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no more. 'Cept maybe to me."
    I watched him pass us by and nod and tether the four horses and wondered if he knew we'd been talking about him from the silence between us and if he'd care one way or another. I was reaching for a piece of mesquite in the pile behind us when he walked over.
    "I think you want to leave that," he said.
    "Huh?"
    "Back off a little."
    I stood and took a step back and Hart kicked at the pile and I heard the snake's sharp rattle before I saw the thing coiling itself into a tight deadly ball, its attention moving from Hart to me directly in front of it just as Hart's boot came down squarely on its head.
    "Jesus Christ , Hart!"
    "Saw it crawl in there just now. You want to be more careful, Bell."
    "You just stepped on the damn thing. They bite for chrissake!"
    "Not if you step on them first, they don't."
    It had easily been within striking distance of me. I was shaken. A snakebite wasn't normally a fatal thing if you got to it right away but you never knew and you wouldn't want to try your luck.
    "Hell, Hart. Don't you like life?"
    "No more than that snake did, probably. But then I don't dislike it either."
    I turned and saw Elena coming up the embankment.
    Her clothes were wet and her hair was wet and she looked refreshed and younger and very lovely. Mother smiled.
    "Hand me that rattlesnake, Bell," he said. "Mr. Hart just supplemented our rations. It's time for dinner."

    The snake was tasty spitted over the fire and went nicely with the beans, salt beef and hardtack. By the time she was finished eating I thought Elena looked stronger. I was amazed at her powers of recovery. Her long hair gleamed in the firelight. I mopped my plate with the last of the bread and gathered up the others' to take to the river. Hart stopped me.
    "Time we talked," he said.
    He looked at Elena and I sat back down again and waited. Hart opened the whiskey beside him and we passed it around. Elena waved it away.
    She drank some water from the canteen instead and told her story.

    I knew full well that shortly after the war large parts of Mexico had become colonized by hundreds of white settlers attracted to the land, the cheap living and the notion of life as conquerors. I also knew that conquerors did not tend to be generous with the conquered. Especially the brand of soldier who'd campaigned in Mexico.
    If he was regular army he'd probably already fought in the Indian wars at one time or another in the very recent past and to him a Mexican was just another half-caste Apache. Rape had been common during the wars on both sides and some men — far too many men — had developed a taste for it, for violence and a woman who'd let him do whatever he damn well felt like because she knew she needed to just to stay alive.
    It was a taste they brought with them across the border into Mexico.
    There was money in their pockets.
    They could pay for what they wanted.
    There was a market among their number growing fast as weeds in a graveyard and the Valenzuras supplied that market.
    Elena, her sister Celine and the young woman whose name she never knew had tried to flee their fate there.
    She had cut away their hobbles with a dull kitchen knife sharpened over time while the others slept and secreted in her skirt and they'd hidden in some scrub behind and below the hill she called Garanta del Diablo until darkness fell and then had tried their run. They got as far as the river.
    "I pulled one of them off the Anglo girl and crushed his skull with a stone at the riverbank. But they'd already used the knife on her by then, on both of us. They thought it was funny that we should try to run away. A joke. So they toyed with us with their knives. I do not think they meant to kill us — we meant money to the sisters — but they were drunk and it was dark. The last I saw of my sister they were dragging her back across the river. I could not return for her unarmed but now I will. If I cannot have the horse and the rifle I will steal them