The twins looked at each other and then back at him and said of course and pardon their manners and asked him to join them. Wells hung his hat on the ladderback chair and sat himself so that he could easily shift his attention between them. “I mean to say, you fellas are the twinnest twins I ever saw.” A few of the curious were still eyeing them, but when Wells glanced their way they cut their attention elsewhere. “I take it you know who I am?” Wells said, again pitching his voice not to carry beyond their table.
“Yessir,” Blake Cortéz said, muting his own voice. “Doesn’t everybody in here?”
Wells’s mustache widened. “I suppose they do.” His eyes were bright with bonhomie and crafty intelligence. “I know about you boys too. Leastways I know what-all you’ve told folk and what they have to say about you. Speak good Spanish, they say, on account of you grew up in Mexico. I can see I was told true about your proper manners.”
In fluent Spanish with only a trace of accent, he said, But I don’t believe there are many people who know that at least one of you might—I emphasize might—be able to throw a machete through a man some twenty feet off. It’s something I heard tell, but it’s mighty hard to believe. His smile and manner did not alter. To anyone glancing their way he could have been relating an amusing anecdote.
The twins wondered whether he had talked to Anselmo, or to Evaristo after he’d talked to Anselmo.
Well sir, Blake said, I don’t fault you for finding it hard to believe. Because if such a thing actually happened, it would probably have been more like ten feet.
If such a thing actually happened, James Sebastian said.
“I see,” Wells said. “Well, let me just say that if such a thing actually happened, even at ten feet, I’d be mighty doggone impressed.” As they would soon come to realize, Jim Wells almost never used profanity in either language—and, like themselves, he could shift from folksy vernacular to formal diction whenever it suited him. He again reverted to Spanish. Of course, if anybody wanted to try to prove such a thing actually happened, first thing he’d have to do is produce a body, or at least a witness more reliable than, oh, the employee of a smuggler, say. But I would bet that if such a thing actually did happen, the body would probably already be somewhere beyond all possibility of recovery.
That would be my bet too, James said. He and Blake smiled back at him. He was as genial as they’d heard. He piqued their curiosity.
“Look here, boys, I hope you’ll pardon my bluntness, but there’s something I have to know and I want you to tell me true. You on the run from the law? I mean real law, American law.” They would have smiled to learn that his curiosity had already prompted him to make telegraphic inquiries of sheriffs’ offices all over the state, seeking to know if they had warrants on either James S or Blake C Wolfe.
“No sir, we aint,” James said.
Wells nodded. “Good, good. Well now, let me just say, I never take long to make up my mind about somebody, and I have a feeling that neither do yall. I’d like us to speak frankly, so what say we quit being coy about that riverside business and let’s agree that whatever gets said between us stays between us. You have my word on it. I got yours?”
Again the twins swapped a quick look. Then Blake Cortéz said, You do, sir. Despite the man’s casual fostering of trust, they had read his eyes and knew he was not one to ever tell anybody anything incriminating, not 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 too wrong to be let off with a fine, the constable would bring him in. Unless of course the hardcase was too drunk or too ornery or too stupid to know not to make a fight of it and left the constable no choice but to shoot him. That happened now and again and everybody knew it did. But there was hardly ever any to-do about it.
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.