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Page 72
The coyote was perfectly capable of disappearing into the night and leaving the lot of them stranded and lost in the downpour. So far he had not done this. To that extent, thought Arkady Karmann, the brute exhibited a kind of honor.
Three of the women were traveling with young children, four boys and a single girl. What they imagined they were going to do when they crossed to the other side was anyone's guess. Karmann could not imagine the conditions of the life they were leaving that would make an effort like this seem a reasonable alternative.
Each man had paid the coyote fifty U.S. dollars for his services, such as they were. The women had paid ten dollars less, and the children had cost their parents only twenty.
Originally there had been four coyotes, but as they approached the border, the others had fallen away, leaving only the leader, a big, paunchy man who refused to give himself a name in the mistaken conviction that anonymity would keep him safe from the Border Patrol.
The night was windy as well as wet, and cold. The wind seemed to blow out of the plains to the north, and it had steel teeth. Karmann had somehow always imagined that the lands along the southern border of the United States were warm, almost tropical. The deep cold said otherwise. He wondered how the children were managing. Not one of them seemed to have proper clothing for weather like this.
No one in the straggling mob following the coyote was dressed decently. Everyone was freezing cold, some were already footsore, and most were frightenedeven those who had made this crossing before.
The United States had twice made legal the presence of what the officials called "undocumented aliens," in the naive belief that the problem of the illegal migrants seeking work could be settled once and for all with such measures. But the problem did not resolve itself. Mexico was a land of low pay and high unemployment. The United States was the reverse.
Karmann wondered if his own countrymen might not re-

 
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