The Guns of Santa Sangre (21 page)

Fix was in an expansive mood. “We’re rich, boys. What you gonna do with your’n?”

Bodie sucked some whisky from his bottle. “Buy me some pussy,” he belched.

“Then after that what?”

“I dunno. Buy me s’more.”

The silver clinked and clanked like a tambourine in time with their spurs and saddle cleats.

“You’re gonna spend it all on pussy, Bodie?”

“No, I ain’t gonna spend it all on pussy neither, Fix. I’m gonna buy other stuff. Like clothes. And a new gun probably. Then I’m gonna…well I’m gonna…put it in a bank, that’s what I’m gonna do, so’s I can have my money working for me while I figure out what to spend it on
besides pussy
!”

He cracked up hysterically, and Fix joined in the laughter.
 

The little, taut gunslinger’s eyes went distant. “Figure mebbe I’ll buy me a little spread down Durango way. Get me some cattle. Settle down…mebbe.”

Tucker shook his head, holding his reins, hips shifting with the horse’s gait on the saddle. “Lot of money, boys, that silver is a whole lot of money.” He was preoccupied, riding in the lead ahead, eyes hard in the distance. “And all it’s given us so far is a big set of brand new problems.”

“Like what?” asked Bodie. “We’re rich.”

“That’s if’n we live to spend it. We got to be real careful. Right now we’re riding through no man’s land with a fortune. We can’t just ride around Mexico carrying all this silver. What we need to do is bury it. I say we split the loot into three parcels and we each ride out and hide it where the others don’t know about.”

Tucker felt the unfamiliar twinge of distrust in the air between the three men.

“Reckon this much
dinero
could be a big temptation even twixt the best of friends,” Fix grimly agreed.

“It ain’t that exactly,” Tucker said, although now the specter of betrayal had been raised it lay in the air like a dead fart, ruining the mood. “What I mean is we split up and each bury a third of the silver. Let’s say one of us gets caught somehow with his parcel of silver and the sumbitches try to beat out of him the location of the rest of the treasure, he can’t spill what he don’t know.”

“Can’t argue with that.” Fix grunted in agreement.

Bodie nodded, eyes glazed in confusion from trying to follow the conversation.

Tucker continued. “Then after we bury it, we regroup. Each of us knows where his parcel of the treasure is and doesn’t tell the others. And the agreement is that each of the buried shares is owned three ways by us, so if we lose one, nobody’s out of pocket. Agreed?” They others nodded. “It’s decided then. We bury the treasure and we bury it soon. Tomorrow. That’s one problem licked.”

“So we just ride back and dig up what we need?” Bodie asked.

“That’s the idea. Problem two. We can’t go around cashing silver candlesticks and religious articles. They’ll make us for thieves, and we got enough people after us already. What we need to do is melt this silver down into bars. So we got to locate a blacksmith’s shop directly like that town back there had. We’ll pay the blacksmith a share for his work and his silence. If we think he’s dodgy, we’ll just kill him when he’s done the work.”

“A bullet’s a lot cheaper than a share of the silver, I savvy.” Fix clicked his teeth. Tucker knew right then that the as yet unidentified blacksmith already had a slug of lead with his name on it.

“Mebbe so. We go back one at a time, dig up one parcel of silver goods from the church at a time, bring it back have the blacksmith melt it. The other two can remain with him to be sure he don’t run off with our loot. Once we get these artifacts melted down into bricks, then each of us ride out and bury their share same place or t’other.”

“Then what?” Fix asked, because Tucker had a habit of thinking things through which was why he was unspoken leader of the tight-knit gang.

“Then we got the same problem. Can’t go riding around with this much silver. Not unless we want to get robbed or killed. It’s got to be a million dollars or more we’re haulin’ right now in our saddlebags. And unless we want to spend our remaining days in Durango, we can’t leave it buried and just keep coming back for it piecemeal. I say we bank it in Juarez or Mexico City. Turn it, or some of it, over into cash in bank accounts. It’ll take us a few weeks, with all the riding to the buried silver and the banks and back, but we take it real slow and careful and patient and we’ll get ’er done.”

“We got another problem,” Fix offered. “All them federals and bounty hunters on our ass, and remember those banks likely have our posters up. Heading into a bank is a big damn risk.”

“Mebbe we could pay off the Federales. Pay ’em the reward on us and a bonus for staying off our backs. Buy their protection,” said Bodie. “Not like we ain’t got the money. We can buy anything. Including our own asses.”

Tucker and Fix looked at the third of their number. Once in a while, he made sense and when the normally dull man had one of his good ideas it was always a pleasant surprise. They nodded.
 

“That could work, we get to the right Federales,” Tucker admitted. “Maybe that fat pig general Lopez who heads up the fort outside of Mexico City we had that run in with back in May. Bet a few bars of silver would persuade him to send the word have his troops back off. That would sure as shit piss off The Cowboys, but if the price was right, he’d probably string up any of their bounty hunters they send after us too.”

“Then we just lay low in Mexico the rest of our days.” Fix shrugged. “In the style to which I intend to become accustomed.”

“Might be a good idea buy a big ass ranch or hacienda down Guadalajara way. Men is going to be coming for us, but we hire on some Mexican guards, pay off the Federales like Bodie said, we could buy protection and live behind the walls a lifetime. Or until they forget about us.” They men of action considered the unpleasant prospect of being so penned up for eternity. It didn’t sit.
 

“Right.”

“Right.”

“Whatever.”

“Sure as shit can’t go back to the U.S.,” Fix agreed.

“Not any state got an extradition treaty with Arizona, we can’t,” Tucker said. “I hear Doc Holliday is still rotting away in a Leadville jail up in Colorado fighting extradition by the Tombstone boys and word is they’re sending his ass back to The Cowboys and a waiting noose directly.”

“Why the hell isn’t Wyatt Earp helping his friend out?” Bodie wondered.

“Heard Earp dropped him like a hot potato after the Vigilante Raid,” Tucker said ruefully.

“Earp was always a prick.” Fix chuckled dismissively. “Should have put a bullet in his brain pan when I had the chance. Holliday too.”

“We get our money banked, we might can risk New York, maybe San Francisco, set ourselves up as proper gentlemen or robber barons. Or we can catch a ship and head to England. Start over.”

“Too much to think about right now.” Fix rubbed his eyes. “Been a long day. Right now, I just want to set camp and break open a bottle of whisky and admire our spoils. Tomorrow, we’ll bury it, just like you said, friend, and go find us that blacksmith.”

Suddenly being rich wasn’t sounding so great, Tucker was thinking. It was confusing and tense trying to figure out a way to hold onto their money and keeping what they stole looked harder then getting it in the first place. Nothing had changed. They were still going to feel hunted, still spend their lives looking over their shoulders, now more than ever.
 

And that wasn’t all that was weighing heavy on his conscience.

“Hey, Tuck. What you gonna spend your share of all this loot on?” Bodie asked affably.

“Peace of mind.”

“Huh?

“Them poor wretches back there. We gave them a royal screwin’, leaving ‘em to those bastards.”

Fix sneered. “Fuck ’em, Tucker. Them Mexicans was stupid enough to roll over for them bandits, stupid enough to tell us where their silver was, and a fool and his money are easily parted.”

Tucker chuckled mirthlessly. “We parted ’em with it that’s for sure.”

The little wiry gunfighter was bothered. “You going soft all of a sudden?”
 

Tucker didn’t take the bait. There was sadness and regret in his blue eyes. “Just wondering when exactly we became the bad guys is all.”

Bodie shrugged. “We ain’t no worst than most. I love my mama.”

“My mama was a whore,” Fix tossed off.

“One thing you can bet on,” said Tucker. “They didn’t set out to raise no bad men.”

“Boo hoo.”

Tucker shot the others a circumspect glance. “You boys don’t find it peculiar them bandits, cannibals, whatever they was, just let us walk out of there with all that silver?”

The big Swede laughed a little too loud, in a drunken glow. “Lucky is what we is.”

“Irregular is what it is,” growled Tucker. “Too good to be true. And what’s too good to be true usually ain’t.”

Fix gripped the saddle with his knees and whapped his palomino on the haunches with his reins clenched in a black leather gloved fist so as to speed it up over the rocks. “They could have killed us right there, if they wanted to.”

“But they didn’t,” said Bodie.

Tucker nodded, like that proved his point. “Irregular I say. Maybe they’re just toying with us and this ain’t over yet.”

Fix looked up at the coloring sky. “Well, sun’s going down, boys. Figure we best make camp.”

They rode into the deep crevices of the brutal canyon country. There was an eerie atmosphere in the air, a hanging ground mist. The box canyons shadowed purple as dusk descended, the sun lowered in the sky and a dull haze settled in the area. Tucker, Fix and Bodie rode slowly through the towering chasms of crags and ravines rising up on all sides.
 

“I’ll be glad tomorrow when we’re a day’s ride from here. This is a bad place,” said Tucker. The gloom was dank and cold. He shivered.

Bodie reacted abruptly. “Did you hear something?”

Fix went stone still, the lean little gunfighter on high alert, braced for action. His gloved hands hovered itchy by his gunstocks in his belt. He spat a chaw of tobacco on the ground, flinty observant eyes surgically carving a line across the rocks above them. “Shhh.”

Tucker unsnapped the clasp holding his Sharps rifle on his saddlebag of his dun colored stallion with a little
click
. Bodie eyeballed the others, and they caught his gaze. He snicked his glance to the left. There was a blur of movement on a scree behind him. Then they saw Calderon as he stepped out from behind a big rock a few feet ahead, holding a rifle in his bandito rags. His eyes were shiny black marbles.
 

“We meet up again, gringos.”
 

The three gunfighters faced the outnumbered Mexican, sitting laconically in their saddles and cradling their weapons. The silver in the saddlebags glittered and glinted in the pale ghost of the full moon appearing overhead in the twilight sky.

Tucker’s tone was blunt. “What do you want?”

Calderon nodded. “I come for the silver.” They watched him. “Mostly.”

Bodie got riled. “Your Jefe said we could take it.”

“Jefe change his mind, gringos, and he wants his silver back.”

Tucker casually scanned the visibly empty box canyon, satisfied that there were no other bandits, and then returned his gaze to the interloper who faced them with a notable lack of concern being all by himself. “You come alone,” he said.

“
Solamente
.”

“So what if we don’t want to give it back?”

The bandit tilted his head, the way a dog regards a kill. “I take it anyway.”

Fix tickled his pearl-handled Colts with his gloved fingertips. “I’m gonna put one in his bone box just for shits and giggles.”

Three against one.

Those odds might not be in their favor, Tucker reflected. All of them remembered the bullet-ridden Mosca back in Santa Sangre with one between the eyes and five in the chest standing there laughing, completely unharmed. This one could be just as indestructible. They reckoned they were about to find out. As if to make the point, a mangy buzzard alighted on a crag of granite overhead, giving those below its malignant full attention.
 

Tucker suppressed a smile. “So we give you the silver, and you here all by your lonesome against us three, is gonna let us live?”

Calderon seemed taken aback. “No, gringo, I am going to kill you too.”

Tucker nodded. “Let’s get to it then.” With that, he fired both guns two-handed at point-blank range into Calderon’s chest, blowing smoking bullet holes through his front. Some of the bullets punched out fist-sized exit wounds in back.
 

The bandit staggered, but remained standing.
 

“Sonufabitch!” yelled Fix, flabbergasted. “Who the hell are these guys?”
 

Calderon spat a bloody, crumpled slug with powerful force and deadly accuracy between Tucker’s eyes, breaking the flesh and hurting him.
 

“Ow!” The cowboy recoiled, grabbing his forehead.
 

By then Bodie and Fix had their guns drawn and were fanning and firing, creating clouds of smoke and muzzleflash into which the bandit disappeared from view as his body was hammered again and again with lead, apparently riddling him with bullets and blowing him to pieces. The
thunderbooms
of the gunfire echoed around the box canyons long after the shooting ceased. The smoke cleared. Calderon was gone, fled into the ravine. He was quickly glimpsed scrambling up the rocks of the chasm, lizard quick. His chortling laughter reverberated.