The plan was simple. Duke Benedict would stay in Nogales and build up a stake from his poker winnings, while Hank Brazos ran a string of horses south into Mexico. When they were financially solvent again, they’d reward themselves with a long, restful vacation. But they didn’t count on Brazos getting himself arrested and sentenced to hang on a trumped-up murder charge. From that moment forward, Benedict had only one priority—to save his partner from a necktie social. To do just that, he agreed to throw in with a fearsome bounty hunter named Branch Lucas, who was in Mexico on business of his own. That business concerned a man called Diablo—a man of the people, who intended to free Toltepec Province from the yoke of slavery and had an entire army of renegades at his disposal. When Benedict and Brazos threw in with that army, the flame was lit, and the powder keg that was Toltepec Province was ready to explode!
