Nena dumped the contents of the saddle bag on the cabin floor. Taking the medical kit she opened the lid slowly. An angry beetle clattered inside it. After preparing all the ingredients she cut Muddy's pants to the crotch and gripped the oversized beetle with her thumb and forefinger.

Chancho helped Muddy drink as Nena guided the beetle in its work. The guano salve disinfected the ragged edges of the wound, a through and through, and the water revived him.

"I'm fine." He stroked Nena's hair as she stooped over him.

"You're alive."

"We're all alive." He tried to soothe the warrior in her.

"I'm not sure that is such a good thing," she hissed.

The barbs were too many for Chancho to shrug them off. Nena's temper had flared at him before, but it had always died down quickly. "Lo siento. I'm sorry for bringing trouble." His quiet, happy life had nearly gone from his memory.

"Are you? You speak without change." She narrowed her eyes at him. "I will not listen any more. We should have gone to Mexico."

Muddy clutched her hand. "I stopped us from—"

"You listened to him." Nena put both her hands on Muddy's face. "I need you to listen to me. Jesse is dead." Muddy closed his eyes. Nena continued. "The ranger is still pursuing us and now the cavalry. This will not stop. It is getting worse." Her voice wavered causing Muddy to open his eyes and look deeply into hers. "We had a quiet life."

He pulled her to him and embraced her trembling body. "We will again."

She shook her head. "No, we won't. Not like this. There is nowhere for us to go. Why didn't you fly to Mexico?"

He held her head in his hands, looking again into her eyes. "I was angry. I am angry. Jesse served these people his entire life, for right or for wrong. Four years retired and they gun him down at the very fort he served to protect, like a dog. He did nothing but help us. We did nothing but defend ourselves. I will not allow it to stand. No life lived like that is worth living."

Life returning to him, he shifted his gaze between Nena and Chancho. "These people will know they were served and protected by the likes of Jesse Warrior, by generations of Warriors, even if I am the last one remaining." He stroked Nena's hair. "We must earn the life before we can live it. It is how it has always been. Chancho?"

"¿Si?"

"We're heading east, correct?"

"Si. Toward the boomtown we saw from the air."

"Good. It'll be a lawless place."

"We cannot hide. They know what we look like now, not that we would blend anyway." Nena could not let it go.

Chancho shoveled more coal into the furnace and checked the boiler levels. Bumping against a clipboard he loosed several papers. While gathering them before the wind could whip them from the cabin, a headline caught his eye. "Hola, what's this?" He read out loud from the flyer.

"A dry vote is against Del Rio Villarreal and his friends. A dry vote is against immigrants, yes. But a dry vote is against progress too. A dry vote is against liberty. America will only remain the land of the free as long as it is home to the brave. Blowhards and fear mongers are already destroying both. The evidence is clear for those willing to see."

He looked at the other two. "It is signed Bronco O'Brien." He scanned the inside of the pamphlet, his eyes widening. "It's about us! All of it."

"Everything?"

"Everything! The rinche, the marihuana, everything."

Nena stammered. "But how? We only—"

"It has been two days. O'Brien is making it public." Muddy reached for the flyer. "He probably assumes we are in..." he apologized to Nena with his eyes, "...Mexico by now."

"It says there is a rally today, in a town called Blondie." Chancho rubbed his ear. "What does it mean?"

"It means that we may not have to hide."

Nena spoke, "If these flyers have reached the boomtown—"

"We would fit the description." Muddy sat up, his color already returned to normal, darker than the lumps of coal. "And if O'Brien's right about prohibition, a boomtown would be a willing audience."

"We will ask them for help?" Nena scowled.

"We will test their spirit." Muddy held her close. "You will judge them for us, but Chancho..."

"¿Si?"

"You will have to convince them."

Chancho shook his head. "Of what?"

"That what O'Brien says is true. That we are all family. That our freedom is the same as theirs."

Chancho was still shaking his head.

"You will have to convince them to join the fight."

"But this is not the revolucion."

"You must make them believe it is."

A crackle of static interrupted them, followed by a tinny voice echoing in the cabin. Chancho jumped. "Wireless! How did I miss that? ¡Increíble! Wireless on a train!"

"Answer it!" Nena shook her fist at him.

"Disculpeme." He lifted the receiver. "Hola."

"Not in Spanish!"

"Oh, sorry. I mean, hello?"

Unaffected, the voice spoke firmly from the other end. "In a few moments you will be forced from the main track onto a side rail. I recommend you slow down and take the opportunity to turn yourselves in. If you do not step off the train with your hands over your head the moment the engine stops my men will shoot first. There will be no questions." A steady static resumed as the line went dead.

Chancho hung up and looked out the window. On cue, they chugged past a switch. The sign read, "Blondie." For 180 degrees, oil derricks cramped the horizon like broken teeth on a saw.

"Did that sign say 'Blondie'?" Nena helped Muddy to his feet.

"Si."

"What time did that flyer—"

"Noon."

"And it's almost—"

"Noon. Si. It appears we will be paying Mr. O'Brien a visit sooner than we expected." Chancho scratched his chin, wondering if Chloe would be with her father.

"Stop the train." Nena stamped her foot. "Stop the train before we reach the station."

Chancho jumped. "Si, si, of course." He cut off the steam and pulled the brake, the station still a few hundred yards away.

"We will need a diversion." Muddy tested his leg, finding it solid enough to walk on. "As soon as the train slows Nena and I will jump off. Chancho, you release the brake and give the engine full steam before you follow."

Chancho nodded. "But what if the crowd—"

"You will know what to say."

"And the rinche?"

Muddy clapped his shoulder with a meaty hand. "It sounded like he was on a train as well, but he'll have others."

"We can't trust anyone." Nena cut in. "Our story on a flyer means nothing. There is no guarantee these people will help us." She checked on the distance to the station—two hundred yards and closing.

"No, but the crowd will help us whether they intend to or not. Remember, disorder will favor us. Stay together." Muddy hoisted a saddle bag over his shoulder and grabbed Nena around the waist.

"And if there is no revolution?" She quipped.

"We will find a way out. Chancho, follow us quickly. We will wait." Reaching the lowest step Muddy and Nena swung their arms outward and leapt from the train.

Chancho released the brake and gave the engine all the steam he had left from the dwindling furnace. "Sorry girl, but they'll fix you up." With the last saddle bag over his shoulder he leapt clear of the railroad ties and hit the ground running.

Only a hundred yards from the station, the deputies spotted them instantly. Gunshots pursued them into the brush. But shortly after the three of them began hurdling sagebrush and cactus, shouts of alarm rose as the runaway engine slammed into a barricade. Forgotten for the moment, they worked their way toward the edge of town.

The town proper barely deserved the label, and certainly didn't justify the name 'Blondie.' Smeared in mud and oil, the countryside reeked. Rivulets of oil-tainted water swirling with rainbow refractions drained away from the town. As they drew nearer, sulfur gas choked them and dirt gave way to mud. The few areas that had dried since the recent rains became treacherously rutted. Despite all the evidence of human tampering they had yet to see a townsperson, other than the ones shooting at them.

Finally they reached a semblance of main street. Tromping along uneven boardwalks, they hurried past the most haphazard lean-tos and shanties Chancho had ever seen. Mexican peons had more pride in their buildings. The only substantial structures appeared to be saloons and whorehouses. The few glass window were smeared thick with mud and spattered oil.

Every gap, every space between and behind, and sometimes even in front, boasted a rickety derrick. They jutted from the ground like jagged, unnatural weeds. Whether covered at the base with plywood shacks and posted warnings of dangerous gas, or bilging away in the open, the derricks pumped their precious black ooze into pipes on the surface. The unearthliness of the empty streets, the ever-present clanking and the odious off-gassing caused Chancho to shiver.

A ricocheting bullet brought him back to reality. The edge of the crowd loomed at the end of the street, still blocks a way, while their pursuers angled toward them purposing to cut them off. It would be close—the bullets even closer. Muddy could not run at full speed, and Nena was burdened with helping him.

Chancho broke away from the boardwalk and ran toward the gunmen. "I'll catch up with you in the crowd! Say hi to Chloe for me!"

"Chancho!" But there was no time for argument. Muddy and Nena continued toward the crowd at a fast lope.

Chancho concentrated on not twisting an ankle in the rutted road while running directly toward trouble. "Hey! I'm Chancho, fast as fast can be!" He taunted the deputized goons until a slug bit into the edge of his boot. "Madre de Dios." Zig-zagging toward the opposite side of the street he drew most of their attention and fire. Upon gaining the far boardwalk he continued toward the deputies as long as he dared. After hot slugs splintered a saloon railing right beside him, he ducked through swinging doors with the deputies only fifty feet away.

"Hey! The bar's closed. Everyone's at the—" a busboy left behind to guard the place attempted to cut him off.

"Perdoname, but some men with guns are right behind me." Chancho dodged him. "I suggest you get down, mi amigo." He ran straight through to the back. Finding the door locked he lowered his shoulder and crashed through it as the men burst in the front.

"The bar's closed!"

"Shut up, idjit!" The first man barreled the busboy over, the second one clocking him in the chin with a boot as he rushed by.

Chancho bounced off a dumpster in the back, dropping his saddle bags. He turned to retrieve them but a bullet slurped into the mud right beside them. Reeling, he took off toward the crowd as loud cheers rose. "Para mi? You shouldn't have." The back alley reeked of stale mud and discarded garbage, the sludge sucking at his boots.

He slogged his way across a stagnant mud soup skimmed with oil scum just as the gunmen pushed through the remaining shards of the back door. Two bullets whizzed past him on either side before he rounded the nearest pump house. Clearing the muck, he ducked through a gap between derricks leading to the next street over. With the pursuers never gaining clear line of sight again he reached the crowd and slipped into a fissure of humanity. Now to find Muddy and Nena, and with any luck, possibly Miss O'Brien.