They saw little of each other over the following days. Whenever they came in sight of each other they did not speak. Their suppers were silent affairs but for the clink of dishware and the serving staff’s footfalls on the hardwood floors.
His temper was now in constant confusion, a mix of anger, injured pride, and despair. He pined for her affections even as he refused to lower himself to apology. He yearned to touch her even as he refused to speak or even look directly at her. He was meting harsh punishments to his peons for the smallest infractions, ordering the whipping of a stableman for being slow to saddle a horse, of a pair of kitchen-boys for dicing in the pantry. He had a woman branded on the cheek on her husband’s charge of infidelity, though there was no proof of it and she swore it was not true.
He was drinking heavily every night, pacing himself to exhaustion in his chambers, trying to understand how things had come to such a pass—his mind in a mad muddle, his emotions in chaotic tangle. When he thought of her naked beauty he had to bite his tongue against howling in desire for her. He thought he might be going mad.
And then one night, less than a week ago, he could bear it no longer. He smashed a brandy bottle against the wall and stalked to her chambers with a lamp in his hand and banged open her door, waking her in a fright. He set down the lamp and shrugged off his robe and flung himself on her. She resisted for only a moment before letting herself go limp and shutting her eyes, refusing him even her sight, refusing him everything but unresponsive flesh. He could not help but proceed, though it was like coupling with the newly dead. When he was finished and realized he was crying, he cursed her and struck her with his open hand. She flinched but did not open her eyes. He stormed from the room in a weeping rage.
He kept to his chambers for most of the following day, heartsickened by his brute behavior, frantic with fear that her affections were forever lost to him. The next day was Christmas, and hoping to begin a process of amends and reconciliation, he presented her with an exquisite emerald brooch. He laid it before her on the supper table and she stared at it without expression and then ignored it. He asked if he might pin the brooch on her to see how it looked, and she picked it up and put it in her dress pocket. He’d had to restrain himself from striking her—and from bursting into tears.
The next days passed like a time of mourning. He would see her from his window as she set out on her stallion onto the riding trail in the mesquite woods. On her return she would linger within the stable, no doubt seeing to it that the horse was properly tended, perhaps feeding it apples as she liked to do. Then she’d go for a walk in the garden and he’d lose sight of her. She would not return to the house until dusk. Sometimes she would take another wordless supper with him in the dining hall, sometimes she would retire for the night without eating, and he would dine alone at the head of the huge empty table.
And then that morning, four days before the new year, she was gone. Her bed had not been slept in. She was not in her bath, on her balcony, in any of the reading or music parlors, not in the dining room nor the kitchen. The maids said la doña had not come down for her morning cup of chocolate. The household staff was called to assembly in the main parlor and it was discovered that her personal maid was also absent. None of the staff had seen either of them since the evening prior. Before he could send for his segundo, the foreman himself appeared with the news that the stableman in charge of caring for la doña’s stallion had departed the hacienda last night in one of the trucks and had not returned. The man told the gate guard he was being sent to Torreón to pick up a new saddle for la doña. The women must have been hiding in the vehicle.
Don César dispatched teams of searchers to the nearest towns, more than a hundred miles south to Gomez Palacio, to Torreón, to San Pedro de las Colonias, seventy-five miles north to Jiménez. But there was no need—they found the truck twenty miles away, where the hacienda road met the highway at the small railstation pueblo of Escalón, found it parked behind the depot. They roused the night clerk from his bed—a man they called El Manco Feo for his ruined arm and the ugly dogbite scars on his face—and learned that yes, a man and two women, all strangers to him, had boarded the night train to Monclova. His description of them was accurate. The clerk was taken to Las Cadenas to give his report to Don César in person, to tell him that the train had arrived in Monclova hours ago. Don César knocked him down and kicked him repeatedly before ordering him out of his sight.
He had no notion at all whether she was still in Monclova or where she might have gone from there. He sent men to that city to seek her. He interrogated every member of the house staff, questioned all of his vaqueros. The missing stableman was Luis Arroyo, who had been on the payroll less than six months. None of the other hands knew where he was from, knew anything of his past.
And then a short while ago it had been learned that the maid who fled with the party, one Maria Ramirez, had been born and raised in a village called Apodaca, just outside of Monterrey, and that her father was a baker there….
El Segundo arrives on the balcony as Don César finishes his brandy. Segundo is a tall lean man of middle years and wears his black beard in a sharply pointed goatee of the grandee style, his long hair in a ponytail. His dress is impeccable and his manners courtly, but his dark hands are scarred from ropeburns and branding irons, with knife cuts, the knuckles large and prominent and scarred as well.
“A sus órdenes, patrón,” Segundo says.
Don César instructs him to send their best retrievers to the family home of this Maria Ramirez and question her about his missing wife. If the Ramirez girl should not be there, then the family must be questioned about her. The retrievers are to be given ample expense money and are to act upon whatever information they get that might lead them to his wife. If they are unable to find her, then that will be the end of it and he will be shed of the bitch.
Segundo says he understands completely. He will dispatch Angel and Gustavo—and then softly inquires what Don César desires them to do if they should find her.
“Quiere que se la traigan? O prefiere que…se desaparesca?”
Don César considers the question as he stares out at the great desert beyond the hacienda.
And finally says that they should bring her back, of course.
In the hours after the wind and drizzle quit, a thin fog rolled in off the gulf and the windows glowed pale gray in the morning light of New Year’s Day. I got dressed and tucked the Mexican Colt under my coat at the small of my back and went downstairs.
As always, Gregorio had set out the makings of breakfast for his tenants before he went to bed. A big kettle of coffee was lightly steaming on the stove, next to a warm pot of refried beans and a large and ready frying pan. On the counter stood a wire basket of eggs, a fresh loaf of bread on a cutting board, a can of lard, some bulbs of garlic, a string of dried chiles, and a large roll of chorizo sausage. A gourd covered with a warm damp cloth held a stack of fresh corn tortillas. On the table were bowls of butter, sugar, grape jam, shakers of salt, red pepper, ground cinnamon.
By this hour Sergio had already come in from his night clerk job and had eaten and cleaned up after himself and gone up to his room. I usually took breakfast at a café across the street from the train station but I wanted a word with old Moises this morning, so I figured I might as well eat while I waited for him to come down.
I
I lit the gas burner under the big frying pan and cut off a chunk of chorizo and put it in the pan and ground it with a fork. Then broke off a clove of garlic and peeled it smooth and dropped it in with the chorizo and used the fork to crush it up good. I chopped a big chile to fine bits and stirred it in with the sausage and garlic. The chorizo sizzled and darkened and the fragments of garlic and chile turned brown in the oozing grease. The sharp aromas mingled with the fragrance of coffee and refried beans. I turned down the burner a little and cracked three eggs into the pan and scrambled them with the chorizo and seasonings. When the eggs were almost done I pushed them with the spatula to one side of the pan and took two tortillas from the gourd and quickly heated them in the cleared side of the greasy pan. I laid the tortillas on a plate and scraped the chorizo-and-eggs onto them, then added some beans on the side and poured a cup of coffee and stirred in plenty of sugar. Then sat at the table to eat.