CHAPTER ELEVEN: DEATH SQUAD

I was abruptly awakened by the whomping noise of a helicopter’s blades flying low over the mission. The deafening sound of the Lycoming jet engine of a Huey helicopter was distinct and frightening. I heard outlying screams from villagers as I jumped out of bed. Then there was a loud pounding at my door. Without waiting for me to answer, the door flung open. It was Hornsby with a desperate look on his face.

“Get your pack!” Hornsby demanded. “Meet me and Cassarina in the courtyard. Quickly.”

Without hesitation, I ran out of my room, half dressed, carrying my backpack over one shoulder. Making a desperate dash across the courtyard, I saw the two of them anxiously waiting for me by the fountain. The helicopters menacing presence raised the hairs on my back. There was not one, but two Hueys, painted in a drab olive green, hovering about 200 meters above the village. I couldn’t see any distinguishing emblems painted their fuselage.

We were not in their line of sight. It appeared they were more interested in something moving about in the other side of the village’s perimeter. A servant of Father Hernandez, who had attended to our dinner the night before, came running up to us. He said his name was Emilio and was to take us to the river to escape.

“Donde esta Padre Hernandez? Hornsby asked him shouting above the Huey’s deafening sound.

“Monsieur, es . . .” The man looked absolutely terrified. Suddenly one of the Huey’s let go with a burst of 50mm machine gun fire strafing the rainforest canopy.

“For chrissakes!” Hornsby yelled as the four us ran for cover in the rainforest.
More villagers screamed. Another burst of 50mm machine gun fire rattled above us, but the soldiers were targeting something in the opposite direction. As Emilio hurriedly led us along a narrow trail through thick brush, he turned back shouting “escuadron de la muerte . . .”

“Death squad,” Hornsby translated as he ran close on the heels of Emilio.

At that moment the helicopters turned and headed in our direction. Emilio motioned us to take cover in the bushes. Without hesitation I dove into the huge tangled mess of vines, shrubs and monstrous fern growth, wishing I could disappear. Cassarina, diving to camouflage herself, practically landed on top of me. When I looked over at her, I saw sweat dripping down her lovely face, off her nose. She looked scared but hadn’t lost her wits.

Hornsby and Emilio took to the other side of the trail. The Huey’s hovered above us for a few minutes. The downdraft of the helicopter blades stirred up the loose foliage about us. Cassarina looked at me with her saucer green eyes, speaking in a strained undertone.

“American special forces sent here to train counterinsurgency troops.” Cassarina was point blank on the matter. “The issue centers around the Red Bishop, Father Sanchez, in San de las Cristobal and his ‘church for the poor’.”

“Suspected conduit for guerrillas?”

“No, the church is acting as an eyewitness to village atrocities.”

“And, Father Hernandez . . . ” I said. The Huey was directly overhead the tree canopy.
“Human rights violation informant,” Cassarina said, flattening herself down a little deeper, with her bright blue backpack underneath her. She informed me that there was a Mexican leftist group building up in this area allegedly supplied by communist Cuba. No doubt the recent incident with the Chols refusing to let those archeologists take that sacred stone caught the government’s attention.

“How did you know?”

“Garthwaite wrote about it in his last letter,” Cassarina said.

“That’s why you made such a fuss about continuing on,” I surmised.

“It was a factor,” Cassarina said, nodding her head. Garthwaite had written to Cassarina to be careful because of reports of paramilitary groups on the Guatemalan side. They were looking for rebel’s crossing over into Chiapas along the Rio Usumacinta.

“And Hornsby knew as well,” I said crawling deeper into the humus moist soil of the rainforest.
“Of course,” Cassarina replied matter-of-factly.

Unable to discover us, the Huey’s turned and flew off in the direction of the small landing strip. Given the opportunity to flee, we ran along the trail toward the river. Being discovered would only complicate the military’s aggressive presence, a threat of exposure to their clandestine operations. Fortunately, we didn’t have to go far to reach our escape point.

Emilio produced a long cayuco, tucked away under some overhanging brush on the river’s edge. He told us we’d have to wait till nightfall before setting out. There were Guatemalan patrols on the other side so it was too dangerous to go in daylight. The distant rattle of more machine gun fire could be heard coming from the direction of the village. As an arbiter for truth, I confronted Hornsby about what Cassarina had informed me of while hiding from the military helicopters.

“You knew about the dangers,” I said nearly cursing under my breath.

“Jules, don’t start,” Cassarina interjected.

“Yes, I did but I didn’t expect this flare up,” Hornsby said, laying back on his backpack.

“Well, I’m not going to go without Father Hernandez,” I said grabbing the camera.

“Jules, you’re insane,” Hornsby protested. “You’ll get yourself killed.”

There was another remote staccato burst of M-16 rifle fire.

“No mostrarse misericordioso,” Emilio said, telling us the soldiers were not going to show us mercy if we were caught.

“We must take the chance.” Cassarina defended my appeal.

“Wait a minute, not so fast, Cassarina.” She was shocked to see me turn on her. “You mentioned the Red Bishop, the same man that I saw you talking to when I first arrived in San Cristobal.”

Bewildered that I knew of her meeting, she nodded in acknowledgment.

“What’s the hell going on? Who are you working for?”

“Ourselves, just like you, Jules.” She maintained her composure.

“Ourselves?” I said fuming.

“There’s no time. We must get Father Hernandez.”

“Try me, for at least a minute.”

Cassarina stared at Hornsby then back at me.

“Father Hernandez was behind the Chol confrontation. He incited the villagers to stand up against the archeologists.”

“And that brought the military here?”

“We didn’t expect this, Jules, believe me. How could we?”

“You might have told me at least, it would keep our trust in tack.”
“But that’s a given, isn’t it?” she said without pardon.

For the moment, I sensed in Cassarina a complete shift of alliances. She stood there, looking at me with solemn respect, willing to make amends for disguised behavior unbecoming her staunch integrity. The whole issue of our existence relied on trust and I suppose I had hit the nail on the head by raising the issue.

Hornsby wasn’t as keyed in to our evolving relationship, which under the circumstances was opening up more intimate avenues. If she was willing to go back to the village and risk her life with me, then she was certainly willing to. . . .

“Are you as foolish as he is?” Hornsby said in a harsh whispered voice staring at Cassarina.

A distant burst of M-16 gunfire added to our fear of a sickening tragedy evolving.

“We must go,” I said turning to leave, pausing to see if Cassarina was going to follow.
Emilio starred anxiously with a courteous wave of his hand begging our attention. The slender man told us that Father Hernandez had instructed him to take us downriver to seek refuge at the next village. Returning to the mission was a careless endeavor, if it not in opposition to Father Hernandez’s wishes. I could see Emilio’s loyalties were being tested.

Seeing it was futile to change our minds, Emilio said, “Los vivos y los muertos.”

Hornsby agreed. “The quick and dead . . .” adding that if we weren’t back by dusk, we’d be on our own. He wasn’t waiting around for us. I didn’t believe him.

Cassarina and I quickly ran along the trail back to the mission. Most likely the troops were rounding up the villagers. My body was shaking as we reached the edge of the trail cover that opened up to the mission. Cassarina stayed close behind me as we crouched down in the dense underbrush looking for any signs of life around the mission walls.

For a moment the mission was deadly quiet. I told Cassarina to wait. I was going to sneak across to the courtyard and hopefully find Father Hernandez, the man who summed up the Chols, the essential force of devoted Christian life and the flourishing strength of humanitarian faith against the peril of humankind’s debauchery. He didn’t make that point with me in the kitchen, but it was palpable in the way he talked, sipping his coffee. The priest had an innate quality to maintain neutral diplomacy between friends and enemies, of which its success brought casualty.

If for the moment, as I gazed at the outline of the mission, I wondered who was the informant that brought the shadowy trouble upon this mission and the villagers. Or did he, with his own priestly ambitions of martyrdom, bear it alone? In an ironic twist, he had redeemed the sins of his predecessors who cursed the Mayan culture by trying to annihilate its existence.

“If I’m not back in ten minutes, leave without me,” I said. I handed her the camera.

“Absolutely… not!” Cassarina replied.

Then, a string of commanding shouts in Spanish come rolling across the mission’s clearing.
“Seguir adelante. Obrar sin perder tiempo. Ser candidato para . . .”

The voices were coming closer against the backdrop of men and women moaning, crying, and children’s shrieks of fear.

“Wait,” Cassarina said to me. She grabbed me by the shoulder to hold me back. “ I think they’re coming,” she said.

In a few moments, we saw villagers being marched in single file past the mission walls, herded like cattle by well-armed militia. Some of the men staggered, having been beaten about their faces. Others proudly walked regardless of their wounds. At the end of the line came Father Hernandez. Two soldiers were escorting him with the barrels of their M-16’s digging into his back.

“Vamos,” one army officer kept saying to Father Hernandez, intimidating him.

The priest said nothing, his face streaming in blood. The weight of his body shuffled as if prolonging the inevitable. Some of the village women turned to him, crying softly, submissive to the soldier’s threats, but then others tried to approach to kiss his robe, only to be met with sharp blows by a rifle butt. If the children could have ran to him, they would have. But they were soon sequestered with the women to one side of the group of male villagers, forced to bow their heads on bended knees.

“We’re too late,” Cassarina uttered. She cautiously started taking photographs.

“Hacer cola,” the Captain commanded.

The men, along with Father Hernandez, were lined up in a straight line, facing the whitewashed adobe mission wall. The Captain shouted orders to his men to form a firing squad as a menacing gesture. Father Hernandez, for a moment, slowly turned around as if listening to a far-off sound, a faint voice in which was directly in our line of sight. The priest starred at Cassarina and I, fiery-eyed, gleaming in a greeting of humility. Though we were barely visible behind the thick brush about fifty meters away, I imagined he knew we were there, for the familiarity of his presence touched me.

“God is our victory.” I heard him bellow.

At that moment one of the younger men broke from the line, running as fast as he could directly toward us. Two soldiers took off running after him leveling their M-16’s. The Captain started yelling to shoot him. There was a burst of gunfire, but it wasn’t at the escaping man. The firing squad, mistaking the Captain’s orders to fire and in all dutiful respect, shot and killed the men lined up against the mission wall in a thunderous salvo of blazing gunfire.

In the next instant, I noticed two American soldiers from the distant side of the firing squad, starring directly at Cassarina and I. Cassarina had captured the atrocity on camera, but the glare of the camera lens had caught the attention of two American soldiers. Alerted to our presence, they started shouting in Spanish at the captain, who in turn was waving to more of his men to chase us.

The distance between the escaping villager and ourselves was closing fast. I stood frozen for eternity’s sake, looking at the fallen lifeless men along the mission wall, and the fast approaching escapee. The footsteps of the man running our way seemed light and quick. I could almost hear him panting for breath as he reached the edge of the clearing, his long wavy black hair tossing about, salvia dripping from the corners of his mouth, and his eyes beseeching us to save him.

Looking over at Cassarina, I saw her bursting into tears at the sight of Father Hernandez lying dead on the ground among those who had obediently followed him. The shrieks of the village woman and the wailing of the little children added to the anguish befalling us. We were caught in the somber, concentrated fury of anguish that had snatched the innocence of our world from us. The burst of M-16 gunfire whizzed bullets past us and burst the man’s chest open with blood spraying blood everywhere, including Cassarina’s face and myself.

We ran as fast as we could through the trail’s brush. A volley of gunfire rang out. Bullets whizzed past us, splintering tree bark into a thousand pieces. Stern voices shouting commands echoed against our backs.

“My, bloody god,” Cassarina coughed up between gasps of breath. I think if she could have, she would have vomited, but the immediate danger kept her from succumbing to her emotions. As for me, the prophecy of my dream, the predicted death, pushed me to stay alive. I wouldn’t die here. More bullets whizzed past us, though we were gaining a greater distance, familiar with the way to the river.

“You can make it, Cassarina,” I shouted at her.

Eyes pale from the sorrow of death and the scorn on her face, I could see her deep thoughts running like a ragging river, tapping her strength to continue.

“Run, Cassarina!” I demanded, grabbing her by the arm to pull her along.

In short time, the clamor of soldiers running behind us started to fade. Another burst of gunfire shredded the landscape safely away from us. The death squad had lost our trail or simply gave up. When we got to Hornsby and Emilio they were aware of the danger chasing us. The cayuco was loaded with our backpacks and ready for us to climb aboard and shove off.

Without a second to lose, we furiously paddled along the edge of the Rio Usumacinta crouched down in the tipsy cayuco as we passed underneath thorny festoons of coiled branches and overhanging tree branches for protection. More random shots rang out far behind us, but within a few desperate minutes we had put a safe distance between the soldiers and us.

“No doubt they’ll come looking for us in the helicopter,” Hornsby said.

After traveling about a kilometer down river, he decided we were safe to hole up till dark in the cover of the rainforest. We landed carrying the dug out canoe up on shore and tipping it over with our backpacks underneath it. Then we crawled back a bit further into the bush, smearing our faces with mud and draping ourselves in foliage of creepers, tree branches and ferns to hide ourselves. It wasn’t long until we heard the Huey’s storming up the river.

They were determined to find us by scouring the shoreline at about ten meters above the river’s surface. It was a tense moment, as I feared they would send in a scout party. But they didn’t. One of the side gunners strafed the trees directly above us hoping to flush us out from fear. One of the American soldiers grabbed the gunner by the shoulder, reprimanding him for being so careless. In the next moment, the Huey flew out of our sight.

After the sound of the Huey’s disappeared, I sat up rigid with a burning pain in my head. I surveyed our situation. We were confronted with the hardihood of desperation. The treachery of the paramilitary counterinsurgency operations was pulled down right on top of us. Cassarina was desperately assimilating the maelstrom of the atrocity we had just encountered.

She sat cross-legged in the rotting soil of the rainforest as a dismal solitude of breathless immobility from the suddenness of a human injustice being committed front row and center. The makeshift camouflage she was wearing dangled from her raven hair caked in splotches of dried mud mixed with blood splatters. I sensed she was waiting for a signal to know what to do next as the fate of a venerable woman.

All of us acted as if we were haunted by misery. Even Emilio didn’t stir, but waited attentive in the detached silence between us. Hornsby, in the meantime, reached into his shirt pocket and got out a map that had worn through at the folds, inspecting it in an attempt to recover from the mad terror of the calamity that befell us.

I knew that when we are overwhelmed emotionally in a crisis, we revert back to the most familiar behavior. Hornsby was no exception. Getting our bearings from the map was his means to process the mad panic we had just survived. It was the first time that I saw desperation, momentarily, wash over his face.

I moved toward the river’s edge to see if the cayuco had been hit by gunfire. It hadn’t been. For a moment I glanced out at the river’s surface to see the floating carcass of a man, face down, drifting in the river’s current. His back was riddled with bloodstained bullet holes. The frightful appearance chilled me to almost insanity.

I didn’t want to madden them with news of the corpse in the river. But it shattered my nerves.

“What precisely do you want us to do now?” I said sounding quarrelsome as I returned back to the group.

Cassarina, in response, cleared her throat as she swallowed with difficulty. The feeling of nausea caused her face to pale. She began to utter something, but nothing came out as her tongue stuck to the roof of her dry mouth. In contrast, Hornsby’s ability to disregard the violence we had just survived was nearly contemptuous to me.

“The next village is Arroyo Jerusalem,” Hornsby said in a matter-of-fact tone.

Cassarina sat stoically, her lower lip quivering. She internally tried to drown the witnessing of a senseless cruelty from her heart. By being an eyewitness to the death squad’s madness at El Desempeno, we had signed our own death warrant if captured. I was sure this was foremost on her mind.

Hornsby grunted true to his rough and ironic behavior. He gripped hard about the trying circumstances, attempting to squeeze out the civility of our purpose. To me, we lived in a condition of cruel adversity.

“Why did you have to go back?” Hornsby groaned, still gripping the map in one hand. “Blasted foolishness.”

Upon hearing his words, Cassarina burst into tears. Her cheeks flamed. She sobbed in choking breaths. The fresh memory of cold-blooded human slaughter consumed her earthly affections. Emilio stirred with an uneasy sigh. Hornsby, shifting to a mood of empathy, consoled her in his arms. Eventually, her crying fell into silence.

I watched Hornsby raise his shaggy eyebrow face as he let her drift off into sleep upon his lap.
“She has suffered much,” he said as if carrying her miserable wound.
“Much?” I wondered.

Hornsby must be holding back against the fact of another secret they kept between them. He bent over her and tenderly stroked her face concealing those feelings that he dare not utter to me.

“Where could we begin, anew?” he said drawing his breath. “It’s perfectly clear, there is no going back.”

The logic of his emotions swayed me. He sat there with a joyless face, worn out and powerless to create renewal of spirit among us. The paramilitary raid had altered his nature as much as Cassarina’s and my own. Perhaps he was questioning his own lack of bravery in the heat of the moment.

But his searching glances, taking little notice of the irritation that annoyed me, showed the internal process of mental changes. Resigned to our situation, he lay on his back in the tall grass, using a bent arm as a pillow and quietly breathed deeply with wide-open eyes. Cassarina was sound asleep with her head in his lap.

“It’s best to get some rest,” Hornsby said, speaking as if to no one then dozed off.

I was weary from the exertion of the day. But awaiting our fate kept me keyed up as well as my growling stomach. I sat vigilant till the night darken the sky and moonbeams come pouring through the tree canopy above us. Up to this point, the course of nature, the definite course of the expedition was sufficient to serve my longings for understanding of Mesoamerican mythology.

Along the way, by virtue of Hornsby’s guidance in framing himself symbolically in understanding the conception of the universe, I was provided with adequate reassurance. But now the necessity of our struggle seemed to exclude the chance to fulfill our sense of duty. We had been lowered to a state of desperate survival.

“Where’s the sense of it?” I thought to myself.

When it was safe for us to move on, we cautiously loaded up the cayuco. Emilio navigated by sitting at the front of the dug out canoe. Hornsby paddled in the middle while Cassarina sat hunched over embracing her knees in front of him, still somewhat catatonic. I was at the rear, using my paddle as an occasional tiller. A disperse cloud cover had protected us from being discovered under the waning moonlight that intermittently shone upon the smooth river’s expanse.

There were light puffs of breeze across the Rio Usumacinta that cooled me off. For a moment I had forgotten the turmoil of the day, as the deceptive pale light of the night dreamily engulfed my senses. Why couldn’t we had had a different outcome? Then all of this would be more commonplace, I thought to myself.

As we arrived at the black-lined shore on the out skirts of Arroyo Jerusalem, the crocking frogs we had heard along the river’s edge stopped. Emilio had brought the cayuco to a small break in the foliage, a sort of archway cut through the dangling vines that was the beginning of a dirt path leading into the forest. As he stepped out of the dug out canoe, he reassured us he would be back shortly, immediately taking off for the village.

We waited under the cover of some brush. The uncomfortable feelings of our situation returned in the darkness of the colossal jungle. We sat there as if we had a hang’s man’s noose about our necks.

I tried to give Cassarina a sip of water with my hands cupped with river water, but she remained in different, starring vacantly into space, still horror struck by the massacre. From my pack I took out a handkerchief, dipped it into the river and washed off the specs of blood and dried mud on her face. She made no objection, though she made no comment either as her chin drooped to her breastbone when I was finished.

“I suspect they’re paramilitary squads trained at the School of Americas.” Hornsby said.
I heard what he said, but I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I closed my eyes and clinched my teeth, hoping I could find some solemn accord in my heart. The silent space between us grew as the frogs began to crock even louder.

Within an hour, Emilio returned from the village. Hornsby, Emilio and myself huddled together. Cassarina was resting in the cayuco.

“There is much talk about you,” he said in Spanish. Hornsby asked if there was word about the Chol villagers and Father Hernandez in El Desempeno.

“Lo fusilar por espia,” Emilio said bowing his head down towards the ground as he made the sign of the cross. Father Hernandez had been shot as a spy. The news just frightened me more. Cassarina stirred for a moment lingering in her remorse. We fell to hushed voices not wanting to disturb her.

“Can we go to the village?” Hornsby whispered to Emilio. Emilio shook his head no, saying that there would be informers to the authorities. But in subdued excitement Emilio said it was our turn of luck. He had met a convert of Father Hernandez’s.

“Un hombre llamado, Cristobal.” Cristobal had been on the lookout for us, when rumors of the attack at El Desempeno reached Arroyo Jerusalem and some gringos had escaped. So when Emilio arrived in the village and found Cristobal, he was already prepared to help us.
There were some chicleos caballeros on the Guatemalan side of the river that wanted to leave the area because of the danger of paramilitary reprisals. Cristobal had made a plan for us to cross over to the Guatemalan riverside to buy their horses. He would guide us north though the Mayan forest to wherever we wanted to go.

“He knows the territory very well,” Emilio reassured us in Spanish. Pleased with the news, Hornsby affectionately slapped Emilio on the shoulder. We were at Emilio’s mercy for our survival, no doubt directed by divine intervention; Father Hernandez. This was a small miracle that raised our hopes of survival.

When Cristobal arrived with a sack of provisions, Cassarina was regaining her senses. She rose up in the cayuco having broken the invisible bonds of her grief with an immense sigh. Her hair was partly over her eyes as she murmured some disjointed words at first. Hornsby and I watched her absent-mindedly absorbed in thought. I felt a great pity of tenderness for her. Kneeling in the shadows of the moonlight, she glanced over to us and saw an unfamiliar face of a decedent of the Nican Tlaca, Cristobal. She sadly focused her eyes at me and asked who he was.
“Me llama, Cristobal,” Cristobal said in warm self-confidence.

Cristobal’s appearance brought a modest assurance that we could escape safely from the Chiapas territory. The young man was dressed like a compensino, with a flimsy straw hat that covered his thick but groomed black hair. A gold chain with crucifix hung about his neck. He impressed me at once of the necessary unrelenting dependability to take us along precipitous paths through the mountainous jungle on horseback.

After all he brought us a stash of cold tamales in a used burlap coffee bag. On his right hip, between his belt was the gleaming blade of a well-sharpened machete and a silver revolver tucked into his pants. The whole of him in the moonlight looked like a swash buckling revolutionary. Cassarina stared at him as he sat silently watchful of her for a moment. They were face to face. There was dullness in her eyes and a melancholy attitude. Cassarina spoke in an expressionless tone.

“Is he taking us somewhere?”

“Yes, Cassarina,” Hornsby said, “he’s taking us away from here.”

The conversation ended there, as we still needed the cover of the night to cross the river. We piled into the cayuco, Cristobal at the bow, and Emilio at the stern, steering. Hornsby and I paddled with Cassarina between us, crossing the expanse of the Rio Usumacinta, a river flowing with ancient secrets.

My mind was eased as a voice called out to us in friendly hushed tones as we neared the Guatemalan shoreline. I felt that there could be an end to our danger. The unpleasant reality of the indigenous’ heart-breaking struggle to survive was enough. A bit further and I could see the outlining shapes of three men.

“Aqui,” one of them called out to us again. As we brought the cayuco to shore, one of them, dress as a cowboy with a strong stench of alcohol on his breath, grabbed the painter as Emilio used his paddle as a tiller to bring the stern along side the shoreline clearing. Quickly we disembarked taking our gear with us, assisting Cassarina as she was still in a grave mood.

Our discourse was spoken in muted voices. Hornsby paid the caballeros for the horses that were lashed to some trees a few meters from us. The caballeros had brought their stash of boiled down sapodilla sap in square cubes and quickly loaded them into the cayuco. Emilio, in haste, said he was taking them back across the river. There was no time to linger with goodbyes. The sun would be rising soon. Emilio turned to me before he got into the cayuco.

“Senor, Jules . . . Father Hernandez . . . want you . . . el libro,” Emilio said in broken English as he reached into this shirt and pulled out a leather bound journal.

I took the book, as he quickly turned and boarded the cayuco.

In a few moments, the three of us watched them paddle away in a rhythmic swing as the form of the cayuco melted away in the darkness. As Cristobal urged us on, I took a moment to read the book’s title before tucking it into my shirt. It read, The Anahuac Mythology.

The four horses were bony and not over fourteen hands high. I suspected maybe a bred of quarter horse but I wasn’t sure. Whether they were fit enough was beside the point. They would have to do. The saddles and blankets had been removed so Cristobal was busy saddling them up as we assessed our situation.

“It’s best to push on,” Hornsby said looking at us expecting a response.

I hesitated as I looked over at Cassarina whose face was blank. The fire in her eyes had been extinguished. No affect of emotion. It had been erased by the frightful tragedy. Without expression she shrugged her shoulders and tears started to flow down her cheeks.
“I will never forgive you,” Cassarina said in a monotonous whisper.

That was a heavy blow to Hornsby. He was trying to assure her of his intention to take care of her. I knew it was a great gesture on his part to compromise the expedition for her well-being. However, I could see her faith was gone, destroyed by the treacherous cruelty we had witnessed at El Desempeno.

There was a whiplash of confused thoughts behind her eyes; a chaotic disorder that curled up and demonized her sensibilities. As well, there was regret in Hornsby’s heart, confronted by the emotional wreckage brought on by his own zeal for success. He knew all that was latent in Cassarina’s nature, I believed, as I observed the two of them together.

His robust attitude that great things could be done transformed us to overcome every obstacle along the way. But he carried a special duty to Cassarina, like a father would to his daughter. She alone could shame him like no one else. He would take her words to heart, in hopes of preserving her, I supposed. But hearing her words he remained firm, unflinchingly turning back to Cristobal to see how he was getting along. The horses were ready. We saddled up and headed off into the early morning sunrise of crimson sky and cobweb-threaded clouds.