The Bells of El Diablo (20 page)

There was a small bar of planks spread across two rain barrels, and about five tables, three of which were occupied. Five men sat in a separate area, beyond a broad, arched doorway, with three
putas
—all looking like the proverbial three sheets to the wind, one hombre passed out on a rickety sofa that was now more wooden bones than the original horsehair it had been covered with.

All that the trio from Tennessee could get to drink, as had been the case for the past two hundred miles, was the native Mexican brew, pulque, an astringent
concoction of the fermented sap of the maguey, or century, plant. The thin, milky brew was kept in a stone jug atop the bar and ladled into clay cups.

The first time James had imbibed the liquor, he’d felt as though he’d been smashed in the head by a brute wielding a sledgehammer. He’d drunk too much too quickly, and Crosseye and Vienna had put him to bed.

Now he merely sipped the brew, having grown to respect its potency as well as to enjoy its slightly sour taste and heady effect. But he dug into the roasted goat meat, frijoles, tortillas, and even the slightly crunchy fried ants and peppers, all smothered in sweet syrup, with the untethered vigor of a hungry coal miner.

The bartender was a withered old lady with Indian-dark skin in a red calico basque and gray
reboza
, her coal black hair piled in a bun. She came over with a pitcher to refill the trio’s glasses, and James said slowly, “Pardon me, ma’am, but have you heard of an Apache Jack hereabouts?”

She set Vienna’s refilled cup down, then picked up Crosseye’s, merely glancing at James skeptically while pursing her incredibly thin, dark pink lips.

“Apache Jack?” he said. “Friend of ours. Amigo. We’re looking for him.”

“If that’s all the Spanish you’ve picked up so far,” Vienna said dryly, lightly kicking James’s shin beneath the table, “let me try.”

Haltingly but impressively, she spoke in Southern-accented Spanish, James only recognizing “Apache Jack.” The old woman merely shrugged impatiently, prattled off some Spanish, then shuffled on back behind the bar.

“Well,” Vienna said, “he’s got to be around here somewhere, in one of these villages. Uncle Ichabod said he’d be waiting for him near the bells, and going by the map, we’re reasonably close to the bells.”

“Hard to judge distance on that map,” Crosseye pointed out. “We might still be a hundred miles from ’em.”

James chewed a chunk of meat and tortilla lathered in syrup and washed it down with the pulque that continued to grow on him. The liquor had a way of mercifully soothing saddle sores and any other kind of discomfort. “If he’s alive and still in Mexico, we might find him in Tres Campanas. According to the map, that’s the last village before the cache.”

Crosseye belched into his fist. “Hard to know how far Tres Campanas is, too, goin’ by that map. Could be twenty miles, could be a hundred, and with our Spanish we’ll never find out!”

“Quit bein’ so damn negative, old man,” James said.

“What he needs is a woman,” Vienna said, giving the old frontiersman a lopsided smile. “It’s been a while.”

Crosseye leaned toward her with a look of mock admonishment. “Now, Miss Vienna, I’m old enough to be your pappy!”

Vienna snickered. James kicked the oldster under the table. “Ow! What’s that for?”

James grinned as he chewed. “Just shinin’ my boot.”

Vienna stared down at her empty plate, thoughtfully turning her clay cup in her hand. “If we can’t find him, we’ve come for nothing. The bells could be no more than a hundred yards from Tres Campanas, but we’ll never be able to find them. The map isn’t that detailed.”

“Don’t worry,” James said. “We’ll find ’em with or without Apache Jack.”

The romance of their adventure, however teeming with danger, had grown on him. The trek reminded him of his solo journeys into deepest Appalachia when he was still a shaver outfitted with only a Kentucky rifle, a powder horn, a knife, and the education in woodsmanship that Crosseye himself had bestowed upon him. He didn’t care how long it took; he’d find that gold. Every man needed a reason for pulling his boots on every morning, and the Bells of El Diablo were currently his.

Part of him hoped they didn’t find the treasure too soon, as he was enjoying the journey.

He forked another portion of roasted goat meat onto his plate, then reached for a tortilla. Just as he’d closed his index finger and thumb around the edge of the tortilla, something whispered in the dark, smoky air of the place. An object streaked toward him, arcing.

And then an obsidian-handled stiletto was suddenly jutting from the table, pinning the tortilla he’d been reaching for to its wooden plate.

James followed the arc of the knife back to its starting point—a tall, rangy Mexican in a low-crowned sombrero and a shabby black suit coat over a frayed silk shirt, a red sash around his waist.

Giggling girlishly, the knife thrower rose catlike from his place on the threadbare sofa. The whore who’d been sleeping against his shoulder groaned and blinked her eyes indignantly as the Mexican gained his feet a little unsteadily and, still snickering girlishly beneath his drooping mustache, walked toward the arched doorway. He leaned a shoulder against the wide stone arch support and covered his mouth bashfully as he continued to laugh

James sagged back in his chair, dug a cheroot and a lucifer from his tunic pocket, and glanced at the knife handle that had just stopped quivering where it jutted from the plate in front of him. “Good one, amigo. Very good.
Bueno.
”

He struck a match to life on his cartridge belt and touched the flame to his cheroot, puffing to work up a good, glowing coal, drawing the peppery Mexican
tobacco deep into his lungs. The Mexican stopped giggling and snickering. His heavy brows drew down over his eyes, as though he didn’t like the gringo’s offhand reaction to his display of south-of-the-border machismo. It had been James’s recent experience that if these bean eaters didn’t have you trembling at the first flash of a knife blade, they clouded up and rained like chastised three-year-olds.

The man pushed off the stone arch support and came slowly toward the table. Through the cigar smoke puffing around his head, James glanced at Vienna. She sat with her back to the approaching Mexican, a tight look on her face, her eyes boring into the table before her. Crosseye stared across the table at James, the old frontiersman’s eyes looking dark but ready for the inevitable…if it came to that, as it so often did down here.

The Mexican stopped at the corner of the table between James and Vienna. He scowled down at James, his demeanor dark and rigid with coiled menace. On his hips were two big Walker Colts; another, larger knife was sheathed over his belly, the scrolled handle jutting up over his sternum. His brown, long-fingered hands were bunched at his sides.

James drew on the cheroot and blew the smoke out. “Can I offer you a drink, amigo? Ain’t been down here long. Don’t have too many friends.”

The Mexican wasn’t looking at James. He was looking at Vienna, his eyes glassy, heavy-lidded, and absolutely riveted on the woman, her thick raven hair swirling across her shoulders clad in the red-and-white-striped serape.

The Mexican’s black eyes slid toward James. His
right nostril flared slightly, his long jaws hardening, and then he turned back to Vienna and grabbed a fistful of her hair. Vienna grunted and glared up at the man, her gray eyes spitting defiant fire from beneath her straw sombrero.

“This one I take!” the Mexican said, spitting the words out harshly and pulling the stiletto out of the table. He slid its nastily thin blade toward Vienna’s throat. “Or I cut!”

James leaped to his feet. The Mexican released Vienna’s hair and swung her around to face James, the blade in his left hand angled toward James’s belly. Only, James’s own right hand was wrapped firmly around the Mexican’s knife wrist. The Mexican looked down at it, eyes winking in the lamplight, puzzled. As he tried to push the blade toward James, he made a deep-throated groaning sound. His wrist didn’t move. He hadn’t been prepared for the sudden, decisive reaction of the tall, dark, blue-eyed gringo, and he looked down in growing fury as James twisted his wrist back and sideways, making the little bones in the appendage pop and crack.

The Mexican stepped back haltingly, and James followed, increasing the destructive pressure on his wrist, until the man’s back was pressed up against the opposite stone arch support of the one he’d been leaning against a few minutes ago.

With an agonized cry, he released the stiletto. It clattered to the floor. Raging, he reached for one of the Walker Colts. It was in James’s hand first, and the tall Confederate hammered the butt against the Mexican’s right cheek.

The Mexican flew sideways and hit the earthen floor
with a thump. He groaned, body tensing, long legs crossing, then uncrossing. Making a deeply pained expression, he fell back against the floor, unconscious. Blood trickled from the three-inch gash in his cheek and around which the skin was purpling.

Holding the Walker Colt butt-first in his fist, down low by his side, James looked around. The other Mexican males in the room remained where they’d been when the tall Mex had thrown the stiletto. They regarded him now dully, droopy-eyed, heads wobbling drunkenly on their shoulders. The little boy who’d been shucking corn stared at James, his eyes wide, lower jaw hanging. The old woman who ran the place was peeling potatoes into a skillet and regarding James with only a vague look of disapproval, apparently accustomed to such carryings-on and, likely, far worse.

“Well, I’m glad you made us some more friends, Jimmy. Can’t have too many friends—that’s what I always say!” Crosseye heaved his burly bulk up from the table, adjusting the pistol hanging down his chest and the cartridge belt around his waist. “With that, maybe we should find somewhere else to hole up out of the wind.”

They found such a place down a cross street nearby. It was marked HOTEL but it was merely a second story with straw pallets above a goat stable. The pallets were partitioned off from one another with ropes strung from ratty striped blankets, all smelling of must and goat.

Behind the stable was a small living area where the young couple who ran the place lived with several children of all ages. One of the children, an infant, was
crying as James tried to sleep on his own pallet sandwiched between Vienna and Crosseye, each separated from him by blanket curtains. Occasionally, the child’s cries were drowned by the moaning wind, but every time sleep reached up for James, the wind would die or the child would wail louder.

Crosseye apparently had no such difficulty. To James’s right, the graybeard was snoring peacefully. That, too, would have kept James awake if he hadn’t grown accustomed to the raucous sawing long ago. To James’s left, there’d been no sounds for a time, and he’d thought Vienna must have gone to sleep, as well, but now he heard water being poured from a pitcher. Unable to sleep, she must have decided to wash.

Soft splashing sounds continued to emanate through the curtain, as well as the light sucking of a sponge being squeezed. They somehow drowned out Crosseye’s long, luxurious snores and the wind’s caterwauling. James lay on his back, hands behind his head, squeezing his eyes closed and fighting the images that kept shaping themselves behind his retinas.

His loins burned. He gritted his teeth and was about to roll over onto his belly and bury his head in his saddle when the curtain to his left suddenly drew back.

Vienna pulled a hand away from the curtain and sat back down on her pallet. She wasn’t wearing a blouse but only her denim trousers. They were unbuttoned. She turned sideways to him, drew her knees up, and wrapped her bare arms around them. Before her was a rusty tin washbasin and a clay pot of water. A sponge lay beside the basin.

Vienna shook her hair back from her face. Her voice
was husky as she said, “Would you like to finish for me, James?”

He stared at her firm shoulders and long, slender arms. He could see half a pale, full breast beneath her arm, mashed against her upraised right knee. Despite the hammering in his chest and the searing agony of lust in his loins, James hesitated, vaguely repelled by the offer.

His mind swirled until his head ached, and then he found himself climbing to his feet, staring down at her stonily, his broad chest rising and falling heavily as he kicked out of his boots. He unbuttoned his shirt, tossed it down on his saddle. In a minute, the rest of his clothes were there, as well—pants, long-handles, red neckerchief, socks.

He moved to her stiffly, his goatish male need for her fairly dripping off him, and sat down behind her. He wrapped his arms around her, around her knees, and nuzzled her neck, intoxicated by the touch of her smooth skin, by the smell of her, the caress of her silky hair on his cheek. She turned her head, and his lips found hers, hot, wet, and pliant. Her tongue was waiting for his at the edge of her mouth, and as he mashed his lips against hers, her tongue retreated, teasing, before jutting forward to entangle itself with his.

He pulled away from her but kept his head very close to hers, their lips almost touching, and cupped her breasts in his hands. He lowered his head, ran his lips down her neck and her right breast, and stopped. He slid his eyes toward her cleavage at the top of which lay a small tattoo in the shape of a bucking bronc, tail curled upward.

James stared at the horse above her heaving breasts.
“Oh, that,” Vienna said, running her hands through his hair, her voice pitched with passion. “Just ignore it, James. That’s from a life I’ve left behind.”

She thrust her breasts against him, and he continued moving his head down, kissing his way down the upturned orb to the jutting nipple.

“James,” she whispered later, half groaning, a single tear rolling down her cheek when they collapsed together, spent. “I’m in love with you, James.”

Something tugged on James’s big toe.

Instantly, he was awake to find his Griswold already in his hand, his thumb ratcheting the hammer back. He was on his back, Vienna curled against him, her head on his chest. He looked up, focusing his sleep-bleary eyes, to see the boy from the cantina lurch back against the blanket curtain behind him, throw his hands straight up above his head, and yell a terrified Spanish plea.