“I think,” Don Pedro says, “that you should go into town so you can spend the weekend with your grandchildren.”

“Don Pedro—”

“Don’t cry. Everything will be all right.”

“But—”

“I have that beautiful duck that you made me last night,” Don Pedro says. “I can warm that up for dinner. Go pack a few things, now.”

He finds Tomás in the barn, cleaning the heads on the new John Deere tractor that they are both so proud of.

“Who were those men?” Tomás asks.

“Some malandros. Idiots.” He tells Tomás to take Lupe into Victoria and to stay there himself, in the hotel where Don Pedro has an account.

“I’m staying with you,” Tomás says. His hair has gone silver, and his strong hands are twisted with arthritis. “I can shoot.”

“I know you can.” He must also have heard everything, Don Pedro thinks. But pigeons and ducks are not men. Not even deer are men. “I need you to take care of the others. I’m sending them, too.”

“You will be alone, Don Pedro.”

That is the idea, Don Pedro thinks. “An old man needs a little solitude from time to time.”

“I won’t leave you,” Tomás says. “I have served you for thirty-eight years—”

“So now is not the time to disobey me,” Don Pedro says. But he knows he has to save this good man’s face, preserve his pride. “You will take my shotgun. The Beretta, the good one. I am counting on you to see that everyone gets safely to town. Go on now, wash up. It is not a drive to make at night.”

He goes into his study and sits in the old, cracked leather chair and reads a book, his habit in the afternoon. Today it is Quevedo’s The Swindler. “I come from Segovia; my father was called Clemente Pablo…”

Don Pedro falls asleep reading.

—

He wakes up when Tomás comes in and says that they are ready to leave. Don Pedro walks outside to see Lupe in the front seat of the old International Harvester, gripping her small suitcase on her lap, and Paola and Esteban in the back.

They are all crying.

Esteban is a young fool, a nineteen-year-old who is as lazy as all nineteen-year-olds but still worth a hundred of these Zetas. He takes good care of the horses and will be a good man someday.

Paola is a lovely young creature, a dismally hopeless maid who should get married to a lovestruck young man and have beautiful children.

None of these beloved people should be here tonight.

“Have a good weekend and behave yourselves,” he says to them. “I will see you first thing on Monday morning, and don’t be late.”

Paola says, “Don Pedro—”

“Get going now. I will see you soon.”

He watches the car rumble down the old road.

When they are gone past the turning, he walks down to the lake. How Dorotea loved this lake. He remembers lying down with her in a bed of wild lilacs and the scent that the flowers crushed under her made.

The priest who married them rode across the Río Bravo on the back of a donkey, and fell off in the river and so was an hour late, and wet and grumpy as an old hen, but it didn’t matter.

Don Pedro watches the sun set over the lake.

Watches the ducks swim into the thick green brush at the edge.

Then he walks back to the house.

He unlocks the gun room and carefully selects a .30-40 Krag, a Mannlicher-Schönauer, the Winchester 70, the Winchester 74, and the Savage 99.

Every fine rifle brings a memory with it.

The Savage brings to mind that fine trip to Montana with Julio and Teddy, old friends who have since passed on, and amber whiskeys by the campfire to ward off the chill of night.

The Winchesters recall long slogs in Durango.

The Mannlicher—that was the trip to Kenya and Tanganyika and long slow afternoons under canvas with Dorotea, and her sitting outside the tent reading or painting and the old African cook who made goat better than they do in Mexico.

The Krag…The Krag was a birthday gift from Dorotea, and she was so pleased that he was so pleased…

Don Pedro takes each rifle and leans it by one of the windows cut into the thick adobe walls. Then he sets a box of ammunition by each rifle.

He heats the leftover duck and sits down with it and a bottle of strong red wine and eats contentedly. He shot the duck himself, as he shoots the pigeon that Lupe makes into such a fine meal with wild rice.

After dinner he goes upstairs and takes a long bath, scrubbing his skin to a pink glow, and then shaves slowly and carefully and trims his pencil mustache because it is important that he look his best for Dorotea.

He puts on a fresh white shirt with French sleeves and the cuff links that Dorotea gave him on their tenth anniversary, and then slips on a tweed shooting jacket, wool trousers, and a silk tie in a rich burgundy color that she particularly favored.

Satisfied with his appearance in the mirror, he goes back downstairs and pours himself two fingers of single-malt scotch and sips it as he reads more of Quevedo and falls asleep again in his chair.

Honking horns, shouts, and laughter wake him up, and he looks at the clock on the mantel. It’s a little after four in the morning, just a little earlier than he usually rises. He walks to the window by the Savage and looks out. The idiots are driving around in circles like Indians in a bad North American western film, whooping and shooting into the air and shouting more of their profanity.

They finally stop, and the man who came to his door earlier stands up in the roof hatch of his vehicle and yells, “Alejo de Castillo, you son of a—”

Don Pedro’s shot hits him in the forehead.

Don Pedro moves to the next window.

The cars and trucks have stopped and men are jumping out. Don Pedro aims at one who is running, remembers to lead him less than one would a deer, and brings him down with a single shot from the Krag. Moving to the next window, he looks back to see bullets coming through the window that he just vacated.

These idiots apparently believe that everyone is as idiotic as they are.

He lifts the Mannlicher to his shoulder and picks out a Zeta who seems to be second in charge and shoots the man between the eyes, and then moves to the next window.

One of the idiots has the brains to get down, and is slithering like a snake toward the front door. Don Pedro has never shot a snake with a rifle before—he has shot many rattlesnakes with a pistol—but the principle is the same and he dispatches him with a shot from the Winchester 70 as he sees two more Zetas rush the door.

He keeps the Winchester 70, picks up the 74, and stands ten feet away from the door, a rifle in each hand.

There is a small blast, the door swings open, and Don Pedro fires both rifles, hitting both men in the stomach and gutting them.

They writhe on the front porch, screaming in agony, bleeding all over the wood, which is going to have to be sand-stoned now, which will annoy lazy Esteban to no end and require supervision.

Don Pedro goes back to the first window and sees the Zetas run back and take cover behind their vehicles.

He hears them talk, and then he sees the tubes come out and he knows that they’re grenade launchers, which is annoying because now he knows that there will be no house for Lupe to move back into. But he has left a will with Armando Sifuentes in town, with specific instructions as to what to do if there were a fire, and he is confident that the lawyer will take care of it.

Don Pedro also knows that he will not be there himself to see the house rebuilt and he feels a little sad, but mostly he feels great joy because he will be with Dorotea soon and he’s glad that he shaved.

When the fire starts, he smells not ash but wild lilacs.

—

When Keller and the FES unit get there, Don Pedro’s hacienda is a smoking ruin, four corpses lie in front of the house, and two wounded Zetas in fetal positions twitch on the front porch.