Free The Guns of Santa Sangre by Eric Red

studied the rubble. “Where’s the bodies?”
    On the ground lay a shattered silver pocket watch on a broken length of small chain. Tucker picked it up and saw the words “John Whistler” engraved inside the bent lid. The name rang a bell and he remembered it belonged to a bounty hunter he had met up with years ago. For sure they would never meet again. The cracked glass cover of the time face showed the hour and minute hands frozen at 8:28, immortalizing the exact moment their owner departed the earth.
    A ratty piece of paper fluttering in the dry arid wind caught his eye, and as it was picked up in the breeze he snatched it out of the air. The gunfighter perused it momentarily and squinted with agitation, and when he saw the others looking at him, he quietly passed the wanted poster with their faces on it around to the other two men to whom it pertained. When it got to Fix, the thin gunsel crumpled it in his fist and pocketed the wadded ball of paper before the girl got a look.
    “Interestin’,” he said.
    “This watch belonged to John Whistler,” Tucker observed. “That stage was heading in our direction and he was on it.”
    “Them wanted posters must’ve belonged to him,” Bodie said, stating the obvious with a sense of discovery. “Two and two put together equals he was after the reward.”  
    Tucker tossed away the broken pocket watch. It clattered on the rocks and lay still. “Reckon we should probably thank whoever took him out. Whistler was a real bad ass and could have given us big problems.”
    “I think we should say a few words over the dearly departed.” Fix spat a blob of tobacco juice with precision accuracy, splattering the watch. “Fuck y’all. Amen.”
    “I know what did this,” said Pilar. That was all she said.
    “Let me guess,” said Tucker. “Those we’re goin’ up against.”
    Her eyes told it all.
    They rode on and left the decimated stagecoach in their dust.
    Canyon cleaved up several hundred yards ahead, squeezing the trail into an ass crack of a ravine. The dull, tedious minutes passed as the three riders followed the horse of the determined peasant girl. One stallion exhaled with a wet flubber . The rattle of the packs on the saddles squeaked with leather over the clop of hooves as the men ascended the rise and came to a depression in the mesa baking like an oven under the nasty sun. The glare was so bright it hurt their eyes, and their vision swam as they squinted and visored their foreheads with their hands to shield their gaze from the sand that reflected like glass.
    Ahead, a black smudge was in the watery waves of heat.  
    There were blurry dots in the sky in the molten, undulating thermals rising off the desert.  
    The closer they rode, they discerned those hovering spots were black birds. Vultures circling. Many.
    Over the next hill, buzzards gathered.
    An outpost.
    The riders reined their horses.
    Vultures continued their overhead circumference.
    Over the ridge, the remains of a stagecoach station lay in smoldered ruins. The charred walls looked painted dull red, but on closer inspection the red was not paint.
    “This is a bad place,” whispered the girl. “ Muy mal .”
    The gunfighters dismounted their horses and drew their irons.  
    “Easy, boys. This place ain’t right,” Tucker said.
    Fix sniffed. “You boys smell that?”
    “Like an open grave.” Bodie winced.
    The three cowboys carefully approached the gutted ruins of the stage junction a hundred yards before them. The lonely building sat quietly in an open clearing with nothing for miles but a few yucca plants and the worn rutted trail running past it. Tucker led, eyes glued to the area, gesturing with his fingers for the others to come forward when he saw the coast was clear. The building was a one-story brick construction with a wooden porch and a paddock.  
    There had been a great disturbance. Saddles and tack lay scattered on the ground, thrown to and fro as if in a savage rage. One of