“It is time you woke up.”

The voice came at him from the darker shadows, a casual observation. He blinked again, and his vision began to focus better, distinguishing between the shadows around him.

“What…where the hell am I?”

“Don’t try to talk yet. Just listen.”

A familiar darkness broken by wavering patches of light from creosote torches…the stench of urine and sweat…the rattle and clink of chains…a steady moaning like that of a wounded animal…

Suddenly he knew where he was, and an irrational panic rose up in a choking wave. He’d worked in a mine once before and knew that smell, knew those sounds….

“Christ! No, I’ve got to get out of here!”

“Por Dios, stay down,” the voice muttered, urgent now, “or you will leave here bent over the end of a sword!”

It took all his will not to leap up, and a cold sweat broke out. Bile rose in his throat, memories suddenly stark and real. The doctor…

But the face that hovered over him with an anxious expression was not the smiling, unctuous face of his old tormentor. The doctor was dead now…dead. No, whatever nasty trick of fate that had brought him here, it was not the same.

This time, there had been a trial, a farcical exercise in frustration and futility as soon as he had recovered enough to make an appearance. He was taken from his cell to a room, where he was swiftly condemned for the crime of smuggling.

It was almost laughable.

The rifles he’d smuggled across the border were not the ones presented to the magistrado as evidence, but it didn’t really matter anyway. Someone knew about it and had betrayed them. Who would have known? Had Butch Casey and Paco been caught as well?

It was all still so fuzzy, most of the details still foggy…the soldiers entering the cantina, ranging around the room like scavengers, hunting.

Thinking back, he would almost swear that the soldiers were interested in him alone that night, had been looking for him. Only a few peasants were arrested; they had ignored most there, save the few men they scooped up and charged as bandits.

“Guilty,” the magistrado had pronounced with barely a glance at the prisoner standing before him in shackles and bruises. He had rifled some papers, then scrawled his signature across the bottom and motioned for Steve to be taken away.

The sentence was predictable—thirty years hard labor. A guard had nudged him, laughing when he stumbled, then slammed a fist against the side of his head as he struggled for balance.

“Gringo pig! You will be with us a long time, so you had best learn your duty now, filth! The price of resistance can be painful…crawl back to your cell like the dog you are!”