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He drank from a canteen, offered it to Teresa through the bars of her cage. She turned her face from it. He corked the canteen and hung it on his pommel.

“That’s all right, that’s all right,” he said. “You will be thirsty soon enough. You will ask for water, and we will see if I feel like giving it to you.”

His men laughed.

He dismounted.

Teresita saw that as soon as he was off his horse, he looked like a toad. His legs were bandy from spending his life in the saddle. His torso was short, and he was tubby and neckless. Rubber lips.

“Ride on,” he ordered.

The men saluted and galloped away.

Two guards took up posts on high ground.

The general smacked the bars of the cage and smiled in at her.

“Now we’ll see,” he said. “Now we’ll see.”

He unlatched the gate at the back of the wagon.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“You will find out soon enough,” he said. He was smiling. He threw the latch and let the gate swing open a handbreadth.

“Do you wish to escape?” he said, laying his hand on the shiny flap of his black holster. “You would like to run,” he said. “Verdad? Eh?”

“I will stay with my father,” she said.

General Bandála looked around.

“Your father?” He laughed.

He heaved himself into the cage with her. The wagon tipped up with his weight. The wood creaked. The wooden tree attached to the two mules in front jerked up and caused them to shift backward. The metalwork on their leads and in their mouths clinked like small bells.

“What are you doing?” she repeated.

She could smell him.

“I am going to enjoy you,” he said.

She moved to the end of the cage.

“No thank you,” she said.

“You whore,” he breathed. “You have no choice.”

He undid his belt with one hand and grabbed her ankle with the other.

She kicked him in the chin.

“Ah, cabrón!” he yelped, clutching his chin. “Bitch!”

“I will remind you that you are an officer of the army,” she said.

He undid the top button of his pants.

She stared in his eyes.

“Look at it,” he said.

“No.”

“I am going to put it in you!” he said.

“Put it in yourself,” she replied.

“What kind of talk is that?” he cried, deeply offended by this sort of discourse from a young lady. “Have you no manners?”

“Sir,” she said, “a bandit on the highway would not dare abuse my situation. But you, who claim to be a gentleman and a general of the Mexican army, are more miserable and cowardly than a bandit.”

He got up on his knees.

“You should know,” he fumed, “that it is up to me to decide whether you should live or die. My displeasure could lead to your being put before the firing squad. It is you who can choose between life and death.”

“Kill me, then,” she said. “Kill me, but do not insult me, General.”

He fastened his trousers and backed out of the wagon.

“Do what you want with my corpse,” she said, “if you need relief so badly.”

He made a face as if he had smelled something rank.

“You are too foul to touch,” he sniffed.

He yelled to his distant men:

“You! Get over here now! Get this dirty creature to Guaymas! Double time!”

They rushed to the wagon and climbed aboard and shook the reins. General Bandála mounted his horse and stared at her as the wagon lurched down the road. Slowly, he nudged his horse into motion, and he followed her, but tried to stay well out of her line of sight.

Within an hour, a cavalry patrol was on the ranch. Segundo had no reason to protect these idiots. He turned José over to the colonel in charge. They dragged him to the same arroyo where he had helped ambush the cavalry, and in the morning, they tied him to a tree trunk by his neck. He was so near death anyway that he couldn’t stand. They watched him choke for a while, and when they got bored with that, they took turns shooting him.

Fifty-nine

GUAYMAS. She had never seen the sea, and in spite of her exhaustion and pain, Teresita was stunned to see a deep blue sliver of ocean curling along the coast in the distance. She closed her eyes. She could smell the salt.

She had swooned in the heat in a courtyard, cramped inside her cage. It seemed as