Free The Son by Philipp Meyer Page B

so white men had arrived as well: Sheriff Graham from Carrizo, two deputies, another Ranger, the new game warden. Additionally: Niles Gilbert, his two sons, and two members of the Law and Order League visiting from El Paso. Gilbert brought a case of Krag rifles and several thousand rounds of ammunition from his store, as he’d heard that others were coming as well.
    “Coming for what?” I said.
    “To help you all run them copper-bellies out.”
    “The copper-bellies in question are across the river,” I said.
    He gave me a look. I nearly pointed out that I have four years of college to his four years of grammar school. But he is one who believes that power is best used for the humiliation of other men. I might as well have explained myself to a donkey.
    I have always possessed a near-perfect recall, of which both Charles and my father are quite aware, but neither supported me when I pointed this out to the others. It had been less than three hours, but the facts were already changing—men who had appeared as apparitions, their white shirts barely visible in the dusk, were now seen clearly. I reminded everyone that it had been too dark to identify any man—so dark, in fact, that the flashes from our guns left us blind—but it no longer mattered. In the light of memory, it was bright enough to see faces, and the faces belonged to the Garcias.
    I suggested we might wait for more Rangers or the army—I was anxious to delay until daylight, when men become harder to lynch—but Charles, who spoke for most in the room, said firstly we could not let them get away with shooting Glenn, and secondly that the army would not be coming at all, as General Funston had made clear that he would only interfere if his soldiers were directly fired upon. He would not put his men to chasing common cattle thieves. Unless of course the cattle are King Ranch Brahmas.
    At this I got even more depressed. The soldiers are the only government agents in South Texas who have no marked tendency to shoot Mexicans. As for the Rangers, they are both the best and the worst. The sergeant pointed out that there were only thirty-nine of them in the entire state of Texas; the fact we had three in the same room (a third had arrived from Carrizo) was a miracle.
    A miracle for whom, I thought. The room had the atmosphere of a cattle association, old friends politely discussing grazing rights and which politicians we ought to be supporting and how we were going to keep our stock competitive in the northern markets. The Colonel chimed in from the peanut gallery and laid out a long argument in support of Charles, in what I have now begun to consider their usual unholy alliance. He claimed that Glenn’s wounding was his responsibility, as he’d had a chance fifty years ago to push the Garcias off this land forever, and had not taken it, and damned if he was going to let the same thing happen twice in a single lifetime.
    I pointed out that due to various events on our land our family tree had already shed quite a few leaves. My father pretended to ignore me.
    “I have lost my mother here and a son and a brother,” I said. “And now another son is on his way to the hospital. I would prefer to wait until daylight.”
    All agreed that our family had suffered great tragedies, but the best thing was to take Pedro as soon as possible. This was the community’s problem now—not just ours—no telling who the Garcias’ next victim might be.
    I laid out another argument, namely that Pedro Garcia was as proud as any other man, and if pressed by a mob, he would certainly not give up his yerno, or any other member of his family, but if asked by the law, in the light of day, it would be a different story.
    “We are the law,” said the Ranger sergeant.
    The others agreed. Not one of them would have considered surrendering to an armed mob in the middle of the night, but they did not see why the Garcias ought not to. I considered mentioning this but instead I said: