Last Train from Cuernavaca Read Online Free

received back the land the hacendados stole from us?”
    â€œNo, but there’s nothing I can do about that, educated or not.” Angela reined her horse toward the river. “Ma xipatinemi.” She called over her shoulder. It was the Nauhuatl form of good-bye. It meant, “May you be well.”
    She tethered her mare to graze beyond the bare dirt surrounding the roots of a banyan tree. The tree was as big around as the hacienda’s blacksmith shop and its canopy spanned the river. Angela’s great, great, great grandfather had brought it from Spain as a seedling.
    In the 150 years since then it had sent down hundreds of aerial roots from its branches. They had reached the ground, taken hold, and thickened into trunks. As the trunks grew wider they crowded each other, forming a maze of nooks and crevices. As far back as Angela could remember the banyan had been her citadel, her kingdom, her refuge.
    She kicked off her shoes. She tugged her blouse over her head and untied the drawstring on her skirt. She dropped it around her ankles and stepped out of it. She draped her clothes over a bush, then she took a running start onto a jutting rock and leaped off. She pulled her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs, and hit the river with a force that sent water up like a geyser.
    She snorted and spouted and splashed, then she walked out of the river, dripping. She retrieved the bundle she had hidden among the banyan’s roots. It contained the white cotton trousers, tunic, leather sandals, and wide-brimmed straw hat that all the farmers wore. She put them on and climbed the tree, finding footholds in the intricate fretwork of roots and branches.
    She walked out on the broad limb that gave the best view of the men in the cane field and settled down where it forked. She reclined with her back against the upper branch, her legs draped along the lower one. Through the years the birds had gotten used to her presence. Anoles and chameleons commuted across her and an iguana as long as her arm dozed like a tabby cat nearby.
    From here she could see Antonio guiding the plow. He had draped his shirt over the handle and Angela never tired of watching the glide of muscles in his bare back and arms. She wanted to tell him how she felt about him, but she was certain he would laugh at her.
    Her eyelids were beginning to droop like the iguana’s when the squad of soldiers galloped across the field. Their horses’ hooves sent dirt flying from the newly plowed furrows. They herded the workers into a line along an old ditch, dry except for mud in the bottom.
    Dread hardened into a canker in Angela’s chest. Most of her father’s men fell on their knees, but Antonio and Arquímedes remained on their feet. They were the first ones shot. Angela bit down on her knuckles to keep from screaming when the two of them pitched into the ditch.
    The soldiers emptied their rifles into the rest, then dismounted to make sure they were dead before they kicked the bodies over the edge. They reined their horses around, and driving the mules ahead of them, they headed in a cloud of dust for the hacienda. Soon strands of vultures began weaving a wreath over the ditch.
    Not until the sun was hovering above the horizon did Angela come down from the tree. As if to delay doing what she had to, she folded her skirt and blouse and put them and her shoes into her satchel. She rolled up her pants legs so they wouldn’t get soaked with blood. She picked up the biggest stick she could find to beat off the vultures, and led the mare to the ditch.
    The bodies sprawled in heaps above the muddy water. Somewhere under them lay Antonio and Arquímedes. Angela crossed herself before she slid down the steep sides of the trench. Flies, crows, and buzzards rose in a raucous black cloud when she hit the bottom. Ignoring the thunder claps of their wings, Angela grasped arms and feet and started hauling the corpses off the