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armed forces at their disposal, Patton and Pershing had to be bewildered by ten thousand miles ofraw wilderness, with their only possible information source, the Tarahumara, disappearing at thesound of a sneeze. The result: Black Jack and Old Blood and Guts could whip the Germans in twoworld wars, but surrendered to the Copper Canyons.
Over time, the Mexican federales learned to take a more be-careful-what-you-wish-for strategy.
What was hell for pursuers, they realized, couldn’t be a whole lot nicer for the pursued. Whateverhappened to the fugitives in there—starvation, jaguar attack, dementia, a life sentence of voluntarysolitary confinement—was probably more ghastly than anything the Mexican court system wouldhave meted out. So, often as not, the federales would rein in their horses and allow any bandit whoreached the canyons to try his luck in the prison of his own making.
Many adventurers who slunk in never slunk back out again, giving the canyons their reputation asthe Bermuda Triangle of the borderlands. The Apache Kid and Massai galloped over Skeleton Passinto the Copper Canyons one last time and were never seen again. Ambrose Bierce, the celebritynewspaper columnist and author of the satiric hit The Devil’s Dictionary, was a rendezvous with Pancho Villa in 1914 when he strayed into the Copper Canyons’ gravitationalpull and was never seen again. Imagine Anderson Cooper vanishing on assignment for CNN, andyou get the sense of the search that was launched for Bierce. But no trace was ever found.
Did the lost souls of the canyons suffer a terrible fate, or wreak terrible fates on each other? Noone knows. In the old days, they’d be killed off by mountain lions, scorpions, coral snakes, thirst,cold, hunger, or canyon fever, and you could now add a sniper’s bullet to that list. Ever since thedrug cartels had moved into the Copper Canyons, they’d guarded their crops through telescopicscopes powerful enough to see a leaf quiver from miles away.
Which made ángel wonder if he’d ever see the Creature at all. A lot of things could kill him outthere, and probably would. If the Creature didn’t know enough to keep his distance from themarijuana fields, he wouldn’t even hear the shot that took off his head.
“.Hoooooolaaaaaa! .Amigoooooooooos!”