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we’ll get some rest tonight. We might be on our way to Monterrey in the morning.”
    But no sooner had I said it then there came a knock at our door. Hays answered it. It was Jack Cole, or Black Jack Cole as he was called. Jack was a small, middle-aged man who’d been a friend of our family for years. Word was he’d rode the owl-hoot trail, but, so far as I knew, he’d never done no serious jail time. Now it was my understanding that he made his living smuggling Mexican gold into the States. I don’t reckon it paid much, but them as didn’t need much were said to be content with it.
    I got up and we shook hands all around and then got Jack seated and a drink in his hand. He was called Black Jack because he was so swarthy. On the border he could easy pass for a Mexican, but his coloring didn’t come from any Spanish blood, but Cherokee Indian.
    When he’d got his drink down and Hays had poured him another I said, “Well, Jack . . . what’s it all about?”
    He had a pleasant face and creased and crinkled skin around his eyes. He gave a half laugh and said, “Well, I don’t know if I can explain it or not. It started out purty simple, but it jest kep’ a-goin’ and a-goin’. Best I can say is you know Norris and how he can git.”
    “Yes,” I said dryly. “Only too well. Tell me what you can.”
    He said, “Wahl, we went out and taken a look at that land and, shore enough, he finds they is a rough bunch of hombres staked out there. See, the Rio Grande had done took a shift here a while back where it kind of throwed your land downhill from the river. Well, some smart compesinos figured it out and they dug ’em a drainage ditch right down the middle of that patch of land and damned if they didn’t get some grass growin’. So they’ve turned a bunch of scrawny Mexican cattle in there and is fattenin’ ’em up at a right smart rate.”
    Ben said, “I bet that set right good with Norris.”
    Jack laughed. “Oh, he got a little hot about it. ’Fore I talked him out of it he was all for ridin’ in thar and clearin’ out the bunch of ’em. We finally went into the courthouse in Laredo. He’d seen the sheriff, but they discovered the deed was clouded by something that had happened a hunnert years ago. I never really got the straight of it. But they told him he’d have to go over to Mexico, on account of it being a Spanish land grant. You know how them goes. So we went over there an’ he got another lawyer, a Mex lawyer. Upshot was he didn’t git no satisfaction from the authorities in Nuevo Laredo. They told him he’d have to go to the capital, to Monterrey, where they had complete records.”
    Ben said, “Oh, shit.”
    Jack looked at him and smiled a little. “Yeah, that’s about the size of it. By then ol’ Norris was gettin’ his back up higher’n his head. So we goes down there to Monterrey, only this time he ain’t gonna git no lawyer. Says he’s tired of payin’ out to clear his own land. ’Course I went along as kind of an interpreter since ol’ Norris don’t speak that much Spanish.” He stopped and shook his head and looked at me. He said, “Justa, the whole damn matter could have been cleared up for a hunnert dollar bill. But—”
    I nodded. “But Norris had his back up.”
    Jack said, “Yeah. We taken this here official out to git a drink to some cantina and the ol’ boy just let it slide that a little fee of a hunnert dollars would get Norris a clear title. A title he could have taken back down to Laredo and had the sheriff run them hombres off the land with maybe. But then Norris got stiff-necked. He said he happened to know for a fact that a title search didn’t cost but ten pesos and he was damned if he was going to pay ninety-nine dollars for something that was already his. Got right angry about it, too. Right there in that cantina.”
    “I can see it,” Ben said.
    “Then what?” I asked.
    “Wahl, Norris announced to that official that he was gonna report him