The Bells of El Diablo (8 page)

James hardened his jaws. “Who the hell are you? How do you know me?”

The man jerked his head, beckoning. James glanced behind him. The hawk-nosed man stood, sneering, holding his Sharps up high across his chest, the other two flanking him, blocking the door. James looked ahead of him. The man with the burned ear had set his shotgun atop the bar and was now, while keeping an eye on
James, pouring whiskey from a bottle into one hand and then cupping that hand to his ear, sucking a sharp, painful breath, showing his teeth, tears shining in his eyes.

The other two stood holding their guns on James, who moved forward. The two stepped away from each other, opening a clear path to the table. The only sound in the room was the snapping of the fire in the broad hearth to James’s right, and the thud of his boots on the worn, wooden floor. James kicked out a chair as he scowled down at the man sitting on the far side of it, who wore a gray Confederate greatcoat, with a gray kepi on the table before him, near the whiskey bottle and shot glass. The insignias of a captain adorned his shoulders. One was badly frayed. There was a tear in the side of his coat in the shape of a Minié ball.

He was a tall, gaunt, pale man. Hollow-cheeked, hollowed-eyed, the eyes themselves a washed-out blue. A sickly yellow waterfall mustache fell over his lips, nearly covering his mouth. Thin hair of the same faded-straw color hung straight down to his shoulders. The man’s name floated up out of the battlefield smoke of James’s past.

“Stenck.”

The yellow-haired man who resembled nothing so much as a putrefying skeleton with eyes smiled, showing one gold eyetooth, dimpling his papery cheeks. His face managed to cling to a shadow of handsomeness. At one time, he’d probably been dashing.

Captain Richard Stenck looked at James with open admiration. “Forrest’s Rapscallion.”

“What the hell are you doing here? The war’s still on.”

“I might ask you the same thing.”

The tips of James’s ears warmed. He had no cause for self-righteousness, and that burned him further. Still, he couldn’t help adding, “I didn’t run from Napoleon’s cannons and musket fire.”

That was the story of why Stenck, who’d never been much of a leader in the first place, had deserted the Confederacy, just up and disappearing during some especially bloody fighting in Louisiana—him and ten men from his company, some of whom were likely standing around James now. James thought he might have recognized a couple of the faces, though not well enough to put names to—all, no doubt, Texans, as was Stenck, though the captain was from there by way of Scotland, where it was said he’d come from royalty and great wealth, though the bloodline had thinned considerably and the wealth had nearly run out. That’s why he and several brothers had been sent to Texas to run a cattle ranch and freighting company before the start of the war.

One of the men behind James said, “Want me to pop him over the head for that, Captain?”

“No, no, no,” Stenck said. “He was just getting a gibe in. What would you expect from one of Nate’s Raiders?” Stenck smiled again with a combination of flattery and faint jeering, then changed the subject. “One of my compatriots and co-owner of the Overland Stage Company told me a gentleman with a Southern accent, likely a Tennessee hillbilly, had inquired about one Mr. Ichabod McAllister. Then I saw you myself in the Holy Smokes Saloon. We’d met, if you remember, in Richmond before the war.”

“I remember.” James and his father had been selling cotton to overseas buyers in Richmond when Stenck
and one of his brothers had tried hawking interests in their freighting company to Alexander Dunn and several other businessmen from Virginia and Carolina. James’s father, who had no interest in Western speculation, had summarily refused, later telling James he trusted no one who showed red eyes before noon.

“And I couldn’t help wondering,” Stenck continued, “why Forrest’s Rapscallion was inquiring about McAllister. Then I remembered that the McAllister plantation wasn’t far from your own Seven Oaks, was it?” He arched a pewter brow. “Or…is it still there?”

“Far as I know.”

“Why were you inquiring about McAllister?” Stenck asked without further ado, putting a businesslike crispness into his voice.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your affair.”

Stenck laughed, showing his little teeth including the gold eyetooth. He leaned forward on the table, swabbing his piss yellow, waterfall mustache with two fingers, then wrapping his pale hands around his shot glass. He looked at James from beneath his brows, his eyes startlingly dead-looking. “You know I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me.”

“Sure must be important.”

“Oh, not really. I just don’t like being insulted by the likes of a backwoods roarer. That’s all you Dunns are, all you’ll ever be, what’s left of you after the war.”

“Now you’re insultin’ me, Stenck.” James hardened his eyes, damned if he’d tell the man what he wanted to know until he knew why Stenck was asking.

“I’m going to do more than insult you if you don’t tell me why you were asking about McAllister.”

James stared at him, sat back in his chair, and loosed a sigh of feigned resignation. He would have been happy to tell Stenck what he wanted to know, but he was leery of tipping his own hand. Something was very amiss, and it had him worried about Vienna.

“His brother had a message for him, that’s all,” he lied. “All’s well back home. That’s it. Now, if you could point me in his direction, I’ll just go relay the message and find me another saloon. That tanglefoot looks mighty tasty, but it don’t look like you’re gonna offer me none.” He clucked with false reproof. “Where’re your Texas manners, Captain?”

“You’re going to sit there and tell me you left the war, abandoned your beloved Confederacy, to tell McAllister that all is well back home?”

“Hell, yeah. For all intents and purposes, the War’s really over, Stenck. Didn’t you hear?”

Stenck stared at him in mute fury.

“What about McAllister’s niece—know where she is, do ya?” asked the man with the bullet-grazed ear from the bar, his voice pitched with shrill impatience.

James jerked a look at him, but before he could respond, Stenck glared at him. “Shut up, Lieutenant!”

The lieutenant with the shredded ear turned away like a scolded dog. James turned back to Stenck, those cold fingers of apprehension beginning to rake him again, though not for himself this time, but for Vienna McAllister. What could that beautiful, black-haired, gray-eyed Southern belle and apple of his brother’s eye have to do with these Texas vermin?

“Why, no,” he said slowly, studying Stenck closely. “I wouldn’t know anything about his niece.” He
cleared his throat, thinking fast. “Uh…what niece would that be?”

Stenck’s face hardened. It looked like a death mask. Only his lips moved when he said tightly, “Take him out and shoot him. Haul him away and throw him in a deep ravine. Leave him to the coyotes.”

Boots thudded behind James.

“All right, all right,” he said, knowing he was at the edge of the proverbial cliff. “You called my bluff. I don’t have a message for McAllister. The message is for his niece, Vienna, in the form of a watch.” He glanced at the man with the eye patch behind him, now standing about ten feet away.

“Ah,” Stenck said, nodding, sucking his upper lip. “I see. An innocent delivery of a watch.”

“There you have it. Now, if you could tell me where she might be, I’ll be runnin’ along. As you know, I’ve inquired everywhere in Denver City, but no one even seems to know the McAllister name.”

Stenck studied James closely for a time, tapping a finger on the rim of his shot glass. Finally, he picked the glass up delicately between thumb and index finger, and threw back half of it. He smacked his lips and set the glass down on the table.

He ran the back of his hand across his mustache, smacked his lips again, and looked once more at James from beneath his brows. “I don’t believe you, Lieutenant. You’re here for something more. You are Forrest’s Rapscallion, after all. You’re here to see McAllister on behalf of the Confederacy. And, since it has become clear I’m going to get nothing of any value out of you…”

He rolled his eyes up to the men now standing in a semicircle around James.

“Wait a goddamn minute!” James barked, frustration churning in him. “I just told you the truth. Where’s the McAllister family, and where is Vienna? What the hell’s goin’ on here, Stenck?”

Stenck arched both brows, pursed his lips. “Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that I do believe your story, Lieutenant, as far-fetched as it is.” He chuckled. “Forrest’s Rapscallion leaving the war to deliver a watch!” He cackled.

James felt his nostrils flare at the captain’s words and mocking laughter.

“If your story is true, Lieutenant, you haven’t left the war as far behind as you thought.”

Stenck glanced at the men behind James. “For the last time—take him out and shoot him!”

Two men each grabbed one of James’s arms, hauled him to his feet, and half led and half dragged him toward the door. “Won’t hurt a bit,” said the man with the eye patch. “One bullet through the back of your head, and you’ll be hearin’ ‘Dixie’!”

He and the others laughed.

As Stenck’s men led James through the batwings and onto the front stoop, James gathered himself for an imminent move. He was badly outnumbered, hands tied, so he’d most likely die, but he’d be damned if he wouldn’t do some damage before he set sail for Glory. The man with the eye patch rammed his Henry’s butt hard against James’s back, and he stumbled down the steps and into the yard.

He was about to turn and lift a vicious kick to an unprotected groin, but stopped, staring straight ahead of him. The three men behind him must have seen it, too—the thin shadow of a man sitting a horse a little ways out from the parked wagon. All three froze, one giving an incredulous wheeze. There was another horse behind the rider’s horse, and just as James recognized his chestnut rabicano in the silvery darkness, a familiar voice said, “
Down, Jimmy!
”

James dropped to his knees in the dirt, and ducked his head. A gun flashed and roared atop the lead horse before him. It roared two more times, the echoes of the
blasts dwindling and falling beneath the groans of the riflemen now twisting and dropping behind James.

James recognized the shrill report of Crosseye’s Lefaucheux, and grinned. “You crazy catamount!”

“Haul your skinny ass over here, ye shaver!” Crosseye’s horse, a big Western-bred roan he’d traded his mule for, curveted.

James lifted his head and squared his shoulders, working against his tied hands as he heaved himself to his feet with a grunt. Hearing men yelling in the saloon behind him and the others continuing to groan and gurgle where they’d fallen, two on the stoop, the man with the eye patch on the steps, James ran over to Crosseye and swung around. The old frontiersman leaned down, and James felt the tugging of the knife blade sawing through the rope binding his wrists.

“Let’s go!” the older man rasped when the cut rope dropped.

“I’m right behind you!” James bolted forward and grabbed his cartridge belt and holstered Griswolds off the steps, where the one-eyed man had dropped them. He also grabbed the sleek Henry repeater before sprinting over to his chestnut that pranced in place, reins dangling.

Crosseye swung his big roan around to face the direction from which he’d come, the lights of Denver winking dully across the black sloping plain, then stopped once more behind James’s chestnut. His Lefaucheux roared, flames lapping from the barrel, the twelve-millimeter slugs plunking into the front of the saloon, one on either side of the batwings, sending another of Stenck’s men wheeling back through the doors with a yelp.

“Let’s go, Jimmy!”
Crosseye screeched as James hurled himself into the saddle from the off-side.

The chestnut whinnied shrilly and buck-kicked as James swung it around, then ground his cavalry heels into the horse’s flanks. With another whinny, the chestnut leaped off its rear hooves and flew off in the direction of Crosseye’s jostling shadow, hooves thudding loudly on the hard-packed trail.

Beneath the rataplan James could hear Stenck’s shrill voice shouting orders. The captain from Texas would not let him go without more of a fight, he knew. Stenck had brought him there to kill him, to keep him from continuing to ask around about the McAllisters, and he’d try his damnedest to accomplish the task. Stenck might have run from one war, but this one was just his size. James had to assume he had more gun hands than the small number he’d seen tonight.

James crouched low over his chestnut’s buffeting mane as the horse galloped down a gradual grade, following the trail that was a curving pale line in the darkness. Crosseye was about thirty yards ahead, starlight glinting off his hat with its turned-up front brim, and off his saddlebags flapping like small wings. They dropped down into the brush-bottomed canyon, and Crosseye stopped his horse, curveting the blowing, prancing mount.

“How’d you find me?” James asked the old frontiersman.

“I saw the whole thing from the flophouse window, but by the time I got down to the street, they was rolling you off in that wagon. So I went and saddled our hosses and shadowed you.” Crosseye spat, and chaw
splashed on a rock beside the trail. He wiped his fur-covered chin with the heel of his hand. “Who were them polecats, Jimmy?”

James glanced along their back trail, sensing more trouble galloping toward them. “Later!” He booted the chestnut on past Crosseye, clacking across the rocks of the dry creek bed, then starting up the opposite slope.

He galloped about a quarter mile back the way he’d come in the wagon, then turned the chestnut off the trail’s south side and into the sagebrush. A low, rocky escarpment humped darkly ahead of him. When he reached it, he swung down from the chestnut’s back.

Crosseye galloped up behind him, then checked down the roan, the horse’s eyes flashing wildly as it chomped its silver bit. “How bad’s their tails twisted, Jimmy?”

“You mean do I think they’re comin’? Uh-huh!” James left his cartridge belt and .36’s hanging from his saddle horn and raised the Henry, running an appreciative hand down the long barrel. “Leastways, I’m hopin’ they are.” He looked up at Crosseye as he worked the Henry’s cocking lever, racking a cartridge into the chamber and absently enjoying the smooth, solid sound of the sixteen-shooter’s action. “And when they do, I want one of ’em kept alive.”