Dead Men Don't Lie. Jackson Cain

up most of the bandits as soon as they exited the arroyo. Those who made it to the train attempted to press themselves along the sides of the boxcars and position themselves outside the big gun’s line of fire. Only when they spread out from the flatcar were they again in range, and the soldado on the Gatling had a shot at them.

      Several of the banditos were squeezing between the boxcars. Scaling the end-ladders, they were crawling over the roofs and sighting in on the two soldados manning the Gatling. One of them shot the soldado manning the big gun. Antonio pushed the gunner off the boxcar and took over. Several bursts from his Gatling sent the bandits scrambling back down the ladders or leaping over the side.

      In the meantime two bandits jumped off their horses onto the far end of the flatbed. Close together, they attacked Eléna. With Rachel’s head still in her lap, Eléna eared back the double hammers. She and Rachel were a dozen feet from the banditos, the twin barrels were sawed off at the breech, and their pattern was immense. Eléna blew the two off the car with the first barrel. Seconds later three more took their place. They were twenty feet away, and close enough together that again a single barrel killed all of them.

      Breaking open the shotgun, Eléna quickly shook and shucked out the shell casings. Cramming two more into the barrels, she’d eared back the hammers just in time to blow a nearby pistol-waving bandit off his horse, then another, even as additional bandits charged. All the while bodies piled up outside her car and on both sides of the trackbed. When she ran out of shells, she raised her old .44 caliber U.S. Army Colt, a sidearm powerful enough to knock a man off his feet, and it sure as hell did that—knocking bandits off the car as they clambered aboard and off their horses, all of them piling atop the rising sprawl of dead men below.

      When the Colt was empty, Antonio tossed her his long-barrel .36 caliber Navy Colt, which she caught two-handed. After emptying the Navy, she had no cartridges for it, but she had time enough to attempt to reload her .44. Flipping open the loading gate, she was ejecting shell casings and shoving rounds into its wheel as fast as she could.

      She’d just closed the loading gate when a tall, rawboned bandit in a straw, floppy-brimmed sombrero, a gray collarless shirt, filthy denims, rope sandals—and with a stench that could make a javelina give up a dead buzzard—swung down off his mount and onto Eléna’s car. Kicking the Colt out of her hand, he was standing over her and pointing a cocked pistol directly into her face. Bending over her until they were nose to nose and she could smell his foul breath and wince at his filthy mouthful of broken, missing, and rotten teeth, he said:

      “Tell me what hell looks like, puta.”

      A pistol rose up under the bandit’s chin and fired so close to Eléna’s head that her ears rung and its side-flash scorched her neck. Covered with the bandit’s blood, Eléna looked down and saw Rachel wide awake, her eyes locked on Eléna’s and the Army Colt smoking in her fist. She had come out of her coma long enough to grab the .44 up off the flatbed and shoot the bandit under the jaw.

      And save Eléna’s life.

      Then Rachel’s left arm relaxed, and her head settled back onto Eléna’s lap. Her right fist, which had shoved the gun directly under the bandit’s jaw, dropped back onto the flatbed. The pistol remained rigidly locked in her unconscious grip.

      Prizing the .44 out of Rachel’s still-clenched fist, Eléna quickly pivoted her head, glancing at both sides of the flatbed, looking for bandits to shoot. To her surprise, there weren’t any.

      Then she noticed the silence.

      Antonio wasn’t firing the Gatling.

      “Everything okay?” she yelled up to him.

      He had run up to the next boxcar to get a glimpse of the barranca’s north end and the front of the train. He was back up above the flatbed.

      “A couple of bandits took off,” he yelled down to Eléna. “They looked pretty shot up. They were trying to haul away some amigos who looked even worse.”

      “Are they coming back?”

      “Naw, they’re in bad shape.”

      The engineer was jogging up the trackbed toward them.

      “Where were you?” Eléna asked.

      “Hiding under the locomotive,” he said without shame.

      “Muy bueno,” Antonio said. “I’m glad you’re still alive. We need you to take this thing north.”

      “To Nogales?”

      “No, El Rancho del Cielo,” Eléna said. “We got a very sick woman here who’s going home. You get us there, you’ll have mucho dinero.”

      She looked down at Rachel then. To her surprise her eyes were open again. She was staring at Eléna fixedly.

      “Gracias,” Rachel whispered. “Muchas gracias, mi amiga.”

      PART VII

      She had to save Rachel.

      —ELÉNA VASQUEZ

      Chapter 28

      The Señorita Dolorosa led her court ladies into her palatial bedroom suite.

      “I have a special treat for you,” she announced. “A new lover. He’s going to be here in a few minutes. When he comes in here, you have to watch.”

      The Señorita loved terrifying and humiliating her lovers in front of her ladies. They put on a good front and pretended to enjoy the spectacle. Their survival often depended on appearing happy and cheerful, even when they were frightened half to death.

      Today, however, they were more sanguine than usual. The night before their Lady had presented them with new clothes. This was the first time they had a chance to try them on. Catalina was wearing her new toga of crimson silk, which played off her red hair, matching nail polish, and high-heeled sandals. Rosalita’s outfit was an ebony toga, and it perfectly matched her long raven tresses and sandals. Isabella was attired in bright canary yellow, which complemented her long blond hair, while Roberta’s turquoise robe, sandals, and necklace almost seemed to reflect the deep lustrous blue of her sapphire eyes.

      None of her ladies favored white, knowing that it was the Señorita’s favorite color.

      “Is this new one gifted in bed, My Lady?” Catalina asked. “Is that why you want us to meet him?”

      “Oh, I don’t think it will get that far,” the Lady Dolorosa said. “I plan on having a different kind of fun with him.”

      “What kind of fun?” Roberta asked.

      “He is the most craven man I’ve ever seen. You should have seen him when I took him into our Inquisitor’s chambers. When he saw the Inquisitor thumbscrew a man—who was already moaning, sobbing, and hanging from a strappado—the new man’s bladder released. He started crying at the temple-pyramid when the High Priest ripped out the heart of another of my former lovers. I had to summon my guards and make them force him to watch. I’ve never had one so bloody sensitive before. Usually my paramours are more . . . manly.”

      “What will you do with him, My Lady?” Isabella could barely choke out the words.

      “I thought you’d guess. I’m going to terrify him out of his wits and then have him tortured half to death.”

      “My Lady,” Catalina said, secretly sick with dread, “it sounds so delightful.”

      “Oh, we’ll have some fun with this one.”

      Then the Señorita’s eyes flashed with a merriment so macabre and her smile blazed with a malevolence so feral that her ladies visibly shook involuntarily, even as they struggled to suppress their trembling.

      Her ladies of the court could not imagine what unexpected horror the Señorita Dolorosa planned to perpetrate next.

      Chapter