Free The Guns of Santa Sangre by Eric Red Page A

the saddles was raked with four ragged claw marks that had cut deep into the leather, shredding and nearly shearing it in half. The outpost had clearly been torched from the inside, and Bodie kicked away a broken melted kerosene lamp that may have been the cause. There was no sign of life, no movement at all. Just the three figures of the heavily armed gunfighters coming at it on three sides, pistols at the ready, their gunbarrels following their noses. The silence was oppressive, the opposite of sound, a vacuum that felt like it sucked them all in. The men moved steadily forward in a low crouch and passed the corral when they were assailed by a sudden overpowering stench.
    Behind the fence, the bleached white skeletons of six dead horses lay in a heaping pile on the ground, their skulls and leg bones torn completely off their bodies, and rib cages broken open to reveal open black holes of their gut cavities. Long, dragging tears of teeth and claw marks marred their skeletal remains. Clouds of flies swarmed in the eyes and mouths of the dead horses’ craniums. Globular eye sockets gaped as if from the unimaginable agony of the horrific way they died.  
    “They didn’t have to kill them horses,” growled Fix, who hated cruelty to animals though he didn’t admit it.
    “They didn’t just kill them. They scourged them,” observed Tucker. “You boys know any Injun tribes this area do that, a warning mebbe?”
    The stretched equine jawbones and jutting teeth were contorted in death’s head grimaces. Some of their dried guts hung draped from the rails of the paddock. The stench of old rot and bile was overpowering.
    “None I ever heard of. And this ain’t Injun land.”
    “Could be a war party,” added Bodie.
    “I don’t know what the hell this is. Exceptin’ that this is Mexico.”
    They hunkered by the edge of the corral abattoir and considered the porch to the outpost a few paces ahead. Huge streaks of black char rose up the adobe walls by the splashes of clotted blood as if buckets of gore had been tossed against the structure. The roof beams were incinerated.  
    Tucker looked back and saw the peasant girl riding closer after her initial trepidation. The look on her face was not as frightened as he would have expected from a plain and simple girl, it was like she had seen this all before.  
    “Stay back,” he called to her.
    Shaking her head, the peasant warily climbed off her horse and followed the men as they approached the ominous stagecoach junction. The doors and windows were black and foreboding like the sockets of a skull.
    Death was here.
    Movement in the doorway darkness caused the three gunfighters to raise their weapons, ready to fire.  
    With a bitter caw, five filthy buzzards exploded out the open door and beat a sickening ascent into the searing bleached sky.  
    The gunslingers entered the outpost, guns leveled.
    Inside the structure, Tucker and Bodie stared at what lay before them in raw horror and these men had seen it all. Even Fix’s eyes bugged out of his head, finger sweaty on his trigger. The large room was dark and gloomy, bright sunlight cutting through the musty air in big shafts that revealed the inside of the building was washed floor to roof with clotted blood. Countless flies were stuck to the dried gore, wings twitching. The decayed skeletons of several people dangled from ropes on the ceiling, hung from their feet, bones rattling in the dry breeze. Swarming flies buzzed.
    “Hellfire,” Fix whispered.
    The cowboys covered their noses with their kerchiefs, wincing at the horrible stench, their squinty eyes regarding the ghastly scene, then each other.  
    Several piles of bones were assembled around the dirt floor. These people had been passengers, waiting for the stage but meeting up with something else instead. The skulls and femurs were immediately recognizable as human. The skeletons had been gnawed clean, and those tidy piles were neat, deliberate. Clothes were heaped in