my father refused to hand me over, the governor had his rurales abduct and torture him. He told him if he didn’t sell me to him he’d frame us on charges of sedition, then convict and imprison us. He also said he’d have me anyway, that he was too powerful to resist or deny. He then sent my father home to sign the papers and to deliver me to the governor the next day. Instead my father put me on a night train to El Paso, Texas, where a fellow arms dealer would raise me en secreto as his daughter.
“When the Sinaloa governor learned I was gone, he put my father through hell in an attempt to learn my whereabouts. My father died on ‘the Parrot’s Perch,’ one of the most agonizing of all the tortures.”
Their Lady paused, while her court ladies stared at her in stunned silence. This was one story they had never heard before.
“What happened next?” Roberta finally asked.
“I grew up in El Paso. I was not particularly grateful or obedient. In fact, I was wild, headstrong, even resentful of my adopted parents. Sneaking away at night, I’d run the streets with the tough Mexican gangs. My foster father tried to reason with me, and when reason failed, he took a razor strap to me, which only incited me to further rebellion.
“And all the while, the Sinaloa governor, Hernán Cortés Castenado, never forgot me. He circulated wanted posters with my photo on them, offering a reward for my apprehension. He claimed I was a killer and a thief. He sent bounty hunters looking for me, several of which came as far as El Paso.
“I did not care. I was rowdy, angry, and promiscuous even then. Finally, my foster father had had enough. He sold me to the governor for the reward. That night I arrived at the palace, the governor had the court ladies bathe and scrub me till I was raw, then deliver me to his bed. He never knew that on El Paso’s mean streets, I’d been having sex since age thirteen. Instead he thought he was getting a seventeen-year-old virgin. I played along with the lie, sharing his bed and biding my time.
“During those years, I studied the power structure in Sinaloa. The most powerful man was with the commanding general. Our leaders have always ruled through violence and terror—going back to the Aztecs and beyond—and the commanding general was the one who put down our people’s periodic rebellions and who defeated our enemies abroad. His military strength far transcended that of the governor.
“By this time my reputation as the most passionately beautiful woman in all of Sinaloa—in all of Mexico really—had spread, and I was increasingly popular with the masses, far more than our governor was.
“I was, the governor told me, muy magnífica in bed. When I saw my chance, I poisoned his ugly shrew of a wife, and by then he was so smitten with me that he took my hand in marriage. However, I now needed him por nada, so I seduced the commanding general, Ramon Osorio. I gradually planted the notion in his head that if my husband, the governor, were eliminated, he and I could take over the throne. Since women could not legally rule Sinaloa, I’d bring the governor’s son—my idiot stepson, Eduardo—in as figurehead. He was a coward, a moron, and I could make him do anything. Ramon and I could easily intimidate, subjugate, and then circumvent him. As for Ramon, he would have riches beyond dreams of avarice and el poder de los dioses [the power of the gods]. Delusions of grandeur aggravated by his delirious desire for me caused him to suggest that I poison my newlywed husband, Sinaloa’s governor, Hernán Cortés Castenado.
“I did so happily and became the de facto governor of Sinaloa. By then, however, I’d met a rising star in the mejicano army, a young general named Porfirio Díaz, and we’d secretly joined forces. We decided that since Ramon was blocking Díaz’s final rise to power, that I should get rid of him. So one afternoon, when Ramon and I were out by ourselves, having a picnic in the desert, I injected him in the neck with diamondback venom. His demise was inconceivably painful. To make matters worse, the whole time he was dying, I knelt over him till we were nose to nose. Gazing into his eyes, I gave him my widest, most loving smile, all the while stroking his cheek, kissing his lips, and whispering, ‘There, there. There, there.’ He found the combination of my betrayal, the radiance of my smile, the tender sensuousness of my caresses, and the excruciating agony of his death throes . . . shatteringly unbearable. I had destroyed his body, his mind, and, I honestly believe . . . his soul. I have to admit it was one of the most thrilling experiences of my life.
“Afterward Díaz assisted me in my conquest of Chihuahua, which I now rule along with Sinaloa. Díaz and I have been closely allied ever since.”
Her ladies stared at her in astonishment.
“My Lady, do you always get what you want?” Catalina asked.
“Siempre.” [“Always.”]
“You now have wealth, power, fame. Is there anything in life you miss or crave?” Roberta asked.
Their Lady shrugged, then looked away.
“Does anything even bother you?” Rosalita asked. “You always seem so confident, so fearless, so sure of yourself.”
“I wish my nights were better. My days might be filled with excitement and amazement, but tedium tortures my nights. Only exhaustive, nonstop, strenuous fornication can relieve me. But no man has ever proven up to that task—not in the long run, not month after month after month—and so that relief is only transitory. Most of the time, my nights are an agony of boredom, which leads to insomnia, which produces a melancholia that I find infuriatingly . . . intolerable.”
“What would improve your evenings?” Catalina asked.
“I’ve had fantasies from time to time of a wondrous lover who would please me not only in bed but who would lighten my soul and enthrall my heart and mind. But to do so he would have to be smarter, wittier, more knowledgeable, and more sexually insatiable than . . . I.” The Señorita smiled wistfully at the sheer absurdity of the idea.
“Have you ever found a man who came close to fitting that bill?” Rosalita asked.
“Of course not,” their Lady said.
“Never?” Catalina asked.
“How could I? Such a man clearly could never exist.”
Chapter 17
Slater had saddled his mount, a big, broad-chested roan. He was taking nothing but a two-gallon water bag, beans and tortillas, jerked antelope, and ammunition. He wore a large black broadcloth shirt loose and over his pants. Under the shirt, two double-sided, black, oiled-silk money belts crisscrossed his back and chest while a third was buckled tightly around his waist just above his gun belt. He was taking only what was his and what he needed. He was leaving the tools and everything else for Moreno, who had become clearly obsessed. He had been laboring in that damn mine like a madman. He even worked nights by torchlight, napping down there. Searching for that drift lode had driven Moreno muy loco, and now his obsession was driving Slater muy loco as well. He couldn’t stand it any longer. Slater had told Moreno he was going to leave, and he was finally doing it. He’d dug too much ore in Díaz slave-labor prison mines, and this mine was too goddamned dangerous.
I rob banks and trains, the outlaw said to himself. I don’t tunnel through rock and dirt like a goddamn mole.
Most of all Slater couldn’t bear to wait here and watch his friend die, crushed under a collapsing mountain of rock.
“Hasta luego, maníaco,” Slater said to himself under his breath. “You want to kill yourself, you’re doin’ it on your own time and by yourself. Maybe someday I’ll
