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a small factory where the sisal was made into rope. But by the 1940s the property, then an eccentric compound of decrepit nineteenth-century buildings surrounded by almost eighty acres of maguey plantings from which the sisal had been made, had stood, unused and moldering, for twenty years. It had been bought in 1947 by Annie’s grandfather, Vince Gallagher, a wounded Army veteran who had combined his military payout with his life’s savings to live out his dream of ranching in some sunny, warm place as far away from his home in International Falls, Minnesota (officially the coldest city in the continental United States) as possible. Knowing little about either ranching or farming-before the war he had worked as a steamfitter-he hired an “agricultural consultant,” on whose advice he tore out the exhausted old magueys, replacing them with tobacco plants and coffee trees, and invested heavily in stock for fighting bulls and fine Arabian riding horses.
    Things didn’t work out as hoped, however. The consultant turned out to be a crook, bullfighting turned out to be illegal in Oaxaca (who knew?), and the plantings had a hard time of it in the rain-starved hills. Only the horses, against all odds, were a success, but only a modest one. Worst of all, his new Mexican wife, the beautiful, flashing-eyed Beatriz, decided after her first trip to the United States that she liked International Falls better than Teotitlan and began spending more and more time there with the Minnesota Gallaghers, who were glad to take her in, not only having taken a genuine liking to her, but relishing the chance to penalize Vince for having chosen to leave in the first place. And with medical care far superior to what was available in Mexico, she made sure to be in Minnesota for the birth of each of her three children. Eventually she would spend more than half the year there, almost always taking their children with her.
    It made for a lonely life for Vince, who, underneath his romantic expatriate veneer, was really a family man at heart. Still, he managed to keep the place going-barely-by raising and selling his horses, and later on by boarding them and working with an Oaxaca tour agency that specialized in back-country treks. In 1975 he brought in Carl, the Montana-ranch-raised son of an Army buddy, to handle that end of the business, and there Carl had remained ever since.
    In 1978, Vince, a two-pack-a-day man (three packs a day in his twenties) had died from complications from the emphysema that had plagued him for ten years, and Tony Gallagher, then about twenty-five, a year older than Carl was, had taken over the ranch.
    “Tony was the oldest of his children?” Gideon asked.
    Annie answered for Carl. “That’s right. Tony was the oldest, then my mother-Blaze was her name-and then Jamie. In fact my grand-mother died giving birth to him, do I have that right, Pop?”
    “Well, not long after. Anyway, to go back to after Vince died and Tony took over… Whew, talk about a new broom…”
    Carl paused to give his full attention to making a left turn from the highway. As with everything else, he was a focused, deliberate, unhurried driver-he took his time, patiently waiting a good twenty seconds for a rattletrap pickup coming from the other way to approach and get safely by. (“ Go, already,” Annie mouthed silently, rolling her eyes.) Finally, when the highway was clear for as far as the eye could see, he turned onto a narrow, potholed, shoulderless, utterly deserted, but more or less paved road. The rusted green sign read, 2 KM TEOTITLAN. In front of them the road crested a low rise, then disappeared into dry, gently undulating brushland dotted with small farms, with the stark brown hills in the distance. Carl took up the story again as they started down.
    Tony Gallagher, young as he was, had a good head for business and was a natural salesman besides. There were a couple of Mexico City mining outfits that had been angling for mineral rights