“The mayor was so afraid of Villa he would not allow any of the dead to be buried in the cemetery. We had to get a wagon and take them up in the hills and dig their graves. The ground was rocky, we couldn’t dig very deep. We put stones on their graves, but we knew the wolves would get them sooner or later. I made the sign of the cross, but my mother was angry with me. She said I should not bow to the church that abandoned us. The priests were too afraid of Villa to say the truth, to tell people that he was a monster.”

Eli took her hand but said nothing.

“After Villa left, Venustiano Carranza’s men came to the village. Carranza wanted Villa too, the same way Pershing wanted him. The Carrancistas thought the people in the village were helping Villa and the rebels. They started fires in our neighborhood as a warning. Our house burned with the rest. We lost almost everything.”

“How did you survive?”

“My mother was a good seamstress. I worked with her for a time. Then Dr. Hodgson came to the village. I thought he was a wonderful man, young and hardworking. He had studied medicine at Yale, he was very brilliant. He wanted to help people, so he came to Mexico. My mother was one of his first patients. His American nurse had left after one week to go back to the United States, so he needed a nurse. He saw that I was interested in medicine and I learned quickly, so he trained me. My mother did not live long after that. After my father and brothers died, she did not want to live. Dr. Hodgson paid for her funeral. He stayed three years in the village. We were still in the village when Ezra came through, buying and selling horses. He made Wyoming sound like a wonderful place. When Dr. Hodgson got sick with the tuberculosis, he wrote to Ezra. That’s how we came to the great state of Wyoming.”

“I admired Doc Hodgson. I didn’t know him well, but he seemed like a good man.”