The hail tore limbs from trees, knocked birds from their perches, and caused a deer to panic and run over the edge of the cliff, its legs still churning as it disappeared into the chasm. The hail flattened Anda’s small garden planted with the last seeds in the house and left smoking holes in the soft earth.
Before it was through, Anda stood ankle-deep in ice and could see it piled against the side of the house as high as her waist. Trees looked like they had been stripped by loggers, and the ground was white.
When the sun came out, Anda stepped outside and wandered in a daze as a dense white fog rose from the ice and blanketed the ground a meter deep, leaving a world where trees grew from clouds and the sounds of injured birds fluttering unseen near her feet left Anda feeling as if she were in a dream.
Later when the fog thinned, she gathered broken limbs until there were enough to cover the bedroom window. She lashed them together with strips of cloth and tied it to the old, rusted square nails protruding from the wood around the window frame, then she chinked the larger gaps with mud mixed with grass, which left the opening foolproof from night-roaming predators, whether bear, lion, or man.
***
Anda got the window uncovered and saw the area behind the house was unguarded. She went to Cleto and shoved on him until she uncovered his pockets. No knife, but she took his money. Anda was so close to the four men outside that she could hear the shuffle of their feet on the ground. One of them jingled change in his pocket.
Anda left Cleto and eased out of the window as silent as smoke.
A man’s voice yelled, “She’s getting away!” She heard them coming, and took one last look at her home before running toward the low ridges east of the house.
The men were in good shape, and fast, but they were no match for Anda. One dropped off at the ridges, and another one seven miles later. The last man, the lean one with long legs, lasted for almost thirty miles before collapsing as she led him down into a small canyon some two thousand feet deep, and then up the other side, never changing her pace. He went down in a pile of loose talus on the deer trail and sat there, watching her top out on the far canyon rim. She ran another thirty miles before stopping to think about things.
What to do? Her family was dead, now Alsate, the only other person she had seen in the last year was also dead. Her heart fell at the thought. He was so sweet and kind, and now he was gone. She had no one left, and Anda knew she would starve if she stayed. Or worse, Cleto or others like him would come. In her fourteen summers, Anda had only been to Ojo Caliente three times, and it was the home of Anacleto and his group of criminals. Anda thought of things her father and grandfather had talked of around the fires at night. Batopilas was one place she could find, because her father had pointed the direction to her once, years ago. Three hard days and nights across rough mountains he had said. She had no choice; it was stay and die, or leave.
But after Batopilas, what? Her grandfather and father talked of another place, and their eyes had shone in the firelight when they mentioned it. El Norte.
She made up her mind: first to Batopilas. She glanced once more at the house and saw no followers, then trotted off in a ground-eating lope.
***
Two days later Anda awoke in her hiding place among a cluster of boulders and felt nauseous. She thought about what she had eaten: a small trout she scooped from a trickling stream and ate raw and the water she drank from the same stream. There had been nothing else. And it wasn’t so much her stomach as it was a little lower. She also checked herself to see if her period had started, thinking maybe it was her menses, but it wasn’t. She was three weeks late, and had never been late a day since she started. So she knew then. She was with child.
Anda crawled from the boulders and looked around at the vastness stretching in every direction. Ridges of dark mountains one behind the other, like frozen waves on a darkening sea stretched before and behind her. Steep canyons dropped off on either side, with many going nowhere and ending abruptly against another range, or intersecting a larger canyon and continuing in a labyrinth that one could never escape.
Anda had never been so alone, so isolated. She had not seen a road, a building, a domesticated animal, or a human footprint in two days of running along the narrow game trails. It was as if she was the last person left on earth. She thought of her father then, and reassured herself she was going in the right direction. It helped a little, thinking of his hard brown face and dark eyes. It also made her realize she was not alone. This pregnancy was a burden almost too much to bear on top of the others, but one has no choice but to endure, she thought. Anda touched her stomach, and then started down the trail. One more day to Batopilas, then north and cross where her father and grandfather crossed, and where her great-grandfather had fought the terrible Apaches in the old days. It was a dangerous, rough, desert place with perils behind every rock, but it was the way into…how had they called it? Yes, into this Texas they talked of with such shining eyes.
CHAPTER 2
As Hunter drove down the rough road near the Rio Grande, she thought about her upcoming trial for the shooting of El Lobo.
The thought of it being moved up without any prior notice, man-oh-man, that was not a good thing. She tilted up the brim of the straw St
etson and wiped sweat from her forehead, then punched and jiggled and banged on the air conditioning controls. A feeble, hot wind came out of the vents. Why was it that stuff never broke until you were miles away from the garage? She put her left arm out and rested it on the windowsill, forcing a deeper tan on her left arm.
The road was like a bad dream: just two pale strips snaking a bouncing, jarring path over a rocky, thorn-filled, sun-blasted landscape. The Rio was on her left and on her right the sloping talus fields and dark, razor-edged stone ridges angled down from brooding desert mountain ranges to cradle this river that was a siren’s call to both animals and men.
Hunter rubbed her eyes. Nine hours today and no sign anywhere. Not even an old footprint. Plenty of animal sign though. She’d seen bobcat, quail, rabbit, fox, the half-eaten carcass of a crow, and twice she saw both lion and bear tracks. That was unusual. But no human tracks.
The upcoming trial crept into her head again and Hunter felt a funny lurch in her stomach at the thought of it now only being two weeks away instead of six months. All or nothing, she thought. Either she’d have a job and her life could go on, or everything would come crashing down. It was a year-long burden that was suddenly much heavier.
Hunter’s mind started to drift back to the shooting when her front wheels dropped into a pothole so hard that dust came out of the headliner like heavy smoke. Hunter coughed as she moved to ease the sudden pain in her lower back.
“Pay attention to the road”, she mumbled. That last one had clicked her teeth together, and she didn’t need a broken axle spring to happen at the end of shift and in an area where her radio wouldn’t work.
Right then Hunter realized she’d missed the path down to Tortuga crossing, and not by a little bit, either. Tortuga was at least a mile back. She stopped the Tahoe and thought about it. This was the end of shift and she still had to drive out of the river area, back on the road and back to Marfa, so at least two hours just for that. Then there was gassing up the Bronco for the next shift and paper work to do before she could leave the office for home. Another half hour at least. Then she had to change clothes, run to the store, buy beer for everyone, and take it to Raymond’s, where he was grilling fajitas for the unit agents.
Raymond said the cookout was to celebrate. She’d asked him, Celebrate what? He’d said, Iowa’s starting two-a-days next month, oh, and I’m making a trip to Odessa tomorrow. It didn’t take much for Raymond to bring up Iowa in a conversation, or to grill something. Hunter thought about his wife Connie, and was glad she and Connie had declared a truce, not friends again, but not enemies, either. It sure made going to their house a lot easier.
Besides, why not call it a day? She hadn’t seen a track all day, it was over a hundred degrees and her air conditioner was on the blink. She put the Tahoe in Drive and started forward. The next crossing was Lagarto, and she would check it, and then head home. Tomorrow she would come back and cut Tortuga. The Bronco hit another pothole and dust settled on her. That made it final: check Lagarto, then go home and hang out with her best friend to eat fajitas and drink ice-cold beer and not think about anything else for the rest of the day. Tomorrow would take care of itself.
***
The next morning Hunter drove south as the sun broke over the horizon and worked its way down the slopes and into the river valley. First thing, she told herself, Go check Tortuga.