nation for a dozen years afterward and cost their leaders and many of their aristocrats—people such as us—their heads. And anyway what do you have to lose except a few minutes of your time? Who knows? If you lift their spirits and let them know what our men are fighting and dying for, you won’t turn them into cheerful givers, but perhaps they won’t shoot your tax collectors on sight.”
“Last year we did have a rather bloody revolt on our hands,” Eduardo said.
“We taxed them into a truly terrifying famine,” the Señorita noted with a pleasant smile.
“And this year we plan to tax them even more severely,” El Presidente said.
“Bueno, ” the Señorita said softly.
“I will harangue the multitude if my stepmother can’t do it,” Eduardo said.
El Presidente and the Señorita looked at him and . . . laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Eduardo said. “I’m their governor, not you, Stepmother!”
Now the room rocked with their raucous guffaws.
“The last time you ‘harangued the multitude,’” the Señorita Dolorosa said, “half the crowd walked away in less than five minutes.”
“They thought it was about to rain,” Eduardo explained.
“It was a clear, warm, cloudless day,” the Señorita said.
“The other half stayed because they were entranced,” Eduardo said.
“The other half couldn’t leave because they’d fallen asleep,” the Señorita said.
“My dear Eduardo,” Díaz said, struggling to promote a truly charming smile, “you aren’t the most animated speaker I’ve ever seen.”
“What he’s saying, El Dopo, is that you’re a stupendous. . . bore!!!”
Eduardo stood and stamped out of the antechamber.
“You think inviting him here was a mistake?” Díaz said.
“He is the governor,” the Señorita Dolorosa said, “if in name only, and he had to know the offensive is coming. Now tell me about it.”
“Our intelligence says that they have acquired and are learning to master heavy artillery. They’ve been tough enough without it, and I fear if they ever do master those big guns, we’ll never defeat them.”
“They are rumored to have workable Gatlings as well.”
“We hear that rumor before every one of our wars with them,” Díaz said. “As you know, however, their highly inferior black powder clogs and jams their firing mechanisms with their residue. Their Gatlings have always been useless after the first thirty or forty shots.”
“Where do you plan to hit them?” the Señorita asked.
“There’s only one strategy and one front that will allow us to destroy Sonora for once and for all: a full-frontal assault on their main fort.”
“To move that many men and that much matériel will not go unnoticed,” the Señorita said. “They will have time to dig breastworks and trenches.”
“We’ll have a fight on our hands, true, but we can and should prevail. If we don’t delay.”
“How soon can we launch such an attack?” the Señorita asked.
“In two months,” Díaz said.
“I’ll prepare my speech.”
“You write such stirring speeches, My Lady.”
“I am gifted,” she shamelessly conceded.
Chapter 21
Slater was over two hundred feet up-tunnel when he found Luis Moreno. He was on his back, his head near Slater’s outstretched candle, the lower half of his body buried under a ton of rock. The deadfall appeared to have broken every bone in his friend’s body from his short ribs down to his toes.
Raising a lit candle, Slater could see two heavy canvas ore sacks near the top of Luis’s head. He looked inside the two bags. In the candlelight he saw dozens of solid gold nuggets, several the size of his fist, none of them smaller than a .50 caliber rifle round.
Slater checked for a pulse in Luis’s throat. It was surprisingly steady. He dripped some canteen water on Luis’s mouth, and miraculously, Luis’s eyes fluttered open.
His friend was still alive.
“Ey, compadre,” Luis said, giving Slater a small, brave smile. “You came back for me. I knew you wouldn’t let your compadre down. I told you también we’d hit it big, and we did. That gold is for you now—because you came back for me. Take it and vaya con Dios [go with God]. This tunnel is not safe.”
“I’m not leavin’ without you.”
“Then you will die in darkness and dust under a Sierra Madre of rock. Just like me. With me. Only you aren’t going to die, because I’m asking you to leave me. Por favor. You were right. I never should have come back here. Nothing can save me now.”
“But—”
Then they heard it—up-tunnel. The hysterical shrieking and frantic scurrying of mine rats—an army of them.
They smelled Moreno’s blood, and they were coming toward him.
That froze Moreno, and the machismo ran out of him in a nerve-racking rush.
“Still, amigo,” Moreno said, “don’t let them bastardas ratas [rats] eat me alive.”
But what could Slater do? Luis was the best friend he’d ever had. The man had saved his life and watched his back a thousand times over for three godawful years in that Sonoran hell pit. Luis never complained, never backed down from a fight, and never turned his back on his friends. You knew who he was, what his word was worth, the things that count.
But Luis hadn’t listened to him, had come back in to dig out that gold, and now Slater couldn’t save him. If Slater stayed they both would die. In less than an hour.
Sooner.
The army of scurrying, shrieking rats was getting closer and closer.
Slater slipped his double-edged Arkansas toothpick out of its belt sheath. Covering his friend’s eyes with his left hand, he said:
“Don’t worry, amigo. I won’t let the rats eat you alive. I am your compadre—now, always, to the end. You are so lucky to have such fine a compadre as me.”
“Muchas gracias, mi amigo. I know you would not let me down.”
Slater knew there should be words at a time like this. If they had been back in the civilized world, there might have even been a Christian service and a sermon filled with meaningful words. Over the years, Slater
