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was the end of the trail for Don Álvarez.
All of it happened in maybe five seconds, and I was right scared and confused. That was the first man I’d ever seen killed before my eyes. Now the cattle had scattered from all the gunfire, and damn if the vaqueros didn’t help us gather them back up. Jeff was kind of troubled how we came to be in possession of them, and I said to him that I reckoned now we was socialists, too. He didn’t think that was too funny. Francisco was telling us what a son of a bitch Álvarez was, treated his vaqueros and their families like they was scum, and that they’d been looking for a chance to get rid of him and we gave it to them. Ben had helped himself to the Spaniard’s pistol, as he no longer had use for it, and told me it was a German Luger, an automatic. Francisco said that now that him and his boys had killed a hacendado, they had better join up with the revolucionarios, and he thought that we ought to join up with them. We didn’t say nothing, but as we was riding back, the wind blew this piece of paper front of my horse, and the horse shied and dumped me right out the saddle. Wasn’t hurt, just kind of embarrassed, and I picked up that paper when we got back to the U.S. of A. side of the line, and by the light of the branding fire, I saw that it said in English, “Attention Gringos! Come south of the border to fight with Pancho Villa for gold and glory! Railroaders, dynamiters, machine gunners wanted.” It was a damn recruiting poster for the Revolution.
Me and Ben got to doing some heavy talking. It went something like this: in all that big country, what were the chances that a piece of paper should blow right in front of my horse? It could not have been a coincidence. There must’ve been a purpose to it. We found out what that was a few days later, when we heard that the revolucionarios had taken over Álvarez’s hacienda. Ben and me decided that we had been given a sign and that we oughta ride down there and see what was going on and join up. What we knew about machine guns and dynamite and railroading wouldn’t have filled a shot glass, but we figured, what the hell. Jeff wasn’t mad. Guess he was used to Ben taking off on adventures, and I think he was glad to be shed of me on account of my socialistic ideas.

1
    O N A RAW N OVEMBER AFTERNOON when low-lying clouds made Lower Manhattan seem more claustral than usual, Gil Castle left his office early to make a five o’clock appointment with his counselor at the House of Hope. In the lobby of his building, he buttoned the collar of his trench coat, took a twist out of the belt before buckling it, aligned the buckle with the flap, then stepped out into the noise and jostle of the capital of capitalism, walking briskly down Exchange Street to catch the subway for Grand Central and the 3:17 express to Stamford. Half an inch under six feet, with graying black hair combed back in a style reminiscent of a 1940s movie actor, a trim build, and mahogany brown eyes flanking a thin raptor’s nose that lent to his face the patrician severity of a Florentine prince, he made a pleasing impression on most people but his looks lacked the voltage to draw second glances from women. And in fact Castle didn’t draw any as he weaved through the pedestrian crowds; he would not have been aware of them even if he had. Since Amanda’s death, he had become sexually inert, dead to desire and, beyond that, to the desire for desire.
    Shoulders hunched against the damp wind’s bite, one hand jammed in his coat pocket, briefcase swinging from the other, he marched on toward the Exchange Street station. The faint rumble of subway trains rising through sidewalk vents, the rush of heating plants blowing exhaust on rooftops, the sounds of traffic and countless feet treading pavement fused into one sound: the hum of the New York financial district, whose frantic busyness had once energized him, now stirred up a surly resentment. He recalled the