The cantina consisted of a small restaurant and bar with four tables. Turned out that they served beans, peppers, and some sort of stew with tortillas. The bar in the back—run by a dark-skinned, Spanish-speaking man with a thick black mustache and goatee—dispensed whiskey and something traded up from El Paso called mescal. River water was used to dilute it.
Two dark-haired young women, maybe in their teens, both thin, with deep-set eyes and the look of sisters, provided services of the horizontal kind in addition to dishing out food and carrying drinks from the bar to the tables.
As the evening deepened, Billy wasn’t sure that he’d really been drinking whiskey. Coal oil might have left the same burning aftertaste as the house’s fine blend. But feeling flush, his stomach full, and with the satisfaction of another job well done, he offered the mustachioed barkeep a twenty-dollar gold piece, pointing at both of the girls, and then at himself and Danny.
“Por toda la noche. ¿Comprende?”
The man had glanced back and forth between them, nodded, and barked some order in rapid-fire Spanish that Billy couldn’t understand.
“All night?” Danny asked him as the older of the girls reached for a lamp, took him by the hand, and led him out the back to one of the jacales.
“Use her good,” Billy answered, “and don’t let her milk you dry on the first ride.”
The girl he followed had long black hair that hung down below her waist. When she looked at him, her eyes seemed large—almost like a deer’s—in her thin face. Small breasts, the size of oranges, were set low on her chest; the baggy white cotton blouse exposed her brown shoulders and chest. Leading Billy to the second jacal, she demurely closed the door behind him and placed the lamp on a bedside table.
“You got a name?” he asked as she turned to him.
“Margarita,” she replied as she laid herself on the bed and pulled her red frilly skirt up past her waist.
“Por toda la noche,” Billy reminded, reaching down and pulling her back onto her feet. “Now, here’s the thing,” he told her reasonably as he reached down and unbuttoned her skirt, letting it fall to the floor. “I been having nightmares. I see my sister rise up, all bare, and bitten. Then she reaches down and grabs my pizzle. And there’s a demon growing in her womb. It’s cause the devil has a choke hold on my soul. You understand any of what I’m saying?”
She stared at him with those large and dark eyes. “Toda la noche. Sí.”
“She’s blond, my sister. You’re dark. Now, I know a fella shouldn’t oughta be having sin-filled dreams about his sister. If’n I wasn’t already damned and possessed by the devil, he’d blast me to hell just for the dreams. So tonight, I’m gonna get it out of my system. Cure myself. ¿Comprende?”
“No, Señor Billy.”
He didn’t understand the rest of what she said, the Spanish words coming much too fast.
He eased the white cotton blouse from her shoulders, letting it fall onto the dirt floor. She stood uncertainly before him, her hands at her sides, fingers working as if kneading tortilla dough.
Billy kicked off his boots, unbuckled his belt, and dropped his drawers. After skinning out of his shirt, he remembered to remove his hat. Some idle thought reminded him that given the dirt floor, he’d be smart to check his outfit for scorpions before he put them on again in the morning.
The bed was barely big enough for two, the mattress feeling like nothing more than straw sewed into ticking. She seemed to be waiting patiently for instructions.
“You come. That’s right. Climb up here.”
He positioned her in the lamplight. Tried to imagine Sarah’s blond hair turning black. Her pale skin browning, her teats shrinking down into the size of Margarita’s small round breasts.
It didn’t work.
Reaching up, he took her hands and pulled her down on top of him. Trying to imagine she was Sarah.
Only when he closed his eyes—let his imagination run free—did the feel of her hair on his skin, her body against his, begin to match the dream.
He could feel his cock hardening against her, and she settled firmly onto him; her breasts, becoming Sarah’s breasts, flattened against his chest.
Her hand slipped down, grabbing him and tightening.
He gasped at the strength in her grip.
“Yes,” he said through a groan.
She shifted, rose, and settled onto him.
“Sarah?” he whispered, the dream image so vivid in his brain.
Then he opened his eyes, and saw only a skinny, brown, black-haired girl, her gaze dull and unfocused as she rocked her hips back and forth.
“You’re supposed to kill her,” Billy told her. “Damn it, girl. You gotta be her. Don’t you see? I’m killing a devil’s dream. I’m trying to save my soul. A man who dreams of his sister in a carnal way? He’s damned!”
Misunderstanding his words, she rocked back and forth with more vigor, thrusting her chest out, small breasts bouncing.
“Goddamn it!” Billy reached up, grabbed her by the neck and closed his eyes.
And in that instant, she was Sarah. Her panicked blue eyes were looking into his. Locks of her golden hair were falling around his shoulders as he thrust up, driving himself into her.
Sarah was bucking, struggling to break free as he tightened his grip.
“You’re a demon,” he hissed. “You’re not my sister. She wouldn’t do this to me. She’d never tempt me this way. But it ends tonight, you Satan-spawned bitch.”
He thrust up into her again as she clawed to break free, the blue eyes beginning to burn red. And then Sarah laughed in his face, loud peals of it, mocking him, belittling his rage. Something hot kindled in
