Last Train from Cuernavaca Read Online Free Page B

trough, but stopped short at the charred, smoking rubble of the stable. The corncrib, blacksmith shop, and sugar press building had also been set on fire.
    With her pulse pounding in her ears, Angela rode through the big doors now standing open. No chickens wandered the courtyard, which looked as if a bomb had gone off in it. It was littered with upturned flagstones and pitted with holes the soldiers had dug in search of silver the family might have buried.
    Angela left Antonio by the cistern and ran through the house, calling for her father and Plinio, the family’s mayordomo . Furniture lay overturned and smashed. Debris covered the floor, but the soldiers had taken everything of value that they could carry.
    Angela went to her father’s study and waded through the scattered books. El gobierno had not considered them worth stealing. She put a stool on a chair and set the chair on a big chest. She climbed onto the stool and pushed aside a panel in the ceiling. She stood on tiptoe and felt around until she found her father’s Winchester 30-30 carbine, the 1894 model, and the box of ammunition for it. She knew how to use it. Riding and shooting were the only activities her father shared with her. She had practiced throwing knives and rocks on her own.
    She replaced the panel and put the stool and chair back where she had found them. She pressed one of the carved wooden medallions at the edge of an ornate cupboard and slid out a narrow vertical drawer, invisible when closed. Inside was a wallet containing forty of the big silver pesos called bolas .
    She put them into the bag around her neck and picked up the rifle and ammunition. She found a couple old shirts and two pair of her father’s trousers that the soldiers had missed. She figured she could replace her filthy clothes with one set and give the other to Antonio.
    She returned to the cistern, and in the last of the day’s light she sluiced buckets of water over Antonio and herself until she’d rinsed off the worst of the dirt and blood. She took the skirt from her satchel and tore off material to change the bandage on Antonio’s wound and make a sling for his arm.
    â€œWhere do you want to go?” she asked.
    â€œWherever you’re going.”
    Shadowy figures darker than the gathering night slipped through the gate. Angela shoved a shell into the Winchester, levered the action, and rested the barrel on the rim of the cistern with the muzzle aimed at them.
    â€œWho are you?” she called out.
    â€œI am Plinio, princess.” The family’s mayordomo had always called her cíhuapilli, princess. “The women told us you had come here.”
    Plinio and five of Don Sanchez’s employees lined up in front of her as if for military inspection. They had armed themselves with hoes, machetes, knives, and a few ancient rifles. They carried their belongings in satchels with the straps running diagonally across their chests.
    â€œDo you know where my father is?”
    â€œNo, but we want to go with you to fight in General Zapata’s army.”
    Angela hadn’t yet decided where she would go, but now she realized that the choice was inevitable. “How do you know what I’m going to do?”
    It was too dark to see the wry smile on Plinio’s doleful, wrinkled face. “ Muchacha, how many years have I known you?”
    â€œAll my life.”
    â€œWell then…”
    Angela wore her hair in a braid that reached the small of her back. “Cut this off.” She held it away from her body. “Hurry. The sons of dogs could return.”
    Plinio knew from experience that arguing with Don Miguel’s daughter was a waste of time. He could barely see the braid, so he measured it with his hand before he sawed through it with his machete. Angela shook her head to let her hair fall in a parentheses around her face. She ran her hand through it, disoriented when her fingers came to the ends so