Gunslingers Don't Sing or Dance by Mike Marino (any book recommendations txt) 📕

Isadora and I lit more dynamite while the Colonel fired his Henry. Once we were directly over the center of the mass of men we dropped stick after stick of dynamite which ripped through the troops as sure as William T. Sherman burning Atlanta to the ground.

The French had been Waterloo’d once again.

We surveyed to battlefield below...El Diablo’s men were looting the bodies of weapons, ammunition, gold watches, jackets and new boots. To the victors go the spoils and in this case...there were no prisoners.

We had engaged in aerial warfare and I have to admit it was the catalyst for the night to come with Isadora. Her adrenaline level was peaking in perfect harmony with mine. We all were in a mental state I could never have fathomed before. Isadora’s passions had been ignited as were mine...and the fuse was short. Tonight they would detonate in a sexual explosive that would leave us both drained...if sex were war….I’m all for it. Afterall ….to the victor go the spoils!

The heavily forested region of the ruins of Chichen Itza unfolded below the silent flight of our ethereal sky machine revealing a rocky road system radiating as explosive  spokes on a westward ho wagon wheel from the center of the former Mayan city which occupied nearly five square kilometres including  El Castillo pyramid … the centerpiece of the village of legend and lore as well as the current object of our enterprise aboard our airship newly christened as ‘The Enterprise’ by that writing rascal and adventurous traveling companion Jules Verne. A journey  that began in New Orleans with half of a treasure map to locate Toltec  treasure  that may or may not exist.


Were these merely  tale tales fueled by  speculative superstitious minds fixated on plunder and conquest then elevated to mythic proportions planted as seeds in a garden by overzealous Spanish soldiers and Catholic missionaries with a ‘pagan’  empire to conquer with an  expansive  agenda to convert the indigenous peoples to servile Christian slavery while eradicating the native culture, replacing ceremonial sacrifice with a canon of crucifixion fixation.  


Pre-Columbian Mayan culture ruled an area that developed expansive and aggressive trade routes from the Incan Empire of  South America and northward to the pueblos of the North American Southwest and the tribes of Canada.


We would be descending soon landing in the ruins near El Castillo where the treasure was rumored  to be hidden inside and underground perhaps deep inside the earth. Jules was ecstatic at the prospect. “Gads, imagine, a journey to the center of the earth! It is just beyond comprehension. I must make a note of this!” He made notes constantly for future reference of course.


Treasure clouded our minds. We could come up empty and all would be for naught as we would find out whether we were victims of  Isadora’s father’s old man fanciful folly or on the bright side of the coin our dreams would be a rich reality. We heard only silence as we glided over the vast site, long abandoned, with only the sound of El Diablo’s men on horseback riding below to meet us to make camp before we set about the task of treasure hunting.


Luckily there was still no sign of Monty Debauchery’s men or Maximillian’s French occupation soldiers to impede our prodigious progress.  Then without warning crashing through the silence of winged flight, Jules Verne shouted out as though an epiphany had suffered a cerebral orgasm filling an ancient mandala with a new reality.


“Look! Look over there in the clearing!”


Clearly seen on a flat rocky surface were strange circular symbols visible now to the naked eye but only from above at great heights as we were. Amazingly they were perfect circles carved into  the surface of solid stone. One couldn’t help but wonder how they got there in the first place, and why they appeared to make some sort of sense from above yet unnoticed, near invisible to the mind’s eye. Balloon technology didn’t exist for Mayans to take flight to direct to the terra firma artists below on the placement of these peculiar land carvings  when the Maya culture was at it’s apex nor did they have the tools for such  massive undertaking to dig the circles so deep and so precise in pre-arranged arrangement into sheer rock!


“What do you think Verne, little green men from Mars having a little fun with we earthlings?” I half heartedly remarked.


“Funny you should mention that,” Jules replied.  “As a student of science and futurism I have to laugh at the idea of Martians visiting from some cattle drive in space roaming amongst us and ordering a beer in a saloon along with a Saturday night bath and shave before retiring upstairs with a dance hall girl in a frilly dress.. No sir, if these were made from people who dropped out of the sky, most likely they were from Venus!”


Of course. That made more sense! About as much sense as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest or giving a book to dog!


“Venus! That’s a good one. Venus!” I said incredulously.


Isadora squeezed my arm gently, I could hear a subdued laugh as she whispered in my ear. “Don’t be too harsh on him Baxter. He may be possessed or crazy. His head may start spinning around and light up!” She was right. You never know when or what a French gringo crazed on Mexican heat and marijuana will do at any given moment. The prospect was interesting though I have to admit. “Colonel, what do you think about space travel?” Isadora asked with a subtle tone of sarcasm masked very well I might add.   


“Don’t rightly know Ma’am. If there is such a thing, we could have used their help at Gettysburg and Atlanta. General Lee aboard such a craft would have had Grant on the run all the way to Washington with his Yankee tail between his legs. Now that would be something to see...ha….we would’a won the whole cotton pickin’ war with a little help from Venus or Mars!”


Jules could feel the jocular jesting as a jousting match he had to counter.  “Well ma’am, I’ve done considerable study on the Mayans before I set out on my travels. My curiosity had me chained to a chair in libraries from Boston to Mexico City and I can come to only one conclusion. Venusians.” He said this with all the confidence of a gunslinger who has the wiles, calm and inner conviction of a poker faced liar to explain how he killed 12 men with only one bullet while  standing on his head blindfolded in a watering hole in Wichita


“Look, El Castillo, where dear Isadora’s father says from beyond the grave our treasure is hidden was built as a dedication  to the Mayan god, Kukulkan of the Feathered Serpent deity closely related to the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl


To them it was known as the Temple of Kukulcan. Just north of the Temple there is a curious platform dedicated to the planet Venus. It also served as an observatory with doors and windows aligned to astronomical events, specifically around the path of Venus as it traveled the heavens.“


Isadora it seems was also versed in some aspects of the culture. “He has a point! I remember reading that the Maya seem to have been more fascinated by them than any other civilization in human history. There has always been a number of people who believe aliens had contact and exchanged knowledge with ancient humans, particularly the Mayans.  Many believe  people from another galaxy have made contact and the Mayan priests who may have received ancient wisdom from these space travelers.”


My Gawd, I thought. The three of them were loco! “Space travelers! Next you’ll be telling me there were time travelers from the future as well who dropped by for a bottle of whiskey before they saddled up for Abilene or the moon!”


The Colonel had a plug nickel to add. “The Mayans were interested in both time and space travel now that I think about it.  Do I believe that there were spaceships flying around with beings who interacted with them on earth? I don’t know...but 200 years ago man was earthbound, couldn’t fly... and the world was flat..now look..the earth is round and we’re high in the sky...so anything is possible son.”


The balloon landed with a bump or two as it always did.
“Look Isadora, If any Mayans were around they would hail us a visiting gods from the far reaches of space no doubt and a great feast would be laid out before us before the big kick finish...the sacrifice of a virgin to Kukulkan with a cacophony of pagan drums and dancing followed by an orgy of sex and drugs with a group of two headed Venusian women!”


She looked at me with those large brown eyes of hers that could melt my heart in a heartbeat. “Yum,” she smiled. “Now THAT would be fun!” Somehow I was not surprised..in fact…I was delighted at the fantasy she projected to my libido!

Date: August 23, 1867

The ‘Enterprise’ landed with a terra firma thump, thump. thump bouncing along the brown Tolec dirt coming to an abrupt heart pounding stop surrounded in a  cloud of dust with  all aboard unscathed as the basket settled on end as the balloon deflated floating angelic gently to the ground.


Not far behind us El Diablo and his merry mercenary bandit men, aka revolutionaries when the situation warrants, were approaching our meeting place at a hell of a gallop. We had mentally made Chichen Itza our own private Cibola. Pyramids, altars, strange alien hieroglyphics on walls and on the ground, the latter only visible from the air. Most of all we hungrily anticipated it as the repository of untold riches and wealth, at least  according to the map Isadora had and her father’s stories. I hoped he wasn’t a spinner of yarns as I created in my pulp novels and articles for Harper’s Weekly about lawdogs and outlaws of what was fast becoming the ‘old’ west’ as modernization and mechanization raced iron horse forward at a furious American industrial pace.


As we got our land legs steady on the ground we were approached by a