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Leandro Osuna slumped heavily in the one crude wooden
armchair. He groaned, lifting his long dusty riding boots, one by one, for his mother to remove.
“You could see the glow
of Cupa burning for miles and miles,” he crowed. "All the way to Santa Ysabel."
Leandro flexed his mangled toes and set
his weary feet gently on the seat of another chair.
Senora Osuna held his smelly boots at arm’s length and set them behind
the open front door. “Well then, that’s that.” She clapped her gloved hands, dusting the rays of morning light streaming into
the cluttered room.
“No Senora, that’s not that,” ‘Zul whispered to herself.
She was pouring a thick, spicey tomatillo
sauce over a leftover dish of carne asada, still warming in a blackened frying pan on an adobe woodstove in the backdoor kitchen
lean-to of the Osuna's one-room Old Town house.
While at Cupa, 'Zul had collected a shaman’s botany-basket of venemous
plants. The base for Leandro’s poisoning was to be sap of the oleander, a Spanish favorite, inducing agonising cramps, dehydration
and death in a few days. She added powdered leaf of poison oak for an itching rash, confounding diagnosis. A good dose of
ground datura seed would lend hallucination and confusion to his agony. Very fine cactus spines completed the recipe. ‘Zul
had mixed these foul ingredients in the tomatillo sauce, with extra chile to hide any bitter taste.
She served the meal
to the hungry man and watched from the doorway as he wolfed it down, barely chewing. She gave him some warm, bland tortillas
with melted cheese, and waited to be sure nothing came up.
When ‘Zul returned to the Machado house, Lugarda met her
at the door. She arched an eyebrow.
“It is done. Three days of fever, vomiting and cramps, four at most.”
“I will
have to attend him.” Lugarda's smile was grim, her face haggard and pale, draped in black lace.
“Yes,” ‘Zul told her. “He
will need attending. And you must tell him at the end, so he dies knowing.”
On the third day Leandro was only partly
conscious. He thrashed and screamed, begging for something to kill the pain. Laudenum would not stay in his belly long enough
to work its magic. His mother gave him brandy, but he could not keep it down.
Lugarda came to see him in the afternoon.
She felt the fire on his forehead. He cracked his cloudy eyes.
“Brother,” she said. “Would you like me to bring the priest?”
“No,
no priest. I’ll be better tomorrow.” His crusty lashes shuttered.
She took pity on him. “There will be no tomorrow. You
have been poisoned. I will bring Father Holbein for your confession.”
For a moment, Leandro lay still.
“Poisoned?”
His eyelids fluttered.
“Yes, poisoned. By those whom you have long tormented.”
With a moan, Leandro reached under his
pillow and shakily pulled out his heavy Colts revolver. He could barely lift it to cock the hammer.
“No,” gasped Lugarda
as she leapt for the door.
The shot rang like a cannon in the little house. Lugarda fell, but felt no bullet. The gun
clattered to the floor. Leandro’s arm hung off the bed, limp. His jaw slouched askew. A bright red stain spread across his
pillow.
“Mami,” Lugarda screamed.
‘Zul came running at the sound of the shot. Leandro was dead. He cast no shadow, so
she spat on his bloody face.
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