“No. He is in Mexico City. He is in the government service, and he could not leave to come with me.”
“He is rich, this man?”
“Yes,” she said, and her voice was no longer cold.
There was silence for a long time — for so long that the dancing firelight died down to a steady red glow.
Teresa Alvarez gazed into the dull embers, with her arms clasped around her knees, absorbed in her own thoughts, and at last she said, “But I have only been dreaming. Even in such a small territory as this, why should anyone remember one man who was here two years ago?”
El Rojo stirred himself a little.
“Was your husband,” he said, “a man of middle height, with smooth black hair and greenish eyes and a thin black mustache?”
Suddenly she was still, with a stillness that seemed more violent than movement.
“Yes,” she said. “He was like that.”
“And his name was Alvarez?”