The Graves at Seven Devils (17 page)

The girl said nothing as she stared, wrinkling her forehead, at the big man aiming the rifle from the corral.

“Come on in,” Squires said, shoving the girl off his knee and rising to his lean six feet two and adjusting the black hat on his head. He wasn't wearing his two matched Remingtons. In fact, he wore only his underwear shirt, unbuttoned halfway down his hairy chest, under a shabby suit coat. The tweed trousers were shoved down into the tops of his beaded moccasin boots.

That was just like Jay, Cora thought. He trusted his charm even more than his gun savvy. And, on that off chance his winning smile and sparkling eyes didn't work, he had the big bear with the Winchester on the other side of the yard.

Cora looked around at her group, all of whom regarded her curiously. She knew Squires better than they did. Could they trust him?

“I reckon we
did
stop for a drink,” Cora said, swinging down from her saddle. “Might as well listen to the cheatin' son of a bitch flap his gums awhile, if it'll make him feel better.”

The others swung out of their saddles, tack squawking, the horses blowing and shaking their dusty manes. Cora looped her reins over the hitchrack and glanced toward the porch.

Squires had already disappeared inside, his self-satisfied chuckles floating softly out the darkened, fly-woven doorway behind him. Cora's gut tightened with anger while her loins puttied with the memory of the better times she'd shared with Jay Squires—a Baptist minister's son from Missouri and one of the best train robbers and safecrackers in all the West.

And the best lover Cora had ever shared the sheets with.

Her gaze caught on the Apache girl standing stiffly and staring toward the corral. The girl covered her breasts with an arm and, grunting fearfully, wheeled and bolted through the saloon's open doors, her bare feet slapping the flagstone tiles.

Cora turned to see Chulo Alameda sauntering toward the house, his rifle on his shoulder now, a pistol held low by his side. The big, bearded face beneath the straw sombrero was bearlike and menacing in its lack of expression.

Cora curled her lip at the man, then turned and headed into the saloon, flanked by the Flute brothers and Sykes and Heinz. The latter two hung back near the door to cover the group's flank; there might be more gunmen than Chulo Alameda outside, and they could be planning an ambush.

Cora strode across the flagstone of the dim room toward Squires. The handsome outlaw had flopped down behind a long, rectangular table with two other Americans—one a middle-aged gent and a young stringbean nearly as tall and thin as the Flute boys though not nearly as well attired. Both the stringbean and the middle-aged gent wore the nondescript clothes—brush-torn and sweat-stained—of the nomadic yanqui outlaw.

Cora chuckled inwardly. Squires had fallen on hard times.

“Come on in and meet my friends,” Squires said, canting his head toward the two men on his left. They sat behind plates littered with the remains of a recent meal and two half-empty beer mugs.

Squires popped the cork on a bottle and yelled at the bartender, Rudolpho Salinas, standing behind the plank-board bar along the room's right wall, to bring glasses for Squires's friends. As the gray-haired Mexican did as he'd been told, sweating nervously and raking his eyes across the newcomers, Cora heard spurs ching on the stone flags behind her. She glanced over her shoulder.

Chulo Alameda ducked through the door as he entered the saloon, eyeing Sykes and Heinz, who stood now with their backs to the bar, rifles ready. They both looked the bearish Mexican up and down, eyes flickering apprehensively.

Alameda had three big knives strapped to his bulky frame and two long-barreled Colt revolvers. His Winchester appeared no larger than a bung starter in his massive arms and hands, and his bearded face, framed by two thin braids hanging down from under his frayed sombrero, was a veritable cutting board of savage, knotted knife scars.

Even more formidable than his looks was his stench.

“Christ!” Cora exclaimed, wincing as the rotten odor washed over her. “You ever wipe your
ass
?”

Either the big Mexican understood no English or he had an uncommonly thick skin, for he merely gave an animal grunt, sauntered over to the bar, and stood facing the room while regarding Sykes and Heinz with bleak menace.

As the bartender heeled it back to safety behind the bar, Squires poured drinks from his whiskey bottle and clucked with admonishment. “Cora, my dear, it's a real tragedy how little your mother taught you about proper manners.”

“Never knew my mother,” Cora said. “And who are you to teach
anyone
about manners, you murdering swine.” As Squires squeezed the cork back into the bottle and lounged in his chair, chuckling without mirth, Cora said as she turned a chair backward and straddled it, “Now, why don't you tell me about this so-called
proposition
? Not that I care, or I'm even interested in any damn thing you have to say except, possibly, ‘good-bye,' but I just know you won't let me sit and drink in silence until you've flapped your jaws awhile.”

Squires regarded the girl sitting across from him with a mock swoon. “God, how I've missed you!”

“How could you not, swine?”

“Could you two save the lovey-dovey stuff for later?” said Custer Flute. He and his brothers had pulled chairs out from another table, far enough away to see beneath Squires's table, with their drinks in their non-gun hands.

“Yeah,” agreed Billy Earl, flanking Cora and throwing back his entire shot. “We don't intend to be here more than a
night
, ye understand.”

“Here.” Squires nudged the bottle toward Cora. “Fill Billy Earl's glass before it starts collecting fly shit.”

As Cora refilled Billy Earl's glass, Squires said, “As you can see, there's only four of us. He glanced at the older gent on his far right and the stringbean beside him, each man strategically spaced about three feet apart in case of a dustup. “Pee-Wee Grayson here and Sonny Dark.” He glanced at Chulo Alameda sharing dark stares at the bar with Heinz and Sykes. “You've met Chulo.
I
met him a couple of weeks ago, just after he delivered a passel of Chinee girls to the miners down in Palo Pinto.”

“Shit,” Billy Earl growled, setting his opera hat onto an empty chair and glancing over his shoulder at the big bear at the bar. “Slave tradin', huh?”

“Good money in the slave trade.” Squires grinned proudly at the big Mexican. “Chulo broke out of Yuma pen a year ago, killed two guards and four of the Mojave Indians sent to track him.”

“
Ate
the last one,” chuckled the stringbean, Sonny Dark. “Cut him up and rock-fried him on the desert floor.”

“Mmm-hmmmm!”
said the older gent, Pee-Wee. “That's good stuff, them Mojaves!”

Both Sykes and Heinz turned toward the group at the tables. Then, as though their heads were both tied to the same string, they turned back slowly, brows mantling their eyes grimly, to Chulo Alameda regarding them cow-like as he leaned on an elbow and rested his rifle on his shoulder.

“Chulo is worth a good handful of average shooters, but even so,” Squires continued, leaning back in his chair with a shot glass in his hand, “we need more men . . . and, uh,
women
. . . for a job we have planned. A job too big for only the four of us.”

Cora slanted an eye at her old beau. “You're askin' us to throw in on a job with you?”

Squires squinted back at her. “When I came
down
here, I didn't know
you
were here. I came
down
here, to the Seven Devils, for a job, hopin' to pick up some help from one of the gangs in these parts . . . if there was any I could trust. I learned last week from Rippin' Robbie Price that the Three of a Kind Gang was hidin' out in these rocks. So”—Squires raised his hands—“I've been lookin' around, found out from Salinas you and your boys stopped in from time to time.” He smiled. “Between jobs, I reckon.”

Cora glanced at Rafe, Billy Earl, and Custer Flute. “Yeah, well, there wasn't no money in the last job, but it was right satisfyin' just the same.” She removed her straw hat decorated with dry desert wildflowers, and pinched up the crown. “What kind of a job you got? Mexico, I reckon. Guns, money, or gold, and how much? Or you just wanna kill somebody?”

“It's gold.” Squires raked his gaze around her men before letting it settle back on Cora. “You in? Perhaps you'd like to talk about it?”

“How much gold?” asked Rafe Flute, flicking weed seeds from an arm of his green-checked suit coat.

“If my information is right, we should each walk away with between five and ten thousand.
Each
of us. That's a lot of walkin'
anywhere
we wanna walk for as
long
as we wanna walk.”

Custer and Rafe Flute whistled at the same time. “You must be figurin' on one o' them Mex immigrant trains,” said Billy Earl, his eyes lighting up and his long, thin lips shaping a smile inside his scraggly black beard. His glasses hung low on his nose.

“Or army payroll coins,” Heinz grunted from the bar, for the moment taking his eyes off Chulo Alameda.

Squires shook his head. “Nope. One of the hacendados down in Sonora found gold on his hacienda. An old Franciscan digging, I hear. I got a man down there workin' for the don, and he sent word that the don will be sending a shipment of gold, almost a hundred thousand dollars' worth, to a Tucson bank.”

“When and where?” asked Custer Flute.

Squires smiled, slid his eyes to Cora and the other two Flute brothers and to the men at the bar, then back to Custer. “That'll have to wait until we've gotten to know each other better.” The handsome outlaw stretched his lips, showing more teeth. “Suffice it to say, we'll be hitting it soon not far from here.”

Cora sat back in her chair and crossed her arms on her chest. Her stony expression belied that her heart had swelled at the prospect of riding the outlaw trail with the once repulsive and irresistible rake who still set her blood to boiling and her loins to quivering . . . and that she hated herself for it. “How many men will be guarding the shipment? How much firepower?”

“At least twenty well-armed men. My man working for the don says the old boy has a couple of Gatling guns. I doubt he'll leave them at home. But if we surprise them at the right time and place along the trail, we should be able to pull it off.”

Rafe Flute bounced his sombrero on his knee. “
Two
Gatlin' guns.
Twenty
guards?”

Cora glanced at him. “You don't wanna do it, Rafe?”

Rafe flushed slightly, hiked a shoulder, and gave his hat a hard bounce. “I didn't say that.” He glanced at his brothers. “If you boys are in, I reckon . . .”

Cora feigned an indifferent yawn and looked around at the others. “Well, I could stand a few thousand dollars in my pocket—I know that. I'm tired of workin' like a dog and runnin' around this desert like a fuckin' pack rat.” She turned around to scowl at Jayco Squires. “My problem is you. If you think you can keep your hands off me and give me about twenty feet elbow room at all times, I'll give it some serious consideration.”

Squires dropped his eyes to her blouse and the pale cleavage that the undone buttons revealed. “I'm guessin' you'll be fightin' your way under my blankets in two nights.”

The others laughed.

Cora's face warmed. “I wouldn't place any bets. . . .”

She let her voice trail off as high-pitched grunts and groans rose from near the bar. It was the Apache girl. She'd donned a baggy sackcloth shirt, which hung off one slender, brown shoulder, and she was carrying a wicker basket filled with bedding. She was sidestepping toward the door around Chulo Alameda. The big man stepped back and forth in front of her, harassing her, guttural chuckles rumbling up from his chest.

Cora leaped up out of her chair, grabbed one of her pistols, and swung toward the door and fired.

The shot crashed like thunder. Chulo Alameda's hat flew off his head and bounced off the back wall to reveal his sweat-matted, louse-peppered hair.

His eyes snapped wide with shock and fury. As the Apache girl screamed and ran outside with her basket, Alameda jutted his lower jaw and stepped toward Cora while raising his rifle.

Holding her smoking revolver straight out from her shoulder, Cora thumbed back the hammer with a ratcheting click and aimed down the barrel at the center of the big Mexican's broad forehead. “You leave that girl alone, hear? Or you and me gonna dance, you shit-smelly son of a bitch!”

Alameda stopped, his rifle halfway to his chest. He blinked. His dark features turned darker. The rest of the room had fallen silent, all the men with their hands on their guns, each faction glaring at the other, wondering which way the wind was going to blow.

Alameda glanced at Squires, then flicked his enraged stare to Cora and slowly lowered his rifle.

Cora heard Squires chuckle as relieved sighs rose from his group as well as from her own. A firefight in close quarters was never a pleasant experience.

“Girl,” Squires said, “why does everything have to be so damn complicated with you?”

“Jay, you keep this big tub of rancid hog guts away from me, understand? Or I'm gonna turn his ugly hide into buzzard feed.”

She holstered her revolver and hooked her thumbs in her cartridge belts. “Now, if you boys'll excuse me, I'll be seein' if that poor girl is all right.” Holding the big man's stare, she backed across the room and out the door.

Behind her, Squires threw back another whiskey shot and slammed the glass on the table. Chuckling, he shook his head and stared at the door.