There was no question this dude was Rafe’s ancestor. Possibly his grandfather many times removed. Except for the cruel cast to his features, they were the spitting image of each other, right down to the blue eyes — an anomaly in Mexicans.
“You can’t do this,” Rafe protested. “You’re my… my grandfather.”
“Are you loco?” the Angel Bandit asked. “I am only thirty-four years old. How old are you, senor?”
Rafe snorted with disgust. “The same. What’s your name, by the way? I can’t call you Angel.”
“Why not?” Turning his sultry eyes on Helen and surveying her body with appreciation, he asked her, “Do you not think I look angelic, my pretty one?”
His mistress, Elena, clouted him on the back with a tambourine, shrieking, “I weel cut off your balls, Gabriel, if you even look at that puta.”
At the same time Helen ripped out, “Get a life!”
Both women glanced at each other with understanding. They turned up their lips in one of those “Men! The slime-balls!” expressions of contempt.
All the time they’d been talking, the Angel Bandit’s gang aimed deadly weapons at Rafe and Helen. These were no nincompoop outlaws. These men were vicious and competent.
Rafe took a deep breath for patience and tried again. “Listen, Gabriel, (Was it a coincidence that they both had angel names?) you’ve got to see the resemblance between us.”
The bandit peered closer. “Si, you do have my mother’s blue eyes. The people in our village called her a witch.”
“Lucia Sanchez was a bitch,” Elena commented snidely.
“Si, si, she was that. A witch and a bitch. But that ees not for you to say.”
“See, see,” Rafe interrupted, “my mother’s maiden name was Sanchez, too. That proves you’re my grandfather. So, give me back my gold.”
“Thees gold ees mine, Senor Santiago. The only question here ees whether I let you live or die. I want to know why you have been impersonating me. My reputation ees suffering badly.”
“How did you learn the secret of my corkscrewing trick?” Elena demanded of Helen. The hardened prostitute didn’t look at all like Helen, except for her obviously dyed red hair. “And what ees thees gargling and forms?”
Helen started to laugh. At first, Rafe thought she was going off the deep end, but then he realized the ludicrousness of the situation. They’d come full circle, back to a scruffy group of nitwits and a comedy of misidentification and miscommunication.
“They are both loco,” Gabriel said, backing away.
In the end, after an hour of arguing and exchanging insults, the Angel Bandit and his mistress, Elena, rode off into the hills with their band of desperadoes, generously leaving Rafe and Helen alive, for “the sake of family.”
“Hasta la vista!” they yelled as they departed.
Rafe and Helen were left wearing their camouflage BDUs, but nothing they’d gathered in their travels to the past remained with them. No guns. No horses. No gold.
Surprisingly, Rafe wasn’t devastated by their loss. It was probably fated to end this way from the beginning. And he had Helen; that was the most important thing.
“Well, babe, are you ready to go home?”
She nodded.
“We’re going to have to go down without jumpsuits,” he said as they spread the parachutes out on the ground and inspected them for rips.
They could have waited another day, but neither of them wanted to put off the inevitable. Rafe donned the harness and repacked chute. Walking to the edge of the cliff, they took one last glimpse back, trying to assimilate all they’d seen and done.
“I’ll never forget Ignacio and Sancho and Pablo,” he said. “They were the catalysts into our adventure.”
“And Sacramento City. Remember your gambling success and our unusual ante?”
He grinned. “After that, we rode to Marysville and met up with Henry. We’ll have to look up his name in a history book when we get back. Maybe he became a famous writer.”
Her lips curved up at that thought. “I will never, ever, forget the cave,” she whispered.
His eyes held hers. That went without saying. Then he turned the mood. “But I taught you to dip. That’s something. Do you think we’ll go dancing a lot when we get back?”