Country of the Bad Wolfes

by James Blake

  Gloria saw him approaching and said something to Louis Little. They stopped dancing as Julián came up, his face tight with anger. Louis Little looked at him without interest, and then in his faulty Spanish thanked Gloria for the dance.

  “It was my pleasure,” she said. Her use of English was as galling to Julián, who did not speak the language, as the smile she was giving the man.

  As Louis started to walk away, Julián said, Hey, gringo. Louis stopped and turned. Don’t bother to ask her for another dance, Julián said. I won’t permit my fiancée to take any further risk of contracting fleas.

  “Julián!” Gloria said.

  “The only fleas I ever had,” Louis Little said in his soft southern English, “I got from your mama.”

  Julián needed no translator to comprehend “mama” and that he had been insulted.

  Watching from the edge of the dance floor, Sófi saw him give Louis Little a hard shove rearward—and a woman cried out as he unsheathed his saber faster than Sófi would have thought possible. Just as suddenly, Louis Little was brandishing a massive knife drawn from under his coat. There were startled squeals and the couples nearest the two men backed away from them as they began to circle each other with weapons ready. Some of the officers shouted bets on Lieutenant Salgado but could get no takers. A Bowie knife was no match for a saber in the hands of a cavalry officer and they all expected the lieutenant to drop the gringo with his first sally.

  Díaz stepped between the two men and they froze.

  Put up your blades and come with me, he said. They traded hard looks as they followed him to a side door, where Díaz paused before a clutch of officers and said, “Pistolas.” Several ranking officers beckoned their aides, who came at a trot from their posts near the doors, each them with a revolver on his belt. The guns were unholstered and held out butt first for Díaz’s inspection. He took one and unbuttoned his tunic and slipped the pistol into his waistband and then selected two more, one in each hand. He told the officers at the door to make sure everyone else stayed inside and then ushered Lieutenant Salgado and Louis Little out into a large lamplit garden. An officer shut the door behind them. Up on the dais, Edward Little stood with his hands behind him and his eyes on the garden door. Only the two young women at the table could see he was holding a gun.

  The orchestra was told to resume playing but nobody wanted to dance—they were all too tense about the imminent duel. There was loud debate about its outcome, a flurry of wagers offered and accepted. The odds were in heavy favor of Lieutenant Salgado not only for reasons of partisanship but because he was known to be a good shot, while no one knew how well the gringo could handle a gun. It was said he had fought in the American Civil War, but even if true, that fact revealed nothing about his ability with a pistol. Some of the older officers, more experienced with the ways of duels, bet that there would be no winner. The combatants would either kill each other or, as in most duels, both be wounded but neither fatally.

  Sófi sat with her sister and found out what had been said in the confrontation. Gloria’s eyes were as bright as when boys had fought over her in girlhood. Sófi could not have denied that her own dread was laced with a strange elation. It wasn’t every day a pair of men fought a duel over your sister.

  Out in the garden Díaz picked a spot that would put the two men in equal illumination at a distance of some thirty paces and where an errant bullet was unlikely to hit anything other than a tree or a wall. He asked if either of them wanted to end the contention with an apology. Neither one did.

  Very well, Díaz said. He showed them that both revolvers were fully-loaded Kerr single-action five-shooters. Then made them stand back to back and handed each of them a pistol. He told them to begin pacing when he began to count. When the count reached fifteen they could turn and fire at will.

  If either of you turns before I call fifteen, Díaz said, drawing his own pistol, I’ll shoot you. Understood? He backed up a few feet from the line of fire and began a measured counting.

  The two men paced away from each other until Díaz called “Quince!” and then they whirled and fired. But even as he spun around, Louis Little—who had been a guerrilla fighter with Bloody Bill Anderson’s wildwood Missourians in the war of the American states and thereby learned everything on earth there was to know about pistol fighting—dropped to one knee and Salgado’s bullet passed above and to the left of his head as his own round hit the lieutenant in the chest and staggered him rearward into a tree. Julián collapsed to a sitting position with his back against the tree trunk and the revolver yet in his hand, and Louis Little, still crouched, shot him three times more, cocking and firing as fast as he could, the first of these bullets passing through Julián’s head and pasting the tree with blood and the next two striking his unbeating heart even as he was toppling onto his side.

  Captain Anderson had always said to make sure they were finished, that he’d seen more than one man killed by another assumed to be dead.

  Louis Little stood up, the revolver cocked on the remaining round, and he studied Julián’s still form. Satisfied the man was dead, he uncocked the Kerr and went to Díaz and handed it to him. The general tucked it and his own pistol into his pants.

  Your father tells me you are from Louisiana, Díaz said.

  Yes.

  They must have some interesting duels in Louisiana. Here the rule is that a man must stand his ground during the exchange of fire and the rule is understood to mean that he should stand it upright. You stood your ground, yes, but somewhat, well, gymnastically, let us say.

  Louis Little stared at him. He had not known Díaz very long and wondered if he was one of those bossmen who purposely didn’t tell you all of the rules just so he could have the pleasure of charging you with breaking one that you didn’t know about. He’d had a bossman like that in a timber camp when he was sixteen years old, his first job after leaving home following his mother’s death. The bossman had not liked him for some reason and made things hard for him at every turn. One day the man upbraided him loudly in front of a crew of witnessing timberjacks for breaking some rule Louis hadn’t heard of. The bossman said ignorance was no excuse, that Louis would have to pay him a fine of a day’s wages and if he argued about it he’d give him a hiding to boot. The contretemps concluded with the bossman on his back and his head in bloody mud with Louis’s timber axe wedged in his skull to the sinuses. Louis then mounted the bossman’s horse and galloped off to places unknown.

  The War Between the States was then in its second year and he was soon riding with William Clarke Quantrill and his confederate guerrillas, whom many regarded less as military irregulars than as a band of outlaws using the war as pretext for their depredations. When dissension broke up Quantrill’s company, Louis chose to ride with Bloody Bill. Then the war was lost and so he went west and roamed without purpose and here and there took employment as a marshal and once as a train guard and on various occasions killed men either for the bounty to be collected or over an insult of some sort or, most often, in some drunken argument whose particulars he would not remember. Finally he did as a few other die-hard rebels had done and went to Mexico. The republicans were still at war with Maximilian and there was no shortage of opportunity for a man of Louis’s skills. Because the imperialists were invaders, he saw them as akin to Yankees, and he hired on with Juárez. But he had got there at the tail end of things and had been in Mexico but six weeks when the war ended.

  One afternoon, shortly after the liberation of Mexico City, he was drinking in a cantina and wondering what he might do next when he overheard the name of Edward Little mentioned in a group of American roughnecks at a nearby table. He bought a round for the bunch and asked about Edward Little and learned that he was General Díaz’s chief scout and was at present in the central hospital with a bad chest wound.

  An hour later he was at Edward Little’s bedside. He introduced himself as Louis Welch and asked if he remembered a woman in Louisiana named Sharon Welch. “It was a long tim
e ago,” Louis said. “Momma said you were on your way to Texas and yall didn’t know each other but the one night, so you might not recall. She told me about it when I was twelve. Said she wanted me to know who my daddy was, even if she didn’t hardly know more than your name. She said she liked you an awful lot.”

  Edward Little remembered young Sharon Welch. She was sixteen, as was he, on the cold evening she sneaked out of the house and into the barn where her daddy had permitted him to spend the night. In the years since, he had at times thought of her. He was sorry to learn she was dead but was glad to make the acquaintance of the son he had not known they created. He offered his hand and the young man accepted it. The next day he introduced Louis to Porfirio Díaz, who seemed more amused than surprised to learn Edward had a son. That had been two weeks ago.

  Don’t worry, kid, Díaz said. I didn’t specify what the rules were, did I? You were free to use the rules of Louisiana. And I have to say, you handle a pistol very well.

  Louis smiled back. Thank you, general.

  Díaz went over to Julián and retrieved the other revolver. I feel sorry for this one’s fiancée, he said. A widow before she was even a wife.

  In his bad Spanish, Louis Little said he intended to make things right for her.

  Really? Díaz said. Tell me. I would like to hear about this intention.

  Louis told him, not sure if the way Díaz smiled as he listened was because of what he was hearing or the way it was being said. But he listened carefully, and when Louis finished explaining what he had in mind, Díaz said, I have only one question. Do you want to do this because you feel guilty for killing her man? Louis assured him it wasn’t guilt. It was what he wanted the minute he saw her. He gestured at Julián Salgado and said maybe now what he wanted would be easier or maybe impossible. Díaz clapped him on the shoulder and laughed. There’s only one way to find out, my friend. Goddammit, I should have known by the way you looked at her when you were dancing. “Pero que cosa fantástica es el amor, no?”

  In the ballroom, the first two shots—which all of the woman and even some of the officers in the room had taken for one, so closely together did they sound—had stopped the music and hushed all talk, and Gloria squeezed Sófi’s hand so hard it would ache the next day. Almost immediately behind those first shots, there came three more reports in rapid sequence, and one of the officers said, Well, I’ll bet somebody just killed the hell out of somebody.

  There followed long minutes of buzzing speculation before the garden door finally opened and Díaz and Louis Little reentered the room. There were low groans from the bet losers and chuckling from those few who had backed the gringo. No one saw Edward Little return his gun to its holster under his coat.

  Díaz handed the guns to one of the officers and gave low-voiced instructions to some others and they nodded and went out to the garden.

  As Louis Little headed for the bridesmaids’ table where Gloria sat and watched him approach, Díaz gestured at the others sitting there and they all got up and moved away—except for Sófi, until Gloria hissed, “Vete,” and she sighed and left too. Then Louis was at the table and asked Gloria’s permission to sit beside her and she nodded. He sat down and leaned toward her and spoke in a voice so low she had to lean towards him too, their heads almost touching, and to every eye in the room they looked like longtime intimates. Louis Little spoke without pause for about a minute and was done. Gloria stared at him a moment more and then smiled and said something in response and he grinned and took her hand and turned to look at his father, who smiled in his own maimed fashion and raised his glass in salute.

  “Bravo!” Díaz said. He leaped up to the dais and called for everyone’s attention and proclaimed the impending marriage of Louis Little and Gloria Blanco.

  The room erupted with applause and cheers and copious wisecracking about the ball-and-chain and the poor gringo’s excessive punishment for the simple crime of shooting a man, and so on. The smiling couple stood with their arms around each other and Louis Little bent to Gloria’s ear and said something and her smile widened. She was beaming.

  Díaz called for Father Benedicto and someone shouted that the old padre was passed out in the bar adjoining the ballroom. Díaz joined in the laughter and said to rouse him and bring him up there, to carry him if they had to. While the revived priest was being assisted in making his unsteady way across the room, Díaz announced that the funeral for Lieutenant Julián Salgado Ordoñez would be held in the garrison cemetery tomorrow afternoon. He expected every officer in the room to attend. Lieutenant Salgado was an honorable soldier who fell in a honorable contest and he would be shown every respect.

  Sófi stood bewildered. Julián Salgado was lying dead in the garden while in this boisterous ballroom her sister was smiling in the arms of the man who’d killed him. A man she had only just met and would marry in the next few minutes.

  Father Benedicto was hoisted up to the dais and an officer held him upright by one arm. White hair disheveled and eyes a red glaze, his collar awry, the old priest protested to Díaz that it would be an offense before God to perform a sacred office in such shameful condition as he was in. Don’t worry, Father, Díaz said. God and I are old comrades. I’ll square you with Him in my prayers tonight. Just keep it short and simple. You ask if they want to be married, they say yes, and you say all right you’re married.

  The priest swayed and the officer holding to him said, Easy does it. Another said, The old boy needs a bracer, that’s all. He handed a bottle to the priest and said, Here you go, Moses. Father Benedicto took a deep drink, paused for breath, then took another big swallow. He smacked his lips and gave a contented sigh. The color rose in his cheeks. Díaz grinned and said, Father, you’ll outlive us all.

  Sófi pushed her way through the crowd to get to Gloria’s side at the foot of the dais stairs. Gloria smiled to see her and said Hey, girl, I was wondering where you were.

  What are you doing? Sófi said.

  Getting married, sweetie, what’s it look like?

  It looks like you’ve lost your mind.

  Gloria laughed and gave Sófi’s cheek an affectionate pat.

  The old priest took another drink before Díaz gently detached the bottle from him. Let’s hold off on that for just a minute, Father, he said, and beckoned Louis Little.

  “Come on, darlin,” Louis said, “before the old coot passes out again.”

  A minute later Gloria was Louis Little’s wife. And by legal definition had also become daughter-in-law to her lifelong friend Raquel Aguilera de Little, who was in fact two months younger than Gloria and herself only three hours a bride. The band struck up a lively tune and the brides each kissed Díaz in turn, and the bridegrooms, father and son, shook his hand, and then both couples headed for the door. As Gloria was being hurried along on Louis Little’s arm, Sófi trotted up beside her and said, Where are you going? What do I tell Mother and Father? What about your clothes? What about—?

  Gloria blew her a kiss. I’ll write you, sweetie, I promise! And was gone.

  When Sófi got home and told her parents what happened, María Palomina said, Oh my dear Jesus, and sat at the table and put her head in her hands. She had not liked Julián Salgado, true, but to lose his life in a stupid duel over her impetuous daughter! Nothing Gloria Tomasina ever did could surprise her, but María Palomina had to wonder about the girl’s mental condition. To marry a man she had not known an hour—and even more unbelievable, whose hands were still dripping with the blood of her betrothed!

  How could it be, María Palomina said, addressing the room at large, that I gave birth to such a one?

  She looked at Samuel Thomas, who sat sipping brandy at the other end of the table, scowling at some vision in his head.

  I guess we know which side of the family she takes after, María Palomina said. My people never produced anybody even a little bit like her.

  Samuel Thomas ignored the gibe. He did not care about what happened to Julián Salgado, but he was incensed that Gl
oria had married an American. A goddam gringo, he said. That stupid girl.

  He persisted in his bitter mutterings about it until María Palomina, in her irritation with the whole matter, said that if he was so strongly opposed to marriage between Mexicans and Americans, maybe they should have their own holy union annulled. She asked what he was anyway so mad about. He had wanted Gloria gone and she was gone. What did he care who she was gone with?

  You know what? Samuel Thomas said. You’re right. You’re absolutely right. To hell with it. Her punishment for marrying an American will be that she’s married to an American.

  To which María Palomina said, Tell me something I don’t know, Mister Yankee. How long has it been? Eighteen years?

  He fixed her with a thin look and she returned it in mock fashion. Then put the back of her hand to her forehead in a theatrical gesture of long-suffering and sighed loudly and said, Eighteen years. Eighteeeen lonnnng yeeears. And cut a sidelong look at him. He tried to hold to his indignation, but then she grinned at him and they both laughed.

  Well, I’ll tell you what, Samuel Thomas said, raising his glass. Here’s to eighteen more. Because I can take it, woman, you hear me? I can take it. I’ve taken other punishment almost this bad.

  They laughed harder still and Sófi joined in. She had never before heard her father jest and rarely heard him laugh and never with such gusto. He laughed and pounded the table with his fist. María Palomina laughed so hard she nearly slipped off her chair, which made them all laugh harder.

  They had just got themselves under control when Bruno Tomás came up after closing for the night and said, Hey, everybody, what’s new?