The Widow's Revenge Read Online Free PDF Page B

bastards didn’t buy their meat like upright citizens.
They must’ve killed one of Lonnie Ross’s pigs.
Wouldn’t bother
them
that Lonnie’s wife was sickly and that the young couple had four hungry children to feed and Lonnie hadn’t worked since he got laid off last Christmas. When Loyola heard someone laugh, angry tears welled in her eyes.
First they murder my sweet little nanny goat, now they’re picnicking on one of my dirt-poor neighbor’s pigs.
    It was apparent that someone had to do something about this outrage. Loyola knew very well who that
someone
was, and also what that
something
was—and she was more-than-ever determined to draw warm blood.
    But not before she’d learned everything she could about this devilish bunch.
    Straining to hear, the aged spy cocked her ear. As she’d hoped, snatches of conversation did reveal something about their malevolent plans. Quite a lot, in fact. She tried very hard to commit every bit of it to memory.
    After Loyola had absorbed as much as she could without becoming completely befuddled, she gave up the tedious intelligence-gathering game.
    The time had come to get down to serious business.
     
    THE WIDOW’S REVENGE
    Loyola Montoya raised the heavy pistol in both hands, closed her left eye, took careful aim at the back of the nearest and biggest witch, and whispered, “With a little luck, I’ll drill the son of a bitch right through his black heart.” Stiffening her back and setting her teeth in anticipation of the roar of the .45 and its jarring recoil, she hissed through her teeth, “This is for Nancy.” The expectant marksman pulled the trigger.
    Nothing.
    The weapon in her hands might as well have been a useless lump of pot metal. Accustomed to conversing with herself when puzzled, Loyola commenced her whispering. “What went wrong?” She glared at the pistol. “I must’ve left the safety on.” (She had.) But the shootist knew how to remedy that error. And she tried. Ever so hard. But though her thumb searched ever so diligently for the smallish latch, it could not find the contrary thing.
Oh, what an old fool I am.
Humiliated and deflated, she muttered, “Damn!”
    Whispers and hisses are one thing (or two?); a mutter, quite another.
    Two or three someones had heard Loyola’s heartfelt “Damn!”
    One was the man whose broad back had been her intended target. He shushed his comrades to silence with a subtle gesture, then turned to stare directly at the spot where the Apache elder was concealed behind the huckleberry bush.
    The other members of the coven followed his gaze.
    Thirteen evil stares are a formidable force to be reckoned with.
    Loyola froze. But not entirely. The thumb on her right hand was (unbeknownst to the dangerous lady) still searching for the safety.
    The big man made another barely perceptible gesture. Four other
brujos
separated from the circle to join him. The five, striding purposefully about two yards apart, approached the old lady’s hiding place.
    The Apache warrior’s determined thumb found what it had been looking for, and her trusty trigger finger reacted—
    Boom-boom-boom!
(They are not called
automatic
pistols without good reason.)
    “Yi-yi-yikes!” (With each thunderous report, the startled shooter yelped.)
    Simultaneously with the
booms!
and Loyola’s yelps, devil worshipers were falling to prone positions with arms outstretched. No, they were not calling on their Father Below for deliverance. The prudent supplicants were hitting the dirt so as to present the smallest possible targets. Sad to say (one cannot help but side with the sniper), the tactic was effective. Not one of the hated thirteen was struck by the zipping lumps of lead.
    The sole casualties were a gnarly branch on a twisted piñon, a quarter-million-year-old chunk of brownish red sandstone, and a left front tire mounted on one of the unhappy campers’ stolen motor vehicles. We are not talking shabby, off-brand retread. The fatally wounded tire was a