The barman brought his food in no time, saying, “I am Diego, señor. If there is anything else you need, I am at your beck and call.”

  “Gracias, Diego,” Slocum said. He slid his boots to the floor and picked up a fork, and in two shakes he was halfway through the first enchilada. They were like he remembered them, packed with shaved beef and onions and peppers, and thickly topped with tangy sauce and cheeses and guacamole.

  They were damned good.

  He was nearly finished with the second one when a shadow suddenly loomed over his table. He looked up and straight into the face of Jorgé Rodriguez.

  Now, if anybody had ever looked like a hired gun, it was old Jorgé. He had a face like an ax blade, bisected by a thick salt-and-pepper mustache. Thick brows beetled over narrowed, jet-black eyes that held a none-too-kindly expression. As usual, he did not smile.

  As for his dress, he still favored the white, blousy Mexican pants and shirt and the wide sombrero, along with the worn bandoleros strapped across his chest. In fact, Slocum would have sworn that Rodriguez was still wearing the same clothes he’d worn the last time they’d met.

  Slocum swallowed, then said, “See you’re still favorin’ those old Smith & Wessons, Jorgé. Still carry that Arkansas toothpick down your boot?”

  Jorgé’s impassive face suddenly bloomed into a grin. “Slocum!” he said in his thickly accented voice, and jerked out a chair of his own. “You are still very funny, for a gringo!” He glanced at Slocum’s glass, which was nearly empty, and turned toward the bar. “Diego!” he shouted, and held up two fingers. “Dos cervezas!”

  Diego nodded and pulled two fresh glasses off the shelf.

  “So, amigo,” Jorgé continued, “we both know why you have come here.”

  Slocum nodded and said, “Yeah. The enchiladas are worth the ride, even from Colorado.”

  This time Jorgé’s grin broke into a barking laugh. “Very good joke, Slocum! Yes, the food is muy bueno, but you know what I mean. What are we going to do with these two? My employer and yours?”

  “Well, seems to me your Señor Valdez could stop swipin’ Mr. MacCorkendale’s cattle. That’d pretty much put a stop to it.”

  This time, Jorgé didn’t laugh. “You know, compadre, I have tried this approach myself. I say, ‘Send Señor MacCorkendale’s cattle back, Señor Valdez! You are a rich man with a big rancho and plenty cattle already.’ But he says it is a principle. If the cattle are on Mexican soil, they must be Mexican, no matter whose brand they carry.”

  Jorgé shrugged, as if saying that he’d done his best, and any further effort was impossible.

  “So they expect us to settle this thing for ’em,” Slocum said, cutting off a bite of his enchilada with the side of his fork. “So, say that one of us kills the other. That gonna settle anything, or will Valdez just hire himself another gun?”

  Jorgé grinned wider than before. “You say Valdez will have to hire again? What makes you so sure it will not be MacCorkendale doing the hiring?”

  Slocum shrugged. “Just a hunch, Jorgé. Feelin’ lucky, I reckon.”

  Diego brought them their cervezas, which broke the rhythm of the conversation and therefore kept it from escalating into something uglier. Which it very easily could have.

  As it was, Jorgé just arched his bushy, caterpillar brows and asked, “Was not it you who told me that men make their own luck, Slocum?”

  “I don’t recall, Jorgé,” Slocum replied, draining his first glass of Mexican beer, “but I hope to hell that it’s true.”

  “Who was dat man, that Slocum?” Helga asked Ralph MacCorkendale as she ladled out his potato soup. Or potato salad. He had never been able to tell the difference, except that one had more vinegar than the other.

  “Just that. Slocum,” he said, hoping that would end it.

  But no such luck. “Who is he?” she asked. She took her seat and passed him a platter of sausages the size of a six-year-old’s forearm. “You mention his name many times, Herr MacCorkendale, but you never say why.”

  “How many times do I got to tell you, honey, you don’t call your husband Herr MacCorkendale. My name is Ralph. Use it, okay?”

  Although those prim manners were primarily what he’d married her for, he was getting a little fed up with her old-country ways. Not to mention her goddamn potato soup or potato salad or whatever it was, and her sausages and the goddamn Wiener schnitzel.

  Why couldn’t they have a steak or a plain ham sandwich every once in a while?

  “Ja . . . Ralph,” she said softly, as if the utterance of his Christian name was almost too intimate for her to bear. “Have you hired Herr Slocum, or is he just visiting with us?”

  He remained silent, and finally, after five or six long minutes, she said, “Herr MacCorkendale, it is not right that you keep things from—”

  “Shut up!” he roared, much louder than he’d intended. Much more viciously, too, and she cowered as if he’d hit her, damn it. From the other end of an eight-foot table!

  Quickly, he got himself under control and said, “Helga, forgive me. I didn’t mean to snap at you, honey. It’s just . . . business, that’s all. Slocum’s here on business. That’s all you need to know.”

  Helga pursed her lips—an annoying little expression, he thought—and after a moment, said, “You are meaning Valdez business, nicht wahr?”

  “None’a your nevermind,” he said, and cut off a bite of her goddamn bratwurst or liverwurst or whatever the hell it was. Donkey dong, that’s what he called it. At least to himself. “Now leave it be.”

  “Ja, mein Herr,” she muttered, and spoke no more.

  Slocum woke while the last of the afternoon light was still flooding through the windows, casting long shadows on the clean, white linens and highlighting the long, lean, yet ripe cinnamon body drowsing beside him.

  He slid his hand along her shoulder, down her torso, and over the bell of her hip, then stopped and dipped his head to kiss the nape of her neck.

  “Maria?” he whispered.

  She stirred slightly, and he smiled when she rolled toward him, brushing long strands of ebony hair from her face. “You, too, are awake, my Slocum?” she asked lazily, an infectious grin on her face.

  “Yes’m,” he said and slid his hand across the silky flatness of her belly to her opposite hip. He hoped she was in the mood, because he wanted her again. And not just to take his mind off Jorgé Rodriguez, either.

  Damn!

  He’d let that ugly sidewinder into his thoughts again! And he’d promised himself that while he was with Maria he wouldn’t think of him, think about this stupid range war that was brewing, or allow the personas of Pablo Valdez or Ralph MacCorkendale to enter his mind.

  And he’d lost his erection to boot!

  This detail hadn’t slipped past Maria, either. She said, “Are your thoughts so black, my darling?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she slipped her slender hand down his belly, took hold of his withered cock, and began to rhythmically, gently tease him with the pressure and movement of her fingers.

  He was hard again in no time.

  God, she was a wonder!

  She had brought him so far that he was thudding for release, and he pushed her hand away. “That’s plenty, honey,” he said, his voice throaty with urgency and want.

  She batted her eyelashes innocently. “You no like, Señor Slocum?”

  “I like, you little spitfire,” he said as he moved between her legs and positioned himself. “I like it just fine, and you know it.”

  She giggled softly and brought up her knees to grip his sides. “Maybe I do,” she said, her voice filled with potential chuckles. “Maybe I do not. Maybe you should show me, Slocum, no?”

  “Yes, Maria,” he said, and entered her. As she sighed and wriggled with pleasure, he said, “Maybe I will.”

  3

  In the dying afternoon light, Jorgé Rodriguez rode slowly back to the rancho of Señor Valdez, pondering his options.

  Slocum would be no pushover. He’d known this from the beginning, when Valdez had hired his guns. But after speaking with Slocum, he was certain of it. There could be no negotiations, no compromises.

  He feared it would end just as Slocum had said: with one or both of them dead, and more guns paid for and brought in by both sides. It would be endless. It would start a border war.

  Jorgé Rodriguez was a pragmatic man, perhaps as much as his old compadre Slocum was. It seemed the only fools in the mix were the men they were working for. Particularly Pablo Valdez. It was Valdez’s stubbornness that was the cause of all of this.

  Jorgé did not blame Señor MacCorkendale for wanting his own cattle back. Valdez was stealing them and using the border as his excuse.

  What to do, what to do . . .

  Jorgé had hired his gun to many men in his time, and he had always fought until the end. That was the point of it, wasn’t it? Right or wrong, he had always stayed, once he’d given his word.

  His word was very important to Jorgé Rodriguez.

  His horse, Zorro, shied violently to the left, but Jorgé sat him. “It’s only a covey of quail, amigo,” he said as the last few stragglers flew up. “What is wrong with you this fine afternoon, to be so touchy?”

  He soothed the gelding with long strokes down the horse’s glossy, black neck, then sent him on his way again. Odd for Zorro to be jumpy like that. He was usually a very calm, well-trained horse.

  But perhaps he had picked up on Jorgé’s unease after the conversation with Slocum. Jorgé had plenty enough to share, anyway. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more distressed he became.

  He liked Slocum. Admired him. And he’d certainly hate to kill him.

  On the other hand, he didn’t particularly wish to be dead, himself.

  “Aye, yi, yi,” he said softly, patting the black gelding’s neck. “It is—how do you say, Zorro? A conundrum. I must think of something clever. Or Slocum must.”

  Somehow, he didn’t think it would be him.

  Finally, Maria had to go downstairs and mind the cantina, but Slocum hung around. He had an all-night invitation, after all, and what kind of idiot would throw that away?

  There wasn’t much to see in Jaguar Hole, however, and once he took a walking tour of all three blocks of the town, just to stretch his legs a bit, and then put up Concho in the livery, about the only thing left was to go back to Cantina Lopez and order a cerveza and some supper to soak it up.

  The crowd was much more sizable than it had been earlier in the day. Folks must make a special trip to come to Jaguar Hole just to eat Maria’s chow, he decided. He figured there were more folks in the cantina than the entire population of Jaguar Hole, and the hotel had been the only building of any size that he’d seen during his tour.

  He also thought it odd that a town this small had livery stalls for fourteen horses and turnouts for two dozen more.

  And they’d been mostly full. He’d gotten Concho the next to the last stall.

  The crowd in the cantina wasn’t all that rowdy—at least, not nearly so rowdy as he would have expected. And he figured that Maria had a good bit to do with this. He watched her behind the bar, drawing cerveza and pouring whiskey, passing out pickles, eggs, and peanuts, and calling orders back to the kitchen.

  Everything ran like clockwork, and no ungentlemanly behavior was accepted. At all. All the patrons, to a man, called her Señorita Maria or Miss Maria. But they all had that faraway, dreamy look in their eyes when she turned away from them.

  She was a powerfully beautiful woman. And an imposing one, as well. Slocum castigated himself for worrying that she might be married. Everybody in the place—except him, it seemed—was terrified of her. Or rather, they were in such awe of her that they’d never, ever, take a chance on romancing her.

  Slocum couldn’t figure that nobody had ever tried, but mayhap they’d found themselves carried or booted or dragged out into the street faster than they could say, “I love you.”

  Those treated in such a fashion would usually remember not to repeat the offense.

  At eight o’clock—or thereabouts—a mariachi band started to play. Now, if there was one kind of music that Slocum really didn’t like, it was mariachi. They always seemed to be off-key and proud if it, playing as loudly as humanly possible. These fellows sang, too—mostly on key, which came as a pleasant surprise—and were a great hit with most of the patrons.

  Slocum changed his cervaza orders to whiskeys, and lived through the music. Slowly, the crowd drifted out, thinned, and at two in the morning, Maria sent the last of the customers home.

  Excepting Slocum, of course.

  By this time, he was pretty damned drunk, having downed five cervezas and at least ten shots of whiskey—actually, he’d lost count—since sundown. He remembered something about Maria coaxing him up and out of his chair, and then having some difficulty navigating the narrow stairs.

  He made it all the way to her bedroom, however, before he passed out.

  When he woke the next morning, the clock said ten thirty, and the bed was rumpled, but Maria was nowhere in sight.

  Dammit, anyhow! Well that would teach him to hang around all night, just waiting and drinking. Today he’d have to get down to work, and if he could get back to town, he was going to limit himself to one—no, make that two—cervezas.

  He sat up, his head pounding, and clamped his hands across his forehead. Nobody could complain about Maria watering the whiskey, that was for certain!

  He finally made it downstairs at about eleven thirty, at which time Maria—who must have heard him thumping around upstairs—had breakfast ready and waiting for him, along with a pot of good black coffee. She was a good woman.

  He downed three cups of coffee before he dug into his sausage and eggs, and consumed all of it while he watched Maria, in the kitchen, cooking. Or rather, he watched the occasional swish of her turquoise skirts as she traveled back and forth from the table to the oven and back again, and the play of her slim, brown calves and mocassin-covered feet.

  And he kicked himself about every three minutes for getting so drunk and passing out the night before.

  He was just eating the last of his cinnamon sticks when she came out and sat down opposite him, with her arms folded on the table and a grin on her face. “And how do you feel this morning, my handsome American cowboy?”

  “Better than I have a right to,” he admitted sheepishly.

  She leaned forward across the table, and her low neck-line exposed the shadows he should have explored the night before.

  “Yes, my darling,” she said. “You were in very bad shape. I put something in your coffee to make you feel better. Do you?”

  He realized he did, and grinned at her. “You little sneak. Yeah, I do. What you put in it, anyhow?”

  She shook her finger at him. “Secret family recipe. Like my enchiladas, only different.” And then she smiled. “I might tell you one day, Slocum, if you are very, very nice to me.”

  He maintained his grin, although perhaps it grew a little more salacious. “Oh, I will be, baby. I will be.”

  Actually, he felt not only better, but a little bit better than better, if that were possible. Oh, well. He drank the last of his coffee, set the mug down, and said, “It’s back to business for me. I’ll see you tonight, honey, if I can get back to town by dark.”

  “You had better, my Slocum,” she said, and winked before she stood up.

  He did, too. And when he finished watching her beautiful backside on its way to the kitchen, he kicked himself all the way to the livery stable.

  Concho was in fine fettle and ready to get going, and after Slocum brushed his coat into a glossy sheen of black starry spots on the silver-white background, he tacked him up, swung up into the saddle, and set off.

  But not toward the MacCorkendale place. He’d decided to visit Pablo Valdez first. Jorgé Rodriguez hadn’t been able to talk any sense into him, but where Jorgé had failed, perhaps he could succeed.

  It was a long ride down to the Valdez rancho, and Slocum was feeling increasingly . . . odd. He’d never felt quite like this in the aftermath of a hangover before, and the only thing he could lay the blame on was Maria’s whatever-it-was. The stuff in the coffee. A man being too drunk to make love wasn’t worth a poisoning, was it? Or was it?

  He shook his head, and the desert wobbled most disconcertingly. He kept Concho moving, but he closed his eyes for a moment and waited for things to settle back to normalcy. When he cracked one eye open, things seemed to be back to usual, and he opened the other.

  It was a calm, windless day, clear-skied and warm and sunny, and he was traveling through a long, wide valley. He’d been riding through it, in fact, for about two hours now, and the end was still nowhere in sight. Yet the breeze made by his passing seemed like cyclone winds, and the sounds of insects and birds and the rustles of snakes and lizards seemed all too close.

  He was feeling sick to his stomach and realized that he was a whole lot jumpier than usual, too.

  What had she fed him? Poison? Ground glass? Ladanum?

  No, no, not Maria. Not his baby, his little Mexican spitfire.

  Spitfire. That got him thinking, too.

  He felt a stab of pain go through his shoulder before he heard the shot. He heard it echo off the canyon walls, too, as he fell off Concho’s side and into the sparse yellow weeds.

  Concho stopped immediately and nosed him.

  Instinctively drawing his gun, Slocum tried to figure where the shot had come from, but in his fuddled condition he’d lost track of which way he’d been headed.

  At last he managed to ascertain that from the direction of the sun, and got off two shots at the cliffs ahead and to the right.

  There was no return fire. He must have been down longer than he thought and had been given up for dead. But Jorgé wouldn’t bushwhack him, and Jorgé wouldn’t just ride off without checking his body, either.