Edward Little never explained his predilection for Catalina to anyone—he explained nothing of himself to anyone—and no one of the family, not even her father or grandfather, ever mentioned it. Catalina was Don Eduardo’s darling and that was that. It had occurred to Gloria, who kept the thought to herself, that her father-in-law’s partiality for the girl might be rooted in the loss of his only daughter when she was still a baby. But if that were so, why choose Catalina over Sandra Rosario who had been born first? Gloria had a notion about that too. Sandi was a sensitive child who wept for the injured and the helpless and the all alone, while Catalina . . . well, Gloria had never seen nor heard Catalina cry, not in pain or for any other reason, not even as an infant.
Given Patria Chica’s isolation and proximity to the railroad, its safety was unsure. In early March when rebel action was reported only fifty miles from San Luis Potosí, Díaz had a company of infantry posted on the outskirts of the hacienda. But still Edward wanted to send Catalina someplace safer, and so of course would send Sandra Rosario too. He put the girls on an army train bound for Monterrey, where the next afternoon they would transfer to another military train and arrive in Matamoros around midnight. He assigned Eduardo Luis to go along as his sisters’ protector until he turned them over to John Louis at the Matamoros station. John Louis would take the girls across the river to his Brownsville home and Eduardo Luis would return to Patria Chica. Catalina asked how long they would have to be away. Until things settle down here, Edward said. He gave her a roll of American currency and hugged her hard and kissed her. Then patted tearful Sandra Rosario on the head and was gone.
In Monterrey there was a mechanical problem with the train they were supposed to transfer onto. Wanting to deliver the children on schedule, the officer in charge had a sleeping coach added to a special train about to leave for the Matamoros garrison—a train of only two other cars, one packed with munitions and the other carrying a guard detail of two rifle squads. The train chugged off through a sunset-reddened countryside and then into a desert night made ghostly by an incandescent moon. Catalina lay awake for a time, staring out the window at the night sky and wondering what the border would be like.
She came awake to a thundering clash of iron as the coach yawed and shuddered and came to a jarring halt. Her head struck the wall and she was unconscious for a moment before becoming aware of her brother shaking her by the shoulder and shouting “Cat! Come on!” Gunfire blasting outside. Men bellowing, howling. Crying out in pain. She found it hard to sit up and then realized the coach was at a sideward tilt. The little amber lights just inside the doors were still on but the air was hazed with dust and smelled of steaming oil. Eduardo Luis wore only pants and boots. She saw the fear in his eyes, the pistol in his hand. Sandra Rosario shrieked from the other end of the coach where men with big hats and wild dark faces had rushed in and one had his arms around Sandi from behind and was dragging her out. As Eduardo Luis started to raise his pistol somebody shot him and he fell to the floor on his back with his eyes rolled up and a red-black hole in his forehead. Catalina tried to get her knife from under the pillow but was grabbed by her gown and yanked rearward. She twisted and tried to wrest free and the gown ripped away and she fell on the floor, naked but for underpants. The man holding the gown stared down at her, grinning under a huge mustache. Then was on her.
She would not know how many took a turn. Five? Six? The coach windows were gray when the last of them was done. He was the only one of them still in the coach and was having trouble rebuckling his pants belt. He paid no attention to her as she sat up. The floor under her sticky with blood and semen, the pain between her legs like a raw wound. She heard the snortings and stampings of horses, the clatter of heavy wagons. She pulled herself up against the bunk and slid her hand under the pillow. Somebody hollered for the laggard to hurry up, what the hell was he doing, courting her? There was laughter. Without looking up from his struggle with the buckle the man yelled back for them to fuck themselves. She turned to face him and said softly, “Oye, bruto.” The man raised his face to look at her and she backhanded the blade through his neck all the way to the bone. Blood jumped and spattered her breasts. The man staggered, hands to his throat as if trying to hold his head in place as much as stanch the blood throbbing through his fingers and cascading onto his shirt. He tried to cry out but could not. Then tripped over Eduardo Luis and fell facedown and let a gurgling groan and in a moment more went still, blood widening on the floor under his face. There was another shout for him to come on, goddammit. She stood next to the door with the knife ready for whoever came in first. To hell with him, somebody said, he can catch up. She heard them leaving, horsemen and wagons.
She found her clothes and got dressed, nearly falling once from a sudden swirl of dizziness. The floor viscid under her feet. She knelt beside Eduardo Luis and cleaned off his face with her gown and then covered him with it. She had to think hard for a moment to remember he was eighteen. His gun was gone. But the dead man’s gun belt was still on the chair where he’d placed it and she went to it and took the Remington revolver from the holster and emptied the cylinder and saw that all the cartridges had been spent. She reloaded the chambers with bullets from the belt loops and then with the point of her knife made another hole in the belt for the buckle tongue so the belt would fit her. Then put it on and slid her knife under it but had the revolver in hand as she went outside into the light of the risen sun.
The locomotive was canted to one side on the ground beyond the disjointed tracks with its great iron wheels buried to the hubs and a thin haze of steam still rising off the engine. Dead men in every attitude. Some of the attackers and all of the soldiers. Ants already at work on the faces. She did not find Sandra Rosario among the dead but found several canteens of water. In every direction the horizon ran to distant ranges except to the northeast which lay flat all the way to the sky. There was a low dust cloud in the southwest she took to be that of the departed raiders. She had to assume they had Sandi with them. She tried various hats before finding one that wasn’t too big. She had no idea how far she was from Matamoros but knew that the tracks would take her there. She slung a pair of canteens across her chest and started walking.
Near midday a billow of dust rose in the northwest and began to enlarge. She had the Remington in her hand when they came riding up, a band of men of the same breed and aspects as those of the night before. Teeth bright against faces black in the shadow of their sombreros. Every man of them draped with bandoleers and guns and knives, their horses hung with rifles and machetes. They reined up around her, grinning and joking about the pretty soldadera so ready to shoot them all. The leader said he was Tomás Urbina and asked what happened. She told him about the train attack. He asked if she had been violated and when she didn’t answer he cursed her attackers with such artful vileness she nearly smiled. He told two men to take her to Matamoros. She hesitated but a second before clasping the hand reaching down to her and being swung up behind the rider.