The Bells of El Diablo

by Frank Leslie

  James turned and walked up a rocky slope to where Crosseye sat on a flat rock, well below the crest of the hill, running his bowie knife deftly over a hunk of ironwood he’d picked up along their trail. Somehow with the big knife he’d managed to carve the plumed head and tail of a desert quail, though he was now working on one of the feet, holding the piece up close to his face and wincing with the effort. Wood shavings curled down from the bird to his thigh before dropping onto the black rock beneath him.

  He held up the bird, grinning proudly. “Not bad for a cross-eyed duffer, eh?”

  “You never cease to amaze.”

  “When it’s done, I’m gonna give it to Vienna so when she gets back home she can set it on her mantel to remind her of her adventure in Old Mexico.”

  James sat down beside the oldster. “You best go back down to the wash, squeeze in another hour of sleep before we pull out. Good dark soon.”

  Crosseye said, “How come you don’t like to talk about her, Jimmy? She’s a good woman, and it’s clear by how she looks at you, you shine for her.”

  James glanced at him, squinting one eye. “You see anything wrong in it—her and me?”

  “What could be wrong in folks feelin’ good about each other? As long as it don’t hurt no one else.” The older man studied James for a time, his steady eye boring into James’s. “Hell, you can’t hurt Willie.”

  “I reckon I already did that.”

  “The war did that. You quit mopin’ about it. You got you a good woman, and you think to the future, not to the past, or you’ll be a miserable wretch for the rest of your days, and you’ll make her miserable, too. Vienna’s been through enough.”

  James ground a heel in the dirt. “She’ll probably head back home, like you said. That’s where she belongs.”

  “Then you belong there, too. Tell your old man to go diddle himself. He’s all swallowed up in the war, so he can’t see what’s clear—the South is a goner, and he has to make peace with his own, ’cause that’s all he has left, or shut the hell up about it.” Crosseye sheathed the knife and heaved himself to his feet. “There, I said it. I was out of line, talkin’ about old Alexander Dunn that way, but I figure I’m far enough away I can say what I want about anyone I feel like sayin’ it about!”

  He chuffed, amused at himself, and shouldered his rifle. “Christ, I’m gettin’ crazier than Apache Jack. Must be this high, thin air and all that sunshine.” He went hopping down the hill in his bandy-legged stride, and James was alone with the calls of the night birds and the scuffs of the nearby coyotes that, judging by the dwindling sounds they made, were now feasting more than fighting.

  James leaned his rifle against a rock beside him, dug out his makings sack, and rolled a cigarette. He’d just finished the cigarette when feet crunched gravel down in the darkness at the base of the slope. Vienna called his name quietly. Her voice warmed him, soothed him.

  “Here,” he said, not having to raise his voice, as the coyote had fallen silent now, and all was quiet.

  He heard her boots in the gravel. Then he heard her breathing, saw her shadow move against the fading sky. She sat down beside him, wrapped her hands around his left arm, and snuggled up tight against him, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder. “Done sleepin’?” James said.

  He felt her nod her head against him. “Can’t sleep well during the day. I’ll be glad to get the bells and hightail it out of here.”

  “Me, too.”

  “James? I’ve been meaning to tell you…” Continuing to squeeze his arm, she glanced up at him. “What Jack said about you…leaving the war.”

  “About being a coward?”

  “He didn’t mean it. He doesn’t know what happened.”

  “He doesn’t need to know.”

  “No. No one needs to know. But you need to know that I don’t fault you for what happened. And I’m sure Willie, wherever he is, doesn’t fault you for it, either.”

  James placed his hand against the back of her neck, feeling her silky hair beneath his palm, and pressed his lips against her forehead.

  “I just want you to know,” she said, looking up at him again, her eyes glinting in the starlight, “that I love you, James. And I’ve buried what happened.”

  James felt a frown cut into the skin above the bridge of his nose. It was a question that he’d wanted to ask many times but had never found the words. “Vienna, don’t you grieve him? I mean, you and Willie…”

  She gave a little groan, then stood and, crossing her arms on her chest, walked a little ways down the slope. She turned back to him, and her voice was low and firm. “James, frankly, I’m a little tired of hearing about Willie.”

  “Vienna, Christ…!”

  “Yes, I loved Willie,” she said, extending her arms impatiently. “And Willie loved me. When we were children.” She walked back up the slope toward James. “That was a long time ago. Longer ago than what can be counted on a calendar. So much has happened!”

  Vienna paused, looked straight out from the hill for a time at the thickening night cloaked in twinkling stars, and shook her head slowly. She knelt down beside James once more. “I’m a different person now. I’m a woman now. And I know that Willie would understand if we’d found each other…and fallen in love. He’d want us to be happy.”

  She placed a hand on James’s thigh. He could feel its warm caress through his trousers, the fingers digging in. She scuttled closer, wrapped her other arm around his neck, and closed her mouth over his.

  Her lips were soft and pliant. She groaned, kissing him harder. He wrapped his arms around her, felt her body writhing against his, her breasts swelling behind her shirt and poncho, stirring a fire in his loins.

  Pulling away from him, she drew a hard breath, running her tongue along her lower lip. She sandwiched his face in her hands and stared at him from beneath her brows—a bewitching, seductive look that almost made him quiver with a raw, physical need for her.

  She smiled, reading his thoughts. “After we get the bells, James, we’ll have all the time for that in the world.”

  She kissed him once more hungrily, pressing her breasts against his chest, then peeled out of his tightening grip with a husky chuckle, playfully fighting his arms away. He grabbed her again, kissed her quickly, and let her go.

  A second chance, he thought, his heart quickening at the prospect. She was his second chance….

  She gained her feet, her direct gaze holding his. A little breathless, she brushed off the seat of her black denims and threw her thick hair back behind her shoulders. She laughed, a gentle sound in the silence, and reached out to brush the tips of her fingers across the buckle of his cartridge belt.

  “All the time in the world, my love….”

  She turned and walked back down the hill, her slender figure and the red-and-white-striped serape slowly consumed by the darkness. He continued to hear her boots crunch gravel for a time, and then the sounds faded and she was gone.

  But he could still feel the lightning fire of his passion and his desire for her jetting in every nerve.

  An honest-to-God second chance….

  Chapter 28

  In the silvery darkness, Pablo checked his mule down to a halt. He turned and threw a waylaying arm out at Chulo driving the wagon behind him.

  The boy slipped easily down from the beast’s back, dropped the reins, and scampered up a slope on the right side of the draw they’d been following. James reined the chestnut to a stop to the right of Apache Jack, who sat in the wagon, silent in the quiet night, turning his head this way and that, listening.

  The boy’s soft, running footfalls had dwindled to silence but quickly resumed, growing louder. James could hear the boy breathing hard with excitement as he appeared once more at the lip of the shallow bank. Pablo rattled off some whispered, ebullient Spanish and grinned.

  Jack punched his open palm. “I’ll be damned!” He said something else that to James, beginning to pick up some Spanish, sounded like, “You found it, boy!
”

  As the shaver leaped onto the mule’s back, James regarded the sandstone wall looming over them and over the wash. It was a precipitous ridge, jutting straight up to the star-washed sky, its crest a good two thousand feet from the ground. The wall had looked smooth from a distance, but now James could see some flues and fingers and pinnacles of rock jutting separately from the main mass, and gravelly ledges from which spindly brush and shrubs grew.

  But he could not imagine that there was any way into the mountain from here.

  A few minutes later, following the boy and the wagon, he saw that he’d been wrong. As the party traveled along the side of the cliff, they turned into a right branch of the wash. The wall peeled back to James’s right, like a massive door opening, and beyond—into the gaping hole—the wash continued, pale with flood-washed and polished gravel.

  The canyon at its mouth was wide enough for two wagons to enter it abreast, but it narrowed considerably a hundred feet in, and just when James thought they were going to have to stop and leave the wagon behind, the walls fell back once more. The wagon passed freely, Chulo holding the mules to a slow pace, for the shod wheels and the wagon’s rough planks lifted a nasty clatter that could be heard by any near Apaches.

  The floor of the wash climbed gradually, and the mules as well as the horses started to strain, but then Pablo stopped his mule at another black gap in the wall on his left. The gap was the mouth of a narrow, offshooting canyon. As Chulo stopped the wagon, Pablo tied the mule to a shrub standing to the right of the gap and whispered to Apache Jack, who nodded and returned several phrases in Spanish, his spindly shoulders fairly shuddering with excitement.

  James looked around. The canyon was dark, but a moon was rising. It wasn’t yet above the ridge, but enough light angled into the chasm that he could make out the rocks and shrubs and the crenellated walls of the cliffs on either side of him.

  High above, an owl hooted. Aside from a rodent scratching in the brush, and the stomping and blowing of the tired horses and the squawking of tack, that was the only sound.

  “Up that little canyon there?” Crosseye shouldered his rifle and looked at Jack dubiously. “How far?”

  “Hell, we’re so close I can smell that gold from here!” Jack covered his mouth as he laughed, and, looping the handles of two lanterns over his right arm, he felt his way around the mules and moved carefully, one step at a time, toward the mouth of the cleft.

  “Pretty dark,” James said. “Maybe we should wait till morning.”

  “Jack said we shouldn’t be out here during the day.” Vienna took one of Jack’s lanterns. “Besides, we have these.” She stood beside James, her shoulders rising and falling as she breathed, obviously excited, staring into the dark cleft. Crosseye had presented her with the quail he’d carved, and it hung down her red-and-white-striped serape by a rawhide thong.

  “That’s right. You’re a good girl. You remember what Jack says. Wish at least one of my wives would have been like you—then, maybe I’d have kept her.” Jack spat and reached out to grab Pablo’s arm, the handle of his lantern squawking from where it dangled from his wrist. “We’re gonna have to walk from here. Lots of rocks, so be careful. Won’t light the lamps yet—don’t want any Apaches seein’ the light.”

  “You’d best wait with the wagons, Jack,” Crosseye said.

  “No, sir. I’m gonna go in and help fetch them three purty ladies out of there. They’re heavy. Two of you boys can carry one, but without block and tackle, it’s prob’ly gonna take every one of us to hoist ’em over rocks an’ such.” Jack spoke to Vincente and Chulo in Spanish, and they nodded, Chulo running his sleeve across his mouth hungrily.

  James felt the pull of the gold himself. He still wasn’t convinced it was gold they’d be hauling out of the cavern, but he’d heard enough about it from Apache Jack for the fever to be catching. Jack didn’t know how much they were worth, but he’d said each bell probably weighed a hundred pounds. That was a hell of a lot of gold. Even if none of it would be his, he wanted to see it, touch it.

  Chulo and Vincente hurried into the cavern behind Pablo, rocks grinding beneath their boots. Jack took James’s arm, tugged on his sleeve. “Remember what I said about Chulo? As soon as we get the gold out here to the wagon, you’re gonna have to shoot him.”

  Vienna started into the cleft behind Chulo and Vincente, and stopped. Running her fingers pensively over the quail, she waited until the two Yaqui were out of hearing, then whispered back over her shoulder, “What if he doesn’t try anything, Jack?”

  “He will. Somewhere along the trail, he will. Him or Vincente or both.” Jack slapped James’s back and jerked on Vienna’s wrist. “Come on—what you waitin’ for, girl? Have bells cast of solid gold started growin’ from the dogwoods in Tennessee?”

  As Vienna led Jack into the gap behind Pablo and the two Yaquis, James brought up the rear, sharing a dark glance with Crosseye. He wasn’t about to execute Chulo just in case he might try to double-cross him and the others. But he saw no point in Jack knowing that just yet. First, they’d get the gold out, and then he and Crosseye would keep a close eye on the two Yaquis.

  The corridor into the cliff wall was narrow and littered with rocks of all shapes and sizes. At one point they had to climb over stone slabs that had torn away from the walls, blocking the trail. James and Crosseye had to take their time, helping the frail Apache Jack. Vienna scrambled over the rocks like the nimble little forest sprite she’d once been back home, when she and James and Willie had explored caves together in the hills around Seven Oaks.

  Pablo led the way up a short thumb of rock on the cleft’s right side and into a ragged-edged cave opening. The floor was uneven. From somewhere inside came the faint tinkling of dripping water and the creepy sound of unseen, fluttering wings. James recognized the reek of bat guano. The ceiling was just low enough that the men had to crouch, holding their hats.

  Jack muttered something to Vienna, and they lifted the lantern cowls and lit the wicks, adjusting the flames until the glow of the lanterns slid the shadows back against the cracked and chipped stone walls.

  “That’s better,” Vienna said, lifting her lantern high.

  “For you, maybe,” Jack quipped dryly, giving his own lantern to Pablo, who led him forward. “Come on, honey,” Jack wheezed lustily at Vienna. “Last one to the treasure’s a rotten egg!”

  James counted his steps as they moved behind Pablo into the cave, and they stopped when he’d reached twenty-three. Against the back of the cave was a wide stone shelf, and on the shelf were three hunched shapes. Slowly, the lantern light washed like liquid brass over the shapes, revealing them.

  “Sí,” Pablo said through a long, gleeful sigh.

  James stared in awe at the three small suns shining in the wan light of the lanterns. He moved forward, all his compatriots forming a semicircle around the bells. Vienna, standing next to James, gave a slow, quiet gasp as she crouched before them, her low jaw dropping.

  Apache Jack cackled as though even he could see the three bells sitting on the stone slab before them—all roughly the same size, each about half as tall as a rain barrel, and nearly as broad. Obviously, Jack had been here recently to tend to his three precious ladies. He’d scraped off the grime and bird and bat shit of the past three centuries, and the foul and dirty rags lay around the bells like the soiled robes of saints.

  The bells were solid gold. Loops had been cast in their tops through which a wooden beam had likely held them secure in the belfry of a long-vanished church. On the front of each a praying saint had been etched as well as the year in which each had been fashioned from the gold the Franciscans had mined with the help of their Apache slaves: 1567.

  James stared at the gold, hearing the quiet rush of the centuries emanating from the three bells before him.

  “The Bells of the Devil,” Crosseye said, breaking James’s reverie. The old frontiersman’s voice was pitched with portent.

  James felt a twinge of fear stri
ke him from out of nowhere. Annoyance pushed it aside. He’d come too far to be spooked by some old Indian legend.

  “Don’t think we need to worry about that, pard,” he said.

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I think we need to worry about getting them out of here and finding cover before daylight,” Vienna put in. “We don’t want to get trapped in here.”

  “Come on, you young bucks,” said Apache Jack. “I didn’t bring you along so’s you could stand here feasting your eyes and givin’ each other the fantods. Grab a hold, and let’s start haulin’ ’em back to the wagon. We’ll get two on the first trip, make a second trip for the third.”

  James crouched over the bell on the far right, tipped it back, and got the fingers of one hand under the bottom. He tipped it back the other way and got the fingers of his other hand under the bottom, as well. He lifted, testing, and discovered that he could lift it with effort, but with a knot of pain growing in his lower back. Two would be able to lift it and carry it more easily, albeit awkwardly, in the close, shadowy confines.

  While Chulo and Vincente got a hold of the bell on the far left, Crosseye got his own hands under James’s bell, and, grunting, the two Tennesseans began shuffling back toward the cave entrance. Vienna guided them, lighting the way with her lantern, while Pablo held his own lamp for Chulo and Vincente. James and Crosseye had a rough time carrying the bell down from the cave to the narrow floor of the corridor, each man falling to his knees at least once and nearly dropping the bell at least twice.

  They grunted and cursed, groaning and sweating, Apache Jack cajoling and offering advice. James felt as though his spine would rip out from his lower back before they finally managed to set the bell on the chasm’s floor, and he stepped back, hands on his hips, breathing hard. Crosseye dropped to one knee, doffing his hat and running a hand through his curly, thin, sweat-damp hair. Veins bulged in his freckled forehead flushed from exertion.