The Last Will & Testament of Santo Valdez
Prologue
Three Vendettas
A bounty hunter.
A shaman.
An assassin.
All three of them had sworn a blood vendetta, each for a
different reason.
One for gold.
One for vengeance.
And one for love.
For each, there would be no stopping. No turning back.
And no mercy. The call of blood too strong to be denied.
The three with no recourse but violence in this lawless
epoch of gunslingers, bounty hunters, brujos, and assassins.
And so, they would follow the Dead Roads across the
Western Lands and beyond. Through the Outlaw Nations
and the Bloodlands. Into regions controlled by water barons,
bandits, and wild Indigene tribes, haunted by entities from the
spirit realm and the ghosts of those who perished in this
unconsecrated land.
Though the three did not yet know each other, their
paths would soon cross. Each following that path to its
inevitable conclusion. To a fate preordained on the very day
those blood vendettas were so sworn.
The three pursuing their destiny, under a blood-red sun.
ONE
The Last Will & Testament of
Santo Valdez
They rode across the stark and barren plains like vengeful
spirits, leaving in their wake a trail of blood and
despoliation. They were thirteen in number, and like that
cursed number they cast ill omens upon the land.
They were thieves, desperados, killers, scalp-hunters, and
worse. Among them were individuals known and feared
across the Western Lands. And elsewhere.
The twin sisters, Snake Mary and Rose Darling, assassins
from the Far Eastern land of Nihon. One a sadist, and the
other, a masochist.
The gambler and con-artist, Tai Fargo, said to possess a
peculiar talent for divining the vagaries of Luck—and also a
weakness for opium.
Black Moon, a gunslinger of mixed blood, and a dead
shot with a pistol before drink and the devil took their due.
The Padre, a defrocked priest expelled from the church
for his sins, the nature of which discomfited even the
members of his criminal cabal. The Seven Deadly Sins among
them, plus a few the Bible failed to mention.
With them were the bounty killers Dorado and the
Hangman. The former, a cold-blooded mercenary who’d do
anything for the right price. The latter, a thrill-killer known to
string up his victims from trees, which he referred to as
“leaving his calling card.”
Among the lesser ranks was Shank, an infamous
backstabber and an irredeemable lowlife. With him, a pair of
scalp-hunters named Laramie and the Charlemagne Kid.
Lastly a couple of nameless bushwhackers with
sociopathic aspirations, who’d wandered into the gang a few
weeks earlier from the water-mining town of El Topo.
The leader of this band of miscreants was a cold-blooded
killer known as One-Eyed Jack, or Iron-Eyed Jack. The latter
appellation owing to the iron eye, engraved with a skull, that
Jack wore in place of the one he’d lost in a drunken knife-
fight some years before.
Jack had made his bones riding with Santo Valdez, a
bandit of wide repute in Texarcana, and a man beloved by the
poor folk of his homeland. Long a thorn in the side of the
water barons, Santo Valdez had come to be regarded by his
people as their protector and patron saint.
Many were the stories told of Santo Valdez. Some true,
and some not.
It was said that Santo knew the secret names of things,
and how to engrave occult sigils on silver bullets, which were
the only things that could kill magical creatures like wendigo
and lechuza.
Some said the indigene tribes feared him as a brujo, or
sorcerer, and kept their distance, fearing he might step on
their shadows and curse them. Others said he kept a witch for
a mistress, and she was the source of his magic.
It was said that Santo Valdez had hidden a fortune in
gold somewhere in the Bloodlands. Gold that Santo claimed
to have stolen from the water barons. Payment, he said, for
the water that they stole from his people.
When Santo first met One-Eyed Jack he gave him the
nickname, El Diablo, after his devious and untrustworthy
nature. The name stuck. And by the time Jack had worked his
way up to second in command of Santo’s gang, hardly anyone
ever called him Jack again.
Jack didn’t know anything about brujos or curses. But
he’d paid close attention to the tales of Santo’s gold. In
particular, the story of how Santo had hidden his treasure in
the Bloodlands, where no one would ever find it.
Santo had sworn that he’d never tell a living soul where
that treasure was. But on the day that he retired from the
bandit business, he promised his gang that he would leave the
gold to them in his Will. Provided he died of natural causes,
and not at the hands of some back-stabbing thief.
Few had any doubt that this last comment was directed
at El Diablo. Who took its meaning and made sure that no
harm came to Santo during his retirement.
So it was that when news came of Santo’s death, El
Diablo and his gang put aside their robbing and pillaging, and
followed the Dead Roads south to Paraiso, in Texarcana. To
the villa where Santo had spent his final days. There to hear
the Last Will & Testament of Santo Valdez.
The old town of Paraiso had once been the property of
a wealthy water baron until Santo hung him above the iron
gates and appropriated the place for himself. This done, Santo
let it be known that henceforth, none would have to pay for
water in Paraiso.
And with that, Santo’s former criminal career had been
expunged from the minds of the local populace. Who
thereafter regarded him as their benefactor and protector.
The peasants had no such illusions about the one-eyed
man they called El Diablo, however. And so, when the bandit
once known as One-Eyed Jack rode into Paraiso with his gang,
the peasants kept to their business with eyes downcast, and
held tight to their rosaries and saint-medallions.
Through the gates of Paraiso rode the thirteen bandits.
The dust of their passage behind them, scattered on the wind.
The afternoon sun at their backs, their shadows preceding
them, skulking across the ground like misshapen goblins.
They entered a wide unpaved courtyard with a stone well
at its center. On one side was a cantina, and stables for mules
and horses. On the other, the hacienda where Santo’s wife
and their servants lived. Beside it a church, and atop the roof,
a bell-tower with three bells, which the priests rang on all the
High Holy Days.
El Diablo and his gang tied their mounts to a hitching
post outside the cantina and entered the hacienda. Black
Moon and Dorado already half-drunk. Trading swigs from a
jug of corn liquor as the thirteen bandits walked across the
courtyard.
Inside, they found Santo’s body on display. Dressed in
an elegant vaquero-style suit, his hands laid across his chest.
His velvet-lined casket flanked by bouquets of sage, prairie
flowers, and marigolds. Brown-skinned and silver-haired, his
features peaceful in repose. Handsome still, even in death.
His widow, veiled and dressed in black, seated nearby.
Next to her sat an old man, his bent form clad in a faded black
frock coat and hat, beneath which hung a few strands of lank
gray hair.
At the sight of El Diablo and his gang, the old man rose
from his chair and extended a knobby hand, introducing
himself as Santo Valdez’s attorney.
El Diablo ignored the gesture. “You the one ‘sposed to
read the Will?”
The attorney nodded.
“Get on with it then,” said El Diablo gruffly.
The attorney bowed and shuffled over to an ornately
carved table, upon which a number of documents had been
neatly laid out.
“I’ve had copies drawn up of the Will, should anyone
require one.”
El Diablo drew his gun. “Just read, dammit.”
Without further delay the attorney opened a leather
briefcase and took out his copy of the Will. Hands shaking,
he began to read aloud.
Being the Last Will and Testament of Santo Valdez:
Be it known by all concerned that it has therefore been confirmed
by my attorney, the estimable Modius De Janeiro, that my death
has hereby been certified to have been by natural causes. And not
as a result of foul play by any of my former “friends” or
“associates.”
Such being the case, I hereby bequeath my home and personal
possessions to my wife, Isabelle Marianna Valdez. She is to be
well-treated and protected for as long as she lives. Whether here
in Paraiso, or elsewhere.
To any of my former associates who are present here today, I honor
my promise, and bequeath to you my hidden fortune of 100,000
gold pistoles. Gold that I took from the water barons, who are the
real bandits of this world. For they have stolen our water and
turned our land into a desert.
Should you hear such men disparage the poor, keep this in mind.
There can be no rich people without poor people. For the rich need
the poor like vampires need blood.
As to the location of the gold—it is in the mountains beyond the
Bloodlands, hidden in a holy place where the saints from olden
times were once interred. Look here, ye of good faith, and you
shall find it.
This is the full and final Last Will and Testament of Santo
Valdez.
With this the old attorney returned the document to his
briefcase and went back to his seat.
El Diablo glared at the old attorney with his one good
eye. “That’s it?”
The attorney nodded nervously. “Yes, that is the
document in its entirety.”
“A goddamn riddle,” said El Diablo, disgusted.
He spat on the floor and turned to walk away. Then,
almost as an afterthought, turned and shot the attorney in the
head.
The old man keeled over and crumpled to the floor,
blood pumping from a hole just above his temple. Black
Moon took a slug of whiskey, and put another bullet into the
already-dead body. Dorado and the Hangman laughed, but
took a step back and stood behind Black Moon, in case he
was not yet done shooting.
The Padre stood over Santo’s casket, eyes cast
heavenwards as he made the sign of the cross.
“May he rest in peace,” he said. “The dirty bastard.”
Snake Mary dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a
handkerchief. “I can’t believe he’s really gone.”
“Me either,” said her twin sister, Rose Darling. “Can’t
hurt to make sure, though.”
She walked up to the casket and unloaded both barrels
of her shotgun into Santo’s face.
Snake Mary covered her mouth and giggled.
The Padre made a brief benediction over Santo’s bullet-
ridden corpse and spoke in a consoling tone to Santo’s widow.
“Perhaps a closed-casket ceremony would be best, my
dear.”
El Diablo turned to the widow. “Yeah, my condolences,
señorita.”
Then he shot the widow between the eyes and she fell
backward, dead before she hit the floor.
El Diablo stalked out of the hacienda and headed for the
cantina. The other members of his gang following close
behind, drinking and joking among themselves.
