Bitter Trail and Barbed Wire

by Elmer Kelton

  “That’s where you’ll find the ones that done this. Them two gringos that was sidin’ the bandits, I expect they’ve got a Union flag over their door. I’d like to go help you hunt them.”

  Frio shook his head. “Happy, they’re fair game on this side of the river. Over there, they can’t touch us and we can’t touch them. We can’t afford to get Mexico turned against us.”

  “Mexico ain’t goin’ to turn against us. She’s makin’ too much money out of the cotton trade.”

  “Happy, last year a Unionist by the name of Montgomery joined with some Matamoros bandits on a raid in Zapata County. They killed Isidro Vela, the chief justice. He was well thought of on this side of the river. Some time later a bunch of our boys crossed over the Rio at Bagdad, caught Montgomery, and hung him. Nobody denied that he had earned it, but it almost caused Mexico to close the border. Bad as he needed killin’, it wasn’t worth the cost.

  “Sure, it hurts to stand on the riverbank and watch somebody like that runnin’ around loose on the other side. But it works as much in our favor as it does theirs. More, maybe. The Yankees keep all our ports bottled up, but there’s nothin’ they can do about the trade that goes out of a Mexican port. Long as Mexico stays neutral, we all win. She ever changes, we lose.”

  Happy Jack pursed his lips. “Then you don’t aim to start no fight with them?”

  “No fight.”

  The young man pushed his hat back and leaned against a wagon wheel, disappointed. “I reckon I’ll stay here. I won’t be missin’ nothin’.”

  2

  Throuch the ages, the Rio Grande had been as unpredictable as a woman. She had changed her mind dozens of times, altering her course and leaving deserted a multitude of old riverbeds that the Mexicans called resacas. Most of these had haired over with grass and weeds, though the drought of recent months had burned away much of the vegetation. Along the edges of some resacas stood the stately old palm trees that had caught the fancy of the first exploring Spaniards and had prompted them to name this the River of the Palms.

  The Gulf breeze blew in welcome from the east, waving the palms and easing the heat that Frio Wheeler had borne across the sands and the heavy brush. It always pleased him to reach the first of these ancient riverbeds, for it meant Brownsville was close at hand. He and Blas Talamantes rode horseback several lengths ahead of the lone wagon with its load of smoke-blackened cotton. They passed near the old Resaca de la Palma battlefield where General Zachary Taylor and his troops had drawn some of the first blood in the Mexican War of 1846, just seventeen years ago. Lots of men who lived in Brownsville, and far more who lived across in Matamoros, had vivid memories of that fight. Frio had listened to many a bloody tale.

  Far across the river stood the twin spires of the tall brick cathedral on the Mexican side. There was nothing so spectacular on the Texas bank. Brownsville was much newer than its Spanish-speaking sister, and somewhat smaller. There had been no town on this side when Taylor’s troops had built the eight hundred yards of earthwork that was to become known as Fort Brown. Today Brownsville with its stone and lumber buildings still had a new look about it.

  Town dogs came running out to meet and greet the riders, yapping at the heels of the horses and backing away only when Blas took down his rawhide rope. The dogs fell to one side and picked up the mules as the wagon drew close. The mules gave them less attention than they would give a mosquito.

  “Blas,” said Frio, “I’m goin’ to lope on ahead and visit some folks. I’ll see you directly down at the cottonyard.”

  Blas smiled thinly. “No hurry, we get there just fine.” He paused, then added, “Someday maybe you better marry that girl.”

  Frio grinned and moved into an easy lope. He rubbed his face and found it still smooth, for he had shaved in camp that morning.

  Brownsville was growing rapidly because of the war trade. Every time he came in from a trip, it seemed the town had edged a little farther out along the wagon road. People were coming in faster than houses could be built. Here and there he could see tents and Mexican-style jacales, thatched with reeds and broomcorn. Soon he was riding in the heart of the town, past the Miller Hotel, the new city market, the palebrick Stillman home, which had been the first permanent house in Brownsville. In the dirt streets he passed Confederate soldiers from the fort, whiling away off-duty time by making the rounds of the saloons. Mexican dulce vendors were attempting to sell them candies made of brown piloncillo sugar. The soldiers were not interested in candy, but they were plainly interested in a couple of the flashing-eyed girls who were trying to sell it.

  Down beyond the brick quartermaster’s fence that stood between Fort Brown and the town, General Hamilton Bee wouldn’t be thinking about girls. He would be nervously studying his dispatches, wondering when and if the Yankees might land troops at the Boca Chica and march the thirty miles inland across the sea meadows to capture Brownsville. Frio could well understand why Bee would be nervous, sitting here with just four companies of the Thirty-Third Texas Cavalry, a battery of light artillery and a scattered few militia companies that he didn’t altogether trust, dispersed up and down the river for three hundred miles.

  With this invaluable border cotton trade and thousands of pounds of war goods coming over each day at Brownsville, it was incomprehensible to Frio that the Confederate government would let it be jeopardized by lack of troops. But one of the biggest disappointments the Southern people had suffered was the slow realization that their new government in Richmond could blunder along as foolishly as the Washington government ever did. Sometimes he thought it would be a wonder if both sides didn’t lose the war.

  Meade McCasland’s frame mercantile store fronted on Elizabeth Street, which the pioneer merchant Charles Stillman had named for his wife. The store had a tall false front with a dummy balcony that opened from nowhere and led the same way. Gray-haired Meade McCasland never had liked that feature, for to him it smacked of deception, and there was not an ounce of deception in his soul. From the day he had bought it, he had intended to cut the storefront down to size. But these were busy times, and he had more to worry about than an unwanted balcony.

  Frio Wheeler reined through the wagon traffic toward the hitchrack in front of the store. He held up, to let a droopy-mustached old Mexican pass with a burro-drawn cart and forty gallons of muddy Rio water that he would sell for two dollars a load.

  A little Mexican boy of about six came bouncing off the porch, running excitedly. “Mister Frio! Mister Frio!”

  Frio stepped to the ground and scooped the boy up in his arms, whirling him once around and putting him down again. “Como le va, Chico?”

  Dark skin accented the sparkle of the boy’s white teeth in a smile that was so wide it must have hurt.

  “Muy bueno. Much good. This time you stay a while, no?”

  Frio tousled the kid’s black hair. “This time I stay a while no! Got to work. How is Señor McCasland? And Miss Amelia?”

  The boy shrugged. “They not sick. Señor McCasland, he is work pretty hard. La señorita, she is worry what for you don’t come a little quicker.”

  Frio dug a coin out of his pocket. “Go buy you some dulce.”

  The boy took the coin and shouted his thanks over his shoulder as he trotted barefoot off down the street, looking for a vendor. Frio walked inside the frame building and paused to let his sun-accustomed eyes adjust themselves to the interior. It was hot in here. Frio had heard it said that this country had summer nine months out of the year and late spring the other three.

  Meade McCasland was showing some newly arrived English cloth to a couple of women customers. Once a strong man, he was breaking now with the weight of years and personal sorrow upon his broad shoulders. He saw Frio, and he said in a quiet Southern voice, “You ladies just take your time and look all you want to. I’ll be right here.” He strode forward and gripped Frio’s hand so tightly it almost hurt.

  “Glad to see you back, Frio. Have a good trip?”

  Fr
io smiled, warming inside, for there was not a man alive he liked better than Meade McCasland. What little Frio could remember of his own father was reflected in this man. “It wasn’t dull,” he said and let it go at that. “Things seem to be bustlin’ around here.”

  McCasland nodded. “More and more people coming in. Bookkeeper down at Kennedy & Co. said he saw more than a hundred ships anchored off Bagdad a few days ago. Every flag in Europe. A couple of Union blockaders were patrolling up and down like a pair of cats waiting at a mousehole, but there was nothing they could do about neutral vessels unloading on Mexican soil.”

  A thought came to Frio, unbidden: They could take over Brownsville easy enough. That would stop it. He didn’t speak the thought. He knew it had come to McCasland often enough anyway, and his friend had more troubles now than any two men ought to carry.

  “You’re lookin’ well, Meade,” he said, stretching the point a little. The old man didn’t look good at all. “And Chico looks like you’ve been feedin’ him all right.”

  Meade came close to smiling. “Chico never misses a meal.” The boy’s mother had worked for the McCaslands after her husband had been killed by bandidos on the Laredo road. When she had died of the fever and there had been no one else to care for the boy, Meade McCasland had taken the task upon his own shoulders.

  Frio asked, “And Amelia? How’s she?”

  McCasland was plainly pleased that Frio asked. “She’s back in the living quarters. She’d be up here now if she had any idea you had come in. I think she’s been afraid you’d find some good-looking young lady in San Antonio.”

  Frio shook his head. “Never noticed they had any.”

  “They do. At least, they did. Never will forget the first time I was ever in San Antonio…” Meade looked away, remembering. “But never mind that, just go on back. She’ll be tickled to see you.”

  Frio walked through the door that separated the store from the dwelling in the rear of the building. Hat in hand, he closed the door quietly behind him. Amelia McCasland stood with her slender back turned. She and a young Mexican housegirl were holding up some unrolled new cloth, and Amelia was talking about what a lovely dress it was going to make. The widening of the housegirl’s eyes caused Amelia to turn.

  “Frio!” she cried, almost dropped the cloth. He saw joy leap in her pretty face, then confusion as she glanced back at the Mexican girl.

  “Señorita,” the girl said discreetly, “I will go on and start work in the kitchen.”

  “Yes, Consuela, please do that.”

  Frio stepped closer to Amelia as the girl left the room. Amelia smiled. “Well, come ahead, I’ll let you kiss me.”

  He leaned down to give her a quick, unsure kiss. She caught his arm. “Not like that,” she said. “Like this!” She tiptoed up and put her hands at his back and pulled him close. Her lips were warm and eager as they met his. In a moment she let her heels touch the floor again. She leaned back, her hands tight on his arms. Eyes sparkling, she said, “That’s more like it. You going to ask me this time to marry you?”

  Frio didn’t know whether he ought to smile or frown. It seemed easier to smile. “Hadn’t figured on it.”

  “And why not? Maybe if you’d ask me, I’d say yes.”

  “It seems to me you’re the one who’s proposing. I always thought that was for the man to do.”

  “It is, but you won’t do it.” Mischief was shining in her eyes. “Do you think I’m too forward, Frio?”

  “Well, you’re not the most bashful girl I ever met.”

  “I can’t afford to be. Traveling as much as you do, you might meet somebody else. I’ve got to get you first.” She watched him, waiting. “But, if you won’t ask me this time, I’ll just have to wait till the next trip, I guess. Sooner or later you’re going to ask me.”

  Serious, he said, “Amelia, I’ve told you before: these trails can be dangerous. It’s one thing to leave a sweetheart behind. It’s another to leave a wife. Besides, I’m travelin’ all the time. What kind of married life would that be for either one of us?”

  The sparkle slowly went out of her eyes, and she went serious too. She leaned her body against him again, the side of her face pressed against his shoulder. “You’d be home once in a while—for a day, for a night. Better to have even so little than to have nothing at all.”

  It always seemed to Frio that Amelia had to work a little at her brashness. It served a purpose: to keep the sadness beaten back. But always the sadness lurked there somewhere, for this had been a tragic house.

  “Better we wait a while yet, Amelia. Wait and see what the war is goin’ to do.” There was something more, something besides the war. She had lived all of her life in town. He wasn’t sure how well she would fit on the ranch, especially during the early years when life there would necessarily lean toward the primitive. Not for all the money in the world would he have said so, but he was afraid she might not be able to take it. “Let’s wait, Amelia,” he said again.

  “Until next time,” she answered and put the subject aside. She motioned Frio toward a red-upholstered settee. “You were longer this time than usual.”

  “Took a while to get the government cotton together. Matter of fact, I had to leave ten of my wagons in San Antonio, waitin’ for a load. Private speculators have been goin’ around over the country, buyin’ up cotton to try and make money on it. Government’s had a hard time gettin’ what it needs for the war trade.”

  Anger flared in Amelia’s blue eyes. “Looks like the government could stop these speculators.”

  Frio shook his head. “Politics. Hard to catch them, and some have so much influence in Austin and Richmond that nobody can touch them anyway. Conscript law says anybody freightin’ nongovernment cotton loses his exemption, but they don’t enforce it much. War seems to breed its own brand of snakes.”

  They fell into silence. Frio liked just to sit and look at her. Gradually, though, his gaze drifted to a big charcoal drawing, framed and hanging on the wall. A Mexican artist across the river had done it just before the war. The likenesses were as real as a photograph: Meade McCasland, his wife and his daughter Amelia in the center, sons Tom on the left, Bert on the right.

  On first thought it seemed to Frio that the artist had been kind to Meade, making him look much younger, leaving out the deep lines that had creased his face. But on reflection he knew the likeness had been real enough at the time. Most of the facial lines and much of the gray had come upon Meade since the war had started. He had suffered enough grief to kill some men.

  Tennessee-born, McCasland had drifted to Texas in the 1830s and had fought beside Sam Houston at San Jacinto, avenging friends who died in the Alamo. He had come to the Rio Grande a few years after the Mexican War. He had loved his country, this sad-eyed man, and in the Texas secession referendum had voted like Sam Houston to keep Texas in the Union. But when the final count showed a majority for secession, McCasland had wept silently inside, then swallowed his bitter disappointment and accepted the Confederacy. His was a Southern heritage, and he would not stand against his friends.

  Meade had not foreseen the split that was to come within his own family. In the echo of the guns at Fort Sumter, the youngest son Bert had marched off in gray to fight with the South. Tom, the older, remained fiercely loyal to the Union, quarreling even with his father. With others, Tom had tried to organize a resistance against the Confederacy in Texas. Failing, the militant Knights of the Golden Circle hard on his heels, he had retreated unwillingly across the river to sanctuary within the stone walls of Matamoros.

  Mrs. McCasland fell easy prey to the fever, for she had lost the will to live. Bert was dead at Glorieta alongside so many others of Sibley’s Brigade, and Tom was in exile beyond the Rio Grande. Meade McCasland was left with only his daughter.

  Meade hadn’t seen Tom in almost two years, though they were hardly more than a mile apart. Amelia crossed the river to visit him occasionally, for Tom held no bitterness against her.

  It
was in Frio’s mind to tell Amelia what had happened to him on the trail, so that she might try to persuade Tom to stay on the south side of the Rio. He said, “You been across lately to see Tom?”

  “I was there a couple of days ago, but I couldn’t find him. He’s been … seeing a woman named Luisa Valdez. She was at his place. He was away on business, but he’s well. She said we have nothing to worry about.” Nothing to worry about! A sour taste came to Frio’s mouth. He realized that nothing Amelia could say would sway Tom much. No need to tell her and Meade McCasland that Tom’s business had been north of the river, that it had been to ride with the bandidos of Florencio Chapa and attempt to destroy a wagon train.

  * * *

  LEAVING, FRIO FOUND the happy Chico chewing candy on the front porch. The boy ran ahead and unhitched the sorrel for him.

  Purely by chance, Frio overtook his wagon as he reined the horse away from the McCasland store and down the treelined dirt street. Blas Talamantes eyed him with a little surprise.

  “You don’t stay very long.”

  “Afraid I might say somethin’ that had no need of bein’ said.”

  They slanted down toward the big government cottonyard at the bend of the river. Beneath the dust of plodding hoofs and grinding wheels, he could see a thousand bales or more of CSA cotton. They were lined up awaiting sale and transshipment by rope ferry across to the Matamoros side, this to give them at least the cloak of legality and make them untouchable by the Yankee blockade ships. Across the river Frio could see one of the small shallow-draft steamers that belonged to M. Kennedy & Co. It was pulling in toward the Matamoros wharf, likely with a load of war goods freshly unloaded from some European ship anchored off Bagdad on the Mexican side of the river’s mouth. The steamers had been signed over to Mexican owners and flew the eagle flag of Mexico, which was often referred to in joking disrespect as the Turkey Buzzard. But everyone knew this was only a wartime ruse, for the crews were the same as they had always been, and the original Texas owners still gave the orders.