“Yes.”
“I will be careful.”
“Good. Now, we should go find some food and eat.”
“And you can tell me how to locate the Hart hacienda.”
Yes, I can, or at least about where.” He looked at Adan, “Why do you want to know so badly?”
“My father is American, and his name is Hart.”
“Who told you this?”
“My mother, before she died last year.”
Dario leaned back and said, “That’s an interesting thing to hear. Do you know which Hart it is? There are two.”
“I don’t. My mother never told me, and she kept this hidden from me until she became ill and knew she would die. She was so sick she couldn’t think straight. But he called my mother, mi jollita, his little jewel. She told me that.”
“Maybe you can ask them when you walk up to the front door and tell them you are the heir to their fortune. I’m sure they will like that, and you with your skin, you should fit right in to the family of blond haired, blue-eyed devils they are. I am being sarcastic on that, as you can tell. You will be lucky if they don’t put you up against an adobe wall for saying such a thing.”
“I have it to do. There is nowhere else to go for me.”
Dario said, “We should celebrate with a fine meal from the restaurant where my friend works.”
“What is the name of this place?”
“La Kiva. It’s partly underground.”
“Like a mine?”
“No. You’ll have to see for yourself.”
“Are we going to eat in the restaurant?”
“No, we might get reported, or there may be a Border Patrol Agent eating there. We’ll get the food and find a safe place outside, somewhere we can be out of sight.”
“Then you will show me the white hacienda?”
“I will.”
Dario and Adan found a place at the edge of the parking lot by several tall oleanders with boulders as perimeters that they could use as seats. Adan waited while Dario went to the restaurant and returned twenty minutes later with hamburgers, fries, and two cold Dr. Peppers, the condensation already beading up and running down the sides of the bottles by the time Dario reached their eating place. They didn’t talk while eating, and Adan hadn’t realized how hungry he was until the first bite of the burger.
They finished the meals in a short time, making sure to eat every French fry and drain the soft drinks. Satisfied, they lounged in the meager shade and let the food settle before Dario led them out of town and toward the home that had loomed so large in Adan’s mind. He said, “It’s a long walk, so we need to take water with us.”
They stopped at the store and Dario bought two plastic bottles of water and two packs of salted peanuts, giving one bottle and one package of the nuts to Adan before they walked out of town into the desert and angled toward the arroyos and hills in the distance. There were houses and small mobile homes dotting the desert as they went, but after an hour, there was only the desert, the sky, and an occasional crude road.
“Where is this house?” Adan asked as he wiped sweat and dust from his forehead.
“It is beyond a place called the Christmas mountains. The ranch is large, hundreds of thousands of acres, and the house is in the middle, in a small canyon. We won’t see it until we get to the edge of that canyon. And then we will be careful and hide while we watch it.”
“I’m going up to the door and tell them who I am.”
“I know, but first, to be safe, we will watch a while. People have been shot out here before.”
“Shot?”
“What I heard, is the sheriffs said they were rustlers and had a shootout with one of the ranch hands, but I don’t think that is true.”