The Bells of El Diablo

by Frank Leslie

  No sign said as much, but it must have been a saloon. Maybe also a stage relay station, as there were a big barn and several corrals on the far side of the yard. James had been a little surprised by how many such establishments west of the Mississippi didn’t bother identifying themselves, as though their functions were obvious or widely enough known that painted signs would only be a waste of materials.

  The wagon stopped. James heard the wooden brake shoes slide over the left front wheel. The man with the eye patch heaved himself to his feet, the Henry in his left hand generally aimed at James. The man stepped over the tailgate and leaped to the ground with a grunt and a thud of his boots in the well-churned dust of the yard.

  When he lowered the tailgate, he said, “Climb on out of there, now. Don’t try nothin’ ill-behaved, all right, friend? Hate to kill a fellow Southern boy.” He gave a half smile as he backed away from the tailgate. He loudly worked the Henry’s cocking lever, ramming a live round in the chamber. “Forrest’s Rapscallion, least of all.”

  James stared at him, puzzled. So, despite the English accent, he was from the South. And he knew him.

  “Oh, I didn’t recognize you,” the man with the eye patch said. “But someone surely did. Someone, most like, who wore Yankee blue when you were all decked out in the Rebel gray, causin’ all heaps of trouble for them federal boys. Come on out of there, now. A man like you shouldn’t die out here, like this, no reason at all. What a pity that’d be.”

  James stared at him, apprehension raking cold fingers up and down his spine.

  “Ain’t gonna tell you again, though,” said the man with the eye patch, as the driver and the hawk-nosed man cocked and aimed their own carbines, both maws centered on James. “Let’s go in and see who knows you way out here in the West.”

  Chapter 7

  James rolled onto his belly, got his knees beneath him, and climbed painfully to his feet. He leaped off the end of the wagon and into the yard. The man with the eye patch tossed his head at the cabin. The smoke unfurling from the brick chimney smelled of juniper and piñon. Warm, welcoming smells on a chill Colorado eve.

  The cabin itself and the three men around James, holding guns on him, were less welcoming.

  James winced again as pain hammered his tender head, then mounted the porch steps. A black cat meowed shrilly as it leaped from atop a barrel left of the batwing doors, hit the floor with a soft thump, and dashed off along the base of the saloon and around the far corner.

  A black cat, to boot? Shit, James thought. Was this the end of the trail?

  He pushed through the batwings and stopped, both doors propped against him. His feet felt like lead, not from any injury but because something told him that once he crossed the threshold, he’d likely only cross it again carried feet first. A rifle butt rammed his back, sent him stumbling forward and into the saloon, his boots thudding loudly.

  In the periphery of his vision, he saw the hawk-nosed man moving to within a few feet of him, turning his rifle back around. Before he could get the barrel aimed directly at James again, James wheeled, lowered his head, bounded off his boot heels, and rammed his head and shoulders into the hawk-nosed man’s chest. The man tripped his Spencer repeater’s trigger, and the bullet sailed off across the room, evoking a shout from someone inside the main room.

  The hawk-nosed man hit the floor with a bang on his back, cursing. James had no idea what he was trying to do; it was his instinct to fight honed after three years of bloody war. But the man with the eye patch and the man who’d driven the wagon—a beefy bulldog with a scrunched-up face beneath a green canvas hat—stood before him, the driver extending a Sharps carbine straight out from his right hip. The man with the eye patch had his cocked Henry aimed directly at James’s right eye from two feet away. His own good eye smiled, the corner twitching faintly over the sleek rifle’s cocked hammer.

  “Now, what was the goddamn meaning of that?” asked a man somewhere behind James. He had a booming, slightly English-accented voice.

  Breathing hard, the old fighting fury seething in him despite his previous resolve to live and let live, James turned back around to face the inside of the room. Three more men stood before him, about twenty feet away. Between the two on the right, James could see a fourth man sitting at a broad, round table with a bottle and a shot glass. One of the three, the one on the far left, near a long bar running down along that side of the room, was holding a gloved hand over his right ear. Blood oozed between his fingers. He scowled, gritting his teeth.

  Apparently the spent bullet had found a target.

  Two of the three were holding pistols on James. The one holding his ear aimed a sawed-off shotgun at him, straight out from his left shoulder. A leather lanyard hung free beneath the nasty-looking two-bore, both the rabbit-ear hammers of which were drawn back to full-cock.

  “Melvin, put the blaster down,” said the man sitting at the table. He canted his head to see through the trio before him. “I didn’t have him brought out here so you could blow a wagon-sized hole in him.” He rolled his gaze to James. “I ask you, Lieutenant—what good did that do you? My men are well trained, and they shoot to kill. Your hands are tied behind your back. How far do you think you could have gotten?” He shook his head in bemused disgust. “Isn’t that just like the South, though? Determined to keep fighting against even the steepest odds.”

  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 ha
d 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.

  Chapter 8

  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.