But Rio Muerta was no mirage.
The town was real, with its own heart and lungs, and in its veins ran silver.
Up and down the busy streets of the boomtown, dusty wooden buildings were new and freshly painted, the nineteenth century gingerbread architecture every bit as up to date as modern American frontier towns like Tombstone and Dodge City that Rio Muerta indeed resembled. Saloons, hotels, bordellos, casinos, feed and dry good suppliers, gun dealers, mining equipment purveyors and other shops all looked prosperous and expensive.
It was the silver, Higuerra knew.
Silver was being dug out of the ground in prodigious quantities in Rio Muerta and money flowed into town as steadily as the river that was its namesake.
The Colonel held his ears to muffle the ear-splitting shriek of the locking brakes on the locomotive’s driving wheels followed by a screeching, banging clamor as the train, with a concussive collisioning of bumpers, began to slow towards a stop. The engine spewed off boiling steam that wafted around the open cargo doors. Through the billowing mist, in the low rise of canyons at the edge of town, Higuerra spotted the distant mineshaft portals like rat holes in the rock. Herds of itinerant miners and raggedy prospectors filtered in and out of the shafts like ants, pushing rusty steel mine carts loaded with rubble along the rails leading deep into the ground.
Brakes hard on, the railroad ground to a jolting shuddering halt, so positioned that it brought up the cargo cars precisely alongside the ornate arch above the station platform adorned with the huge black block letters:
RIO MUERTA
The railway tracks stopped here—it was the end of the line.
The train had arrived.
The platform was deserted.
Where was the cargo, the Colonel wondered? It should be here by now. The officer was a prompt man who broached no tardiness. The delivery was late and his garrison had a schedule to keep.
Rio Muerta was under the protection of the Presidente of Mexico himself. The reason for this was why Colonel Higuerra and the Federales were here today ... it was why they returned once every month, tasked to pick up shipments of silver from the mining town and deliver it by rail under armed guard directly to the presidential palace in Mexico. The cargo was the same every time: ten wooden crates containing five hundred pounds of pure silver “donated” by the town bosses to Presidente Francesco Cinquegrana. Each shipment was worth in excess of ten million pesos, or twenty million U.S. dollars.
The job the Federales were here to do was essentially to deliver a gigantic bribe. Being a decorated policia federale with a distinguished combat record and a chest full of medals, Higuerra found the duty dishonorable and demeaning, amounting to nothing more than a bag man.
The fact the town had bought off the authorities and operated outside the law gave him pause, because for years there had been rumors of miner disappearances in Rio Muerta. The word among the itinerant laborers was that to go work in the Salazar mines in Rio Muerta carried the risk of never being seen or heard from again. But mining was a hazardous profession and the job carried risks anywhere, so if minors disappeared there were invariably five or six more to replace them.
Personally, the Colonel did not take the tales of the disappearances seriously. Rio Muerta, he knew, had a forbidding history dating back centuries before the mining operation had even been built. Higuerra took the recent grim rumors circulating about the town with a grain of salt. If this was a bad place, so be it. In an hour’s time, the Colonel and his troops would be on the train back to Mexico City with their cargo of silver, long gone.
But the truth was, he couldn’t wait to get the hell out of here.
The platform remained empty, the crates of silver still a no show. The stern Colonel stood at crisp attention by the lip of the cargo hold doorway, glaring out on the platform and the streets of the town. He didn’t like to be kept waiting and his leather boot tapped impatiently as his hawk gaze scanned the bustling streets for the arrival of the supply shipment.
A clatter of hooves and wooden wheels on the platform and a squeaking creak of a wagon under the strain of great weight announced the silver cargo had arrived. “Alerto!” Higuerra snapped to the three soldiers who came forward to the doorway.
A horse-drawn mining wagon rolled laboriously down the platform. Ten massive wooden crates were loaded on the transom in back, stacked precariously. The horses strained to pull the heavy wagon and the axles bent and groaned under the load of the vast riches it carried.
Two very big men who struck formidable figures rode up front, driving the rig. They looked identical. Both had striking dark complexioned faces with strong hard angular Hispanic features denoting Aztec blood. The similarities of the men were legion—same jet black hair and matching onyx waxed handlebar mustaches as beneath thick ebony brows, twin pairs of black bullet eyes radiated a fierce charismatic force of will. Higuerra knew the unmistakable Salazar twins on sight. The Colonel had met Romulus and Remus Salazar many times, since the brothers always insisting on the formality of hand-delivering the silver shipments themselves to the Federales to transport to El Presidente.
The Colonel couldn’t tear his eyes from the approaching figures in the wagon. Even if one had never met these two before, it would be instantly obvious from the robber baron authority they projected that they ran the town—one look and anyone would know that in Rio Muerta these men were top dog. First there was the clothes: both Salazars wore custom tailored suits of expensive and flamboyant aristocratic elegance, each decked out in double-breasted jackets, silk vests with pocket watches on fobs, pressed shirts with ties, and pleated trousers—only the weathered Stetson hats and rugged cowboy boots and spurs broke the image of upper class gentlemen. Holstered twin gold-plated Colt .45 revolvers bulged at their hips in identical holsters. While the rest of the populace of Rio Muerta dressed in shabby work clothes or rags, the Salazars were always clad presentably enough for high society balls in New York or San Francisco. Despite this refinement, the Salazars were no dandies—the twins were physically formidable presences who owned a sense of animal danger that let you know they were the last men you wanted to interfere with. In this way, they reminded Higuerra of some of the rich and powerful gangsters and crime bosses in Mexico City. No question, the twin bosses of Rio Muerta struck impressive and remarkable figures indeed.
Now the carriage had pulled up right beside the open doors of the train cargo car hold and Romulus jerked on the reins for the horses to stop. The transom of the wagon was flush with the floor of the train car, so all the soldiers needed to do to transfer the crates was slide them from the wagon into the hold. As Romulus and Remus stepped off the carriage, they courteously greeted the Colonel and his men with warm affable handshakes, welcoming grins and gracious respectful gazes, banishing any air of aristocratic inapproachability. The Salazars oozed grace and class—the disarming charm of their presence made one feel both honored guests and a peer. Colonel Higuerra knew it was all a façade but even he could not help experiencing a twinge of flattery as his hand was clasped munificently in both Romulus’s gloves. Remus shook hands the same way. Even for gangsters, the Colonel had to admit, these guys were good.
Higuerra looked over his shoulder and barked orders to his men to commence offloading the crates from the wagon and load them onto the train. His soldiers jumped into action, leaping off the cargo car into the wagon and began struggling to slide the crates into the hold. The Colonel remained where he stood and did not leave the train car because he didn’t want to set foot or touch the ground of the corrupt town. More importantly, this vantage positioned him above eye-level to the Salazar twins so they had to look up at him, in a deferential position. Both brothers stood a foot taller than the comandante, who didn’t want to give them the advantage of looking down at him.
“Halto!” Higuerra shouted to his men. He looked at the twins. “With respect, señors Salazar, please open the crates so we can confirm the contents. We do not want to make the trip twice.”
Romulus looked up at