the road agents returned?
'I am sorry, but we must go; we have to get you away from here, Sofia. We have to go now if you are to live.'
'I… I d-don't want to l-live,' she cried pitiably.
Another glance out the window.
Nothing yet.
He took a moment to lay down beside her and fold her into a hug. She did not resist, although she was shaking so hard, he wondered whether she would have been able to anyway. Miguel tried to speak, but his throat was tight with grief, forcing him to push his feelings down tight. When he knew he could talk without falling apart, he spoke quietly into her ear.
'Crying is good; you must cry for all of them. But we must go, too, Sofia. Your mother, your brother and sister, all of your uncles and aunts, they will haunt me if I do not get you safely away before those men come back. And they will come back, Sofia. Very soon. So we must go.'
He kissed her head, which felt hot with fever, and rubbed his callused hands gently on her upper arms as he spoke. Slowly the tremors that shook her body trailed off and the awful, gut-wrenching tenor of her cries became less like the sounds of an animal and more like the bawling of a little girl to whom something bad had happened, something very very bad. When Miguel judged her sufficiently in control of herself again, he eased up, pulling her with him.
'Come on, then, come with Papa,' he said softly. 'You can bring your bear and a few personal things, small things like photographs, but you must gather them quickly and keep them all in one bag. Pack some clothes for traveling, for trail riding, warm clothes. And be quick, Sofia. Those men will be back for their friends soon, and we will give them nothing. Nothing, do you understand?'
She sniffed and nodded uncertainly.
'Do we have time to bury them? To say prayers?'
He shook his head firmly.
'No. We must be gone, but we will not leave this house to the agents, and we will leave no one to the dogs or the wolves.'
She nodded shakily and tottered over to her dresser drawer on stiff unsteady legs. When he judged her sufficiently composed, he left the room and hurried downstairs, where he tossed the bags and heavy jacket onto the kitchen table. He fetched a couple of saddlebags from the utility room at the rear of the house in order to pack them with trail food. Rice, beans, dried meat, sugar, coffee, and a bottle of vitamins. Mariela had baked biscuits that morning, and the rich, malty smell of them was still thick in the kitchen. He found a jar of cookies in the pantry and wrapped a few in an old tea towel. They would do for a quick meal this morning, and he felt it important not to leave them behind.
Finally he unlocked the cupboard under the main staircase and flicked on the bare lightbulb inside. Using a key on a separate ring hanging from his belt, Miguel opened a small gun cabinet he had fixed to the rear wall. He took out his favorite rifle, a Winchester Model 1894 Lever Action 30.30, and his saddle gun, a double-barreled Sicilian- style Lupara. He then grabbed six boxes of ammunition for the long arm and two boxes of shells for the sawed-off shotgun. He threaded a heavy clublike Maglite torch through one of the big steel key rings on his belt. Sofia had already collected her hunting rifle and the ammunition for it. He was not keen on her carrying the Remington on a regular basis, although if she had had it with her this morning…
Stop it, he told himself as he tried to figure out what other weapon to get for his child. Neither of them was a soldier and he didn't want to be loaded down with a lot of useless ironmongery. As it was, they simply couldn't carry enough weapons to fight off more than a very small band of road agents.
He grunted and decided that the Remington would have to do.
Shuttling all the supplies out to the horses required four trips, with Sofia joining him on the last run. He was glad to see she had changed her clothes and carried her personal belongings in a small backpack with the head of her teddy bear sticking out of the top. She remained subdued, and he could tell from the furtive way in which her eyes sometimes darted here and there that she was wondering where he had laid out the bodies. Miguel did not want her dwelling on such things. He gave her a bag of beans to carry out to the horses and told her to transfer the rifle he had ridden out with this morning to her own mount.
'For the next few weeks we must always be armed,' he said. 'Both of us. Until we get somewhere safe.'
'Are we going to Corpus Christi?' she asked in a small voice. 'Wouldn't they expect us to go that way?'
The sky had grown dark with gathering storm clouds. Lightning strikes crackled over the hills to the southwest, and a few drops of icy rain splashed Miguel's face as he looked up.
'Yes,' he said. 'I do not think we can go south. They probably would expect that. We would have to pass through Blackstone territory, and his men would make it difficult for us. We shall ride north, to Kansas City. The federales are strong there. We need to tell them what has happened. They will do something.'
Sofia said nothing. He wondered how much she knew of the political situation in Fort Hood, of the standoff between the Federal Mandate and Governor Blackstone's regime. It was not something the adults had discussed in front of the children. The horses twitched their ears and shivered while he loaded them with supplies and allowed them to drink from the trough lying in the shade on the eastern side of the house. Miguel did not let himself dwell on the moment that was coming, the abandonment of the ranch that had been the best hope for his family.
He remembered the day they arrived in a salvaged school bus loaded down with supplies from Corpus Christi. A civilian from the Federal Mandate had helped them get settled in, logging their location on a laptop and taking a few pictures of the family. It had been difficult, getting the children to settle down long enough to gather for a photograph. The men had inventoried the salvageable equipment and the structures for the government man while Mariela and the women put out the best spread they could manage. Everyone sat around a cobbled-together table, sampling freshly butchered and roasted beef while enjoying bottles of a New Zealand red wine they had brought with them.
After dinner Mariela was waiting for him in their bedroom, her skin glowing under the candlelight. She held out her hand…
Miguel shook the past away. He took a deep breath and held it for a second lest his self-control finally fail.
He could not afford to think about this, to let go of hope entirely. He had to look to the future, to Sofia.
The dogs were still barking, and he again asked Sofia to ride over to the barn to release them. 'They will be upset,' he said.
She nodded, her face a dull mask as she placed one boot in the stirrup and swung up into the saddle.
'Good. If the men come back, you must ride out immediately. Head into the forest. They won't be able to follow you in there, not in vehicles. You know the clearing? In the middle of the forest? You wait for me there at the northeast corner.'
He considered telling her to make for the militia post at College Station if he didn't turn up, but she was fragile enough as it was. He did not think his daughter would cope with the prospect of something happening to him while she rode away. Miguel checked that she had transferred the rifle to her mount then waved her off.
He flicked his eyes down to the main road, past the bodies of the road agents, which he had not bothered to move. A pair of black crows, their oily feathers glistening with raindrops, pecked at the wounds of one of the dead men, pausing momentarily as Sofia's horse approached. Miguel watched her stiffen in the saddle as she rode past them with her head turned away. He ducked back inside for just a moment, bending down to open the bottom drawer in the kitchen, from which he removed a small sheaf of papers in a plastic Ziploc bag. His settlement documents, proof that the government in Seattle had chosen his family to run this farm as part of the reconstruction program. He tucked them away inside his jacket, then pushed a light straw Stetson down on his head and donned a pair of wraparound sunglasses. From the cupboard under the sink he fetched a one-gallon drum of lamp oil, unscrewed the cap, and splashed the contents all over the kitchen.
For a few seconds he hovered on the edge of indecision, unable to do what he had to. But the barking of the dogs reached him, telling him Sofia was releasing them from the barn. With his face contorted into a rictus of loathing, he struck a match and tossed it on to the nearest patch of oil, which ignited with a whoomp. He stalked out of the house without a backward glance.
