slipped and regained traction and then they were all four up and over the incline and galloping off toward the trail. Catching the peasant’s gaze, Tucker nudged his jaw for him to ride ahead and lead the way, and filled with purpose, the Mexican retraced the trail of his hoof prints he had left heading into town.
They rode across the Durango plain in the heat of the day. A second ridge of mountains appeared beyond the first, brown in the flat light and spackled with green. The washed out sun had risen a few more degrees, and the day would get hotter yet before they reached their destination. And so the battery escort of hired gun killers flanked the hunched, determined brown man they accompanied. Everyone figured that their newly watered horses were refreshed enough to ride at full tilt for twenty minutes before they slowed again. The outfit was making good progress.
They all rode together up a small mountain trail of the first butte.
The humble peasant smiled with simple, pure faith at the three hard men riding along with him.
“You are good men, senors .”
“You don’t know nothing about us,” Tucker said quietly.
“I do.” The Mexican rode eagerly on ahead, out of earshot. “I do…”
The three bad men eyed him like coyotes.
“He don’t know the half,” uttered Fix.
“Like we aim to steal that silver, not waste it on no bullets,” added Bodie humorlessly.
“That’s for damn sure,” Tucker said, half-convinced himself.
“Ignorant wretch is letting the wolf into the chicken coop and don’t know no better.” Fix spat tobacco juice onto a passing lizard and scattered it into the rocks.
Tucker considered the thin, skeletal gunfighter in the black suit and vest covered with dust. He’d ridden with Fix for three years and as long as he’d known him, the other gunfighter was the most pitiless man he had ever met. A good friend, who said what he meant, without question the fastest and deadliest shot of the bunch, but the man had no mercy towards people. John Fix had a fatalistic view of the human condition and his place in it. His tough-mindedness balanced off Bodie’s impulsivity and Tucker’s measured deliberateness. But Fix was a gunsel only, a man who dealt with things as they appeared in front of him, where he struck swiftly and without remorse. He lacked Tucker’s own grasp of the big picture and habit of planning a few steps ahead, which was why Samuel Evander Tucker, late of Dodge City, was the group’s unspoken but unchallenged leader. The three had rode together through the years simply because it seemed like the natural thing to do from the day they first met, never with any specific plan, and every day they seemed to make the decision anew to stick together. When they fought, when their guns came out, they were no longer three, but one, an invincible machine of flying lead, stinking gunpowder and blazing irons, and they killed and shot as one thing with six arms and legs and they never had to talk. These gunslingers were obviously bad men themselves, but they had been through a lot and often and were still alive. If you asked them why they still stuck together, each would have said the same thing.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
The shootists’ rode side by side with the peasant across the dusty desert of Durango under the burning sun on the road to Santa Sangre. The full moon hung faint as a ghost in the cloudless sky on the horizon, like a portent.
The trail curved higher around the upper ridge, and the riders slowed to a trot as the horses trod over the uneven ground. The peasant rode in the lead, followed by Tucker, then Bodie, then Fix in steady single-file formation.
They all heard the sudden shrill castanet.
The Mexican’s horse violently reared, front legs bicycling, eyes wide in alarm, whinnying in terror. Its rider emitted a high-pitched scream of surprise, coming out of the stirrups as the mustang rose up on its hind legs in panic. A coiled
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