CICATRIZ ALLOWED HIS MEN TO SAMPLE WHAT THEY HAD RIPPED from the storehouse at the farm, and they partied through the night and most of the day after. It seemed that the same bitch had appeared and bested them again, and so they toasted the man who had been a federale. It was a surprise, running into her at the farm. Cicatriz had almost put her out of his mind, but there was no doubt it had been she, for his whelp of a cousin had been with her. Cicatriz sat and thought about the girl, breathing through his mouth because of the impasse of his ruined nose. Men and women slept all over the room. Naked brown bodies, the rise and fall of snores. A connection in the city had driven a van of Saltillo whores to them. But tonight the liquor ran dry, the perico ran thin. He sat awake and alone, naked, buoyed by some last chemical pulsing. Once he pushed the bitch from his mind, dead faces formed in the ether of his thoughts and he wished them gone. He stroked himself and watched the dark snatch of a sleeping whore, the limp cock of one of his men. He had had lovers in his life, but he had once had a friend, as well—a true friend, he thought, one of the few—and it was the friend he missed the most. He thought of her, his friend, and held on to her face in defense against the others.