Country of the Bad Wolfes

other as if they’d been acquainted for years. The twins liked the Littles but were habitually chary about revealing very much of themselves. They were so artful about it that not until later would the Littles realize they had not really learned much about them beyond what Gloria had already told John Louis. Only that they were county constables and real estate investors and had homes in Brownsville and at the seaside, where their families were passing the weekend.

The twins, on the other hand, had learned a great deal not only about the Littles and their kin but even about their own. Such as their Uncle Samuel having been a San Patricio, one more detail their father had withheld from them. And about the death of their cousin Gloria and the circumstance of it, which evoked a smile from Blake Cortez both sympathetic and admiring. “Wish I’d known her,” he said.

James Sebastian wanted to know if it was true the Little family was friends with Porfirio Diaz, as they’d been informed. John Louis said it was.

“You know him yourself?” Blake said.

“Only all my life,” John Louis said. His father had known Diaz for some forty years and still worked for him.

“Doing what?” Blake asked.

John Louis shrugged and said that was something known only to his father and Porfirio Diaz.

“Sounds mighty damn mysterious,” James Sebastian said with a grin. And quickly added, “Pardon my language, Miss Ursula.”

She smiled and said, “Please, no more Miss Ursula. I am Ursula or Sulita, as you prefer. And you are damn well pardoned.” Evoking laughter from them all.

They were quick to grow close, these border branches of the families Little and Wolfe. Marina and Remedios welcomed Ursula with sisterly camaraderie, and their children regarded Hector Louis as one more brother in the bunch. Persuaded that the school the Wolfe boys attended was the best in the region, John Louis and Ursula decided that Hector should also go there, and to make it easier they bought a house in Brownsville, a brick two- story on a large corner lot on Palm Boulevard and only a three-block walk to the Wolfe homes. The first time the Wolfes visited the Littles in their new residence, Hector Louis and Cesar Augusto got into a fight in the backyard, the cause of which was never made clear. The adults came out of the house to see what was happening and found the other boys yelling fight strategies now to one combatant and now to the other, Vicki Angel looking on with them and with as much avidity. Cesar was nearly two years older than Hector Louis and much better versed in fighting, but Hector was slightly larger and had no lack of courage or verve. Ursula wanted to stop them but Marina put a hand on her arm and restrained her with a shake of the head. The men let them punch and grapple in the dirt for a minute longer before James Sebastian pulled them apart by the collars, declaring Cesar the winner but telling battered Hector he had no cause for shame. The two boys thereafter became best friends, and Cesar taught him how to fight but then was sorry he did, realizing too late that if they should ever fight again, bigger Hector would surely get the best of him.

The families made frequent visits between their Brownsville homes and between Playa Blanca and Cielo Largo, and the Wolfes greatly enjoyed the barbecues and rodeos at the Littles’ ranch. The twins admired the excellent breed of John Louis’s herds and introduced him to several serious buyers of horseflesh. As for the Littles, their first visit to Playa Blanca was their first view of the sea. They learned to swim there, all three of them, and to sail.

Eventually the twins took John Louis to Wolfe Landing, their arrival heralded by the yappings of Anselmo’s dogs, and introduced him to Anselmo and Pepe and Licho. Anselmo had now been married for three years and he and his wife Lupita had a two-year-old son named Costo, and Licho Fuentes was engaged to a girl named Selma. The twins showed him through the large house they had not used much over the years but that was well-kept by a crew of maids Pepe Xocoto transported from town once a week.

The twins and John Louis were seated on the verandah and finishing their third drink when they told him they thought he should know they sometimes did a little smuggling.

“Oh hell,” John Louis said, “Suli and I have known that since our first meal in a Brownsville cafe. People talk, you know.”

The railroad had come to Brownsville in 1904, and with it a greater influx of Anglos, most of them in search of good cropland. More and more of the countryside continued to be cleared for agriculture, and small mestizo farms continued to give way to larger Anglo operations. More so than in any other part of the state, the mix of Mexicans and Anglos in the delta had long been harmonious, but few of the newcomers had any interest in local customs or in learning Spanish, and most of them disdained all things Mexican. Racial resentments had begun to simmer, then to boil.

In addition to these alterations to the natural landscape and the social fabric, there had come the inevitable transformations of technology. The telephone. Electric lighting. A sewer system. A waterworks. A trolley line. The changes came and came.

And the world spun ever faster.

Over time, the twins had gradually reduced their colonia circuit rides to twice a year, which sufficed to maintain order in them, though sometimes a colonia would send a plea for help to Jim Wells who’d get the word to them and they would at once ride out to attend to the matter. Now they didn’t want to do it anymore. They liked being with their families at the beach and they liked taking part in the gun transactions at the Horseshoe, as they had begun doing.

They tried to give their badges back to Jim Wells but he refused to accept them. He said they would no longer be required to ride the circuit, he would have other constables assigned to it. But he wanted them to remain special constables with no specific duty other than to be his “confidantes,” as he called it, to be available whenever he should need to talk about somebody who was causing him a problem and refusing to be reasonable in settling it.

They said being his confidantes was the least they could do for him.

“Good,” Wells said. “So keep the badges. They’re a mighty handy thing for confidantes to have.”

The profits from arms smuggling dwarfed what they earned from liquor. They had been smuggling guns for more than a year when they bought the last of the parcels extricated by Jim Wells from the welter of land-grant litigation and achieved their goal of owning all the land—minus the state right-of-way to the gulf—east of the city and between the river and Nameless Creek. An area of some fifty square miles, depending on the Rio Grande’s unpredictable and ever-shifting meanders. Shortly after that final deed came into their hands, they told Jim Wells they wanted one more thing.

“A town?” Jim Wells said. He grinned from one of them to the other. They were puffing cigars and sipping whiskey in his den and waiting to be called to Christmas Eve dinner with their families, after which Wells and his wife and children would attend the midnight mass at the Immaculate Conception Church, as they did every Christmas.

“Yessir,” Blake Cortez said. “You always wanted to know what our big plan was. Well, that’s it.”

The three had been talking of the state’s intention to form several new counties in South Texas in the next few years, and Blake asked if it was true that one of the new counties was going to be named Jim Wells. “I’ve heard that rumor,” Wells said, as though he had no inkling at all. “If it happens, it’ll be an honor.” They all laughed and had another drink. Then the twins told him of wanting to make Wolfe Landing a town.

“Let me get this straight,” Wells said. “You want Wolfe Landing to be a bona fide town. A state-chartered town. Out there in the middle of that godforsaken land nobody owns but you?”

“Yessir,” James Sebastian said.

“And of course the state would get the right-of-way for a road to it from off the Boca Chica Road,” Blake said. “Can’t have a town without a public road to it, naturally.”

Wells looked at them as if not quite sure they weren’t joking.

“You know we’ve always wanted to keep the world from crowding in too close,” James said. “What better