Ernesto Alabando.
Tomasina’s one true love.
The Leper’s slug loudly hammered the stone, cleaving it in two along a hair-thin fault line.
Both sides slumped away, leaving the Kid exposed.
He bounded off his knees, ran crouching to his right, wanting to save the last cartridge in his six-shooter because he’d never get a chance to reload. A thundering blast much louder than a rifle report rose from the direction of the shrine. The Kid knew immediately that what he’d heard was the Leper’s double-barreled shotgun being brought into play.
The squash-sized fist of rock salt blew up a dogget of earth and nudged the Kid’s left boot into the other one. The Kid left his feet. When he came down, his head glanced off another tombstone as he slammed onto his right shoulder and lay with his foot stinging now as badly as his cheek and his ear.
He felt as though a rail spike had been driven through his right temple. Warm blood trickled down that side of his face. He lay on his back, arms and legs akimbo, his vision flickering as the ground rolled like ocean swells around him.
In the back of his head a voice was screaming, “Tomasina!”
“I’m not gonna kill you, Kid!” the Leper shouted. The Kid heard his footsteps growing louder as the stalker walked toward him. “Gonna make you hurt bad. Have fun killin’ you slow!”
The Leper laughed.
The Kid suppressed his misery, gathering himself.
Bunching his lips and hardening his jaws, he rolled onto his left shoulder and extended the cocked Schofield toward El Leproso, who just then stopped and grinned behind his mask as he aimed his double-barreled shotgun at the Kid’s face.
At the same time, a raucous screech rose on the Kid’s right—a sound like an entire flock of eagles in an ear-rending dustup over a dead rattlesnake.
The bounty hunter jerked slightly with a start and the rock salt fired from the roaring shotgun blew up rocks and dust a good foot ahead and left of the Kid’s extended revolver.
The Kid triggered the Schofield, watched his slug drill a quarter-sized hole in the Leper’s dusty mask, through the dead center of El Leproso’s forehead. The man’s head jerked violently back. Then it straightened on his shoulders, wobbling slightly.
The Leper opened his gloved hands, and the smoking shotgun fell slack against his chest, dangling by its lanyard.
El Leproso stood staring at the Rio Concho Kid. Slowly, the smile left his thick, red lips behind the mask, which grew red quickly as the killer’s blood ran down the inside of it. The Leper’s eyes rolled back into his head until only their whites were visible through the holes cut in the cloth.
El Leproso fell straight back atop a grave, kicking up tan dust painted gold by the morning sunlight. He lay there as though he’d been dropped from the sky.
The Kid glanced at the owl perched atop a tombstone about fifty feet away. Smugly, the bird was preening under a half-raised wing.
Tomasina . . .
The Kid climbed heavily to his feet, dropped his empty pistol, leaped the dead Leper’s body, and sprinted along the side of the church toward the front. He dashed around the corner, and stopped, raking air in and out of his chest.
A cold stone dropped in his belly.
The padre was on his hands and knees, bawling, his tears dribbling into the dirt beneath him.
Tomasina hung by the rope around her neck, twisting slowly from side to side.
The Kid screamed her name, and, sliding his bowie knife from his belt sheath, sprinted over to her, leaped into the air. He swiped the knife across the rope once before gravity drove him to the ground.
“Tomasina!” he cried, desperately bounding off his heels once more, slashing at the rope above the girl’s head until the last strand broke.
The Kid dropped the knife. The girl fell into his arms.
He collapsed to his knees, holding the girl’s slack body across them. Her cheeks were pale, her eyes closed.
“Tomasina,” the Kid cried, shaking her, feeling tears mingle with the blood on his cheek.
Her chest moved. Her lips fluttered. She drew a breath, and her eyes opened.
The Kid stared down at her, his lower jaw hanging in shock.
“I . . . I came here to join Ernesto . . . in the cemetery,” she rasped out barely audibly. She stared up into the Kid’s relieved eyes. “He is there, where El Leproso put him.”
“Ah, Tomasina,” the Kid said.
“I came to join him . . . because I thought life was only big enough for one love. For only one true love.”
She smiled, lifted her arms weakly, wrapped them around his neck. “But now I know that’s not true, Kid.”
“Me, too, Tomasina,” the Kid said, laughing with exhilaration. “Me, too!”
The Rio Concho Kid lowered his head to Tomasina’s, pressed his lips to her ripe mouth, and kissed her long and tenderly.
The Rio Concho Kid and Tomasina De La Cruz will return . . .
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Brandvold has penned over seventy fast-action westerns under his own name and his pen name, Frank Leslie. He is the author of the ever-popular .45-Caliber books featuring Cuno Massey as well as the Lou Prophet and Yakima Henry novels. Head honcho at “Mean Pete Publishing,” publisher of harrowing western ebooks, he lives in Colorado. Visit his website at www.peterbrandvold.com. Follow his blog at: www.peterbrandvold.blogspot.com.
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