The Guns of Santa Sangre (17 page)

“This is too easy,” said Fix.

“What’s the catch?” said Bodie.

“It’s got to be a trick. They’re screwing with us,” the other replied.

“Let’s take it one step at a time,” said Tucker. “First get the silver. Then worry about getting out the door.”

Fix almost grinned, tobacco juice on his bad teeth. “We’re rich, boys.”

“If we live to spend it,” observed Bodie.

“Reckon,” Tucker added.

When they had taken all of the candlesticks, they greedily grabbed the shining silver platters, their adrenaline beginning to pump. Nobody stood in their way. No one interfered. The chapel was silent save for the clinking of the metal they removed and the quiet mewling of the lost girls in the corner. Their saddlebags were nearly full and brimming with silver before the cowboys got to the back of the alter and lifted the two silver statues of the Virgin Mary.

Then they heard the sobbing.

Tucker looked at Fix, who looked at Bodie, and they put down the precious statues and walked to the small room in back of the tabernacle. There was a wooden door and that door had a small slot. When they opened the panel, through the hole they saw the fifteen surviving villagers of the town locked in the room. The starving people were still alive, just barely, but badly beaten, held captive and imprisoned in the back of the church.

“Damn,” whispered Tucker.

“You said it,” said Bodie.
 

“Those sons of bitches. They’re gonna eat those people,” choked Fix.

Crammed in the small back room of the church like human cattle in a stockade, the peasants saw the hard sympathetic faces of the shaken gunmen through the slot in the door. They fell to their knees begging and pleading pathetically for help in their native tongue. The unfortunates’ eyes were horror holes. “Please…please…please… Help us… Save us.” The gunfighters heard the words over and over, unable to tear their gaze from the miserable wretches and the three briefly forgot about the silver.

A voice behind them broke the spell. “Forget about them. Those are not men. They are sheep. They are the weak. We are the strong. The strong eat the weak, as wolves eat sheep.” Mosca shut the slot on the door. “You three are strong. You must join us. Here you belong, amigos. With us.”

The gunfighters turned to face the Jefe. Tucker spoke first. “What’s going to happen to them?”

“What happens to all sheep, amigos…the slaughter.” Mosca’s reply was cold and heartless.

Fix bristled. “Those aren't sheep. Them’s people. You have everything they own. That’s enough. Let ’em go.”

“Join us or take the silver and go, amigos, before I change my mind.” A malignant threat entered the tone of the pitiless bandit leader’s voice as his grin became strained and tense, disgusted by the cowboys’ empathy he clearly took for a sign of weakness.
 

The gunfighters regarded one another. They had seen all manner of human cruelty wherever they rode but had never come across the raw savagery that lay before them in Santa Sangre. It stirred a buried humanity deep in their hardened hearts. In their minds were branded the faces of the captive villagers behind the door and the gruesome portents of their imminent fate were splattered all around the church. It was the worst thing they had ever seen. The cowboys wanted to do something. They wanted to draw their pistols and murder all the bandits. But the silver statues were in their hands and more money than they had ever seen stuffed their saddlebags. A terrible choice tore their consciences. But they were just three.
 

The Jefe studied them closely, his feral, animal eyes sizing them up and taking their measure, seeing what they were made of.

Bodie looked at Fix.

Fix looked at Tucker.

Tucker eyed both of them. “There’s too many of ’em. We can't help these people. Let’s go.”

Decision made.

Walking to their saddlebags on the floor with the empty clink of the spurs on their boots in the silent cathedral, they packed the statues of the Blessed Virgin in the treasure-filled pouches and lashed them tight.
 

Chapter Eight

Pilar watched the church.

It sat across the village up on the hill, too quiet.

The girl lay on her belly on the opposite ridge above the valley, peering from behind the rocks, occasionally glancing through the binoculars Tucker left her. All was still. She waited for gunshots, for screams, for some disturbance within the walls of any kind, but for nearly an hour there had been nothing. The last movement she had seen was the two bandits coming outside and taking the gunfighters’ saddlebags from their tethered horses behind Santa Sangre, then going back inside. The big oaken doors had closed, and she had gotten a bad feeling. Her unease had begun as she had watched the cowboys ride up the hill, surrounded by so many bandits, and saw with her own eyes how outnumbered they were. Below the white adobe walls and steeple, it was so still there was not even a bird. Her town lay at the base of the hill, quiet as a grave. The girl caught herself fingering her crucifix and noticed that she had been praying beneath her breath, unaware she was doing so. Lifting the binoculars to her eyes again, she scanned the front of the church through the eyepiece, the walls looming big and flat and the oaken doors tightly closed in the circle view of the twin lenses. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing for her to do but wait and pray.
 

Probably, she figured, they were loading up the silver. Perhaps no gunfire was a good sign. It would take them thirty minutes, she guessed, to take all the treasure from the church and get it loaded up on their horses. But would the werewolves, or the bandits they became during the day, just let them walk out of there with the loot? Perhaps they would, because the creatures knew it could kill them and wanted it gone. Just giving it to the cowboys was an easy solution. But the evil ones were cunning and might know the gunfighters meant to kill them with it. Then they would scourge the shootists where they stood with their knives and machetes and that might have happened already. Now she was thinking too much, and fresh doubts about the soundness of her plan filled her with dread. More likely, the gunslingers would have to shoot their way out, but that hadn’t happened yet. Pilar was driving herself crazy imagining the different things that could be occurring inside.

Get your hands busy, she told herself.

Keeping her head down, the peasant girl slid out of view of the church and rose to her feet. She brushed dirt and pebbles off her baggy clothes, and trod down the path toward the blacksmith’s shop nestled in the gully. Her time would be better spent preparing the fire and the kiln and the tools, so that if and when the time came and the three bad men returned with the silver, they could set to work directly in making the bullets.

She glanced up at the sun, hanging at two o’clock in the sky. Sunset and moonrise lay about five hours off, she gauged, and there was much to do. Fear stabbed her insides as she walked toward the shed. This was her village’s last chance. It was the last full moon of the month and she had a terrible feeling that the werewolves would kill everyone tonight. So many things could go wrong. The gunfighters could already be dead inside the church. Even if they got out with the silver, their hands on all that treasure could easily tempt them from returning with it to the blacksmith’s shop and they may just ride off, stealing the priceless valuables to become rich men and live like kings, breaking their promise to her.

That was the chance she took.

It was the only chance she’d had.

God would provide.

She entered the shed, glad of the cool shade. As she stood in the doorway, she gazed at the big cast iron pot, to be used for the melting of the silver, sitting empty. The anvil sat beside it. The sledgehammer. The dangling chains and andirons and molds hanging from the wooden buttresses. This was all they had, all the equipment that was at their disposal to wage war on The Men Who Walk Like Wolves. The food dishes of the gunfighters sat on the ground, and the girl experienced a twinge of loneliness seeing them. Be strong, Pilar told herself.
 

There was nothing to do but wait.

Restless and reflective, the girl somberly wandered over to a corner of the shed with her sleeping roll and the small tied quilt of personal belongings she had taken from her home before dawn, to have them with her for comfort. She had figured she’d need to stay up at the blacksmith’s shop during the gunfighters’ visit to the town and had wanted a few things with her. She untied the blanket and laid it open. There was her cross of Lord Jesus. Her wristlet of turquoise beads she had been given by her grandmother. A small miniature of her mother.

And there were the yellowed dime novels.

A large pile of them.

Her attention went there, to her treasures. With a growing smile, her eyes widened as they always had as she thumbed through the tattered pages, and her heart beat just a little faster.

DIME WESTERN MAGAZINE. COWBOY STORIES. ACE HIGH WESTERNS. FAR WEST MAGAZINE
. The pulp novel covers were illustrated in vibrant colors, displaying lurid paintings of gunfighters and outlaws firing smoking guns spitting blazing muzzlefire and clutching buxom wenches behind them protectively. She had learned how to read English from these dime books when she was a child. The friendly Tennessee priest had brought them from the post office in town. He’d mail ordered the pulps because he’d seen how the small child’s eyes lit up when he told her tales of the cowboys he’d met on his journeys. The minister’s clever plan had worked, because from age five, little Pilar had devoured the penny dreadfuls with their romanticized melodramas of the big, powerful, heroic but gentle outlaws who were the heroes of the open range. It had formed her fantasy of the cowboy. Her overheated imagination was fueled by purple prose of desperate shootouts between evildoers and the tall, handsome, soft-spoken stranger who always had honor and never backed down from a fight. This was the thrilling bigger than life world she dreamed of beyond the impoverished confines of her humble village. The fantasy world western heroes were as much her companions as the simple farmers who were her friends and family. She wanted more than what her circumstances offered. Pilar yearned for the manly strength of the gunfighters she read of in the western pulps, dreamed of being swept away in the arms of such a man and kissed passionately, then bearing his child. But she knew she could not marry a man such as this or tie him down, for he was a restless rover and must always ride on into the sunset for more adventures. But he would always love her, and the child she bore would grow up to be a man of courage and bravery just like his father and become a hero like him. When Pilar became a teenager and the good reverend had given her adult classics to read, she would still keep the western books under her bed and reread them dozens of times until she had memorized each and every word. As she grew to a woman, she set aside childish things. But the cowboy remained in her heart.

When the werewolves came to her town, she knew at once the kind of strong, brave, fierce heroes she must find to protect her village, and realized it must have been God’s plan to have her read dime novels as a child, memorizing them as she did the scripture. She would know at first sight the cowboy gunfighter who would deliver them.
 

That morning, standing across the street from Tucker, Pilar had known he was this man from the first moment she laid eyes upon him.
 

The girl tied the books back in the quilt. Kneeling, she gathered up some firewood and stuffed it under the heavy cast iron kettle. Briefly, she debated the wisdom of starting the fire now, knowing the chimney smoke might be seen by the bandits stationed around the church across the way, but she had not seen any of them outside, and the gunfighters would be back soon with the silver if they returned at all. Pilar lit the match. Rich scented smoke began to fill the structure as the flames began to lick. She looked around for what else needed to be prepared. The water cask was empty. Picking it up, she walked to the doorway.

Someone blocked her path.

The tall bandit was lean, wiry and feral. His face was long and stretched, vulpine in bone structure. His sharp teeth razored into a bad grin as he brushed a lock of oily, lank, filthy hair from his face. His predatory, wary eyes fixed her just the way the wolves she had seen did, always sizing you up. “
Buenas dias
.”

Pilar backed off as the one she had heard called Calderon by the Jefe pried the empty cask from her fingers and tossed it aside, advancing, corralling her back into the shed.
 

“
Hola
,” the girl managed, thinking to avert her eyes submissively but not daring to let him out of her gaze. The bandit did not immediately make his intentions known, although he radiated a hungry animal smell and predatory heat. His thin lips drew back in a sneer over his big, chipped buck teeth as he eyeballed her.
 

The girl suddenly wanted to pee badly.
 

He was enjoying intimidating her, taking his time. The bandit ran a finger over one of the dishes the gunfighters had used, then ran his finger and its broken jagged nail on the anvil with the sledgehammer placed atop it, ready to be used.
 

The grating sound of the fingernail on steel hurt her ears and jangled her nerves.