at the rate that mine is killing them.”
“Torn, we get some gold, we can take all the time in the world figurin’ what to do with that bank’s money.”
“Remember what happened when Ojo Serpiente [Snake Eye] went in two weeks ago. He died in a cave-in, buried alive.”
“One accident.”
“Then, El Mustang. The methane got him. When that damn gas isn’t poisoning us, it’s catching fire and incinerating everything in its path. How many mine fires have we had?”
“But we got a fortune in gold in that mine. I saw the main vein—oro puro [100 percent gold]—the real thing.”
“Tell that to Cuervo Rojo [Red Crow].”
“Fuck him.”
“And what happened to him?” Slater asked, grimacing.
Luis looked away, silent.
“Trapped under a ton of deadfall, a whole mountain’s worth of rock.”
Slater even shuddered at the thought.
Still Moreno leaned forward and fixed his friend with a tight stare.
“But you ain’t listenin’, amigo. I just told you I seen the vein. A drift of solid gold a foot thick and running only God knows how far and long. Enough oro to buy Sinaloa and Sonora. We could own Méjico!”
“We already got seventy-five thousand dollars apiece. We don’t need any more.”
“And if we spend one centavo of that money, we get all the armies of Méjico and Norteamérica coming down on us like rockslides. That’s Díaz’s money we stole.”
“That ain’t a mine, Moreno. It’s an open grave. You go in it, it’s your grave.”
“I’m going back in. I’m not walkin’ away from a fortune in gold.”
“Then you’re goin’ in alone. I tell you that hole is cursed, and I’m takin’ off. I’m not hangin’ around here to watch you die.”
“Then adiós—vaya con Dios, old friend.”
“Y diablo [and the devil],” Slater said.
Luis Moreno turned his back on Slater, picked up his pick, and headed into the mine.
Without looking back.
Chapter 14
For hours on end, Eléna sat on the flatbed car with Rachel’s head cradled in her lap. The car banged and bounced so hard it was the only way she could protect the woman’s cracked head. Occasionally, Antonio would spell her, but for the most part, she did not want Antonio tied up. He was their protection, and this was bandit country.
But most of all she worried about Rachel.
They had packed four pistols, two knives, and a sawed-off shotgun in their rucksacks. The guns were all rechambered to take cartridges, and Antonio kept them loaded and close at hand. They had three two-gallon water bags, which Antonio had hung on the vertical ladder bolted onto the end of the adjacent boxcar. Dried beef and mangos, tortillas, and some soft cornmeal mush, which Eléna had packed specifically for Rachel, made up their rations.
She had no appetite but forced herself to eat; Rachel, who was unconscious, could not ingest food, not even the mush, and came to only when she was thirsty enough to drink.
Otherwise, Eléna’s sole job was to sit upright on the hard floor of the car and keep the woman’s head immobilized.
There were a dozen soldados on the train, but they mostly stayed in the boxcars or up on the boxcars’ roofs. So as the train roared through the waterless wastes of the great Sonoran Desert, she preoccupied herself by studying the various flora—the endless stands of yucca, the bushy forests of mesquite, fields of maguey, which her people raised for its fiber, which they wove into cloth, and its fruit, from which they made tequila and mezcal. Ubiquitous prickly pear cactuses, bent sagebrush, creosote, and stunted salt-bushes rolled into sight, while hot winds blew through the chaparral.
As the train rumbled through the desert, she unthinkingly observed the animals as well. Scrawny jackrabbits, scrawnier coyotes, and dark ugly javelinas with their downward-curving tusks, which foraged and hunted along the track bed. When the train pulled up onto the sidings for water and kindling, Eléna studied the procession of reptiles—the sidewinders, diamondbacks, and speckled rattlers. She noted snakes as well—whip snakes, king snakes, red racers, and gopher snakes. Then there were the usual innumerable varieties of lizards—horned lizards, whiptail lizards, desert spiny lizards, long-nosed lizards, side-blotched lizards, the zebra-tailed and leopard lizards.
In her boredom, Eléna almost unconsciously catalogued insects—the assassin bugs, the talapai tigers, thread-legged bugs, wheel bugs, which, when they tried to board her car, she smashed instantly. She deliberately watched out for the twiglike, two-inch walkingsticks, otherwise known as the devil’s darning needles, which stripped the leaves from trees and sprayed poison at their enemies. She actively disliked the praying mantis, which eats its mate whole. She cringed at the tarantulas, yellow jacket wasps, jewel wasps, and stink beetles, which direct a noxious-smelling spray at their enemies. She even spotted a reclusive scorpion or two from time to time and reminded Antonio to check his boots for them before putting them on each morning. Eléna’s personal favorite were the ant lions, which hunted ants like predatory cats.
She didn’t sleep and wasn’t sure if she ever would again. They not only had Rachel to worry about, they were now in the middle of bandit country. Armies of them roamed and plundered this wasteland, and a gang of them, pouring out of a nearby barranca, could shatter their boring tranquillity in a heartbeat.
How did the old saying go?
There was no law in Veracruz, no Sunday in Sinaloa, and no God south of Ciudad Juárez.
Chapter 15
On and on Richard and Mateo walked. By now physical training was in full swing, and over six thousand soldiers were drilling. Not on the sidelines though. There, the army’s disciplinary problems—men who failed to follow the army’s draconian orders—suffered. Some were hung by the wrists, even by the thumbs from a seven-foot-high cross-pole. Four were spread-eagled on caisson wheels. Several more were spread-eagled upside down.
The sun beat down on them like hell’s furnace itself.
For a long time Richard and Mateo walked in silence.
“Why did you join the rurales?” Richard finally asked Mateo. “There have to be easier ways to earn a living.”
“What do you know about Díaz and the Señorita?”
“That they’re fiends from hell who cloak themselves in human flesh.”
“Es verdad. They also killed everyone in my family.”
Richard stopped walking and studied Mateo, silent.
“My father was a Sinaloan
