the horse that dropped and this sight would strike such mortal terror in the other animals they would carry their pitiless riders another fifty miles without complaint until they too fell, hearts exploded from exhaustion and fear.
Tall in the saddle, Azul kicked her horse into motion. She gestured to the east and beckoned her men on, urgently, impatiently. The werewolves began to string out as they increased speed across the valley floor. Azul cast a savage glance back at her six bandits hurtling on horseback behind her. The full moon was already a ghostly wisp in the thickening twilight of the vast El Diablo sky. Below it, the bandita charged across the bleached bone expanse of Mexican desert wastes, blood up, so close to her hated prey she could taste them.
She would taste them, oh yes.
And soon.
Miles away in El Diablo, Tucker caught the silver bullet that Fix pitched him. He gripped it meaningfully in a gloved fist. “You sure about this?” he said.
Fix nodded tersely.
“You?” Tucker asked, swiveling his flinty gaze to Bodie for confirmation.
The big Swede cracked a broken grin. “Hell yeah, I’m sure.”
“It’s your asses if you’re wrong.”
“If’n you was gonna turn into one of them werewolves, you woulda done last night during the first full moon’n I would have put that slug through your heart directly. Like we all agreed.” The taut little shootist Fix shrugged. “A full moon is a full moon. Stands to reason if’n you didn’t turn into no hairy sumbitch then, ya ain’t gonna turn into one tonight. Trust me pardner, if’n you had started howling last night we wouldn’t be having this here conversation because you best believe, friend or no, I would not have hesitated.”
Tucker didn’t doubt him; his pal’s saturnine expression made that plain and clear.
The three tough rugged American gunfighters tugged the handkerchiefs over their faces below their Stetsons, sitting erect in their saddles of three horses on the ridge of the tall ravine looming high above the railroad tracks below. Their loaded six-guns were drawn.
The trio of shootists known as The Guns of Santa Sangre were in the bowels of El Diablo, which meant The Devil in Spanish and was an apt moniker for this dangerous hell hole of a place: a forbidding barrier range of monolithic canyon massifs, towering cliffs and plummeting gorges stretching hundreds of miles in all points of the compass, great super plateaus and bottomless crevasses that gave way to blasted desert oblivion—a true no man’s land. In the west, the dying sun setting over the jagged crags spread a deepening sanguine glow that bled lengthening crimson shadows, colors of the range’s satanic namesake, across a hostile and pitiless terrain. Purple shadows of twilight dappled the colossal gorge. The sun was low, a faint ghost of the full moon in the dim.
A railroad line ran through El Diablo. It was the only way through it. The outlaws had taken position out of sight behind big rocks in the ramparts high atop the rambling system of canyons and would not be spotted by the train when it came.
They wanted to get in and get out.
The desperadoes were armed to the teeth and braced for action, pumped with adrenaline, but had nothing to do but wait for the train to show. So, they jawboned to take the edge off before the shooting started.
“I know you would have shot me through the heart, Fix,” Samuel Tucker agreed, rubbing his beard. The big ruggedly handsome cowboy had a chipped intelligently pale-eyed face, and was leader of the gang because he was the thinker of the bunch. “Sitting up the whole damn night looking up the barrel of your pistol with your finger on the trigger wasn’t my idea of a relaxing evening, friend.”
“You drank up our whole last bottle of whisky, Tucker, what are you gripin’ about?” Bodie scowled, dry and on edge. He hadn’t had a drink in twenty-four hours—the bottle had been their last and Tucker had not let go of it. Figuring it might be their comrade’s last night on earth, Fix and Bodie had let him.
“If it was you, Bodie, you’d have drunk all the whisky too knowing Fix was meaning to shoot you,” Tucker said defensively. “Hell, I know that’s what I told him to do if I became one of them creatures, but I needed some Dutch Courage and under the circumstance you can’t blame a man for taking a drink.”
“Or five,” snorted Fix.
“Or the whole damn bottle,” sputtered Bodie.
“That’s why you been hung all day and we ain’t,” Fix smirked. “Been a pleasure watching you wince from that headache.” The short spare compact gunfighter was dressed in a weathered black suit jacket vest and trousers and wore a black bowler hat instead of a Stetson. His resemblance to an undertaker was fitting. Twin pearl handled Colts hung from his holsters. John Fix was by far the deadliest shot of the three and the coldest killer when the situation demanded it. A sardonic sense of humor and dour disposition were his personal stock in trade.
“Yeah, Tuck, that serves you right drinkin’ all our whisky you bein’ hung all damn day and we ain’t.” Lars Bodie laughed loud, massive barrel chest on his mountainous six-foot eight-inch frame heaving like a steer. The Swede’s muscular tree trunk arm hoisted a hand the size of a cow hoof to swipe a tear of mirth from his friendly, dumb eye.
“Fuck y’all,” Tucker grinned. His hangover had just recently abated as evening came on. “Oughta shove this here silver bullet up both your assholes.”
“That’d be a good trick,” Fix winked.
The shootists all chuckled.
Tucker cracked a grin, heartened by his comrades’ trust. Fix and Bodie had just returned him the silver bullet as a token gesture of faith even though tonight was the second full moon and that slug was their only protection against Tucker if he grew fur and claws. Back in the church of Santa Sangre, Tucker had suffered a flesh wound from one of the wolfmen in the shoot-out. The outlaws had learned that the bite from a werewolf turned you into one and in the heat of battle Tucker did not recollect if he had been bitten or just clawed. Until last night, the gunfighters had not known if their leader would become a wolfman when the next full moon rose.
Luckily, he hadn’t.
And Bodie and Fix were betting that tonight Tucker wouldn’t either. His friends believed he was fine because they simply had to, trusting each other with their lives. Theirs was a codified masculinity. Friendship, camaraderie and mutual reliance was baked in to the character of the three outlaws. It was their religion, all they had. They prayed in the church of fellowship and it had a congregation of three, even though that belief would cost them dear if they were wrong about one of them changing into a werewolf tonight. Tucker soberly regarded Fix and Bodie. He forced a smile. “Well boys, the good news is I ain’t no wolfman and all I got me was a scratch not a bite back there in that church. The bad news is the only reward we got from saving them wretches at the village from them creatures is that one lousy silver bullet. We need this score to pay off.” Tucker’s eyes narrowed. “Focus up, boys. We got us a train to rob.”
Lifting the binoculars to his eyes, Bodie squinted and scanned the empty train tracks far below down the mouth of the El Diablo canyon. Long moments passed as the Swede peered into the distance through the field glasses, scouting. So far, the lines were empty down to the vanishing point of the rail bed in the melting waves of heat in the distance.
No sign of the train yet.
“This place may not be the end of the earth, but you can see it from here,” Bodie scowled as he lowered his binoculars and surveyed the grim, inhospitable region stretching for boundless miles in every direction.
A month before, the three gunslingers had become heroes at Santa Sangre. It seemed like a lifetime ago now. Good deeds can be a bad habit, Fix had remarked then. He was correct. True, it had felt good saving those people, but a chest full of pride didn’t fill an empty belly—they were as broke when they rode out of Santa Sangre