“It’s nothing but desert for at least a hundred miles to either side of the damn road,” Brando said.
“I bet this here says ‘Middle of Nowhere,’” LQ said, tapping his finger on a blank portion of the map labeled BOLSON DE MAPIMÍ. Back on the YB I’d always heard that the Mapimí was one of the meanest deserts anywhere, but I didn’t see any reason to mention it just now. The last fifty miles or so of our route would take us through the south end of it.
We then studied the diagram of the rectangular hacienda compound. It was enclosed by high walls and marked as 250 yards deep and a quarter-mile wide, its length running east-west. Its only entryway was a double-doored gate in the center of the south wall. Directly under the gate description was a penciled note in Spanish saying that the gate was always open and posted with an armed guard. The driveway into the compound ran straight for about seventy-five yards to a big courtyard. The casa grande was on the far side of the courtyard and faced south toward the gate. Another notation said the servants’ quarters were on the lower floor, the family’s rooms on the upper. There were various patios and small gardens all about the house, and a large garden directly behind it. Just past the big garden were a corral and a riding track, and, beyond them, a mesquite thicket that ran the length of the compound’s rear wall. An unbroken row of tiny penciled squares along the west wall was labeled as the peon living quarters. Over against the east wall, adjacent to the woods, a small square indicated the stable. A square at the southeast corner of the compound was the garage. Between them was the vaquero bunkhouse.
The way I saw it, everything depended on getting past the gate. If they were able to shut us out, the whole business could get pretty bitchy. Once we were inside the compound, all we had to do was get to the house, get Daniela, and then get out again.
“Sounds so damn simple,” LQ said, “I can see why you were ready to do it by yourself.”
“Unless the guy’s got a bunch of pistoleros, I figure there won’t be that much to it,” I said.
“That’s the thing,” Brando said. “What if he does have a bunch of pistoleros?”
“They might be smart enough not to argue with a BAR.”
“And if they aint smart enough?”
“Then we’ll play it any way we have to.”
They stared at me. Then Brando said, “That’s the plan?”
“You don’t have to have any part of it, either of you. You can cross back over the bridge and catch a train to Galveston.”
“You say that again I’m liable to take you up on it,” LQ said.
“You don’t have to have—”
“Go to hell, wiseguy,” LQ said.
“If anybody’s got a better plan,” I said, “I’m ready to hear it—as long as it doesn’t mean waiting. I’m not waiting.”
Brando blew out a breath and threw up his hands.
“The best plans are always simple,” I said. “Everybody knows that.”
“In that case,” LQ said, “we got us the greatest goddamn plan in the world.”
We took rooms in what was said to be the best of the hotels in town and went to bed early so we could get going before daybreak. But when we met downstairs at dawn LQ and Brando were red-eyed and full of complaints about the lumpy beds and the light of the full moon blazing in through the gauzy curtains and the ranchero music that blared incessantly through much of the night from the cantina across the street. It didn’t help their mood much when I said I’d had a pretty good night’s rest myself.
I said that just to needle them. The truth was, I dreamt all night, one dream after another—of being out in the deepwater sea with a giant shark circling around me; of Reuben lying in the dust with a terrible stomach wound and calling for me to help him; of Daniela standing naked on a brightly lit platform while a crowd of men in the surrounding darkness bids to buy her. And of Rodolfo Fierro, sitting in a high-backed chair on an elevated platform, dressed in a fine black suit and cloak and wearing a Montana hat at a cocky angle, his legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles and his coatflap fallen aside to expose a holster holding a Colt .44 with ivory grips of carved Mexican eagles. He was staring down at several long rows of clearly terrified men while a voice speaking in Spanish delivered verdicts of death. Then he looked over their heads at me, and in English I said, Hey Daddy…and he smiled…
We put a five-gallon can of drinking water on the floor by the backseat and three cans of gasoline into the trunk and got on our way before daybreak. The sun rose out of the flatlands and shone red on the mountains to the west just under the setting silver moon. The sky was clear except for the dust we raised behind us on the packed dirt road.
The countryside reminded me of the YB Ranch—cactus of every kind and mesquite trees and creosote scrub, mesas and mountains on every horizon. But it was alien territory to LQ and different even to Brando, who came from a part of Texas with geography a lot tamer than this region of brute rock ground and thorns on damned near everything.
Now and then we’d see a small cross—sometimes a cluster of crosses—stuck in the ground alongside the road and we came to find out they had been placed by the families of people killed at those spots in motor vehicle accidents.
Two hours after leaving Villa Acuña we reached the junction road from the border town of Piedras Negras. There had been a rainstorm a day or so earlier and truck traffic had made a washboard of the road surface. The car jarred hard and sometimes jerked to one side or the other and Brando cursed and fought the wheel. There were plenty of stations within range of our radio, most of them playing ranchero music, which LQ and I liked but Brando had had enough of, and he searched the dial till he found one out of Eagle Pass broadcasting Texas string-band stuff.
As the morning grew warmer, pale dust devils rose in the open country and went whirling toward the dark ranges in the distance. Around midmorning we came to a ferry crossing at a river the color of caramel. The ferry was a rope rig and could carry only three cars at a time. There were four cars ahead of us, so we had to wait. There were three small crosses at the edge of the riverbank. LQ and Brando napped under a tree and I skipped rocks on the water until it was our turn to cross.
We got to Monclova in the early afternoon and gassed the car at a filling station. I got directions from the attendant to get to the westbound road. Brando wanted to have a beer before moving on, so we parked around the corner from the main plaza and went into a cantina.
The place was cool and dim and a radio was playing mariachi music. Besides us the only other patrons were two guys at a table against the wall and another three standing together at the far end of the bar and laughing with the cantinero. You could tell by their clothes they were vaqueros—and by their laughter and gestures that they were drunk.
The cantinero came over and looked at each of us in turn, then asked Brando, “Qué quieren de tomar?”
“Cerveza,” Brando said with his gringo accent. He looked at me and said, “Tell him I want the coldest one in the joint.”
“Tres cervezas,” I said. “Bien frías.”
The cantinero stared at my eyes and then gave Brando another look before going to fetch the beer. He set the bottles in front of us and went back to his friends at the end of the bar and whispered something to them. They turned to look at us. One of them, the biggest, came down the bar, puffing a cigarillo.