Country of the Bad Wolfes (66 page)

Lopez took a small card from his coat and placed it on the desk. It bore the name of the Hotel de las Palmas and a telegraphic address. He said he had a messenger service there if Don John should want to contact him. In case you remember something that might be of help in locating your brothers, he said. Something that had slipped your mind during this conversation.

As soon as the man was out the door John Samuel went upstairs and to a window facing the plaza. He spotted him talking to a group of men seated along the verandah of the hacienda store. Lopez then went to the marketplace to converse with some of its vendors and buyers. In every clutch of men he spoke with, some among them pointed eastward toward the sea. Toward Ensenada de Isabel. John Samuel smiled. If others told him of the place, who could say it had been their older brother who revealed where to find them?

Lopez went to his horse and mounted and started for the main gate at a trot. And John Samuel thought, Go, damn you.
Move
.

At mid-morning Bruno showed up at John Samuel's office. The bandage covering his cheek was stained a rusty red where blood had seeped from the stitches. His engauzed arm was in a sling. He asked John Samuel if he knew about the man named Lopez who had been telling everyone that Mauricio Espinosa sent him to fetch the twins so he could talk with them about what happened. Asking where the boys might be. Everybody was talking about him. The general opinion was that the twins should stay in hiding, wherever they were.

He was here and asked if I knew where they were, John Samuel said. I said I didn't know, but somebody told him about the cove, because he asked me if I thought they might be there. I said maybe. What else could I say?

Are
they there? Bruno said.

I don't know. Maybe.

He saw Bruno looking at the hotel card on the desktop and told him Lopez said he could be contacted there.

“Maybe they sailed off already,” Bruno said, turning the card for a better look. “But if they're not there he won't know if they're gone or hiding on the hacienda. He could make things hard till he knows for sure one way or the other.”

“He made no secret of working for Mauricio.”

“Why should he? Lets everybody know who they're dealing with. Mauricio probably told him to collect the twins and kill them on the road. Shoot them and claim that they were killed in a bandit ambush or something. Who could prove different?”

From John Roger's office Bruno headed for the telegraph station. He was hoping the line had not yet been cut, as it no doubt soon would be. On Sunday he had wired his mother and sister the news of Uncle John's murder by Alfredo Espinosa, the mayordomo's younger son, and that the twins had then killed Alfredo. Not wanting to add worry to the pain of this news, he omitted all other detail, including that of his own wounds. The next afternoon he'd got a wire from Sófi conveying her and María Palomina's great sympathy for all of the family at Buenaventura and expressing their great grief at the loss of John Roger, whom they had known for much too short a time.

Now Bruno sent another wire to Sófi, telling her that Alfredo's brother Mauricio was an army general and had sent a man named Esmeraldo Lopez to find the twins, who had fled. Nobody knew if the boys were still on the hacienda, but there was fear for them, and fear of the harm Lopez might do to Buenaventura in his effort to find them. He told Sófi he did not mean to alarm her but it was important for somebody outside the hacienda to know these details in case some disaster should occur. He remembered the card of the Hotel de las Palmas in Veracruz and told her it was where Lopez was staying.

The telegrapher read the message with evident interest. Bruno told him that if he knew what was good for him he would be true to his sworn oath to preserve the confidence of all information that went through him. If I find out you've told anyone about this, I'll cut off your fingers and your tongue. The telegrapher had never before heard him in any humor but pleasant. Yes, Don Bruno, he said, yes, of course.

Ten minutes later the hacienda's line was inoperative. A repair team was sent out, and two miles down the road they found where it had been severed. But even after they fixed the break the line was still dead. Another mile farther along they spied another cut. They were heading toward it when rifleshots came from the shadows of the trees. Warning rounds that struck no closer than a few yards from the wagon. The crew turned around and sped back to the compound.

The incident confirmed John Samuel's suspicion that Lopez had not come alone. John Samuel had never before given a thought to the hacienda's lack of hired protectors, but how he now wished his father had kept a party of pistoleros on the payroll. He believed that the men of the compound, armed with muskets and pistols from the armory, could defend the walls, should things come to a fight. But they were not trained combatants, and even if they outnumbered Lopez's men they would stand no chance against professional gunmen in a fight outside the walls. If Lopez so chose, he could hold the compound under siege while he destroyed everything outside of it. Never had John Samuel been more aware of the hacienda's isolation and of his lack of friends to whom he might send for help.

Two hours before Wednesday's dawn a faint orange glow was reflecting off the low hang of clouds to the distant east. Those who saw it first woke others to look at it. What could it be but the cove house on fire? They wondered if the twins had been there when Lopez arrived. If they had been killed. If they were at that moment burning in the flames casting that distant glimmer.

Looking from his window John Samuel was wondering the same things. And hoping hard. By daybreak they could barely descry the smoke cloud of the fire steaming itself out against the wetness of the jungle.

Later that morning came word that Buenaventura's daily outbound train had derailed. The sabotaged tracks had come apart under its wheels before it even got off the estate. A crew went out to repair the rails—but as before, rifles opened fire from the trees and the workers retreated to the compound.

The destruction of the tracks was strong implication that the twins were still at large, else Lopez would have no reason to persist. But what if Lopez had given the order to uncouple the rails before he went to the cove in search of the boys?

Then at midafternoon came a report that both of the main entrances to the hacienda had been blocked by felled trees and that a labor crew had again been warned off by rifleshots—and the proof that the twins were still unfound seemed irrefutable. But had they sailed off before their hunters arrived at the cove, or were they in hiding in the jungle, or somewhere else on the hacienda? And if they had got away and Lopez wasn't sure of it, how much longer would the man persist in his afflictions of Buenaventura before he gave up?

As if those two haven't caused enough misery, John Samuel thought. Now they bring this on me.

That night a fire broke out at one of the coffee warehouses and its entire store was lost. A few hours later the slaughterhouse was in flames and the damage was extensive. In the last hour and a half of darkness, one of the stables at Rancho Isabela was set ablaze. The hands were able to rescue the horses but the stable would be reduced to ashes.

When Amos Bentley arrived for his usual Sunday supper with Sofía Reina and María Palomina he found them in red-eyed sorrow. They told him the news of John Roger's murder and he said Oh my God and slumped onto a sofa and cried like a child. Sófi and María Palomina sat to either side of him and crooned consolations and stroked his head even as they brushed at their own tears. They all three stayed up most of the night, talking of John Roger and bemoaning the loss of him. Next morning Sófi went to the nearest telegraph station and sent a wire of commiseration to her brother and the rest of the family at Buenaventura.

On Tuesday came the telegram from Bruno about General Espinosa and the man named Lopez whom he'd sent in search of the twins and about Bruno's fear
that disaster might ensue. And now, atop their bereavement, Sófi and María Palomina were afraid too.

Think of poor Felicia, María Palomina said. So near to giving birth. Imagine her worry! Who
is
this man, this damned general, to cause such fear to everyone?

Gloria! Sófi said.

What? her mother said, confused.

Gloria
! We have to tell Gloria! Sófi said. Gloria's husband was a friend of President Díaz. Her husband's father still worked for him. Maybe Gloria could get one or the other of them to speak to him about this and maybe he would do something to help Buenaventura.

María Palomina's face was bald disbelief. Maybe
who
would? The president? The
president
, Sofita? She bit her lower lip and regarded her daughter as if the girl had lost her mind.