Country of the Bad Wolfes (52 page)

Genaro told Moisés the hides looked pretty good. But they picked them out, Moi, he said. Let me go down and pick some myself.

Oh, these boys look pretty honest to me, Moisés said. I don't think they would try to sneak any bad hides in with the good ones. The Lucio one assured him they would do no such thing.

Moisés had all the hides unloaded onto the dock. As the younger Carrascos were counting them he told the twins his rate.

The Tavo one asked if he paid the same rate for all hides.

Why? Do you think I would cheat you?

No sir. It's just that if these hides are better than most, they should get a better rate than most.

Moisés smiled and said, So young but such shrewd men of business. Well, it so happens, these hides
are
better than most. He quoted a higher rate and said it was more than he had ever paid. Genaro called out the total number of hides and Moisés did the computation in his head and told the twins his price. They had done the mental arithmetic too and arrived at the same figure. They exchanged a look, and told Moisés it was a deal.

As the younger Carrascos began loading the hides on the cart, Moisés took the purse from his belt and shook some gold coins into his palm and handed them to the Lucio twin. Here you are, boys. I hope you'll bring me some more of these good hides.

We'll do that, the Lucio twin said. He sprang up to the dock and loosed the mooring lines and tossed them into the sloop and then hopped onto the foredeck and shoved the bow from the dock. The raised mainsail tautened in the breeze and the
Marina Dos
began to move away.

Be careful, boys! Moisés Carrasco called after them. That town is full of bad people! Guard your money well! And your backs! The twins waved, and one shouted, Thanks for the warning!

As they made their way across the harbor in the gold light of late afternoon, they saw Moisés and one of his brothers lugging the hide cart up the path toward the tannery. The other brother was seated on the dock and watching the
Marina Dos
.

“You see what I saw in all those eyes?” Blake Cortéz said.

“Plain as a wall poster. I'd bet they used to collect hides themselves and that's how that one lost those fingers. Likely got a crew to do it now. A lot cheaper than buying them from a middleman like us. All they need to know is where to send the crew.”

“Reckon they'll follow us?”

“Give odds on it,” James Sebastian said.

“Well,
Marina
's no tub but she can't outrun that red thing, not even with an empty hold. We could head back tonight, make it harder for them.”

“Not hard enough. Moon's about three-quarters waxed. They'll see us plain as day from a long way off.”

They were silent for a moment. Then Blake said, “What in hell we talking about? Even if we lost them this time, they'd only try again the next.”

“Right you are, Brother Black. I say if they want to follow us, well, let them. Let's see them run that red thing where we run
Marina
.”

Blake laughed. “Goddam right. Let's just see them do that.”

The one on the dock watched them all the way across the harbor. He was still there, a small indistinct shape, when they tied up at the malecón, then padlocked the hatch of the boat's cuddy cabin and headed for the zócalo.

They had a Veracruzano supper of grilled red snapper on white rice slathered with fried green peppers and tomatoes, then ambled around the zócalo. The night was loud with laughter and music, the flanking streets with the ringing and rumbling of streetcars. After a while they went into a cantina called Las Sirenas and ordered mugs of beer. There was naturally much remarking by the other patrons about the boys' youth and their twinhood, much jesting about being drunk and seeing double. There was a tense moment when a drunk turtler—a large mulatto accompanied by a zambo crewmate—wisecracked that such babies should be asking for their mama's teat rather than a mug of beer. But he smiled when he said it, and so the twins treated the gibe as good-natured, and they retorted that, to them, beer
was
mother's milk. The turtlers joined in the laughter, and the Cuates Blancos—as they would come to be called by the other patrons—bought a round for the bar. A little later, when the White Twins made the casual remark that they were crocodile hunters, there was no lack of curiosity about their trade. The ensuing talk about the hunting and skinning of crocodiles naturally expanded to include the topic of the tannery across the harbor and the family that ran it.

They did not get back to the
Marina Dos
until almost midnight, but the harbor operated round the clock and was brightly lighted and loud as ever with the work of loading and unloading ships. The far side of the bay was in darkness.

“Think they're still watching?” Blake Cortéz said. “They can sure see
Marina
easy enough in this light.”

“They're watching. They aint gonna chance us slipping out of here without them knowing.”

They heard much about the Carrascos while in the cantina. About the barfight killings and the rumors regarding the Montemayors and about the various hide hunters who had been known to sell to the Carrasco tannery just once and then were never seen in Veracruz again. They learned that the Carrascos did have skinners in hire—a trio of Mayans, short and neckless like the rest of their race, strong and stoic as mules. It was said the three were escapees from a henequen prison plantation in Yucatán. They never came into town but had many times been seen to depart from the Carrasco dock in the red sloop and then a week or two later seen to return, every time with a store of hides to unload at the dock. It was all of interest to the twins—including the rumor of a tannery in the Chinese quarter, said to be owned by a man named Sing.

They unlocked the cuddy hatch and ducked inside and keyed open the heavy padlocks on the lockers beneath the bunks on either side of the little cabin. They were careful of the inch-high razor strips they had embedded along the top edge of the lockers' front panels to slice the hands of thieves. They took out the Winchesters and checked their loads and set them in easy reach in the J-racks above the bunks, then curled up and went to sleep.

They ate an early breakfast on the patio of a harbor café from which they could see the Carrasco dock and the man sitting on it and looking their way. A half hour later, as they cast off, the sun was risen to the rooftops and the lookout was hurrying up the path to the tannery.

The clouds were few and scattered, the wind steady. They were a mile north of Veracruz, and beginning to think maybe they'd been wrong about the Carrascos, when James Sebastian, keeping watch behind them with binoculars, said, “There they be.” At the tiller, Blake Cortez looked back and made out the red dot that was the
Bruja Roja
. “You tell how many?” James said they were too far yet. He lowered the glasses and smiled. “Could be an interesting day.”

As they had surmised, the
Bruja Roja
was the faster boat. She fast closed the gap between them to about four hundred yards and then loosened her sails to maintain that distance. James could now make out that the boat held four men.

In early afternoon they came abreast of where they knew the cove inlet to be. The red boat had held its distance behind them as precisely as if they were towing it on 400 yards of line. Blake held course for another fifty yards, then said, “Now we'll see just how good they are.” And tillered the sloop toward shore.

“They're trimming sail,” James said. “Here they come!”

The twins had timed the tide well. There was a good foot and a half of water between the keel and the rocky bottom when Blake turned the sloop to port again, and the boat bore toward the inlet mouth that as yet wasn't visible to the men in the red boat. They laughed at the certain confusion of their pursuers, who had to be wondering what the hell the twins were doing, first running in so dangerously close to the rocky coast and then turning back to southward. Not until the
Marina Dos
vanished would they realize there was a pass there.

As soon as they entered the inlet and were behind the stand of palms and out of sight of the
Bruja Roja
, James Sebastian dropped the mainsail and handed his brother the line to the jib. He grabbed up the oilskin sack containing the Winchesters rolled up in clothes for protective padding and threw it out onto the portside bank and waited till the boat was past the rocky stretch before he sprang from the deck to land in a rolling tumble on the sand. Blake continued steering the boat toward the south beach—and just before running aground he let the small sail drop and heaved the anchor over the stern. Then swung himself over the port side and dropped into water up to his chest and slogged out onto the beach and ran back to where his brother was crouched in the palms, a position affording clear view of the approach to the inlet. James handed him a carbine and Blake levered a cartridge into the chamber.

The red boat came in view and turned toward the inlet, following the same route as the
Marina Dos
. But its unsteady weave bespoke the pilot's lack of confidence in steering at that speed toward a passage so narrow. One man was working the mainsail and another the jib. The fourth was crouched at the starboard side, leaning out and serving as lookout, a rifle in one hand.

The pilot's attention was fixed on the tip of the inlet's rocky tongue, but in his fear of the point he was holding the boat too far to the right to suit the lookout, who thought they were going to rake against the inlet's inner bank and began flapping his left arm and yelling That way, that way! Thinking the lookout had spotted some obstacle within the inlet and was waving him away to open water, the pilot panicked and heeled the sloop to port so sharply that the lookout lost his balance and went overboard. But they were already too close to the inlet to clear the tongue and the boat struck the rocks at a point near the starboard bow. The arresting jar sent the other two crewmen hurtling out onto the rocks as the pilot slammed face first into the roof of the open cuddy hatch and dropped into the cabin. For a moment the swaying boat held in place on the point, its loosed sails flailing and popping in the wind, and then the inlet's outgoing current shoved the stern to seaward and the boat detached from the rocks with a loud cracking shudder. It carried away in a slow rotation as the bow went under and the stern lifted and it sank in fifteen feet of water.

The twins came out of the palms, the Winchesters dangling from their hands. The two who landed on the rocks were Mayans. One lay on his belly, eyes closed, the top of his head a bloody mesh of hair and bone. One hand kept opening and closing on the stony ground as if were trying to hold to the earth itself. The other Mayan was on his back with a leg turned inward at an unnatural angle and nothing of him moving but his heaving chest and his eyes, which fixed on the twins as they loomed over him. Blake Cortéz nudged him with a foot and said, What's the matter, friend? Bust your back? The Mayan blinked but did not speak.

“Lookee here,” James Sebastian said.

The one who had fallen overboard was climbing out of the water. Genaro. Of the missing fingers. He no longer had the rifle. He saw the twins and halted in water to his shins, dripping, clothes sagging. He slicked his hair back and smiled and said, That did not go very well.

What were you planning for us? James Sebastian said. Same as with the others who sold you good hides?

Genaro Carrasco coughed and spat and affected puzzlement. I do not know what you mean, he said. He started to come out of the water and then stood fast when James Sebastian raised the carbine like a pistol at his hip.