Los Desperados

By Eric Leif Davin and Morgan M. Morgan

“They were desperate men in a savage land, and they had run out of time.
But they had one last battle to fight.”

La Cancion de Los Desperados

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781794793408

Eric Leif Davin

Eric Leif Davin is professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, winner of the Eugene V. Debs Foundation's Bryant Spann Memorial Prize in Literature for his historical writing, and author of Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965.

Book preview

Los

Desperados

Los

Desperados

Eric Leif Davin

with

Morgan M. Morgan

DavinBooks

PO Box 90087

Pittsburgh, PA 15224

Los

Desperados

Copyright 2021 by

Eric Leif Davin &

Morgan M. Morgan

All Rights Reserved

ISBN:

Text Description automatically generated

Front Cover: Los Desperados

Por mi Hermanos

"They were desperate men in a savage land, and they had run out of time.

But they had one last battle to fight."

La Cancion de Los Desperados

Across the Rio Grande

The desperados swam their horses across the muddy Rio Grande around noon. It was a desperate decision for desperate men. It was the only way they could escape the huge posse that had been chasing them for days, for weeks, ever since they’d robbed the bank in Presidio del Norte. 

That robbery had been a bloody fiasco. It was supposed to have been a quick holdup, followed by a quick escape. They’d pulled off plenty of such bank robberies before, all over Texas. But one of the bank tellers pulled a Colt out of a drawer and fired at them. They’d fired back, cutting him down in a hail of bullets. In the chaos and confusion that erupted, the rest of the tellers ran out a back door. There was no one left who knew the combination to the big money vault. The desperados decided to grab what they could from the cash drawers and run for it. 

They stepped out of the bank into a hailstorm of gunfire. The gunplay inside the bank had alerted the entire town and it seemed that every man in Presidio had a rifle. They came running toward the bank just as the desperados came out. The townsfolk began blazing away at the bandits, and the bandits fired back. Women screamed and ran as men fell and horses, tied to hitching posts, reared and pulled at their reins in fear. 

The desperados grabbed the reins of their mounts, leaped into the saddles, and dug their spurs into the sides of the frightened horses. They rode hell for leather down the dusty street, guns blazing in all directions. 

The town blazed back, and several of the desperados were blown out of their saddles as they braved the gauntlet of gunfire. Presidio was a small town, and the bandits soon reached the edge, still spurring their horses brutally, still riding in desperate flight. They turned in their saddles, firing back at the town as they left, the town firing back. 

The desperados kept flogging their foamflecked horses as they rode for their lives, while the men of Presidio saddled up and came after them. What followed was a long and grueling chase across a barren desert wasteland. The hot sun beat down on the desperados as they rode, day after day, across the burning land, desperate for water, desperate for rest. 

But there was no water, no rest, no place to hide, as the posse from Presidio kept hot after them, as determined to hunt them down and kill them as the desperados were to stay alive. Their exhausted horses staggered and faltered, blood streaming down their haunches from where the desperados dug their cruel spurs into them, but the men gave them no rest. They were running for their lives, and it was better the horses died than them. 

And still the posse behind them came on. 

Finally, the desperados reached the Rio Grande. They reined in their horses on a small bluff above the slowly flowing green waters of the river as the dust of their desperate run swirled up around them. There were seven of them now, half the number that had ridden into Presidio del Norte. Their horses smelled the river and strained in thirst toward it, but the men held them back. They looked over their shoulders. In the far distance they saw the Presidio posse still pursuing them, so far off they shimmered in the heat like a desert mirage. But they knew the posse was no mirage. It was as real as the parched and barren land around them, and was still as determined to catch them, as the desperados were to escape. 

Gringo, one of the desperados, nodded toward the land on the other side of the water, as dry and desolate as the desert around them. That’s Mexico across the river, he said. The posse won’t chase us over there.

Then what are we waiting for? Morgan said. He glanced around him at the other

desperados. Let’s ride for it!

The others nodded, and they loosened their reins, letting their eager horses stumble down the sides of the bluff, thirsty for the waters of the muddy river. 

They reached the riverbank and plunged into the Rio Grande. Their horses gulped thirstily at the water as they swam, while the men scooped up the river water with their cupped hands as they urged their mounts further out into the stream. The Rio Grande’s current was deceptively strong and began to sweep the horses and men downstream as they struggled further out into the river. Still the riders spurred their horses on, their eyes on the Mexican side. Some glanced behind them and, in the distance, could still see the posse riding for them. 

Just as the Presidio posse reached the American side, the desperados reached the Mexican side and clambered out, water running off them and their horses in rivulets. The men of the posse reined in their horses in a swirling dust cloud and began firing at the desperados across the river. Bullets zinged above the heads of the wet and dripping bandits and whipped through the mesquite trees around them. Severed branches fell all around them. 

The desperados laughed in relief at having outrun the Presidio posse, and began firing back. There was a brief flurry of gunfire across the border river, and some of the horses among the posse on the American side were hit. They screamed and fell, and their toppled riders rolled in the dust. The desperados laughed all the more, then turned and spurred their own horses away from the river bank, deeper into the foreign land, their refuge and, at last, their escape. 

The desperados rode onward for hours until, at last, sure that the Presidio posse had not crossed the Rio Grande after them, they reined in their tired horses in the welcome shade of a grove of cottonwood trees. They climbed down out of their saddles, slowly and painfully. Their tired and hungry horses, relieved of their burdens, bowed their heads and began munching at the sparse ground cover. The desperados themselves collapsed, groaning, on the ground and sprawled out, almost unable to move. For a long while none of them spoke, and there was no sound but that of their horses nosing along the ground and the calls of a few desert birds out in the creosote bushes beyond the cottonwoods. 

What now? the one called Deadly

Denny asked of no one in particular. 

Gringo looked around at the desert furnace out beyond the copse of cottonwoods. Patricio, he said, you’ve been down around here before. What’s the nearest town?