Chapter 4 - The Web Unravels
By four o'clock the following morning, a thick, greasy fog had rolled off the Sabinas River, creeping through the dusty streets of Villa Redención like an ethereal tide.
Evaristo walked out of the saloon on the corner of the plaza, adjusting his gunbelt. He was nervous. All night, he had felt a strange, prickly sensation on the back of his neck—the feeling of eyes watching him from the dark windows of the empty houses. Twice he had drawn his revolver at shadows, only to find a stray dog or a wind-blown tumbleweed.
He crossed the plaza toward the church, where Don Anselmo’s men were setting up wooden benches for the morning ceremony.
As he passed the heavy, iron-studded doors of the Church of San Miguel, he stopped dead in his tracks.
Nailed to the center of the wooden door, illuminated by the pale lantern light, was a large square of white linen.
Evaristo stepped closer, his heart beginning to thud wildly against his ribs.
It was a drawing.
Drawn in bold, thick charcoal strokes was a life-sized portrait of Pedrito Gálvez. The boy was lying near Garabato Creek, his small face contorted in pain. Standing over him was a man whose face was shadowed, but whose left boot was detailed with unmistakable clarity—including the broken, crooked spur.
Beneath the drawing, written in crude, dark charcoal letters that dripped down the white cloth like blood, were four words:
THE BLOOD CRIES OUT.
Evaristo let out a strangled roar of rage and terror. He lunged forward, ripping the linen off the door with shaking hands, tearing it to shreds.
“Who did this?!” he screamed into the foggy, silent plaza. “Who put this here?!”
No one answered. Only the hollow echo of his own voice bounced off the adobe walls.
He turned and ran toward Don Anselmo’s hacienda, his boots pounding against the cobblestones.
As he reached the high archway of the hacienda’s courtyard, he stopped again. Another piece of linen was nailed to the iron gate.
This drawing showed the cottonwood tree on the hill. A girl was hanging from the branch, her head tilted, her dress blowing in the wind. But standing beneath her, holding a purse of gold coins in one hand and a silver-topped cane in the other, was Don Anselmo Rivas. And written across the bottom was a single sentence:
THE ROPE COULD NOT HOLD THE TRUTH.
“Guards! GUARDS!” Evaristo shrieked, his voice cracking with hysteria as he tore the second drawing down.
Inside the grand study of the hacienda, Don Anselmo Rivas sat behind a massive mahogany desk, sipping dark coffee from a china cup. He wore a black suit of finest French wool, his boots polished to a mirror shine.
When Evaristo burst into the room, pale, breathless, and waving the torn rags of linen, Anselmo did not lose his composure. He merely set his cup down on its saucer with a delicate clink.
“Control yourself, Evaristo,” Anselmo said coldly, his voice smooth and measured. “You sound like a pig being led to the slaughterhouse.”
“Look at these!” Evaristo stammered, throwing the torn cloth onto the mahogany desk. “Someone is putting these up all over the plaza! It’s the boy! It’s the girl!”
Anselmo looked down at the torn sketches. His eyes narrowed slightly, a microscopic flicker of cold annoyance passing across his handsome face.
“It is Joaquín Robles,” Anselmo said softly, dismissing the cloth with a flick of his manicured finger. “The old man has finally lost his mind to grief. He is trying to create a panic before the military commander arrives.”
“No, Anselmo, you don't understand!” Evaristo leaned over the desk, sweat running down his greasy forehead. “The drawing of the boot... it has my broken spur! The drawing of the creek... nobody knew about the box except you and me! How could the old man know that unless—”
“Unless what?” Anselmo snapped, his voice turning into an icy blade. “Are you going to tell me the girl came back from the dead?”
Evaristo swallowed hard, unable to answer.
Anselmo stood up, walking to the window that looked out over the plaza. In the distance, the sun was beginning to burn through the morning fog, casting a sickly yellow light over the town.
“The girl is dead,” Anselmo said firmly. “You saw her hang. You saw her choke. The Comanches took her body to rot in the mountains. This is nothing more than the desperate ghost-stories of a defeated town.”
He turned around, picking up his silver-topped cane from the corner of the desk.
“Captain Treviño and twenty troopers will be here in two hours. The mayor will sign the deed transferring the Sabinas valley lands to my company. The villagers will receive their 'protection' tax assessments, and Joaquín Robles will be arrested for sedition and slander before sunset.”
He walked past Evaristo, clapping a cold, heavy hand on his foreman’s shoulder.
“Go to the stables. Make sure the horses are ready for the honor guard. And if you see any more drawings, burn them. Do not let the captain see that this village is frightened by charcoal on rags.”
Evaristo nodded nervously, pulling his hat down low over his eyes as he walked out into the courtyard.
He didn't go to the stables.
His mind was screaming at him. The broken spur. The wooden box. The clean-cut rope he had found ten days ago. The fear that Anselmo had managed to suppress with cold logic burned inside Evaristo like a fever.
He walked out through the back gate of the hacienda, heading toward an abandoned adobe grain mill near the edge of town—the place where he had hidden the wooden box after moving it from Garabato Creek three days ago.
He needed to check the box. He needed to know it was still there.
The grain mill was dark, its roof half-collapsed, the air thick with the smell of dry straw and old rat droppings. Sunlight leaked through the broken rafters in thin, dusty beams.
Evaristo drew his revolver, holding it in his right hand as he stepped carefully across the rotten floorboards. He reached the back corner, where a stack of empty flour sacks covered a loose adobe brick in the wall.
He kicked the sacks aside. He reached into the hole.
His hand touched empty air.
The wooden box was gone.
Evaristo’s heart stopped. “No... no, no, no...”
He dropped to his knees, clawing wildly at the wall, pulling out bricks, scattering dust into the air. The box—containing the forty thousand pesos in stolen gold certificates, the forged land deeds bearing Pedrito’s father’s fake signature, and the bloody silver button Anselmo had lost during his struggle with the boy—was gone.
A soft, scraping sound came from the shadows behind him.
Evaristo whipped around, raising his revolver. “Who’s there? I’ll blow your head off! Show yourself!”
Out of the dusty darkness stepped a man. He was tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a deer-hide shirt, his face painted with two horizontal black bars across his cheeks—the Numunu markings of war. In his hand, he held a heavy iron war-club.
It was Tahuá Nait.
Evaristo screamed, pulling the trigger.
CLICK.
The hammer fell on an empty chamber. Evaristo frantically cocked the gun again, firing a second time.
CLICK.
He looked at the cylinder in terror. The lead bullets had been removed; the chambers were empty, stuffed with dry yellow grass.
Tahuá Nait did not rush. He stepped forward with the calm, terrifying momentum of an avalanche. Before Evaristo could turn to run, the warrior’s left hand shot out, catching the huge foreman by the throat and slamming him against the adobe wall with enough force to knock the breath from his lungs.
The revolver fell from Evaristo’s numb fingers.
Then, from behind Tahuá Nait, a second figure stepped out of the shadow.
She was wearing a simple dark dress. Around her neck was a broad leather collar. In her small, steady hands, she carried the dark wooden box.
She looked at Evaristo with eyes that contained no hate, no fear, and no mercy. Only the absolute, cold light of truth.
Amalia stepped closer. She leaned in until her pale face was inches from Evaristo’s terrified eyes.
May you like
She opened her mouth, and from her ruined throat came a raspy, musical whisper that sounded like the ringing of a distant funeral bell:
“Hello, Evaristo,” she whispered. “Did you miss me?”
