The Bells of El Diablo Read Online Free PDF Page A

the first time after three long years of bloody war, after three long years of cold, efficient killing.
    His own brother, little Willie, lay before him dying from wounds that James himself had inflicted!
    Willie was quivering. James pushed himself up higher on his elbow and looked into Willie’s young face. No, he was not quivering. He was laughing, lips stretched back from his teeth, tears running down from his single blue eye. Then, suddenly, Willie Dunn pushed up on his own elbow and leaned forward, coughing raucously, dark blood spitting from his mouth and both nostrils.
    James’s blood ran cold. He’d punctured one of Willie’s lungs.
    “Damn near got the war won,” Willie said, still laughing bizarrely, “and my dear old grayback brother goes and kills me!”
    Someone called James’s name. The shout sailed out over the creek and across the canyon, echoing. James had recognized the voice. “Crosseye, over here!”
    “Crosseye?” Willie looked up at him, frowning. “You gotta be joshin’? He’s with
you
?”
    “What’d you think—he’d join the Union? Just like me—and
you
—he was born a Southerner.”
    “Oh, it doesn’t surprise me ole Crosseye signed up with ole Jeff Davis. Just like you, he didn’t want no Yankee tellin’ him what he could or couldn’t do—no, not even when it came to using men as
slaves
! I’m justsurprised the old bastard’s with
you
—
here
…not to mention still alive.”
    “Nothin’ can kill that old bastard. You know that.”
    “Not bears, not Injuns…” Willie was talking memories now, memories he shared with his older brother while a fond look of reflection passed fleetingly across his otherwise pain-racked eye. “Not the whole Union army!”
    James called for their mutual friend again.
    “Jimmy?” came Crosseye’s echoing shout, louder this time. “Where you at, boy?”
    “Here!”
    Panicking at the thought of his brother dying by his own hand, James pushed his brother down flat once more and closed his hands over the two ragged holes in Willie’s upper chest. Willie screamed and kicked a low-heeled cavalry boot. “I’m finished, you bastard! You killed me!”
    Two men came scrambling through the brush, stumbling down the bank and grabbing dogwood and oak branches to break their falls. The first man was stocky and bull-legged, and his battered, broad-brimmed hat hung down his back by a leather thong, exposing the thin, red-gray hair curling close against his domelike head. The second man was younger—Jackie Baker from Kentucky. Both men held long Enfield muskets in their hands, and their canvas haversacks flopped down their sides from leather lanyards. Their uniforms, like those of most of the Confederate soldiers, were nearly rags, and their wash-worn underwear shone through in scores of places.
    Crosseye moved down the slope and stopped fifteen feet away from James and Willie, scowling down at the younger Dunn.
    “Hold on there, Jimmy,” Crosseye said, bringing his rifle up. “One left, eh? Well, not for long, no, sir!”
    James snapped a look at Crosseye Reeves, who’d been a sharecropper back at the Dunns’ Seven Oaks Plantation and a mentor in the art of woodsmanship to both James and Willie—against their mother’s wishes, of course. Softly, James said, “Put it down, old man. It’s Willie.”
    Crosseye lowered the Enfield from his craggy, patch-bearded cheek, narrowing the eye that did not wander. “Huh?”
    “Gotta get him back up to the camp. Get him by a fire.”
    Crosseye moved slowly down the slope, followed by Jackie Baker. The two other surviving members of Dunn’s Raiders were just now running down out of the forest. They were Cletus Moon and Moss Cline. Both men slowed when they saw James crouched over the fallen federal soldier, and came down cautiously, puzzled expressions on their gaunt, haggard faces, both men, like Jackie Baker, not yet twenty but having seen enough killing to last them twenty lifetimes.
    James stood