CHAPTER 1
The great canyons run like claw marks off the spine of the Sierra Madre, as if some enormous lion god had pulled Mexico to ground like prey. Pale wounds six thousand feet deep furrow through soil and stone in jagged chasms extending for many miles before shallowing and blending into the landscape of a less feral part of the country.
The big ones are large enough to swallow the Grand Canyon four times over and still have room. The Barranca Del Cobre, Copper Canyon, is the largest and most well known, but there are others only slightly smaller.
One, the Barranca Quebrada, Broken Canyon, is remote, rugged almost beyond belief, sheer-walled, and splintered with so many side canyons that few outsiders other than the occasional Tarahumaras, Yaquis and rumored small bands of the fierce ones who are refugees from another time have ever seen this mile-deep wound in the Mother Mountains.
And that is where she lives…
***
Anda Tumecas stood outside her tiny stone house at the edge of the great canyon and looked at the sky for a long minute. She was uneasy, and the air itself felt hot and stuffy, as though she had climbed too fast from the canyon floor below and her ears needed to pop. She yawned, but it didn’t help.
There was something else too, something she couldn’t locate but could sense, and the hairs on her neck prickled. Anda let her eyes follow the rim all the way to the canyon trail some thousand meters distant.
Nothing.
At that moment, her stomach growled and the feeling, as if she was made of dried maize husks and was ten feet tall and two inches wide came over her. The dizzy weakness almost made her stagger. One plate of black beans in the last five days, she thought.
Anda selected four smooth stones from the ground, tossed them up and down in her hands a few times to make sure they were going to be right, then put them in the pocket of her threadbare skirt. She trotted away in a lope, moving over the rough rocky ground and through a thin scattering of pines to a wide area of scrub brush and cleared ground.
The snare was untouched, but she saw fresh tracks of six blue quail. Anda’s mouth watered. She pulled out a stone and at that moment felt all the hairs on her neck prickle. She turned and looked hard at everything along the canyon rim, scanning it for a full minute, until hunger gnawed at her insides with so much insistence that she turned away from the rim. Food was more important than anything else, and Anda knew she would soon starve to death without it.
***
A thousand meters away Anacleto Holguin crouched behind a deadfall and whispered, “She couldn’t have seen me, no way.”
He readjusted the cloth covers shading the lenses of his binoculars and rose to look again. The girl was hunting. Cleto touched his tongue to his upper lip as he fondled himself. His position was good, hidden in shade among a cluster of boulders and pines near the mouth of the narrow path that led down into the Barranca. Cleto’s legs were still weak and rubbery from the climb. Hijo de la chingada, he thought, that trail so narrow that one of his arms hung out over the edge with the gut-lurching view.
Only horses, mules and foot traffic could traverse it, and only in single file. He wiped his face with a handkerchief. Getting from the village of Ojo Caliente to the start of the trail had been bad enough: a full day’s travel along the canyon floor over no discernable road and in a truck with broken shocks.
Man, it had bounced his insides to jelly. At least he hadn’t had to walk. But the trail up to the rim, now that was real torture. Cleto glanced at his gang. Four men lounged in the shade, drinking from bottles of tequila, and ready for what was to come. When Cleto turned around, the men watched their fat pig of a boss alternately fondle himself and look through the glasses at the small Indian girl.
Cleto watched Anda as she eased forward like a slow motion dancer, smooth and careful along the brush line. Through the binoculars, something that at such a distance looked like a swarm of gnats erupted from the ground in front of her and flew in scattered directions, and just as fast he saw the girl cock her arm and throw, knocking some bird from the air in a cloud of feathers.
Anda picked up the quail and loped across the uneven ground to her tiny house. Cleto adjusted his hardening penis and pushed himself to a standing position. “All right, cabrones. She’s in the trap. Let’s go.”
***
Anda heard his rasping breath before the door banged open and fat, sweaty Cleto Holguin stepped inside.
“Hey girl, you grew up a little, uh? What are you now, thirteen, fourteen?” He gestured toward her chest. “Last time I saw you, you didn’t have those little nubbies, but I think you weren’t so skinny then, either. It was in Ojo Caliente, a year ago when I saw you, remember?”
“I remember you tried to put your hand up my skirt,” Anda said. She glanced from Cleto to the door, but there were four hard-looking men standing just outside.
“Nahh, that was just some playing. But this, this is going to be some real fun.” Anacleto played with himself through his white pants as he grinned at her. He’d never had one like this, not one so wild. She was so tiny and so good looking in an Indian way, with dark watchful eyes that reminded Cleto of a young wolf. Her long black hair was combed and neat, and the threadbare skirt and blouse she wore were clean.
Cleto felt the heat of dark thoughts flush his face. No one could find out about this one. He would have his fun, then let the men have her and when everybody was finished, they would toss her off the rim. By the time somebody else found her, if somebody found her, she would be only a few bones and scraps of cloth.
“You leave now,” Anda said as she backed away. “Leave now and take your m
en with you before someone gets hurt.”
“Of truth? And who is going to do that, your parents? Maybe your boyfriend? Your parents are dead, and your boyfriend, you think he can rescue you?”
Anda’s heart raced. How did he know about her family, and of Alsate, the wild boy who started coming by six months ago?
“Oh yes,” Cleto said, “I know about him, the sneaking bastard. My men caught him four nights ago when he came into Ojo Caliente. He made the mistake of trying to sell his bundle of mota to one of my men. I tell you though; he stayed quiet a long time. But, after a little work with the knife, he started talking and man, you couldn’t shut him up then, you know? He talked about your parents dying in the quake last year and about you living alone up here and how he met you.”
Cleto leered at her, “Let me tell you, he didn’t leave out anything, you understand? So now we want to share in a little of the honey you were giving to him. You can make it easy or hard, but either way, it’s going to happen, girl.” Cleto half-closed the front door and used his bulk to steer her into the bedroom.
Anda backed into the only other room in the house as Cleto lifted up his enormous belly, reached under and unzipped his pants, pulling out a stiff, stubby erection. He held it in two fingers and said, “This snake is for you, chulita. You make friends, it’ll go easier for you.” He grinned as she backed to the bed. “I hope you’re a squealer,” Cleto said, “I like a little noise.”
When he was one step away and still brandishing his member, Anda snatched a fork off the plate left from last night’s meager meal and buried the tines into the head of Cleto’s penis.
It took a second for Cleto to register the pain, then his eyes grew wide and his mouth formed an O. He grabbed his groin and uttered a small squawk as he fainted.
Anda watched the half-open front door but no one came in. She listened to them talking about who would go next after Cleto. The quail was lying on the small table, but in sight of the men outside. Anda thought about sneaking to the bird but knew she couldn’t risk it. To leave that much food…
Cleto stirred and a small moan seeped from his lips. She made her choice then, and began removing the wooden covering over what had once been a window with glass panes.
***
She lost the window one month after her family died, during a storm that erupted from a dark, green tinged thunderhead blowing with roaring winds so fierce Anda felt air pulled from her lungs. The boiling sky poured down its fury in a barrage of frozen, wind propelled missiles. The pounding from the hailstones was so terrifying and so loud Anda could not hear herself screaming. Iridescent white cannonballs the size of grapefruit smashed through the window to ricochet off the dirt floor and explode against the stone walls.