William W. Johnstone by Savage Texas

was carefully composed, neutral, showing only intense concentration on her work. Sometimes she leaned in so close that Sam could feel her breath on his face. It was warm, sweetsmelling.
    Standing behind and to one side of her was an aged crone: small, shriveled, almost sexless. She was white-haired, her face a nest of wrinkles, with a wide, flat nose and lipless, toothless mouth. Black marble eyes were shiny and alert. A living mummy.
    In one hand she held a lamp, a tin candleholder with a thin, round disk of shiny, polished metal behind the candle flame. The disk was a reflector, focusing the candlelight and beaming it in a ray of brightness that shone on Sam’s wound. Despite her appearance of extreme age, her hand remained motionless, holding the lamp in place without twitch or tremor.
    Sam Heller had a head full of fire and a body full of pain. The tequila heightened the derangement of his senses. A node of pulsing awareness in some corner of his brain remembered the beauty’s voice murmuring, “It will ease your pain, gringo,” as the tequila was being poured down his throat earlier.
    His vision swam; above, the lights on the suspended wagon wheel fixture rushed toward him and receded away from him.
    His body was taut, rigid; each muscle, vein and tendon of his powerfully built physique standing out in bold relief. His upper body was marked by old wounds: knife scars, a scattering of raised, clawlike burn streaks, and several nasty-looking dimples in the flesh that were long-healed bulletholes. The planked wooden tabletop was slick with his blood and sweat.
    The vaqueros holding Sam down were enjoying the show. It was something different, a break in the routine. It was interesting to watch the gringo suffer and see how much he could take; amusing, too. They were hard men steeped in strength, tenacity, the ability to endure pain; they appreciated those qualities in others. They watched the spectacle avidly, faces intent with cruel relish.
    All but the Gypsy. His features were composed, masklike, except for alert, dark eyes; his emotions unreadable.
    Sam was determined not to give his tormentors the satisfaction of seeing him suffer or hearing him cry out. His frozen face was a grimace of silent pain, breath hissing through clenched teeth. The hissing increased in volume as the probe went deeper. The point touched a nerve or something.
    Sam spasmed, thrashing around on the table. At a few words of command from the beauty, the men holding him down tightened their grip, immobilizing him.
    “Ah,” the woman said. She withdrew the probe. Its absence brought Sam blessed relief, a release from his writhings on the white-hot griddle of agony. The respite was short-lived.
    The raven-haired woman took up a long, thin needle-nosed instrument resembling an oversized pair of tweezers about twelve inches long. It smelled of the tequila which had been poured on to disinfect it.
    The woman rested her free hand on the bare flesh surrounding the wound to steady Sam. She worked the tips of the tweezers into the ugly punctured crater of the bullethole, cold steel burrowing into living flesh.
    She dug deep, twisting and probing for what seemed like an eternity. Finding what she was looking for, she battened the gripping jaws around the object and retracted the instrument. Generating a supreme high note of pain as it stretched and mauled tortured nerves.
    It popped free from Sam’s flesh, bearing its prize with it. Clutched by twin tips of the tweezerlike instrument was a shapeless lump of lead trailing bloody tendrils of tissue. The woman held it in front of Sam’s face. A number of hammering heartbeats passed before his pain-dulled eyes focused on the object.
    “The bullet, hombre ,” she said.
    Sam’s nod of recognition was almost but not quite imperceptible. In a husky, rasping breath he manged to gasp, “ Gracias . . .”
    He didn’t hear the metallic chinking sound as the bullet was dropped into a tin cup. He had passed