The Bells of El Diablo

by Frank Leslie

  Vienna muttered an exclamation as she drew back on the reins of her startled horse.

  Holding his own reins taut, James stared, incredulous, toward the dead men. Smoke wafted above the wagon. He heard the squawk of the Gatling gun’s tripod swivel, saw the nose of the gun rise, as did the man called Chulo, from his position behind it. His boots scraped in the wagon bed.

  As James and the others booted their mounts toward the wagon and the cabin, Jack said something to Chulo in Spanish, and the hulking creature, who seemed more beast than man, leaped down off the wagon and walked around, prodding the down men with his boot toes.

  Jack turned toward the Southerners and Pablo as James said with a wry chuff, “Friends of yours?”

  “Ha!” Jack slapped his thigh, cackling. “Bandidos of the worst stripe. The tall fella there, Madrino, and Chulo got along like two bobcats tied to the same plank. Ya see, Madrino made Chulo’s sister heavy with child and left her to fend for herself.” Jack cackled again, wagging his head. “My friends from the Confederate States of America, welcome to Mexico!”

  Chapter 25

  When Jack stopped laughing, he reached under the wagon’s seat for a bottle, pulled the cork, and glanced over at Chulo and Vincente, both of whom were now looting the bodies of the dead, closely inspecting the cadavers’ arsenal of knives, pistols, and rifles. “Ladies and gentlemen from Tennessee,” Jack said, “meet my friends Chulo and Vincente. Chulo and Vincente, these here good folks is Miss Vienna McAllister, Mr. James Dunn, Mr. Crosseye Reeve, and, well, you know Pablo.”

  Pablo was busy unhitching the mules from the wagon.

  If Chulo and Vincente had heard the introductions, they didn’t acknowledge them. Vincente was pulling the right boot off one of the dead men while Chulo was hefting a revolver in his hand, testing the weight.

  Jack wiped the lip of the bottle off on his pants and extended it to Vienna. “Ladies first…if you’ve a mind for a libation, Miss Vienna.”

  “After this day, I could drink it all down myself.” Vienna threw back a healthy slug of the tanglefoot, choked down a cough, and extended the bottle to James, who took it and glanced at Chulo and Vincente. “Where’d they come from, Jack?”

  Keeping his voice low, Jack said, “They help out around the mission when they ain’t up to no good, stealing horses and robbin’ banks an’ such. They’ve helped me with my prospectin’ from time to time, though they haven’t never seen the bells.”

  “They understand English?” Crosseye asked, throwing back a drink of the tonsil-burning tequila.

  “Just Chulo. Don’t speak a lick of nothin’, though.” Jack smiled and passed his index finger across his throat.

  James continued watching the big men, Vincente moving awkwardly on his clubfoot. He was a full head shorter than Chulo, but broader and even more powerful-looking through the shoulders. He seemed more interested in the dead men’s knives than their guns; just now he was running his thumb across the blade of a six-inch, wooden-handled skinning knife.

  James turned to Jack. “Can we trust ’em?”

  Jack threw back another drink and sucked air through his teeth, shaking his head. “Nope. Once we get to the bells and get ’em down out of the mountains and past the Apaches, we’ll have to kill ’em.”

  James and Crosseye both just stared at him, James wondering if the man was joking and deciding he wasn’t. Jack jerked a jeering finger at him and Crosseye. “You two don’t know Mexico yet, but you’re about to get to know it real well!”

  Vienna said, “I don’t understand, Jack. Salsidio said he’d killed you.”

  “He was playin’ a bluff, tryin’ to get you to open up about me an’ my ladies.” Jack chuckled. “Salsidio was more bandido than rurale. Like most of ’em are. Oh, he paid me a visit, all right. Seen you leave, I reckon. He’s been after the bells for years himself. Got close but never found ’em. Somehow, months back, he started to figure I had. He musta tracked me once or twice, and got savvy.

  “Anyway, when he seen you gringos in Cordura, he figured you were here to help me get the gold out. He came to pump me about it, threatened to kill me, of course, but he never would. Not on holy ground, leastways. Salsidio was many things, and a good, hell-fearin’ Catholic was one of ’em. God rest his soul.” He spat in disgust, chaw dribbling down his gray-bristled chin.

  Crosseye was leaning against the wagon, staring at the Gatling gun. “Where’d you get this bullet belcher, Jack?”

  “Chulo and Vincente got drunk one night and stole it off ole Salsidio himself! They been hidin’ it out in the desert!”

  Jack wheezed a laugh and passed the bottle again to James. He turned to Vienna. “Darlin’, would you help a blind old man into the cabin? I need to sit a spell, have another drink or two. Then we’d best turn in. Got a lot of rugged country to cross next several days.”

  Vienna walked forward and took Jack’s skinny arm and began leading him toward the cabin. Both Chulo and Vincente rose from where they’d been crouching amongst the dead men and ogled Vienna openly, their animal eyes dark and wanton, Chulo’s nostrils working. James noticed that Chulo had a long, thin scar across his neck. As Jack had indicated, he’d had his throat cut.

  James didn’t like the looks the two Yaquis were giving Vienna. Apparently, Jack sensed the looks, as well, and berated both men in Spanish, gesturing wildly. Both Indians cowered like curs, flushing and looking sheepish, and quickly began dragging the dead bodies out away from the shack.

  James put his back to the wagon, staring after Apache Jack and Vienna. Through the open door and the window to the right of it, he could see them moving around in the cabin.

  Standing beside him, arms crossed on the side of the wagon, Crosseye said, “What do you think, Jimmy? Is Jack crazy?”

  “Oh, he’s crazy, all right.”

  “And I’m thinkin’ them three bells might be all in his head.”

  “If so, he’s got his brother, Jeff Davis, fooled, and we’ll be taking a dangerous trek into Apache country with a blind man for nothing. But remember, Pablo’s seen the bells, too.”

  “So Jack says.”

  “Right.” James nodded. “We don’t really know what he’s said to the sprout, do we?”

  “Nope.” Crosseye paused, staring back over his shoulder at Jack now sitting at a crude wooden table on the other side of the front window. Vienna had taken a pot off the fire and was dishing the dead men’s supper onto a plate before the crazy, old desert rat.

  “How we gonna play it, Jimmy?” Crosseye asked.

  “One hand at a time.” James walked over to where he’d left his chestnut. “And my first card’s gonna be tendin’ my horse and cleanin’ my guns.” He grabbed the chestnut’s reins and began leading it around the cabin toward the corral in the back.

  The entire party threw down on the cabin floor. Most were asleep against their saddles within half an hour of tending their horses and eating some of the dead men’s javelina cooked with beans.

  James didn’t sleep well, for coyotes came down out of the mountains to dine on the cadavers that Chulo and Vincente had dragged only as far as the edge of the yard. The carrion eaters loosed a haunting cacophony as they fought, snarling and growling, over flesh and bone. When the dissonant symphony finally died, James slept for a time before, deep in a chaotic dream in which he and Willie were running from snarling wolves toward where Crosseye waited for them at his cabin’s open door, a near sound woke him.

  He opened his eyes. The windows were streaked with the pale light of early dawn. Someone moved nearby, and he turned his head to see Vienna rising slowly from her bedroll and saddle in front of the now-dead fire in the fieldstone hearth. She was entirely dressed except for her boots, and now she picked up each one in turn and stepped quietly into it.

  Around the cabin, which was only two rooms separated by a half-ruined adobe wall flanking the hearth, the other men snored softly against their own saddles. Crosseye snored the loudest. The party hadn’t posted a watch be
cause they weren’t in Apache country yet, and few bandidos besides the Mandino gang haunted this neck of southern Sonora. All the men were sound asleep, Apache Jack curled on his side between James and Crosseye, lips moving as he muttered incoherently.

  Vienna walked quietly around the crude eating table, the only piece of furniture in the room besides two dilapidated wicker chairs. She opened the door slowly, looked around cautiously, then moved on outside. James felt a protective urge—there could be a wildcat or a wolf nearby, drawn by the carrion. But Vienna had a pistol with which she could hold off most beasts until James got to her.

  He closed his eyes, intending to get another forty winks before rising. But then another sound rose, and he looked toward where Chulo and Vincente were sleeping against the front wall, Chulo with his head in the corner between the front wall and the side wall, Vincente with his feet near the door. Chulo was rising. James recognized his bearlike bulk as the big Yaqui tossed his covers aside and, grunting and breathing raspily, gained his feet and stepped into his boots. When he raked his eyes furtively around the room, James closed his own eyes but continued to watch through slitted lids.

  Chulo swept his long, tangled hair back behind his shoulders, donned his black sombrero, and headed for the door. He glanced around the room once more stealthily, watching to see if James or any of the others was stirring, then opened the door, ducked his head and heavy shoulders, and went out, leaving the door partway open behind him.

  James tossed his own blankets aside, stepped into his boots, wrapped his gun belt and holsters around his waist, and followed Chulo out into the yard. He stopped as he pulled the door closed and looked around.

  The wagon sat where they’d left it in front of the cabin. Beyond, James could see a couple of scurrying shadows. Straggling coyotes, probably pups that had been forbidden the main meal. The rancid odor touched the cool, dawn breeze.

  There was no sign of Vienna or Chulo anywhere in the front yard, so James walked around the corner of the cabin and stared toward the rear. Chulo was a dozen yards out from the back of the cabin and moving toward the brush corral beyond it, where the horses stood still as dark statues. Chulo walked in his heavy, ambling fashion, neither slowly nor quickly but with a slightly halting, secretive gait.

  James pulled one of his Griswolds from its holster, checked the loads, then, holding the pistol straight down in his right hand, strode down the side of the cabin and out behind it, gradually closing the distance between him and the big Yaqui. James’s low-heeled boots made no sound.

  He walked around behind the corral and a small, crumbling stone stable and stopped. There was a line of willows and ironwood shrubs following the bank of an arroyo. Chulo stood with his back to James, using one hand to hold aside a branch so he could stare into the arroyo beyond him.

  James walked up behind the big man, who was a good four inches taller than James’s six-one, and pressed his Griswold’s barrel snug against the Yaqui’s head, just behind his right ear. He clicked the hammer back.

  Chulo tensed slightly, froze.

  He turned his head slowly toward James, who kept his pistol pressed hard against Chulo’s head. Those dark eyes regarded James with dull menace. James smiled with only his mouth. His own eyes remained hard, threatening, as they held the flat gaze of the big, lusty voyeur.

  Chulo let the branch fall back into place in front of him. James depressed his Griswold’s hammer, pulled the gun slightly back from the Yaqui’s head. Chulo gave a low snort and then, continuing to hold James’s gaze, he brushed past him and turned his head forward and began walking leisurely back toward the cabin.

  James followed him from a distance, leaving Vienna to tend her business in peace. Crosseye stood bleary-eyed, holding his Lefaucheux, off the rear corner of the cabin, regarding Chulo suspiciously. As the big man moved on past him, Crosseye looked at James.

  “What’s goin’ on, Jimmy?”

  James stopped near Crosseye and watched Chulo disappear around the front corner of the cabin. “Just had a little heart-to-heart with Chulo.” James holstered his .36. “Should be all right now, but I’m startin’ to see it Jack’s way.”

  “See what Jack’s way?”

  “Before this is over, hoss, we’re gonna have to kill ole Chulo. Till then, let’s watch each other’s backs extra close.”

  Chapter 26

  The party ate a quick breakfast of grub left over from the night before and moved out before the sun had yet fully risen. As they had done the night before, Chulo drove the wagon while Jack rode beside him on the wooden seat, the red bandanna over his head and the white bandage around his eyes brightening as the light grew. He took frequent sips from a bottle to assuage the pain of the Apache torture that had taken his sight, and rolled one quirley after another.

  They came to a village just before noon and took on trail supplies, including feed for the horses. They loaded the supplies in the back of the wagon with the Gatling gun while Apache Jack and Vienna paid out gold coins to the mercantiler’s short, chubby wife who wore a red rebozo, with a small child sleeping soundly in a burlap sling hanging down her chest. They filled their canteens and extra water jugs at a community well and rode off into a vast, rugged, rocky desert in which very little but small cactus plants grew.

  “We’ll be in Apache country soon,” Jack said, “so keep your eyes skinned, though it won’t do much good. ’Paches hit before you even know they’re near.” He muttered a curse, grinding his teeth, and took another pull from his bottle.

  As the wagon rattled along the old cart trail they were following across the vast flat ringed with rocky mountains foreshortening against all horizons, James rode up alongside Jack. He’d bought a handful of cigars from the mercantiler’s wife, and he bit the end off one now and touched flame to it. “Tell me about the curse on them bells, Jack. Where’d they come from and why are they said to be the Bells of the Devil?”

  Jack pulled on his bottle and stared straight ahead, dust from the mules’ hooves wafting around him. “Franciscan priests established a church around here over three hundred years ago and brought religion to the Apaches. They were way out here”—he swept his bottle around to indicate the lunarlike landscape around them, shadows slanting around every rock and cactus—“on this canker on the devil’s ass. Backside of nowhere. A small party of ’em alone. Used the Injuns as slaves in their gold mine. All the gold was used to decorate the church they built with slave labor, dedicated to the glory of God!”

  Jack snorted, pulled on the bottle. “Well, there was a drought and them priests’ crops wouldn’t grow, and a war broke out amongst the tribes. Anyways, it’s said these priests went crazy from all the strife and bloodshed, not to mention loneliness and lack of food aside from rattlesnake, and adequate water, and they turned to the devil. Yessir, they started worshipping ole Scratch.” Jack chuckled, shook his head. “They turned their church over to El Diablo, and they turned their parishioners to him, as well, and they started takin’ Apache girls as wives.”

  Jack turned to James and grinned knowingly. “More than just one, ya understand. Ha!” He shook his head and turned forward once more. “And the drought ended, as did the war between the tribes, and all was just nice as fiddle music for many years in that isolated corner of the desert.

  “Then there was an earthquake that wiped out the whole town in which the padres had built their church, and the padres and many of their Injun worshippers were killed, the church ruined. All but the bells. They tumbled out of the belfry intact. The Injuns saw this as punishment from the God the priests had first turned them to; they figured the bells were left as a reminder of what would happen if they ever turned to the God of Darkness again. So an Apache leader got a shaman to put a hex on them bells, and they took them up into their own sacred mountains and hid them away in a canyon, where they couldn’t do no more harm. At least, not as long as no one bothered ’em…tried to use the gold in ’em for gain. They were the devil’s bells, you see. And anyone who laid eyes
on ’em would be met with the worst misfortune imaginable, to die a very painful death indeed.”

  “Right,” James said, “and that was only the beginning of their misery.”

  “There you have it.”

  “You believe any of that stuff, Jack?” This from Vienna riding behind James.

  “Why?” Jack said. “Because of my eyes?” He faced ahead, mashing his lips together pensively, his frail body jouncing with the bouncing of the wagon. “Nah. I got careless. Had all that gold on my mind, and I couldn’t leave it alone, and I wasn’t watchin’ close enough for ’paches.” He sighed. “That’s all,” he added uncertainly, lifting the bottle high once again.

  He smacked his lips and turned to James. “Say, there, young man from Tennessee, been meanin’ to ask you…”

  James turned the chestnut around a nasty-looking nest of cholla cactus, as he’d learned one brush against those poisonous spines could ruin a horse quicker than a rattlesnake bite. “What’s that?”

  “You’re a strappin’ young buck, with no injuries far as I can tell—so’s why aren’t you back East helpin’ our Confederate forces whip them evil hordes of Yankees?”

  James felt a tightening between his shoulders. He glanced at Crosseye riding on the other side of the wagon. Crosseye scowled, brushed his sleeve across his mouth, and looked ahead. James had to admit it was a good question. A reasonable question. The implication was obvious: was he a coward?

  He often wondered that himself, but before he could formulate a response, Vienna rode past him on his right and said, holding the reins of her trotting grullo up high against her chest, “If he hadn’t come West, he wouldn’t be here to help us get the bells to the Confederacy, would he, Jack?”

  As she continued on past the wagon and rode up to where young Pablo was leading the way, James glanced at Jack. The old desert rat was still looking at him, unsatisfied by the response but not pressing the matter. James felt the bunched muscles in his shoulders loosen slightly when Jack turned his head forward again and took another drink from his bottle.