The Guns of Santa Sangre (25 page)

Bodie glared at the departing riders as he poured more molten silver into the molds and set the container into the cauldron of icy river water with a steaming sizzle. “He’s gonna fuck her.”

Fix humorlessly jammed another gleaming slug into an open cartridge casing and tweaked it in with the clamps. “Shut up and work.”

Both gunfighters returned to their business of manufacturing the silver bullets.

The desert flowers were in bloom, bright yellow and red blossoms on the arms of the saguaro and cholla cacti radiant in the hillocks of the barrows. Out in the desert a mile off, the two small figures of Tucker and Pilar rode across the big empty of the badlands as the sun inched closer to the distant mountains. Behind them, the church on the hill was miles back. Tucker had been following Pilar, and the short ride had put them well out of earshot of the village as they negotiated their horses into a verdant valley by a pebble-strewn draw. The creek that ran past the blacksmith’s shed had widened into the clear stream that snaked through the gully, its fresh waters giving sustenance to all manner of vegetation in the lyrical oasis. This is what they had followed. The gunfighter knew they were running out of time, but trotting behind her, the sweet smell of her drifting back at him and mixing with the fragrance of the flora inclined him to linger. This was true beauty, and he had seen too little of it over the grim horrors of the last twenty-four hours. He just wanted to dawdle and take pleasure from it. Perhaps if they survived the coming battle, he could spend a little more time here. Tucker felt renewed, like he had something to live for. Best of all, it was just him and her. A man might stay awhile. A towering mescal cactus dominated the rocky, stark open area. That’s what he had been looking for.
 

The cowboy reined his horse. “This’ll do.”

He dismounted and helped Pilar from her mustang, then started tying off their horses by the shore of the creek in the overhand of a paloverde tree. The steeds immediately stuck their snouts in the cool burbling brook and became otherwise occupied quenching their thirst.

The peasant waited patiently as the shootist unloaded an ammo belt from his saddlebags.
 

“We’ll use yonder cactus for target practice,” he said.

Pilar watched Tucker with big moist brown eyes, taking him in and absorbing every word he said. A soft wind whipped up over the plains and wafted her baggy clothes around the pleasing swells of her body. She brushed dust from her face.

Tucker drew a Colt Peacemaker and flipped open the cylinder to reveal a half-empty pistol.
 

“You open a gun like this. That button there.”
 

She nodded, paying close attention.
 

“Take yer bullets, round side down, and stick ’em in the holes.” He loaded the gun. Pressed the cylinder back into the revolver. “Close it till it clicks and yer good t’ go.”
 

Pilar smiled, standing beside him.
 

He lengthened his arm, lined up a shot on the cactus a hundred yards away and squeezed off a shot.
 

The blast reverberated around the valley, scattering crows and a nervous lizard that ducked under a rock.
 

Pilar shook at the sound.
 

A chunk of splintered plant fell from the dead center of the cactus.
 

“Easy as milking a cow, see?”

“Let me try,” Pilar said eagerly.

“Your turn, m’am.” He placed the pistol in her hand and their fingers touched, lingering. When he let go, the weight of the gun dropped her hand to her side from the heft.
 

“It’s so big and heavy,” she gasped.

“Mebbe it’s best you use both hands, so grip it tight with both paws round the handle, and, you’re right handed so it seems, put your right finger around the trigger.” Fueled with adrenaline, the lovely peasant girl hoisted the pistol straight-armed with both hands and pointed it at the mescal cactus target.
 

“Take careful aim,” he instructed. The gunslinger positioned himself behind her and ran his big, scarred hands down her elbows, peering over her shoulder. He smelled her hair and tried to focus, adjusting her arms to point the gun at the distant mescal. “Good. Now. Use one eye and look down the twin notches on the back of the gun and line ’em up with the sight notch on the front of the barrel so they are one thing, and put that on your target.”

“Yes.”

“You got ’em lined up?”

“Yes.”

“Now, nice ‘n easy, squeeze the trigger, don’t pull. Go.”

She fired with a satisfying
crack-boom,
and the heavy hog leg kicked like a mule, knocking her backward into his big body, which he didn’t mind, making him chuckle. Fear flashed in her eyes from the smoking iron she nearly dropped when it went off. The bullet ricocheted off a distant rock, missing the cactus.
 

“Try again. This time use your wrists to take the impact, now squeeze the trigger, nice ’n slow, don’t pull. And if y’need a little motivation, picture that tree is one of them wolfmen sumbitches.”

Swallowing, Pilar gamely took two-handed aim again with the Colt revolver at the cactus, carefully peering down the sight and this time she did it right. Squeezing the trigger, she blasted a hole in the trunk, dead center, flinching from the recoil but keeping her grip on the gun.

A tine flew to perdition.

“Good!”

The peasant girl fired twice more, putting two other rounds into the plant, a quick study.

“Good girl.”

She smiled proudly and slid back in his arms as she lowered the pistol, slowly turning as she slipped the gun back in his holster, hands traveling up his shoulders as she stared in his eyes.

And they kissed.

His hands moved under her shirt. “Beauty like you a man’d walk into Hell for.” His fingers got a handful of smooth tit and hard nipple. Pilar leaned back her head and her lips turned rubber with arousal.

“Burn with me,” she pleaded, guttural and lustful.

She dropped the loose outfit from her shoulders and stood naked in front of him. Her proud breasts were nut brown, high and firm with dark nipples flushed with health. Her buttocks swelled in twin supple mounds. Her legs were long and strong, to the bushy black triangle below her navel. Tucker thought in her unbridled nakedness she was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on, and he knew for certain what he was fighting for and why he had come.

Tucker stripped down and Pilar took in the fullness of him with a gasp, her breath catching. Then he kissed her hard, filling her lungs.

He eased her onto the ground.

The girl’s legs parted, knees in the air, and the cowboy pressed himself in and she cried out as he came up against a stubborn resistance inside her. She gripped his shoulders, bearing up bravely as with new gentleness he pushed slowly and persistently until her girlhood gave way and he was slowly thrusting as she wept on his shoulder and a torrent of tender obscenities escaped her lips. They made vigorous love in the dirt until they came hard and loud and fell in each other’s arms, still joined deep inside the sweet warm clench of her. They lay that way under the watchful desert flowers, naked bodies intertwined, and he saw the drops of blood on her smooth thigh. It was with the greatest reluctance that he disengaged of her and both nude lovers rose to their feet, walked into the cold stream and bathed one another tenderly head to foot.

The sun’s descent called them back to town.
 

Tucker stood buckling his chaps while Pilar dressed in her baggy garb, drying herself from the creek and brushing her hair with her hands. The girl was flushed with physical satisfaction and a private, secret pleasure in her eyes. He watched her in all her mysteriousness, feeling young again, like he used to be. It had been so long. There were a few drops of blood on her pants. “We better go,” she said.

“Reckon we best.”

They mounted up.

As they settled into their saddles, he looked at her. “Pilar…”

She pushed her hair back from her happy face with her hands and gave him a well-laid smile. “Yes, Tucker,” she said, her face and voice womanly now.

“I was your first.” His voice was tender and awkward. She beamed at him and nodded. “A girl as beautiful as you. A village of young men. How can that be?”

The girl spoke from her heart as she gazed into his eyes with the force of nature. “I wanted my child to be a man such as you, a hero, not peasants like the men of my town. I saved myself waiting for the day you would come and always knew that you would answer my prayers.”

He tipped his hat. “Pleased to be of assistance. Let’s ride.”

They galloped back toward the village.

Both, in ways separate and same, now were ready.

The blacksmith’s shop was wreathed in smoke and steam. The sun festered in the bottom of the sky. Fix gave it the stink eye as he drank some well water and splashed some on his face, heading back inside. They were all out of time.

Bodie melted the silver. The saddlebags of church artifacts were empty and had all been melted down by now. His companion joined him quietly, pounding the silver bullet heads into open cartridges with a mallet.
 

The hours had passed swiftly.
 

The pile of bullets had grown large.
 

They had what they had. It would have to do.

“Where the hell are they?” Bodie wondered.

The other cowboy gave him a wry glance.

Bodie stewed. “The hell you say.”

“Keep your mind on your work.” Fix hammered away.

They busied making a few more silver bullets.

A short while later at dusk, the glowing Tucker and Pilar rode back to the blacksmith’s shop and reentered the structure. The other cowboys flicked glances at their friend, savvying the situation. It was twilight, and they had melted down all the silver and turned it into slugs. “We have exactly 837 rounds,” counted Bodie.

Fix eyeballed the dimming sky. “And daylight’s a memory.”

“There’s something else you must know.” Pilar faced them all and her eyes were urgent. “Use caution not just not to be killed. Take great care not to be bitten by the werewolf, for if you are, if they draw your blood, you will become a monster such as they. This is how they make others like them.”

“So we just get bit by one of these sumbitches we sprout hair?” Tucker inquired nervously.

“
Si
.” She nodded.

“Good to know,” said Fix.

Tucker drew his pistols, spinning them around his fingers until they were butt side up, and he flipped open the twin cylinders. “We got some killing to do.”

They armed up, loading the gleaming silver rounds, pressing the cartridges into ammo belts, shoving them into the breeches of their rifles, plugging them into the orifices of every pistol they had and sticking them into their holsters.

“What’s that?” Tucker asked. Bodie was grinning proudly, holding out three crude but nasty sharp silver blades atop sledgehammer-rounded silver grips he had forged.
 

“A little something for in-close work.” The Swede chuckled affably and tossed his friends the two silver blades, sheathing the third himself.

“Let’s make a plan.” The natural leader hunkered down in the flickering firelight of the coals, drawing with a poker a crude square map layout of the church floor plan in the dirt on the ground. “This is the chapel. Front door here.”

He made an X.

“Back room where they got those people, here.”

Another X.

“We’re here.”

X.

“Figure we got mebbe twenty-four of them sumbitches, mostly inside here.” He scratched dirt with the poker head inside the scrawled rectangle. “But be careful they aren’t positioned outside, anywhere around here.” He drew a circle around the square. The other two cowboys and the peasant girl squatted beside him around the map, reviewing it alertly.

Fix raised an eyebrow, studying the diagram. “They got a back door to this dump?”

Pilar nodded. “Yes, a small door in the back that goes under the church to a hatch into the back room.”

Bodie uncrossed his legs. “The sumbitches know about that?”

Pilar’s gaze clouded with uncertainty. “I do not know.”

Fix looked up, chewing his lip. “Maybe we can create a diversion in the front, and Pilar can slip past them varmints through the back.”

“Good.” Tucker nodded. He used his finger to draw arrows and lines indicating the four of them and their directions of attack. “So that’s the plan. Fix, Bodie, you and me ride up front, go in blasting. Pilar goes around back, sneaks in and lets them folks out the back way.”

Bodie shrugged, amenably. “Whatever you boys think is best.”

Tucker looked them all over. “If we’re lucky, the werewolves won’t notice those people is on the move until it’s too late.”