The Bells of El Diablo Read Online Free PDF Page B

pull through.
    A horse nickered to James’s left. He could see the Raiders’ seven mounts tied to a picket line there, and the stolen cannon just below the ridge. Straight ahead of him, the rocks shone pale in the darkness. He found the hollow beyond which lay the black entrance of a cave, and stumbling painfully over obstacles in the darkness, he found his way into the cave and set Willie down, leaning him back gently against the cave’s wall.
    “I’ll get a fire goin’, Willie.”
    His brother said nothing. James lowered his head to his brother’s, placed his hand on Willie’s forehead. He couldn’t hear him breathing. James’s heart thumped fearfully.
    He pressed his hand more tightly against his brother’s cold, clammy forehead. “Willie?”
    The young soldier rasped, convulsed, then drew a ragged breath. “James?”
    “I’m gonna get a fire goin’, Willie. Gonna get you warm.”
    “Don’t blame yourself, James.”
    “Shut up, Willie.”
    James moved back out of the cave and found where his clothes were piled near where Billy Krieg’s and Lawrence’s were also piled, barely visible in the darkness. The four other Raiders were moving up the slope through the pines.
    “One o’ you fellas wanna get a fire goin’?” James said.
    They all four stopped near him, and he could see their incredulous scowls even in the darkness. They thought he’d gone off his nut. Crosseye said, “With a supply train headed this way, Jimmy? You crazy?”
    James shook his head as he pulled his long-handles up his legs, his body having dried, leaving uncomfortable, crusted patches of mud on his arms, chest, and thighs. It was caked between his toes. “No one’s comin’, Crosseye. It was an ambush.”
    “
What?
”
    James’s anger exploded like pent-up steam in an overheated locomotive. “One of you get a goddamn fire goin’, goddamnit! Gather wood and build a big one!”
    Three of the men jumped back with a start, wary of James’s temper. Crosseye, somewhere in his forties though he’d never revealed his true age to anyone, even James, whom he’d practically raised back at Seven Oaks, studied the younger man dubiously. He scratched the back of his head under his broad-brimmed hat with its front brim pinned to the crown, then turned to the others. “You heard the lieutenant, ya damn junipers! Gather wood and start a fire!”

Chapter 4
    When James had stomped into his worn boots, he shrugged into his Confederate-gray tunic—or what was left of it. It virtually hung in ribbons on him. Crosseye stood before him, head turned toward the black hole of the cave. “You sure that’s him, Jimmy?”
    “I’d know my own brother, wouldn’t I?”
    “Well, I’ll be a sober shoat,” Crosseye said, raking a thumbnail down his beard. “Never thought I’d see that boy again. Figured the Union had done swallowed him up. Why’d they spit him out here?”
    “To kill us. It was a trap.”
    “Figure that!” Crosseye’s slightly high-pitched raspy voice sounded sad. “I remember when that boy was no higher than a tit on a mama coon.”
    James walked into the cave, let his eyes adjust to the darkness once more, then walked over to his brother’s vague image slouched against the wall. Willie was breathing softly, raspily. James quickly gathered stones littering the cave’s floor and arranged them into a circle. When Moss and Cletus had each deposited armloads of relatively dry wood in the middle of the caveand coaxed a small fire to life in James’s ring, the Confederate lieutenant fetched his haversack and canteen. The flames danced wan orange light and shadows across the cavern’s uneven stone walls.
    When he had shoved a relatively clean neckerchief into the largest of his brother’s two wounds—the lesser one appeared to have stopped bleeding—James tried to get him to drink, but Willie only turned his head away, coughing. Sweat shone like beads of molten gold on his forehead and cheeks carpeted in a fine, blond