The Bells of El Diablo (31 page)

“Jimmy?”

James looked over Pablo’s dark head toward Crosseye. The old frontiersman looked like a life-sized figure fashioned from clay-colored dust. His broad chest rose and fell heavily.

Between breaths, he said, “Just so’s you know—from now on, when it comes to Apache curses, this dog don’t hunt!”

After a long rest, James and Crosseye managed to run down their terrified horses and Pablo’s mule, and, keeping a close eye out for Apaches, they followed Vienna’s wagon tracks westward along the wash.

They did not find Vienna or the wagon, however. What they did find was a flurry of unshod pony tracks—a good twenty or so riders—intersecting the tracks. Nearby, the twin wheel furrows left the arroyo and cut southward toward a jagged black sierra hulking ominously against the far horizon.

They followed the tracks for a ways, but more unshod horse tracks joined those of the first set and the wagon tracks, and James and Crosseye gave up the hunt. The Apaches badly outnumbered them. Besides, they needed to get Pablo back to his grandmother.

Vienna—or Mustang Mary—and the gold were gone. For her sake, James hoped she was dead.

Two months later, he and Crosseye had followed the currents of time and chance to a little Mexican outpost along the Yellow River near the Sea of Cortez, and found themselves whiling away an afternoon over
pulque, tortillas, fried goat liver, and chili peppers in an outdoor cantina under a brush arbor, when James looked up from his plate and scowled.

Crosseye regarded him over the chunk of tortilla and meat he held up close to his mouth. “What is it?”

James’s heart thudded. A short, slender figure wearing Vienna’s straw sombrero and her red-and-white-striped serape sat with her back to James and Crosseye’s table. The stranger sat with three men and a
puta
with blond streaks in her long black hair. The
puta
was talking and laughing huskily with the Mexican on her left.

James’s heart thudded again anxiously as he stood, and a strange hybrid of feelings engulfed him as he strode quickly over to the figure he was staring holes through and clamped his right hand over the person’s shoulder.

An angular face turned toward him, scowling. A man’s Indian-dark face, one eye slightly higher than the other, a thin, wiry black mustache mantling the thin upper lip. A couple of cracked and chipped teeth shone as the little, savage-looking Mexican scowled incredulously up at James, who dropped his eyes to the ironwood carving of a quail hanging around the man’s skinny, leathery neck by a braided rawhide thong.

James wrapped his hand around the quail. “Where did you get this?”

“
What the hell do you think you’re doing?
” the man in Vienna’s hat and serape said, shrilly indignant, rising drunkenly to his feet. By necessity, James had picked up some rudimentary Spanish.

The whore rose, too, thrusting her hands palm out.

“Please, no trouble,” she said in heavily accented English. “What is the matter with you, gringo? You enjoy raising hell so far from home?”

James released the quail, let it fall against the striped serape. He glanced at the whore on the other side of the table. “Ask him where he got this. The hat and the serape….”

The whore stared angrily at James, then, keeping her eyes on him, spat out some fast Spanish, gesturing disgustedly, translating the question. The little Mexican curled his lip above rotten gums as he prattled off a caustic-toned reply.

The whore said, “Abel says he got the hat and the serape, and the quail, too, off a dead Apache. He said if you don’t mind your manners you’ll get your throat cut and your scalp lifted.”

Abel picked up one of the several long black Indian scalps he wore from a wide brown belt around the serape and shaped a gap-toothed, menacing grin. James stared at the scalp. He felt sick as he backed away slowly, raising his hands in supplication.

He slacked back down in his chair across from Crosseye, swept his hat from his head, ran both hands through his hair.

“Well, I reckon now we know what happened to her,” Crosseye said, sitting back in his own chair, thumbs hooked behind his bandoliers.

He turned to stare out from under the brush arbor toward the dusty street beyond, where a handcart stacked with split mesquite was being wheeled toward a small stone shack. Chickens scattered from the handcart’s path. “Wonder what happened to the gold….”

James leaned forward on his elbows, stared down at his plate. He fought Mustang Mary from his mind. He had to let go of her, just as he’d let go of the war and Willie. “Gone, old-timer. All gone.”

“Damn. Sure was purty, wasn’t it? Too bad it had to be cursed.”

“I heard tell about some more.” James looked up at the burly frontiersman from beneath his brows. “I heard a couple of gringo traders tell about it last night. Apache gold up Arizona way, in a mountain range called the Superstitions.”

“Ah, hell, Jimmy, tell me it ain’t cursed.”

“I didn’t hear nothin’ about it bein’ cursed.”

“’Cause this dog don’t hunt around Apache curses.”

James smiled. “I remember.”

Crosseye’s good eye and his crossed eye wobbled around in their sockets as he pondered the prospect. Then he shaped a slow grin. “Well, hell, what’re we waitin’ for?”

The two ex-Confederates tossed coins on the table and donned their dusty hats. They headed outside to their horses, swung into the leather, and rode hard for the border.

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Frank Leslie
is the pseudonym of a prolific and acclaimed writer who has penned more than sixty Western novels. He lives in Colorado.