31

The next morning at five o’clock, Chikis was back in camp. I heard him start a fire to boil water for coffee.

It was still dark but I didn’t need light to pack my gear and tent. I could do it blindfolded. I’d gotten it down to a science and could pack up in less than half an hour in total darkness. I had a system and knew exactly what to do next, so there was no guessing.

Packing up in the dark was good. I could feel the dirt but not see it.

I was filthy. The filth was part of me.

I didn’t care anymore.

In the desert, water is to drink and cook with; it is too precious to waste. We don’t clean; we rinse. I ate on a rinsed dirty plate with a rinsed dirty spoon or my rinsed dirty fingers. If food tasted bad, or there was something in it that was odd-shaped, kind of insect-shaped, or wormy-looking, I didn’t care. I didn’t want to know what it was. If I wanted to eat, I ate what was there.

When I emerged from my tent, a stranger was standing next to Chikis at the campfire.

“Este es Arnulfo. Él es un amigo.” This is Arnulfo. He is a friend.

I introduced myself, and we shook hands. Arnulfo sized me up, and I sized him up. He appeared to be the real deal, despite wearing a baseball hat with a blue hoodie. He also wore thick leather chaps and dusty cowboy boots with long silver spurs. I was not sure what he thought of me.

Chikis was speaking. “Arnulfo knows every trail this side of Sierra San Pedro Mártir. He was a vaquero at Rancho Las Palmas, and his cousin is the vaquero there now. His other cousin is the vaquero here at Rancho Cerro Prieto. He can only ride with you today. There will be another vaquero tonight.”

I gave Chikis a grateful smile. He had done well and restored some of my faith in him. I was thrilled he had found a local vaquero willing to ride, and there would be no delay.

“I need to pay Guile. How can I get him money?”

Chikis shrugged and shook his head.

“The trail is very bad; it is all cholla,” Arnulfo warned.

Chikis insisted I wear his chaps. His thick bullhide leather chaps weighed almost as much as I did, and my waist was so thin Arnulfo had to hold the chaps around me while Chikis helped me on Bozo.

It was the first time I’d worn chaps, and for once I rode straight through cactus like a vaquero. Cholla was everywhere, but I felt invincible. Unfortunately, after a few hours, my legs and hips grew numb from the heavy weight of the thick leather chaps.

Our path was littered with prickly sharp maguey. A few of the maguey were blooming, a canopy of yellow flowers atop six-foot-high cactus spears. After it flowers, the maguey dies and leaves only a tall wood stalk. It is known as the century plant, because it takes many years to flower, flowers only once, and then dies. At least it flowers before it dies, I thought, unlike man, who may live a century and die having never flowered.

From Father Serra’s and other expedition diaries it is difficult to determine their route. Their diaries all mention “roads,” but these were mostly old footpaths and animal trails. Linck is the only Jesuit missionary to have traveled north of Velicatá, and here, in the foothills of Sierra San Pedro Mártir, both Crespí’s and Serra’s expeditions veered northwest from Linck’s well-documented route. In this direction, there are few notable landmarks. Serra described the road as “painful and ugly.”¹ The land is sterile and dry, no trees, just cardon and cirio and a few scattered desert palms.

Arnulfo and I followed the same arroyos—Rosario and Aliso—as Crespí and Father Serra. Crespí’s campsite was near large palms, but there was no running water. He called the campsite Las Palmas, and Father Serra called the area Santiago. We passed what must be that same cluster of palms, since they were the only palms we saw in more than four hours. There was no surface water, just dunes of sand and decayed palm debris, exactly as Crespí described the area two hundred years ago. It was a miserable place to camp, and I was thankful we were not stopping there.

The desert sand was stifling hot. Itty-bitty teensy flies were everywhere and as miserable as the heat. When I walked, they swarmed out of the dust and around my eyes and in my ears; thousands of them, smaller than gnats. They flew in my nose and my mouth. They buzzed in my ears, and stuck to my eyelashes. I pulled my green bandana over my mouth and nose and covered my ears, but the flies went through the cloth.

We finally arrived at Rancho El Pozo, the end of the trail for Arnulfo Murillo.

Cenovio said El Pozo—the well—was where Chikis would stop riding and drive the truck, and Guile would ride with me. Chikis didn’t make it past the first day. Within a day, he had taken control of the truck. Heaven knew what Chikis did all day while we trudged through desert sand.

Arnulfo unsaddled the animals, and we waited for Chikis to arrive with the truck. We ate canned tuna and sat outside a vaquero’s small hut made of concrete blocks, corrugated metal, and chicken wire.

After two hours sitting in stifling hot heat, we saw a small dust storm and a white truck pulled in front of the rancho. It was Cenovio and gang.

Cenovio had three guys with him, and they all piled out of the truck. José, the vaquero who lived alone on the rancho, was one of them. I wasn’t sure who the others were, and why they were here, or why Cenovio was here. Cenovio unloaded more tequila.

I set up my tent in a corner of the old cirio corral far away from the loud revelry.

A short while later, Chikis arrived in our old truck with the new vaquero who would ride with me to El Coyote. He also had Guile in the back of the truck. I walked out to greet them and gave Guile a hug. He was apologetic and embarrassed that he’d left me alone the day before. He said something about El Coyote; I wasn’t sure if he was offering to go with me to El Coyote, or if he was telling me he would be at El Coyote next week when I get there. It was times like this that I wished I spoke better Spanish.

I paid Guile double what I owed him. It made him very happy, and me too. I would never forget his kindness when we were stranded at Rancho Las Palmas, and how he moved the fire with his bare hands. I didn’t want to leave any unhappiness or ill will behind on the old mission trail.

Cenovio and Chikis introduced the new vaquero, Joaquín Martorell, and his teenage son, Juan, who would be going with us.

I now have two vaqueros, a teenage kid, two horses, a wild mule, and an old truck.

While setting up my tent, I went to put my camera away only to discover that it wasn’t in my pocket. I began to panic. Every picture I’d taken since arriving in Loreto was on the camera.

I was sick at the thought of losing it. I tried to think of when I last had it. I remembered that I’d taken some pictures when Cenovio arrived, so it had to be somewhere here. Everyone helped me look. No luck.

Joaquín, my new vaquero, refused to stop looking. He retraced my steps around the well and found it buried in desert sand next to the cirio fence. I embraced him in gratitude. That kind of dedication would serve me well on the trail.

In the morning, Chikis rode with me and Joaquín, and Juan took the truck. As we rode, Chikis became serious. He talked of dreams: a dream to own his own rancho, a dream to provide for his two sons, a dream to own a truck. He wanted to take me all the way to the California border.

“If I take you to Tijuana, will you buy me a truck?” he asked wistfully.

“I may be able to help you get one.” I smiled. “Not a new truck but a used one, a farm truck.”

I meant it. If Chikis would help me with my dream, I would help with his. I had no faith he would actually go with me to Tijuana, but I encouraged him to dream.

But I had one condition. “Chikis, after El Coyote I want to walk to Tijuana with a pack mule, and no truck.”

He nodded his head. “We will ride mules, and carry our supplies on a pack mule.”

Joaquín and Juan parked the truck in Rosarito, an old mining ghost town on old San Miguel road, and waited for us. The truck was out of gasoline, and Chikis and Joaquín siphoned a few gallons from the large plastic gasoline container in the back.

Why we are out of gas? I wondered. I had given Chikis fifteen hundred pesos for gas three days ago, and Joaquín could have gone for gas today while Chikis and I were riding through the sierra.

Chikis had the truck follow behind us to a small canyon protected on three sides from the blustery north wind. Joaquín parked the truck by the side of the road, and we set up camp in another dust hole.

Chikis was kind and attentive. He put his big tarp underneath my tent, and folded it over, to provide extra warmth. “We need three mules to take us to Tijuana,” he said. “My cousin is a vaquero at San José de los Arces and can get the mules. I will ride there tonight and talk to him.”

He rode off on the macho mule without eating.

I was jolted awake hours later by headlights shining into my tent and a loud truck driving into camp.

It was Chikis.

He shook the outside of my tent. “My cousin drove me in his truck. I left the mule at his rancho. I need a thousand pesos to get gasoline for our truck tonight.”

I was groggy with sleep and didn’t want to get in a discussion about waiting until morning to get gasoline. I gave him a thousand pesos.

The truck and Chikis were still gone in the morning when we packed up camp. We were saddled up and ready to go when Chikis drove in, wearing dark sunglasses, and a dirty hoodie pulled up over his head. He was barely able to get out of the truck, and in no condition to drive.

Joaquín took one look at Chikis and decided his son Juan should ride with me, and he would drive the truck.

Juan was a very nice boy, a vaquero-to-be. He liked computers and technology, but not as much as animals and rancho life.

As I walked deeper into Sierra San Pedro de Mártir, the landscape began to change rather abruptly. There was no longer cardon and cirio cactus; now there were trees, cottonwoods and sycamores with beautiful fall foliage. Junípero Serra poetically described the change as “the land began to be more smiling and gladsome.”² The trees and thick green vegetation provided secrecy from government drones, and the area had become a favorite hideout for drug smugglers.

It was also freezing.

The wind was too cold to breathe, and I put the bandana over my mouth to warm my breath. I had a cough and didn’t want to get sick. My chest ached when I breathed, and I hoped and prayed it wasn’t another lung tumor.

In midafternoon, Juan and I rode over a steep mountain, and in the middle of the road was our truck.

Joaquín was busy emptying the truck. “La montaña es mala. No es bueno para un truck,” he said. The mountain is bad. It is no good for a truck.

It was obvious the truck wasn’t going any further. The hood was open, one tire was flat, and the ground was littered with our camping gear and supplies thrown haphazardly all over the road. Chikis was sitting in the passenger seat, his hoodie almost hiding his face, shivering and looking miserable. His eyes were dark and swollen.

Joaquín announced the rocky mountain road was impossible to drive on and he and I would have to go alone with a pack animal and enough food for four days. Juan would go with Chikis in the truck and they would try to meet up with us further north in Sierra San Pedro de Mártir, between Rancho San Antonio de los Caballos and Valladares. If not, we would continue to El Coyote and meet them there.

Joaquín had already saddled up the macho mule and was ready to head out. He and Juan quickly loaded a packsaddle on our old gray mare, and two saddlebags with camping gear and food.

“We must hurry,” Joaquín warned. “It is going to rain, and it may snow.”

We were just about to take off when I felt Joaquín stiffen beside me. I turned to look where he was staring and saw two men carrying assault weapons walking up from the arroyo.

Joaquín quickly motioned for Juan to stand behind him.

It was chilling to encounter men with military-grade weapons in these isolated arroyos where drug cartels smuggle cocaine, heroin, and amphetamines to the rich and famous in Los Angeles and the glassy-eyed homeless in San Francisco. In this land of narcos, as in drug-infested neighborhoods, one cannot tell a good guy from a bad guy.

I looked for a place to hide but there was none.

Chikis came alive, jumped out of the truck, and hurried toward the men. Joaquín and Juan stayed on the far side of the truck, listening.

I slipped quietly behind the truck, and crouched down next to the back bumper, partially hidden from view by a red canvas folding lawn chair.

The armed men were engaged in animated conversation with Chikis and appeared to be amused at the sight of our broken-down old truck, and two vaqueros loading pack animals.

They hadn’t seen me, and I leaned to the side and tried to hide underneath the raised rear bumper.

The two men were dressed in tan-colored short-sleeve T-shirts, camouflage pants, and lace-up desert boots. One was short and stocky and carried an assault rifle on a band around his neck; the other was taller and more fit-looking, and had his assault rifle hooked over his left shoulder, and his pants tucked into his boots. They both looked unshaven, but clean.

They walked around the truck and glanced at me. They didn’t seem to care all that much.

They were laughing. We must have looked like a circus with our old truck and tires and stuff scattered all over the road. I had not had a bath now for about eight days since we left Cataviña, and I smelled and looked homeless. Our animals were tired and worn-out. Chikis looked like death warmed over and could hardly open his eyes in the sunlight.

All of a sudden, two men on dirt bikes came roaring up out of the arroyo. The men with their guns stood in the center of the road, blocking them. The bikes came to a screeching halt. I couldn’t hear the conversation.

I was loading my pommel bag on Bozo when a third guy on a motorcycle came over the crest of the hill. He slammed on his brake and skidded to a halt in front of me, with a look of sheer horror on his face. He was terrified, coming upon this scene.

I could only imagine what raced through his head, in the split second he understood his life might be threatened: Am I at the wrong place at the wrong time? Are they drug smugglers and the military is searching their truck for cocaine? Are they all narcos? Are the mules loaded with drugs? Is the dirty American woman carrying drugs to the border? Am I soon to be dead?

The three men on dirt bikes skidded fast away, slinging rocks behind.

What stories they must have told later of the bizarre encounter, as they tried to make sense of it!

The two men with assault weapons were still standing in the middle of the road, laughing, as Joaquín and I headed out of the arroyo and north into the towering peaks of Sierra San Pedro Mártir.