The Guns of Santa Sangre (12 page)

The gunsmith has come to like the sad, strange old man and helps him load his weapons, for the drunkard’s hands shake. The shop owner feels a twinge of remorse watching through the window as the
borracho
struggles into the stirrups of his horse and rides off. He reckons the man that bought the silver rounds will surely be shot dead by a regular lead bullet before he ever gets a chance to pull his own trigger.

The
borracho
learned the purpose of silver bullets from his grandfather when he was just a boy. None of the people in the town believed The Men Who Walked Like Wolves existed. They thought his grandfather a drunken fool, but the aged farmer swore it had been written by the Old Ones that silver was the only way to kill them.

His grandfather had also taught Hector how to drink, letting the lazy boy take his first sips of whisky from his bottle when he was ten. One day, the young
borracho
had accompanied his father’s father on a ride in their cart from their village to a nearby town to fetch supplies. “Take this useless
nino
,” his father had said. “Hector is no good for work here.” That suited the boy fine because he hated hard labor and loved his crazy
abuelo.
Off they rode, leaving the village far behind. Passing the bottle back and forth in the shaky wagon, they rode through the desert in the hot sun and it was a good day. The trek should have taken just hours, but their horse broke a leg in a rut by late afternoon. The boy cried as his grandfather told him not to look and there was a single gunshot and the lamed
caballo
lay dead in the sand.
 

It was many miles to town and almost as far back to the village, so his grandfather said they would spend the night under the stars and start on foot in the morning.

It was a bad decision.

There was a full moon that night.

The dark desert was cold and they shared the blanket and the bottle that was running low.
Abuelo
, the boy had asked, are not werewolves about? His grandfather had smiled, told him not to worry for they were protected, and this was when he displayed the fistful of silver-headed cartridges he took from his pocket. Dumping the regular bullets from the cylinder of his
pistola
, he loaded the SAA revolver with the shiny ones that glinted bright in the moonlight. The young
borracho
saw his grandfather cock the pistol and set it by his side as he lay in the back of the cart to rest.

The grandfather was very drunk and slept like the dead.

The sound of the wolves did not wake him.

Nor did the old man awaken when the young
borracho,
drunk himself,
shook him while he snored on. The noise of the creatures somewhere out in the darkness terrified the youngster, who wet his pants and bawled, snot running down his face. The shapes moved in the canyons, huge and hairy, eyes red as coals, fangs like rows of barbed wire in their mouths.

Closing in.

Hector should have taken the gun.

For the rest of his days he blames himself for what happened to his grandfather. The gun was big and heavy but he had fired it before and could have managed it then. How many times had his
abuelo
explained about silver? Why had he not listened?

The hulking forms drew closer in the gloom, growling like rolling thunder and fear got the best of Hector. He was just a little boy.

He hid the only place he could.

Under the cart.

Hector was very small and the transom was low with just enough space for him to squeeze into and hide if he didn’t move a muscle or make a sound. So he lay there petrified and listened as the werewolves came. He heard everything. Their paws padding on the ground, then the wood creaking above his head as they stomped onto the carriage, splintering the boards, savage slavering snarls and chomping teeth tearing and rending flesh and the awful meaty wet
crack
and
snap
of his grandfather’s limbs being chewed off and devoured. At least the old man never screamed, for he never awoke.
 

The luck of the drunk.

No such luck for the
nino borracho
who had to listen to the werewolves a foot above him feast on his
abuelo
with lip-smacking relish. And the poor boy could not get away from those sounds under the wagon for he was too afraid to cover his ears, to move or even breathe.

Or cover his nose.

The smell of the werewolf would never be forgotten to him.

Don’t move or they will find you and eat you
, he warned himself in his mind.

Then, a half-hour later when the last bone was cracked and the last bit of marrow slurped, the creatures departed, their shapes dimly seen through the wooden spokes of the wagon wheels.
 

They had not eaten him.

Hector would later realize the smell of the whisky in his pores had disguised the scent of his blood so the werewolves did not smell him. From that day forward the
borracho
drank whisky every day of his life.

The sun came up before the little boy ventured forth from his hiding place. All that remained of his beloved grandfather was a few bloody rags and an empty liquor bottle. The child was alone in the vast empty desert and he wanted his mother.

It was on a Sunday when he started back. He knew this because the sound of the church bells led him back to his village.

Now those bells haunt his dreams.

Listen, there they are again.

A faint ringing.

Pulling up the reins of his horse, the old man stops to listen, an hour out of the town he had the silver ammunition made. Sitting in his saddle, surrounded by barren expanse of Durango desertscape on all sides, the
borracho
feels alone in the universe. He hears no bells now, just the whisper of wind in his ears, and knows the bells are a memory from his troubled sleep.

It was a dreadful dream the old man had been having the last month that made him embark on his fateful journey, set him on this path with his silver weapons. An unseen hand is at work and the
borracho
feels a part of some greater plan. For as long as he could remember, the old man
had drifted from town to town, flophouse to flophouse, in a drunken blur of alcoholic stupor. He’d begged for money, worked cheap jobs, robbed and stole, paid for his whisky when he could. The
borracho
had waited for death in a ditch somewhere, fully expected it. He wanted to die. That fate became a certainty when the crooked Federales had locked the old man up, before fate and fortune had put him back on the trail re-armed with the dead
policia
’s rifles and pistols and silver. Then came the dream. He has it over and over again, night after night. The vision is so clear and vivid it has to be more than a dream. It is his destiny; a destiny to be fulfilled. It is why, old as he is, broken down as he is, he rides on this horse today alone through the hot badlands, saddlebags laden to overflow with guns and bullets of silver, toward a destination unknown yet always certain.

The old man hears the bells in his sleep.

Sees the church.

And always, the dream is the same.

The church bells ring faint and distant at first, then louder and more insistent until they become deafening, a distorted clanging gong like a sledgehammer on an anvil. All is blackness until the silhouette of the mission steeple appears, impossibly large, against a huge full moon hovering like a yellow and putrid watchful eye. The white adobe walls of the mission are somehow familiar, the bell tower tall and stark against a moon that is always full. Then the church begins to bleed and once it starts bleeding it does not stop. Dark drops of shiny black seep and drip out of the weathered cracks in the façade of the church like tears, until soon the pouring droplets become a flowing gush of bright red blood, hemorrhaging out the pores of the mission, until the walls are white no more, but red wet as fresh paint.

Inside, the screams of infants.

The blood of the innocents.

They are in the church.

As are the werewolves.

The trickster moon lording over them.

The sangre flows like a river, an endless surge of blood bursting in a tidal wave through the church doors and splashing in a great overflowing sea of gore down the hill and this is when he always wakes.
 

To dream the same dream the next night, and the next, calling him to action.

The old man knows the church. Remembers it as a boy from a place he ages ago abandoned. Understands when he reaches his destination he will find the church and knows what he will find in it.

That is why he has the silver.

Now by instinct he spurs the horse and gallops due northwest, drawing ever closer. The
borracho
needs no map or compass to guide him, for the dream pulls him like a magnet.

Taking him home.

It was high noon, and the village was nowhere in sight.
 

The bullet hole in Tucker’s arm was beginning to hurt something fierce and gave him another reason to be impatient to reach their destination. He needed to wash and bind it before it got infected. They’d lost time engaging with the Federales and dallying back at the stagecoach junction massacre but it couldn’t be helped, though luckily it was hours until sunset. They still had time.
 

The four riders crossed a plain, flat and unmarred but for the ghost of a mountain range shimmering wetly in the melting waves of heat rising off the desert floor. The three gunfighters and the peasant hadn’t said much for the last hour, and none of them had much to discuss. There was the
crunch
of the hooves in the sand and the
clink
of stirrups and
squeak
of leather and not much else. Tucker noticed that Pilar had been preoccupied since the skirmish and refused to meet his eyes now. He wouldn’t care but this girl was the key to the silver, and they could ill afford to have her get any second thoughts about taking them to her town. She may have become worried about her people now she’d seen the kind of killers they were.
Women
, he cursed privately,
never just come out and tell you what’s on their mind.
 

“Spit it out,” he said.

The peasant girl finally spoke. “Those Federales were after you. Why? Did you rob a bank?”

“No,” stated Bodie flatly.

Fix grunted. “We don’t do that.”

Pilar looked at her hands clutching her reins. “What crime did you commit that they would offer such a reward?”

Tucker lit a cigarette, his jaw muscles working under the stubble. “Them Federales was dirty.”

“I see.”

“No. You don’t. You ever heard of The Cowboys?”

“
Si. Vaqueros
. Like you.”

“No,
The
Cowboys. A gang.”
 

A blank look.

Fix peered over at her from the saddle, and made a finger twirl above his head. “Red sashes?”

Pilar looked down, shrugging in ignorance. “Sorry.”

Tucker went on. “Well, we rode with a gang for a few years went by that name. We came regular over the border from Arizona, stole cattle here, drove ’em back into the States. Rustling cattle out of Mexico across into New Mexico and Arizona is big business. Steal it here, sell it there at a discount. Cheap beef.”
 

Pilar nodded, staring straight ahead, trying to understand. “You are rustlers and this is why the Federales wanted you.”

Fix sent a projectile of chewing tobacco saliva against a rock where it exploded in a splatter of brown crud. “Wrong, your damn Federales are in on it. They get paid off. Hell, they protected our runs and covered our asses.”

Bodie went on. “Last year we did a run, rustled a herd in from Durango, crossed the Rio Grande and got met up by some U.S. Marshals. Our compadres and us was caught red handed and it was a standoff. Guns loaded and drawn. The Cowboys wanted to shoot the Marshals.”

Fix snorted. “We shot our compadres instead.”
 

Tucker picked up the tale. “Wasn’t going to be part of no lawmen killing. We turned ourselves in, got tried, did a stretch in Yuma, time off for saving the Marshals. But like I said, cattle rustling is big business both sides of the border, and The Cowboys put a price on our head for shooting some of their number. It’s mebbe a thousand of them, just three of us, so we hightailed it to Mexico. Been down here ever since.”

“Figured we’d hide out,” Bodie said.

“Thought we’d be safe,” said Fix.

“But The Cowboys got that reward out, and the Federales here are in league with ’em, and that’s who those boys were.”

Pilar smiled brightly. “So you are not really bad?”

Fix glowered and spoke softly. “Bad enough.”

Tucker searched her face, curious. “It don’t bother you hiring men like us?”

Pilar held his gaze. “You are dangerous men. My village needs dangerous men to drive away the evil.”

That settled, they rode on.