Good.
She did not have the patience to brush him aside, not today. She had not forgiven him for having the nerve to show up at the door of la casa mayor with nothing but buenas to explain himself. For every morning or afternoon on the road he nonchalantly tried to chat about the weather or horses or the other vaqueros, or God forbid, asked polite questions about what curanderismo she had learned from Abuela in his absence.
For that absence always went unspoken. Their entire time on the road, he acted as if striking up a conversation with her were the most normal thing in the world.
As she lay in her tent at night, slapping away mosquitoes and longing for the comforting breathing of her sister and cousins nearby, she reached a conclusion that made her eyes sting with unshed tears.
The boy she knew and missed was dead. The man who had returned in his place was a fraud who bore his name. Beneath his attempted charming veneer was an unfeeling stranger. He did not care how years of absence had affected her, for they certainly did not affect him.
She did not care to know him. In fact, she refused to.
She quickened her pace through the grass to the river, hoisting the water jug on her hip. The sooner she washed her face and collected water, the sooner she could get away from him. She could always tell when he was watching her. She felt it like a physical weight, like a soft hand on her arm, a whispered I’m here.
But where had he been for nine years? Why had he left? Why hadn’t he sent her any word? These thoughts drove her forward as steer move at the whip; she was so wrapped up in them it took until she was halfway to the riverbank to notice how eerie the silence of the twilight was, broken only by a soft buzzing.
How the feeling of being watched was perhaps more than Néstor’s presence as she scanned the unusually high grasses on either side of the path. How it hugged the back of her neck with a predatory intimacy.
She turned the last bend in the path and nearly tripped into the carcass of a bull blocking the path to the river.
Her gasp of surprise was almost a cry.
“Nena.” A hand on her arm; it drew her back gently, catching her and keeping her balanced. Any other time she would have bristled at the touch, at the familiarity of her nickname. But she barely noted these, nor Néstor’s sharp, hissing intake of breath.
The soft, claylike soil of the riverbank was roughened and muddied by pawing hooves; the bull had been taken down in a struggle. It lay on its side, head at a sharp angle pointed toward Nena, eyes glassy and still untouched by vultures. Flies thickened its nostrils and a long wound at its throat.
The carcass was fresh.
Its face had the harsh, starved look of beasts in famine; its hide was pulled taut over protruding chest bones and hips, hugging each rib tightly over a strangely hollow belly. It was desiccated, like a lime left to dry out in the sun, like salted meat smoked for weeks, as if every drop of liquid had been sucked from it, leaving nothing but a husk in its wake.
An Hacienda del Sol brand blackened the bull’s shoulder. This was no feral steer left to fend for itself, that might sicken and die with no one noticing. This was one of the healthy cattle that had been brought along with the squadron.
“What on earth?” she breathed.
The hand fell from her arm. Néstor stepped forward, moving gingerly around the carcass’s head and crouching in the disturbed earth to get a closer look. Nena hovered a step behind him, holding the water jug tight to her hip.
The wound at the cow’s neck was that of a predator: rough, uneven, ripped. Mauled. The dryness of the cow’s hide emphasized needlelike punctures around the wound.
“I have never seen anything like this,” Nena said softly, half to herself.
Even as the words fell from her mouth, she wondered if they were a lie. Something in the uneven edging of the wound called to mind the strange, snakelike punctures she had seen on the inside of the vaquero Ignacio’s arm.
Néstor’s hat shaded his eyes and hid most of his expression, but she could see the grim set of his mouth.
“I have,” he said.
“What did this?” Nena asked. It didn’t look like the work of a cougar, nor a coyote—there were no paw prints to be seen, no claw marks. Only the desperate pawing of cloven hooves.
“Well . . .” Néstor rose slowly. One hand rose thoughtfully to his jaw; the gesture sent a pang of familiarity through her chest. He was here. The strangeness that hung around them like a physical weight on the air made her raw, made the pang strike deeper. He was here, and she still missed him. “An old vaquero once told me it was the work of spirits.”
His voice in her memories was that of an adolescent, crackling like frost underfoot. Now it was like worn leather: supple and dark, well-fit as an old saddle. She hated how natural it sounded. She hated how it felt like a draft of cool water. She hated how much she wanted him to keep speaking.
The sensation of being watched had not broken; if anything, it built, like a branding iron slowly reddening in the fire as the twilight deepened. Speaking would keep it at bay.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“I don’t know. The man was a bit, ah, strange. You know?” He whistled softly and made a looping gesture with one hand around his ear. He said strange, he meant loco. “Beto and I drove with him years ago, north of Presidio de San Vicente.”
It was only a few sentences, but it was more than enough to damn him. The familiar gestures, the throwaway reference to a life lived away from Los Ojuelos. How casually he said years ago, as if that time slipped comfortably by, as if those were not long months Nena sat staring out the window, waiting for Félix to come from the comisaria with the post. Waiting in vain for any news.
You need to stop asking, Nena. He’s gone.
Nine years. For nine years she wondered where he was, if he was safe, if he was coming back. She grew. The landscape of her life changed irreparably. She became more and more tightly bound by the ropes of womanhood; he roamed free, unburdened by responsibilities.
“Let’s see if someone at camp has a better explanation,” he said, lifting a hand to his lips. He let out a high, sharp whistle: two notes, repeated twice, a message clear as day to anyone who grew up on Los Ojuelos. Come here, come see, without the third, higher note indicating help.
“Here, come this way,” Néstor said. He stepped back from the carcass and waved for her to follow him a few paces back. “We should wait for others to arrive, but then we’ll go to the river.”
She stepped toward him, then paused. Following him was a long-dead habit; she hated how easily it resurrected itself. How easily she fell into it.
She was caught off guard by the sudden, hot presence of a sob growing thick and fast and difficult to breathe around. Perhaps it was exhaustion. Perhaps it was something else. She quashed it either way. She lifted her chin haughtily, readjusted the jug on her hip, and stalked right past him down the path in the direction of the river.
“Nena?”
She didn’t want to hear another word from him, not another syllable softened by his voice’s light, rural twang that sounded so much like home.
“Wait, please.” Footsteps behind her. “I said I wouldn’t leave you.”
Nena scoffed. “Bold words.” She could taste the acidity in the words before they struck the air. “You shouldn’t go making the kinds of promises to my father that you have a history of breaking. He’s bound to lose his temper with you.” She squinted. The river had appeared around a bend; its slow-moving surface reflected the reddening twilight.
The footsteps behind her hesitated. Continued. “What the hell are you talking about? Nena—”