One Last Score

I’m still not sure just what went wrong; in fact, I don’t remember much about last night at all. I’d like to blame God, or fate, or just bad damn luck; but I think the fault might lie somewhere closer to home.

We was just after one last score.

The train from Guaymas to Nogales was supposedly carrying a shipment of gold. Some kind of tribute from the Mexican Republic to the Governor of Arizona, or some such political nonsense. Me and the boys, hell we didn’t care about nothin’ but getting our hands on all that loot and high-tailing it south. We planned on sittin’ on some sunny beach where the margaritas and the senoritas were sweet and plentiful, and that gold could buy as much of both as we wanted.

Bart Myllee and his cousin Dillon got the schedule from a Southern Pacific station master over at Tombstone, before they shot him and left his body for the buzzards. The train supposedly had a dozen Mexican rurales and at least one Federale travelin’ north with the booty in a passenger car.

The problems started when we derailed the damn train. Jim Bernard was our powder monkey, and he blowed the tracks just north of Cibuta. The train derailed alright, but it was goin' faster than we thought, and it piled up end over end out there in the desert, among the sage and saguaros. The Federale had been killed, but the rurales had turned out to be trained soldiers from the Mexican army, and they were a tough bunch of bastards.

After a gunfight that seemed to last forever, Me and Bart was the only two left standin’. Dillon and old Jim was a layin’ dead in the dirt, and all the Mexicans had either been shot or run off. We found the safe all bent and dented, and with Jim bein’ dead, it took over an hour for Bart to finally knock the hinges off it, and he almost lost his left hand in the process. He finally did it though, and turned out the safe was stuffed plumb near full of 50 peso gold coins.

We loaded our bags and dragged them back to the horses we’d staked out in the hills. We filled the saddlebags, mounted up, and rode as hard as we could for the coast.

That was day before yesterday.

We rode them horses damn near into the dirt, and finally finished up in a little seaside fishin’ town as the sun was a comin’ up. We found us an empty barn, and racked out.

Bart woke me near sundown, and we found our way to a little cantina near the wharf. Wasn’t hardly nobody there, but an ugly old painted-up senora who spoke no English, and a grizzled barkeep. I told Bart he should pay with some of the copper pennies we'd been savin’ but he had to go and be a big shot.

He flipped one of them big gold coins on the bar, and the keep’s eyes damn near jumped outta his head. We each grabbed a bottle of tequila and made our way over to the table where the whore was keepin’ house. I do recall she got a little prettier with each drink, but that’s about all I remember.

All I wanted was to head south, get my feet up, and live like a king, or at least a landed gentleman. That was before I woke up in this damned cell. Now my head is poundin’ and I’m alone in this dirty pit.

I looked out the barred window a while ago, and I saw someone hanging by the neck from a scaffold. I think it is Bart, but I can’t tell for sure.

I hope if they are comin’ for me next, they at least get me a fresh rope.

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