Dead Men Don't Lie

Book 1: Outlaw Torn Slater Western

by Jackson Cain

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Westerns

Synopsis

Wanted in thirteen states. Locked up for two years in a Mexican prison. Released into the wilds of the
American West with a twenty-thousand-dollar bounty on his head. The outlaw Torn Slater doesn’t just live
outside the law, he takes it into his own hands—and makes it cry for mercy …
After robbing some banks, Slater knows he should lay low. But when a beautiful widow asks for his help, he can’t
say no. Her reckless son has gone looking for trouble in Mexico—and found it in a woman called “La Senorita.” This
power-mad femme fatale combines the torture methods of the Spanish Inquisition with the heart-ripping rituals of
the Aztecs to get whatever she wants. And she wants the widow’s son. Slater would be lying if he said taking down “La
Senorita” would be easy. But dead men don’t lie …

Release date: September 29, 2020

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 443

Sample

Rachel Ryan stood at the Hermosillo cantina bar, staring into her glass of tequila. Glancing around the crowded taberna, she absently noted the two dozen tables with their quartets of straight-backed chairs. Coal oil lamps were bracketed against the walls, and twenty or so hung randomly from the ceiling.

In a corner, a mariachi band played all the great plaintive Mexican songs—“Corrido,” “Dormir Contigo,” “Te Desean,” “La Incondicional,” “Mi Terco Corazón,” “El Son de la Negra,” “Algo Tienes,” “La Cárcel de Cananea,” “Tu Amor,” “Vive el Verano,” “La Paloma” as well as hers and Richard’s personal favorite, “La Golondrina.” The band included a trumpet, an accordion, a violin, a high-pitched, round-backed vihuela guitar, and its big, bulky, bass counterpart, a guitarrón. The cantina featured a large dance floor. Since Sonora’s main fort was nearby, half the clientele were soldiers in gray uniforms. A dozen or more cavalry officers had on brown, roweled riding boots, which clinked on the wood floor when they walked. The other half of the clientele were civilians. White cotton shirts and faded Levi’s were popular among the civilian men, white cotton dresses among the women. Since La Paloma was an upscale cantina, even the putas sported white cotton dresses.

Fluent in Spanish, Rachel and her brother, Richard, both understood the song lyrics around them. After three months in this country she was even dreaming in Spanish. Rachel listened to “La Golondrina,” absently taking in the song’s words:

Ever the clown, Richard mockingly warbled the English translation:

“Sort of summarizes our whole trip, doesn’t it?” Rachel said.

Richard let out a long sigh. “Are you questioning the wisdom of our venture?”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t let Mom hear you say that,” Richard said. “She’ll never let us live it down—sneaking off like we did in the dead of night, then coming back broke, our tails between our legs, admitting we screwed up.”

“I’m starting to wonder why we came here at all,” Rachel said.

“We wanted to know if Sinaloa was as bad as we’d heard, and if it posed a threat to El Rancho, which it does.”

“I wanted to hook you up with our Lady Dolorosa,” Rachel said. Now it was her turn to mock.

“Yeah, right, pimp me out. Maybe I could earn us train fare back.”

“From what I hear her lovers do not find her generous,” Rachel said.

“She’s built an Aztec pyramid behind her main hacienda. She’s installed Aztec priests and brought back their rituals. Her priests even conduct human sacrifices atop those temples.”

“That’s where she sends the lovers who disappoint her,” Rachel said.

“After her Grand Inquisitor finishes with them in his torture chambers,” Richard said.

“That’s when her Aztec priests take over,” Rachel said. “After flaying them whole, they cut out their hearts atop those pyramids, then bleed their remains out into troughs, like stuck pigs.”

“That’s only because they failed to satisfy her in bed,” Richard said, thumping his chest, “which in my case could never happen.”

“You’re different, Virgin Boy?” Rachel said, taunting him with her favorite nickname for him—and the one he hated the most.

“‘My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.’”

“What’s that from?” Rachel asked.

“Tennyson,” Richard said. “Idylls of the King, but don’t bother reading it. You wouldn’t get it.”

“Why?”

“It’s literature.”

Rachel gave her brother a condescending frown.

Six rurales in gray, silver-trimmed uniforms and dark brown riding boots, heeled with razor-sharp buzz-saw rowels, bellied up to the bar on their right. They had .44 Colt revolvers on their hips and bandoliers crisscrossing their chests. They all wore broad-brimmed sombreros with triple-creased steeple crowns, which matched their uniforms. The tallest of the six pounded on the bar with his palm. Eléna, the woman who owned the cantina and served the drinks, didn’t take anything off anybody, and she glared at him. An attractive widow, her hair was as black as a crow’s wing, and her tight-fitting red cotton dress showed her figure off to her considerable advantage. She was a successful, good-looking businesswoman. Men vied for her attention and tried hard to stay on her good side.

“Mateo,” she warned the officer, “keep it up and Antonio will break a shotgun butt on your thick skull.”

Major Mateo Cardozo grinned widely. Under his black, downward-sweeping horseshoe mustache, his white even teeth shone brilliantly. Mateo and Eléna were both playing a favorite game.

“A thousand pardons, señorita,” Mateo implored, “and a compliment on your belleza [beauty]. Also a bottle of tequila for my men and myself, por favor.”

“I can see you hombres have already had a bottle somewhere else.”

“Two bottles,” Mateo said.

“You have to make five a.m. roll call, not me.”

She gave him a bottle and six glasses. He gave her the money.

“Who knows, señorita?” Corporal Rinaldi said. He pulled himself up to his full five feet, six inches of height, his forehead furrowed but his dark eyes glittering. “Tomorrow, we may not even be in the army.”

“That is a fact,” Mateo concurred.

“What’s wrong?” Eléna asked, polishing a glass.

“We have to figure out those goddamn howitzer trajectories,” Sergeant Enriqué—the big, bearded guy—muttered under his breath, “and until we do, those damn guns won’t hit shit.”

“General Ortega is madder than hell at me,” Mateo admitted. “Díaz and the Señorita are planning another attack, and if we can’t get our artillery up and running, we’re screwed.”

“We’re all screwed,” Eléna said softly, nodding.

Rachel gave Richard a quick hard look. “I’m going to the excusada [the restroom],” she said, “then let’s slope on out of here. I’ve had it with Méjico Lindo. This whole trip was a bust. As much as I hate to admit it, Mom was right. We’ll figure out how to find our way back to Arizona tomorrow.”

Richard nodded his agreement.“Verdad.” [“Truth.”]

Mateo was still complaining about his cannons. “That’s ’cause those cannons are old Napoleons, and no one has fired them in a decade. The generals can’t 14 Jackson Cain expect us to learn this shit overnight. We don’t even know how to aim the damn guns.”

“I don’t even know how much powder to use,” Rinaldi said.

“Or how to make the right kind of hideputa [son-ofa-whore] powder,” Mateo said.

“We’re using the same mix of sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter that we use to load rifles,” Enriqué said.

“Except those howitzers aren’t saddle rifles,” Mateo said.

“They aren’t handguns either,” Enriqué said.

“Why’d the general give us the job anyway?” Enriqué asked. “We’re cavalry. We ain’t no artillery.”

“Someone has it in for us,” Rinaldi said.

“He gave the job to me,” Mateo said, “not to you hombres. You won’t get blamed. I will, and Ortega will be right. I was supposed to figure out how to make those guns work. I let him down.”

“It’s not our fault that Sonora doesn’t have real artillery officers,” Rinaldi said.

Richard had just graduated at the top of his class from West Point as an artillery officer. He was so young though, only nineteen, that they asked him to take a year off before the army gave him a field commission. Emboldened by three shots of tequila, Richard tore a sheet of writing paper from his knapsack pad and began filling it with ballistics equations. He then tapped Mateo on the shoulder.

“You have three basic problems,” Richard said. “You need someone from your university who knows integral calculus to compute your trajectories. He’ll understand these equations here.” Richard wrote out a glossary, defining the symbols. “He then has to find a good book on the chemistry of explosives. He will then be able to tell you how to mix the cordite you need to power your shells.”

“Cordite?” Mateo asked.

“None of the European Great Powers are using black powder for their artillery and their other high-powered weapons,” Richard said. “Not anymore. America is phasing it out too. You’ll need nitroglycerin, if you want to manufacture nitrocellulose and nitro-guanidine, both of which you really need if you want to produce the cordite necessary for really high-quality howitzer powder. It’s not easy to make though.”

“I can’t even make a shell go a hundred yards,” Mateo grunted, eyes downcast.

“Aim the guns at a forty-five-degree angle for maximum range,” Richard said, “and then—”

Stopping in midsentence, he looked up from his paper full of equations and saw the troopers were all circling around him, staring at him, fixedly, fascinated—a little too fascinated. Mateo was suddenly putting his arm around his shoulders.

You had to show off, didn’t you ? Richard cursed silently. How in living hell do you get out of this one?

Rachel came back. Hearing Richard’s last remarks and seeing the paper full of equations, she instantly realized how badly Richard had screwed up. She removed Mateo’s arm from Richard’s shoulders.

“Richard, we are out of here.”

A woman in a black robe stood with a youthful captain of the guard on the third step of the Great Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl. The widowed stepmother to the governor of the Sinaloa, she was that state’s true ruler and now ran Chihuahua as well. She was also the wealthiest woman in all of Central America. She had made countless enemies over the years, and if she truly wanted to go out in public, she was wise to do it incognito. The black robe effectively disguised her appearance. With the hood up, most people mistook her for a priest.

She wanted to stand next to the young capitán during the next few minutes and watch his reaction when the enormity of his fate finally and irrevocably sank in.

She had commissioned this particular pyramid almost fifteen years before. She had overseen its construction and had visited it countless times. Still it never failed to impress her. Close up, it was so vast that no one could fathom its dimensions. It was as if it encompassed the entire universe.

Its square base was three hundred yards along the edges. Its sloping sides were lined with hundreds of steps—so numerous they seemed to reach the sun. At its top, off to one side, was the sanctuary of Quetzalcoatl—the god-king. Many mejicanos viewed him as the Aztec Jesus Christ. Quetzalcoatl was the only god in their firmament who had once lived and walked among them and who actually liked the mejicano people. Hanging on the sanctuary wall atop the temple was a stunning representation of Quetzalcoatl, an immense mosaic rendered in gold, silver, and turquoise.

But on the flat summit also stood several gesticulating priests, brandishing machetes and obsidian carving knives. Before them was a limestone altar, four feet high and six feet long—the infamous stone on which countless victims had been, as the Lady Dolorosa liked to mockingly put it with a sly sneer curling her upper lip, “heartlessly sacrificed.”

Shrouded in human skins, crowned with gleaming headdresses of elaborately woven eagle plumes, gemstones, and glittering strands of finely spun silver and gold, the bloodstained holy men harangued the roaring throng, shaking their big gore-dripping obsidian knives at the howling masses below.

The pyramid was cordoned off and federales kept the surrounding mob approximately a hundred feet from the temple’s base. The Señorita needed federales to control them. The crowd numbered in the thousands, and they howled continually: “Blood for Quetzalcoatl!” She still could not believe how popular her human sacrifices were with Sinaloa’s populace.

Four hulking novitiates appeared at the pyramid’s base with the terrified wretch in hand. Partially flayed by the Grand Inquisitor, he was almost too weakened to resist. But one glimpse of the priests—their knives, the stone—and he was a raving madman with the strength of the demented.

The Señorita had chosen her spot on the pyramid well. Her ex-lover was about to be dragged, kicking and screaming, past her on his way up the terraced steps to the sacrificial stone. In fact, he was so close she could discern his whip welts, burns, knife slashes, his missing teeth and fingernails, to say nothing of large swaths of stripped-away skin. From the way his right arm was bent and pressed against his chest, she inferred that her Inquisitor had dislocated that shoulder, probably on the strappado or the rack.

There. They were dragging him up the first step less than ten feet from her.

“Ey, hombre!” she yelled at him.

Recognizing her voice, he abruptly turned his head and stared straight into her eyes. The shock of recognition shook him to his core.

“Why are you doing this to me?” he shouted at her. “What did I do to you?”

She quickly crossed the short distance between them. The priests, sensing who she was, quickly stopped on the fourth step. Mounting that step, she leaned toward the captain, her mouth and eyes bursting into a blazing sunburst of a smile. When the two of them were nose to nose, eyes locked, she said:

“You were a truly terrible fuck.” The Lady Dolorosa spoke softly, her smile still grand and glorious. Looking back at her new major—a man whose name she also could not, did not, remember and would never remember—and staring him straight in the eye, she grinned condescendingly and said: “Got the picture, puto? You comprende? That’s what happens to hombres who can’t cut it between the sheets.”

The big man in the black Plainsman hat with the flat crown and broad uncreased brim stared into the campfire. Dropping to one knee, he fed several dried-out cottonwood branches into the blaze, warmed his hands, and then drank some more mezcal out of the neck of the bottle.

“We gonna take that bank, Torn?” the man on his right said.

Slater passed the bottle to his friend and nodded slowly. He’d done time with Moreno in the Sonoran Pit—arguably the worst of Méjico’s many despicable slave-labor prison mines—for three long years, and he trusted him. They’d been through hell together, and Luis did every minute of it standing straight up. If he couldn’t rely on the man here on the outside, he couldn’t rely on anyone, and Slater couldn’t take down major banks and payroll trains all by himself. Even worse, since Slater was wanted in thirteen states and territories, as well as the states of Sonora, Sinaloa, and Chihuahua, and had the same $20,000 price on his head in both the U.S. and Méjico, trust was a luxury he couldn’t usually afford.

But for three years, he and Moreno had survived that prison hellhole together, and afterward they’d robbed banks and trains together. Yes, Moreno was a man you could ride the river with.

Their third man, Alberto Segundo, sitting on his saddle blanket by the staked-out horses and finishing his dinner, was another story. His older brother, Roberto, had been Moreno’s oldest friend, and that man had proven himself in the Sonoran Pit as well. He’d finally died there—trapped in a cave-in. Before he’d died, however, he’d convinced Moreno to take his little brother on a job, if they ever got out.

And it turned out they needed Alberto. They were short a man, time was running out, the payroll was about to arrive at the bank, and so they’d taken him on. None of which meant they could rely on him. His appearance alone reeked of lifelong failure and bad mistakes: He was missing half his teeth and one eye. There was nothing anyone could do about that, but he was also a drunk, and he stank. They had to force him to wash himself, his clothes, and his long, straggly, stinking hair in the occasional stream. He couldn’t stop his almost insane boasting about how tough he was—how many federales he’d killed, how many banks he’d knocked over, and how many trains he’d robbed. Any man who bragged about such stuff to Outlaw Torn Slater was clearly . . . muy ignorante y muy maníaco.

But they didn’t have time to find anyone else.

“Think Alberto’ll hold up his end?” Slater asked.

“All he has to do is guard those remounts for us up the trail.”

“I wouldn’t trust him to carry a dozen tamales across the street.”

“He’ll do it,” Luis said. “He’ll be there. If he isn’t there, he won’t get his end.”

Slater stared at him, silent.

“If he’s not there, Torn, we’ll hunt him down and kill him.”

Torn Slater was still silent.

“You want me to kill him, amigo? Now. Just say the word.”

“Not yet. Maybe he’ll do his job.”

“Stranger things have happened,” Moreno said, nodding his head.

Slater looked away.

“Ey, compadre,” Moreno said, smiling, hoping to lighten Slater’s mood. “What you want to do with your end?”

Slater shrugged. “Same as always.”

“What’s that?” Moreno said, genuinely curious.

“Hard liquor, fast women, slow horses.”

“And waste the rest?” Moreno said, finishing the rest.

“Verdad.”

“Then what?”

“Rob every bank, fuck every woman, and kill every swingin’-dick, lawin’ sonofabitch that gets in my way.”

“You left out trains,” Moreno said. “We blow them también.”

“Trains too,” Slater said.

Moreno shook his head sadly.

“What’s wrong?” Slater asked.

“Is that all you think about? ¿Pesos, gatito y muerta?” [“Money, pussy, and death?”]

“What else is there?” Slater said. “We rob banks and trains for a living. We don’t live lives of fine distinction.”

“But blood and putas, pesos and death, that ain’t no life for us—not siempre [forever] .”

Slater allowed him a not-unfriendly smile. “We got tequila too.”

Now Moreno looked away, shaking his head, unamused.

“So what you wanna do with all this money?” Slater asked. “Invest it with El Presidente Porfirio or J. Pierpont Morgan? The Señorita? Try that and she’ll put us in one of her prison mines.”

“I got nothing against mines. I got a mine up in the Sierra Madres—very remote. We take that bank money and head on up there. We pick up provisions along the way, and, when we get there, we bury the money nearby. We work the mine, sluice the streams, and when we get bored, we hunt game and we fish. They got deer, antelope, trout, and bass like you ain’t never seen in your life. In the nearby indios villages, they got muchas buenas indias puras if we want chiquitas. And who knows? Maybe we also take a fortune in oro puro [pure gold] out of that mine. Main thing is we don’t come down off that mountain till the federales forget who we are, forget what we did, and forget we’d ever been. Then we get ourselves a real life—one with no more banks to hit, no more trains to rob, and no more lawmen dogging our trail.”

Slater stared at his amigo, silent.

“Verdad? ” Moreno finally asked.

“Verdad, but, amigo, we got one more bank to rob—tomorrow morning.”

“But still, think about that mine, amigo, the hunting and fishing, the chiquitas? How long has it been since you relaxed? You interested?”

“I’m interested in that next bank,” Slater said.

“I know, amigo. We got one more bank to rob. Always one more bank and train to rob. But after that, we back off for a while, no? Promise me you’ll think about it?”

Slater slapped his friend on the shoulder. “Sí, mi amigo, I’ll think about it. Why not? Why the hell not?”

In the cantina Rachel politely removed the major’s arm from her brother’s shoulder.

“He’s not going with you,” she said to Mateo.

Major Mateo Cardozo did not seem upset. Treating her to an affectionate grin, he said: “Sí, I understand completely.” Mateo picked his military hat up from the bar and placed it over his heart. “But on the other hand, there are some hombres muy malos y muy duros in this benighted land, and when two gringos, such as yourselves, come here so far from home, they have need of amigos such as us, no?”

“We have muchos buenos amigos here already,” Rachel said. “We aren’t alone.”

She and Richard both hesitated to say who their parents were. Their ransom would be worth a fortune.

“I am sure you are not, guapa [beautiful],” Mateo said.

“And you aren’t taking him with you,” Rachel said, standing her ground and holding Richard’s arm.

“I really don’t know much about artillery anyway,” Richard said, still trying to backpedal. “I was only spouting off.”

“Richard,” Rachel said. “Shut up.”

Mateo gave them both another captivating smile. “What can I do to prove I love you, that I am a man of trust? How about un abrazo? All you gringos like the abrazo.”

Mateo was a big man—at least six-two—with broad shoulders, and under his tan army shirt, his biceps bulged. Richard, however, was a good six feet four, and had the muscles of a seasoned rock-climber, which was what he was. He’d also boxed, wrestled, and done high-platform diving at West Point. Still, when Mateo wrapped Richard in his big burly arms, Richard felt as if he’d been embraced by a grizzly bear.

“See,” Mateo said, “I give your brother the abrazo. We are amigos—now, siempre [forever]. I will never go back on that.”

A crowd was gathering around them now, which not only made Rachel even more nervous, it seemed to bother Mateo.

“Tell you what,” he said to Rachel. “Let’s you and me go outside and discuss this. Too many ears in here. We’ll work something out. We won’t shanghai anybody. We’re soldados not hombres malos [bad men].”

Apprehensive but still wanting to hear what he said, Rachel followed Mateo out the side door and into the alley.

“Those hombres back there, they aren’t as simpático as me,” Mateo said. “They get ahold of you, they’ll drag you into this alley and rape you so malo-duro you’ll never fuck again. Not me. I’m uno mucho bueno hombre.”

“And I’m una mucha buena mujer [a very good woman]. But you take my brother, and I won’t stop till I kill you. You die, and I’ll carve my name on your tombstone. I’ll harrow hell for your excremento-stinking soul.”

Suddenly, Rachel saw a blur, and Mateo’s big right hand slapped her temple hard enough to ring temple bells and hang stars. Slamming her head against the adobe wall behind her, Mateo grabbed her throat and whispered:

“You watch your mouth, puta. I’ll drag you out of here in shackles and leg irons. I’ll sell your gringa ass into a casa de puta dura bruta [a rough whorehouse]. You’ll die there turning muchos tortuosos tricks [many torturous tricks].”

But Rachel wouldn’t back down. Shaking loose from Mateo’s grip, she began beating on his chest with her fists, ripping his cheeks with her fingernails, kicking his shins with her heavy boots. She about to shout her mother’s name—she was so angry she didn’t care what happened.

“We have connections!” she shouted. “We’re not nobodies. Our mother is one of the most powerful people in North America! We’ll come after you with police, politicians, whatever it takes. Our mother will—”

But she never got it out. In a blind, red-eyed rage, Mateo thundered:

“PU-TA!!!”

Then he hit her in the left temple, not with his fist but with the shot-loaded, whip-spring buttstock of his wrist-quirt—a makeshift blackjack.

She didn’t pass out immediately. She stared at him in what seemed to be wide-eyed wonder.

“What the fuck?” was all she said.

Then her eyes slowly closed. Passing out, she slid down the cantina wall. Rubbing his torn cheek, Mateo stared in shock at her, at what he’d done.

“Lo siento, chiquita,” [“I’m sorry, baby”] he said to her sadly. “I think I maybe killed you, but you got me muy loco.” He studied her for one more long, hard moment. “Aw, fuck it,” he finally said with a head-shaking shrug. “Así es como sucede a veces.” [ “That’s the way it happens sometimes.”]

Heading back into the cantina, he grabbed Richard and dragged him out to their mounts, which were tied to the cantina’s hitchrack. When his men came out with his hat and jacket, he commandeered one of the cantina patron’s horses and told Richard to mount up. Instead Richard started to turn around and look for his sister, but before Richard could go into the alley and find her, Mateo laid the quirt’s leaded stock over the top of his head. Catching Richard on the way down, Mateo hoisted him up face-first and belly-down across the saddle of the confiscated bay. Using a coiled saddle rope to secure Richard, Mateo grabbed the horse’s mecate and swung onto his big horse. Dallying the mecate around his pummel, he led his men and Richard—trussed up, unconscious, and belly-down over the mount—toward the army fort.

“Amigo,” Mateo said to the unconscious Richard, “welcome to the Sonoran rurales.”

Lady Dolorosa and her new capitán watched the four novitiates drag the Lady’s ex-lover up the temple’s stepped slope. She was giving him a shy, demure wave.

“Yes, I shall almost miss you, whatever your name was. We did have some fine times. We must have. I kept you around for over a month.” She looked at her new prospect. “To tell you the truth, I don’t remember much about any of my lovers. When I try to recall their faces and features, it’s as if their memories seem to vanish without a trace. In my head they all blur into a single, generic, composite male.”

She turned to her “prospect.” “But every day is a new beginning, and now I have you. Any questions?” she asked, giving him her most endearing smile.

“I was curious why we’re here,” he said nervously.

“Think of this as motivation. That’s what I try to instill in all my eager young boys: the passion to serve and excel.”

“To serve and excel in the service of Madre Méjico?” he asked, confused.

Lady Dolorosa broke into a series of mocking, mean-spirited giggles.

“No, silly. I’m talking about fealty to my bed and body, of course! I thought you knew. I can’t sleep nights and one of the few things that distracts me in those dreadful nocturnal hours is really good . . . sex. You able to excel in that department? You better be.”

“Of course, My Lady. You’re the most beautiful, irresistible woman I’ve ever seen, and you’re my ruler.”

“Funny, that’s just what who’s-it up there on the pyramid used to say. Flattering words, however, are no substitute for action and endurance. Stamina—that’s what I require from my willing young men—juggernaut stamina. I do hope you’re up to the task—unlike what’s-his-face.”

An almost preternaturally shrill and piercing scream ripped through their conversation like a thunderbolt.

“Ah, the pièce de résistance!” Lady Dolorosa shouted to her new capitán above the crowd’s ear-cracking cheers.

Her former lover—up on the altar—was still alive, and the Señorita’s head priest was covered with the man’s gore as he stabbed and hacked his way into his chest cavity. Reaching deep into it, the priest slashed the aortas and yanked out his victim’s still-throbbing heart. After shoving it straight into the man’s hysterically screaming face, he lifted it high overhead for the crazed congregation to see. He then tossed it into a huge ceramic crock filled with the hearts of those previously immolated.

His assistants hung her ex-lover by the heels over a nearby edge, along which a gutter ran all the way down into a ground trough. As thoroughly as any slaughtered steer, the man was finally exsanguinated, his blood filling a huge ceramic crock below.

When she looked back up at the summit, the head priest was hacking at the man’s neck with a black, razor-sharp obsidian blade. When he cut through, the man’s head slipped off the altar and hit the stone summit with a sickening crack! The priest picked up the head by the hair and flung it down the terraced slope. It hit every one of the hundreds upon hundreds of steps on the way down.

“Good-bye, Pancho,” she muttered half aloud, “or whatever the hell your name was.”

“Do you wish to go anyplace else?” the capitán said, looking a little queasy.

“No, this has been amusement enough. I have to get back to the palace before my colossal joke of a stepson burns the place down. You can do whatever you have to do. My bodyguards here will take me back, but I must see you tonight at ten p.m. sharp. Don’t be late.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“Until then?”

“Until then . . . El Dopo.”

She pinched his cheek so long and hard that his squinting eyes teared, and the bruise quickly turned garishly, sickeningly livid. Studying her handiwork, she could not resist pinching it again. And again. And again.

Turning abruptly, she headed toward her team of bodyguards, which had remained a discreet twenty or so feet behind them. When she reached them, she paused for just a second to look back at her new lover.

“Just one more thing, Capitán.”

“Yes, My Lady?”

“Do not ever disappoint me. I am the last woman in the world you want to disappoint.”

Two hardcase strangers in black frock coats, matching broad-brimmed hats, and white shirts with black dangling bow ties rode up Culiacán’s main street. With two huge bulging carpetbags strapped to each of their saddles, they easily passed for two ranchers arriving at the bank to make a deposit. Even the pack mule following them, laden with pa