Sample Chapter-Palo Duro Gold

Palo Duro Gold Chapter 1
The black racing stallion stretched his long legs across the rough terrain as the rider touched spurs lightly to his side. He had been running this way for nearly an hour, and the exertion was beginning to tell on his breathing.
“Hold up boy” the rider said softly, speaking Spanish, as he pulled gently on the reins.
They stopped on the rim of a small knoll in the otherwise flat and deserted country of Eastern New Mexico Territory. The horse, dripping sweat, blew his breath noisily through his nostrils, as his master looked back down the trail from which they had come. A small dust cloud could be seen more than five miles to the west. The rider smiled and spoke once more to the stallion, “They will never catch us now, Diablo,” as he dismounted and stretched his legs.
Tall, over six feet, his sweat-soaked, unruly blond hair curled below the large, Mexican sombrero which was tied securely below his chin. The sombrero was adorned with the skin of a huge rattlesnake which coiled menacingly around the crown.
Dust and blood covered the black, form-fitting suit of fine linen. The wide bottomed trousers were slashed up the side and laced with red and green ribbons. Buttons on the vest were silver as was the huge buckle on his belt. Twin pearl-handled revolvers hung from the belt which encircled his waist, and a bandoleer of rifle bullets was draped across his chest. A new Winchester repeating rifle was stuffed securely in the saddle boot.
Beneath the broad hat band, his long blond hair and blue eyes struck a strange contrast on the swarthy, olive-brown tint of his skin. He considered himself Mexican although his father was French and his mother was Mexican-Indian.
He hated gringos. He had killed twenty-one by the time he was twenty-one years of age — one for each year. His viciousness and hatred, however, was not limited to gringos, ten Mexicans had fallen victim to his murderous rampages. Even though he was Mexican, himself, he felt no remorse for the killings of his own kind. He killed for the love of killing. Mexicans in Santa Fe called him El Darse Loco — Mad Dog Sostenes.
His birth name was Sostenes L’Archeveque 1 . When he was only eight years old, he watched as his father was tortured and murdered by a gringo and he swore, as he watched the dirt being thrown on his grave, to kill every gringo he met.
Although he wore his pistols tied to his leg like most gun-fighters of the day, and wore a bandoleer of bullets wrapped around his chest, his favorite weapon was the sharp, pointed, double-edged dagger which hung from the back of his belt. Sharp as a razor, he loved to see the blood flow from the wounds which he could inflict with the blade.
He gave his victims no quarter — to him, a fair fight only invited disaster. His method was shooting them from the back in order that they could not defend themselves. Last night, gringo victims numbers nineteen, twenty and twenty-one were murdered by his guns in Jose’s Cantina in Las Vegas. Slipping his pistol from its holster below the table, he shot the three unsuspecting gamblers, who were playing poker with him, because he believed that they were cheating. Not satisfied with just gunning them down, in anger, he pulled the sharp dagger from his belt and quickly slit the throats of each of his victims, and laughed as their blood covered his hand and spotted his clothing. Although the Cantina was crowded with drinkers and gamblers, no one was willing to interfere for fear that they would meet
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the same fate as the three unfortunate gringos. He laughed and shouted “Adios, amigos!” as he grabbed up the stakes from the table, bolted out
the back door of the Cantina, mounted his black stallion, and rode east toward the Texas-New Mexico border. Once he crossed the border into the unsettled, lawless Texas Panhandle, he knew he would be safe — he had made this trip several times before, with posses hot on his trail.
Borregos Plaza was his destination, a sheep ranch owned and occupied by his brother-in-law, Nicholas “Cola” Martinez. In recent years, Mexican sheep herders had migrated down the Canadian River and had established a small community, Atascosa Plaza, in the Texas Panhandle, only thirty miles from the New Mexico border. Atascosa was surrounded by several Mexican Plazas — Borregos, Romero, Salinas, Trujillo, Sandoval and Chavez2. Sostenes did not stop for rest until he reached Salinas Plaza on the Texas- New Mexico border, where he knew he would be safe from the pursuing vigilantes.
Salinas Plaza, named for the huge salt lake nearby, was occupied by twenty-five Mexican families, who operated stores and saloons, and was frequented by salt traders from the Santa Fe and Las Vegas area. Everyone in New Mexico knew and feared Sostenes, and the crowd quickly left the Cantina when he swaggered through the door.
“Tequila!” he shouted, pounding the bar with his fist. The frightened bar tender, poured him a glass, spilling some on the bar. Drinking it down in one gulp, Sostenes pushed the glass forward and demanded another. “A steak –
rare!” he ordered. Picking up his glass and the half-empty bottle, he walked to a dark corner of the saloon and sat down with his back to the wall and his eyes on the door.
The bartender delivered the steak, rare and still dripping blood, and nervously asked if there was anything else. “Yes,” Sostenes replied, “I want my horse fed and watered and a room. If anyone comes asking for me, you are to tell them that you have not seen me. You will be the first to feel the steel of my blade if they find me.”
“Si, senor — I will tell no one,” the frightened bartender replied.
Sostenes need not have worried, the posse, realizing that the outlaw had crossed into Texas, turned and headed back to Las Vegas. The next morning, the residents of Salinas were thankful when the Mexican outlaw mounted his black stallion and rode eastward into Texas down the Canadian river.
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