THE OTHER, TATUAJE, didn’t reach for the machete at his waist, but instead a gun he had hidden in a holster beneath his long shirt. Neither Chayo nor Neva had seen it, and he went for it now, as Neva ran toward Chayo, putting herself in front of Tatuaje’s gun. His first shot went low, kicking up dirt and rocks at her feet so that she stumbled and fell, rolling in the scrub. But she got up and kept running, throwing a handful of gritty sand in Tatuaje’s direction.

His second went high, lost forever in the sky.

The third wasn’t from him at all . . .

. . . it was from Chayo.

He was kneeling over Baseball’s body with that man’s gun in his hand, and nearly blew Tatuaje’s heart out of the back of his chest.

The impact rocked him back and forth and his sunglasses slipped sideways on his head, but he didn’t fall.

He said something in both English and Spanish and coughed a thick river of blood, as his eyes rolled up white.

Perhaps he was praying, too.

Chayo’s next shot dropped him to his knees, where his gun slipped from his hands into the dirt. He reached down for it but couldn’t see it, couldn’t find it, his empty hands moving on their own, fingers searching.

Chayo’s last shot knocked him backward and put him down.

Still empty-handed.

—

IT WAS OVER IN SECONDS. When it started, Chayo had never held a gun.

When it was over, he’d killed two men.

Except . . . Baseball was still alive, barely. Dying by the second. There was a splinter of the old rifle deep in his left eye, and Chayo’s knife buried in the thin, weathered flesh hidden by the bandanna below his chin. The knife stuck out awkwardly, quivering with each last breath he took. He made gently whispering sounds, like he was telling secrets, like soft wind blowing through an open window. He was kicking his legs . . . back and forth . . . back and forth . . . slowing like a clock winding down.

He was crying bloody tears from his ruined eye, and Chayo held his hand as he died.

Afterward, Neva pulled Chayo up, helping to keep his own legs from buckling. He realized her arms were stained thick with his blood, and when they both finally understood just how bad he was hurt, she helped lay him back down again.

She stood over him looking back the way they’d come, her thoughts unknowable. Chayo wanted to tell her to go, to keep going. The sky was blue above her, framing her with wisps of clouds working their way north, the direction they had been traveling.

He lay in her shadow, and it was cool there.

Then she got to work.

—