ANOTHER RIO ARRIBA MURDER

"Pero, ?qu? chinga'os hicites?" Amadeo shrieked in Vicente's face. "Pues, como te dije?le di un balazo al cabr?n," replied Vicente impassively, leaning back on the hood of his midnight blue and gold micro-flake 74 Grand Prix, sipping a warm Coors, and absentmindedly toying with the brass medal of the Virgen de Guadalupe hanging from his neck. "Tuvo suerte el cabr?n?nom?s un tiro le di," Vicente laughed. "Como el corrido aquel, ?no????se de Rosita Alvirez? De los tres tiros que le dieron, nom?s uno era de muerte. ?Que no?" And Amadeo was struck silent by the frozen edge in his old friend's laugh. Vicente'd always been medio loco, but what if he'd really lost it now? He'd just killed a man?at least that's how it appeared?and here he was joking about it as if it were no more than a stray dog he'd blasted in the balls. The only sound in the still mountain air was a cranky old cow braying at its calf down in the grassy ca?ada below. Even the sleek golondrinas sat in a dumb row on the rusty tin roof of the abandoned choza Vicente's tio had built. Th crude structure with the boarded-up windows and padlocked doors had been difunto Andalesmo's home for more than half a century. Below the house was a corral, still filled with rotting hay, fashioned out of flat sandstone chunks from the nearby mesa. Here, in this remote island of zacate surrounded by the Santa Fe National Forest, in this place called el Pinabetal, the old man had not cut a single pinabete for his corral. And he had used no mortar?the rocks were strategically and painstakingly positioned, one tying into the next, creating a five-foot wall sturdy enough to climb. Up on the other side of the mesa, above the long grassy finger of irrigated land, was a huge pile of weathered lumber. The grey, warped orillas de madera were scattered down the face of the hill where the anciano had once run his own m?quina de rajar. The machinery had now vanished, along with the old man, but his legacy was as twisted and permanent as that mound of lumber. He was a miser?mure apetado el difunto Andalesmo?and it was no surprise he'd used none of those planks for his corral, just as he'd never spent a centavo of his sizeable fortune. Era rico; he had owned one of the largest ranchos still in the hands of la gente, but he never threw away a hat?wore them until they disintegrated on his head?and Amadeo still remembered the time Andalesmo retrieved an old battery acid-pocked levi jacket from his barril de basura. And although the old man had at last succumbed to Vicente's incessant brow-beating and had purchased a GMC four-wheeler, he'd never used it. Just left it parked by the corral and continued to ride his ancient, bitchy mare, even when he could barely pull himself up into the saddle and nearly rattled his failing eyes out trotting up to his isolated ranch, the lonely sanctuary he rarely left. Andalesmo had never married either?maybe he was saving himself too, o puede que s? era