Читать книгу Dead Men Don't Lie - Jackson Cain - Страница 40

Chapter 26

At night, Mateo brooded. His clubbing of Rachel outside the cantina still haunted him. He hadn’t been ready for the ferocity of her assault. In defending her brother, she had attacked him like a demon straight out of hell, and in a moment of anger and perhaps even panic, he’d laid her out with the weighted buttstock of his cuarta-quirt. He’d felt something crack and then realized he’d hit her too hard.

Why had he hit her in the temple? He now secretly feared he’d killed the girl.

He felt bad enough about it that he’d approached General Ortega one night in his office.

* * *

“The important thing,” the general had said to him, “is that her brother didn’t witness it. He doesn’t know how badly you hurt her. According to the man who took the cantina over, the sister and Eléna, the former owner, took a train north, and that’s all anyone knows. And who knows? Maybe the sister made it. Stranger things have happened. We’ve all seen men who were wounded severely in battle survive. Whether she lives or dies is in the lap of the gods and should be of no concern to you. It’s nothing you can affect. In all probability no one down here will ever know, her brother included.”

“She was just a kid, and I really hurt her. I don’t know what came over me.”

“We’re soldados,” the general said with surprising gentleness. “We aren’t trained to pull our punches.”

Mateo stared at him, silent.

“My friend,” the general said, “it can’t be undone.”

“Still . . .”

The general put his hand on Mateo’s shoulder. “You’re a soldier—a professional, and the hard truth is we have a war to fight. You can’t let anything distract you. Look at it this way: In any war there is collateral damage. Maybe Ricardo’s’s sister was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“General Ortega, she was only trying to help her brother.”

“Sí, mi amigo, but that’s the way it happens sometimes.”

* * *

The general was right, of course. Mateo could not rewrite the past. What was done was done. The blow to her head—no matter how bad he felt about it—was on his backtrail. He had to move on. He was also right that at this moment their real problem was defeating Díaz’s and the Señorita’s troops, and the survival of Sonora—of all of them—was at stake. A drunken mistake—no matter how tragic—had happened, but that was over now. It could not be altered or recalled.

It was over.

Still he suffered—as did the woman.

Assuming she was even alive.

However, he could conceivably affect the future. Maybe that was the key. Maybe you redeemed past sins by redeeming the future and helping—even saving—those you cared about.

Maybe he could keep the girl’s brother alive. After all, he’d played a dirty trick on him—dragooning the poor boy into the Sonoran rurales. Furthermore, he was starting to like the kid, something he hadn’t counted on, since he was not a man with muchos amigos. Throughout his hard life he’d found compadres to be an unaffordable extravagance. Still almost against his will he was starting to like, even admire, the young man.

Sorry I got you into all this, Ricardo.

Oh well, the past cannot be undone.

It couldn’t, but Mateo could fight for the future. He could fight for Sonora. The girl’s brother would help him, and, in turn, he would watch the boy’s back. Maybe that would help to make up for what he’d done to the young man’s sister—and to Ricardo.

He hoped in his soul it would.