When his money ran out after an all-night card game, he was unable to face Miranda’s wrath. Looking down at her as she lay sleeping in the black silk nightgown he had bought her that very morning, he kissed her for the last time and shut the door softly behind him.
Twenty miles into Texas, he noticed a wanted poster nailed to the side of a feed store:
Zebulon Shook Wanted Dead or Alive for
Bank Robbing, Murder, Arson, and Horse Theft.
It wasn’t his reputation or fear of the law that made him return to Vera Cruz. The pathetic truth was that he missed Miranda Serenade, a raw and vulnerable feeling that he had never experienced before.
~ ~ ~
Miranda greeted him at the door in the middle of a steamy, claustrophobic afternoon. She was wearing her black silk nightgown and pointing a pearl-handled pocket derringer straight at his aching heart.
“You want to know who you are, Zeb-u-lon? One more fucking gringo cabrón asshole with a used-up firecracker for a dick and no heart.”
When he told her that he was prepared to give her what she wanted, within reason, she said she’d consider it when he put something real on the table. Like money. Never mind his rotten used-up heart. She had given up on that part of him.
When he didn’t answer, she slammed the door in his face.
He sat on a park bench and thought it over. Except for his horse and army Colt revolver and enough cash to last a week, he possessed nothing of value. He could always ride back to the mountains and try to rescue the family business. He had been good at the fur trade and was widely known and respected. But he had celebrated a last adios to that way of life, and there was no returning to what was forever gone. There was always the outlaw trail. With his new credentials as a wanted man, he could ride up to Arizona where there was a local war going on. Or he could sign up with any number of desperadoes. Or he could disappear into the Far West, make his way to the Oregon territory, or Alaska where no one would have heard of him. And then there was Miranda. He could beg her for another chance, although if she was foolish enough to take him back, he knew that she would end up braining him with a frying pan. Or worse. Not to mention what he might do to her, heart or no heart.
Across the park a mariachi band was serenading a lavish birthday party in honor of a local politician. Farther away, two Texas mercenaries leaned against the trunk of a cottonwood tree, sharing a bottle of mescal. He had run into them in a saloon a few nights previously, bragging about their knowledge of explosives and firearms and how much their specialties were in demand from various well-heeled banditos and revolutionaries. The older man, who went by the alias of “Salty Smith,” was rumored to have broken out of the hard-rock prison at Yuma, killing two guards in the process before he joined John Wesley Harden on his last furious rampage through Texas.
The mercenaries weren’t pleased to see him, having heard there was a wanted poster on his head and that he was one of those mountain lunatics who brought more trouble to the table than he was worth. After he took a slug from their bottle of tequila, he asked if they could put him on to a job. “Anything but cleanin’ up saloon slop or runnin’ errands for Mexican floozies.”
Salty nodded, barely hearing the question, his attention directed across the park. He raised his hand toward a waiter standing at the edge of the birthday celebration. From then on everything slowed down. The waiter lit a match, cupping it in his hands as if it were a precious flame, while another waiter cautiously lifted up a large wooden box. The two mercenaries stood up, dusting off their pants as their eyes shifted across the park and down the side streets. Slowly, with studied nonchalance, they walked out of the park as a bomb exploded behind them, blowing up the politician and several guests. The act was followed by a line of men appearing on a rooftop, firing down at the crowd as they screamed and scattered in every direction.
Zebulon ran down a winding street, then turned into an alley as a platoon of mounted police appeared around a corner. Reversing direction, he stumbled into a crowded street full of cafés and clothing stores. A few people had stopped in the middle of the street to listen to the shots, which sounded, in the distance, like firecrackers. He ran past them toward the waterfront. Suddenly the shots stopped. Birds chirped from tree branches. Three young boys kicked a rolled-up ball of rope against a mud wall. Near them a vendor stood by a cart, calling out selections of fresh fish and crabs. Forcing himself to slow down, he walked on until he reached the harbor. When a cannon boomed a few blocks away, followed by more rifle shots, he turned into the door of a palatial three-story hotel.
The spacious high-ceilinged lobby was empty except for a well-dressed couple engaged in booking a room. Neither seemed aware of what was going on in the rest of the city. Zebulon picked up a newspaper and sat down in an armchair. Pretending to read, he was unable to stop glancing at the woman standing at the front desk with her back to him. A red silk shawl was draped across her shoulders, and her thick spill of black hair was as luminous as polished ebony. It was Delilah, the woman from the bar in Panchito.
Outside the hotel, a man was singing a plaintive song about a woman’s soul that no one, not even the lover he was singing to, was able to comprehend. The man’s voice made it seem as if he was drowning or committing suicide inside someone else’s dream.
Zebulon stood up with no idea where he was going or what he wanted to do. He was halfway out the door when Delilah called out to him.
“I thought you were dead.”
Her eyes focused on the Colt holstered around his waist, then shifted to the fifteen-inch Green River bowie knife tied to his right thigh, then to his Mexican trousers with silver buttons down the sides, his black sombrero, and finally, the bright blue serape that matched the color of his startled eyes.
“You seem to have recovered,” she said. “My congratulations.”
As he took a step toward her, she crossed both hands in front of her breasts. Help me, her gesture implied. And… whatever you do, stay away.
As impulsively as she had called out, she turned away, leaving him staring at Ivan, her companion that he remembered from the card game in the saloon. He wore a white flat-brimmed felt hat tilted over one side of his face, and the same black cape was draped over his shoulders. Walking back and forth across the lobby in yellow hand-tooled leather boots, he banged a silver-handled cane on the floor, his voice rising as he argued in Spanish over the availability of the hotel’s honeymoon suite, which, he claimed, he had booked three weeks before. The clerk threw up his hands, shouting that there was no record. Nada. Nada. Nada. There never was and there never had been. The only room was on the second floor facing the street. It was their choice. Take it or leave it. He had nothing more to say.
Zebulon walked across the room as if pulled by an invisible rope. “Give them what they signed up for,” he said to the clerk. “Or deal with one malo loco gringo. Comprende?”
Grabbing the clerk by the collar, he lifted him over the counter and dropped him to the floor. Then he removed the Colt from his belt and pointed it at the clerk’s forehead, pulling back the