The Guns of Santa Sangre. Eric Red

man looked around him until he located the stagecoach outpost in the distance. It jutted like a broken tooth out of the arid terrain a half a mile away. The small structure sat silent and still. Nothing moved inside, and from what he recalled, nothing would. Flocks of vultures flew in and out of dark windows that resembled eye sockets of a skull. More ugly buzzards perched on the wooden roof or circled like black fangs in the sky, attracted by the death that lay within. A path of his footprints in the sand led from the outpost up to where he had fallen and the indentation of his own shape on the ground with the wide dark stain of dried blood buzzing with flies. The stagecoach junction was a tomb, and while the little building afforded the only shelter from the deadly heat, he would sooner die before returning there.

      But Alvarez knew he better find a doctor before gangrene set in.

      It wasn’t going to be easy.

      The wounded man was in the middle of nowhere, engulfed by pitiless badlands vast and empty that seemingly went on forever. The sun was a searing oven, roasting him from on high.

      What was he going to do? he wondered.

      Better start walking.

      Move those legs.

      So he began taking clumsy steps, buckling under the punishing heat.

      Touching the pocket of his trousers, Alvarez felt the bulge of the pouch; he still had his silver, what had gotten him into all this. Too bad he would not live to spend it because his wound was bad, so much blood lost, and there was nowhere to go for help.

      But he kept walking.

      And walking.

      The day got hotter.

      He grew closer to death with each unsteady step.

      The wounded man would stagger over a hill in desperate hope he would spot some sign of civilization only to crest the rise to face more blasted empty terrain. In his delirium and despair, the thief was not sure how far he had walked before he saw the horses.

      Two of them, in the distance; twin horses and riders melting like a mirage out of the watery waves of rising heat. He raised his hands above his head and flagged them down, praying that the caballeros and hombres astride them were not a hallucination.

      Alvarez had fallen to his knees and wept in relief when the two Federales rode up, even though he had been running from them only yesterday. What a difference a day makes. Their tan button coats and caps blotted the sun as they sat in their saddles, light glinting off their brass buttons and the cartridges in their bullet belts. “I surrender, señors, please, take me in,” the thief begged, and the obliging policia federal took him into custody directly.

      The prisoner Alvarez sat at the table.

      The rusty iron manacles bit his ankles.

      The fat Federale sat across from him. The thin unshaven one leaned against the wall. They were inside a squat single-story outpost nestled in the foothills, a few miles from where he had been picked up. The police station, if it could be called that, was a hovel. Brick walls, dirt floors. A rifle rack in the corner. Two cots against the left wall. Empty whisky bottles. In the next room, he could see the bars of a cell. The air was close and stank of sweaty body odor.

      And gangrene.

      His arm wound had been washed and bound with a dirty cloth, but was infected. He could already smell the onset of necrosis. “I need a doctor,” Alvarez groaned through teeth grit in pain.

      “We said we will get you one,” said the cop behind him. “After you talk.”

      They had found the silver when they searched him. The pouch sat on the table, out of his reach, and there was no point in lying to these men.

      “My name is Pedro Alvarez,” the prisoner began. “And I will tell you what you want to know.” You bet you will, said the grim expressions on his captors’ faces. One way or the other.

      The fat one pushed a worn wanted poster showing a trio of Americanos under his nose. “Do you ride with these men?” the thin one barked. Alvarez stared dumbly at the hard faces of the three bad men in the crude sketches, but the letters on the crumpled paper meant nothing to him.

      “Look at them!”

      “He asked you a question, shit for brains!” The thief got punched in the back of the head by the cop against the wall.

      “I can’t read.” Alvarez lowered his eyes in shame.

      “Their names are Tucker, Bodie and Fix. Hombres muy peligrosos. Gringo gunmen down here who have done many robberies, killed many people with their fast pistolas. Do you ride with them?”

      “No, señors, I do not know these men. I swear I have never seen them.”

      “You have not heard of the reward?”

      “What reward?”

      “You have never ridden with these gunfighters?”

      “I do not know them!”

      The fat officer punched the table with a beefy fist. “Then where did you get the silver? We know you stole it!”

      “I am a thief. I robbed the money, as you said. It was a paymaster in Sinaloa but I did not kill him, señors, just hit him on the head a little bit, enough to drop him. This I swear to you on the grave of my mother. For the last three days I have been on the run. My plan was to catch the stagecoach at the Aqua Verde junction and escape to Mexico City, but the stage it never came. Last night, we had all of us been waiting there for hours at the junction when the trouble started.”

      “Who was waiting?”

      “There were five of us. Two vaqueros, the man who sold the tickets and a fancy woman and her little girl. They steered clear of me, señors, because of my stench for not having bathed in days, and that was fine with me. I did not want to be noticed, you see. My brain was worried the Federales would catch up to me any minute, and if I did not get on that stage and get to Mexico City then I was a dead man.” The prisoner laughed ironically. “Just a few hours ago, I thought getting arrested was the worst thing that could happen to me, but I was wrong. Now here I am, you caught me, and I am relieved because what I met up with last night was worse than anything the law could do to me.”

      “Don’t bet on it.”

      “Put me in jail and throw away the key, señors, it would better than what attacked us. Here I am safe.”

      “Go on. Finish your story.”

      “The stagecoach did not come. Something else did.”

      “Is that what happened to your arm?”

      Alvarez winced, clutching the gruesome bandaged wound in his bicep. “I need a doctor.”

      “That depends on your story.”

      “May I have a cigarette at least?”

      One of the policia pushed over his fixings and matchbox. The thief spat on a piece of rolling paper, added a pinch of shag tobacco, closed it, licked it and put it to his lips. He struck a match and sucked smoke, coughing. “Maybe two hours passed. We looked out the window for any sign of the stagecoach. We would have surely seen its approach for the moon was full and very bright. You could look out and see the whole desert for many miles. But there was no dust on the horizon. And it was so quiet, señors, no desert sounds, no insectos, not even wind. No sweet music of the night. Niente. That is how I knew, how we all knew, something was very wrong. I admit I was very scared, señors.” His eyes widened in horror. “We heard them before we saw them. Howls, many howls, like wolves but not wolves. From everywhere.”

      The Federales exchanged dubious glances.

      “It was an unholy sound that filled our hearts with fear. One of the vaqueros saw the first one through the window and when we rushed over there were many more, circling.