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.
The question remained, however. And he doubted he’d ever have an answer for it—at least, not one that would satisfy his own conscience. Truth was there was still a war going on; the enemy was invading his homeland. And he’d tucked his tail between his legs and run away from it.
Was killing his own brother a good enough reason?
He didn’t have to think about it long. Less than a minute later, Crosseye, riding on the other side of Chulo, said, “Jimmy.”
James looked at him. Crosseye lifted his chin to indicate their southern flank. James cast his gaze in the direction his old partner had indicated. Slightly behind them a good half mile away, dust rose in a tan smear. James could make out a couple of horses and riders, but from this distance he couldn’t see anything to distinguish them.
Then, all at once, as though they were merely a heat mirage, they disappeared.
“What is it?” Jack said, turning his head this way and that, listening for trouble.
James turned to him. “Riders to the south and slightly behind. About half a mile away.”
“Can you tell if they’re Apaches?”
“Can’t tell.”
“See any smoke signals?”
James scanned the broad bowl they were traversing, seeing nothing but the bald, sawtooth mountains in all directions. The only movement was a raptor of some kind hovering high above, wings flashing in the brassy sunlight. “Nothing. What do you think, Jack? Should me and Crosseye ride out for a look?”
“Not yet. If they’re ’paches, they might be tryin’ to lure us into a trap. Best if we go on pushin’, keep our eyes skinned and make sure all our guns are loaded.” Jack snorted. “Sure am glad we got that Gatling gun. Should be all right,” he said but then repeated the sentence in a slightly more uncertain tone: “Should be all right….”
Jack nudged Chulo with his elbow, said something in Spanish. The big Yaqui nodded, glanced to the south, then shook the reins over the mules’ backs, stepping up the speed. A low jog of hills humped a couple of miles ahead, stretching for what appeared to be a mile or so across their trail. Apparently, Jack wanted to reach those as quickly as possible.
“This ain’t where the band of Lipans that call this neck of Sonora home usually stomps,” the old desert rat muttered, perplexed. “Their territory’s another day, day and a half ahead…miserable sons o’ bitches.” He tipped his bottle back and cackled to himself and James wondered again if they were out here for no good reason.
When they reached the hills half an hour later, Chulo pulled the wagon up and over the crest. As he continued hazing the mules down the other side, James told Apache Jack that he and Crosseye would scout their back trail in hopes of getting an idea of who was behind them. Jack merely cursed darkly and popped the cork on a fresh bottle.
Vienna, riding out ahead of the wagon with Pablo, hipped around in her saddle to give James a concerned look beneath the brim of her straw sombrero. He waved, trying to put her at ease, and then he and Crosseye galloped at an angle down the slope away from the wagon. When they reached the bottom of the line of hills, they kept moving south, riding in and out of arroyos and swerving around boulders of all sizes and thickets of wiry brush and cacti.
James turned to angle a glance behind them. The wagon was a thumb-sized blotch of green now about a quarter mile away, continuing east, with Vienna and Pablo riding point, Vincente following several yards behind on his rugged mule.
“This oughta be far enough south,” James told Crosseye, and checked down the chestnut.
He stepped out of his saddle, rummaged around in his saddlebags for his field glasses, and slid his Henry repeater from its saddle boot. Crosseye grabbed his Spencer, and they scrambled up the bank, Crosseye moving every bit as quickly and surefootedly as James, though the older man’s breathing was raspy, and he grunted and muttered curses at his age.
“Don’t ever get old, Jimmy,” he said as they dropped to the side of the hill about four feet from the top.
Then they continued to crab slowly up the side of the slope, doffing their hats.
James said, “What’s the alternative, hoss?”
“Good point.”
James edged a cautious glance over the top of the sandy hill, his keen eyes taking in the terrain they’d just crossed. An arroyo angled across the rocky, sandy ground. A couple of coyotes were sauntering along its bottom, close enough that James could see the sunlight in their dun-and-gray coats, tongues hanging over their lower jaws. They jerked their heads around, investigating every nook and cranny of the wash for prey. The one following the first cast frequent glances behind it, and James stretched his own glance back in the direction the brush wolf was peering.
James picked movement out of the desert—a ragged line of riders moving toward him. Dust rose in the still, warm air. Occasionally, the clang of a shod hoof off rocks reached James’s ears, and the occasional murmur of male conversation.
James lifted the field glasses to his eyes, adjusted the focus until the party of horseback riders swam as clearly into his view as possible from their distance of at least five hundred yards away. They formed a ragged line of roughly twelve men and horses, with a couple of packhorses being trailed by the last two men in the group.
James couldn’t make out much about their clothing except that it was the attire of white men, not Indians.
James gave the glasses to Crosseye, who adjusted the focus and stared out across the desert for a time, showing his teeth and slowly sliding the glasses from right to left as he tracked the riders.
“Well, at least we shouldn’t be in danger of losin’ our topknot,” he said finally, handing the glasses back to James.
“Apache don’t take scalps, anyway,” James said, recalling a recent Apache tutorial bestowed upon him by Apache Jack when they’d stopped to water their horses and mules at a rare desert rock tank. “That’s a Plains Indian tradition. Whenever the Apaches do it, it’s only because it’s been done to them.”
Crosseye was squinting out toward where the riders disappeared by ones and twos behind a broad, towering stone escarpment. “You think they’re followin’ us?”
“Well, we’re headin’ in the same direction.”
“Best assume so, then.”
“Banditos, maybe,” James said.
“Yeah, well, we got the Gatling gun. If they’re followin’ us, they’ve no doubt scouted us and know about the bullet belcher.”
“Maybe it’s the gun they’re after.”
Crosseye looked at James. “Or the girl. In case you hadn’t noticed, there ain’t many o’ them to be had out here on this backside of nowhere.”
James’s lips quirked in a jeering grin. “You’d know that better than anybody.”
“Yeah,” Crosseye said, nodding and adding darkly, “Me an’ Chulo.”
James gave a sour grunt. The mention of the big Yaqui reminded him that he’d left Vienna without protection should Chulo and Vincente decide to move on her. He crawled a few feet back down the hill, doffed his hat, stood, and jogged the rest of the way down to where his and Crosseye’s horses waited. Crosseye was behind him, groaning and cursing his age again.
They swung into their saddles and started back in the direction of the wagon.
They hadn’t gone ten yards before they heard the wicked belching of the Gatling gun. James cursed and ground his heels into the chestnut’s flanks, tearing off at a ground-eating gallop.