Dead Men Don't Lie. Jackson Cain

be given mucho dinero, and even more important, you know what?”

      “¿Tequila y buenas mujeres?” [“Tequila and beautiful women?”] Richard asked with mocking derision.

      “And something much, much better—¡libertad! [freedom!]”

      “And if I say no?”

      Mateo gave Ricardo his widest, most charming smile. “My young compadre, that is not a possibility you wish to contemplate. All our survivals are at stake, yours too. If we do not make those guns work, we will all suffer the tortures of the damned and die a thousand times.”

      “We will suffer a Sinaloan Inquisition?”

      “I will, but not you. You, young muchacho? I will see you die a thousand times long before I do. I will see to it personally.” For once Mateo wasn’t smiling.

      Chapter 9

      That night Slater and Moreno rode into Alberto’s camp behind the clump of boulders up in the Sierra Madre foothills. He was sitting in front of a blazing fire, drunk on tequila, shoving hot beans and tortillas into his mouth.

      “You got the pesos?” Alberto asked with an inebriated grin.

      “You got anything in your head except tamales y frijoles?” Moreno asked, swinging down from his horse.

      Alberto put down his beans. He stood and, lowering his hand onto his holstered pistol, he said:

      “You really wanna fuck with me?”

      “Nobody wanna fuck anybody dumb as you,” Slater said. “Anyway we got the pesetas—more than you can ever imagine.”

      Alberto still had his hand on his gun.

      “Ey, amigo,” Moreno said, slapping Alberto’s back, giving him his widest, most ingratiating grin. “What’s more important? Pesos in your saddlebags or notches on your pistola? Come. Bring the tequila. We got to celebrate. You are now a wealthy man.”

      Turning around toward his mount, Moreno unhooked a valise, opened it up, and tossed it at Alberto’s feet. Bound-up packs of hundred-dollar bills spilled out in front of the drunken man.

      “Ah, I knew you was simpático,” Alberto said. “We will have mucho bueno times, you, Señor Slater, and me, no?”

      Hypnotized by the riches strewn in front of him, he knelt down and opened up money bag after money bag after money bag on the blanket in front of the fire.

      “It is mucho bueno, muy bueno,” the inebriated outlaw whispered.

      “No,” Slater said. “It’s no good, no bueno.”

      The two bandits stared at Slater. Alberto was confused.

      “There’s too much money in them bags, Moreno. Didn’t you hear the banker? We didn’t hit any federale payroll. We intercepted a money shipment straight from the U.S. Treasury to El Presidente Díaz himself. We got us over a hundred fifty thousand fresh-minted yanqui hundred-dollar bills. How many brand-new, hot-off-the-printing-presses hundred-dollar bills you ever seen in Méjico? Spend one of those—take one into a bank, a hotel, take one anyplace, even into a dirt-poor Chiapas cantina—and you’ll have Díaz, his federales, his rurales, the U.S. Army, every bounty hunter south of the Rio climbing up our asses.”

      “What you suggest we do?” Moreno asked.

      “I’m taking my share and going to ground. I’ll stash it and live off the land till I can figure out how to spend it. It may take me years to dig it up.”

      “You sayin’ we got a fortune, but we can’t spend it?” Moreno asked.

      “Not one bill of it. It’s so hot, it’s smokin’.”

      “Es verdad,” Moreno said softly, half to himself, finally understanding their problem.

      “You just ain’t got the cojones to spend it,” Alberto said, his hand, once more, hovering over his sidearm. “I’m taking my share right back to my village. I left it like a thief in the night, but I’m comin’ back rich as Don Porfirio himself. I’m livin’ like a grandee from here on out, and any hombre says different, he’s havin’ it out with me.”

      Slater cross-drew a pistol out of his belt in a smooth, single motion and shot the intoxicated man just above his right eye.

      “Had to be done,” Moreno said, slowly nodding. “He was a threat to both of us.”

      They paused only to eat the rest of the beans, washing them down with black coffee. Quickly, emptying the rest of the blackened pot onto the campfire, they kicked dirt over the rest. Unsaddling their horses, they walked to the remuda, threw the saddles onto their new mounts, and cinched them up. They threw a pad, crossbucks, and panniers onto a fresh mule. They then meticulously loaded the gear and money bags on it.

      They cut the exhausted stock loose.

      We got fresh horses, a strong pack mule, mucho dinero, and a head start, Slater thought bleakly. That’s all I ever asked for.

      Chapter 10

      Eléna spread a thin gray mattress on the floor of the flatbed train car and covered it with a sheet. Seating herself at the head of the mattress with her legs spread out and a dark pillow on her lap, Antonio gently placed Rachel on the mattress, easing her head onto Eléna’s pillow. Rachel’s face was flushed with fever. Eléna wiped her brow with a cool wet washcloth.

      “You sure you want to ride on the flatcar?” Antonio asked.

      “The air will be better here than in the boxcars,” Eléna said.

      “If we catch a rainstorm or banditos attack, the boxcars will provide more protection.”

      “Then we’ll carry Rachel into a boxcar.”

      Eléna looked down at Rachel and emitted a long, slow sigh. She was even more worried about the skull fracture than she had been back at the house. The fractured temple was depressed, which meant, according to Dr. Pérez, that it was putting pressure on the brain. A surgeon, he had said, would need to do a craniotomy to inspect the condition of both the brain and the protective tissue enveloping it. The surgeon would then have to remove the skull segments, reassemble them, and put the jigsaw puzzle pieces of patchworked cranium back into place. Eléna and Dr. Pérez only knew of one doctor and one hospital within a radius of a thousand miles that could conceivably perform the operation: Dr. Frank Ryan at El Hospital del Rancho—Rachel’s father.

      No way it could be done in Mexico.

      Eléna glanced at her pocket watch. She had inherited it from her grandfather. A B. W. Raymond, it was a big railroad watch with a white face and roman numerals marking the minutes. She’d especially loved the anachronistic IIII, which represented the numeral 4. Since it was a railroad watch, it was the right timepiece for their trip. In fact, it was time for the train to pull out. As if on cue, the wood-fueled locomotive, which stood four cars ahead of them, screeched three long whistle bursts. Slowly but with increasing frequency its engine chugged, lurched, and strained, black smoke billowing out of the diamond-shaped stack. Gradually, the wheels rotated, and the cars jerked into motion.

      The train was thankfully taking off on time—something of a miracle in Mexico. Eléna took that as a good omen. She needed the train to depart on time. The clock was running out on Eléna and her patient. In thirty-six hours the train would hopefully pull into a rail stop, which was a one-hour wagon ride to the Ryans’ rancho. She would contact Katherine Ryan when she got there. She had been afraid to wire Katherine, telling her that she was bringing her daughter home, for fear that prospective kidnappers might intercept the message. Rachel would bring a queen’s ransom down here.

      All Eléna could hope was that she’d find a wagon and horses at the train station.

      * * *

      Time was so precious she’d sold her cantina in under three