up the whole damn night looking up the barrel of your pistol with your finger on the trigger wasn’t my idea of a relaxing evening, friend.”
“You drank up our whole last bottle of whisky, Tucker, what are you gripin’ about?” Bodie scowled, dry and on edge. He hadn’t had a drink in twenty-four hours—the bottle had been their last and Tucker had not let go of it. Figuring it might be their comrade’s last night on earth, Fix and Bodie had let him.
“If it was you, Bodie, you’d have drunk all the whisky too knowing Fix was meaning to shoot you,” Tucker said defensively. “Hell, I know that’s what I told him to do if I became one of them creatures, but I needed some Dutch Courage and under the circumstance you can’t blame a man for taking a drink.”
“Or five,” snorted Fix.
“Or the whole damn bottle,” sputtered Bodie.
“That’s why you been hung all day and we ain’t,” Fix smirked. “Been a pleasure watching you wince from that headache.” The short spare compact gunfighter was dressed in a weathered black suit jacket vest and trousers and wore a black bowler hat instead of a Stetson. His resemblance to an undertaker was fitting. Twin pearl handled Colts hung from his holsters. John Fix was by far the deadliest shot of the three and the coldest killer when the situation demanded it. A sardonic sense of humor and dour disposition were his personal stock in trade.
“Yeah, Tuck, that serves you right drinkin’ all our whisky you bein’ hung all damn day and we ain’t.” Lars Bodie laughed loud, massive barrel chest on his mountainous six-foot eight-inch frame heaving like a steer. The Swede’s muscular tree trunk arm hoisted a hand the size of a cow hoof to swipe a tear of mirth from his friendly, dumb eye.
“Fuck y’all,” Tucker grinned. His hangover had just recently abated as evening came on. “Oughta shove this here silver bullet up both your assholes.”
“That’d be a good trick,” Fix winked.
The shootists all chuckled.
Tucker cracked a grin, heartened by his comrades’ trust. Fix and Bodie had just returned him the silver bullet as a token gesture of faith even though tonight was the second full moon and that slug was their only protection against Tucker if he grew fur and claws. Back in the church of Santa Sangre, Tucker had suffered a flesh wound from one of the wolfmen in the shoot-out. The outlaws had learned that the bite from a werewolf turned you into one and in the heat of battle Tucker did not recollect if he had been bitten or just clawed. Until last night, the gunfighters had not known if their leader would become a wolfman when the next full moon rose.
Luckily, he hadn’t.
And Bodie and Fix were betting that tonight Tucker wouldn’t either. His friends believed he was fine because they simply had to, trusting each other with their lives. Theirs was a codified masculinity. Friendship, camaraderie and mutual reliance was baked in to the character of the three outlaws. It was their religion, all they had. They prayed in the church of fellowship and it had a congregation of three, even though that belief would cost them dear if they were wrong about one of them changing into a werewolf tonight. Tucker soberly regarded Fix and Bodie. He forced a smile. “Well boys, the good news is I ain’t no wolfman and all I got me was a scratch not a bite back there in that church. The bad news is the only reward we got from saving them wretches at the village from them creatures is that one lousy silver bullet. We need this score to pay off.” Tucker’s eyes narrowed. “Focus up, boys. We got us a train to rob.”
Lifting the binoculars to his eyes, Bodie squinted and scanned the empty train tracks far below down the mouth of the El Diablo canyon. Long moments passed as the Swede peered into the distance through the field glasses, scouting. So far, the lines were empty down to the vanishing point of the rail bed in the melting waves of heat in the distance.
No sign of the train yet.
“This place may not be the end of the earth, but you can see it from here,” Bodie scowled as he lowered his binoculars and surveyed the grim, inhospitable region stretching for boundless miles in every direction.
A month before, the three gunslingers had become heroes at Santa Sangre. It seemed like a lifetime ago now. Good deeds can be a bad habit, Fix had remarked then. He was correct. True, it had felt good saving those people, but a chest full of pride didn’t fill an empty belly—they were as broke when they rode out of Santa Sangre as they were when they rode in.
Outside the village limits, the outlaws quickly found nothing had changed. They were still wanted men with rewards on their heads with no honest work to be found for them north or south of the Mexican border. So Tucker, Fix, and Bodie went back to robberies. Old habits die hard and they stuck with what they knew: dealing in lead. The gunfighters’ guilty consciences were mitigated a bit by their heroic deeds destroying the werewolves and saving all those lives. Figured it scored them a few points in heaven and balanced out their past crimes. Being good guys had been fun while it lasted.
But right now, all three were thinking, if we had gotten that silver we had been promised, we wouldn’t have had to rob no damn train.
The past was behind them. Fix spoke for all of them when he said, “It don’t pay to think too much on things you leave behind.”
“This score is gonna be the one. I can feel it,” spoke Tucker confidently. “Those miners back there at the saloon said this railway line runs to a mining town called Rio Muerta a hunnert mile east of here and the train is headin’ back Mexico City way loaded with miners carrying silver.” Tucker licked his lips thinking how lucrative the train robbery could be. “Them that told us had no reason to lie.”
“Not with our gun barrels in their mouths,” Fix remarked, busy rechecking the loads in his pistols.
“A lot of freshly mined silver is on that train. Ours for the taking.” Bodie whistled heartily. “Them miners told us oughta know. They was heading to Rio Muerta their ownselves.”
“I just hope they wasn’t misinformed about how much silver is in those mines and how many miners is gonna be on this train,” Tucker muttered. The hours of inaction waiting for the railroad to show up was taking a toll on his nerves and he was beginning to fret and think too much.
Fix chewed his lip and brooded. “I heard rumor it may not be many. They say a lot of prospectors strike out for Rio Muerta to make their fortune because of all that silver supposed to be there, but only a few return.”
“They say a lot of crap.” Bodie shrugged off such talk.
“We’re soon to find out, I reckon,” Tucker remarked.
“Soon as this train shows up let’s rob it and cut out of this Goddamn territory.” Fix’s eyes had a hooded look.
Bodie whistled sharply to get the other shootists’ attention: “Smoke.” He passed the binoculars off to Tucker, who shifted in the saddle and put them to his eyes for a look-see.
In the magnified circle view of the field glasses, a billowing smokestack smudged the bruised sky as the smeared blur of a distant steam train emerged out of the heat waves. A high-stacked locomotive was coming their way.
It was go time. There was no more talking required so the gunslingers pulled the handkerchiefs over their mouths and got ready. The wood handle plunger to the TNT detonator felt reassuring in the palm of Tucker’s hand and he felt a moist slickness of sweat and grit inside his glove. The squat wooden box was firmly braced between two big rocks on the ridge. The
