MOJADOS, WETS, MULES

Chief Deputy Sheriff Raul Flores pried open the dead wet's stiff fingers and pulled the glass vial out of the palm. Flores held the vial between his forefinger and thumb and raised it up to the wind and sunlight. It was the same type of vial I had clutched, four years before, as I tried to press my guts back into my body.

"Let me see that," I said, and Deputy Sheriff Flores flipped it to me. It was filled with the same silver-blue metallic liquid as my vial.

I had been gut-shot and was dying. I was up a canyon trail seven miles away from the river. Because of the steep canyon walls, I was in a dead zone, so I couldn't radio for help. Sister Quinn found me, gave me a vial, and told me to press the vial against my chest and pray. As I held the vial and tried to keep my teeth from chattering, she grabbed me under my shoulders and dragged me down the trail. She grunted and strained, and I felt her sweat drip into my face. After a mile or so, out of the dead zone, she radioed for help on my walkie-talkie.

Fellow agents said that it was a miracle she had found me, but some of the locals along Texas Highway 170, El Camino del Rio, weren't surprised. She was magical, they said. She always showed up when someone needed help. Some called her a buena curandera; others said she was a saint. Some said that during the night, Sister Quinn could turn into an owl, just like the souls of the dead could, and perch on tombstones. They said she was probably flying overhead, returning from a tombstone, when she saw me dying.

Now here was another blue vial, only Sister Quinn hadn't been around to save this wet. I unsnapped the chin strap, then pulled off the motorcycle helmet and held it by the strap. The wind cooled my sweaty face and hair, and I felt a chill. Though you doubt you could ever get used to the summertime heat, you do, so the winters, pleasant to the snowbirds, sometimes chill you. I rubbed at my forehead and felt the dust smear into the sweat; then I pulled up the collar on my nylon jacket to keep the wind off my neck. My partner, Pat Coomer, Chief Deputy Sheriff Raul Flores, Deputy Sheriff Freddy Guerra, and I stared at the dead man. We had all seen the circling buzzards and wondered if something had happened to the wets we were chasing. I had spotted the mule just as the buzzards landed and started picking at his eyes and crotch. They lit out when I walked up. The flies didn't go away; they still buzzed around the neat .22 bullet hole in his head.

The six wets Pat Coomer and I were tracking squatted together around a mesquite. The mama held her smallest kid while the other shivering kid cried. A woman held her bloody leg. One man stared at the ground. A second man smiled at me. All of them glanced up now and then to look at the dead man, as though he were some evil sign — muy mal, un maleficio. They had their plastic jugs filled with water and their extra clothes or bedding rolled into tight bundles beside them. It was the childless woman who had stepped in the lechuguilla.

Earlier, as I rode the motorcycle through and around the wash, dodging the cacti, I had seen the bloodied spear of the lechuguilla. The night before, agents had dusted the dirt levees on our drag that paralleled 170 to Ruidosa. This morning, with the sun in my eyes, I had tracked for signs and spotted the footprints. If the wets had stayed on the old ranch road, they'd hit the sensors that we had up in San Antonio Pass and they'd be easier to find, but they'd do less harm to themselves if we caught them before they went through the pass. Then the checkpoint on Highway 67 picked up signals from the magnetized, bugged bridge we had put up over one of Raymond Kohlmeyer's fences. They had made good time; they were into the canyon.

So I had headed up 67 on the motorcycle, and Pat Coomer let himself in the northeast gate of Raymond Kohlmeyer's ranch and drove west. Kohlmeyer's ranch was just a lot of creosote and cactus southwest of the Chinati Mountains, but it was part of the only flat spot between the Rio Grande and the south rim of the Davis Mountains. Anywhere else this side of 67 was rough, ravine-filled territory; the other side of 67, the El Camino del Rio side, was even worse.

I had radioed ahead to Pat, who found no signs. I'd guessed that they would follow a dry wash, and I tried to track them. As I drove down the wash or along its caliche banks, I struggled to keep the motorcycle from fishtailing out from under me and away from lechuguilla spears. I noticed rolled pebbles, dust stomped off rocks, and eventually blood on another lechuguilla.

Raul Flores gave orders to Freddy Guerra, who was filling out the necessary Presidio County and state of Texas forms. Marfa was the county seat and Abe Rincón was the elected sheriff, but Raul Flores ran county matters around Presidio. Two years before, Joey Latham, who looked the part, was sheriff, but when we busted a pickup truck full of marijuana, the Anglo driver told us about the cocaine stashed in Joey's horse barn.

"Goddamn it," Flores said loudly to be heard above the wind. "I guess you better put gunshot as cause of death."

"No shit," Pat Coomer said. "What gave you that idea?" Red-haired Coomer had his usual give-a-shit grin, and now, even in winter, his fair skin blazed red in the sun and the wind.

"What are you going to do about it?" I asked Flores.

"Ask some questions."

"To who?" I asked.

"I've got my sources."

"What about this?" I held up the glass vial. "Doesn't this make you suspicious?"

"What the hell is it?" Coomer asked.

"Curandera shit," I said. "Medicine, luck, miracle juice."

"We'll question her," Flores said, then turned to his deputy, Freddy Guerra. "Better get that Baggie out of the truck and wrap this vato." Freddy left, and I pulled off my sunglasses to look at Flores. He glared at me. "Christ, what the hell else you want me to do?"

"Why don't you just wait for that crazy bitch to turn herself in?" Pat asked through his chuckle.

"Why don't you search her templo, question her, scare her a little?" I asked.

"Christ, she's a nun. How's it gonna look if the Presidio County Sheriff's Department is hassling a goddamn Catholic fucking nun?"

Quiet Freddy Guerra came back with the body bag and unzipped it.

"Before we bag him, look at his boots," I said.

"What the hell?" Flores said. "You want 'em, pull 'em off."

"How many wets or even mules with the money they get packing dope you seen with Red Wing boots? And those are genuine Levi's, not some off brand. And look at his hair: long but well cut."

"We'll compliment his mama or whoever else dressed him before he was shot," Raul said.

"Try a little harder," I said. Raul gave me a dumb look. "He's working for some people with money. And they're bad fuckers, real broncos, and he's a bronco too."

"So let's bag this bad fucker," Raul Flores said.

Pat shrugged...