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bloody from recent beating .
    At the fifth door Maria nearly collides with a fat Mexican soldado who is emerging from the room, tucking his shirt into his pants. He meekly nods and steps hastily aside for her. As she passes Elena glances into the room and sees a young woman with bright red tangled hair sobbing naked sprawled across the bed .
    The worst by far is the sixth room. She has been listening to the sounds coming from here since they entered the corridor.
    Someone is being horribly beaten.
    And here she sees men she knows — Gustavo, the flat-faced Indio half-breed who brought her to this place and Fredo, the fat one who rode with her sister. Fredo holds a short studded whip. They stand on either side of a table. Tied spread-eagled to the legs of the table face-up across it is a young girl of exactly Celine' s coloring and build and Elena stops dead in her tracks sure at first that it is Celine, absolutely certain of it and in her rage and fear at the bloody carnage in front of her nearly vaults into the room despite her hobbled legs, the threat of death itself won't stop her, until the girl turns her head and she sees by the livid kidney-shaped birthmark on her neck that it is not Celine after all but someone else's sister fated to endure this .
    Come on, says Maria . Whore.
    She follows her with difficulty, the hobbles chafing at her ankles, up a back set of stairs which were probably once for the servants ' use and into a second corridor. The sounds she is hearing now are not precisely screams but they are sounds of great distress and they are female. Maria waits ahead of her at the entrance to the first door she comes to and angrily beckons her in and now she hears also the unmistakable crying of a baby. Elena follows her in.
    The room is lit with more than a dozen scented candles. They do not quite mask the scent of raw flesh and unclean sweat and urine which emanates from the woman upon the bed. The woman has just given birth and the old hag Eva holds it crying in her arms. It is wrapped in a thin white towel. With Eva grinning toothlessly down at it, she thinks, anyone would cry. The pig-faced sister Lucia is cleaning up the afterbirth. Behind them Paddy Ryan stands in shadow .
    Male or female? Maria asks .
    Lucia shrugs . Male, she says .
    As Eva predicted, Maria says . Too bad.
    She turns to Elena . Take it, she says. Elena has no wish to come anywhere near this filthy creature or this child but she does as she's told and manages to do so without touching the old woman's clawed yellow hands . Are you ready, Ryan? Maria says .
    I am, he says .
    She turns to Elena again . Go with Mr. Ryan.
    Ryan leads her back the way she's come and she refuses to gaze into any of the rooms now despite the young girl's screaming and the crack of the whip. The baby's crying is constant and it seems she can do nothing to stop it. He leads her across the courtyard to the barren wasted hill beyond and they begin to climb. She has never been up this hill before but she knows what they call it — Garanta del Diablo — the Devil's Mouth. She has seen the black plumes of smoke which drift continually on the wind.
    As they near the top she stops to catch her breath and glances back toward the hacienda. All three sisters are on the porch, watching them. The baby has at last stopped crying. Ryan has disappeared from sight atop the plateau. The sun beats down. She continues on.
    At the top she sees him waiting for her standing beside a wall-like pyramid of blackened skulls. The wall is tall as he is.
    The air is thick with tarry smoke wafting up from behind him.
    Some of the skulls are very small but all of them are human.
    She begins to cry .
    Bring it here.
    You can't do this! she says.
    His voice is quiet and without passion. When he smiles the scar on his cheek contracts . Sure I can. Bring it here. Else you both go. Up to you.
    It's a child!
    A boy's no use to us here. That's just the way it is. He draws his sidearm and spins the