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out of the cottage to my left. A short, dark woman with a child. She spoke in Spanish to the man with the rifle. I understood enough to know her child was sick and that she needed a ride to the emergency room.
    Rifle Man became flustered and annoyed. He tried to keep his gun trained on me while he barked back at the woman. Clearly, multitasking wasn’t his strength. I couldn’t understand all that he was saying, but his tone didn’t convey sympathy. The woman started to cry, and there was desperation in her voice that required no translation.
    “You understand this?” I said to Hawk.
    “Woman’s baby be really sick. She say he need to get to the hospital right away. He say that too bad, he ain’t bringing them to the hospital, don’t care if the baby live or not.”
    The woman rushed closer to the man, pleading and wailing and trying to show him her sick child. He pushed her away, and she and the baby fell to the ground.
    Hawk opened his door and got out of the car.
    “Hey! Hey!” Rifle Man swung his rifle over the top of the car toward Hawk. “Stop right there or I’ll shoot. This here’s private property and you’re trespassing.”
    Hawk ignored him and walked around the car to the woman and her baby. As Rifle Man swiveled to train his gun on Hawk, I pushed open my car door and slammed it into his left side. He collapsed with a grunt and the rifle flew from his hands, landing a few feet away. I stepped from the car. As Rifle Man tried to stand, I leaned in and kicked him in the stomach. He fell to the ground and rolled onto his back. I stood over him with my Beretta pointed at his nose.
    “Okay,” I said. “Here’s the deal. We’re taking this young woman and her baby to the hospital. You’re going to pull yourself together, and in two hours you are going to drive to the hospital and pick them up. Do you understand me?”
    Rifle Man was having an even harder time with comprehension. I waited for him to mouth the words and then digest them. Finally, he nodded.
    “You have dented my car door, and worse than that, you’ve annoyed us. Being men of goodwill in this holiday season, we’re willing to forgive you. But if you try to stop us, or if you cause any harm to this woman or her child, I am going to come back here and extract my insurance deductible from you. Do you understand that?”
    Again he mouthed the words. He seemed to have problems with “extract.” I tried again.
    “If you shoot at us, or if you harm the woman or her baby, I will come back here and hurt you. Do you understand?”
    Fear materialized on Rifle Man’s face, and this time he nodded without having to do much thinking. He shouted something in rapid-fire Spanish to the woman.
    “Hawk?” I said.
    “He tell our new friend here that he’ll come by the hospital in two hours to check on her and the bambino. He also tell her he hope the baby be okay.”
    I holstered my Beretta, walked over to the rifle, cracked open the barrel and collected the shells and put them in my pocket. Then I grabbed the rifle by the barrel with both hands and flung it over the car and far into the trees.
    Hawk had led the woman and the baby over to my car and put them in the backseat. I got back in the car, did a three-point turn, and drove slowly back out the dirt road. In my rearview mirror, I could see Rifle Man slowly getting to his knees and looking dumbly at our taillights.
    We reached the open highway, and she said,
“A la derecha.”
I could see in the rearview mirror that she was young, maybe twenty. She wore her hair in a kind of bun, and her winter coat was patched and threadbare. The baby wore a good-quality parka and was nestled down in it, asleep.
    Hawk said,
“Cómo se llama?”
    “Martita.
Mi hijo se llama
Juanito
. Tiene mucho fiebre.
”
    “Habla inglés?”
Hawk said.
    “Sí. Un poco.”
She smiled and I could see she was missing a front tooth and the rest of them looked brown.
    “Do you know Carmen?” I said.
    “Sí, sí! Es un