Wolves At Our Door

by J P S Brown

  "Thank you. When the fire destroyed our buildings at La Culebra, we realized that we need to install a better water supply, and we want to rebuild as soon as possible. If you’ll drive the oxen as far as La Golondrina, we’ll take them on to La Culebra."

  "That will be no trouble at all, though I’ve never been to La Golondrina, either," Che Che said.

  "Can you bring them tomorrow?"

  "I can start tomorrow, but I can’t get there for at least three days, because I’ll have to drag the Fresno."

  "That will have to do, I guess."

  "Don Ibrahim, my wife will attend to your place to sleep out here on the veranda with my nino Jim and our guests," Che Che said.

  "That’s fine," Ibrahim said.

  "Joe and I will go with you to La Golondrina tomorrow, if it’s all right," Kane said to Ibrahim. "I have to see my compadre Vogel and maybe bring him back with me. We need to return to our cattle as soon as we can. The Brennans did not intend to stay indefinitely, so maybe Jack is ready to come back too."

  "Of course."

  "Anyway, I don’t think Jack needs Vogel’s help to make the movie. Jack can continue filming with Rafa, if he wants to, but I need Vogel back here."

  "It will probably be best to suspend the filming for a while," Ibrahim said.

  That night, after everybody settled into their beds on the veranda, Kane allowed himself to gloat. He would bet his horse Gato again that the Lupinos needed oxen and a Fresno to bury their dead. In a hurry to enlarge some pools? Bullshit. Arab and Los Lobos carcasses were making a pestilence of their hidden paradise pasture.

  Kane, Joe, and Ibrahim started at four the next morning and arrived at La Golondrina at noon. This time nobody but the old kitchen retainer met them when they rode up to the front yard. Ibrahim invited them to dismount and went inside ahead of them. After a while he came out with Fatima. Her eyes and nose were red and wet with weeping. Kane was surprised. He would never have believed that she seriously cared about anything that went on at La Culebra. He could believe that she might be mildly concerned over the loss of an opium crop, but how could the millionaire bawl about it? He would have bet a new hat that she knew nothing about the Arab and Los Lobos paramilitary school. Kane gave her a token abrazo and asked why her eyes were red.

  "Ay; Jim. Abdullah has been killed and we have a terrible fire at one of our camps," she said.

  "My goodness," Kane said mildly. "Ibrahim told us about the fire and we see the smoke, but nothing about Abdullah. How did he die? Ibrahim didn’t tell us that anyone had been hurt in the fire."

  "No, Jim. Vandals destroyed our buildings and corn warehouses at La Culebra, and when Ibrahim and Abdullah pursued them, they killed Abdullah. Abdullah is my other father. I love him as much as I do Nesib. He’s so wise, so good to me."

  "The loss of the buildings and crop is a terrible blow," Kane said with a straight face. "However, you can recoup the property. But our friend Abdullah was the only one of his kind."

  "You don’t understand. Our security has been violated. The property losses are nothing compared to the loss of our security. The fire was caused by an attack by enemies we knew nothing about. It means that the drug traffickers have finally singled us out as their enemy in this war that has affected so many other people in the Sierra. One of our own has been murdered. Explosives were used. Everythingcrops, fields, buildings, and other expensive property were leveled by vandalsnoterrorists."

  "And only Abdullah was killed?"

  "Didn’t Ibrahim tell you anything? The terrorists also attacked Kosterlinsky’s cavalry and killed some troopers."

  "Was Kosterlinsky hurt?"

  "He and most of his troop escaped, but their horses were driven away and they even lost their guns." Fatima spoke in English so that Joe could understand and she could have his sympathy too.

  Joe went with Ibrahim to look for Jack and Kane sat with Fatima on the veranda. He gave her all the sympathy he could simulate with a cold heart. The woman wailed out the story for him, and that only cooled his heart more and gave him more to gloat about.

  "Where are your other sons?" he asked.

  "Rafa and Jacobo are here. They went up to La Culebra to see what could be salvaged, but returned to report that we have nothing left."

  "Who first told you that you had a fire?"

  "Ibrahim."

  "Maybe I should go up there and look around and see what I can find out about those terrorists. They might hit El Trigo next."

  "Oh, no, there’s nothing you can do," she said quickly. She must have felt that she had overdone her wrangle for sympathy, because she stood up. "You better come inside, my father will want to see you."

  Fatima led Kane to Lupino’s study. Kane had never been invited there. Thick curtains were drawn closed over the windows. The room with its thick adobe walls was as dark as any room could be at midday.

  Lupino sat at a large desk. His chair was large, soft, and roomy, and he had let himself sink way down inside it. He looked mashed into the chair for good, but Kane found that he was not overjoyed to see it. He was sorry to hear that Abdullah had died, but how could the Lupinos know that? He had been alive when Ibrahim turned coward and ran away. He was alive the last time Kane saw him. Kane would believe the tough old Arab was dead when he saw his ten-day-old corpse, and not before. He was not happy to see that Lupino seemed to be in total decline, either. He had always respected the man, and still did.

  After Kane sat down by the desk, the old man said, "Look how you found us, Jim. What do you think? Have they told you what happened? We’re ruined."

  "I’m sorry about Abdullah, don Nesib," Kane said. "We all loved him. He’s been my friend for fifty years. Where’s his body? Have you held his wake yet?"

  "Ah, no, he was killed down in the brush this side of Cerro Prieto. With all the devastation caused by the terrorists, we have not had the time or the resources to bring back his body."

  "Are you sure he’s dead? You’re not so devastated that you can’t go find him and bring him home, are you? How can you allow worry over loss of property to keep you from bringing your old friend home? Fatima told me that no one but Abdullah was injured, no one burned in the fire. Sure, you lost some corn, but you can grow more. You’re rich enough to buy all the corn in the Sierra, if you want. You would never miss the money. Be sorrowful for the loss of your old friend, as we all are, but you’re not ruined. Where is Abdullah’s body? Vogel and I will go get him."

  "You don’t understand." Lupino moaned like a spook in the darkness of his corner. Kane would have expected the man to be much more formidable when faced with disaster.

  "The financial loss is terrible, but the worst part is that wicked people singled us out for attack," Lupino said. "In the nearly seventy years since I first settled here, no one ever attacked me. When I came here, President Plutarco Elias Calles was still at war with the Yaquis, but no one bothered me. Apache renegades were still a danger but caused me no trouble. Juan Vogel’s father and I lived and worked in these mountains alone on our ranches while murder and robbery happened everywhere else. La Golondrina has been an island of peace these seventy years, because we never took sides and no one who ever sought safe haven on this ranch was ever turned away."

  Kane thought, Yes, and in a minute your lying ass will rise up and shit out your lying head, you’ve got it stuffed up there so far.

  "We have always been an example of good neighborliness and friendship for everyone in the Sierra. Now look at us, Jim. Yesterday someone destroyed a whole season’s crop of our . . . corn. Why? Are they trying to run us out as they have all the other decent families?"

  "I know how you feel, don Nesib," Kane said. "How can I help you?"

  "You know Abdullah and Ibrahim saw the gang that attacked us. They followed them down to Cerro Prieto."

  "Ibrahim didn’t tell us. You know who attacked you?"

  "They wore masks. Ibrahim only escaped with his life when he and Abdullah were ambushed."

  "That
was lucky for Ibrahim, but tell me everything that happened. How did Abdullah die?"

  "Ibrahim was in the lead when they rode into a trap. The attackers waited until he passed, then killed Abdullah and his horse. Ibrahim went back to help him, but saw that he was dead. Luckily he was well mounted and able to flee on the wind, or the attackers would have killed him too."

  "My goodness," Kane said.

  "They killed Abdullah first to assure themselves that he would block the trail and prevent Ibrahim's escape, but my son broke through a thicket and flew away."

  "Gracias a Dios," Kane said quite formally.

  "Have you been offered coffee or a swallow of mezcal, something to eat?"

  "Oh, no," Kane said. "We only rode down to see if my compadre Vogel is ready to return to Guazaremos. We need him there, and I don’t imagine he is much use to Jack and Rafa. We’ll go back today. Don’t worry about us. And don’t get up. I'll go and see what Vogel has to say."

  Kane broke outside into the fresh air. A shout from Toribio at the front gate made him step back onto the veranda to see over the top of the cornfield. A bareheaded man had arrived at the hacienda afoot and was opening the bars of the gate under Toribio’s lookout. He let the top three bars fall to the ground, stepped over the bottom two, and shambled on toward the house. Fatima came out and shielded her eyes against the sun to look at the man. Vogel came around the corner of the house and stopped beside Kane and shook his hand.

  "Jack and Rafa are about finished with their production," Vogel said.

  "It’s Abdullah," Toribio shouted from his post. The hacienda came alive and Kane felt the same emotion that his enemies felt. He was glad to see Abdullah. Not only was he back, but still tough enough to have walked eleven miles uphill after being mashed into the brush by his horse. Kane and Vogel walked down the trail to meet him. No one else at La Golondrina seemed to want to walk a little way to give him a hug and shake his hand, but the partners embraced him and escorted him to the house. He had washed the blood off his face, but his shirt was covered with dried blood. He had a twoinch gash on his forehead, other smaller scratches and scrapes on his face, and his hands were skinned, but he seemed to have no other wounds or injuries. He stopped to tell Fatima he was all right, but she did not come down from the veranda to receive him, so he went on to his quarters with Kane and Vogel. Inside, he dipped a cup of water out of his bucket and drank it all, then another.

  Kane and Vogel stood by because they liked the old man, although they knew he was their enemy, even if he did not. Kane wanted to find out if he had recognized any of the raiders’ horses during the pursuit on the trail to Cerro Prieto. The man was a horseman with the eyes of a hawk and might have recognized Cato and the mules Paseador and Negrito. Lupino had given Kane and Vogel those mules, but Abdullah had picked them out. After he quenched his thirst, Kane searched his eyes for a sign that he knew that Kane had been one of the raiders who unhorsed him.

  The old man looked Kane in the eye and said, "Where is Ibrahim? Did he get back?"

  "Yes, he thought you were dead," Kane said.

  "Yes, he left me for dead."

  "What happened? "

  "We ran into an ambush, like fools. I saw a hooded man, and when he raised a gun toward me, I brought my horse to such a sudden stop with such a heavy hand that I pulled him over backward. The horse’s tender mouth and light rein saved my life, because when he reared, he shielded me from a volley of bullets that the hooded men fired at me. The good horse El Morito took the shock of the bullets and gave his life for me."

  "I remember that blue horse," Kane said. "He turned out well, didn’t he?"

  :A valiant servant, maybe, but it was his tender mouth and total response to the rein plus my fear and heavy hand that saved my life."

  "Ibrahim didn’t tell us any of this," Kane said to rub in Ibrahim’s cowardice. "What did he do when your horse went down?"

  "I think he ran and left me for dead, but I’ll wait to hear his story. I would never have thought that Ibrahim, whom I helped raise, would run away like that. You and your compadre Vogel would not leave me in a situation like that, would you?"

  "I don’t know what you mean," Vogel said.

  "Do you know what I’m talking about, Jim?"

  "Ibrahim didn’t tell us anything," Kane said.

  "Then I’ll tell you. I know that neither of you would do what Ibrahim did, and that has always made me happy about you, but it makes me sad about Ibrahim."

  Kane thought, Isn’t that exactly what I did? I left the old man for dead too. How am I any better than Ibrahim? Well, maybe I’m a little better, because I took Martinillo away from there. He would surely have killed him in the next minute. It’s a war. Maybe I’ll even be sorry someday that I didn’t let Martinillo have him.

  Kane and Vogel stepped outside Abdullah’s stall to give him privacy as Rafa, Ibrahim, and Jacobo walked into the barn with Jack and Joe behind them. "We’re finished with all of you/’ Rafa announced. ’And by that I don’t mean the filming of a movie. You, Kane, have five minutes to get yourself and your dogs off this ranch. Take wing. Fly. That means, get, or I will loose the dogs on you."

  Kane looked to Jack for an explanation. Jack only raised both eyes to the sky and then gave Kane a look of warning. Ibrahim would not look at Kane, and Jacobo stared at him as though he were a stranger. Nesib and Fatima walked into the barn, and she gave Kane a sorrowful look. Kane and Vogel moved closer together. Jack and Joe came on to stand by them. The Lupinos lined up side by side to face them.

  "It looks like the whole family’s here to see us off," Kane said.

  "Where’s Ali? Are you sure you don’t want to wait for him to help you run us off? The five of you are sure not capable of the kind of dogfight it would take to chase us off this ranch. If we are dogs, you are too, and we’re bigger ones than you."

  "We learned by radio a few minutes ago that Ali is in the hospital in Tucson," Jacobo said. "We’re sure you know the reason."

  "Well, he’s a busy doctor, I guess," Kane said. He sat on a pile of grain sacks. He only wanted to get back on the trail to Guazaremos now and let the devil finally have the Lupinos. The pain in his side had become a constant agony and he wanted to get the hell home where he could lie down.

  "He’s a patient in his own hospital now," Jacobo said.

  "He was attacked and crippled by your grandson," Fatima said in a high, strained voice. "Your miserable grandchildren are probably responsible for the ruin of his career as a surgeon. Your bully of a soldier grandson broke all his fingers and both his arms."

  "That can't be," Kane said. "My grandson is confined to a sickbed in the Army hospital at Fort Huachuca, miles away from Ali. Wherever he is, he’s too sick to cripple anybody."

  Jacobo told the Lupino version of Cody Joe’s attack on Ali as received on the radio. Ali had encountered Kane's grandchildren in a restaurant and offered to pay for their dinner. The girl had reviled his family, and then her brother had viciously attacked him.

  "Juan Vogel, I don’t want you to take offense in this," Nesib said. "We hold no rancor for you or your guests, the Brennans. You are welcome to return to La Golondrina any time you wish to come without Kane. But for now, you need to take Kane away from here. As the sire of the brute who sired the whore and the bully who crippled one of my grandsons and defaced and humiliated another, I hold him responsible for unpardonable injury to my family."

  "That’s fine," Vogel said. “We’ll saddle our animals and be gone in a few minutes." He turned to help Kane rise from his seat on the grain sacks. Kane knew that Vogel had been watching him and could see that he had thrown his last bucketful of energy into this final journey to La Golondrina.

  Rafa sauntered away and took hold of a pitchfork that was leaning against a stall. Kane knew that he better get back on his feet, but did not think he had the strength. He had left his fight on the long, long trail that had brought him to that moment at La Golondrina. He certainly knew himself to be the seventy-five-y
ear-old man who in the foolishness of geezerhood had brought himself a long way to the wrong place at the wrong time. Then he saw Rafa turn toward him with the pitchfork and decided that he could get up one more time.

  With Vogel’s help he regained his feet as Rafa charged him with the pitchfork. As a marine, Kane had spent many hours in bayonet drill. He waited and batted the pitchfork behind the prongs with the back of his hand and it passed him by a yard. He brought the heel of his other hand in an uppercut to Rafa’s chin, but the big, young bulk of the man fell on Kane and draped him over the grain sacks. Rafa raised up and straddled him with the pitchfork in both hands. Both Kane’s arms were pinned at his sides under Rafa’s knees. Rafa raised the pitchfork overhead. Kane knew that he would not be able to deflect the next heavy, downward thrust, so he was a goner.

  "Enough of this," Vogel roared. He took hold of the pitchfork, jerked Rafa down on his back, stomped on his chest, twisted the pitchfork out of his hands, and threw it aside. Rafa squealed with the strain on his doubled knees. Vogel lifted his foot and let him go. Rafa rolled off the sacks one way, and Kane wallowed off another and stumbled to his feet. Rafa came at him again. Vogel grabbed at his head as he went by and missed. Fatima stepped in with her hands up and shouted, “No, Rafa!" as Kane shoved her out of Rafa’s path. The tiny woman flew away like a leaf. Rafa tripped on the edge of a grain sack and fell, stunned, at Kane’s feet. Kane drew the colmillo, but he looked toward Fatima before he used it.

  Fatima was on her feet facing Kane. Nesib was standing behind her holding the pitchfork. The shiny tines were lined up vertically and sticking out of the right front of Fatima’s clothing. Every movement in the room had stopped and everyone stared at her face. Nesib had picked up the pitchfork and Fatima had been impaled on it when she fell away from Kane. Nesib stepped back and jerked the tines out of his daughter’s side. She looked at the colmillo in Kane’s hand, then looked into his eyes. "He’s my son, Jim," she said. Kane threw the knife down in front of her and she collapsed.