The Guns of Santa Sangre (22 page)

“We had him dead to rights! You saw!” Bodie cried, utterly rattled. He and Fix reined their horses around, swung out of the saddles and tethered the reins to a small tree. Guns drawn, the two shootists ducked into the high canyon in pursuit of Calderon.

Fix yelled back at Tucker, spraying tobacco juice. “Cover the area and keep a lookout for other’n!”
 

“Will do!” Tucker shouted. Staying in his saddle, clenching a big iron in each fist, he reloaded, guarding the base of the cliffs and nursing the nasty bleeding cut between his eyes.
 

Fix took cover behind a slab of rock and leapt around shooting a single pistol round at the bandit a hundred feet up in the chasm, who fired back. Both bullets missed and rebounded off the rocks. The ricochet of the slug exploded by Fix’s head, nearly killing him as it chinked the granite.
 

“Shit!” he yowled.
 

Bodie sprang forward, firing his Winchester repeater rifle twice up at the fearsomely elusive Calderon, then ducked around behind a boulder for cover as three more bullets came from above and ricocheted deafeningly. A new threat. Five loose bullets were zigzagging out of control around the narrow cranny of the ravine. Unpredictable in their lethal trajectories, buzzing like mad bees, the rebounding slugs slammed again and again into the rocks by Fix and Bodie, making them leap like Mexican jumping beans. Impact meant instant death.

BLAM!

BLAM!

PTOW!

Fix winced and dodged up to the next rock outcropping, getting off a shot at Calderon, who buckled and grunted. His shadow was visible on the rock wall above, as the wounded bandit huddled in a cranny.

The full moon lifted in the sky.

Fix saw the long shadow of the man just over the incline, crouching in the precipice in the hard white moonlight. A groan of pain came from the figure as the moon cracked over the horizon.
 

“I got him, boys, you hear me? I hit him and I can hear him squealin’!” Fix yelled over his shoulder. Then the small cowboy yelled up into the depths of the canyon. “Give up fool, I know you can hear me! Don’t want to kill you none after you bein’ so generous with the silver so throw down yer guns and I’ll let you limp outta here if ya still can!”
 

The sounds of anguish intensified and the silhouette of the man on the rocks above became distorted on the ravine rock wall. The shadows of the legs lengthened. The torso’s shadow spasmed and seizured as the rib cage began to concave. The outline of the digits of the hands and feet extended into talons in the moonlight. Finally, the profile of its head punched out its snout into a canine skull formation with a horrific bone-snapping
crunch
that echoed through the ravine.
 

Fix fingered the trigger of his handgun, watching the bizarre shape shifting of the shadow.
 

“What the hell…?”
 

The human screams of pain gradually subsided into a rumbling growl that increased in timbre, mean and guttural, echoing through the innards of the chasm. The shadow disappeared before Fix’s disturbed eyes, leaping away with supernatural speed and stealth.

A hundred yards away, Tucker sat on his horse, twin pistols gripped in his fists, knees clinging to the saddle, eyes moving back and forth as he rode this way and that through the canyon base. The horse started to freak, eyes widening big as saucers, sweat frothing its mane. The cowboy went into high alert, searching the rugged cliff walls above and around him. Something very hungry and bloodthirsty watched him from above, then leapt an impossible distance to the ledge of the opposite stone face to observe him from another predatory vantage. Hearing gravel crumble, Tucker looked up quickly, thumbing back the hammers of his guns, as a few pebbles tumbled onto the ground by his horse’s hooves. His stallion was very nervous. Tucker reacted to the fleeting silhouette darting above him, then down below. It was a great big shadow like moving black paint. Whatever was stalking him ducked into position, the hot blood pounding in its ears.
 

The monster pounced.

Tucker gasped.
 

The hairy beast stood eight feet tall with red eyes and a savage feral expression. The long snout stretched cavernously wide, exposing jagged rows of yellow fangs strung with foul saliva. Its legs and haunches were dog-like, and its talons were big as pitchforks.
 

“Bless my balls,” Tucker choked.
 

The huge four-legged wolfman leapt up from a coiled crouch, big as Tucker’s horse, and tackled the stallion. The steed managed to stay upright from the first punishing blow, rearing in naked terror onto its hind legs. Tucker, horrified and awe-struck to be face to face with such a creature, struggled to control his animal. Thinking fast, he reined his rearing horse and used its pawing front hooves to knock the monster back. The werewolf got piledriver-kicked in the chest and with a hideous spitting snarl went sprawling to the ground in a cloud of dust, frothing saliva, radiating insanity from its eyeballs. Frighteningly fast, the beast was instantly back up on four paws on the ground. In a swipe of its ugly claws, the monster sheared the head of the stallion clean off its thick neck in an explosion of blood and trailing meat, sinew and spinal column. The severed horse’s head bounced off the rocks, bursting like a ripe watermelon. Tucker went down with it and got pinned under the saddle as the heavy steed came to earth, bridle in the gaping mouth several yards away. The saddlebags of silver spilled from the harness and dozens of gleaming metallic objects clattered and clanked against the rocks. The cowboy was trapped under his headless horse, leg stuck beneath the saddle. He opened fire with both pistols over his dead animal’s flanks, shooting the fast approaching wolfman in the chest and face multiple times. The .45 caliber slugs hammered the creature back and it raged in protest, but the bullets did it no permanent damage. Tucker knew his number was up. His hammers clicked on empty chambers.
 

The werewolf licked its wounds, ragged holes in its fur. Its pained eyes lost their dimness as they refocused on the helpless man trapped under the decapitated horse, gaze turning bloodthirsty as it rushed him. With a mighty heave, the gunfighter hauled his leg free of the bulky saddle and limp torso of his dead steed. He rolled away in the slippery, spreading lake of blood and gore dripping from the severed neck and staggered to his feet. Quickly reloading, he faced down the snarling, rearing creature that approached him in a mountain of furred fury, distended fanged muzzle drooling. Tucker cried out to the others, true alarm in his voice. “Hey I can use some help here you fucking assholes!”

“Here I come. Hot damn,” Bodie roared back. His compatriot ran into the area and hoisted his shotgun, but was immediately paralyzed by the scene before him.
 

Now, the gunfighters surrounded the monster in the gully in a showdown triangulation, and all three were shadowed by its immense bulk. The two tethered horses were rearing against the trammels and snorting, bicycling hooves pawing the air and kicking up clouds of dust debris in their panic. Bodie pumped his Winchester 1897 shotgun and brought it to his shoulder, drawing a bead on the creature’s face.

It spun to regard him with swirling mad whirlpools of eyes. The beast’s lower jaw descended and disengaged and the maw gaped, impossibly wide open.
 

Bodie pulled the trigger, the stock bucking against his shoulder. He pumped and fired twice more for good measure.

And blew the werewolf’s head clean off.

It grew back, but messier and disfigured, like a smeared oil painting.

The huge full moon illuminated her whole ghastly tableau bright as a searchlight, as if to make sure they saw everything, sparing them nothing. The three gunfighters just stood on three sides of the beast emptying their guns into it.

The creature hissed and spat and twisted from the onslaught of lead as they drew new weapons and used those, but it grew accustomed to the bullets and dropped to all fours waiting them out until they were empty. It eyeballed them patiently until the hammers of their weapons fell on empty chambers.

Fix grabbed the silver scepter from the tabernacle as the werewolf leapt on top of him. The creature impaled itself through the left rib cage on the sterling silver spear. The point went straight through its heart and exploded out its hairy back, trailing gore. Fix’s eyes widened, knowing he was dead. But he wasn’t.

The wolfman was.

The monster threw back its fang-snouted head in a dying howl of dismay. Its eyes darkened, and its hideous physiognomy shuddered and went limp as it died on the spear run through its body.
 

Fix sucked wind.
 

The other two gunfighters approached. Before their very eyes, the werewolf transformed back to a man in the pale moonlight. Now mortal, the corpse was covered with bullet scars, the shotgun-shattered, disfigured head and skull in human form not grown back properly. Even so, they all recognized Calderon.

Fix leapt back in abject disgust from the naked man flopping on him, repulsed.
 

Tucker stared, delirious. “Grab the silver. We’re getting out of here before more of those things come after us.” Too shaken to speak, the gunslingers scooped handfuls of the fallen silver back into the saddlebags. “Bodie, I’m taking your horse and you can ride with me until we can find a fresh mount.”

“I didn’t lose my horse, Tucker, you did. Why is it you’re taking my horse?”

“Bodie, don’t give me any shit. I mean right now, really don’t give me any shit or I swear I will beat you down.”

“Hey idiots.”

Tucker and Bodie looked where Fix was pointing.

Calderon’s horse calmly grazed nearby.

“Come on boys, we’ll argue about this later. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

The three of them swung into the saddles of the three spooked horses and galloped off into the beckoning desert.

They didn’t even bother to retrieve all the spilled silver.

It was true.

Every damn word Pilar had said.

That bandit had turned into a monster man-wolf right before their eyes. They all saw it, and their guns couldn’t kill it. Just the silver killed it, when stabbed through the creature’s heart. Exactly like the girl had said. Damn. They should have known back at the church. He’d fired a pistolful of .45’s into the bandit leader and the man
still
walked and
still
they hadn’t believed her about the werewolves and the silver. But back at the box canyon, they saw the wolfman with their own eyes and
now
they believed. Damn it all to Hell. What the girl had told them all along had been the gospel truth, but they laughed her off, stole her and her people’s salvation and literally threw them to the wolves. Tucker cursed himself because Pilar was truthful, had been from the moment they met, and she’d been right about everything. Everything but them being good men. She had been so wrong about that.
 

All three of them were lower than those monsters. Reason was they lied. They gave their word to a woman and her people, and they broke it. Mosca, he didn’t lie. He was what he was and said so. In his unspeakable way, he had principles like Pilar. And the Jefe spoke the truth when he stated that Tucker, Fix and Bodie were just like he and his fellow devils. Tucker feared he’d been right when those words were uttered, his own eyes locked to Mosca’s powerful perceptive stare, and it frightened him because he hadn’t wanted to believe it, because what surrounded those bandits in the church were death and blood and the stench of the dying. That place was Hell, and Mosca said it was where they all belonged together. But the Jefe was right, he saw that now. Tucker, Bodie and Fix were just like them and rightly should have joined up. Only difference was they didn’t have the guts to admit what they were.

The gunfighters rode hard into the night and were far away from that terrible place, but by them taking the silver, Pilar would be raped and eaten alive in the church of Santa Sangre.
 

Tucker knew then they could never spend the silver.

It was bad money.

They were scum.

A voice roared in his brain louder than the thunder of their galloping hooves.

No.

He and his boys were not like those dirty miserable creatures. Mosca was wrong. Tucker would prove him wrong. The cowboys were men. They had a choice. The landscape lay under the blanket of night beneath the light of the bright full moon, a patiently watchful eye waiting to see what their next move would be. Tucker suddenly reined his horse.
 

“Wait,” he stated flatly.
 

The others stopped and faced him in their saddles.
 

“What are you doing?” Fix asked incredulously. He was gasping and sweating.

“We gotta go back.” Tucker stated it like a plain and simple fact.

Bodie was beside himself. “You nuts? Back where those monsters are? We got the silver. We got all! We're rich!”
 

Tucker was resolved in himself. “I’m done doing the wrong thing.”

Fix shook, full of dread. “We can't kill whatever those are.”