Courses of the Cursed: A Curtis Jefferson novel

By Vince Bailey

African American youth Curtis Jefferson is still serving his one-year term at Fort Grant, a penal outpost for boys-a place where a horrific massacre still haunts the inhabitants. In the second book of the Curtis Jefferson series, our hero continues to be challenged by a murderous fellow inmate, Harvey Huish, a torment that leads to a br

• Language: English
• Publisher: IngramElliott
• Release date: Aug 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781732843677

Vince Bailey

Vince Bailey grew up in Central Arizona, starting in the late nineteen-fifties. His youthful experiences there contribute significantly to his award winning Path of the Half Moon and Courses of the Cursed - Books 1 & 2 in the award-winning Curtis Jefferson series. Vince has also been published in several college and local newspapers, and penned a column for a nationally distributed trade periodical. Mr. Bailey currently resides in Arizona, with his family.

Book preview

Jumper

Curtis Jefferson, boy convict, rose, standing tall upon the wide rampart. He wavered briefly, checking his balance atop the tall adobe partition that divided the inside grounds of Fort Grant from the midnight darkness beyond the wall. Once stabilized, Curtis turned and glanced back at the shining glass panes of the nearest dormitory building. A faceless pair of eyes belonging to his nemesis, Harvey Huish, gleamed from one glazed frame, riveted upon the young wall walker. The sapphire light flashing from those ghoulish orbs penetrated the night like a tractor beam, drinking in the fugitive boy’s image, beckoning him back.

Resisting the dark enchantment, Curtis turned away, peered instead into the gloom on the free side of the wall and stepped off into its dark embrace. The eight-foot free fall through the inky murk felt surprisingly long. An unexpected floating sensation threw off the boy’s timing, and he landed in an ungainly position. The unplanned-for crash-landing into the desert floor dealt him nothing worse than a skinned elbow, however.

Sonofabitch! the jumper hissed to himself. Got to be more careful—coulda busted an ankle. What then, fool?

Feeling sufficiently self-admonished, Curtis took stock of his present surroundings. His shining obsidian eyes scanned the countryside beyond the walls of the Fort. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light of a waning gibbous moon, he could only perceive a series of dark blotches plastered on a glowing gray canvas—a still life of visual ambiguity.

Though Curtis was visually impaired, his ears gave him serious pause: a small, dreadfully familiar sound drifted over the dead air to the boy’s now-alert ears. There was only one ping at first, soon to be followed by more, building at length into a crescendo of tiny collisions. It sounded like several hundred billiard balls skittering across slate tables, disturbing the desert silence with their ominous clonking. Curtis had identified this dreadful sound before: horses’ hooves stamping on river rocks. Zombie equestrians—a murderous posse on a mission from hell—were abroad again in the night!

Curtis immediately recalled how Randy, his now-estranged companion, had once touted the security that being inside the Fort offered, while warning that the walls ensured that the things on the outside can’t get to you. He shuddered, listening intently to the rise and fall of the sinister sound, trying to determine its direction. At length, he breathed a sigh of relief as the clonking cacophony that followed the horsemen from hell began to diminish, and to eventually fade into the distance.

Convinced, at least momentarily, that he was no longer in immediate danger, Curtis reviewed his circumstances and tried to determine a reasonable direction. Mind racing, he turned his head to the west, toward the little gas station–café hamlet of Bonita Springs some six miles distant. Granted, it was the only civilized cluster within a thirty-mile radius, but it was also an unlikely place for a fifteen-year-old fugitive to hide. After all, every one of the town’s twenty inhabitants would immediately peg a black boy clad in institutional garb for an escapee from the nearby reform school.

Turning his head again like a beacon, now eastward, he faced the open miles of the Sonoran Desert. Chatter among inmates held that one or two rural towns existed at the eastern reaches of that arid expanse, perhaps thirty miles away. Curtis tried to estimate how many of those miles he could cover before daylight, or how far he could get at all without carrying water or food. Just a little thought exposed this ill-fated expedition for what it was: a spontaneous performance aimed at scaring the bejesus out of Harvey. The discovery of a missing Curtis Jefferson would foil Harvey’s own planned escape by prompting a higher level of vigilance among the guards. He’d already fulfilled his purpose by going over the wall under his archenemy’s watchful gaze. Harvey would now be pissing his pants over his scheme being thwarted. Was there really any other purpose in further pursuing this phony escape?

Curtis determined that he would spend most of the remaining dark hours outside the walls and sneak back in before dawn. He might even hang out in the latrine during morning bunk check to set up the rumor of a missing inmate, thus prolonging Harvey’s agony before showing up at morning mess. His nemesis would first be consoled at Curtis’s reappearance, then furious at being fooled. It was a prank even Randy would envy.

Driven by this new purpose, Curtis trudged eastward along the wall, feeling for the cracks in the stucco that would enable him to scale the partition, this time from the outside. After a fifty-yard jaunt, he found a spot where the fissures were wide enough to serve as handholds and footholds for climbing.

By the low and still-ascending gibbous moon, Curtis judged the time to be around one, four solid hours before first light. Relishing his prank on Harvey, he chuckled to himself as he sat with his back against the wall. He would stay parked outside the Fort until around five. It wasn’t long before he was nodding.

Curtis raised his head from a shallow doze with a start. He had snoozed away a couple of hours at the foot of the wall without incident. But he sensed quite strongly that was about to change. The gloom was still too thick to detect any visible movement in the immediate area. He strained to distinguish any audible evidence of intrusion, but the night was eerily silent—at first. Yet, at length, a faint, almost indiscernible whisper of a sound emerged at the very edge of perception, a snuffling sort of sound, like some kind of impaired intake of air, repeated, over and over. The young man’s heart began to race, then to pound, as he identified the sound of something or someone actually smelling the air. A creature was sniffing for its prey, and Curtis realized his own scent filled its nostrils. He froze in terror as the sound grew still more intense, approaching the boy’s vulnerable position. Reason told him that moving would give his stalker more sensory trails—motion and sound. Yet he knew that his building fear would provide a stronger scent that would ultimately give him away if he remained still. Instinct kicked in, and Curtis’s flight reflex compelled him to stand and climb with all haste.

Scaling like a terrified cat, Curtis was a good six feet up the stucco rampart’s face when his pursuer met the base of the wall, snarling and snapping in canine frustration. The boy, feeling he’d pulled off two escapes in one night, felt cocky enough to turn to taunt his would-be attacker as he gained the crest of the wall. The beast, he assumed, was one of the uncharacteristically large and aggressive coyotes peculiar to the region.

Baaad doggy! he blurted, but his taunt was cut short by what he saw—or thought he saw—in the pre-daylight gloom. Despite the snarling canine sounds that continued just below him, the shadowy form at the base of the wall appeared to be human in form! Not only that, but that spectral shape, still growling like a dog, was apparently beginning to scale the wall as well!

Eyes as round as saucers, Curtis Jefferson dashed along the crown of the wall in an easterly direction until he met one of the makeshift watchtowers that dotted the walls every few hundred feet. There, he jumped down into the security of the inside yard and made for the sanctuary of the henhouse, hoping that Marcus secretly carried a pistol. As he ran, he once again recalled Randy’s ominous warning: The walls keep the things on the outside from getting to you!

Footbridge

It was only a matter of time, as all things associated with the Fort Grant saga are, before Curtis shared the rest of the story with me, Vince, his confidant. I was certain that Curtis would eventually resume the tale of his confinement there, so I gave him ample room to come back around to sharing it at his own speed. What I didn’t know was that his reluctance had more to do with the dark turn the telling would take than the string of pleasant distractions presented by the month of May.

Three weeks passed after the night of the first telling before Curtis even hinted at a continuation of his story. As always, he and I hung together as part of the misfit gang of friends we shared. Though the deepened nature of our friendship was mutual and tacitly acknowledged, I think it went unnoticed by the others, and we kept that first relating of the tale under the radar as well. That was fine with me. He had singled me out before as the exclusive one-boy audience for his story since I seemed to him, as he said, a good listener.

Disbelief was not a part of my upbringing. I grew up in a town founded on a mythical mirage said to have seduced a Mormon missionary away from his ill-fated wagon party. Ultimately, that mirage guided Leland Jacobs to a lifesaving well that became the lifeblood of our town. Moreover, I was steeped in the Catholic religion—a faith that I confess is riddled with bizarre religious mysteries—not to mention I was guided through my youth by a handful of superstitious threats and unnatural consequences. My dad was quick with supernatural warnings like, You stay out past curfew, the Ouija Man is going to get you! It was destiny. I was the prime candidate to hear the extended version of Curtis’s unjust detention last year, and he knew it. He also must have sensed that I would be the one to eventually put it all down in writing.

As I said, Curtis’s tale had been on hold, partly due to the many diversions offered by the first days of May 1964. The All-City Track and Field Meet occurred on the first Saturday of the month, attracting fleet-footed ninth-grade competitors from all three Jacobs Well junior high schools. Curtis easily won blue ribbons in three back-to-back sprinting events. Then, too, early May brought high-temperature marks in the mid-90s to the Valley of the Sun, an annual green light for swimming in the local canals as the winter runoff abated and the waters went from muddy to clear. The swift water at the diversion gates and spillways provided our motley crew with forbidden, but refreshing, frolic on weekends and after school. Couple those heralds of summer with the giddy anticipation of school’s end, and I must confess that I, too, was temporarily distracted from my underlying hunger for a second telling of Curtis’s unfinished tale.

But something happened in mid-May that reawakened my yearning for Curtis to take up his account of the Fort Grant saga again. It came over me in the most unlikely of places—the classroom, and during a test! It was understood that all ninth graders throughout the state had gone through a pretty intense course on Arizona history. It was mandatory to pass the class just to graduate from junior high back then. During the final exam for that class, it occurred to me that there had been no mention of the Fort Grant atrocity during the several months of intensive study, not even a passing reference. In fact, it struck me that I’d never even heard of the Fort Grant massacre until Curtis told me all about it. That’s when I began to cobble together the bits and pieces that he’d related during that first telling and a horrific predawn picture from nearly a hundred years prior emerged. I imagined how my history-book passages would have looked if they had been lifted directly from Lieutenant Whitcomb’s dog-eared manuscript, just as Curtis had read them:

It is often believed that a brief break in the skirmishes between Apaches and white settlers arose in early 1871, and that it was perceived by some to be a threat to the profit of certain wealthy Tucson merchants who had come to benefit from government programs aimed at pacifying the Native population. Merchants like Stanley Huish had become the middlemen between federally funded schemes, such as the blankets for peace program, and the Native recipients. A lasting peace was the last thing that these dealers wanted. So, a number of raids occurred in the spring of that year. These were mere performances to invoke the sham appearance of a full-blown Indian uprising, many of which were alleged to have been financed by wealthy Tucson merchant Stanley Huish. Some of these raids were made against settlers by mercenaries masquerading as Apaches. Some were waged against the Apaches themselves to provoke retaliations. Such was the raid on the Aravaipa tribe staying near Fort Grant.

In a predawn attack on the camp, the Papago members of the raiding party silently bludgeoned and impaled their sleeping victims. In an hour’s time, 144 Aravaipa Apaches—virtually all women and children—were murdered mercilessly. Many were tortured and deliberately mutilated in indescribably horrible ways.

I shuddered a bit as those story fragments conjured the images of the tortured victims who suffered that savage and senseless attack. What a horror it must have been for those poor ill-fated souls to ultimately submit to such a depraved mass murder at that darkest of hours. How ghastly it must have been for those cavalrymen to experience the aftermath of that mass killing—they must have stumbled upon an unthinkable scene of gruesome carnage at the campsite the next morning. The lifeless bodies of over 140 innocent women and children lay strewn about that hollow like broken dolls, some bludgeoned to the point that their corpses were no longer recognizable as human, others impaled with crude cedar spears in grisly and unmentionable ways. As horrified as they must have been, those soldiers had immediately dismounted to begin the grim task of burying the dead, as the winged scavengers had already begun to feast.

That an episode this monstrous could be perpetrated, not by horrific beasts, but by fellow creatures, was, and is, unimaginable. Yet that was the inescapable truth: men were, and are, quite capable of such appalling brutality. And if one were to ponder the notion that the site of such an enormous episode of evil might provide a remote harbor for the devil’s devices, that notion might not be so easily dismissed. It was a history that so delighted the Prince of Darkness that, according to Curtis’s tale, he’d arranged for a monthly reprise of the dreadful event. What better choice of location was there for Lucifer’s redoubt than the austere wilderness, where science, reason, order, and modernity can scarcely reach? It all followed a twisted logic that somehow rang true with me. I came, suddenly and without reservation, to believe in the curse. And in the middle of a history test, no less.

It was one of those outings at the aforementioned canal spillways that allowed me to blurt out a question that had been troubling me. It was a Friday afternoon, and the whole gang was having a ball sliding down the mossy sluices, cavorting in our cutoff jeans, knee-deep in the white water where two canals dropped down a steep hillside at the edge of town. Our cool fun was unhappily cut short, as was often the case. A Water Users truck showed up and the zanjero chased us out of the artificial surf. We all scattered, and I wound up alone with Curtis for a while, hiding behind an oleander hedge. We shook the droplets of water out of our overgrown hair like a couple of waterlogged border collies.

I’ve been meaning to ask you something, Curtis, I said, seizing the opportunity but still trying to sound nonchalant.

Ask away, bud.

Did the curse ever get lifted from Fort Grant?

He shot me a look like I’d just farted out loud during the moment of silence at a funeral.

Let’s not go there today, Vince. Too nice a day for it.

I knew better than to pursue the issue beyond that. But he did say not today which, for me, implied that he’d be returning to the story at some point. Just that small ray of hope brightened my spirit, and its provisional cheer didn’t have to hold me for long.

The following afternoon, a Saturday, my perusal of the sports page at the back of The Sun Valley Tribune was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. I raced to the kitchen and snatched up the receiver just ahead of my sister’s viper-quick grasp. It was Curtis on the other end.

Hey, Vince, you up for an evenin’ bike ride out to the canal?

You better believe it! I rightly guessed that he was ready to take up the tale again but wanted to do so under the same conditions and with the same atmosphere as before.

Well, the moon is right, he said, so meet me at the Circle K around six. That’ll put us out there right about dark. Be there and be ready with your best set of listenin’ ears.

"Curtis, I was born ready for this."

It was as he’d said. We reached the place where we had parked our bikes a month before just as the evening gloom was descending. The earthen feeder ditch that we’d leaped across weeks ago was swollen to its banks with swiftly flowing irrigation water. Someone—probably a ditch boss—had placed an old scaffold plank across the span to form a sort of makeshift footbridge. We parked our chrome horses and crossed over to the melon fields that stretched out in the deepening darkness before us. Halfway down the ditch bank, I switched on my flashlight, and the reflected gleam told us that the fields were totally flooded.

Let’s just settle right here where it’s high and dry, Curtis suggested. Now, what was it you were askin’ me yesterday when that worthless canal cop busted in on our fun?

We seated ourselves on the damp earth. I doused my light for effect.

I just sort of wondered aloud whether the Fort Grant curse ever got lifted.

I don’t know for sure, my friend drawled thoughtfully. "I doubt it. To this day, nobody talks about—or even knows about—the Fort Grant massacre. I can’t imagine there bein’ any kind of reckonin’ if people don’t even realize that it happened at all. Can you, Vince?"

No, I suppose not.

I began to recall all the questions that the first telling had given rise to, all the loose ends Curtis had left dangling. He was right before when he’d said I could pretty much fill in the gaps on some of it. Two major omissions still stood out in my mind, though: the deadly animosity between Curtis and Harvey Huish and the bitterness between my friend and his cohort, Randy. These unresolved issues demanded some kind of reconciliation.

Predictably, Curtis did not resume the telling of his tale immediately, and I let the gurgle of the coursing water and the gathering darkness relax me. As expected, the mournful song of the coyote pack lilted across the night air just as the Estrella Mountains blocked out the last rays of sunlight.

What my friend said about the curse of Fort Grant not being lifted resurfaced in my thoughts. Because the massacre that occurred there had gone unacknowledged for nearly a century, it made a perverse sort of sense that the grip of the spell should endure like an old vendetta. Ignorance is the devil’s tool of preference. Its attendant corruptions require so little of his effort.

So, you got a pretty good handle on this story so far, Vince? Curtis asked at length.

Yes, I’m pretty sure I do, I replied confidently. I was just thinking about what you said a few minutes ago, that there can be no real reckoning if the history of that place is pretty much left unknown. Hard to believe that such a notorious event happened on that site. So many were murdered in cold blood, and no one knows. There’s not so much as a historic marker or monument or something there to commemorate it.

Who says there’s not?

Well, I just assumed…

Oh, there’s a monument there all right—nothing official, mind you. But there it is, bigger than life.

Really? What’s it look like? I was skeptical.

"This is the thing: I’ve never actually seen it, but I know it’s there."

And how do you know it’s there? I asked.

Because some friends told me about it—friends I trust to always tell the truth. But that place is really hell to find, unless you know the landmarks like I do. And let me tell you that it would take a signed decree from God, notarized by Jesus, and an army of angels for backup before I’d even so much as toy with the idea of goin’ back to that evil place. Hell, I don’t even like goin’ back in my mind without whisperin’ a prayer or two first.

Sorry, Curtis, but I can’t seem to picture it. I still have a hard time with the thirdhand knowledge, man.

That’s funny. About half of what I’ve told you so far has been thirdhand. You mean to tell me you’re still a doubter?

Not at all, I replied. But if you haven’t seen this monument, how can you be sure it really exists?

I told you. My friends Isabel and Ray told me all about it, that and then some.

But I don’t know your friends. I’ve never met them.

Well, open up your head, Ted, ’cause you’re about to. About to meet ’em, that is.

Malaguena and Metal Man

Amodest rooster tail of dust was kicked up as the aging Ford pickup left the cracked pavements of highway 75. The vintage truck rattled as it skidded off the left shoulder onto the gravel parking lot of the little café nestled in the northern outskirts of the town of Oracle Mesa. It glided to a stop, idling perpendicular to a half-dozen or so parked cars that faced the rustic entrance to La Cocina Cienfuegos , as the ornamental metal signage indicated.

Ray Cienfuegos, master welder, sometime mechanic, and self-professed artisan, popped open the passenger-side door of the tan F-100 and stepped onto the running board. He turned and stooped to address the ancient Apache driver. The glare of a bright midmorning sun rising high above the red, clay-tile roof of the restaurant caused him to squint and shield his eyes with his left hand as he steadied himself with a right grip on the wraparound windshield pillar.

Thanks for the lift, Ezra, and thanks again for the hefty draw. The project should be complete inside of a couple of weeks, for sure.

No need for thanks; you earned it. I am very pleased with the progress, said the old man as he nodded approvingly. But I do insist that it be ready to erect before the end of this month.

I’ll make sure of it, come hell or high water.

In these parts, the former is more likely. Ezra grunted.

Well, thanks again, said Ray as he hopped from the running board of the idling truck.

The words were drowned out by the sudden growl of the motor as the buckskin-colored pickup leaped into motion. Ray held still, lingering there as if to move from that moment back into the mundane stream of everyday life might somehow break the spell of elation he felt.

He looked about dreamily, his eyes coming to rest on the café sign. That familiar display was the first major work of metal art that he’d ever turned out, and it held a special place in his artist’s heart. It was a primitive piece, an arrangement of two hanging plate-metal parallelograms suspended by steel chains from a tube-steel post-and-beam structure that sprang a full seven feet in height from a stone planter base. The upper plate, some four feet long and two feet tall, shouted out the words LA COCINA, or the kitchen, in Spanish; the lower plate, slightly smaller, boasted his own surname and that of his aunt, the proprietress, CIENFUEGOS. The characters were rendered in relief by a laborious grinding process and infilled with a black enamel that stood in sharp contrast to the hammered chrome finish. It had been three years since Ray erected this contribution to tía Isabel’s café, but he still grinned every time he spied it.

The local fame of the café signage had provoked a resounding clamor from patrons throughout the San Pedro River Valley for young Ray Cienfuegos’s metal art renderings. In fact, the sign stimulated a demand for a veritable army of his enameled metal creations, including legions of palm-tree lawn ornaments, chili-pepper sconces, scorpion andirons, wagon-wheel chandeliers, Gila-monster trivets, metallic cicada paperweights, and the like.

Even so, it seemed that the spotty hit-and-miss nature of the income from the artsy projects would never really come close to paying the bills. In fact, it was the more menial welding shop work—repairing broken motor mounts, assembling custom trailer hitches, fabricating metal-plate wood stoves and several furlongs of ornamental iron fence—that truly met the monthly mortgage payments on his remotely located shop and residence.

As a consequence of that perceived shortfall, Ray felt he could not truly call himself an artisan by trade until his artwork became his main livelihood. Like so many artists, the hours spent accruing outside income were hours lost at his craft, and that was a source of great frustration.

But then, one bright morning the previous spring, his tía Isabel pointed out a fortuitous advertisement running in the Tucson Daily News. It was a solicitation by the Arizona Highway Department for proposals to create a roadside memorial to Tom Mix, the legendary silent-era western movie star who died in a rather strange car accident where highway 75 crossed a nearby wash. The work was actually intended to replace the current one that was damaged by vandals (shot full of holes, that is, by locals using it for target practice).

"You can do this, mijo, Isabel had urged. You’ve got the talent and the creativity to win this thing. The award is a five-thousand-dollar commission and a photo of your work on the cover of Arizona Byways magazine. Imagine that!"

Of course, Ray had imagined that quite vividly. And while his effort in that competition only netted him an honorable mention, it became a stepping stone for bigger and better projects.

Ray averted his gaze from his creation and strode toward the doorway in the white stucco facade, still smiling. His heavy boots pounded out the rhythm of his approach on the plank flooring of the now-vacant front waiting-porch. Only a dozen or so late diners remained inside. Ray gripped the black iron door handle and pulled open the thick cedar-slab door, yielding a blast of heavenly aroma: piping-hot Hatch green chilis melding with heavenly combinations of pork, potatoes, eggs, and cheese. The delightful smells wafted through the heavenly portal. The overwhelming aromatic bliss paralyzed him in the doorway as it always did. He lingered, welded to the threshold, breathing in the breakfast goodness.

"You hang in that doorway one second longer, sobrino, and I’m appointing you to kill every last fly in the place! It was the angelic voice of his dear, sweet aunt composing yet another melodic refrain in fortissimo for all the patrons in her establishment to enjoy. Goddamn moscas are so thick already, they’re going to pick up the next order and fly it to the table!"

A noisy wave of chuckling and scattered salutations arose from the tables where a smattering of friends and regular patrons sat enjoying their fire-hot plates of huevos rancheros. Mornin’, Ray, and "Buenos dias, Ramon," and Oye, El Tercero, rang out as the young man tipped an imaginary hat to his familiar greeters and propped himself on a stool at the blue laminate lunch counter. He turned to face the wide pass-through window that opened into the kitchen where Isabel Cienfuegos wove her culinary spells. Her ultra-feminine form was centered there as if framed in a portrait on a white plaster matte, her heavily painted lips pursed in a forced frown that belied the smile in her eyes.

"Tía, Ray laughed, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single fly in your place in all the years I’ve lived here."

Lucky for you, she returned, loudly enough for all to hear. "That’s why we keep the door closed, and because I serve my food so hot, one flyover would toast their little nalguitas. They’d think they were in the fires of insect hell if they ever so much as buzzed anywhere near one of my plates!"

"Now, are you talkin’ fire hot or spicy hot—like you?" sang out one of the customers from a nearby table.

Both! the statuesque dueña retorted. "As if it’s any of your business, señor."

"Yes, and I just keep trying to make it my business, if you don’t mind," the customer shouted back, laughing good-naturedly. Ray recognized the voice behind him as that of Freddy Hightower, his aunt’s constant and constantly spurned suitor. The banter was typical, with an almost rehearsed quality, like some boisterous vaudeville routine.

"But I do mind, chistoso! Is there something wrong with your food, Freddy?" Isabel demanded.

Of course not, why?

Because you’re talking instead of eating. Why don’t you try eating instead of talking? People talk less when the food is good. Besides, I like you better when I can’t hear you.

The dining room erupted in laughter, with Freddy laughing as loud and as long as everyone else in warmhearted self-deprecation. Isabel allowed a sly smile to steal briefly across her face, taking an inner bow before her captive audience as she hefted two steaming platters of chilaquiles onto the window apron and smacked the summoning call bell hard.

"Ordenes, Maria!"

A slightly overweight and highly overworked waitress trotted forward like a maze-running rodent, coffee pot in hand, perspiring at the temples from her endless task of keeping customers’ mugs perpetually full and hot.

"Take these platos to the Candelaria table, pronto!" la dueña barked. And leave the pot on the counter for Raymie.

The harried waitress slipped on two stove mitts, grasped the oven-hot plates, and raced away with them. Isabel Cienfuegos withdrew from the pass-through portrait frame and reappeared in full through a pair of spring-loaded saloon-door panels.

Ray had regarded his aunt as the epitome of womanly beauty from the time she had assumed the youngster’s guardianship. Ray was eight when his father, Isabel’s older brother, was killed in a work accident at a nearby copper mine. Even now, as she was gliding into her early forties, her movie-star looks were only enhanced by the indomitable spirit that the passing years endowed. Standing at a statuesque six feet, she was easily the tallest woman in the valley, a novel characteristic that only accentuated her dusky allure. Her polyester pink waitress uniform was a