down in a hard neighborhood and they’re hell-bent on proving to everybody that they’re just as tough as the next one—and tougher.”
“I’ve nothing against them—if they behave. Now about these border-running folks?”
“I reckon Bardell’s your big meat. Whether you’ll ever get anything on him is another thing—something for you to work up a lather over. Next to him—Big ’Nacio. You ain’t seen him yet? A big, black-whiskered Mex that’s got a rancho down the canyon—four-five mile this side of the line. Anything that comes over the line comes through that rancho. But proving that’s another item for you to beat your head about.”
“He and Bardell work together?”
“Uh-huh—I reckon he works for Bardell. Another thing you got to include in your tally is that these foreign gents who buy their way across the line don’t always—nor even mostly—wind up where they want to. It ain’t nothing unusual these days to find some bones out in the desert beside what was a grave until the coyotes opened it. And the buzzards are getting fat! If the immigrant’s got anything worth taking on him, or if a couple of government men happen to be nosing around, or if anything happens to make the smuggling gents nervous, they usually drop their customer and dig him in where he falls.”
The racket of the dinner-bell downstairs cut off our conference at this point.