The Guns of Santa Sangre (15 page)

Her stomach ached with hunger.

Against the walls, the other villagers sat, knees drawn up, heads down. Their faces were emaciated and haggard and their eyes were black holes from the diet of fear they lived on. Nobody spoke, not anymore. Their number grew less every few days as the hairy men would come in and grab one at random; dragged out kicking, begging, weeping, that villager would not be seen again. Bonita would pray it was not her turn and cover her ears against the screaming she would hear behind the door—but thankfully the cries did not last long.

Pilar would come.

She never lied.

The room stank with the odor of people who had not bathed in a month. The closet she had hid in weeks before had been turned into a latrine with a slop bucket inside where they would go to relieve themselves. This became less frequent because the bad men barely fed them. Crusts of bread and water and a few pieces of slaughtered pigs from the village were tossed in once in awhile. Swarms of flies buzzed around the smelly closed door.

Bonita huddled in her mother’s arms but those arms had grown steadily weaker over the passing days. When she looked in her parent’s face she saw a pale tight mask lined with pain and terror. For the first weeks, her mother had prayed softly and brushed the little girl’s hair over and over, but lately those prayers had stopped and Bonita’s hair grew tangled and unkempt. It fell to the child who was holding onto her mother to comfort her parent, not the other way around.
 

My sister will come, don’t cry, Mama.

She promised.

And promises are to be kept.

A child’s faith sustained her because for her it was a simple fact.

The bolt on the outside of the storeroom door rattled and slammed aside.

Bonita’s guts clenched.

The door swung open and one of the hairy men stood there, sniffing and glowering like an animal. He had come for one of them. The people cringed as his black eyes swung over them, back and forth.
 

Settling on Bonita.

It was her turn, she knew.

He would take her from the room never to return.

Hurry, Pilar.

The bandit’s boots creaked on the old floorboards as he walked over and towered above her. Bonita felt her mother’s arms tighten but they were parchment thin and had no strength.

The little boy Raul who sat beside her looked at her face so she said goodbye to him with her eyes.

The hairy one suddenly reached down with a filthy hand, grabbing hair. The boy’s, not hers. Raul shrieked as he was lifted up by the head off the ground and carried like a chicken out the door with the bandit.
 

The door slammed closed and the bolt was thrown and Bonita covered her ears to the terrible high-pitched screaming, but as usual it did not last long.

Pilar had never felt so filthy. She had ridden for ten hours in the hot sun and dust and was coated with disgusting layers of sweat and caked with the grime and the mud she had smeared all over herself for a disguise. She stank. The girl felt like a rotten vegetable and not even like a woman. She was strong of heart, had braved much the last day, but she was also female and her dirtiness buried her self-esteem. She could bear it no longer.

The deep creek lay ahead.

In her mind, she could already feel the cold, refreshing waters on her skin. It would only take five minutes. The men were eating, behind her in the shed, and would not discover her if she bathed fast. The girl threw a cautious glance over her shoulder and saw nobody had followed her. She was alone. Reaching the edge of the waters, she disrobed quickly behind a big rock, pulling her baggy shirt over her head and when she loosened the wrapped cloth over her bosom, her heavy breasts tumbled out. Stepping out of her pants, she tossed the foul-smelling discarded clothes into a heap behind the rock, and walked stark naked in the waist-deep water with a shuddering gasp of relief. Her flesh tingled as she dunked her head beneath the rippling surface, hair soaked, re-emerging and spitting water. The rush of the current felt good and cold against her breasts, and her big brown nipples crinkled like little pebbles. She scrubbed hard. Everywhere. With a desperate exhilaration, she used her hands to cleanse her face, her armpits, her stomach, the thick bristle between her legs and her buttocks, washing herself top to bottom. Soon her skin felt smooth, supple and voluptuous again. Pilar began to feel renewed, a flesh and blood girl once more, and the simple act of getting washed up cleared her mind and removed her dread along with the accumulated dirt. She stood up on the slippery rocks in water just above her knees and splashed herself with the creek runoff, shaking her head as her sopping hair smacked her neck. The dry desert heat felt good on her breasts and thighs, drying the warming cold water dripping down her naked body. She could stand here forever.

And that is when she saw him.

The giant they called Bodie.

Pilar’s rump had been turned to the trail back to the blacksmith’s shop and she had not seen or heard him come down. Now there he was just standing on the bank with the big fool lopsided grin on his lantern jaw, his eyes ogling her with unbridled lust. With a startled cry, Pilar crossed her arms over her exposed chest and covered her privates, turning her backside away from him, bent down in embarrassment to disguise her nudity—but he could see everything. To make matters worse, the girl slipped and lost her balance, taking her arms away from her body as she clambered up, so he saw her nude all over again. And that was when she saw the place where she had dropped her garments was empty. He was holding her clothes with a dirty smirk. She faced him and stood bare-assed and dripping. Her beautiful brown eyes flashed in alarm but she held the grinning cowboy’s gaze while he eyeballed her boldly up and down.
 

“
Por favor
,” she whispered.
 

He unbuckled his trousers.
 

She struggled to keep looking at his eyes.
 

He teasingly held the clothes out for her a few feet away and she had no choice but to remove her hand from her bosom.
 

“You shore are purty,” Bodie said.

This was it.

He would take her.

They would all take her.

Maybe at least they would kill the werewolves when they were finished.

“Bodie!” Tucker barked. Both Pilar and Bodie turned to see Tucker and Fix sitting on their horses, armed and ready to go. They had the Swede’s horse with them.

“Shit,” Bodie said.

“We got work,” said the leader.

“Man needs a little relaxation,” mumbled the giant cowboy.

“Mount up.”

“I was about to.”

“Your horse, idiot.”

With a petulant scowl of disappointment, Bodie tossed Pilar her clothes. He heaved a huge sigh, turned and stomped up the trail like a big baby to where his comrades sat on their horses. The girl quickly ducked behind a boulder on the shore and got dressed. The Swede swung into the saddle of his horse, buttoning his fly as they headed back up the trail. Tugging on her drawers and slipping her feet into her sandals, still dripping wet, the peasant girl took off in a run to catch up with the gunslingers before they rode down into the village. She got to the top of the arroyo back at the blacksmith’s shop right as the three riders were turning their horses around to shove off up the trail.
 

In the gap, Tucker reined his stallion around and blocked the Mexican from getting back on her horse. “Wait for us here and when we get the silver we’ll come back.” His eyes were hard but she guessed he was just looking out for her. This was the dangerous business of killing and was the whole reason she had brought professionals of their fearsome trade to this place. She knew nothing of gunplay, and he was right, she would just get in the way and what good would she be to her mother and sister dead.

“Good luck,” was all she said.

The peasant watched them ride out, her face bright with pure hope and faith.

Backs to her in their saddles, out of earshot of the girl behind them, the hard men shared a smirk.
 

“Good luck is right, because none of us got any intention of coming back,” Fix murmured.
 

“If or when we get any silver, we be long gone,” Bodie said.

“We got to get the silver first,” Tucker pointed out.
 

“That’s a fact,” said Fix.
 

The sun was high and brutally hot as the men rode up. The trail passed by the embankment where they had scouted the town, then widened as it turned into a downgrade leading to the western edge of the village. The three rode slow, their weapons close at hand, the only sounds the clop of hooves, occasional snort of their horses, tumble of dislodged stones and the squeak of saddle leather. They were on full alert, their eyes moving left and right in a clockwork scan. The time for killing had come, and this was what they were good at and all talk ceased, because as the adrenaline began to pump and their senses became sharp, the three were one. Gradually, the trail spilled out at the base of the valley and put them eye level with the first shacks of the place they had come to clean up.
 

The village lay ahead.

The gunfighters rode fearlessly down into the town and past the adobe huts and wood fence corrals of the settlement that was quiet as a cemetery. It was preternaturally silent. The three rode side by side in a flank formation. Then they saw movement. Five bandits rode their horses around the area, eyeballing them. The big hairy men in the loose-fitting clothes and cut-off vests were armed to the teeth in their dusty weathered saddles, their open shirts showing the coarse black hair on their unwashed chests. Swarming flies buzzed around them. Their horses seemed cowed and fearful of their owners, eyes wide with fear. Tucker, Bodie and Fix just kept riding, like nothing was happening. Five more bandits appeared as if out of nowhere. Now there were ten. The gunfighters rode on through the town, hands near their pistols and rifles, waiting for the banditos to make a move, but the slimy brigands just watched them curiously, and assembled. Tucker had seen enough wolves in his life to admit to himself these scum shared the same wary, head bobbing, unblinking way of regarding a man.
 

Bodie chuckled. “Wolves who walk like men, my ass. These are just plain old bandits, boys. But I can see how the villagers might’ve gotten that impression bein’ as these varmints are mangier than any coyotes I can recall.”

Fix clicked his teeth. “We don't need to waste the silver on bullets, that’d be too good for ’em.”

Tucker’s gaze moved left and right. “There’s sure a lot of ’em.”

Then all of a sudden the Jefe was right in front of them, straddling his horse and blocking their way. He was a huge, fat Mexican man of indeterminate age with long hair streaked with gray and ammunition belts crisscrossing his chest. He looked very strong despite his girth. “What are you doing, here,
Senors
?” He spoke in a gravelly sing song voice, grinning wide to reveal a full mouthful of gold teeth glinting in the sun.
 

“Just riding through,” Tucker said.

“You can ride lots of places, yet you are here,” said the Mexican.

“It’s a place as good as any.”

Tucker held the Jefe’s visceral gaze. Another bandito rode up. This one held himself to his saddle with just his powerful knees, because his hands were occupied gripping the naked ass of a nude village girl facing him in the saddle, his hands pumping her buttocks slowly and deeply up and down on his hips. He was not wearing pants. The unclad girl submitted passively to her rape, her body lacerated with bleeding cuts, sores and bruises from being scratched and chewed. Her bare breasts draped against his chest, arms hung at her sides, head limp on his shoulder, eyes wide and glazed, brutalized past caring.
 

Tucker, Bodie and Fix watched the spectacle in disgust, the true horror of the situation sinking in.
 

The bandit eyeballed them with a drooling grin as he finished with the girl, holding fistfuls of her bare butt, slapping her hips onto his harder and harder as he started to grunt. His thighs tightened, and veins in his neck bulged as he roared with release.
 

The gunfighters stared on in utter mortification, fingers tickling the stocks of their holstered pistols.
 

Holding their gaze lasciviously, the bandit slowly smiled, getting hard again inside the girl. Holding her limp thighs, he started humping her in the saddle slowly and lustfully all over again. He might as well have been screwing a corpse.

The three gunslingers regarded one another with cold murder.

The Jefe grinned at them with a wide mouth of gold teeth. “Come with us, amigos. Drink. Be friendly.” He smelled like a dog. The cowboys wrinkled their nose at his stench. “I am Mosca. These are my men. This is Calderon. He is my second.”

Tucker kept his eyes on the bandits who now surrounded them on all sides, tightening his horse up next to Fix and Bodie's saddles. Leaning in, he scratched his nose and whispered, “I savvy we get inside that church, see if that silver is there at all and this ain’t no big goose chase.”