not tell you because you and your father are Americans. I was afraid you would both be disgusted by my father as a traitor to your country.” She hesitated a second before adding, “And that you would think less of me. For being daughter to him.”
For a second, Louis Little fixed her with a blank stare—then chuckled as if she’d made a witticism and he had just caught on to it. He looked at his father, who showed a small smile. The two boys were smiling too. They’d never heard of a Saint Paddy but they were amused by Louis’s amusement. They would soon enough investigate the subject and learn about the Patricios.
“Listen darlin,” Louis said, “first of all, it wouldn’t matter to me who your daddy was. If he was a damned horse thief or even worse, a preacher, or a damned politician”—that got a smile from his father and a laugh from the boys—“it wouldn’t have a thing to do with how I see
“They did not,” Edward said. “They were doing what they believed right.”
“See?” Louis said to Gloria.
Edward had not, however, told Louis that the Mexicans he had ridden with had been convicted of numerous acts of banditry and murder before and during the war, and that he himself and another gringo, the only two non- Mexicans in the gang, had been sentenced to be hanged along with them. The entire bunch was spared from the gallows only because General Winfield Scott, commander of the American invaders, was desperate for scouts who knew the country between Veracruz and Mexico City, and every man of the gang agreed to so serve him. They became General Scott’s so-called Spy Company—a foolish name, given that they were not spies but scouts. They were outfitted in distinctive uniforms and provided with fine mounts and armed with the best of American cavalry weapons. The Mexicans of the Spy Company had felt no qualms about fighting against their country. Had in fact exulted at the chance to get even with any number of Mexican enemies, especially the authorities who had wanted to hang them. In siding with the Americans, they had saved themselves from execution, which seemed to Edward as right a reason as any for turning one’s coat. Every man’s first obedience was to the law of self-preservation, and anybody who said different was a damned fool or a damned liar. In full fact, Edward’s association with men of tenuous allegiances had begun even before his membership in the Mexican gang—though no one of his family knew that, either. At the age of seventeen he had ridden with a band of scalp hunters, most of them Americans but some from who-knew-where and who spoke languages Edward had not heard before or since, plus a handful of Shawnee trackers. A company of men with the common purpose of killing Indians for the bounty on their scalps but with no abiding loyalty save each man to himself. Yet Edward believed that each of them must have felt as he did—that in such a company of friendless isolates and outcast wanderers he was among his true breed. A breed bound to the fate that befell them on a hellish afternoon in Mexico’s northern wildlands when they were set upon by a host of Comanches and every man of them slaughtered save for Edward, who survived despite wounds whose scars would stay with him to the grave. And absent his scalp.
“I am glad neither of you hate me for my father,” Gloria said.
“You coulda been glad about it a lot sooner if you hadn’t kept it a secret all this time,” Louis said.
Yes, she said. Now she knew that.
“What other secrets you been keeping from me?” Louis said, smiling.
Well, if you must know, Gloria said, I’m really Chinese.
Even Edward joined in the laughter.
It was yet another of his lifelong secrets that he too was kin to a captured and convicted, flogged and branded San Patricio—his brother, John. Unlike Gloria’s father, however, John had escaped from captivity after his punishment. His liberation was planned by Edward and effected by a wealthy Mexican woman, a devoted champion of the San Patricios, assisted by a few men in her employ. The woman and three of the men, posing as lawyers she had retained to assist the Patricios, made an evening visit to the prison and were very clever about disguising John Little so that he could leave with her in the place of one of her men, who would stay behind. They were out the prison gate and almost to her carriage when the plan came undone. There was a gunfight on the street and the carriage driver and the two men with the woman were killed, the woman herself arrested, but John Little escaped into the night. Edward had witnessed the fight from a few blocks down the street where he had been waiting for his brother to be brought to him, a saddled horse ready. He was searching the streets for John when he saw a crowd of men fleeing a back-alley cantina. In that deserted tavern he found his brother hanging from the rafters. Lynched by American soldiers who’d known him for a Saint Patrick by the brand on his face. Johnny. Murdered at nineteen.
He had kept John a secret not because he felt shamed by him but because of his own shame in having failed to protect him, no matter John was his elder by a year. They had somehow got lost of each other in New Orleans in the year before the Mexican War, on their way from Florida to Texas to make their fortune. He did not see John again until almost two years later when the American army assaulted the Mexican force making a desperate stand at the gates to Mexico City. The Spy Company had been with the attackers, the Saint Patricks with the defenders, and amid the pandemonium of the battle’s culminating hand-to-hand carnage came the bewildering instant when he and John recognized each other among the berserkers—and then both of them went down with bad wounds. Edward had healed sufficiently to be in the crowd of spectating American soldiers when the surviving Saint Patricks were punished. For almost forty years now he had carried the guilt of his helpless witness to John’s flogging and branding along with the other Patricios who had been spared the noose. He did not know how his brother had come to be with the turncoats, but knew without doubt that Johnny must have found some breed of fellowship among them, a brotherhood of sorts, else he would not have sided with them, for sure not to the end. Edward could not help but feel included in that fraternity. The brothers of his brother were his brothers too. Hence did he feel bound to defend the family of his daughter-in-law, she who was daughter to a San Patricio.
He had never met General Espinosa but he had heard Diaz speak of him. He was young for a general and a favorite of Porfirio, who was going to be unhappy about this. Which was why Edward would not assign the job to any of his agents. He would not place any of them at direct risk of the president’s wrath. He could not be sure that Porfirio would forgive even Louis.
He set aside Sofia’s telegram and said, “I’ll take care of it.”
“I can do it,” Louis said.
“I know you can, but it has to be me.”
“Why’s that? Because he’s a friend of Porfirio’s? Hell, Porfi don’t have to know it had anything to do with us.”
“Of course he does, son.”
Louis held his father’s gaze. “Yeah, well. Even so. I’m willing to take my chances with him.”
“I said I’ll do it.”
He turned to Gloria. You may tell your sister the matter is being attended to, but do not mention my name. Not now or later.
“Muy bien, Papa Eduardo,” Gloria said.
THE POWER
HIS SISTER MARRIED
In addition to Patria Chica’s general telegraph line, there was a private one in Edward’s study. For the rest of that evening he swapped messages with his agency’s main office at Chapultepec Castle and studied topographic maps. The agency office was belowground, in a stone room that had once served as a dungeon and a section of which still did. Stored there were files on every member of the federal government, every state governor and
