Wild Cards

A Sixkiller story set in the wild and lawless Borderlands of the 1870s.

Sixkiller feels like a blind man for a minute, stepping out of July sunlight into the reeking shadows of the cantina called Dos Cabezas. Breathing smells of leather and sweat and warm beer, he waits for his eyes to adjust to the dark so he can find the man he came to kill.

Behind the bar, a big woman in an embroidered dress raises an empty shot glass, eyebrow cocking a question. Sixkiller nods, and she fills the glass up with tequila. He leans against the bar’s peeling wood, scanning the collection of cowboys and campesinos taking refuge from the sun.

An old man snoozes beneath a peeling poster of a girl in swirling skirts, his battered hat pulled low over his eyes. At a scarred table in the corner, two skinny leather-faced men in sweaty cotton shirts and chaps sit in heated argument.

Over by the window -- yes. There he sits by the window at another of the little tables, paunch bulging over a wide leather belt with the handsomest silver buckle Sixkiller has ever seen. Light gleams on the man’s bald brown forehead as he peers at a spread of cards.

Sixkiller considers his target. This one looks like some middling-well-off ranchero with a plump wife and a pack of kids back home. There’s no obvious reason why Sixkiller’s Boss (better known as El Diablo in these parts) has marked him out for death. But that’s not Sixkiller’s business. It never is. The Boss sent him a job to do, and that silver buckle will be his paycheck.

The balding man is not alone. On the other side of the table, a young woman bends over the cards, talking softly.

Damn, she’s beautiful, with black hair sleek as water to her waist and the chiseled features of a highborn lady from the big cities down south. She raises her head, meeting Sixkiller’s gaze, and her black eyes are the eyes of the diamondback, cold and hard as his own.

The woman smiles. Then she pulls another card from the deck and holds it up. leaning in to murmur in the rancher’s ear. The man’s face twists and he surges from his chair. A pearl handled pistol appears in his hand, aimed straight at Sixkiller’s belly.

Sixkiller drops to one knee as the shot fires wide, chipping the bar, and his jet-trimmed revolver slides into his fingers. His first bullet hits true. Crimson blossoms on the rancher’s ruffled shirt and he crashes into the table, sliding to the floor in a shower of dog-eared cards.

Gasps and curses, clattering boot heels: the room empties fast. Sixkiller eases himself to his feet. The bartender shrugs and pours him another drink.

On the floor the cards lie scattered. Hummingbird-swift, Mercedes Silva plucks one from beside the dead man’s hand and turns it over. On well-thumbed black cardboard, a white skeleton dances draped in roses. The card reads La Muerte, Death.

A streak of fresh blood gleams across the skeleton’s grinning face.

“I told him, see, in the cards?” Mercedes runs a finger across the blood smear. “A man in black has come to kill you.” She licks the finger, thoughtfully. “And he looked up, and there you were.”

Her high-boned face makes Sixkiller think of wolves, of feral cats, of vampire bats in the night. He eases the revolver back into its holster.

“Those cards said that?”

“Maybe,” says Mercedes Silva.

She takes another card from the heap, turning it for him to see. Two nude figures entwine against a backdrop of a crescent moon and stars. Los Amantes, the Lovers. Slipping the card between her breasts, she slides into the waiting circle of his arm. “You should thank me.”

Sixkiller smiles. Bending to her bloodstained lips, he does.