Chapter Nine

“You will be back.” 

Tucker banished Mosca’s farewell words from his mind, urging his horse faster. The gunfighter never again wanted to set eyes on that unholy church and what lay within. Like Lot’s wife, the cowboy feared if he looked back, saw but a tiny glimpse of the distant steeple, he would turn to naught. The three gunfighters galloped across the hot griddle of the desert, the baking wind smashing against them, and they leaned into their horses and heard the galloping hooves and the rattleclank of their treasure-laden leather saddlebags, making fast their souls and good their escape. Open badland wastes beckoned and embraced, and soon they were far from that accursed village.

Tucker thought of the silver. He thought of how he would spend it. But try as he might, the cowboy couldn’t get out of his mind the little figure of the peasant girl standing on the ridge as they charged past on their horses with their stolen silver, watching them go. Even at the great distance, just from the brief glance he gave her, he saw the slump of her shoulders. 

He had been many things in his time. Son. Cowboy. Husband. Widower. Soldier. Outlaw. Thief. Killer.

Now liar.

Samuel Llewellyn Tucker wondered when it was exactly he had gotten too mean to pray.

 

 

It had been an hour since she saw those sons of bitches ride out with the silver and all hope was lost. 

This is why when Pilar heard the horse’s hooves below the ridge heading into town, her heart leapt in her bosom. Had the gunfighters had a change of heart and returned to fulfill their promise? Her stomach quickly fell as she rushed to the edge of the incline and peered down to see only a lone rider on a horse trotting into the village. It wasn’t them. It was as the girl feared; the cowboys had abandoned her and stolen the silver that would have saved her people. But as she squinted through the shimmery dust, she recognized the rider.

It was Vargas, the old town drunk who had fled the village on a whisky binge years before.

What was he doing back?

 

 

The borracho rode into town armed to the teeth with silver bullets.

He was betting that The Men Who Walked Like Wolves didn’t know that.

His old tired bones ached in his saddle from the long ride, but his heart was strong. The sight of his abandoned, derelict village shocked and dismayed him. It was a graveyard for vultures and flies. As he led his horse through the deserted corrals and stalls and saw the bones and rotting meat he knew they belonged to his friends. How many still survived he did not know.

But some must have.

For the bandits still occupied the area.

Up on the hill, by the church they now blasphemously called Santa Sangre, he could already see a few distant stick figures of the cutthroats patrolling the perimeter of the stark white mission. The whole place stank of death. His horse feared the area and sensed the unnatural evil present. It tossed its head in its bridle and wanted to go no further, but the old man held firmly on the bit with an iron grip and urged the caballo forward. Just a few more yards, then he would dismount and cut it loose, and his own feet would carry him the rest of the way.

He had a lifetime of dishonor to make up for.

The village, or what was left of it, was depending on him.

He would not let them down.

Perhaps the old man should have considered his age, his eyesight. Perhaps he should have been mindful of the bandits’ sheer numbers compared to the amount of bullets he had. But this was not on his mind.

At the edge of town, the borracho dismounted and unstrapped his saddlebags and firearms that were already loaded with the bullets that would kill the werewolves. He thanked his horse for the good service it provided and before he could smack it on the rump, the stallion took off out of the village at a heated gallop, wanting to be gone from the evil place. The old man stuffed the Navy and SAA pistols in his belt, slung a Mexican bolt action rifle over his right shoulder and a Winchester repeater rifle over his left. He stuffed handfuls of silver bullets he had already separated by caliber into different pockets. They were heavy and the guns and ammo weighed him down, but he bore up under the greater burden of responsibility. 

Walking to the base of the hill, the borracho faced the church like a gunfighter. A rifle he held on one hand, a pistol in the other. The old timer stuck out his chest. Raised his chin. He was not afraid. It was a good day to die. 

“WEREWOLVES, SHOW YOURSELVES SO I MAY SEND YOU TO HELL!” he shouted boldly.

The bandits looked down, taken aback at the sight of the decrepit stranger down the hill. Vargas bellowed at them as they noticed him for the first time. “TODAY YOU DIE! ALL OF YOU! I, HECTOR VARGAS, HAVE COME TO KILL YOU AND FREE MY PEOPLE!”

The fat, bearded leader of the brigands stepped out of the open wooden doors. He blinked in the sunshine but also in incredulity at the one old man in the village outskirts below yelling up at him in challenge. Mosca cracked a big gold-toothed grin. The four bandits flanking him by the church also grinned. They laughed mockingly, arms crossed, for this was very funny to them.

The borracho blushed in humiliation and his legs shook at the ridicule, but he stood his ground, unshouldering his rifle. “I AM HERE TO RELEASE MY PEOPLE! I AM HERE TO KILL YOU COWARDS!” His frail voice barely reached the animals on the hill above, but they heard enough to laugh even harder, busting a gut.

Shaking his head, the amused bandit leader cupped his hands over his mouth. “Who are you, old fool?” he shouted.

“I AM HECTOR VARGAS AND I WAS BORN IN THIS VILLAGE! AS MY FATHER WAS BORN HERE AND HIS FATHER BEFORE HIM! THIS IS MY HOME!”

“But why have you come back?” Mosca’s voice sounded astonished at the audacity of the old timer.

“THIS IS MY HOME AND THESE ARE MY PEOPLE WHOSE BLOOD YOU HAVE SPILT AND I HAVE COME TO KILL YOU AND SEND EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU STRAIGHT TO HELL! YOU HEAR ME, WEREWOLVES? I, HECTOR VARGAS, HAVE COME TO KILL YOU!”

Mosca spread his arms generously, displaying his chest. “Get on with it then!” he chortled.

Fired up with purpose, the old man shouldered the repeater, took aim and fired right at the chest of the bandit leader. His arms were frail, his eyesight poor and his aim was a little off. The bullet struck Mosca in the right shoulder instead and made a blossoming red bloom. But while the bullet missed the heart by a foot, it wiped the grin right off the bandit’s face and the sudden raw fear and agony the borracho saw in the brigand’s eyes emboldened him.

“SILVER!” screamed Mosca in utter surprise and unbearable anguish as he pawed the big wound in his shoulder, the impacted slug burning like a red-hot poker buried in his flesh. He fell back against the wall, howling in pain like a wild animal. Tugging his knife from his belt, he jabbed it into the ragged hole, trying to dig the slug out. “AAAGGG-GGGGGGGGGHHHH!” The bandit leader fell to his knees, buckled over in panic, desperately prying the round out of his flesh with the knife. “HE HAS SILVER BULLETS!”

For one brief moment of glory, the old man had them. He opened fire on the other bandits, cocking his Winchester with one hand and firing his Colt in his other fist, unleashing a fusillade of silver bullets on the top of the hill. Spat out cartridge casings glinted gloriously in the sunlight as they flew twirling from the breech of his repeater. He rotated the rifle, cocking the lever action around his fingers, and fired from the hip, again and again. The slugs exploded and caromed off the white adobe walls of the church as the alarmed bandits ducked for cover. They scrambled for their weapons under the onslaught. One of them was hit in the kneecap and went down screaming in pathetic agony, a yelping sound more canine than human, pressing his own fingers into the bullet hole to pinch out the molten-hot silver slug. 

It was the best moment of the old man’s long life.

The three other bandits had snapped to attention and unholstered their pistols and rifles and began shooting back. Their aim was good for wolves have sharp vision.

The first round in the old man’s side broke three of his ribs. He watched a foot-long jet of blood fountain from his shirt. 

Still he laid down fire.

Bullets buzzed past his ears like a swarms of angry bees. The borracho’s SAA pistol was empty so he tossed it aside and drew his Navy revolver and kept firing. His arms ached from the recoil but his adrenaline was pumping. Slugs exploded geysers of dirt at his feet. He could see the muzzleflashes of the bandits shooting down on him from the hill through the chalky haze of plaster dust his own bullets had kicked up when they ricocheted off the walls of the church.

Mosca damn near sawed his shoulder off but he got the bullet out.

The red flattened slug clattered on the ground.

He kicked it in blind rage, roaring in fury, the pain in his shoulder subsiding now the silver was gone.

Instantly, the bandit leader was up on his feet, smoothly quickdrawing one of the revolvers from his cross holsters and squeezing off a single shot that blew the borracho clean off the ground. The Jefe spat in the dust in vile contempt, raised his hand and his men stopped shooting. The ringing reverbs of the gunfire faded to silence as the brigands on the hill stared down at the sprawled figure of the old man down in the village below them.

He was moving.

The borracho lay on his back in the settling dust, his life bleeding out of him. He’d lost his guns. The weapons had flown from his grip when the shot that felled him blew a rat hole out of his thigh. He had taken two rounds, the other in his side. The old man coughed blood and grit his teeth, turning his head to see the pistol ten yards from him. There was still feeling in his arms and legs and he wasn’t dead yet.

Get the gun.

With a grunt of pain, he rolled over onto his stomach and began to crawl for his weapon.

Quick, get the gun.

Mosca’s eyes were vacant as he started walking down the hill, in no hurry. The smoking Colt was in his fist, carried loosely at his side. Step by step, he descended the gravel incline toward the pathetic figure on the ground below who crawled on his belly like a snail toward one of his guns with the silver bullets. The bandit leader took his time in his approach, face slack, grimy hair falling down his back. Mosca stuck a cigar in his mouth and fired it up with a stick match he struck with the thumb on his free hand. He blew clouds of smoke like a chimney, stogie clamped in his teeth as he spoke.

“You have heart, pendejo,” he snarled. “I’ll give you that.” The wounded old shootist kept dragging himself toward the pistol in the dirt. The Jefe descended from the church, smoking as he spoke. “I saw a mouse that had heart once. There was this big cat and she had pounced on this mouse, tore off his leg. The back leg. The mouse tried to crawl away, bleeding, without a leg.” The bandit leader’s boots had reached the base of the hill in a crumble of gravel. Mosca slowly and deliberately closed the distance between himself and the crawling man, talking softly. “The cat, she just watched him crawl and crawl without the leg and when the mouse was at the end of the porch thinking it would get away, the cat pounced again and dragged him back, biting off his other leg.” 

The borracho pulled and tugged and dragged himself across the punishing rocks and stones of the hard pack ground. His leg and sides were wet and sang with agony, and he left a smear of blood in his wake. The pistol was now three feet away. He saw his hand reach for it, fingers stretching the last few inches for the stock. Counted rounds in his head. Five more silver bullets were chambered. Then the large ugly shadow fell across him and the old man could smell the bandit leader standing right behind him.

The first shot split his eardrums.

The old man’s right hand reaching for the gun disappeared in a fine red mist and shrapnel of bone fragments. The blasted stump of a wrist geysered a jet of blood a foot in the air. His own screaming drowned out the sound of the second gunshot that ricocheted in a flash of sparks off the pistol, sending the gun skittling another five yards away where it spun in a glint of metal in sunlight until it went still.

Mosca stood tall and awful over the old man who lay writhing in agony, clutching with his good hand his arm shot off at the wrist. The borracho spat up at him but the bloody saliva didn’t reach its target and splattered back onto the old man’s face. The Jefe chuckled, enjoying this, puffing cigar smoke. Gritting his teeth, steeling his gaze, the wounded wretch twisted his head to regard the pistol a few yards farther from him now.

And began to crawl for it.

Reaching toward the fallen weapon with his last good hand.

“You have heart, pendejo. Like the mouse.” Mosca smiled, nodding his approval. “How I remember the cat on the porch watching as the mouse, now without two legs, pulled himself across the porch with both its front legs, inch by inch, leaving a long trail of little mouse blood. It went squeak squeak. The cat, she just waited, for she had nothing better to do.” The bandit blew wafting smoke from the muzzle of his pistola, and took another step to keep pace with the maimed man desperately dragging himself on his stomach toward the gun. The old man’s revolver was now two feet from his left hand fingers.

“Squeak squeak, eh little mouse?”

Still the old man crawled, dragged, urged himself toward his pistol with his last remaining strength, suffering terribly. Towering above, taking his sweet time, his murderer coldly regarded the side of his victim’s face, watching the drunk bite his lip bloody to stop himself from passing out. Another foot now. The slow drag of shirt on gravel. Those aged fingers stretching for the barrel of the gun with all the force of will their owner could muster to fire just one more silver bullet if he could. Fingertips six inches away. “Can you guess what happened next, pendejo, do you even care? I know you must focus now on getting that gun, so I will tell you. The mouse with the big heart, he made it again to the edge of the porch and another inch he would be safe when the cat pounced, dragged him back and bit off his front leg.” Relishing the moment, squeezing every last drop of sadistic pleasure out of it, Mosca slid his revolver back in his holster.

The drunk’s ancient tobacco-yellowed fingertips touched steel.

The bandit spun his pistol out of his holster around his forefinger and fired a single quick shot from the hip, blowing the borracho’s left hand clean off. Finger pieces and bits of palm flesh splattered the dirt as the old man wailed dismally, holding up a gruesome soup of a handless wrist out of which jagged a splintered bone.

“My problem, and your problem, is that I am not a cat, I am a wolf.”

Mosca moved with lightning speed and with one filthy fist grabbed the old man by his thinning white hair, brutally yanking his head up and lifting his shoulders off the ground with savage force.

“And a wolf goes for the throat.”

With that, Mosca sheathed his gun and drew out his knife, sawing at the borracho’s neck. The blade cut deep into the flesh, gushing blood in all directions. The bandit’s feral visage was splattered with the bright red oxygenated arterial spray and his grinning teeth turned crimson in a face that was a lurid mask of gore. The dying man’s eyes bulged in unimaginable horror as in his remaining seconds of consciousness he felt his own head being cut off. Mosca viciously jerked the blade back and forth, slicing through skin, tendon, muscle and finally spinal cord with a sickening crack and the torso began to fall away, held to the head by a long, wet rope of meat. Grunting impatiently, the bandit leader shook the nearly severed head violently in his grip, until the last grisly strand of muscle snapped and the skull came loose. He carried it by the hair over to a corral fence and slammed the ragged neck stump down on a jutting wooden post, grotesquely impaling the decapitated head. Its sightless eyes stared glassily. Mosca wiped the blade clean on the dead man’s hair then sheathed it, his own gaze as detached as the head. “Si, you had heart, pendejo. Too bad for you it’s over there.”

The bandit leader kicked the headless trunk out of his way as he trod back up the hill to Santa Sangre.

“Fuck you and your silver.”

 

 

Up above on the ridge, tears poured down Pilar’s cheeks watching the scene below from her hiding place. She had seen the whole savage and brutally sadistic killing. Made herself watch. Yet had done nothing. What good could she have done? she told herself over and over. Had she showed herself, with certainty she would have been captured and raped and killed and eaten like the rest. But while her reasoning was sound, the peasant girl knew in her heart she was a coward and she was afraid and that old man who had died so badly down there had not been afraid to die, to do what he could. You are no hero, Pilar. You have learned there are no heroes, just the strong who prey on the weak. Shame and self-disgust consumed Pilar and she felt small and worthless as she slunk back from the ridge into the hard lengthening shadows of the lowering sun.

The old man down there at least had been brave.

It made his flesh that much tastier to the vultures who even now descended to feed on his remains.

Then it hit her. The dead man had been using silver bullets, and somewhere on his corpse he likely had more rounds. The body was out in the open in the square. As soon as the bandits went back inside the church she decided she would sneak down into the town and retrieve the silver rounds and the weapons to fire them, staying out of sight. It was up to Pilar now to rescue her sister and her mother, though she would certainly die in the attempt. Her promise had been to return for Bonita, not live forever. She could be brave still.

A few minutes later, the girl risked a peek over the edge of the ridge and saw the two bandits collecting all the unused silver bullets and guns from the dead old man, scavenging the body of weapons like the vultures were of its flesh. The carrion birds did not even pause in their feeding as the brigands took the last of the ammo that could kill them back up into Santa Sangre and all hope was once again lost.

That’s when she saw her little sister step out of the church hand in hand with the bandit leader and for the first and only time in her life, Pilar prayed for her own death.

 

 

“Sit with me.”

“Okay.”

The big man with the bad smell sat on the edge of the hill, eye level with the child. “Sit on my lap.” Bonita watched him a moment. He was smiling, patting his thigh. So she sat on him. He put his dirty paw of a hand gently on her back as she perched on his knee. They looked out at the quiet village, and for a while neither spoke.

He did first. “It is cool up here, si?”

“The breeze is nice.” She nodded.

“It blows your hair like a dandelion.” Mosca sniffed her hair in a way that was odd to her. “You have beautiful hair, child.”

“Thank you.”

He stroked her black tresses. She wrinkled her nose. “You smell bad.”

Mosca chuckled. “But you smell very, very good. So good I will eat you.” He laughed and she did too, like it was a game. “You are a good girl, si?” 

She shrugged. He held her on his lap under the hot sun of the day. “You are a bad man,” she stated firmly. “And you have dirty fingernails.”

The bandit roared with laughter. “I like you, child. You are very brave to speak to me in such a manner. What is your name?”

“Bonita.”

“Such a pretty name.”

The little girl thanked him politely, perfectly behaved.

“Are you not scared of me?”

She shook her head. “No.”

His reddened eyes twinkled with mirth. “Why is this, my brave little one?” 

“Because my sister will come and save me.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Will she? And where is your sister now?”

“I don’t know.”

“But I do.” With a wolfish grin, he nudged his bearded jaw toward the ridge across the village. “She is right over there, at the blacksmith’s shop. Do you know what she is doing at this very minute as we speak?”

“Getting ready to come and save me.”

“Watching us right now. We can’t see her because she hides, but she sees you. Wave to her.” The bandit lifted the little girl’s hand and they both waved. “That’s it. Wave hello.” The child waved for a while, then put her arm down.

“Do you think she saw me?” Bonita asked.

“Certainly. She is crying right now, because she knows that all is lost. Your big sister is very brave, like you. She rode very far to bring dangerous vaqueros to kill us, but she chose poorly and those men stole the silver. They were very bad men.”

“Worse than you?”

“Much worse because they lied. I am bad, but I do not lie.”

“I’m sad now.”

The bandit stared in her face with gentleness. “I had a beautiful little girl just like you once. You remind me of her.”

“Did she die?”

He nodded somberly. “She was about your age.”

“What was her name?”

“I don’t remember.”

The little girl looked at him perplexed, like he was kidding her. “How can you forget your child’s name?” 

His eyes were distant now. “Because it was a long, long time ago.”

She fidgeted. He adjusted her position on the loose pants on his muscled thigh to make her more comfortable. “How long?”

He regarded her with melancholy. “Five hundred years.”

“People don’t live to be five hundred years old.”

“No, people don’t.”

“So how can your child have been five hundred years ago?”

“Because I am not People. I think you know this.”

“Yes.”

He touched her face.

Sniffed her skin.

Tears began to flow from her eyes.

“Don’t be sad, little one. Everybody dies. This is as it should be.” 

He stood.

“One day you will, too,” he said. The bandit held out his hand. “I will take you back to your mother.”

Bonita rose and took his hand and together they walked back into the church. “My sister is coming.”

“Perhaps.”

“My sister, when she comes, she will kill you.”

The little girl looked up at the huge bandit with her honest button eyes.

He didn’t blink.

All he said was…

“I know.” 

 

 

The bloody bullet wound of a sun sunk into a lake of gore on the horizon as gathering darkness extinguished the last traces of any hope of day. The desert at dusk stretched endlessly on all sides, claustrophobic in its sheer vastness. Three distant riders rested their horses and trotted toward a box canyon of crevices and towering rock crags. 

Far to the rear, hanging back, a fourth horse and rider pursued them with the dogged dour determination of a coyote. Like the ageless desert predator he was, the hunter blended into the landscape and stayed out of sight.

 

 

The gunfighters had been on the trail for three hours, retracing their steps from the long morning ride from the cantina because without a map of the area they didn’t know where they were, and a wrong turn in the endless desert with its lethal heat was a death warrant. Plus their own sign was still fresh and easy to follow. They’d decided to head west once they reached the stagecoach trail they’d encountered earlier, and from there follow it west. The Wells Fargo line would be routed to civilization. The men took it easy on their horses because the animals were weighed down with the brimming saddlebags of silver. If they lost any of the mounts, they’d have to rig up a drag for some of the treasure and that would slow them considerably. It had been about 3:00 p.m. when the men had ridden out of Santa Sangre, and night was fast approaching, so they began looking for a place to camp and start out fresh first thing the next morning. That box canyon ahead looked as good a place as any. Tucker said again what he had said every half an hour since they fled. “Too damn easy.”

Fix was in an expansive mood. “We’re rich, boys. What you gonna do with your’n?”

Bodie sucked some whisky from his bottle. “Buy me some pussy,” he belched.

“Then after that what?”

“I dunno. Buy me s’more.”

The silver clinked and clanked like a tambourine in time with their spurs and saddle cleats.

“You’re gonna spend it all on pussy, Bodie?”

“No, I ain’t gonna spend it all on pussy neither, Fix. I’m gonna buy other stuff. Like clothes. And a new gun probably. Then I’m gonna…well I’m gonna…put it in a bank, that’s what I’m gonna do, so’s I can have my money working for me while I figure out what to spend it on besides pussy!”

He cracked up hysterically, and Fix joined in the laughter. 

The little, taut gunslinger’s eyes went distant. “Figure mebbe I’ll buy me a little spread down Durango way. Get me some cattle. Settle down…mebbe.”

Tucker shook his head, holding his reins, hips shifting with the horse’s gait on the saddle. “Lot of money, boys, that silver is a whole lot of money.” He was preoccupied, riding in the lead ahead, eyes hard in the distance. “And all it’s given us so far is a big set of brand new problems.”

“Like what?” asked Bodie. “We’re rich.”

“That’s if’n we live to spend it. We got to be real careful. Right now we’re riding through no man’s land with a fortune. We can’t just ride around Mexico carrying all this silver. What we need to do is bury it. I say we split the loot into three parcels and we each ride out and hide it where the others don’t know about.”

Tucker felt the unfamiliar twinge of distrust in the air between the three men.

“Reckon this much dinero could be a big temptation even twixt the best of friends,” Fix grimly agreed.

“It ain’t that exactly,” Tucker said, although now the specter of betrayal had been raised it lay in the air like a dead fart, ruining the mood. “What I mean is we split up and each bury a third of the silver. Let’s say one of us gets caught somehow with his parcel of silver and the sumbitches try to beat out of him the location of the rest of the treasure, he can’t spill what he don’t know.”

“Can’t argue with that.” Fix grunted in agreement.

Bodie nodded, eyes glazed in confusion from trying to follow the conversation.

Tucker continued. “Then after we bury it, we regroup. Each of us knows where his parcel of the treasure is and doesn’t tell the others. And the agreement is that each of the buried shares is owned three ways by us, so if we lose one, nobody’s out of pocket. Agreed?” They others nodded. “It’s decided then. We bury the treasure and we bury it soon. Tomorrow. That’s one problem licked.”

“So we just ride back and dig up what we need?” Bodie asked.

“That’s the idea. Problem two. We can’t go around cashing silver candlesticks and religious articles. They’ll make us for thieves, and we got enough people after us already. What we need to do is melt this silver down into bars. So we got to locate a blacksmith’s shop directly like that town back there had. We’ll pay the blacksmith a share for his work and his silence. If we think he’s dodgy, we’ll just kill him when he’s done the work.”

“A bullet’s a lot cheaper than a share of the silver, I savvy.” Fix clicked his teeth. Tucker knew right then that the as yet unidentified blacksmith already had a slug of lead with his name on it.

“Mebbe so. We go back one at a time, dig up one parcel of silver goods from the church at a time, bring it back have the blacksmith melt it. The other two can remain with him to be sure he don’t run off with our loot. Once we get these artifacts melted down into bricks, then each of us ride out and bury their share same place or t’other.”

“Then what?” Fix asked, because Tucker had a habit of thinking things through which was why he was unspoken leader of the tight-knit gang.

“Then we got the same problem. Can’t go riding around with this much silver. Not unless we want to get robbed or killed. It’s got to be a million dollars or more we’re haulin’ right now in our saddlebags. And unless we want to spend our remaining days in Durango, we can’t leave it buried and just keep coming back for it piecemeal. I say we bank it in Juarez or Mexico City. Turn it, or some of it, over into cash in bank accounts. It’ll take us a few weeks, with all the riding to the buried silver and the banks and back, but we take it real slow and careful and patient and we’ll get ’er done.”

“We got another problem,” Fix offered. “All them federals and bounty hunters on our ass, and remember those banks likely have our posters up. Heading into a bank is a big damn risk.”

“Mebbe we could pay off the Federales. Pay ’em the reward on us and a bonus for staying off our backs. Buy their protection,” said Bodie. “Not like we ain’t got the money. We can buy anything. Including our own asses.”

Tucker and Fix looked at the third of their number. Once in a while, he made sense and when the normally dull man had one of his good ideas it was always a pleasant surprise. They nodded. 

“That could work, we get to the right Federales,” Tucker admitted. “Maybe that fat pig general Lopez who heads up the fort outside of Mexico City we had that run in with back in May. Bet a few bars of silver would persuade him to send the word have his troops back off. That would sure as shit piss off The Cowboys, but if the price was right, he’d probably string up any of their bounty hunters they send after us too.”

“Then we just lay low in Mexico the rest of our days.” Fix shrugged. “In the style to which I intend to become accustomed.”

“Might be a good idea buy a big ass ranch or hacienda down Guadalajara way. Men is going to be coming for us, but we hire on some Mexican guards, pay off the Federales like Bodie said, we could buy protection and live behind the walls a lifetime. Or until they forget about us.” They men of action considered the unpleasant prospect of being so penned up for eternity. It didn’t sit. 

“Right.”

“Right.”

“Whatever.”

“Sure as shit can’t go back to the U.S.,” Fix agreed.

“Not any state got an extradition treaty with Arizona, we can’t,” Tucker said. “I hear Doc Holliday is still rotting away in a Leadville jail up in Colorado fighting extradition by the Tombstone boys and word is they’re sending his ass back to The Cowboys and a waiting noose directly.”

“Why the hell isn’t Wyatt Earp helping his friend out?” Bodie wondered.

“Heard Earp dropped him like a hot potato after the Vigilante Raid,” Tucker said ruefully.

“Earp was always a prick.” Fix chuckled dismissively. “Should have put a bullet in his brain pan when I had the chance. Holliday too.”

“We get our money banked, we might can risk New York, maybe San Francisco, set ourselves up as proper gentlemen or robber barons. Or we can catch a ship and head to England. Start over.”

“Too much to think about right now.” Fix rubbed his eyes. “Been a long day. Right now, I just want to set camp and break open a bottle of whisky and admire our spoils. Tomorrow, we’ll bury it, just like you said, friend, and go find us that blacksmith.”

Suddenly being rich wasn’t sounding so great, Tucker was thinking. It was confusing and tense trying to figure out a way to hold onto their money and keeping what they stole looked harder then getting it in the first place. Nothing had changed. They were still going to feel hunted, still spend their lives looking over their shoulders, now more than ever. 

And that wasn’t all that was weighing heavy on his conscience.

“Hey, Tuck. What you gonna spend your share of all this loot on?” Bodie asked affably.

“Peace of mind.”

“Huh?

“Them poor wretches back there. We gave them a royal screwin’, leaving ‘em to those bastards.”

Fix sneered. “Fuck ’em, Tucker. Them Mexicans was stupid enough to roll over for them bandits, stupid enough to tell us where their silver was, and a fool and his money are easily parted.”

Tucker chuckled mirthlessly. “We parted ’em with it that’s for sure.”

The little wiry gunfighter was bothered. “You going soft all of a sudden?” 

Tucker didn’t take the bait. There was sadness and regret in his blue eyes. “Just wondering when exactly we became the bad guys is all.”

Bodie shrugged. “We ain’t no worst than most. I love my mama.”

“My mama was a whore,” Fix tossed off.

“One thing you can bet on,” said Tucker. “They didn’t set out to raise no bad men.”

“Boo hoo.”

Tucker shot the others a circumspect glance. “You boys don’t find it peculiar them bandits, cannibals, whatever they was, just let us walk out of there with all that silver?”

The big Swede laughed a little too loud, in a drunken glow. “Lucky is what we is.”

“Irregular is what it is,” growled Tucker. “Too good to be true. And what’s too good to be true usually ain’t.”

Fix gripped the saddle with his knees and whapped his palomino on the haunches with his reins clenched in a black leather gloved fist so as to speed it up over the rocks. “They could have killed us right there, if they wanted to.”

“But they didn’t,” said Bodie.

Tucker nodded, like that proved his point. “Irregular I say. Maybe they’re just toying with us and this ain’t over yet.”

Fix looked up at the coloring sky. “Well, sun’s going down, boys. Figure we best make camp.”

They rode into the deep crevices of the brutal canyon country. There was an eerie atmosphere in the air, a hanging ground mist. The box canyons shadowed purple as dusk descended, the sun lowered in the sky and a dull haze settled in the area. Tucker, Fix and Bodie rode slowly through the towering chasms of crags and ravines rising up on all sides. 

“I’ll be glad tomorrow when we’re a day’s ride from here. This is a bad place,” said Tucker. The gloom was dank and cold. He shivered.

Bodie reacted abruptly. “Did you hear something?”

Fix went stone still, the lean little gunfighter on high alert, braced for action. His gloved hands hovered itchy by his gunstocks in his belt. He spat a chaw of tobacco on the ground, flinty observant eyes surgically carving a line across the rocks above them. “Shhh.”

Tucker unsnapped the clasp holding his Sharps rifle on his saddlebag of his dun colored stallion with a little click. Bodie eyeballed the others, and they caught his gaze. He snicked his glance to the left. There was a blur of movement on a scree behind him. Then they saw Calderon as he stepped out from behind a big rock a few feet ahead, holding a rifle in his bandito rags. His eyes were shiny black marbles. 

“We meet up again, gringos.” 

The three gunfighters faced the outnumbered Mexican, sitting laconically in their saddles and cradling their weapons. The silver in the saddlebags glittered and glinted in the pale ghost of the full moon appearing overhead in the twilight sky.

Tucker’s tone was blunt. “What do you want?”

Calderon nodded. “I come for the silver.” They watched him. “Mostly.”

Bodie got riled. “Your Jefe said we could take it.”

“Jefe change his mind, gringos, and he wants his silver back.”

Tucker casually scanned the visibly empty box canyon, satisfied that there were no other bandits, and then returned his gaze to the interloper who faced them with a notable lack of concern being all by himself. “You come alone,” he said.

“Solamente.”

“So what if we don’t want to give it back?”

The bandit tilted his head, the way a dog regards a kill. “I take it anyway.”

Fix tickled his pearl-handled Colts with his gloved fingertips. “I’m gonna put one in his bone box just for shits and giggles.”

Three against one.

Those odds might not be in their favor, Tucker reflected. All of them remembered the bullet-ridden Mosca back in Santa Sangre with one between the eyes and five in the chest standing there laughing, completely unharmed. This one could be just as indestructible. They reckoned they were about to find out. As if to make the point, a mangy buzzard alighted on a crag of granite overhead, giving those below its malignant full attention. 

Tucker suppressed a smile. “So we give you the silver, and you here all by your lonesome against us three, is gonna let us live?”

Calderon seemed taken aback. “No, gringo, I am going to kill you too.”

Tucker nodded. “Let’s get to it then.” With that, he fired both guns two-handed at point-blank range into Calderon’s chest, blowing smoking bullet holes through his front. Some of the bullets punched out fist-sized exit wounds in back. 

The bandit staggered, but remained standing. 

“Sonufabitch!” yelled Fix, flabbergasted. “Who the hell are these guys?” 

Calderon spat a bloody, crumpled slug with powerful force and deadly accuracy between Tucker’s eyes, breaking the flesh and hurting him. 

“Ow!” The cowboy recoiled, grabbing his forehead. 

By then Bodie and Fix had their guns drawn and were fanning and firing, creating clouds of smoke and muzzleflash into which the bandit disappeared from view as his body was hammered again and again with lead, apparently riddling him with bullets and blowing him to pieces. The thunderbooms of the gunfire echoed around the box canyons long after the shooting ceased. The smoke cleared. Calderon was gone, fled into the ravine. He was quickly glimpsed scrambling up the rocks of the chasm, lizard quick. His chortling laughter reverberated. 

“We had him dead to rights! You saw!” Bodie cried, utterly rattled. He and Fix reined their horses around, swung out of the saddles and tethered the reins to a small tree. Guns drawn, the two shootists ducked into the high canyon in pursuit of Calderon.

Fix yelled back at Tucker, spraying tobacco juice. “Cover the area and keep a lookout for other’n!” 

“Will do!” Tucker shouted. Staying in his saddle, clenching a big iron in each fist, he reloaded, guarding the base of the cliffs and nursing the nasty bleeding cut between his eyes. 

Fix took cover behind a slab of rock and leapt around shooting a single pistol round at the bandit a hundred feet up in the chasm, who fired back. Both bullets missed and rebounded off the rocks. The ricochet of the slug exploded by Fix’s head, nearly killing him as it chinked the granite. 

“Shit!” he yowled. 

Bodie sprang forward, firing his Winchester repeater rifle twice up at the fearsomely elusive Calderon, then ducked around behind a boulder for cover as three more bullets came from above and ricocheted deafeningly. A new threat. Five loose bullets were zigzagging out of control around the narrow cranny of the ravine. Unpredictable in their lethal trajectories, buzzing like mad bees, the rebounding slugs slammed again and again into the rocks by Fix and Bodie, making them leap like Mexican jumping beans. Impact meant instant death.

BLAM!

BLAM!

PTOW!

Fix winced and dodged up to the next rock outcropping, getting off a shot at Calderon, who buckled and grunted. His shadow was visible on the rock wall above, as the wounded bandit huddled in a cranny.

The full moon lifted in the sky.

Fix saw the long shadow of the man just over the incline, crouching in the precipice in the hard white moonlight. A groan of pain came from the figure as the moon cracked over the horizon. 

“I got him, boys, you hear me? I hit him and I can hear him squealin’!” Fix yelled over his shoulder. Then the small cowboy yelled up into the depths of the canyon. “Give up fool, I know you can hear me! Don’t want to kill you none after you bein’ so generous with the silver so throw down yer guns and I’ll let you limp outta here if ya still can!” 

The sounds of anguish intensified and the silhouette of the man on the rocks above became distorted on the ravine rock wall. The shadows of the legs lengthened. The torso’s shadow spasmed and seizured as the rib cage began to concave. The outline of the digits of the hands and feet extended into talons in the moonlight. Finally, the profile of its head punched out its snout into a canine skull formation with a horrific bone-snapping crunch that echoed through the ravine. 

Fix fingered the trigger of his handgun, watching the bizarre shape shifting of the shadow. 

“What the hell…?” 

The human screams of pain gradually subsided into a rumbling growl that increased in timbre, mean and guttural, echoing through the innards of the chasm. The shadow disappeared before Fix’s disturbed eyes, leaping away with supernatural speed and stealth.

A hundred yards away, Tucker sat on his horse, twin pistols gripped in his fists, knees clinging to the saddle, eyes moving back and forth as he rode this way and that through the canyon base. The horse started to freak, eyes widening big as saucers, sweat frothing its mane. The cowboy went into high alert, searching the rugged cliff walls above and around him. Something very hungry and bloodthirsty watched him from above, then leapt an impossible distance to the ledge of the opposite stone face to observe him from another predatory vantage. Hearing gravel crumble, Tucker looked up quickly, thumbing back the hammers of his guns, as a few pebbles tumbled onto the ground by his horse’s hooves. His stallion was very nervous. Tucker reacted to the fleeting silhouette darting above him, then down below. It was a great big shadow like moving black paint. Whatever was stalking him ducked into position, the hot blood pounding in its ears. 

The monster pounced.

Tucker gasped. 

The hairy beast stood eight feet tall with red eyes and a savage feral expression. The long snout stretched cavernously wide, exposing jagged rows of yellow fangs strung with foul saliva. Its legs and haunches were dog-like, and its talons were big as pitchforks. 

“Bless my balls,” Tucker choked. 

The huge four-legged wolfman leapt up from a coiled crouch, big as Tucker’s horse, and tackled the stallion. The steed managed to stay upright from the first punishing blow, rearing in naked terror onto its hind legs. Tucker, horrified and awe-struck to be face to face with such a creature, struggled to control his animal. Thinking fast, he reined his rearing horse and used its pawing front hooves to knock the monster back. The werewolf got piledriver-kicked in the chest and with a hideous spitting snarl went sprawling to the ground in a cloud of dust, frothing saliva, radiating insanity from its eyeballs. Frighteningly fast, the beast was instantly back up on four paws on the ground. In a swipe of its ugly claws, the monster sheared the head of the stallion clean off its thick neck in an explosion of blood and trailing meat, sinew and spinal column. The severed horse’s head bounced off the rocks, bursting like a ripe watermelon. Tucker went down with it and got pinned under the saddle as the heavy steed came to earth, bridle in the gaping mouth several yards away. The saddlebags of silver spilled from the harness and dozens of gleaming metallic objects clattered and clanked against the rocks. The cowboy was trapped under his headless horse, leg stuck beneath the saddle. He opened fire with both pistols over his dead animal’s flanks, shooting the fast approaching wolfman in the chest and face multiple times. The .45 caliber slugs hammered the creature back and it raged in protest, but the bullets did it no permanent damage. Tucker knew his number was up. His hammers clicked on empty chambers. 

The werewolf licked its wounds, ragged holes in its fur. Its pained eyes lost their dimness as they refocused on the helpless man trapped under the decapitated horse, gaze turning bloodthirsty as it rushed him. With a mighty heave, the gunfighter hauled his leg free of the bulky saddle and limp torso of his dead steed. He rolled away in the slippery, spreading lake of blood and gore dripping from the severed neck and staggered to his feet. Quickly reloading, he faced down the snarling, rearing creature that approached him in a mountain of furred fury, distended fanged muzzle drooling. Tucker cried out to the others, true alarm in his voice. “Hey I can use some help here you fucking assholes!”

“Here I come. Hot damn,” Bodie roared back. His compatriot ran into the area and hoisted his shotgun, but was immediately paralyzed by the scene before him. 

Now, the gunfighters surrounded the monster in the gully in a showdown triangulation, and all three were shadowed by its immense bulk. The two tethered horses were rearing against the trammels and snorting, bicycling hooves pawing the air and kicking up clouds of dust debris in their panic. Bodie pumped his Winchester 1897 shotgun and brought it to his shoulder, drawing a bead on the creature’s face.

It spun to regard him with swirling mad whirlpools of eyes. The beast’s lower jaw descended and disengaged and the maw gaped, impossibly wide open. 

Bodie pulled the trigger, the stock bucking against his shoulder. He pumped and fired twice more for good measure.

And blew the werewolf’s head clean off.

It grew back, but messier and disfigured, like a smeared oil painting.

The huge full moon illuminated her whole ghastly tableau bright as a searchlight, as if to make sure they saw everything, sparing them nothing. The three gunfighters just stood on three sides of the beast emptying their guns into it.

The creature hissed and spat and twisted from the onslaught of lead as they drew new weapons and used those, but it grew accustomed to the bullets and dropped to all fours waiting them out until they were empty. It eyeballed them patiently until the hammers of their weapons fell on empty chambers.

Fix grabbed the silver scepter from the tabernacle as the werewolf leapt on top of him. The creature impaled itself through the left rib cage on the sterling silver spear. The point went straight through its heart and exploded out its hairy back, trailing gore. Fix’s eyes widened, knowing he was dead. But he wasn’t.

The wolfman was.

The monster threw back its fang-snouted head in a dying howl of dismay. Its eyes darkened, and its hideous physiognomy shuddered and went limp as it died on the spear run through its body. 

Fix sucked wind. 

The other two gunfighters approached. Before their very eyes, the werewolf transformed back to a man in the pale moonlight. Now mortal, the corpse was covered with bullet scars, the shotgun-shattered, disfigured head and skull in human form not grown back properly. Even so, they all recognized Calderon.

Fix leapt back in abject disgust from the naked man flopping on him, repulsed. 

Tucker stared, delirious. “Grab the silver. We’re getting out of here before more of those things come after us.” Too shaken to speak, the gunslingers scooped handfuls of the fallen silver back into the saddlebags. “Bodie, I’m taking your horse and you can ride with me until we can find a fresh mount.”

“I didn’t lose my horse, Tucker, you did. Why is it you’re taking my horse?”

“Bodie, don’t give me any shit. I mean right now, really don’t give me any shit or I swear I will beat you down.”

“Hey idiots.”

Tucker and Bodie looked where Fix was pointing.

Calderon’s horse calmly grazed nearby.

“Come on boys, we’ll argue about this later. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

The three of them swung into the saddles of the three spooked horses and galloped off into the beckoning desert.

They didn’t even bother to retrieve all the spilled silver.

 

 

It was true.

Every damn word Pilar had said.

That bandit had turned into a monster man-wolf right before their eyes. They all saw it, and their guns couldn’t kill it. Just the silver killed it, when stabbed through the creature’s heart. Exactly like the girl had said. Damn. They should have known back at the church. He’d fired a pistolful of .45’s into the bandit leader and the man still walked and still they hadn’t believed her about the werewolves and the silver. But back at the box canyon, they saw the wolfman with their own eyes and now they believed. Damn it all to Hell. What the girl had told them all along had been the gospel truth, but they laughed her off, stole her and her people’s salvation and literally threw them to the wolves. Tucker cursed himself because Pilar was truthful, had been from the moment they met, and she’d been right about everything. Everything but them being good men. She had been so wrong about that. 

All three of them were lower than those monsters. Reason was they lied. They gave their word to a woman and her people, and they broke it. Mosca, he didn’t lie. He was what he was and said so. In his unspeakable way, he had principles like Pilar. And the Jefe spoke the truth when he stated that Tucker, Fix and Bodie were just like he and his fellow devils. Tucker feared he’d been right when those words were uttered, his own eyes locked to Mosca’s powerful perceptive stare, and it frightened him because he hadn’t wanted to believe it, because what surrounded those bandits in the church were death and blood and the stench of the dying. That place was Hell, and Mosca said it was where they all belonged together. But the Jefe was right, he saw that now. Tucker, Bodie and Fix were just like them and rightly should have joined up. Only difference was they didn’t have the guts to admit what they were.

The gunfighters rode hard into the night and were far away from that terrible place, but by them taking the silver, Pilar would be raped and eaten alive in the church of Santa Sangre. 

Tucker knew then they could never spend the silver.

It was bad money.

They were scum.

A voice roared in his brain louder than the thunder of their galloping hooves.

No.

He and his boys were not like those dirty miserable creatures. Mosca was wrong. Tucker would prove him wrong. The cowboys were men. They had a choice. The landscape lay under the blanket of night beneath the light of the bright full moon, a patiently watchful eye waiting to see what their next move would be. Tucker suddenly reined his horse. 

“Wait,” he stated flatly. 

The others stopped and faced him in their saddles. 

“What are you doing?” Fix asked incredulously. He was gasping and sweating.

“We gotta go back.” Tucker stated it like a plain and simple fact.

Bodie was beside himself. “You nuts? Back where those monsters are? We got the silver. We got all! We're rich!” 

Tucker was resolved in himself. “I’m done doing the wrong thing.”

Fix shook, full of dread. “We can't kill whatever those are.” 

“Silver bullets can.”

“Give me one damn reason we should go back!” Bodie yelled.

Tucker locked his friends in a steely gaze. “Those people. We owe ’em. Gave ’em our word. We can’t let those werewolves murder them people like that. If we ride away now with their silver, we'll never live it down and we’ll be nothing ever again. I’m sick of things I’ve done, boys. It’s time to stand up. I want to make a difference for a change.”

Bodie looked wildly at Fix. “You ain’t with Tucker on this are you?” 

Fix’s eyes hardened with resolve. “Tucker’s right about one thing, them sons of bitches back there got to go.”

 

 

That previous day, Pilar had waited patiently for the gunfighters on the other side of the ridge where they were to regroup by the blacksmith’s shop if the men had lived to get the silver. The Mexican girl had heard the gunshots and knew the hour was nigh, but when she saw the three riders gallop away from the church on the horizon and keep riding north, her heart sank. They were leaving. Sunlight glinted off silver in their saddlebags and she knew the men had the treasure and were taking it. They had stolen her peoples’ only protection and salvation, and she and her family were doomed. So this is how it ends, thought the peasant. What had she expected with such men? They were no-account gunfighters and killers no different than the evil ones who had taken her people and her church. 

That was yesterday. 

This afternoon, Pilar dropped to her knees and gripped her crucifix and prayed. She prayed for her people. She prayed for her sister. She prayed for their passage from this world to Heaven. She felt herself of dust and nothingness and in her wretchedness she huddled in the utter emptiness of the desert where all was weakness and brutality and ugliness and death, but she was a simple girl, and under the hot sun in the dark hour of her abandonment and despair, her faith filled her. Her prayer was simple.

Deliver Us From Evil.

Then as she opened her eyes and cast a hopeless glance into the horizon, the Mexican rose to her feet, unable to believe her eyes. 

The figures of the three riders were riding toward her.