Wolves At Our Door

by J P S Brown

  The three bachelor Lupino brothers owned a house in Rio Alamos where they stayed when they were in the region to oversee their produce and cotton businesses. They also owned a house in Huatabampo that they used to oversee their resort hotel, fishing, and freight business in that seaport, only thirty miles away on the Sea of Cortez. Ali Lupino was at the hospital and he gave the partners a more thorough account of Marco Antonio’s and Memin’s injuries. Marco Antonio had been shot through the throat, the lung, and the abdomen. Memin had been shot near the heart and in the groin. The Montenegros and Adancito Martinillo had hurried them to the hospital and donated the first blood that kept them alive. Kane and Vogel were directed into an examining room where they lay down and gave a pint of blood apiece. Adancito had gone in search of more blood donors. Donors began to arrive and line up in the corridor outside the room where the nuns attended to Kane and Vogel.

  Ali Lupino joined the partners out in the hallway after they gave blood. Ali had something more to tell Kane. "Cody Joe can be released in the morning, if you want to take him home, Jim. This hospital is small and needs the room. Be careful that his wounds do not become infected. Bring him to me at my hospital in Tucson for treatment day after tomorrow. I’ll be back there then."

  "What’s this about garlic on the bullets, Ali?" Kane asked. "Does it really make them more poisonous?"

  "Garlic on bullets? I never heard of that. If the garlic houses bacteria, I guess it would make bullets infectious."

  "Chief Cepeda says the bullets that hit our boys had been rubbed in garlic."

  "I'll look into it, Jim. I also urge you to take your compadre Vogel to Tucson so I can examine his lungs with the proper equipment,"He went back into the hospital.

  Just then Oscar Vogel came out of Memin Martinillo’s room. He walked past Kane and Vogel to the room where Memin’s wife and other Martinillo relatives waited. Kane and Vogel were so engrossed in their own business that they had not noticed the quiet huddle of Martinillo relatives in the waiting room. Oscar told them that Memin had died. Memin’s wife walked past Kane and Vogel to his room without a word or a whimper.

  "I thought Adancito and Memin were raising their families in the states," Kane said. ”What are they doing back here where they can get shot? I thought they were happy in California."

  "They came back to work for the Montenegros," Vogel said.

  "The Montenegros must pay well. I didn’t think there was enough money in Mexico to lure those boys back."

  "The Montenegros have made them rich, Jim. Besides that, they missed Mexico."

  "They didn’t make Memin rich."

  "No. But that’s the game they play to get rich."

  "Where’s our compadre Adan? What’s happened to him? He knows we worry about him, yet he stays away."

  "He’s gone to the high Sierra because he wanted to, not because we asked him to. You still must not realize that we’re at war here and have been for thirty years. Where have you been?"

  "I’ve been here, but not like you. You’ve stood between me and the war. I can ride in the Sierra without a guard, because I go with you and Martinillo. If you were not my partners, I might not be able to do that."

  "Yes you would. You have as many friends in the Sierra as we do, but keep in mind what’s going on. We have enemies, and enemies kill each other. By the way wasn’t it surprising that Chief Cepeda caught the man who tried to shoot your horse?"

  "Surprising," Kane said.

  "Don’t tell me you found nothing when you searched the monte across the highway. Who broke that man’s arms?"

  "What man?"

  "The man Chief Cepeda found in the brush. The man who had the rifle he couldn’t shoot, because his arms were broken. What do you know about that?"

  "The man was about to shoot the rifle when Placido and I caught up to him."

  Vogel stared at him.

  "We separated him from the rifle so he wouldn’t shoot"

  "And broke his arms."

  "No, but I cut them with the colmillo to get the rifle away from him."

  "Válgame." Vogel shook his head.

  “Where did they take the man?"

  "He’s being treated in the social security hospital under arrest. He’s not under restraint, though. You fixed him so he might never even scratch his own ass again."

  "Well, he was about to shoot our horse."

  "I take it back. I guess, you haven't forgotten that we’re at war."

  Oscar Vogel appeared again. "Are the parents of the Martinillo boy here?" he asked.

  "His mother is in the waiting room, his father is dead, and his uncle Adancito is out looking for blood," Vogel said. "How is the boy?"

  "He just died," Oscar said.

  The Vogels and Kanes made arrangements for Memin’s and Marco Antonio’s funeral the next day. In accordance with Mexican law, they were buried within twenty-four hours of their deaths. The velorio, the wake, for both men was held at Vogel’s house. Alicia, Mari, and Dolly Ann arranged the flowers and cooked most of the food. As Luci mourned with her family, Dolly Ann’s tears for her friend Marco Antonio would not stop, but she kept working. She believed that friends had no right to collapse in grief and look for solace with the dead one’s family, but she would have liked to close herself up in a windowless room away from everybody for life.

  The partners did not stay to mourn with the family. In a war they had no time for that. The dead were buried and the combatants needed to prepare to engage the enemy. The women took the time to weep, the men to arm themselves.

  Marco Antonio and Memin went to their graves well attended. Luci's mother gave Kane permission to take her to the 7X. Since her husband’s death, the mother had not gone near the Martinillos. She had divorced herself from them because her husband had been killed in the drug war, and she wanted nothing to do with anyone who lived in the middle of it. She had returned to her own family. She appeared at the wake with her mother and a sister, wept silently, and left early. No one blamed her. Martinillos were being machine-gunned down. Adancito left for the Sierra to tell his mother and father that their son Memin and their grandson Marco Antonio were dead.

  Kane called the immigration inspectors at Nogales Airport and arranged for a seventy-two-hour pass for Luci. If he brought the necessary documents, they would let her cross in his custody as a special favor. Kane’s years of flying across the border without trying to fool anyone in customs and immigration paid off again.

  Kane loved the simple, uncomplicated life of the Sierra Madre so much that he was not sure he would do Luci a great favor by taking her home to the 7X. The 7X had its own trouble with dangerous people. Cody Joe and Dolly Ann were not totally aware of it yet. In fact, nobody else knew the trouble Kane and the Lion had seen on the 7X lately. He and the Lion agreed that they would be the only ones who dealt with thugs when they came to the 7X. They believed that border trouble should not happen to any other kind of American except cowmen. At least two cowmen, Kane and the Lion, had proved they could handle it. That’s why they had allowed the four thugs they caught in the Ruby pasture to go home. The thugs would tell their mamas that horses ran over people and old grandfathers would drag them by the neck if they trespassed on the 7X.

  Kane almost overloaded Little Buck with Vogel, Cody Joe, Dolly Ann, and Luci Martinillo, and flew to Nogales the morning after the funeral. After the customs and immigration inspection at the airport, they flew on to the 7X and landed before dark.

  The Kanes would be busy with cattle for a few days because La Golondrina steers were scheduled to cross at Nogales the next day. The cattle would be trucked from the border to the 7X to be fed and rested

  Güero Rodriguez did not know Kane’s schedule, but he considered himself to be a patient man. He had returned to the 7X after being told to stay away because he intended to snatch Kane’s granddaughter. He and his four bodyguards crossed some rich illegals on Buster trail early on the morning after the Kanes returned to the 7X and saw Kane’s airplane parked on the s
trip. After he delivered his customers to the Hummer at the mine, Güero returned to his lookout on Buster trail and trained his binoculars on the 7X headquarters. Kane was not there, but the grandson was, and so were the blonde and another pretty Mexican girl about her age. Now he might snatch two virgins instead of one. He watched the youngsters all day. His cohorts in Rio Alamos had told him the grandson had been shot, so he was not surprised to see the kid’s throat wrapped in bandages and his leg propped up on a chair in the screened Arizona room of the main house.

  He liked it that Kane was gone all day. This was a bonanza. He knew people who would pay a lot of money for two sixteen-year-old virgins. The grandson would be no problem, wounded as he was. If Kane and the Lion went away from headquarters again tomorrow, he might make the snatch.

  That evening he watched truckloads of cattle stream in and unload at headquarters. Kane and the Lion arrived with Juan Vogel, Güero’s own uncle. In Mexico, the first cousins of a person’s parents were called that person’s aunt and uncle, not his second cousin. Some uncle. Vogel had never claimed him.

  Güero and his bodyguards stayed the night at Buster cabin. The next morning, from his lookout on Buster trail, Güero watched the family drive La Golondrina yearlings away to a pasture. Six hours later, they returned to headquarters and stayed there the rest of the day.

  Güero and his bodyguards again stayed the night in the cabin at Buster camp and went back to their lookout the next day. Kane’s pickup was gone, so Güero sent the four bodyguards down the Manzanita trail to wait in ambush, in case the youngsters rode out that way as they had before. He moved down the mountain to a closer lookout where he could see into the main house. Kane, Juan Vogel, and the grandson were gone. He watched old Cañez saddle his horse. He knew from weeks of spying that the Lion never returned from his circle until after three in the afternoon. The girls would be alone.

  Güero climbed back to Buster trail and from that vantage watched the Lion for a solid hour. Then he went down to spy on the girls again. If they went out horseback on the Manzanita trail, they would be his. The chattering girls came out of the main house carrying their do-gooder gunnysacks. To Güero’s surprise and utter glee, they caught and saddled their horses and rode out in exactly the direction he wanted, chattering every step.

  His good luck did not surprise him, because it only proved his genius. He had prepared for this exact eventuality, because he had been sure the girls would ride out with sandwiches and water for the poor Mexican immigrants. This would seem like such a good deed for young, empty-headed girls to do that he had set the trap before they even prepared the sandwiches. Now, he set fire to a young cedar tree, the signal to his bodyguards that the girls were on the way.

  Güero stayed well behind the girls as he followed, but he did not have trouble keeping up. They did not make steady headway because they stopped often to talk and laugh. The blonde enjoyed telling the Mexican girl the names of the trails, the springs, and the mountains. At the narrowest, highest, most dangerous place on the mountain above a deep ravine, a place where their horses could not step off the trail without killing themselves, the girls dismounted to rest and chatter. One of Güero’s bodyguards stepped out of hiding and grabbed the horses' bridles. The girls were so surprised, they did not even whimper. Armando, the lead bodyguard, the stocky thug whose head still showed the scabs of the reata lashes that Kane had put there, pushed Dolly Ann against the rocky bank beside the trail. "I’m going to have this one right now," he growled, then reached out with both hands to grab the front of Dolly Ann’s shirt.

  That made him vulnerable to a boxer’s right cross, so Dolly Ann fell on his nose behind the straightened shaft of her right arm. The man was big and heavy enough that he stayed on his feet. Only his head snapped back on the thick neck, but his eyes crossed. As Dolly Ann’s weight fell on her target, her trunk cocked to the left, and she landed on her feet closer to the target. She snapped her trunk back to the right and brought her left fist from her belt to the man’s jaw. Her fist ended over her right shoulder with her trunk cocked to launch a right hook. The thug’s head started toward the ground and the girl snapped her trunk back to the left and landed the three outside knuckles of her right hand in a classic hook to the man’s chin. The fist bounced through the target, ended over her left shoulder, and dropped the thug into the chasm beside the trail. His big carcass slithered off the trail, toes up, but a boulder saved him from going into the ravine.

  Dolly Ann spun to face the other three thugs. Her exhibition of the sweet science had stunned them. The one who held Luci from behind gathered her closer to his breast, stepped back, and offered her as a shield against Dolly Ann. Dolly Ann made a fist and showed off the bicep muscle of the right arm that had incapacitated the biggest thug, and said, "Next?"

  "Does that one even have a womb?" asked the thug who held Luci.

  "Is she even a she? If it is a she, it fights as though the very hole between her legs has fangs."

  Güero had arrived in time to see the elimination of his thug. He snuck up beside Dolly Ann’s horse on the cliff side, smothered her with a tackle, and brought her down.

  The bodyguards came alive and forced the girls down on their faces, covered their heads with black sacks, and tied their hands behind their backs. They noosed their throats with choke ropes, loaded them on their horses, and tied their feet together underneath the horses' bellies. Güero went to the edge of the trail and stared down at Armando.

  The thug had recovered enough to sit up with his back to the boulder and to hold the front of his sweatshirt to his bloody nose. Güero sighed with new exasperation. He had thought that the paramilitary training that was being given the Lobos gangsters made them capable commando raiders. He had armed them for this raid with cuernos de chivo, Uzi sub-machine guns that made them look just like guerilla warriors. They had walked and talked the role well enough. Now he reevaluated them. If a little yellow-haired, hundred-pound girl could, with bare hands, disarm and incapacitate the leader of his "commandos," the leader of grown men who had been trained by Arab terrorists to be robbers, smugglers, killers, and kidnappers, he and the Lobos gang were in awful trouble.

  Armando climbed back to the trail and took Dolly Ann’s choke rope from Güero without a word. Dolly Ann found her voice and demanded to be released. One jerk by Armando on the noose that encircled her throat shut her voice down in mid-sentence, but he did not seem to enjoy it. He did not even look at the girl again.

  "Be careful you don’t allow hate to cloud your judgment, hombre," Güero told Armando in an even tone. "We can’t scar the merchandise. We don’t want to have to give our buyer a discount. This is handsome stuff, so think of the dollars we’ll get. Don’t tarnish them with abuse just because they’re stupid. They evidently thought those choke ropes were for adornment."

  Cody Joe was running a fever when Kane and Vogel got him to the hospital in Tucson.

  "The boy does have an infection, and I would like to put him to bed and begin his treatment here and now," Ali said.

  "Do it," Kane said.

  "As for you, Juan," Ali said to Vogel, "now that you’re here, let’s look at your lungs."

  Vogel followed Ali down the corridor to submit to treatment and soon returned to sit with Kane and wait for the results. When they became available, Ali examined them quickly and brought them to the waiting room to show Vogel a suspicious spot on one lung.

  "That’s only a scar," Vogel said.

  "It might be a scar, and it might be a tumor," Ali said.

  "I know it’s a scar. A heifer gored me there when I was sixteen."

  "Still, I want a biopsy done. It’s early and we have all day, so we can do it right now."

  "Today?"

  "Why wait? You want to know if it’s cancer, don’t you?"

  "It’s not cancer."

  "Maybe not, but let’s allay all doubts and fears, Juan."

  "Juan, why not just go ahead and do it?" Kane said. "What have you got to lose?"
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br />   "AlI right, but do it quick," Vogel said.

  The required staff was quickly prepared. In half an hour Ali and a pathologist performed the procedure. In another forty-five minutes Vogel returned to Kane’s side fully dressed.

  The partners wanted to visit with Cody Joe before they returned to the ranch, but nurses still attended him, so they sat in a waiting room. Ali introduced Kane to another of his patients in the room, a man named Silverio Garcia, the ministerio publico, public prosecutor, of Rio Alamos. He had been appointed to the post while Kane was laid up in Arizona with his injuries.

  Garcia’s wife and children were with him. He was an old friend of Vogel’s and was at the hospital to receive the first radiation treatments for a spot on his lung. He acted friendly to Ali, but Kane wondered how they could be friends. Garcia had recently received widespread newspaper and television publicity in Mexico and the United States for his prosecution of drug lords.

  Vogel asked Garcia if cancer had been found in his lungs. Garcia said that the biopsy of his spot had proven to be negative for cancer. However, por las dudas, to allay all doubts and fears, and for his family’s sake, he was submitting to the radiation treatments.

  "That’s also the only reason I’m here, por las dudas," Vogel said. He then told Garcia the history of the fears that had been invented for him by a little cough.

  "He X-rayed you and also did the biopsy today?" Garcia asked. "I waited six weeks between the X-ray and the biopsy."

  "Yes, and this is the first and last day for me," Vogel said. "I know the spot is only a scar. Por las dudas is not enough reason for me to have radiation, and I won’t have it."

  "I don’t want it either," Garcia said. "My family does. Your family will too. Everybody says it’s the best way to make sure there’s no cancer."