Seneca Book 4: De Dos Del Nortes
Copyright© 2026 by Zanski
Chapter 2. 1875: The Eye, El Paso, Texas
Before he left the clinic, Ray Dugan had offered me a job. He said he wanted me to find somebody for him and he promised me twenty-five dollars if I was successful — more than a month’s pay when I was a sergeant major in the U.S. Army. Then Dugan told me to come see him Monday morning, and he bid us a good evening.
Dugan had shown up at the El Paso clinic because a deputy town marshal, Juan Artigas, had found Dugan’s business card among the scraps left in my money belt after I’d been knocked unconscious and robbed. After bringing me to Ernest Fogle’s clinic, Artigas had located Dugan at a local saloon and asked him if he knew me.
I had met Dugan, a Pinkerton agent, the year before, in December of ‘seventy-four. He had been an observer at a joint War Department and State Department inquiry hearing into an unauthorized U.S. Cavalry border incursion into Mexico.
Though I had been an infantry scout at the time in question, I’d been loaned to the cavalry for that expedition because of my tracking skills and my familiarity with the Big Bend country. We had hoped to intercept a rogue band of Comanche but had been unable to catch up with them before they crossed the Rio Grande into Mexico. A perversely zealous cavalry captain had, contrary to orders, led us across the border and into a disastrous encounter in which we came under a cross-fire from both the Comanche and a troop of Mexican lancers. The Comanche and the Mexican troopers had been in their own firefight with one another and our captain had led us right into the middle of it — and then had us charge the dragoons.
I’d been the senior ranking man to survive the massacre that followed and had been called as a witness at the Army’s Court of Inquiry. Meanwhile the Pinkertons had been hired by the Mexican foreign ministry to help them determine who, exactly, had been leading the U.S. Cavalry troop which had attacked the company of Mexican lancers — attacking them in Mexico, their own country. Ray Dugan was the detective the Pinkerton Agency sent.
Since then, my pregnant wife, Janie, along with her brother — my best friend — First Sergeant Jordie Tipton, had been killed by a Comanche raiding party. I had been on advance scout for that four-man detachment and I had quickly returned to them when I heard the gunfire. But I was too far away to effectively intervene before the Comanche raiders escaped. I was the only survivor, at least in body, and I buried Jordie and the two enlisted men, as well as Janie and the other pregnant women we had been escorting to Fort Stockton to escape an epidemic at Fort Davis.
After that horror, I could no longer tolerate Army life and I requested, and was granted, an honorary discharge. I was a sergeant major at separation.
After my discharge, I came to El Paso with more than five hundred dollars of saved money and the cash from the sale of Janie’s house and her chicken and egg business. My intention had been to buy land for a small farm in the Mesilla Valley, north of El Paso. Instead I was assaulted and robbed of it all on my first night in town.
Yet Dugan had deemed me lucky. “They’d as soon used a knife as a sap,” he’d commented on my assault. I suppose my “luck” didn’t end there, as I also had previously paid for a week’s lodging for me and for Brutus and Shorty, my saddle-horse and my pack-mule. I’d also purchased some civilian duds — shirts, trousers, and a hip-length canvas coat.
Even so, I reflected with bitterness, my life didn’t exactly feel like I was being cradled in the arms of Providence.
From where I was sitting on the clinic’s bed, I looked over at Doc Fogle and asked, “Why would he think I could find somebody? That’s not what I did in the Army. I was a scout — I watched out for the enemy. I was a tracker, following sign on the ground. Besides, some officer or another always told me where to go and what to do.”
Ernest Fogle was a retired Army medic who had partnered with a doctor in El Paso, bringing his thirty years of Army knowledge and experience to their shared practice.
Fogle’s eyes narrowed into a speculative expression. “Maybe he needs a tracker. Will you go see him?” he finally asked.
“To what end? I can’t conjure a man by guessing. A scout follows tracks. I take note of sign, I count the enemy’s numbers from a concealed lookout, I evaluate potential approaches.”
“What about those special assignments you had? That colored soldier with the white dick, or that private who’d murdered his romantic rival, or the Indian scout who’d been struck by lightning?”
I’d spent long weeks recovering my eyesight while in Fogle’s care at the Fort Quitman infirmary, the partial blindness resulting from a head wound received in a battle with Apaches in mid-February. Apparently, Fogle and I had run the gamut of our Army careers in our conversations. Well, maybe not all of his, as he’d had in thirty years to my eleven.
I shrugged. “I was a sergeant in the Army. I knew my way around the Army.”
“Well, now you’re a civilian. Are things all that different?”
I held my hand near the lump on my head. “It would seem so.”
He shook his head in dismissal. “This isn’t the first time you woke up in one of my hospital beds. That first time you were a sergeant major in the Army. Tonight you just let down your guard, like you did at Chulo Wash.”
Tarnation, the man had a prodigious memory.
He went on, holding his hands apart. “Besides, what’s the harm in talkin’ to this Dugan?” He pointed at the business card the detective had left on the bed sheet. “He’s willing to pay you ten bucks just for giving it a try. You could take his money and just ride on.”
Would that I could, but I didn’t have the heart for that sort of treachery.
“Fine, fine, I’ll go see ‘im. Now can I go to my boarding house, or do I have to listen to you yammer all night?”
“You should have told me you were in town. You could have bunked with me and Gisela (jee-SAY-lah). We have an extra bedroom.” He grinned. “It would have saved me coming out tonight.”
A voice called from the outer room, “Doctor Fogle?”
“Back here, Deputy.” Fogle called. Then, to me, he explained, “It’s the town marshal who brought you here.”
A Mexican man a few years older than my twenty-nine years appeared at the infirmary door. He was mid-sized and had a stubby two-day growth on his cheeks, though he sported a wide mustache. He wore an inverted crescent-moon badge with two links from which dangled a small, five-point star.
“Ah, you are awake, Señor Becker. That is at least good news. I am Deputy El Paso Town Marshal Juan Artigas.” He offered his hand which I willingly shook.
“Thank you for bringing me here, Deputy. Doctor Fogle and I knew each other in the Army.”
He nodded. “Your landlady mentioned that you had recently been discharged.”
“How did you know where I was staying?”
“I just keep asking questions. It is tedious, but not difficult. She says to tell you your animals are safe, pending your return.” He smiled. “At least until the end of the week for which you paid.”
Then he brought a small notepad from the pocket in his waistcoat, along with a pencil stub. “Did you see your attackers?”
“I don’t recall anything of the attack, Deputy. I recall nothing after leaving the Whistling Dixie.”
He looked up at the mention of the saloon. “Were you playing blackjack there, Señor Becker?”
I nodded, then winced at the pain it caused. “A few hands.”
“And did you have the bad fortune of winning those hands?”
“More than not.”
He sighed, made a note with the pencil, then returned it and the pad to his pocket. “Then I know who did this.”
“Great,” I said. “Let’s go get my money.”
He shook his head. “Knowing is not proof for the court. Besides, Señor Becker, your assailants would no longer have but a token amount of your cash.”
“Then how do you know who it was, Deputy?”
“To a Bible-sworn certainty, I do not know. But it is a crime which has happened in the same way before, though you are an Anglo, so the knife was not used.”
“But you know who did this?”
“As I said, not to swear to in court.”
“Just give me their names, then.”
He gave me a speculative look, and, after a moment, he said, “I cannot, señor. As neither can I swear to you I know who did this. To tell you otherwise would be an injustice, even if I were, by chance, correct.”
It was my turn to regard him, as I considered what he had said. “You’re right, Deputy. I won’t trouble you more.”
Now he seemed suspicious of my easy conciliation — as well he might be.
“Señor Becker, should some misdeed occur involving the blackjack game, or the dealer, or any of his compadres, you would fall under suspicion. You would not be permitted to act beyond the law.”
“I understand, Deputy Artigas.”
He made one more effort to resolve the his concern. “Are you certain you are unable to remember anything more, Señor Becker?”
I began to shake my head, but, wincing again, I immediately thought better of it. “No, Deputy, it’s just as I said. Believe me, if I knew more, I’d be telling anyone who would listen.”
“Very well then. Buenas noches, señores.” He turned to go, but I stopped him.
“Deputy Artigas, may I ask you something?”
He turned to face me. “Si, señor?”
“You apparently know Ray Dugan, the Pinkerton detective. He’s offered to pay me if I will help him find someone. He says it is legal, yet he said he will pay me twenty-five dollars. Do you know anything about Mister Dugan’s dealings that should make me steer clear of his offer?”
He looked thoughtful as he replied with a shake of his head. “I know of nothing that should concern you, señor, as far as his observance of the law and his honest dealings with others. There is no mark against him in El Paso.” Then he shrugged. “South of the border, he may not be as scrupulous, but that is not for me to judge; I have only heard rumors. But there have been no complaints brought to our office.”
Then he continued, “The amount of pay you mention may reflect how Señor Dugan is paid. I believe he earns sixty or seventy dollars each month. In addition, I believe he receives a portion of all money he brings into the Agency as the superintendent of the local Pinkerton office.”
It seemed like Artigas had an unusual amount of intimate knowledge about a man’s job, so I asked, “How is it you know all this?”
“Señor Dugan testified to this in a state criminal court trial.” Artigas smiled. “The defense attorney wanted to make his testimony appear tainted by the money Señor Dugan would earn.”
“And did that work?”
Artigas smiled as he shook his head. “It might have, had the defendant not jumped to his feet and shouted at Señor Dugan that he would give him the same thing he gave the dead victim.”
That brought a smile to my face and a short laugh from Fogle.
“Thank you, Deputy.”
“De nada, señor.” He touched the brim of his norte americano straw sombrero, its brim some narrower than was popular among Mexican vaqueros. Then Artigas nodded, turned, and left.
I spent Sunday mostly taking it easy. I cleaned my firearms, then gave Brutus and Shorty a good brushing and an extra scoop of oats. I turned them out into the corral, where there was hay, water, and shade if the mood hit them. Meanwhile, I oiled my saddle and rinsed out the saddle blankets, draping them over the corral fence to dry — until I noticed Shorty making for them. I took the blankets into the stable and draped them through the ladder to the hayloft. After dinner I went for a walk down along the Rio, assessing its prospects for fishing. Then I came back to the house and took a nap, almost sleeping through supper.
“What is it you want me to do, Mister Dugan?”
His office had been easy to locate. It was on the second story, above a barber shop. There was a sign above the stairwell door with the prominent depiction of the never-sleeping eye below a caption that read, “The Pinkerton Agency.”
“Call me Ray, Mister Becker. Do you prefer to be called Judah or Seneca? Or Mister Becker?”
“I think of myself as Judah, Mister, ah, Ray. But I’ll answer to Becker or Seneca, which was an Army moniker given me by others.”
“Fine, Judah. What I want you to do is find a man named Burt Wrigley. He was foreman of the Six-Slash, just across the state line up in New Mexico Territory. When his boss died, he stole the ranch funds, leaving the widow holding the bag and a dozen cowboys short a month’s pay. Rumor has it he fled to El Paso del Norte, and then further south, maybe.”
I shook my head. “There’s not much further south in Mexico, except desert and mountains for hundreds of miles, until you get down to Mexico City, at least that’s what I’ve heard.”
“There’s a couple closer towns, Monterrey and Durango, but mostly you’re right. Northern Mexico is a desert. I’ve been to Monterrey, from Laredo. That was four miserable days by coach, and that wasn’t even pure desert. If you think Texas roads are bad, just try your luck in Mexico.”
“Are you trying to talk me out of taking this job, Ray?”
His face turned red and he shook his head in chagrin. “No, no, no. And I’m supposed to be a good salesman,” he muttered.
I smiled but then said, “I’m puzzled, though. Why hire me? Why not just assign one of your own men?”
He smiled. “I don’t have any men. Chicago sent me to open an office in El Paso after that federal inquiry hearing and my work for Capitan Carranza and the Mexican Foreign Ministry. Before that, I was operating out of our state headquarters in Austin. Things have been slow here for the past few months while I got the word out and I didn’t need any help. But in the last week, I picked up this case, plus two others, one for El Paso County and the other for the freighting company that has the Army cartage contract in south Texas. Both of those can be handled in Texas and, from the company’s point of view, they’re both a higher priority than the Six-Slash payroll. I need to stay here and handle those priority cases.”
“You said Chicago sent you? Who’s in Chicago?”
“The national home office for the Pinkerton Agency is in Chicago.”
“Ah.” Then, getting down to brass tacks, I asked, “If I took on the Six-Slash case, what would you have me do?”
“The best outcome would be to capture Wrigley and all the money, and bring him back here to face charges.”
“You think he still has the money?”
He shook his head, then shrugged. “Maybe some of it.”
“And how do I bring him back from Mexico, without running afoul of the Mexican authorities?”
“I’ll front you ten dollars in four-bit pieces. Use it for bribes.”
“Does that work?”
“Usually.”
“So I truss Wrigley up and just haul him back?”
Dugan gave me a long look, finally saying, “The money is what’s important. If he hasn’t got it, then it’s worth fifty dollars just to bring him back across the border. But he left with near a thousand dollars, and the widow’s favorite horse. We’ll earn another fifty dollars for the horse.”
“What’s so special about the horse?”
He grimaced. “It was a gift from the rancher to his wife on their fifteenth wedding anniversary in May, just a few months before he died.”
“And how much for the payroll?”
“Ten percent, with a minimum of a hundred dollars.”
“What’s the horse look like?”
“It’s a calico paint mare. There’s the Six-Slash brand on its near hip.”
That struck a chord. I was almost certain I’d seen that horse.
“And you’ll pay me ten dollars in advance just to give it an honest go?”
“With fifteen more if you deliver at least half the money, or the man. I’ll add five dollars for the horse.”
“And ten dollars for bribes?”
He nodded.
“What if I don’t use it all?”
“You keep ten percent of any you don’t use.”
I leaned forward and reached across his desk. “You’ve got a deal, Ray.”
We shook hands and I settled back in my chair. “When do I get the twenty dollars?”
He shrugged, “I’ll give you a bank draft. It’s drawn on our account at the Cattleman’s Bank of Commerce, two blocks north from here. I’ll just need you to sign a receipt for it.”
“The receipt will be for a bank draft, not the cash?”
“I can write it that way.”
“Then go ahead, Ray. I want to get to this.”
Twenty minutes later I had ten dollar coins and twenty half-dollar coins, all but two dollars of which was in my money belt.
First thing after leaving the bank, I walked back to the stable at the boarding house to check on a matter that could affect my job and to see if the saddle blankets were dry. Having satisfied myself at the stable, I walked to the town marshal’s office. It was in the next block beyond the Customs House, and across an alley from the building that housed the mayor’s office and city clerk.
I wasn’t surprised to find Juan Artigas alone in the office, working with a stack of papers, making notes on another sheet
He looked up as I entered and said, “Ah, Señor Becker. I do not have any new information about your attack. However, I have been looking at similar attacks over the past year. That alley, where you were found, has seen seven such crimes since last August, one as recently as ten days ago, but that man was stabbed to death.”
“Mind if I sit down?”
“Of course not. Por favor, sientese, señor.”
“Gracias, Diputado. You can call me Judah, if you want, Deputy.”
He smiled behind the wide mustache. “Then you must call me Juan.”
I nodded. “Thank you. May I ask you a question, Juan? About these attacks?”
“Of course.”
“In the crimes you mentioned to me on Saturday night, you said that Anglos were more commonly bludgeoned to unconsciousness and Mexicans more often stabbed to death.”
He shrugged, and, with a mild grimace, gestured to the papers in front of him. “It is not always the case.” He shrugged. “There have been too few of these attacks to say this for certain.”
“Still, the man killed ten days ago, he was an Anglo?”
His face narrowed a bit, and his voice carried a note of wariness. “He was, but how would you know that?”
“You said he was stabbed, but was his face also disfigured, so that you could not identify him?”
“Were you in town then, Señor Becker?” His wariness had turned to suspicion.
“No, Juan. Ten days ago I was at Antelope Pass on the North Road, east of Fort Davis. Before Saturday, I’d never been to El Paso, no closer than Fort Bliss three years ago.” Fort Bliss was about five miles north of town.
“So you heard talk of the naked man without a face?”
“No, but I have been hired by Ray Dugan to find that man.”
“What man is that?”
“Burt Wrigley, from the Six-Slash ranch up in New Mexico, just across the state line.”
Artigas glanced quickly at the report form on his desk, then back at me, his eyes narrowing again, then slowly relaxing. Finally, there was the slightest nod.
“How do you know, Judah? The reports we had said that Señor Wrigley had ridden south out of El Paso del Norte.” El Paso del Norte was still the name of the other half of El Paso south of the Rio, though many Anglos called it just Del Norte.
“Because it made little sense for an Anglo with so much cash to ride out into the Mexican desert. Why not just ride along the Rio on the Mexican side and cross back over at Presidio or San Felipe Del Rio? Why cross the desert just to get to Monterrey when he could head rio abajo (REE-oh ah-BAH-hoh, down river) to Rio Grande City and travel in comfort aboard a steamboat to New Orleans? But finally what made me most suspicious was the calico paint horse in the stable of the boarding house where I am staying, a horse with a Diamond-Eight brand, though three sides of the diamond and part of the eight are fresh and look irregular, like they were done with a running iron, maybe to hide a Slash-six brand.”
Artigas sat bolt upright. “So this killer is staying at your boarding house?”
“No, I very much doubt it. My landlady says a drummer left the horse with her and paid her twenty dollars to keep it inside and out of the sun until he returns in a few weeks. He told her the horse’s skin had been sun-burnt where the white patches are in the calico.”
Artigas nodded. Sunburn could be a problem for white horses. Their hair wasn’t actually white, but had no color, allowing sunlight to reach the skin. He quickly saw the logic, and said, “Then the brand must be on a patch of white skin, which is how he explained the raw look of it and why the horse must not be outside, in the sunlight. As then follows, it means that the horse would not be where anyone else might see it, save for the occasional turistico (tourist) with a horse of his own to stable there.”
It was my turn to nod. “Exactamente.” We’d been speaking mostly in English, but would switch to Spanish if it featured a word or phrase better conveying the sense of our meaning, or even if the word might mean the very same thing but was just better in the way it sounded.
Now he carried the reasoning farther. “But the drummer is almost certainly not the killer. More likely, the drummer had just purchased the horse and at a very good price because of the sunburn.”
“Yes,” I replied. “That is precisely what Señora Vasquez told me. She expects the drummer back in late September and he can move the horse when the sun isn’t so intense and the days are shorter. Then he will ride the horse to San Antonio, where he will make it a gift to his daughter.” Leona Vasquez was the widow who owned the boarding house.
Now Artigas frowned. “So who sold him the horse?”
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