The Road From Cabazon

The trail leading into Los Rios Ranchos was dry and dusty, it being August and not a drop of rain had fallen in over five months. The temperature was high even for this time of year and Diego’s horse, Alejandro, was moving slowly, in need of water and shade and more. Diego himself was well aware that his own body felt much the same way. He was encouraged to see the village not far up ahead and even more so when he reached the stables behind the saloon. Alejandro was well-lathered and clearly worn out by then, in need of rest. It had been a long, hot day on the road from Cabazon.

Before entering the saloon Diego saw the gallows, just across the way between the general store and a dentistry. There were three strung up there; a man, a woman and a child no more than 12 years old - a girl with blonde hair in a long denim dress.

The carne asada was good, the cold Cervezas were better and the piano player was mostly tolerable. After an hour or so Diego's body was somewhat restored. There were two poker games running in the back and soon he found an open seat at one and cashed in, introducing himself to the other players at the table before ordering another beer and a shot of tequila.

He was required to check his shooting irons with the bartender before joining the game, a fairly common practice in these parts and one that Diego personally agreed with. He still had two knives, a blackjack and a set of knuckle-dusters on his person along with a little .22 caliber senorita pistola in his right boot. He had other ways to protect himself as well so if trouble arose he didn’t really expect to be at much of a disadvantage.

“All right, I’ll call.”

“I’ll raise fifteen.”

“God damn, I knew that was comin’. I’m out.”

“Me too. What you got, Jake? Let’s see ‘em.”

“Sorry. Gotta pay to see ‘em, Buddy. Buy you a drink though. You play worser and worser the drunker you git.”

“Fuck yerself. Next hand.”

The cards went into the muck, Jake smiled as he raked in the chips and the dealer shuffled the deck and dealt out the next hand. The young man with the clean-shaven face and the red bandana around his neck got up and quietly left the table. Diego’s chip stack was a little bit above what he bought into the game for, not that he was really there to try to make any money, but a few hands later he found himself heads-up with Jake. On the turn he paused for a moment to contemplate the bet and ask a question.

“Lo siento, mi amigo. What did you make it there? Was it twenty?”

“Yeah, twenty to call. You kin’ go ahead and raise that if ya want.”

Diego looked at his cards for a moment or so with the very smallest smile that one can possibly wear.

“You said your name is Jake, yes?”

“Yeah, that’s right. You gonna call, raise or fold?”

“Lo siento, Jake. Un momento. I need to figure out where I’m at here.”

Diego wiped the smile from his face and looked at his own cards and the communal cards on the table for a moment.

“Take your time, Compadre. I aint going nowhere.”

Diego’s tiny little smile returned to his face.

“Yeah, me neither. I just got here. My name’s Diego Santiago Cordero-Ochoa, by the by. What’s your full name, Compadre?”

Jake stared at him for a time before answering with a cocky smile.

“I aint got nearly all that many syllables, Compadre” - he pronounced it Sil-Ah-Bells - “My name’s just Jake Artin. Jake Artin Junior actually. Hell, I might even be Jake Artin the third or fourth for all I know. They all died a’fore I was born and I ain't never asked my pops about that.” He mugged a smile around the table and got a few forced laughs in return and then called the serving girl over.

Diego put his cards down and broadened his smile.

“Ay si, conozco ese apellido,” he said without looking up. And then, “Lo siento, mi amigo. I’m sorry. Englese is not my first tongue. Do you have family around here?”

Jake looked down at his cards before looking back at Diego with an unfriendly smile.

“I know you just got here but yeah, I got family in this town. This is our saloon yer sittin’ in right now. That’s my uncle Paul who runs the joint sitting next to my Pa over there and he owns the place.” He pointed at two older man sitting together at the bar. “You plannin’ to call or fold or what?”

“I can raise too, yes?”

A short pause.

“Sure, you can raise. And then I can reraise.”

“Gracias, mi amigo. I just wanted to make sure I know the rules at this table.”

Diego checked his cards again and then took a long, slow draw off his glass of beer.

“Lo siento. When I asked if you had family around here I didn’t mean just here in this little town. I meant, you know, all around here.” He made an expansive waving gesture with one hand. “Por todos lados por aqui,” Diego added with a big smile.

Jake stared at him for a moment, taking a long pull on his cigar.

“We speak English here in these parts, Hermano. Call, raise or fold, but stop wasting everyone’s time. We got a game going here and we aint open all night.”

Diego just nodded quietly.

“Si. I call your bet, mi amigazo.”

The dealer dealt the river card without looking up from the table but Jake just stared at Diego with half-dead eyes for a while before reaching down for some of his chips.

“I’ll bet the pot. Looks like…sixty five to me?” He pushed $65 in chips forward. Diego looked at his cards for a short time.

“Yeah, you speak English in these parts but you know every word I said. ¿Me equivoco, mi nuevo amigo?”

Jake just stared at him for a few beats.

“Bahsi de çok hızlı hesapladın…”

“I knew what the pot amount was because there was only me and you after the flop and it was twenty five total before that.”

Jake subtly seemed to realize what he had just done but Diego only looked at his cards and those on the table for a time before finishing his beer and waving the serving girl back over to the table.

“You are very good at math, my friend. Sixty five is almost all I have left. I will call your bet.”

Jake smirked down at his cards for a few seconds before turning them over with a blank face.

“I got two pair. Aces and kings.”

Diego turned his cards over.

“My flush got there, mi amigo.” He ordered another beer, the dealer pushed the chips to him and Jake stood up and walked over to the bar and took a seat next to the two older men and joined their conversation with a sour facial expression beneath his black bull hide hat. After a few more hands Diego cashed out of the game and slowly walked over in that direction as well and stopped further down the bar. After a moment the barkeep took notice of him and came down.

“Hola, mi amigo. I just cashed out of the game.” He hiked a thumb back at the poker table he just left. “May I please have my two Colt pistols back along with a cold cerveza?” The barman nodded and returned shortly with the beer and the two well-polished sidearms.

“Cám ơn bạn tôi.”

The bartender said, “Your welcome, Partner,” then nodded and moved off and Diego holstered the .45’s and drained off half the beer in one slow draw. Then he grabbed a barstool and walked a little further down the bar to where Jake Artin Junior and the two older men were speaking quietly.

When he arrived there he roughly and rudely shoved his barstool into the small space between Jake Junior and the man who looked like he was most certainly Jake’s father, shouldering them aside as he sat down. The bartender looked at him as though he was preparing to deal with this situation but before he could say a word Diego pointed at the young man with the red bandana around his neck sitting just down the bar towards the door and said, “I would like to buy my friend a cerverza.” The barman stared at him for a long moment and then went and poured the beer.

“Your name is Artin, yes?”

No one said anything in response.

“I just ask because I have known other Artins who run small towns like this, from here all the way up to Santa Rosa actually, and probably beyond but I don’t ever really get much north of there.”

No one said anything in response.

Diego pointed out the front window across the street, towards the gibbet.

“What happened to them?”

No one said anything in response.

“I see a young girl hanging out there. There is piss and shit running down her leg. What crime did she commit to deserve such harsh justice?”

After a moment, Jake Artin Senior spoke up.

“That family was convicted by a jury of their peers and sentenced under the law by the local magistrate.” He gave Diego a hard stare.

“For what, speaking up? Seeing something they weren’t supposed to see? Tell me.”

No one said anything in response.

Diego laughed. “Who do you guys really think you’re fooling here? Do you honestly think the name Artin is subtle? Disingenuous?” His Mexican accent was completely gone now.

First he pointed at Jake Junior. “This one speaks Turkish.”

Then he pointed at the bartender. “And this one speaks Vietnamese for fuck sake.”

He laughed again and finished his beer.

“And I’m pretty sure that if I started speaking French or Farsi or even Sanskrit right now you would all know exactly what I am saying. Hell, if I started challenging you with bounded harmonic functions you could solve those just as fast. I’m sure you guys are all familiar with Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions, yes? Hell, you can probably all quote Liouville's Theorem for me. But I’m just a simple vaquero, not a scholar. I don’t know mathematics like you genios.”

They all looked at each other, calculating some response. Diego looked at the young man with the red bandana around his neck sitting just down the bar, staring at him now.

“Let me guess. You were all built and deployed from NorCal Automaton Labs just south of Sacramento, right? I see you all have that tell-tale tiny little nub in the skin just behind your left ears. I can even see the LED there just a little bit. I have very good eyes.”

No one said anything in response.

Diego chuckled and muttered to himself, “Aw, fuck it already...”

In that moment his hands dropped to the two pistols holstered at his hips with preternatural speed and in a singular motion he pulled them up to shoulder level. With the gun in his left hand he shot Jake Artin Junior and the bartender in rapid succession and between those two blasts his right hand fired a single bullet directly through the head of both Jake Artin Senior and Paul Artin without ever glancing in that direction.

The bodies all fell to the floor, their skull cavities torn wide open. The false blood spilled out but inside it was easy enough to see the printed circuit boards and the small tubes that carried the necessary moisture up from the chest cavity to the mouth, eyes and nasal passages as well as all the wiring and the small servo-motors that controlled neck and facial movements and other such internal componentry.

The piano player stopped playing and after a time Diego turned towards the patrons of the saloon, all stunned silent now, and raised his voice.

“You all seem like decent people and on the whole I’m sure that you are. But don’t just accept whoever declares that they are in charge. Don’t just salute whatever flag is hoisted up the pole. Choose your own leaders. Choose good people. Or, at least, just choose people.”

With that said he finished the glass of beer that was sitting on the bar in front of where Jake Artin Junior had been seated, then he strolled out through the bat-wing doors of the saloon. In the stables he got his horse, Alejandro, and tipped the stable boy about half of his poker winnings. The kid’s eyes went wide in amazement - it was probably far more than he could make in a year - and the boy didn’t know what to say.

It was warm and the stars were all punctuating the nighttime sky above and Alejandro still seemed a bit worn out so Diego just walked beside him, holding his lead in one hand while petting his mane softly with the other. Diego would get him some fresh oil and coolant soon. Alejandro was a robotic equine model of course, not a true-born creature, but he was still a good horse. A reliable mount. It would be a while before they reached the next town, where there would surely be more Artins and maybe a decent brothel. Diego spoke to him softly all along the way. Even robots - the good ones anyway, the ones who were built the right way and with the right intentions - needed a little understanding and compassion sometimes.