After three months went by without a word from Evaristo, Jim Wells himself called on Mrs Dória. He told her he was sorry but it was probably best to assume her husband wouldn’t be coming back. He informed her that a bank account had been opened in her name and would receive a monthly deposit sufficient for her to take care of her children until they were of age or she remarried.
“I have to say, she didn’t seem all that distressed by the idea her husband might be gone for good,” Wells told the twins. “Her only concern was the means to feed her kids, and now that’s took care of. Anyhow, she’s a right goodlookin woman, so I don’t expect her children will be without a daddy too long.”
It was a chill March evening and Wells and the twins were sitting with drinks and cigars before a low fire in his den. In the parlor, his wife Pauline and their thirteen-year-old daughter Zoe were entertaining the twins’ wives and young sons while the family cook was preparing supper. In the three months of their acquaintance, the twins and Jim Wells and their families had supped together at the Wells’ home several times, and there would be many more such evenings over the years to come. Suppers and small parties in the company of their families and occasionally with other guests as well. And there would be meetings too of just the three of them, at an hour when their families were abed, when the men would converse in muted voices and dim lamplight about topics privileged to themselves alone.
Only two weeks earlier, Wells had told the twins that his boyhood dream had been to become a man of influence and respect, and if he did say so himself he had achieved that aspiration and was proud of it. They knew he was mildly drunk—his drawl a little more pronounced—and enjoying the bourbon’s liberation of sentiments he rarely voiced. “But I’ll tell you the truth, boys,” he said. “I’d give it all up in a minute if I could just be your age again. And I mean without a nickel in my pocket. All the money on earth aint worth spit compared to bein young and havin a dream to chase after. It’s nice to arrive at it, no denyin that, but the real fun’s in the gettin there. The gettin there. I cannot say how much I envy you. I expect you fellas have some dream of your own and I surely hope you attain it.”
Blake Cortéz said that, for one thing, they wanted a house by the sea.
“Well heck, that’s simple enough,” Wells said. “Just build yourself one. Around Point Isabel probly the best place. Then you’ll only have three houses—excuse me, I mean four. That your big aim? Own more and more houses?”
They had bought the lot next to the Levee Street house and were nearly finished with the house they were raising on it. Enlarged as their two families had become, and with Remedios Marisól expecting her third child in the summer, the house they shared had become much too small and they decided that each family would have its own, side by side.
The seaside house wasn’t their big dream, they told Wells, but in thinking about a beach house they had come to understand what they really wanted. Instead of acquiring a separate gulfside property, the thing to do was to extend Tierra Wolfe to the gulfside.
“You mean to buy up all the land in between?”
“Yessir,” James said. “The coast aint but about eight miles from our eastmost line as the crow flies.”
“Make it sound like a stone toss,” Wells said. “How far up you thinkin to go?”
“Nameless Creek. We figure it’d be best to keep the same north boundary.”
Wells smiled from one of them to the other. “That’s a smart of property, boys.”
“A hankering for a little more land aint anything needs explaining to a cattleman,” Blake said.
“Well, you’re right about that, though I know dang well you aint about to raise cows out there. Fact is, a hankerin for more land don’t need explainin to nobody. Some men know what they want it for before they get it and some don’t know till after and some just want it to have it.”
“That’s right,” Blake said. “And like a fella once said, it’s the getting that’s the fun.”
Wells grinned. “Well, that aint exactly what the fella said but it’s close enough. Tell me true, boys, you got a reason for wantin all that ground?”
“Well sir,” James said, “I guess we’d just like to keep the world from crowding us too close.”
Wells nodded. “Good reason as any.” They could see he knew it wasn’t the only reason or even the main one. But he’d come to know them well enough to understand they never explained anything to anyone until they were ready to, if ever they should be.
The cost of all that land would of course be great, and they had been forced into debt in order to buy the second Levee Street lot and the building materials. But their financial circumstance had very much brightened since they had taken up the smuggling trade. They’d gone to Matamoros with Anselmo and had him introduce them to the Goya brothers with whom Evaristo had done most of his business. The Goyas expressed no surprise that Evaristo was gone and did not ask to know the circumstances but were pleased to learn the twins would continue his trade at the Horseshoe. Two weeks later the Wolfes made their first transaction, receiving a wagonload of tequila at the Horseshoe and paying the Goyas for it with money they’d received for the Marina Dos. It had made them heartsick to sell the sloop but there would be other boats. Anselmo suggested a buyer he knew in Harlingen, thirty miles north. The proceeds exceeded what they’d received for the boat and, even minus Anselmo’s share, were sufficient to let them pay off part of their debt and provide their wives with household money for the next several months.
They were confident they would succeed at the “river trade”—Jim Wells’s preferred term for smuggling—though they knew it was a volatile business and could not be counted on for steady revenue. Their plan was to use most of the money from each smuggling deal to buy some of the land they wanted, even if they had to mortgage the more expensive parcels. They had spoken with Ben Watson at the White Star Company and he had been able to ascertain the titleholders to some of the land to either side of theirs, but legal ownership of other parcels was tangled up in land-grant disputes that had been in the courts for decades, and he was not optimistic about any of those cases being resolved soon.
When they told him of Watson’s outlook, Jim Wells said, “Well, gents, in all modesty, I remind you that you are in the presence of the foremost legal mind in Texas with regard to land-grant law. If you’d like, I’ll be proud to see what can be done to speed things up a bit and get them properties available.”
“We were hoping you’d say that,” Blake Cortéz said. They understood that he couldn’t guarantee a quick resolution to every case. “However long it takes is how long it takes,” James Sebastian said.
Jim Wells’s smile was rueful. “Of course. No press for time when you’re young.”
Now, two weeks later, Pauline Wells called to them in the den that supper would be on the table in ten minutes. Jim Wells called back they would be there with bells on. Then said to the twins, “Listen, fellas, we all know how chancy the river trade can be. It wouldn’t hurt if you also had a regular income of some sort you could count on for at least family money.”
He took something from his coat pocket and placed it on the low table between their chairs. A pair of badges emblazoned with “Deputy Constable” along the top curve and “Cameron County” along the bottom.
“I spoke with the county bigwigs, and in their wisdom they have seen fit to offer you boys the job of special deputy constables. What’s so special is you wouldn’t be reporting to the constables’ office but to me. Your reports would all be word of mouth and if I thought anything you told me warranted the attention of the sheriff’s office, I’d let them know. Nothing else in your reports would go further than me. Now before you get any grinnier about it, I want you to hear me out. I been getting a lot of stories from the country folk about roughneck gangs. Seems all South Texas is crawling with little bands of bad actors. Fellas too dang lazy to work for a living and who think they’re pretty tough because they can push around a lot of poor folk with no means of defending themselves. The folk say the constables are scared of the gangs, being outnumbered like they are. For sure they aint been getting the job done. I could ask the Rangers to help out, of course. They’ll do me about any favor and they love shooting Mexican bad actors and bringing the bodies into town and laying them out in the market square to be gawped at. However, the Rangers aint kindly disposed to Mexicans of any kind, bad actors or not, and the poor folk got good reason to be as scared of them as of the gangs. I want somebody helping them folk they know is their friend. Somebody who’s gonna protect them and attend to any meanness done them, and I do believe you boys might just be the fellas for it. You’ll be responsible for all of the colonias in the county—all of them. From now on, the other constables will stick to dealing with the town Mexicans. Another thing is rustlers. They’re actually the sheriff’s job but if you run into them they’re yours. Mexican rustlers were pretty bad all along the border till General Díaz took over down there and his Rurales pretty well put the boot to them, but not even the Rurales can stop them all. Anyhow, as for how you do the job and what profit you make off it besides your salary, that’s your business. My only rule is to do right by the poor folk.” He smiled. “So. Interested?”