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sputtered, and popped like gunfire over the smoldering chip. Acrid white smoke swirled about, assaulting Juan’s eyes and stinging his nose. He closed his eyes, but did not turn away. Alone in his pain, Juan languished in a world far, far away. His own world, of his own making.
    He was miserable. Not melancholic. A whore in winter without a favorite man, a vaquero lamenting lost love in soulful song; they, were melancholic. Juan was angry and past desperate. Hatred had become his only motivation, staying alive a moment by moment affair.
    Chased out of every prairie town he had come upon, uneasily fed and encouraged to leave by fellow Mexicans who saw him a threat to their precarious lives, Juan had struggled on. He was not welcome in Mexico, and a Mexican was tolerated in this part of Texas only so long as he found and stayed in his place. For a Mexican like Juan, who refused subservience and carried his guns in open defiance of bigots and their unwritten law, death waited in each new town. So far, a faster man had not appeared, and Juan had managed to escape the many posses out to avenge the drunken gringos who had mistaken him for easy prey. He’d lost count of the number, but not the feeling of anger satisfied as he’d watched them die.
    Stroking his bushy, unkempt mustache, Juan sensed a subtle shift in the prairie wind. He opened his eyes and slipped back into reality. The smoke moved away, irritated him no more, but he hated the wind. It never stopped, never left a man alone, at peace with himself. Worse, when it turned humid, as it had for several days, it foretold the coming of towering thunderstorms from which there would be no shelter.
    Hurry up, rat . In the last few days, Juan had been reduced to eating prairie grass, the rodent a windfall. When it was gone, he would have nothing but his anger. He’d considered the despicable and probably final act of shooting and eating his horse, but knew a man stranded on the prairie without a horse could not hope to survive.
    Hunched over the fire, smoke drifting back up again and around his destitute sombrero, Juan saw that the scrawny prairie dog was crisp, but found his enthusiasm for the meal waning. His thoughts drifted to the other rat in his life, the great General Santa Anna. Father . As his famished mind twisted the memory, the old general was responsible for most of his troubles. His anger toward Santa Anna knew no bounds. He savored it, tasted the bile of it, and took comfort in black thoughts of revenge, of gory murder most foul.
    Before the animal’s tiny legs completely burned away, Juan removed the charred creature from the steaming branch and forced himself to eat, carefully nibbling at the stringy meat. It was not mother Smythe’s kidney pie, but better than eating snake, and the Brazos was not far. I s hould be able to catch a possum or raccoon. Anything would be better than eating grass and these damnable prairie dogs.
    Kidney pie? Now, there was a thought for a hungry man. He must be the only Mexican in the world with a taste for kidney pie. His thoughts shifted wistfully to visions of his deceased mother, the Lady Madelein Smythe, whom Santa Anna had seduced, betrayed, and ultimately broken.
    Juan found himself fondling the Sharps rifle cradled in his arms. The bandolero loosely strung across his chest held a mere ten rounds, but in his mind he was ready. Vengeance would come. That, at least, was worth waiting for.
    Juan caressed the smooth, well oiled machine. He might be starving, but he’d never failed to care for the rifle. It was family. The rifle had been given him by a dying old bandit who had ridden with him no more than a month before being killed by soldiers. It had changed Juan’s life, turned him into a man of respect. In countless skirmishes along the border, fighting Texas Rangers and troops of the Mexican government, Juan had astonished his compañeros with the accuracy of his fire. He had brought down game at incredible distances,