The Bells of El Diablo Read online

  “How in the hell did you stumble on these bells, anyway, Jack?” James asked between breaths.

  “Same way all great treasures is discovered,” Jack said, standing to one side of the cave mouth with Pablo, while Chulo and Vincente carried their bell up from the depths of the cave behind him. “By accident. I was on the run from ’paches, and I came in here to hide one late evenin’ without benefit of a lantern. I woke in the morning to see these three beauties glowing at me like celestial virgins.”

  When Chulo and Vincente, struggling under their own burden, had joined them on the floor of the corridor, James and Crosseye hefted their bell once more and started back along the chasm toward the wagon.

  It took them nearly half an hour, with the help of Chulo and Vincente, to get the bell over all the obstacles, but, sweating and weary, they finally set the bell in the back of the wagon, atop a horse blanket laid out for the cargo. They took little time to rest, as dawn was near. They headed back into the chasm to help Chulo and Vincente get their bell over the several stone slabs in the path.

  When they’d set the second bell in the wagon, they each took a pull from Apache Jack’s offered bottle. Jack suggested that he and Vienna stay with the wagons and keep watch for trouble. It wasn’t yet dawn, but the morning birds were beginning to chirp.

  “Give a yell if he starts pawin’ you,” James told Vienna, winking at her, as he and Crosseye and Chulo and Vincente headed back down the corridor to retrieve the other bell.

  “I’m armed.” Vienna patted her pistol and returned the wink.

  Another half an hour later, with Pablo holding the lantern, James, Crosseye, Chulo, and Vincente wrestled the bell over the last rock slab angling over the corridor and set it on the chasm’s floor. James had just stepped back against the wall when he saw Vincente lunge toward Crosseye. A blade flashed in the clubfooted Yaqui’s fist a quarter second before he buried it in the old frontiersman’s belly.

  Chapter 29

  “Look out, Jimmy!” Crosseye bellowed as he fell, Vincente crouching and grunting over him.

  James jerked his gaze toward Chulo, who had a long-barreled Remington in his fist, the barrel aimed at Crosseye. The cow eyes held flatly on James, though the big Yaqui’s broad mouth quirked in a mocking grin.

  Pablo screamed and lurched backward, falling. The lantern clattered to the ground and blinked out. At the same time, Chulo’s pistol flashed and thundered. James barely registered a sting across his left forearm as he clawed both his Griswold .36s from their holsters.

  The Confederate pistols leaped and thundered, the flashes revealing Chulo’s hulking figure against the far wall. Chulo’s own pistol flashed and roared. James fired two more times, and in the light of the lapping flames he saw Chulo jerk backward. The man’s pistol thudded on the chasm floor.

  There was a yowl to James’s right. Vincente’s thick, short figure bent forward, knees buckling, while Crosseye’s silhouette pulled its arm back from the clubfoot’s gut. “There you go, you son of a bitch!” Crosseye said in a pinched voice.

  James glanced at Chulo’s unmoving figure, then ran to Crosseye, his heart thudding dreadfully. He dropped to a knee, holstered one of the Griswolds, and put a hand on the stout man’s shoulder. “How bad he stick you, hoss?”

  “Ah, hell,” Crosseye said, chuckling and getting a knee under him. He placed a forearm on his knee and heaved himself to his feet. “He stabbed one of the shell belts. Poked me a little through the leather, but I been bit worse by skeeters.”

  James squeezed the oldster’s neck with affection. “I thought he’d gutted you clean.”

  “So did he.” Crosseye stared down at Vincente, who was hunkered over his knees, quivering his life out on the chasm floor. Crosseye slipped his Leech & Rigdon from the holster strapped to his right hip, clicked the hammer back, and aimed it down at the dying Yaqui.

  James nudged his partner’s gun hand down. “No.”

  He walked over to where Pablo sat on the ground near one of the slanting stone beams. Even in the darkness, James could see that the boy’s eyes were wide as saucers as he stared at the two dead men. James extended a hand toward Pablo.

  A gun thundered, echoing from the main canyon. Apache Jack’s muffled voice was high with anguish. “Oh, you dirty devil…!”

  James wheeled from Pablo, clicked his Griswold’s hammer back, and ran down the chasm as fast as he could without risking tripping over a rock. The corridor’s mouth shone like a purple vertical rectangle in front of him, slowly growing as James approached it. He could hear Crosseye’s ragged breaths as the older man chugged along behind him.

  Vienna screamed, moaned. James dashed out the chasm mouth into the canyon, crouching and extending both his .36s, expecting to see Apaches dashing around in front of him. He stopped, dropped to a knee, and aimed across the canyon toward where Vienna stood with a tall, long-haired man wearing a sombrero behind her, holding a gun to her head. The second lantern was held aloft by one of the other men in the pack standing around the first man and Vienna.

  Apache Jack lay on the far side of the wagon, on his back. He was thrashing and groaning, clutching his belly.

  All the other dozen or so men and Vienna stood in bizarre silhouette though a faint wash of lilac shone in the sky above the canyon.

  “One more step, amigos, and I blow a hole in the princess’s beautiful, double-crossing head.” It was the voice of a gringo, vaguely familiar, but James couldn’t place it.

  Double-crossing? Then he remembered: Red Mangham.

  “Kill her,” said a tall man standing near the Denver City outlaw leader. His voice, too, was familiar. “Kill her and let’s get out of here. We’ve only got about an hour before sunrise.”

  “Shut up, Stenck!” Mangham barked. “Now that we have the gold, I’m liable to shoot you!”

  “You promised to honor our agreement!” Stenck barked back, jutting an angry finger.

  Hot bile washed through James. The last time he’d seen Richard Stenck, the tall, yellow-haired Confederate had been riding hell-for-leather, naked, out of Tucson. Somehow, he must have joined forces with Mangham, who’d been after Vienna. Stenck must have told Mangham about the gold she was after…and here they all were….

  Mangham yelled, “I told you two fellas to throw down your weapons. Your rifles and every goddamn pistol and knife. Do not tarry, understand?” He ground his pistol into Vienna’s cheek, making her cry out.

  James glanced at Crosseye. He nodded. What else could they do?

  He set the Henry down against the cliff wall flanking him. He tossed his pistols down, and then he drew his knife from the sheath behind his right hip and tossed that down, as well. Crosseye threw down his own small arsenal. James stared across the canyon, hopelessness closing heavily around him, weighing him down. They were all going to die—him, Crosseye, and Vienna.

  Mangham chuckled and lowered his pistol from Vienna’s head, depressing the hammer. Vienna turned to him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him, moving her body lustily against his.

  For a moment, James thought someone had come up behind him and clubbed him over the head. His knees turned to putty. He stared aghast across the canyon. Beside him, Crosseye gave a throaty grunt of exclamation.

  “Well, I’ll be,” the old frontiersman said half under his breath.

  Vienna pulled away from Mangham but kept her arms around his neck. “It can all be ours, Red. You an’ me.”

  Stenck said, “Kill her, Mangham. We had a deal. Just you, me, and your men. Come on—think! She stole from you, ran out on you!”

  Mangham clutched the back of her neck. Vienna tensed. “What about that? What you got to say about that, Mary?”

  “I didn’t betray you, Red,” Vienna, aka Mustang Mary, said in a wheedling little girl’s voice. “I just ran away. That’s all. Of course I needed money, so I took a few coins from your strongbox. Let bygones be bygones. You’ve come all this way. Well, now you not only have the gold, you have me, too.�
�� She kissed him again, and James clenched his fists at his sides. “You know how you feel about me, Red. You’ll never get me out of your blood. What good’s the gold without a good woman to share it with?”

  Mangham lowered his hand from the back of her neck. “Yeah, you know how I feel. I reckon I can’t deny that, Mary.”

  “Mangham, don’t be a fool!” Stenck warned.

  Mangham lifted his pistol, turned it butt out toward Vienna. “If you really love me, Mary, go finish that blind old desert rat. I’m tired of the old fool’s caterwaulin’.”

  James stood riveted, only half believing what he was seeing, the ground pitching around him, as Vienna took the Colt in her hand. She swung around and walked over to where Apache Jack lay on the far side of the wagon from James and Crosseye.

  “Don’t do it, Vienna.” James did not shout it. Even to his own ears, it sounded like a desperate plea. He took two strides out away from the chasm mouth, heard the metallic scrape of half a dozen gun hammers as Mangham’s ten or so men aimed pistols or rifles at him while holding the reins of their fidgeting mounts.

  Vienna took the pistol in both hands, aimed it down at Apache Jack kicking his legs in agony and rolling from side to side. Suddenly, the blind man stopped moving and stared up at her. He was breathing hard, holding his guts in, but he laughed madly. Quieting down, he turned his head toward James and Crosseye. “The gold was cursed, after all.” He chuckled. “It turned this purty little thing into a witch. Just look at her!”

  Vienna’s pistol popped. Flames stabbed at Apache Jack. The old man’s head bounced off the canyon floor, then sagged back down against it and lay still.

  James had started at the shot. He raked his gaze from the faintly twitching form of Apache Jack to the girl. If he’d ever truly loved her, that love was gone. It had turned to a sharp-edged, cold, killing fury. Glaring at her, he clenched his fists so tightly that his fingernails dug into the heels of his hands.

  Mangham pointed at him and Crosseye. “Now them!”

  Holding the smoking pistol straight down in front of her, Vienna looked at James and Crosseye. Her eyes were opaque, matter-of-fact. Stenck and Mangham’s men shifted around on their boot heels, keeping their rifles or pistols aimed at James and Crosseye, who stood about ten feet out from the chasm mouth, their own guns and knives in a ragged pile before them and to the right—too far away to make a play for them, though the urge drew the sinews and muscles in James’s arms and hands taut.

  Vienna walked over to him, stopped four feet away. She continued to wear that bland expression on her once-beautiful face. Amazing how such attractive features could so quickly turn as ugly as an ogre’s—her once-lustrous gray eyes now as dark as coal.

  “Why?” James asked quietly.

  “Over the past year with Red, on the run from Stenck,” she said just as quietly, so Mangham and the others couldn’t hear, “I realized how important money was. With money, you can buy anything—a business, men to help run and protect it. Even the law.”

  “Did you ever intend to bring the gold back to Richmond?”

  Vienna loosed a mocking laugh. “Hell, no! Like you said—the South is finished. We each have to survive any way we can. Me? I’m gonna have money…and power.”

  “He told you to shoot ’em,” Stenck said, walking toward Vienna, James, and Crosseye, “not talk ’em to death!”

  Vienna swung around, raising the pistol. Stenck stopped, eyes widening in horror. “No!” He raised his hands as though to shield his face, but Vienna’s slug plunked through his chest. He grunted, stumbled backward, and fell with a hard thud, mewling and jerking.

  As Stenck’s shrill death screams died, Mangham threw his head back, laughing raucously. Vienna turned back to James, cocking the Colt once more, squinting one eye, and quirking a grin.

  “Thanks for the help, James.”

  “No!” a thin voice cried behind Crosseye.

  A fist-sized rock flew past James’s face and smashed into Vienna’s pistol, which roared and sent a saber of red-blue flames angling toward the brightening sky. Vienna screeched and stumbled backward. “You little savage!” she screamed.

  Pablo’s voice yelled, “Here, senor!”

  James turned. Pablo crouched against the left side of the chasm’s mouth, tossing a pistol he’d taken off Chulo or Vincente. The Remington careened toward James, who snatched it out of the air by its butt and swung back toward the main cave, crouching and firing at the same time the guns of Mangham’s men opened up on him and Crosseye. James’s slug plunked through the knee of one man while Mangham cursed and fired a pistol in each of his fists.

  James returned fire, wincing as hot lead screeched over and around him, spanging off the canyon walls. Crosseye dove forward, grabbed his Lefaucheux and .36 Leech & Rigdon off the ground, rolled once to the right as bullets peppered the rocks around him, and returned fire from his belly, loosing a Rebel yell so shrill and haunting that it got James’s blood up, and Forrest’s Rapscallion began howling like a maniac as his own pistol leaped and roared.

  When the hammer clicked on an empty chamber, he shouted, “Get back inside the notch, old-timer—I’ll cover ya!” and lunged toward his Henry repeater. Two bullets hammered the rocks around the rifle, and he lurched away from them, dropping to his butt.

  As James heaved himself to his feet, the old frontiersman dashed past him, shouting, “Come on, Jimmy, before we catch lead poisonin’!” and threw his broad bulk into the narrow gap behind Pablo.

  “Got a better idea! Cover me, hoss!”

  James reached again for the Henry, grabbed the neck of the stock, and fell back on his rump once more, quickly racking a shell and casting a wild gaze out before him. Several of Mangham’s men lay still amongst the wafting powder smoke, while the others were scrambling behind a shallow hummock in the center of the canyon, behind a thin screen of bramble.

  James triggered the Henry three times from his butt, then lurched to his feet, fired three more times, levering and firing, hearing the shouts of Mangham’s men beneath the racketing echo of his shots. Then he dropped the rifle, wheeled left, and dove into the back of the wagon, hearing the angry thuds of three bullets slamming into the wagon behind him. Another slug screeched off the wagon’s right rear wheel.

  He got behind the Gatling gun and dropped to a knee as he wrapped his hand around the wooden crank handle. In the dimly lit canyon, he could see the flashes of Mangham’s men’s guns and the ghostly puffs and wafts of their powder smoke. Bullets sang through the air around him, hammering the side of the wagon and the cliff wall.

  The mules brayed raucously, prancing and heaving against their collars, jerking the wagon slowly forward as the left front wheel ground against the brake.

  Gritting his teeth and cutting loose with another wild yell, James turned the crank. The deadly canister spun, flashing, the loud reports echoing.

  Bam-Bam-Bam-Bam-Bam-Bam-Bam-Bam-Bam-Bam-Bam!

  James couldn’t see what he was hitting on the dim floor of the canyon that the dawn light was just now finding, but he heard several shrill screams and cries. The flashing of return fire dwindled. Crosseye yowled like a coyote as from the chasm mouth to James’s right, the old-timer yelled, “Go, Jimmy. Gooooo!”

  James had just stopped turning the Gatling’s crank, and the gun had fallen silent though its echoes continued to rumble around between the cliff walls, when the wagon sagged slightly to the right, a spring squawking. In the corner of James’s eye, a shadow moved.

  He heard a female grunt, felt a gun belt smash against the side of his head. The blow threw him sideways, and he reached for the side of the wagon but only grazed it with his fingers as he flew over it. The ground came up to smack his right shoulder and hip.

  He heard himself groan as Vienna bellowed, “Hyaahhhhhh!”

  Blinking to clear his vision, James pushed up on an elbow, gritting his teeth against the pain stabbing through his head. The ground quivered beneath him as the wagon lumbered away from him,
Vienna yelling wildly beneath the team’s indignant braying.

  “Jimmy!” Crosseye knelt beside him, placed a hand on his arm. “Christ Almighty—you all right, boy?”

  Pablo scrambled out of the chasm mouth and dropped to a knee on James’s other side, a worried look on his little, dark face.

  James turned to see Vienna and the wagon roaring down the center of the canyon, heading away to James’s right. A figure just now touched with pearl light was running after her, his stockmen’s boots slipping on the rocky ground, shouting and shooting his pistols.

  “Double-crossin’ bitch!” Mangham bellowed.

  Crosseye grabbed James’s Henry, fired from his hip. The repeater spoke once, twice, three times before the hammer pinged on an empty chamber.

  Mangham screamed. His shadowy figure dropped. The wagon dwindled off down the canyon beyond him.

  Crosseye looked at the Henry in his hands. “Damn fine shootin’ stick, Jimmy!” He extended it toward James. “Here, you take it. It’s yours…and it’s empty.”

  James took the gun, climbed to his feet, and stared after the wagon. Its loud clattering was gradually fading. On the canyon floor, there was no movement, no more gunfire.

  The burly frontiersman stood beside James, quickly, deftly reloading the Lefaucheux, working the ejector, placing the caps, conical balls, and paper cartridges in the cylinders, snarling as his hands worked automatically.

  James placed a hand on the older man’s thick left shoulder. “It’s done, hoss.”

  Crosseye jerked a look at him, blood from one of his several bullet burns dribbling down his chin. “Wha? Huh?”

  He looked out into the canyon.

  Quiet had descended, as though it were a product of the milky morning light. Wafting powder smoke was the only movement. All the horses had fled after the shooting had begun.

  Mangham lay howling about fifty yards down the main canyon toward where James’s party had entered it. He was sobbing, obviously dying, and calling for Mary.

  Mustang Mary hammered off down the canyon with the gold.