Bitter Trail and Barbed Wire

by Elmer Kelton

  Frio stopped the horse a moment to watch the boat and then let his gaze sweep downriver to where the Rio made another bend and was lost from sight. By land it was only thirty miles out to the gulf from Brownsville. By the river, with its leisurely snaketrack course, it was nearer sixty. The flow was lower than usual because of the months of drought, and the little steamships had to pick their way cautiously past the sandbars and snags.

  Frio wished he had time to ride out to the Boca Chica and watch the activity. He liked to go to the gulf and stand with wet boots on the salty beach at the river’s mouth, watching rollers wash in tirelessly upon the land. He liked to look out across the blue waters at the white sails of the trading ships that rocked at anchor and imagine he could hear whispers from across the sea, beckoning whispers from strange lands he hadn’t seen and never would. It always called up a wanderlust within him, a haunting wanderlust he would never be able to satisfy. He had never been out of Texas, except into Mexico, and he knew he would never go.

  “Frio!”

  Someone called his name, and he cut his eyes back to the cottonyard. He saw a heavyset, middle-aged man walking hurriedly toward him, a battered old felt hat pulled down over his eyes, an account book under his arm. Cotton agent Hugh Plunkett glanced at the trailing cotton wagon, then back to Frio.

  “You all right, Frio?” he demanded. “Been worried half to death!”

  Frio frowned, puzzled. “You knew we had trouble?”

  Plunkett nodded vigorously, his gaze exploring up and down as if he were looking for bullet holes. “One of my Mexicans was over in Matamoros this mornin’. Saw some of Chapa’s men come in with a big string of mules. They had your brand on them. I figured they’d killed you.”

  Frio’s fist clenched. “Where’d they take the mules?”

  “There’s a sort of a wagonyard over there owned by Pablo Gutierrez, the fat one they call El Gordo.”

  Frio said, “I know him. Brother-in-law of Florencio Chapa, isn’t he?”

  Plunkett blinked. “Since you mention it, I believe he is.”

  Tightly Frio said, “It adds up. I bet you if I was to go over there, they’d sell me back my own mules.”

  “I wouldn’t pay! I’d go and take my mules and kill the first man that opened his mouth!”

  Frio glanced at the saddlegun on the sorrel and shook his head. “I admit it’s a temptation. But we can’t be raisin’ any dust over in Mexico. I’ll just have to swallow my medicine and act like it tastes good.”

  He told Hugh Plunkett about the raid and about losing some of the cotton.

  Plunkett was sweating profusely, for a humid heat lay here along the river. “Frio, the cotton is the government’s loss, but I’m afraid the wagon and the mules are yours. I wish there was somethin’ I could do.”

  “There isn’t, Hugh,” Frio said regretfully. “Don’t worry yourself.”

  Plunkett grunted angrily as a gust of hot wind slapped dust into his face from the passing of a high-wheeled Mexican ox-cart, loaded with cotton bales on their way down to the ferry. “Damn this river country anyway,” he flared. The government had sent him here against his will, and he hadn’t softened a bit. “We fought a war with the Mexicans once to take this country away from them. I say we ought to fight them again and make them take it back!”

  Frio smiled and forgot his loss for a while. The cotton agent would probably still be griping when he got to Heaven, and nobody would think any more of it there than they did here. Frio handed Plunkett the manifests he had received with the cotton in San Antonio. Plunkett called up some of his help. They unloaded the bales from the lone wagon and checked them against the papers.

  Frio said, “I’ll go back and fetch in the rest of it soon as I get some mules to pull the wagons and a little lumber for patchin’.”

  Plunkett scowled. “You really goin’ over there and buy back your mules?”

  “I figure to try. They’re good mules.”

  “I’d make somebody bleed for this.”

  “They will, Hugh.” Frio’s eyes narrowed. “Somebody is goin’ to pay!”

  As his empty wagon pulled out of the cottonyard, Frio swung into the saddle and looked around for Blas. Hugh Plunkett snapped his fingers, remembering something. “By the way, Frio, there’s been a man lookin’ for you. I oughtn’t to even tell you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Cotton trader, that loudmouth Trammell.”

  The name brought a grunt from Frio, and a frown of distaste. “I got no business with that profiteer.”

  “I figure he wants to try to hire your wagons away from the government. Don’t you let him do it, Frio.”

  Frio shook his head. “I’d as soon hire to Florencio Chapa. At least he admits to bein’ a bandit.”

  3

  Frio and Blas led their horses off the Santa Cruz ferry on the Mexican side and looked southward across the Estrero del Bravo to where the heart of Matamoros lay. About them bustled the river trade, cotton being unloaded from the ferry and carted up to yards to await shipment on the steamers. Mexican laborers and cotton buyers of many nationalities walked around among the dust-grayed bales stacked haphazardly here on the bank. Men shouted at each other and at their mules and oxen. Dust lifted and was slow to settle, for it had been a long time since rain.

  The Gutierrez wagonyard lay southwestward, on the river. Frio swung into the saddle and started riding along the bank, Blas with him stirrup to stirrup. They passed a group of Mexican women washing clothes in the slow-moving water at river’s edge. Frio wondered if the clothes would ever get clean.

  A little farther, a group of girls bathed in the river, shouting and splashing. Some of them had few if any clothes on. Their wet brown skins gleamed in the sun.

  “Now there,” said Frio, “is a sight to gladden a man’s heart.”

  Blas nodded and smiled and turned once to look back after they had passed the girls.

  Matamoros! The formal Mexican name was much longer: La Heroica y Invicta Ciudad de Matamoros. The heroic and invincible. Named for a patriot priest who had died for Mexican freedom, this old border city had long known the smell of trouble, the sound and fury of war. Its time-stained walls were pocked with the marks of bullets and shells. Even now it was gripped by civil war, as was its sister city across the river, for the Indian patriot Juarez was locked in mortal combat with the imperialists and the French, who had proclaimed Maximilian emperor of all Mexico. Here in Matamoros seethed the same turmoil that had gripped the rest of the country, the Juarez Rojos opposing the Crinolinos, who supported Maximilian. At the moment the Crinolinos had control.

  To most of the population there was always a war in progress, or just finishing, or just about to begin. They took it as a matter of course, like the droughts and the floods and the pestilence. Life would still go on after the armies had marched away. Commerce continued as if there were no struggle. Coins changed hands and the city grew, even as generals sparred and hapless soldiers gasped out their lives on bloody sand.

  The trading circles spared little thought to politics.

  Frio and Blas rode past the rude jacales that housed the poor. Half-naked children played in the dirt streets, and disheveled women cooked on outdoor ovens and open fires, sharing the food with the flies. These were tiny houses, the cots folding up against the walls in daytime to give what little room was to be had. Rapidly as the city had grown, these people were lucky to have even this, for many others lived with no roof at all.

  Frio saw a big corral, started with rock but finished crudely with brush. “That would be it,” he said.

  They rode around the outside of the fence, looking in the corral at a motley collection of bone-poor horses and droopy-headed burros. There was no feed in the corral and only one tiny water trough, which now was half mud. Frio saw his mules, gaunted by the long, fast trip. They probably hadn’t been fed at all, and they hadn’t likely watered since they had been swum across the river. Anger stirred in him, but he curbed it. Here he would
be doing the listening, not the talking.

  He and Blas reined in at a low-built stone structure that was the Gutierrez headquarters. Several carts and sagging old wagons stood around in front of the building. An old peón, shoulders bent from a life of hard work, stepped out with his hat in his hand. He bowed from the waist. In Spanish he said, “How may I serve you, patrón?”

  “I am looking for El G—” Frio caught himself. He had been about to say El Gordo, which in Spanish meant the fat one and was not usually a term of endearment. “I would like to speak to Señor Gutierrez.”

  The peón hesitated. Frio added, “It is on business. I would like to buy some mules from him.”

  “Then,” said the old man, “if you will step inside, mi jefe will be most glad to see you.” There was a nervousness about the old man, an undertone of fear. Likely as not that tattered old shirt covered whip scars on his bent back. Here a rich man like El Gordo could virtually own a poor man, much as across the river a white man could own a black one.

  The peón walked cautiously through a door and closed it quietly behind him. Frio could hear a voice in angry impatience, demanding what the old man wanted. In a moment El Gordo Gutierrez stepped through the door, his belly sagging, his mouth wide in a false smile. His eyes smiled too, in anticipation of profit. Gutierrez didn’t seem even to see Blas Talamantes. He ignored him as a hidalgo might ignore another man’s peón grubbing in the dirt. He bowed from the waist, which was something of an effort for him, and said to Frio, “My house is yours, señor. Tell me how I may serve you, and I shall be the happiest of men.”

  Frio sensed that Gutierrez knew him. He was glad the man didn’t extend his hand, for he wasn’t sure he could have brought himself to shake it. “I need to buy some mules. Thought maybe you had some for sale.”

  “Ahhh.” Gutierrez rubbed his hands. “You are indeed a fortunate man, señor, for it happens I have just brought in a large group of mules from one of the best ranches in Mexico. I would be glad to show you.” He motioned toward a back door, which would lead to the big corral. Frio stepped toward it, then stopped as he glanced into the room from which Gutierrez had come. Two men slouched at a table, a bottle sitting in front of them. Frio stiffened. One of them was the bandido, Florencio Chapa. Chapa sat watching him, amusement playing in his black eyes. His was a cruel face that could grin while his hands cut a man’s throat.

  The other man was, in his own way, even more dangerous than Chapa. This was General Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, the wily political opportunist whose brigandage had been carried out on such a high plane as to keep him in a position of power no matter which political party might be gaining the edge in Mexico. Born of aristocratic blood but hardly able to write his own name, he was the beloved “Cheno” Cortina to most of the Mexican people—Cheno the gringo-killer, the champion of Mexican rights against the encroachment of the Anglos. And if somehow Cortina seemed always to have gained more for himself than for his followers, that was of no matter. He was Cheno, and he deserved whatever good there was to be gained from life.

  “This way, señor,” Gutierrez said, holding the door open.

  Frio stepped out into the sun, Blas following him. Frio glanced back over his shoulder, thinking he might again glimpse Cortina. This was the man who had taken a hundred followers across the river one early morning in 1859 and had captured Brownsville by storm, summarily executing five men—some of them Mexicans—who had earned his wrath. It took a Mexican general, Carvajal, to get Cortina out of Brownsville. It took the Texas Rangers under old Rip Ford to drive him back across the river. Even afterward, he kept crossing the Rio Grande to raid small ranchos, taking vengeance not only on Anglos but on the Mexicans who worked for them. He had been chased by the best of men, including even Robert E. Lee, who at the time had still been a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army.

  Frio thought this red-bearded, gray-eyed highbinder probably was enjoying the war between the states, the thought of gringo killing gringo, with Cortina able to sit back and make money out of it through the cotton trade. Though he plied his banditry in higher and more sophisticated circles now, the love of it still burned in him, and he encouraged such savage bandidos as Chapa and the notorious Octaviano Zapata.

  Gutierrez said, “You would like to meet Cheno? He’s one good friend of mine.”

  Frio shook his head. “No, thank you. I’d rather just get on with our business.” He knew he was rushing too much. Mexicans liked to take their time on a business transaction, to talk all around it as if it were not even there. But Frio didn’t think he could stand to be in El Gordo’s presence for very long. He wanted to rush it, to get it over with.

  There was no mistake about their being his mules. He would have recognized them anywhere, even without the brands. If there had been any point in his demonstrating this, he could have popped a whip and shouted an order, and they would have moved into their places, ready to harness. The Mexican caporal had taught him that, to save time in breaking camp and getting the wagons out on the trail.

  Smiling, Gutierrez said, “They are fine-looking mules. They would do a good job for your freight wagons.”

  That was the clincher. Frio knew for certain now that El Gordo was well aware of who he was. “I know they would,” Frio remarked. “They’re my mules.”

  “Your mules?” El Gordo put on an act of not understanding. “They are my mules. I bought them.” His eyes smiled again. “But they can be your mules if you like. I would be glad to sell them.”

  I’ll just bet you would, Frio thought, having to curb his anger again. “How much?”

  The Mexican looked at the ground and rubbed his hands. “They are unusually good mules. Seldom does one see better. I would say they are worth a hundred dollars per head.”

  “Confederate?”

  El Gordo violently shook his head. “Not Confederate money. Gold.”

  “I’ll give you seventy-five, Confederate.”

  From there on it was simply a process of dickering and bargaining. El Gordo had set the original price at double what he expected to get. After a while they arrived at an agreement. Fifty dollars per head, payable in English paper. That much gold would take a wagon. The harness, some of it cut, would be thrown in free.

  “Bueno,” said El Gordo, “we shall drink on it.”

  They went back inside. Chapa and Cortina had gone. Gutierrez got two dry glasses and a bottle of tequila, deliberately ignoring Blas Talamantes. Frio handed his own glass to Blas and thus forced El Gordo to get a third one.

  “To your health, señor,” El Gordo said. “May we have more pleasant business together.”

  We’re going to have a little more business, Frio thought darkly, but you may not think it’s so pleasant.

  He emptied the glass in one long swallow. It was harsh, leaving a deep track all the way down.

  “Come on, Blas,” he said. “We’ll need to find some men and come after the mules. And I have to get the money for Señor Gutierrez.”

  They left the yard and rode toward the heart of the city. Frio looked once over his shoulder. “Blas,” he said after some deliberation, “I guess you know a lot of people in this town.”

  They had just passed a nice-looking girl seated in the big window of one of the better homes, leaning against the wrought-iron grating. Blas glanced back at her and said, “Sí, Frio, but all that has changed. I am married now. María is all the woman I need.”

  “You misunderstand me, Blas. I was just wonderin’ if you might know five or six jolly Mexican boys who might like to pull a good honest robbery.”

  Blas smiled broadly as comprehension came. “Sí, Frio. I think maybeso.”

  “Do it, then. I’ll go to the British consul and get the money. Then I’ll wait in that little bar down from the consulate till you show up. Tell them I’ll let them keep a hundred apiece if they do the job right.”

  Blas started to turn away, then stopped. Worry creased his face. “One thing, Frio. You never can tell. Maybe they run away and ke
ep it all.”

  “A chance I’ll take. I wouldn’t be any worse off than I am now.”

  * * *

  HERE ON THE border, where the trade was heavy, gold was not hard to come by. For more than a year now Frio had insisted upon foreign currency or gold in payment for his government hauling. Stern realism dictated the measure. Even here on the border, people were trading two dollars of Confederate paper money for one in gold. From things he had heard in San Antonio he knew they were swapping as many as four to one in the Deep South. As long as the gold was available, he would take it. Everyone on the border did.

  Because it would be easy for the Yankees to sail up to the Brazos Santiago or the Boca Chica one day and march in to capture Brownsville, he could not afford to keep his money in Texas. There was as yet no trustworthy bank in Matamoros, but an English cotton buyer had helped Frio work out an arrangement with the British consul. Frio could keep a supply of floating cash at the consulate and could send the rest by draft to a bank in England.

  English money was acceptable at face value in Matamoros because so much of it was used in buying cotton. Frio drew out two thousand dollars—the equivalent of it—for the forty mules. Carrying it in a small bag, he strolled down the street to the bar where he had said he would meet Blas. There he ordered a good Scotch whisky, which arrived there now aboard the trading ships, and hunted a place to sit down. He put his back to a solid wall. With all this money on his person, he didn’t care to be slipped up on.

  From here he could see the cosmopolitan parade of humanity that passed the door—cotton buyers and merchants from England and France, Belgium and Germany; sailors from vessels of many nations, delayed at the Boca Chica by repairs; Texans who had come to Mexico because of pro-Union feelings, or simply to escape the draft; Negro slaves who had fled from bondage. There were even federal observers sent here from Washington to keep a futile watch over the border trade. They knew what was going on but were powerless to put even a small dent in it.

  A man could sit in one spot here on the main streets of Matamoros for just a day, and half the world would pass before him.