“Did it ever occur to you that they did the right thing? The Rancho knows nothing about Sinaloa. It was time you learned what you’re up against.”
“But our spies are my children.”
“Oh, I get it. It’s okay to send someone else’s children down there but not your own.”
Katherine buried her face in her hands. “Spirit Owl, I’m losing my grip.”
“You mean you’re losing your control.”
Katherine raised her head and stared at the Owl angrily. “Richard and Rachel kept their trip a secret from me. Had I known, you bet I would have ‘controlled’ them. I would have locked them up and tied them down till the insanity passed.”
“That’s because you’re a miserable person, Katherine, and you aren’t happy unless you’re making those around you miserable. Grow up and learn to stop meddling.”
* * *
His advice depressed her even more. She’d brought her Colt .44 army-issue pistol, ostensibly to fight off pumas, javelinas, and diamondbacks, but as of late she had increasingly considered another use for it. A little voice said inside her head:
I’m sorry, Frank, Richard, Rachel, Owl, I just can’t take it anymore.
She put the pistol to her temple.
And after a moment of silence pulled the trigger.
* * *
Suddenly she saw Spirit Owl in a vision. She said to him:
“Am I dead?”
“No,” the Owl said. “Just in Arizona.”
“I’m supposed to be dead.”
“You’re supposed to stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
“I don’t care. Everyone else gives up,” Katherine said. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“You have to care,” Spirit Owl. “You have work to do. Anyway it’s not your time.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’m the Owl.”
* * *
The vision faded and she heard the hammer dry-snap on a dead round.
“Click!”
The Owl was right.
The bullet told her.
And a bullet always knows.
PART I
How about un abrazo?
All you gringos like the abrazo.
—MAJOR MATEO CARDOZO
Chapter 1
Rachel Ryan stood at the Hermosillo cantina bar, staring into her glass of tequila. Glancing around the crowded taberna, she absently noted the two dozen tables with their quartets of straight-backed chairs. Coal oil lamps were bracketed against the walls, and twenty or so hung randomly from the ceiling.
In a corner, a mariachi band played all the great plaintive Mexican songs—“Corrido,” “Dormir Contigo,” “Te Desean,” “La Incondicional,” “Mi Terco Corazón,” “El Son de la Negra,” “Algo Tienes,” “La Cárcel de Cananea,” “Tu Amor,” “Vive el Verano,” “La Paloma” as well as hers and Richard’s personal favorite, “La Golondrina.” The band included a trumpet, an accordion, a violin, a high-pitched, round-backed vihuela guitar, and its big, bulky, bass counterpart, a guitarrón. The cantina featured a large dance floor. Since Sonora’s main fort was nearby, half the clientele were soldiers in gray uniforms. A dozen or more cavalry officers had on brown, roweled riding boots, which clinked on the wood floor when they walked. The other half of the clientele were civilians. White cotton shirts and faded Levi’s were popular among the civilian men, white cotton dresses among the women. Since La Paloma was an upscale cantina, even the putas sported white cotton dresses.
Fluent in Spanish, Rachel and her brother, Richard, both understood the song lyrics around them. After three months in this country she was even dreaming in Spanish. Rachel listened to “La Golondrina,” absently taking in the song’s words:
A donde irá
veloz y fatigada
la golondrina
que de aquí se va
por si en el viento
se hallara extraviada
buscando abrigo
y no lo encontrara.
Ever the clown, Richard mockingly warbled the English translation:
Where can it go
rushed and fatigued
the swallow
passing by
tossed by the wind
looking so lost
with nowhere to hide.
“Sort of summarizes our whole trip, doesn’t it?” Rachel said.
Richard let out a long sigh. “Are you questioning the wisdom of our venture?”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t let Mom hear you say that,” Richard said. “She’ll never let us live it down—sneaking off like we did in the dead of night, then coming back broke, our tails between our legs, admitting we screwed up.”
“I’m starting to wonder why we came here at all,” Rachel said.
“We wanted to know if Sinaloa was as bad as we’d heard, and if it posed a threat to El Rancho, which it does.”
“I wanted to hook you up with our Lady Dolorosa,” Rachel said. Now it was her turn to mock.
“Yeah, right, pimp me out. Maybe I could earn us train fare back.”
“From what I hear her lovers do not find her generous,” Rachel said.
“She’s built an Aztec pyramid behind her main hacienda. She’s installed Aztec priests and brought back their rituals. Her priests even conduct human sacrifices atop those temples.”
“That’s where she sends the lovers who disappoint her,” Rachel said.
“After her Grand Inquisitor finishes with them in his torture chambers,” Richard said.
“That’s when her Aztec priests take over,” Rachel said. “After flaying them whole, they cut out their hearts atop those pyramids, then bleed their remains out into troughs, like stuck pigs.”
“That’s only because they failed to satisfy her in bed,” Richard said, thumping his chest, “which in my case could never happen.”
“You’re different, Virgin Boy?” Rachel said, taunting him with her favorite nickname for him—and the one he hated the most.
“‘My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.’”
“What’s that from?” Rachel asked.
“Tennyson,” Richard said. “Idylls of the King, but don’t bother reading it. You wouldn’t get it.”
“Why?”
“It’s literature.”
Rachel gave her brother a condescending frown.
Six rurales in gray, silver-trimmed uniforms and dark brown riding boots, heeled with razor-sharp buzz-saw rowels, bellied up to the bar on their right. They had .44 Colt revolvers on their hips and bandoliers crisscrossing