stack. Gradually, the wheels rotated, and the cars jerked into motion.
The train was thankfully taking off on time—something of a miracle in Mexico. Eléna took that as a good omen. She needed the train to depart on time. The clock was running out on Eléna and her patient. In thirty-six hours the train would hopefully pull into a rail stop, which was a one-hour wagon ride to the Ryans’ rancho. She would contact Katherine Ryan when she got there. She had been afraid to wire Katherine, telling her that she was bringing her daughter home, for fear that prospective kidnappers might intercept the message. Rachel would bring a queen’s ransom down here.
All Eléna could hope was that she’d find a wagon and horses at the train station.
* * *
Time was so precious she’d sold her cantina in under three hours—in the same amount of time Antonio needed to book their train, then borrow a wagon and horses in which to drive them to the train station. She had packed hers and Antonio’s rucksacks, two large canvas bags, and three two-gallon water bags. She did it as quickly as she could, since they were desperate to make the two p. m. train to the Arizona Territory.
Her brother-in-law, Alfredo, had been trying to purchase her cantina for years, and now she’d sold it to him. He was stunned that she would pull up stakes, abandon virtually all of her possessions, and leave Sonora in such a hurry. She knew she was selling her establishment at fire-sale prices but she told Alfredo that she did not care. He was so insulting that it took every ounce of self-control to keep from shouting at him:
“Chingo tu madre, puto. I’m going to Rancho del Cielo.”
But she and Antonio could not tell their destination to anyone.
* * *
Now her only fear was that they wouldn’t get to the Rancho in time to help Rachel. She wanted to scream at the fireman and engineer to throw more kindling into the firebox and get that damn train moving.
PART III
There was no law in Veracruz, no Sunday in
Sinaloa, and no God south of Ciudad Juárez.
—OLD MEJICANO PROVERB
Chapter 11
After a breakfast of carne de cabra, frijoles, and tortillas, Mateo took Richard outside. The sun was at zenith and burned in the cloudless sky like a white-hot poker. The temperature was over 105 degrees, and the air was as dry as a cinder block. Before them lay the fort’s huge square parade ground. Three hundred yards on edge, it teemed with companies of rurales, seemingly frenzied but actually engaged in disciplined activity. Dozens of companies of soldiers—over five thousand men in all—in sweat-stained gray uniforms and matching forage caps practiced close-order drill. Under the stern, unblinking eye of obscenity-bellowing drill sergeants, they shouted out their sweltering cadences. Companies of recruits in sweat-soaked fatigues were performing interminable push-ups, jumping jacks, knee bends, sit-ups, and leg lifts—roaring out the numbers of their repetitions. Other companies practiced field-stripping and reassembling their rifles. Whenever a company finished, the drill sergeant ordered them to take a half-dozen laps around the field.
Surrounding the parade ground were a score or more of huge, whitewashed, four-story adobe buildings. Half of them, Mateo told Richard, were barracks in whose bunk beds the base’s soldiers slept each night.
“Each of those barracks,” Mateo said, “holds hundreds of enlisted men. At night, we stack them like cordwood—in triple bunk beds.”
“And you dragoon all of them into your army like you did me.”
“We practice universal conscription in Sonora, and, yes, if the men resist, we enlist them by force.”
“I’ve died and gone to hell,” Richard muttered.
“No, we just walked past the guardhouse. That’s hell.”
“Lovely,” Richard said.
“Off to the right are two mess halls. The men eat there three times a day.”
“Eat what?”
“The enlisted men live on frijoles and tortillas. The latrines and showers are out back.”
“The enlisted men must need a lot of showers the way you work them,” Richard said, glancing at the perspiring soldiers on the field.
“Amigo, that is not possible. We suffer serious water shortages.”
“Beans and body stink,” Richard said. “Great.”
“We ride ’em hard and put ’em up wet,” Mateo said, a grin flickering under his black, downward-sweeping mustache.
Mateo pointed out offices, the dispensary, the officers’ quarters.
“What are those buildings like?” Richard asked. “The ones where you and the officers sleep?”
“Private rooms, all the showers you want.”
“The food?”
“Pollo, carne, and queso frijoles, arroz, mangos, café, cerveza, and tequila.”
“And women?”
“Muchas mujeres. You can even bring them into your rooms for the night.”
“And the enlisted barracks stink really bad?”
“The smell could drive a zopilote [buzzard] off a shit wagon.”
“You suggesting I should enter Officer Candidate School?”
He shrugged. “It’s a thought. But come, amigo, let us take a take a brief stroll.”
Chapter 12
The Lady Dolorosa stared up at her bed’s canopy. Its alabaster satin top and sides were fringed with matching lace. Reclining against a small mountain of fluffy white silk pillows, she casually surveyed her room. Everything was white—from the bedposts to the walls, from the thick rugs and carpets to her silk dressing gown.
Once, when one of her court ladies asked her why she favored the color, she’d responded: “It’s the color of virgins.”
Their laughter had been immense.
Flinging her arms out, she emitted a huge, heartfelt sigh. After a night of desperate, almost demented debauchery, she felt sleepily, dreamily at peace. Still all that exertion had given her a voracious appetite, and as soon as she had awakened, she’d shouted to no one in particular that she wanted her usual breakfast. Five of her ladies-in-waiting now entered, armed with breakfast trays—chile rellenos, pollo con mole poblano, tortillas, sliced jalapeños, dishes of scorchingly hot salsa, all backed up by a large, ice-filled pitcher of tequila, tomato juice, and Tabasco sauce—imported from the state of Tabasco—as well as six bottles of Pila Seca, a highly regarded mejicano beer, which their Lady greatly favored, all of the drinks chilling in ice buckets.
Her ladies placed a tray in front of her, containing a
