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with a small measure of uncertainty. The nun’s peculiar eyes flickered and flashed, and then were ordinary once again; and the padre thought to himself that this woman may fight empty-handed, from time to time…but he doubted she was ever unarmed.
    “I must excuse myself,” he tried again. “I will meet you again…here? Or have you some other preference? This appears to be the center, but it’s difficult to watch something while standing in the middle of it.”
    She smiled, and said, “That is an excellent way to put it. Let us meet in the courtyard in half an hour. Is that long enough?”
    “Yes, sister. Half an hour, and I’ll see you there.”
     
    Up in his room, he sat on his bed and removed his hat. Then he removed his black cotton frock, and stood in a pair of canvas trousers and the boots he always wore when he might be called upon to walk, or fight.
    He stretched, and yawned. It was only a bit of travel fatigue, but he was annoyed with himself all the same.
    He wanted some water.
    The hotel had indoor plumbing of the latest and highest standard, with one tap for hot and one tap for cold—a luxury scarcely to be believed. He turned them both to full blast and filled the sink’s ceramic bowl with warm, clean water that smelled faintly of metal and salt; he dipped his hands in it, splashed his face, and rubbed at his eyes. When he opened them again, he was staring above the small basin at the gilded mirror mounted on the wall, its silvering bright and new like everything else inside the Jacaranda Hotel (if not what lurked beneath it). The padre splashed his face again, then picked up the small towel that hung beside the mirror. He patted the last droplets from his cheeks while staring into his own reflection.
    He would ask Sarah about coffee, when he returned downstairs. He didn’t much care for the flavor, but he always appreciated the results.
     
    He checked the mirror again.
     
    Yes, he was tired…but the years were chasing him, so he kept running. They closed in, all the same. Every crinkle around his eyes, each thread of gray at his temples, and all the old scars deepened with every passing season. He was not as strong and broad as he once had been, but he was still strong enough, broad enough. His chest was lean and sinewy, but not yet sunken. His skin was looser at the joints, but it mostly remained a smooth, tea-colored canvas for a dozen tattoos done in ages past—in another lifetime, or it might as well have been.
    Not all of the images were expertly applied, and most of them held little meaning.
    Some said only that he’d spent too much time in the company of bad men: a scorpion here, a coyote there. A cross on his right inner wrist, done with a needle during his first stay in prison. (It wasn’t a sign of devotion; it was a sign that he didn’t trust the artist with anything more complex.) A sun with wildly waving rays on his left forearm—the only piece with any color, though it was mostly faded now and the orange scarcely showed at all.
    The only tattoo that mattered, was one he couldn’t see without a craned neck and a large mirror.
    It ran across his back, from shoulder to shoulder in blocky, gothic script: his final tattoo. He’d bought it in Juarez, commissioned it by a professional with a steady hand—a man who’d decorated sailors, circus performers, and cowboys alike. The padre had sat down for five hours, leaning forward with his arms wrapped around a dirty horsehair pillow.
    Deo, non Fortuna.
    By God, not by chance.
     

It wasn’t always like this.
     
    Mexico, 1889
    (Six years before Juan Miguel Quintero Rios ever heard of the Jacaranda Hotel.)
     
    West of Texas there were gunslingers—four in particular, banded together by blood and familiarity: brothers Juan Miguel and Roberto, with their cousin Luiz; and a friend they’d known since childhood, Eduardo—a man with a mind unfailingly keen, but judgment unerringly poor. They’d grown up together, orphans in Mexico