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 café. 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 Cortéz 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 way than live in a town in the middle of your own land?”
“Which would pretty much make it your town,” Wells said.
“Well, I suppose you could say it’s our town in the sense that we’re its founders, yessir,” Blake said.
“Every town had to be founded by somebody,” James said.
“Your town with your laws.”
“Well naturally there’s got to be laws, same as in any town,” Blake said. “Municipal ordinances and the like. For the protection of the community. For the sake of economic progress. Heck, Judge, nobody knows that better’n you.”
“You already got the petition papers all writ up, aint you?”
Blake tapped his coat pocket. “Every i dotted and t crossed, yessir.”
Wells laughed. “You boys. You make it sound so goldang easy.”
“It will be, sir,” James Sebastian said. “If you push for it, it’ll be easy as pie.”
“Especially when the state’s about to charter all these counties,” Blake said, “and one of them to be named in your honor’s honor.” He grinned.
“I mean, how much trouble would it be to throw in a charter for one little-bitty town?” James said. “At the request of the esteemed James B Wells?”
“If anybody can do it, Judge, you can,” said Blake.
“You two think way too much of me.”
“Now don’t getting all modest on us, your honor,” James Sebastian said. “We known each other too long.”
Wells smiled and stared into his nearly empty glass.
“What say, Judge?” Blake said.
“You’re aware that there will be, ah, some requisite political contributions? To certain personnel on certain state committees.”
“Of course,” James Sebastian said. “Just let us know how much and when.”
Wells emptied his glass and smacked his lips. “Well heck,” he said. “I suppose I could talk to some people, see what happens.”
Pauline had to come to the door and rap hard on it more than once to get their attention and tell them to hush all that whooping and braying laughter before the neighbors thought they were drunk as coots on the Good Lord’s birthday.
It took almost a year but Wells did it. He received the official decision shortly after Thanksgiving but he kept it to himself till Christmas Eve because it seemed fitting to him that they should be notified exactly a year to the day after making the proposal. And in the same setting and circumstance—his den, waiting to be called to dinner. As their families socialized in the parlor and kitchen, Wells poured drinks for the twins, but when they raised their glasses to him he said, “Just a second, boys. I got something here yall might want to drink to.” He took a bound copy of the charter out of the top drawer and placed it on the desktop. “Merry Christmas, muchachos.”