THE SQUADRON MOVED toward Matamoros like an ungainly, adolescent beast with too many limbs to be built for speed. In addition to the rancheros and their horses, Nena counted at least two spares per ranchero on the string. Then there were the vaqueros and their mounts, the livestock, and rancho cooks on lumbering carts who would make sure the squadron was fed. Papá told Nena as they rode that it was still considered a lean, fast-moving operation, compared to an infantry division—they would reach Matamoros in nine days, God willing, and there she would see the sprawl of a proper army.
How Papá could speak so authoritatively of such things was not clear to Nena—hadn’t he spent his whole life north of Río Bravo, in the rugged outposts of El Norte, oft forgotten by the rest of México? But she bit her tongue. Nodded along as he and other rancheros criticized General Arista’s strategy or speculated about how many Yanqui battalions had arrived north of Río Bravo to the fortress they were building that they called Fuerte Brown. Eager to remain in Papá’s good graces, she obeyed quickly when he asked things of her and kept her head down and her focus on her tasks as a curandera and a woman in the camp.
The men’s anxiety was palpable. Nena knew from eavesdropping that many did not want to be there—forced to leave behind wives and children and aging parents, they were present because their rancheros ordered them to be. Rumors of susto snaked through them like fingers of smoke, morphing with every twist of the breeze. Texians, it was said, eager to further expand their territory, had poisoned the streams—that had to be why men fell unconscious. Some claimed that the Yanquis had trained ferocious dogs and set them loose on the ranchos after they took Puerto Isabel—that was why some men had been mauled, not only among the vaqueros, but also among the Mexican infantry. Others still swore on their grandfathers’ graves that the Yanquis had a new weapon, that it could maul and poison in equal measure.
That was the one rumor that slipped under Nena’s skin like a huisache thorn and festered, calling to mind Ignacio’s sickness and his strange wound. It kept her watching her back when she collected water and carried out camp chores, jumping whenever she heard a rustle in the trees. More often than not, the rustle turned out to be nothing more threatening than cockroaches in the palm leaves of a stout sabal by the riverbank, or the gossipy chittering of a gleaming black zanate in the mesquites.
Or her guards.
Papá had given Félix the responsibility of choosing the men who would protect her over the course of the journey. She thought nothing of it until she saw the cut of a familiar silhouette speaking with Félix during the siesta; caught voices and the bright flash of pistols being cleaned in the sunlight.
Papá did not have favorites among the vaqueros. Félix did. He respected Bernabé Duarte like an equal, turning to the older man for advice as often as he turned to the uncles or even Papá.
“The younger Duarte in particular is an excellent shot,” Félix informed Papá that first night.
A strange feeling washed over her when she overheard this. A dash of dread, a dose of anger.
When one of the other rancheros offered his rancho’s own vaqueros to join the guard watching over Nena, Papá swatted the idea away with a brusque gesture, as if he were brushing a fly away from his meal. “They have the manners of caballeros, Bernabé’s boys. I trust them with my life.”
Nena did not trust Néstor Duarte any farther than she could throw him.
She grew accustomed to the other two who took turns either outside her tent or shadowing her as she walked to get water from the river with the few other women who accompanied the squadron—some cooks, some servants, some vaqueros’ wives. It was strange enough being apart from the familiar rhythms of the rancho; the disruption made it easy to take the addition of a bodyguard in stride. Casimiro was distant and polite, as usual. Years ago, Néstor had told her that Bernabé was incredibly strict with him and Casimiro about how to behave respectfully around the women of the rancho.
The other was the vaquero Beto. Though his appearance suggested Anglo parentage, with blue eyes and a reddish tinge to his light hair, he was indiscernible from the other vaqueros. He was a creature of the chaparral like them, all bowlegged from a life spent in the saddle and with the corners of his eyes lined from squinting into the sun. Unlike Casimiro’s silence, Beto made pleasant small talk that, more often than not, spun into long, amusing stories of his years on the road, a cigarillo never far from his lips. Sometimes, if Nena woke in the night in the darkness of her tent, she could hear him singing to himself softly as he kept watch. She began to associate the smell of tobacco with comfort. She slept well those nights.
Casimiro and Beto were unfailingly polite in her presence. This was profoundly at odds with how they behaved around the campfire with the other vaqueros. She heard them from a distance at times, while helping other women stoke the cooking fire or in passing as she headed to different parts of camp to check on men recovering from minor injuries sustained on the road.
Beto in particular loved to hold a court of raucous laughter among the vaqueros, weaving yarns about Néstor. Néstor finding a cursed conquistador’s helmet in the silver mines in Durango. Néstor downing bloodthirsty longhorns and branding them. Néstor breaking wild meste?o stallions that no one else could even approach. Néstor bedding the wives and widows of wealthy rancheros.
Nena’s cheeks smarted hot as she overheard one of these last tales. She couldn’t help but glance over her shoulder, agitated, to seek Beto’s face and use it to gauge his tone better. Was it a joke? A brutal exaggeration?
“With all these stories you would think he’s Pedro de Urdema?as!” one vaquero cried. There—that was someone who smelled the exaggeration of a vaquero tall tale. Comparing anyone to that trickster hero of folklore was as good as claiming falsehood outright.
“No, Pedro de Urdema?as had to rely on trickery to get out of Hell,” Casimiro said. He had noticed Nena; caught her eye and held it for a minute. Casimiro had been all tipped brims of hats and genteel buenas tardes to her over the years, but now, something wickedly amused sparked in his eyes with the firelight. He looked away, refocusing on his listeners. But he had to know that she was listening too. “Néstor Duarte would charm the Devil senseless and walk out whistling.”
Their words buzzed around her, as insistent and irritating as the mosquitoes that nipped at the squadron as it moved south. She should know better than to believe them. A vaquero tale was only ever half-truth at best, but they chafed at her like straw during the hours Néstor was on watch.
* * *
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THEY WERE A day out from Matamoros. Anxiety knit around the men like thick threads of mist; their horses, tasting change in the air, grew restless, stamping their hooves and whinnying even as they settled into the siesta. Unease lay over Nena’s skin like the constant sweat that lingered throughout each humid day. Papá and Don Antonio Canales had ridden ahead to meet with the general and had not yet returned as twilight reddened in the west. To make matters worse, Néstor was on watch.
She ignored him studiously as she left camp to fetch water, her long riding skirt dragging softly over the trampled grass of the path. The grasses grew unusually high among the ebony trees along the banks of the river. The air clung to the afternoon’s heat; it hung in a thick veil over the riverbanks. Even the distant cry of raucous chachalacas was smothered by it.
The only sound was Néstor’s footsteps, falling in time behind hers at a respectful distance. Unlike other times he had shadowed her in the last week, when he tried and failed to strike up smooth small talk, he said nothing.