Dead Men Don't Lie. Jackson Cain

unbearable. I had destroyed his body, his mind, and, I honestly believe . . . his soul. I have to admit it was one of the most thrilling experiences of my life.

      “Afterward Díaz assisted me in my conquest of Chihuahua, which I now rule along with Sinaloa. Díaz and I have been closely allied ever since.”

      Her ladies stared at her in astonishment.

      “My Lady, do you always get what you want?” Catalina asked.

      “Siempre.” [“Always.”]

      “You now have wealth, power, fame. Is there anything in life you miss or crave?” Roberta asked.

      Their Lady shrugged, then looked away.

      “Does anything even bother you?” Rosalita asked. “You always seem so confident, so fearless, so sure of yourself.”

      “I wish my nights were better. My days might be filled with excitement and amazement, but tedium tortures my nights. Only exhaustive, nonstop, strenuous fornication can relieve me. But no man has ever proven up to that task—not in the long run, not month after month after month—and so that relief is only transitory. Most of the time, my nights are an agony of boredom, which leads to insomnia, which produces a melancholia that I find infuriatingly . . . intolerable.”

      “What would improve your evenings?” Catalina asked.

      “I’ve had fantasies from time to time of a wondrous lover who would please me not only in bed but who would lighten my soul and enthrall my heart and mind. But to do so he would have to be smarter, wittier, more knowledgeable, and more sexually insatiable than . . . I.” The Señorita smiled wistfully at the sheer absurdity of the idea.

      “Have you ever found a man who came close to fitting that bill?” Rosalita asked.

      “Of course not,” their Lady said.

      “Never?” Catalina asked.

      “How could I? Such a man clearly could never exist.”

      Chapter 17

      Slater had saddled his mount, a big, broad-chested roan. He was taking nothing but a two-gallon water bag, beans and tortillas, jerked antelope, and ammunition. He wore a large black broadcloth shirt loose and over his pants. Under the shirt, two double-sided, black, oiled-silk money belts crisscrossed his back and chest while a third was buckled tightly around his waist just above his gun belt. He was taking only what was his and what he needed. He was leaving the tools and everything else for Moreno, who had become clearly obsessed. He had been laboring in that damn mine like a madman. He even worked nights by torchlight, napping down there. Searching for that drift lode had driven Moreno muy loco, and now his obsession was driving Slater muy loco as well. He couldn’t stand it any longer. Slater had told Moreno he was going to leave, and he was finally doing it. He’d dug too much ore in Díaz slave-labor prison mines, and this mine was too goddamned dangerous.

      I rob banks and trains, the outlaw said to himself. I don’t tunnel through rock and dirt like a goddamn mole.

      Most of all Slater couldn’t bear to wait here and watch his friend die, crushed under a collapsing mountain of rock.

      “Hasta luego, maníaco,” Slater said to himself under his breath. “You want to kill yourself, you’re doin’ it on your own time and by yourself. Maybe someday I’ll catch up with you again—probably when I see your soul in hell.”

      He swung onto the roan, leaned back in the saddle, and lifted the reins. He was wheeling the big horse around when he heard the slow-building boom-boom-boom-boom-BOOOOOOM! Boom-boom-boom-boom-BOOOOOOM! Boom-boom-boom-boom-BOOOOOOM!

      The roan was up on his hocks, spinning around, crow-hopping, whinnying insanely, the mountain’s roar echoing in his ears, each reverberation bouncing and banging off the surrounding mountains, canyon cliffs, and vertiginous chasms, each sound reproducing itself in an infinite progression. Sooty black smoke was billowing and mushrooming out of that hole, while hell itself thundered out of that mine shaft like a portent out of Revelation and detonating death and destruction all across Sonora.

      “Well, that’s that,” Slater said softly. “You put it to him coldcock and country-simple, but the man wouldn’t listen. He went in anyway. So, Moreno, you done it to yourself. You brought that whole goddamn mountain down on your ass. I can’t do nothin’ for you now, not nohow. Time to slope on out of here.”

      But somehow he couldn’t do it.

      He sat there frozen immobile in his saddle.

      Goddamn it to hell.

      He swung down off his heaving roan and slowly quieted him down. Taking him to a patch of mountain grass under a pine, he staked him out and pulled off the saddle. Putting on an old torn shirt, he attached a canteen to his belt and wrapped his bandanna over his mouth and nose. He roped together a dozen precut shoring timbers, to brace and prop up the collapsed tunnel in front of him. Picking up a two-foot pickax, a half-dozen candles, and matches, he crawled, bent over, into the mine. He dragged the shoring timbers behind him.

      He was determined to save his friend.

      Chapter 18

      Mateo led Richard to a massive three-storied building of immaculately whitewashed adobe, which housed the army’s main headquarters. Heading him down two hallways, he took him into the Military Intelligence Center. In a large bullpen surrounded by filing cabinets, intelligence officers, clad in gray uniforms, manned eight desks. They worked by the light of coal-oil lamps, sifting through mountains of paperwork, occasionally pausing to write down notes on foolscap. Refugees from Sinaloa and Chihuahua provided Sonora’s analysts with endless transcribed interviews and depositions, which the analysts used to assess that countr y’s threat potential. The men at the desks worked relentlessly, heads down, funereal as death. Given that countr y’s propensities for violence, terror, and imperial aggression, the analysts had every incentive to take their work seriously.

      “The general and I are old friends, and I asked him for a few minutes of his time,” Mateo said. “He knows more about Díaz, the Señorita, Chihuahua, and Sinaloa than anyone I know.”

      Taking Richard into the corner office, he sat him down on the leather couch. In front of them was an oval-shaped oak coffee table and the desk where the chief of army intelligence, Major General Rafael Ortega, sat. Both desk and coffee table were stained oak. Mateo introduced Richard to the general.

      “Ricardo will be indispensable in developing our artillery,” Mateo said, “which we sorely need. He is from Arizona in Norteamérica, however, and he’s not pleased at our recruitment and disciplinary procedures. Our world seems harsh to him—perhaps because he does not understand our enemy. I want him to know what we are up against. ¿Uno poco momento, por favor?” [“A small moment, please?”]

      The general shrugged. “As you wish, Major. I have something new to show you anyway, which young Ricardo might want to look at as well.”

      General Ortega sent a sergeant to get what he’d referred to, and a minute later the sergeant returned with a half-dozen file folders. He laid them out on the coffee table.

      “On a regular basis, we receive drawings and even photographs depicting the Señorita’s atrocities. One source of these over the years has been the Señorita Dolorosa’s own staff. Her ladies-in-waiting and everyone else around her hate and fear her with a passion. Every so often one of them will sneak out of her palace and escape to Sonora. They know we are always looking for intelligence, so they will, if possible, steal some of the Señorita’s photos before leaving. Suffering from severe insomnia and nocturnal depression, she amuses herself by studying photographs of different atrocities occurring in her torture chambers and in her countr y’s penal system. She has boxes of them. We’ve collected quite a trove of these photos and drawings over the years.”

      “Tell him how these victims end up in the Señorita’s and Díaz’s prisons, slave-labor mines, and torture chambers,” Major Mateo said.