And fired again:

Once is safe. Two is certain.

The first bullet landed between Fritz Baum’s eyes, ft hit dead center on the bridge of the nose, blasting in through the fragile bone at the front of the skull so that both the orbs were shattered inwards, the sockets folding into a single bloody line like a punctuation mark across the man’s face. The pulpy globules burst out from the cheeks on a twin spurting of blood, dangling down over the ruddy cheeks for an instant before the plunging bullet severed the cords connecting them to the inner parts of the broken skull and pitched them down over the bounty hunter’s chest.

The bullet ploughed on into the softer stuff behind the eyes, churning the brain into a sticky pool that spurted clear of the broken bone at the rear of the skull as the base fragmented and poured outwards.

Baum’s head jerked back, the mouth opening in a silent scream beneath the empty sockets of the eyes. The movement exposed his throat to the second shot.

It went in through the stretched flesh of the bounty hunter’s neck. It cut his Adam’s apple and tore his windpipe apart. The throat was ripped up, the knot of muscle at the front sundered and driven back into the gaping hole torn out by the bullet. Muscle and lead and pieces of bone exploded from the base of the neck on a long column of blood that joined the fountaining of the skull in an awful cascade that splattered thick with droplets of sticky brain matter and blood-rinsed chunks of bone into the flash-flood.

Baum’s gun dropped from his dead fingers, sliding down over the walls of the gully to splash into the oily water beneath.

Then the bounty hunter’s body followed the tool of his trade.

Azul’s shots had blown the man back from his precarious hold on the upper ledge. Now his dead fingers lost their grip and he slithered down the slope along the same path as his gun. The corpse went down the rain-slickened slope like a runaway sled.

It hit the lower edge of the gulley and halted, legs dangling a foot above the rising water, right hand resting over the skid-marks of the lost gun.

Azul found his knives and cut his hands free. He set the throwing blade back inside his right moccasin, and belted the Bowie on his waist, together with the Colt.

Then he went down and kicked Fritz Baum’s body into the water.

The corpse slid clear of the gulley’s bank. It slid away like a tired memory; like a rag tossed off and forgotten because it has been used too much and has no further purpose. The water took it and washed it away downstream. For a while the corpse bobbed on the head of the flood, then it got lost in the darkness and the churning of the water. And after that it disappeared.

Azul went back to the cave.

He checked Baum’s saddlebags and found the letter that had sent the bounty hunter out to kill him. And wondered who would pay so much to see him hung.

He decided to go on to Cinqua and find out.

Chapter Fourteen

THE ROOM WAS dark, the shutters still drawn even though the storm had long since faded into the southwest. It was warm, the air thick with something more than the sour odor of unwashed sheets and sweat; with the stink of corruption.

There was a bed, its covers rumpled, one pillow stained with make-up; a washstand, a jug of water with a layer of dust floating on the surface set inside a bowl; a small table and a wicker chair.

The man seated at the table was drinking whiskey. Had already emptied half the bottle despite the early hour. It was difficult for him to fill his glass, because his right arm was crooked tight against his side, rigid from shoulder to elbow, the hand covered with a black leather glove. Its partner rested on the table beside the bottle, for the man’s left arm was mobile. The hand was withered, crispy, blackened flesh stretched taut over bent fingers from which protruded nails that were long and yellow, hooked like a bird’s talons.

His movements were awkward. Jerky, as though the simple action of raising the glass to his lips was painful.

He was dressed in black: black shirt, fastened at the throat with a black string tie; black pants tucked inside black boots; black vest; black coat. Even his face seemed black: the skin drawn tight over the bones, its coloring somehow unnatural, owing nothing to the sun that filtered in through the shutters and threw three bars of brilliant light over the ghastly visage. It was crisped. Like a rib of meat left too long over the flames, the nostrils two dark holes beneath a foreshortened stump of near-bone that might once have been a nose; the mouth a thin, tight line slashed between the angles of the sunken cheeks. The skull was almost bald, a wispy tracery of frizzy black hair sprouting like early grass from the parched, dead skin.

Only his eyes held color. They were green. Lashless and devoid of eyebrows but filled with hate. Cold. So cold their intensity seemed to take form and character, to radiate a glow that challenged the sun to warm them.

He emptied the bottle and drummed it on the table.

The door opened and a Mexican came in.

‘Sí jefe?’

He stared blankly around the room, not letting his gaze fasten on the man at the table. Preferring to look elsewhere as he waited for orders.

‘More whiskey.’

The voice was husked as the face. Dry and throaty, like the whisper of the wind down a wintertime chimney.

‘Sí, jefe.’ The Mexican turned to leave.

‘News?’

‘None, jefe. Not yet.’

‘It’s been long enough. If he don’t come soon, we’ll go.’

‘Sí jefe.’

The door closed like the Mexican was pleased to get out of the room.

The man inside sat still and silent, staring at nothing until the servant returned with a fresh bottle. Then he filled his glass again and peered at the amber fluid. What was left of his lips curled back from stained, blackened teeth, and he murmured.

‘Soon, Azul. Soon.’

Cinqua was big, for a border town. There was a central plaza with two cantinas facing one another across the square, a fountain with a baroque figure of a young shepherd pouring water into the retaining bowl; a few tired trees around the square. There was a Rurale station and a mayor’s office; a stable, and one hotel; a few stores selling things like hardware and food, grain and preserves. There was a church and a brothel, both set back from the plaza, on facing sides. Behind the commercial center there were low, tile-roofed houses, each one with its own little garden, where vegetables were grown, or goats and pigs raised.

Beyond the town there were fields, in fallow now that winter approached; and groves of oranges and lemons, the branches of the trees bare of fruit, lonely as scarecrows after the harvest.

Azul circled round and came in from the south. He rode down a narrow street of narrow houses, leading Baum’s and Dumfries’s horses behind him. He found the stable and halted outside. It was a long, low barn, the roof tiled in a red the color of dried blood, the walls white, gleaming in the cold sun.

An old man with a serape the same indifferent color as his beard rose from the chair in front of the door.

‘Buenas Dias, señor. ¿Qué quieren?’

‘You want to buy two horses?’ Azul dismounted. ‘I’ll throw In the saddles for free.’

‘You offer me fine animals.’ The old man looked doubtful ‘Do you have the cartas? The bills of sale?’

Azul grinned. ‘No cartas: no questions. The owners won’t be corning to look for them.’

‘I do not think I have enough money to purchase such animals,’ said the old man: cautious. ‘You understand how it is? So close to the border.’

The half-breed shrugged ‘I’ll deal, then. You put up my horse and give me some information. You get these two in return.’

‘I think I might chance the trade.’ The old man moved around the animals, checking them. ‘What is it you want to know?’

‘There is a man waiting for me,’ said Azul. ‘A man who rides in a black coach.’

The Mexican stepped back, making the flicking sign that drives away evil.