“Chinook is all that’s left.”
That wouldn’t help much. I tried to remember some of the words we used to think were French in the A.E.F.
“ Que désirez-vous? ” brought a bright smile to the fat face of the blue-eyed man.
I caught “ Nous allons à les États-Unis ” before the speed with which he threw the words at me confused me beyond recognizing anything else.
That was funny. Big ’Nacio hadn’t let these birds know that they were already in the United States. I suppose he could manage them better if they thought they were still in Mexico.
“ Montrez-moi votre passe-port. ”
That brought a sputtering protest from Blue Eyes. They had been told no passports were necessary. It was because they had been refused passports that they were paying to be smuggled in.
“ Quand êtes-vous venu ici? ”
Hier meant yesterday, regardless of what the other things he put in his answer were. Big ’Nacio had come straight to Corkscrew after bringing these men across the border and sticking them in his cellar, then.
We locked the immigrants in their cellar again, putting Rainey and the Mexican in with them. Rainey howled like a wolf when I took his hypodermic needle and his coke away from him.
“Sneak up and take a look at the country,” I told Milk River, “while I plant the man you killed.”
By the time he came back I had the dead Mexican arranged to suit me: slumped down in a chair a little off from the front door of the principal