, Blake and James Wolfe. Although she had never met them she had learned much about them from her brother, Bruno, who had been living at the Wolfe hacienda in Veracruz for twenty years. She had in turn told John Louis and Zack all about the twins, including the story of their killing the man who killed their father and escaping the assassin’s vengeful brother, an army general.
One Saturday, just a few weeks after their arrival at Cielo Largo, John Louis and Ursula went into Matamoros and ferried across the river and asked after the Wolfe brothers at the city clerk’s office. They were directed to the two Levee Street addresses. As it happened, the Wolfe families were at Playa Blanca that weekend—except for the twins, who had remained in town for a meeting with Jim Wells. In shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows and with a cigar in hand, James Sebastian answered the knock at the door and saw a neatly dressed couple standing there, the man rugged-looking, brownskinned but green-eyed, the woman a striking mestiza. John Louis introduced himself and Ursula in English and said he was looking for James and Blake Wolfe, who were first cousins to his sister-in-law Gloria Wolfe y Blanco de Little.
Two hours later, sitting at the kitchen table over their second pot of coffee, they were as easy with each
