The Bells of El Diablo (30 page)

“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.

A clattering rose around the canyon. James felt a vibration in his boots. “What’s that?” he said.

“Look there!” Crosseye pointed toward the top of the opposite ridge touched with pink and gold morning light. Rocks were breaking loose from the sides of the cliff and rolling earthward. Large chunks of both cliffs were slanting inward, plunging downward.

“Rock slide!” James turned and grabbed Pablo’s hand, pulled the boy to his feet. “Come on, son—we gotta get out of here!”

James grabbed his cartridge belt and pistols and, holding Pablo’s hand, sprinted off down the canyon. The ground pitched and lurched around them. Rocks and boulders smashed to the canyon floor with explosions that in comparison made the loudest thunderclap James had ever heard sound little louder than a hiccup.

One such explosion sent a cold wave of wind and dust pushing against the fleeing trio from behind. Pablo stumbled, dropping to his knees, though he didn’t make a peep. James stopped, slung the boy over his shoulder, and continued running after Crosseye, the dust so thick he could hardly see the shambling oldster.

Leaping rocks and low shrubs, they tore off down the canyon as though the Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse were bearing down on them from behind. They bolted out of the mouth of the canyon as both cliffs gave way in earnest. The ground leaped so wildly beneath James’s boots that he thought the earth had come loose from its orbit and was tumbling off into space.

They all lost their footing, fell, rolled, heaved themselves to their feet, and continued running until they were well down the wash. When the cacophony had dwindled to a low rushing sound mingled with the clanks and clattering of shifting stones, James stopped, turned.

The cliff was considerably shorter than he remembered. A vast mushroom cloud of dust rose from behind it to spread out in the morning sky, turning the golden morning sunlight a murky tan. Beneath it, the canyon—and the third gold bell—was buried under a million tons of granite, quartz, and sandstone.