Country of the Bad Wolfes

glasses and smiled. “Could be an interesting day.”

As they had surmised, the Bruja Roja was the faster boat. She fast closed the gap between them to about four hundred yards and then loosened her sails to maintain that distance. James could now make out that the boat held four men.

In early afternoon they came abreast of where they knew the cove inlet to be. The red boat had held its distance behind them as precisely as if they were towing it on 400 yards of line. Blake held course for another fifty yards, then said, “Now we’ll see just how good they are.” And tillered the sloop toward shore.

“They’re trimming sail,” James said. “Here they come!”

The twins had timed the tide well. There was a good foot and a half of water between the keel and the rocky bottom when Blake turned the sloop to port again, and the boat bore toward the inlet mouth that as yet wasn’t visible to the men in the red boat. They laughed at the certain confusion of their pursuers, who had to be wondering what the hell the twins were doing, first running in so dangerously close to the rocky coast and then turning back to southward. Not until the Marina Dos vanished would they realize there was a pass there.

As soon as they entered the inlet and were behind the stand of palms and out of sight of the Bruja Roja, James Sebastian dropped the mainsail and handed his brother the line to the jib. He grabbed up the oilskin sack containing the Winchesters rolled up in clothes for protective padding and threw it out onto the portside bank and waited till the boat was past the rocky stretch before he sprang from the deck to land in a rolling tumble on the sand. Blake continued steering the boat toward the south beach—and just before running aground he let the small sail drop and heaved the anchor over the stern. Then swung himself over the port side and dropped into water up to his chest and slogged out onto the beach and ran back to where his brother was crouched in the palms, a position affording clear view of the approach to the inlet. James handed him a carbine and Blake levered a cartridge into the chamber.

The red boat came in view and turned toward the inlet, following the same route as the Marina Dos. But its unsteady weave bespoke the pilot’s lack of confidence in steering at that speed toward a passage so narrow. One man was working the mainsail and another the jib. The fourth was crouched at the starboard side, leaning out and serving as lookout, a rifle in one hand.

The pilot’s attention was fixed on the tip of the inlet’s rocky tongue, but in his fear of the point he was holding the boat too far to the right to suit the lookout, who thought they were going to rake against the inlet’s inner bank and began flapping his left arm and yelling That way, that way! Thinking the lookout had spotted some obstacle within the inlet and was waving him away to open water, the pilot panicked and heeled the sloop to port so sharply that the lookout lost his balance and went overboard. But they were already too close to the inlet to clear the tongue and the boat struck the rocks at a point near the starboard bow. The arresting jar sent the other two crewmen hurtling out onto the rocks as the pilot slammed face first into the roof of the open cuddy hatch and dropped into the cabin. For a moment the swaying boat held in place on the point, its loosed sails flailing and popping in the wind, and then the inlet’s outgoing current shoved the stern to seaward and the boat detached from the rocks with a loud cracking shudder. It carried away in a slow rotation as the bow went under and the stern lifted and it sank in fifteen feet of water.

The twins came out of the palms, the Winchesters dangling from their hands. The two who landed on the rocks were Mayans. One lay on his belly, eyes closed, the top of his head a bloody mesh of hair and bone. One hand kept opening and closing on the stony ground as if were trying to hold to the earth itself. The other Mayan was on his back with a leg turned inward at an unnatural angle and nothing of him moving but his heaving chest and his eyes, which fixed on the twins as they loomed over him. Blake Cortez nudged him with a foot and said, What’s the matter, friend? Bust your back? The Mayan blinked but did not speak.

“Lookee here,” James Sebastian said.

The one who had fallen overboard was climbing out of the water. Genaro. Of the missing fingers. He no longer had the rifle. He saw the twins and halted in water to his shins, dripping, clothes sagging. He slicked his hair back and smiled and said, That did not go very well.

What were you planning for us? James Sebastian said. Same as with the others who sold you good hides?

Genaro Carrasco coughed and spat and affected puzzlement. I do not know what you mean, he said. He started to come out of the water and then stood fast when James Sebastian raised the carbine like a pistol at his hip.

“You see the lie in this fella’s eyes, Brother Black?” James said.

“In great big old capital letters, Brother Jake.”

“Como?” Genaro said.

My brother says you are a bad liar, James said. And cocked the carbine’s hammer.

Genaro Carrasco raised a cautioning hand. Be careful with that nice rifle, boy. I know you don’t want—

The crack of the Winchester spooked an eruption of birds from the trees as the impact of the bullet to his heart knocked Genaro back into the water with a flat splash. He floated supine, spread-eagled and bobbing, eyes wide to the sun. The twins watched the current wheel him around the point and out into the gulf and take him under.

“Well hell,” Blake said. He went over to the paralyzed one and shot him. Then shot the one with the broken skull. “The tillerman?” he asked his brother.

“Never come up,” James Sebastian said. “Way he hit that cabin, probly busted his neck like a stick.”

“Or got knocked cold and drowned. Either way.”

They put the rifles aside and picked up one of the dead Mayans by the hands and feet and slung the body into the outgoing current and it was gone by the time they did the same with the other.

Those were their first three—the tillerman not counting. It came to them as easily as all else they ever determined to do.

“They won’t be expecting them back for a while,” James Sebastian said. “Few days at soonest. Gives us the advantage.”

“Let’s get to it,” Blake said.

That night, Crispin Carrasco had just finished tending to the animals in the stable and blown out the lantern wick and started out the door to go back to the house when he was grabbed from behind. An arm closed hard around the lower part of his face and over his mouth even as it tugged his head back and the edge of a knife blade sliced deeply into the left side of his throat and in a single smooth action carved through it all the way over to his right ear. He could then not have called out even if his mouth were uncovered. His eyes swelled at the pain and he felt the heat of his blood sopping his chest and his whimper was a wet gurgle as he tried with both hands to detach the iron arm and felt the killer’s breath warm and easy at his ear. They held in that posture like perverse lovers for a moment and then Crispin felt an abrupt sleepiness and his hands fell away from the arm. Then the man behind him was not there and Crispin saw the stars tumbling toward his feet as he thought, This is not so bad. And was past all thought and feeling when he struck the earth.

They dragged the body into an empty stall and covered it with straw and kicked dirt over the blood trail. Then went to the bunkhouse and slipped into its darkness. James Sebastian struck a match and a couple of the workers stirred but didn’t wake up and he saw where the lantern hung on a post and went to it and lighted the wick. Blake Cortez tapped the muzzle of his carbine on the wall until all six workers had come awake and were sitting up in their bunks. One of them had started to say, What the hell is—? But went mute at the sound of a rifle being cocked.

Don’t speak except to answer my questions, Blake told them.

The workers informed them there were four Carrasco brothers but one had gone away in the red boat with the Mayans. There were no women in the house, no children.

James Sebastian told them they could have all the animals in the stable but to get them immediately and then get out of Veracruz and never come back.

The workers moved fast, and the ones that got the best animals were those who did not even take the time to dress but hurried to the stable with their clothes under their arms.

Moises and Chuy Carrasco were at the table playing cards when the front door opened and one of the twins who called themselves Rivera and whom they had never expected to see again came in and stepped off to the side