Country of the Bad Wolfes

Then at midafternoon came a report that both of the main entrances to the hacienda had been blocked by felled trees and that a labor crew had again been warned off by rifleshots—and the proof that the twins were still unfound seemed irrefutable. But had they sailed off before their hunters arrived at the cove, or were they in hiding in the jungle, or somewhere else on the hacienda? And if they had got away and Lopez wasn’t sure of it, how much longer would the man persist in his afflictions of Buenaventura before he gave up?

As if those two haven’t caused enough misery, John Samuel thought. Now they bring this on me.

That night a fire broke out at one of the coffee warehouses and its entire store was lost. A few hours later the slaughterhouse was in flames and the damage was extensive. In the last hour and a half of darkness, one of the stables at Rancho Isabela was set ablaze. The hands were able to rescue the horses but the stable would be reduced to ashes.

When Amos Bentley arrived for his usual Sunday supper with Sofia Reina and Maria Palomina he found them in red-eyed sorrow. They told him the news of John Roger’s murder and he said Oh my God and slumped onto a sofa and cried like a child. Sofi and Maria Palomina sat to either side of him and crooned consolations and stroked his head even as they brushed at their own tears. They all three stayed up most of the night, talking of John Roger and bemoaning the loss of him. Next morning Sofi went to the nearest telegraph station and sent a wire of commiseration to her brother and the rest of the family at Buenaventura.

On Tuesday came the telegram from Bruno about General Espinosa and the man named Lopez whom he’d sent in search of the twins and about Bruno’s fear that disaster might ensue. And now, atop their bereavement, Sofi and Maria Palomina were afraid too.

Think of poor Felicia, Maria Palomina said. So near to giving birth. Imagine her worry! Who is this man, this damned general, to cause such fear to everyone?

Gloria! Sofi said.

What? her mother said, confused.

Gloria! We have to tell Gloria! Sofi said. Gloria’s husband was a friend of President Diaz. Her husband’s father still worked for him. Maybe Gloria could get one or the other of them to speak to him about this and maybe he would do something to help Buenaventura.

Maria Palomina’s face was bald disbelief. Maybe who would? The president? The president, Sofita? She bit her lower lip and regarded her daughter as if the girl had lost her mind.

The idea suddenly seemed to Sofi as preposterous as it did to her mother. But what else was there to try?

Rather than use a public telegraph for such a sensitive message, Sofi went to Amos, who himself knew Morse code and whose office in the Nevada Mining Company building was equipped with its own telegraph apparatus for private correspondence with far-flung clients. She showed him Bruno’s latest wire and he shared her concern and of course would do what he could to help. Addressing the transmission to Gloria Wolfe y Blanco de Little at the station of the Hacienda Patria Chica, Amos tapped out Sofi’s message, informing Gloria of their Uncle John’s killing and all else that Bruno had said and asking if her husband or father-in-law could in any way be of assistance to Buenaventura.

Sofi then wanted Amos to send a message to Bruno to let him know she had told everything to their sister, who might be able to help. Amos tried, but Buenaventura was not receiving. The line must be down, he told Sofi.

Sofi had been home three hours when a messenger arrived from the Nevada Mining Company with a sealed envelope for her from Mr Amos Bentley. It contained a wire from Gloria that said, The matter is being attended to. Be brave.

CREEDS OF FRATERNITY

A few days before Gloria received Sofi’s telegram, she and Louis had quarreled about his dalliance with one of the girls in the hacienda laundry. I won’t be like those stupid Creole wives who pretend never to know what’s going on behind their backs, Gloria said. Not me, mister! And because he was no more bred to the role of a hacendado than she was to that of a hacendado’s wife, Louis could not muster the lordliness to ignore her protests and by a cold stare and utter silence make clear that he would do as he damned well pleased. Rather, he chose to profess outrage at the allegation and demanded to know who had told her such a malicious falsehood. She would not reveal that the information had come from her devoted personal maid Leila, who had wept in telling her of seeing Louis and the girl coming out of his office just off the main courtyard, the girl still straightening her clothes. Besides, Gloria knew her husband well and she could see the lie in his eyes. I’m warning you, she said. I won’t be humiliated. Warning me? Louis said. He had an urge to slap her, and that he didn’t was not entirely due to gallantry. Whenever she was truly angry, the look in her eyes gave him pause, it always had. In the four days since the argument, they had not said more than a few words to each other. Edward Little had meanwhile arrived for a visit and was aware of the tension between them, but he never intervened in their marital disputes nor even commented on them.

When Gloria read her sister’s telegram she put aside her resentment and went to Louis and said, “I need your help,” and handed him the wire. He read it, and then together they went to the library to see his father.

Edward put aside his volume of Our Mutual Friend and read the message. He asked Gloria how old her twin cousins were. She wasn’t sure but believed it was about two years younger than her Luis Charon, which would make them sixteen.

“The fella deviling the place aint the problem, it’s the general he works for, that Espinosa,” Louis said. “Find out for me where he is and I’ll do the rest.”

Edward affected to study the wire as he deliberated the situation. He knew that Gloria had never met her Uncle John Wolfe, the American hacendado her family in Mexico City had not known of until a chance meeting between him and her brother a couple of years ago. Gloria had got the story from her little sister Sofi and in turn related it at the supper table one night while Edward was visiting. She also announced that, as her sister and brother had done, she had added Wolfe to her name, which was now Gloria Tomasina Wolfe y Blanco de Little. Louis joked that he had to take a deep breath just to say it. The Littles had thought it an interesting story, but both men—as well as Gloria herself—had known too much happenchance in their own lives to be awed by the coincidence of her family’s reunion. Gloria told them how much better her Uncle John had made the lives of her mother and sister and how happy her brother had been to go live at the uncle’s hacienda. It seemed unfair, she said, that the only sad part about the reunion fell to Uncle John, who’d made everyone else so happy. According to her sister, Uncle John had thought his brother—Gloria’s father—had been dead for many years before he actually was, and did not learn the truth until many years after he actually died.

Poor Uncle John, Gloria said. Bruno said he cried when he heard of his brother’s terrible punishments as a San Patricio.

Anyone observing Edward Little at the moment Gloria disclosed the detail of the San Patricios would have seen no sign of the jolt it gave him, so helpful was his disfigured face in disguising his emotions. He busied himself with his pipe as Louis said, “Whoa there, girl. Your pa was a Saint Paddy? I never even knew he’d been in that war.”

Edward’s younger sons, Zachary Jack and John Louis, were listening hard. Now sixteen and fourteen years old, respectively, they were hard-muscled ranch hands but versed in social etiquette by their Aunt Gloria, as they called her, and they knew not to intrude on the conversation of their elders.

That Gloria had revealed something she had not intended to was obvious from her sudden flush. She looked down at her plate and stirred the lamb stew with her fork. “No. I mean yes,” she said. “Yes he was a San Patricio, and no I never told you.”

“How come?”

She looked at Edward, who sat puffing his pipe with an affected casualness. Then said to her husband, “I did