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 cavalry officer,” Mateo continued. “I grew up on their military bases, and, believe me, what you see here is God’s Peaceable Kingdom compared to that hell on earth.”
“What made you come here?”
Mateo looked away. The story came out of him slowly, haltingly:
“I had an older brother, named Carlos, who was not quite right in the head, but all eighteen-year-olds are conscripted into the Sinaloan Army. He was no exception. He hated it and got drunk as thoroughly and frequently as he could. He was hilarious too—mucho cómico. A great comic, he was full of wisecracks and a natural mimic. He would have the entire barracks rolling around on the floor, clutching their bellies. He was especially uproarious when he ridiculed the Lady Dolorosa, her stupid stepson, even her terrified lovers. He would act out the parts, doing frightening imitations of each of them. In one routine he pretended he was summoned to her bed. He acted out all the lurid things they said and did to each other, twisting his face into different masks of horror and ecstasy while delivering the appropriate punch lines.
“He even did skits of her torturing loved ones in the Inquisitor’s dungeon and assisting the High Priest in a human sacrifice at the summit of the temple-pyramid. He ridiculed the Señorita’s sadism in the most hilarious ways imaginable.
“My brother was a clown but he was also a fool. He had no sense. His fellow soldiers loved his routines. But one was an informant and told the Señorita of my brother’s mockery of her would-be Aztec priests, and she turned him over to her Inquisitors. She summoned several of his fellow soldados into her throne room, and she made him do his routine. My brother was brillante, funny beyond all understanding, beyond all restraint, and he held nothing back. She laughed the whole time. Soon they were all laughing.
“Afterward, wiping tears of hilarity from her eyes, she said to us: ‘You think that was funny? Oh, that’s a hand I can call and raise. I’m going to give young Carlos here comedy lessons that will have him screaming into the night. I’m sending him to our Inquisitor and telling him to spend an excruciating amount of time teaching Carlos the meaning of real . . . comedy. Then I’m sending him to the Stone. Your whole regiment will attend that extravaganza. I shall be there myself. I will laugh at him just as you all laughed at me. Anyone I spot not laughing will take follow-up comedy courses on the Rack and at the Stone.’
“The Señorita feared familial retaliation after such extravaganzas, however, so after she’d killed one of her citizens, she routinely killed all that person’s family members. She left no one behind who might seek revenge on her. So she immediately killed all my blood relatives.”
Mateo stared at Richard a long time, silent.
“How did you escape capture?” Richard finally asked Mateo.
“My family raised horses, and I grew up breaking them on a rancho with an uncle in Sinaloa. We then sold them to the military. I was adopted, and the state of Sinaloa had few official records on me, so the Señorita’s secret police were slow to learn of my existence and discovered too late that Carlos was my brother. One night after they murdered everyone, my uncle gave me two horses and provisions, and I fled for Sonora. I had information to trade on the Sinaloa military, that Carlos had imparted to me—tactics, strategy, strengths, weakness—and I was motivated to fight against the Señorita and Díaz. The state of Sonora gave me citizenship and accepted me into officers’ school at age sixteen. So, sí, I understand why many people—you included—are critical of our discipline here and of our recruitment methods. I agree, at times, we are overly harsh. But Madre Méjico is not Norteamérica, where life is gentle and fair and just. This is Díaz’s