I couldn’t help but feel pity as I looked at my old friend Pancho reclined against a large rock, firelight dancing across his weary face and in his eyes. I felt pretty sure this was the end, and I think he felt it, too. He turned up his canteen over his mouth, and his parched lips responded to every last drop.

“Can I get you anything?” I asked. “Want me to stoke the fire?”

“Nah. I’m fine, Lefty.” His voice was weak. “Tell you the truth, I kinda like the cold.”

He’d been riding wounded through the desert for several days; I’d only caught up with him this afternoon—and to tell the truth, I thought I was gonna have to shoot him outta self-defense until he finally recognized me.

“I never though it’d end this way,” he said, low and gravelly. “Gutshot by some punk Federales down in Mexico.”

“Yeah.” I didn’t feel the need to correct him. “Don’t seem right.”

“What’re you gonna do? You got the bread to go north?”

“I’ll manage.” Of course, he had no idea I’d seen him bury our loot in that old cemetery. “’Spect I’ll head on back to Ohio—least ‘til the heat dies down.”

“Probably as good as any.”

I thought maybe he’d mention the loot—but he didn’t.

“Here,” he said, wrestling with his gun belt. “Don’t reckon I’ll be needing this no more.” He reached the belt and his .45 toward me. I stood up and took it. “Best you wear it outside your pants.”

“Don’t you think that’s asking for trouble?”

“Nah,” he said. “All them honest folk out there, they need to feel it—the dishonest folk, too.”

I hung the iron on my saddle horn, then I grabbed a fresh bottle of whiskey from a saddlebag and took it over to him. I could see in his eyes he was grateful.

But then there came a low, demonic howl from somewhere close, low but piercing, hair-raising. For the first time I saw fear in my friend’s eyes. It weren’t no wolf or coyote, nor was it a call from a Mexican bandit or an Injun. It was a chupacabra, one of them beasts Satan hisself had put here in this godforsaken land to torment the saintly and punish the wicked. Not a man I knew alive wouldn’t choose any manner of death at all as opposed to being left to a chupacabra.

“Lefty!” Pancho’s eyes were crazed, but his body lacked the strength to rise. “Don’t leave me here! Not like this!”

I gave him a last look as I crawled into my saddle, wondering if I should tell him that I’d been the one who’d shot him, the sorry bastard. He shoulda never stole our loot—never shoulda. Then there came another howl, closer than before, and I decided not to tell as I began to ride. He had more to worry over than who put a bullet in him—a whole lot more.