The Bells of El Diablo Read Online Free

slithered from the maw of the barrel, above the long loading tube.
    “That damned Yankee rifle,” as the saying went, “that they load on Sunday and shoot all week!”
    A Henry. He’d heard about them but had never had the pleasure of seeing one before.
    Boots thudded behind James. He swung around, straightening, to see several shadows running down off the pale road dropping out of the wooded mountainside and onto the bridge, dark blue capes buffeting like bat wings in the muddy darkness. The young Confederate lieutenant levered a round into the Henry’s breech, vaguely appreciating the smooth, assured sound of the action, and fired the gun quickly from his right hip. He grinned devilishly as he levered and fired, levered and fired, until five brass cartridges had clinked to the wooden boards behind him.
    The three soldiers who’d been running toward him lay howling and writhing while a fourth wheeled and ran back up the road a ways before darting into the woods on its right side.
    James curled his upper lip in a mocking grin.
    Something sliced across his left arm, and he realized the men on the shore were firing at him while a few were running back up toward the bridge behind him—scurrying shadows in the inky night. The rifles boomed and popped and the balls screeched around him, several hammering into the bridge rail before him. Another man was shooting from the bridge’s far side, on the opposite shore of the creek from where James and his men had entered it.
    James racked another shell—so easily!—into the Henry’s chamber, and returned fire on the man shooting from the bridge’s far end and whom the lieutenant figured was probably the man who’d first started throwing lead at him and Coker. He fired three shots in the rifleman’s direction but couldn’t tell if he’d hit anything except for the bridge rail, as the dark woods formed a stygian backdrop.
    James then racked another shell, hoping he had a full tube of cartridges, and triggered round after round at the shore of the creek to his right, where most of the soldiers had gathered to throw lead in Coker’s direction. The Confederate was mildly surprised they hadn’t hit the dynamite and blown the bridge. Even a near shot would cause those sensitive caps to ignite.
    Or had they killed Lawrence before he could place the bundles against the pylons?
    As the cartridges clinked around his bare feet, heheard men yelp and howl and curse, and several silhouettes dropped under his deadly aim. When he spied no more movement along the shore, he slid his attention to the south end of the bridge, saw the flash of two rifles, heard the slugs hammering the bridge rails on either side of him.
    He watched with satisfaction as two more figures went down before the Henry’s hammer pinged on an empty chamber. He gritted his teeth against a sharp, burning pain in his right side, and realized he’d been hit. When had that happened? He sloughed it off—far from the first of his many wounds since the beginning of the war….
    Dropping the Henry, he scrambled toward the first man he’d shot on the bridge and slid the man’s Colt Navy .44 from the dead captain’s holster.
    Two rifles were still barking at him, spitting small javelins of flame. Balls sizzled around him, skidded off the wooden floor of the bridge, and pounded the rails. One clipped his ankle. He cocked the .44, hoping the charge hadn’t been fouled by the drizzle, and dropped to a knee, raising the pistol straight out from his right shoulder. The first shot sputtered a hair but still threw the ball. The second time he pulled the trigger, there was only a
thwisht!
sound.
    The damn cap was wet….
    James heard the thuds of running feet, saw a silhouetted figure running toward him. The federal triggered his own pistol, and James flinched as the bullet screeched off the bridge about one foot to his right. He heard a click as the approaching soldier triggered his pistol on an empty or fouled