The Guns of Santa Sangre (18 page)

Still Calderon watched her, mordant eyes black as pitch, impossible to read but observant and circumspect as they studied her.
 

When she could bear it no more, she said, “What do you want?”

His voice was high and nasally, and had a musical lilt. “These men, gunfighters, show up here. Just riding through they say. There is nothing here. Nothing anywhere near here. And yet they are here in this village. Chance, it could be, perhaps, but I think not. It is no accident they are here,
si
?” Pilar froze as the stalking Calderon slowly paced the blacksmith’s shop, studying the metal forging equipment. He picked up a poker and tapped it on his hand. “This place. It is used to make metal. Harnesses. Plows for the fields. Or bullets,
si
?”

“Please, I don’t understand.” The girl cringed, knowing if she tried to flee the bandit would be on her in less than a second, tearing her asunder. She knew too well what they were capable of. He radiated violence and suspicion, but barely spoke above a whisper.

“What I think,
punta
, is men like these, they are here for the silver. Why else gringos come to a shit town like this?
Mucho dinero
.” He wagged his finger at her and made a scolding
tsk tsk
sound. “And I know you went and found them. Yes you did. Brought them here to kill us. Promised them
mucho
silver. Told them they needed the silver to kill
mis hermanos
.”

“I didn’t.”

And then he was there.

Across the room so fast she never saw him move.

His face was in hers, his dirty talon of a hand gripping her neck in a stranglehold and cutting off her respiration as she choked under the stink of him.
 

“Yes,
si
?”

“Yes.” She could not lie.
 

“
Bueno
.”

And Pilar wept.

It was over.
 

Calderon would go back and tell his Jefe and the gunfighters would be ripped to shreds before they ever got out with the silver. She had tried. But had only been responsible for more deaths.

He reached out his hand and put it in her shirt, scooping out one of her bare melon breasts and squeezing it roughly in his fingers, thumbing her nipple painfully. Pilar didn’t dare move, and terror spread through her that he would take the virginity she had protected so long.
 

Calderon watched her. “I am right,
si
?” He tugged her boob like a cow udder.

“
Si
.”

He released her breast. “I go now and tell Jefe. And we will kill them for you very nice. Then, tonight, I will be back, when the moon is up and you will open wide for me,
punta
.” With that, he extended his long foul tongue and lapped it like a dog across the side of her face.

She turned from him, wincing in disgust.
 

With a grunt of base satisfaction, Calderon stormed out of the blacksmith’s shop, swung into his saddle and rode hard for the church.
 

Inside the defiled chapel, Tucker, Bodie and Fix had loaded their saddlebags to overflowing with the gleaming silver artifacts.
 

They were grabbing the last ornate candlesticks when Tucker noticed the scabrous, lean bandit with the wolfish face slink into the cathedral through the bright opening in the doors and skulk over to the Jefe. Giving the gunfighters the stink eye from across the pews, the lurking Calderon pressed his snout of a mouth to the bandit leader’s ear and furtively whispered, a susurration canine in timbre. Mosca listened, nodded and watched the cowboys steadily without blinking. Sound carried in the cathedral but all Tucker could discern was the hissing whispering noises from Calderon. However, he heard Mosca’s grinning response just fine. “
Comprendo, hermano
. I knew the minute they rode in.” He wasn’t sure that meant trouble or not, but Tucker figured they better make tracks. Ready to leave, the gunslingers were about to heave the saddlebags over their shoulders when they looked up and saw the Jefe standing, blocking the open doorway, silhouetted against the lowering sun. “Just one thing you must do for me before you go, amigos.”

Tucker lowered the saddlebag and stood upright, facing Mosca. “What would that be?”

“Give me a gunfight.”

“You and me?”

“
Si
. If you are faster than me, then you may go with the silver.”

Bodie snorted. “Knew there was a catch.”

“Here we go,” muttered Fix.

“Fair enough.” Tucker nodded to Mosca. Lowering his hands to his sides, fingers hovering by the stock of his pistol in his holster, Tucker assumed the position. He shot a glance for Bodie and Fix to back off as he stood in the center aisle between the pews and faced the Jefe standing with his arms crossed in front of the door. You could hear a pin drop. The other two gunfighters braced for the battle they were ready for when they first stepped into Santa Sangre. Each turned to face the army of bandits on either side of the church who were slowly stepping near their rifles and pistols, watching them like a pack of hungry wolves, beady eyes on the gunfighters’ hands perched by their holstered irons.
 

None of the banditos went for their weapons. The gunslingers were closer to their pistols and would get the initial shots off and draw first blood before the place turned into a shooting gallery.
 

Mosca spoke softly, facing off for the showdown with Tucker, yet his arms remained calmly crossed. “Your move.”

As they faced off for the shoot-out, Tucker put the army of bandits surrounding him out of his mind because his friends had them covered. He focused on sizing up his adversary and took his measure. In his sightline, he saw nothing in his own straight-ahead stare but the bandit leader and his guns, taking in every movement of his opponent. The hirsute man was fat and ungainly, yet his locked gaze was supremely confident and assured, primal and raw as a wild coyote. He seemed to be enjoying the prospect of imminent death, and that was just a little damn unnerving. It was the crazy ones you worried about. Tucker waited to draw, he could wait a long time.
 

Hell with it. Nobody lives forever.
 

It happened in a split second.

Tucker drew first, fist closing on the gunstock, feeling the tug of the barrel leaving its sheath. Instantly, the muzzle was pointed forward, his right hand pushing the gun and hammer under the flattened palm of his left hand, fanning and firing a shot right between Mosca’s eyes. The bullet put a neat red hole in the Jefe’s forehead, spritzing a spray of matter behind his head. The bandit leader remained standing with his arms crossed. The gunshot echoed in sonic reverberation through the church, scattering a few vultures. No further shots rang forth.
 

Tucker expected the air to explode with gunfire. He looked left and right with his pistol drawn but the bandits were just standing there on all sides, grinning. The air was taut with tension as Bodie and Fix stood braced, ready to draw on all the other brigands but none of them made a move. He threw glances to his comrades but they were staring in the direction of the Jefe with their mouths hanging open.
 

Mosca just stood there, shot in the head.

Tucker watched him, the barrel of his raised pistol drifting smoke. There was a tidy, penny-sized hole in the forehead of the man.
 

Mosca’s eyes popped open, daylight glinting off the rows of gold teeth as his lips spread in an insane grin.
 

“You got me, amigo.” With that, the Jefe drew his pistol.

Tucker quickly shot him five times, fanning and firing his pistol until it clicked empty, the bullets slamming home into Mosca’s chest in a tight pattern that tore cloth and spurted blood.
 

“Oh! Ow! Ow! Oh!” the bullet-ridden bandit cried in mock pain. He stayed on his feet, dancing a little jig. The Jefe was laughing the whole time, unharmed. “I let you win again, amigo.
Mira
. As you can see, bullets do not hurt us. We live forever. We are the strong. You can be like us. Impossible to kill. Men like you should ride with us. Join us.”

Tucker, Bodie and Fix exchanged slow glances.

“
Join us
.” Those words hung in the air.

Tucker heard the sound of flies growing louder and louder. The cloying noise of the insects seemed to emanate from the leader of the brigands, as if the hive was inside his guts. And right then the cowboy understood these were not men. Bullets could not kill them. Nothing could.
 

The gunfighters were struck dumb, faced with
hombres
whom bullets did not faze.
 

Fix showed rare wide-eyed shock. “It was true what that damn peasant said about these sumbitches.”

“Every damn word of it,” Bodie stammered.

Before their eyes, the bullet hole in Mosca’s head healed, the penetrated flesh closing up as the cauterized blood ceased to drip, leaving barely a scar. “So what do you say?”
 

Tucker realized what the Jefe offered the gunfighters was to make them invulnerable, immortal, impervious to death by gun or noose, as the bandits obviously were. An end to fear and worry. At once, he felt utterly trail weary as Mosca’s eyes fixed on his own, looking through his head across the desecrated church in a persuasive comfort of fellowship. Why not join the bandits, the cowboy wondered, what did they have to lose? Nothing but their humanity, but how much of that burdensome commodity did they have left anyway? They’d killed, robbed, cheated, left numbers too great to count dying in the dirt and that was all that lay ahead in their future until a bullet did them in. He and his two companions were little more than animals now anyway, ready to take the treasure and abandon the villagers to slaughter even though they had given their word, all three of them, that they would protect the people. It was so easy to just go for the money. Life for him was nothing but the same base, dirty, dismal day-to-day survival it was for any lizard that ever crawled out from under a rock. He took in the feral, hairy faces that minutes earlier had seemed so foul and now looked strong, admirable and reassuringly kindred and familiar. His brothers. Their terrible stench was the same, but it no longer bothered him any more than his own bad smell. Hell, if they joined up with this lot they wouldn’t even have to shave anymore, or bathe. His gaze traveled to the naked girls huddled in the corner and saw their welted asses and bruised breasts and the iron in his trousers rose, because he wanted their bodies and suddenly he didn’t mind the blood.

The two gunfighters on either side shrugged amiably when he glanced at them, like they could go either way, but they were looking to Tucker to make the decisions like they usually did.

What did they have to live for anyway? The last few years the three outlaws had been relentlessly hunted, on the run, fearing death by hanging or bullets, suffering starvation, scrounging for a buck. What good was the silver? Tucker wondered. Even if they got out of here with the treasure, people would be gunning for them trying to take it. He might even have to keep his eyes on Bodie and Fix in case they got greedy, and sleep with one eye open at night in case one of them tried to plug him and take it all. They could never go north back to America again, not with the reward on their heads and The Cowboys would never relent. They had no home, no family, no friends except each other until now. Until these bandits. Their home was here. Mosca’s gaze had a spellbinding effect. Not like he was a friend, more that he was inevitable, cut from the same stock as they were, and his will had a powerful pull. Tucker beheld Bodie and Fix clenching their guns at half-mast, flickers of indecision in his comrades’ eyes and he knew, without asking, that they felt it too. The three gunslingers stood side by side in the aisle between the pews, the looming shadows of the bandits on all sides in the shadowy recesses of a church no longer a place of worship for a Christian God but a terrible pagan and nameless deity. Tucker had often worried whether they were good or bad men, but now knew there was no good or bad, just what you were capable of. These bandits were capable of anything. Like the Jefe said, they were the strong, and the respect in his gaze showed them his pack was where they belonged. Take the bandit’s offer. No more fear. Be free. Pure. Indulge their appetites like animals and eat when hungry, fuck when lustful, kill when bloodthirsty. The blood was the thing. Best of all, not to care anymore. Nothing left to care about. Let it all go. Being a man was a pain in the damn ass. It was all about survival. And these bastards had survived forever, Tucker knew, and so could they.

The pathetic muffled sobbing from the back of the church drifted through the recesses of the cathedral, sounding over the blood pounding in Tucker’s ears that had been all he had been hearing. It was a sound of raw terror. It stirred his conscience, made him cognizant of the poor people, mothers, fathers, children, waiting to be butchered like livestock. Somewhere deep inside him, some stubborn long-buried grain of humanity asserted itself. The cowboy knew this pain and struggle was his, and Tucker did not want to lose himself.

He broke Mosca’s gaze, ending the spell. The silver gleamed in his eyes, and greed and fortune became all consuming. He had more money in his hands than he had ever known, and their job here was almost done, if they could just get out in one piece.