by Wesley Ellis
“No,” Jessie said calmly, though her heart was beginning to hammer. After Carlos, who was dead, and Mono himself, Arturo was the one she feared the most. There was something unstable in his eyes, as if lurking devils lived there.
“No, thank you.”
“Drink when I tell you, gringa,” Arturo said, gripping Jessie’s shoulder. Arturo’s eyes had gotten darker, the devils seemed nearer to the surface. In his world, in Mono’s world, a prisoner, especially a woman, did what she was told to do. “You heard me.”
“Leave her alone, Arturo.”
Arturo’s head snapped around. Diego Cardero stood behind him, smiling. His thumbs were hooked into his black, cartridge-studded gunbelt—very casually his hands rested there, very close to his guns.
“Go away, Diego, this isn’t your damned business.”
“It sure is,” Diego said as casually as before. “Mono said to watch her; I’m watching her.”
“Watch her. What do I care? Why can’t she take a drink?” Arturo asked.
“She doesn’t want to,” Diego said reasonably.
“I don’t give a damn what she wants.” Arturo flung his half-empty bottle of tequila against the adobe wall of the cantina; it shattered, showering a comer table with glass and liquor. No one so much as looked around.
“She doesn’t want to drink,” Diego repeated.
“It won’t hurt her. I can’t do anything to her that will lessen her worth. Don Alejandro will still pay if she’s a little bit drunk, a little bit screwed, eh?”
“Go on,” was all Diego Cardero said, tilting his head no more than an inch. There was menace in those two words. Arturo understood very well. Diego Cardero’s own devils revealed themselves briefly in his liquid eyes. “Leave her alone now.”
Arturo rose and for a minute Jessie thought there was going to be trouble as the lanky bandit stood poised before Diego Cardero, his hand near his own holstered Colt. After a long, taut minute, however, Arturo merely slunk away, glancing back like a dog, beaten and resentful.
Jessica Starbuck let out a breath of relief. “Thank you,” she said to Diego.
The bandit just nodded, reversed a wooden chair, and sat down, arms folded on its back. “I told you nothing would happen to you.”
“This time. What happens when they all get drunk? What happens if it’s Mono who takes a notion? He wasn’t talking about keeping me around for polite conversation, you know.”
“I know.” Diego Cardero lifted his eyes to where Mono stood, one arm around Halcón, the other hand holding a bottle of tequila. The level in that bottle, in all the bottles, was rapidly lowering. They were unpredictable, these men. They had killed, all of them; few of them seemed to have a fear of death themselves. Perhaps because their lives were so empty except for the violence and blood, they had no real love of life.
Mono led them because he was the most savage of all. He had protected Jessica so far, but that was merely a whim, or perhaps some echo of an admonition to be kind to women.
Mono did exactly as he wished, however, and when he was drunk, he wished to do evil. He had killed women before. He had killed his friends over a two-peso bet for the hell of it and stood over their bodies, mocking them and spitting on them.
“What the hell are you doing with these people, Diego?” Jessica asked.
“I told you, I am a bandit.”
“That’s even too dignified a word for what Mono and his men are. Coyotes... no, that’s an insult to that animal, isn’t it? Maybe there is no word to fit them.”
“And me?” Diego asked with a bright smile.
“And you what?”
“Am I a thing to you, Jessica Starbuck?” the bandit asked.
“What you are, Diego, I still don’t know. You have a chance to show me now, don’t you?”
“To show you?” The smile was as bright as ever, but the eyes narrowed slightly.
“You could help Ki and me out of this.”
“That is one thing I cannot do,” Diego said. The smile faded now.
“But—”
“It is the one thing I cannot do, Jessica. I am sorry, believe me.”
She looked into his eyes, her heart filled with fury. She looked and the funny thing was she did believe him. She believed that he was sorry, believed that he wanted to help, believed he could not.
“All right,” she said. “We know where we stand now.”
Their eyes held for a minute longer and then Jessica heard the front door of the cantina open. A small boy in shabby clothing peered in and then raced away. Behind him came a three-man mariachi band. They wore black, and their jackets and sombreros were ornately decorated with gold thread.
They looked as if they belonged in prison stripes. They moved slowly, cautiously, into the cantina like convicts. They were scared stiff.
“Music!” Mono boomed. “Come in, come in mu chachos! Sanchez, give these three crows tequila. Play, my friends, play!”
They played from a small platform, and although their fingers were lively and bright, their faces were frozen in petrified unease. They knew Mono too well.
Jessica remained in her chair, watching, listening to the drunken boasts and the apparently often repeated stories. Someone had had his throat cut; someone had had her skirts lifted and, while she was held down, raped by six of the bandits. An Indian slave had given them trouble and been set afire.
Diego was still there, sitting silently and watching.
“Bastard tried to cut me,” Miguel was saying, “I guess we taught him. Painted him with pitch and stuck a torch to him... ran off across the desert like a great firefly until we shot him.”
“Now,” Jessica Starbuck said to Diego, “now, I think I would like just a little tequila.”
From somewhere in the back Arturo appeared, dragging someone behind him.
She was young and had dark eyes and full breasts. She wore a striped skirt and a white blouse that accented smooth dark shoulders.
“Maria!” Sanchez shouted. The cantina owner leaned against the bar rigidly like a man suffering apoplexy.
“Your daughter is back,” Arturo said triumphantly. “Back so soon from Dos Caballos and visiting her aunt. Now she can visit with us, no? Visit with Arturo and his friends and join the party.”
Sanchez shook his head heavily, despairingly. The girl was fiery and strong. Twisting free of Arturo’s grip, she slapped away his hands. When he caught her by the wrist, she sunk her teeth into his arm, and the bandit yelped in pain. Mono and the others laughed, but there was no amusement in Arturo’s eyes. He slapped the girl viciously, and she sat down hard on the floor, blood trickling from her mouth and staining her white blouse crimson.
“Bastard,” she snarled, “filthy cabrón.”
Arturo drew back his boot as if he were set to kick her, but Diego said sharply, “No!”
Arturo’s eyes shifted to Diego, those devil-filled eyes that now were killing eyes.
“Don’t tell me what to do, Cardero,” Arturo said. “You stood against me once today already. Don’t tell me what to do about this little slut. I will kick her teeth in if I wish and you will say nothing... or you will die.”
Diego’s hands slowly lowered to be nearer his guns. Arturo, standing over the girl who sat spraddle-legged on the floor, turned slightly to face Diego. It took Mono to break it up.
“Come on, Arturo!” the bearded giant shouted. “Drink with us. If you kick the girl’s teeth out, she will not look so beautiful, eh? Not look like something a man would want to use. Musicians, what are you standing around for? Play for us! Now!”
Mono drew one of his own pistols, fired into the wall beside the bandstand, and laughed uproariously as the mariachis scrambled for their instruments and began frantically and unhappily to play a bright tune.
Arturo turned away from Diego, taking a last warning glance at the tall man. The girl, Maria, still sat on the floor, her lips moving in a soundless curse until Diego helped her up.
She slapped his ha
nds away as well and went behind the bar to help her father serve the thirsty bandidos. Outside somewhere a shot was fired and a gleeful yell went up. Mono, staggering slightly now, laughed again and called for another bottle.
Jessica Starbuck sat in a hard wooden chair, watching. It was going to be a long, long night.
Chapter 6
The night passed slowly, painfully. Ki glowered at the darkness, needing to fight back against it. Beyond the door, the drunken celebration continued.
Ki had examined the room he was locked in, looking for some way out. There was none—none but the heavy door that was barred shut. Now there was nothing left to do but sit and wait—wait for Mono and his men to finish their drinking, gambling, and fighting.
Then perhaps someone would decide it was too much trouble after all to watch Ki and cut his head off. And Jessica—that was the part that hurt, that caused a knot of anguish to build in Ki’s stomach. She was out there with that mob of cutthroats.
Footsteps, light and rapid, sounded beyond the door and Ki’s eyes lifted. He moved to the wall near the door and waited, his body tensing. His wrists were still tied, but his hands were still effective weapons. He weighed his chances quickly and decided he had no real hope of making an escape. Slowly he let his body relax.
The door swung open and Ki stepped back.
The woman with the tray entered and Ki blinked in surprise. Young, darkly beautiful with black eyes, full breasts, and a wide slash of a mouth, she entered the dark room, looking around. Behind her in the lamplit corridor, Halcón stood with a rifle.
It was the Indian who spoke. “Better eat. Mono still wants you alive.”
Halcón appeared indifferent to Ki’s life or death. The girl had moved across the room, head down, to place the tray with its steaming frijoles, tortillas, and rice on the low shelf against the wall.
She passed Ki again, her dark eyes lifting to his and briefly sharing Ki’s anger. Then she walked out, head down once more. Halcón kicked the door shut and the darkness returned. Ki heard the footsteps receding and he walked to the tray of food.
He ate without appetite, stared at the gloom surrounding him, and let his thoughts run in endless futile circles. There was no escape. None.
In the cantina the band played on. They had been at it for four hours, their fingers cramped and their voices now hoarse. Mono strode about the cantina, kicking over tables and shouting at the ceiling, his eyes red and glazed.
Jessica Starbuck sat alone. Now and then her eyes met Diego‘s, but they communicated nothing, nothing but vague contempt for this man who had promised no harm would come to her but had said that he could not help her escape. Jessica made no sense out of that, and it angered her, angered her almost as much as the knowledge that she still liked this man, wanted him.
“I want a woman!” It was Arturo who suddenly shouted this in a voice audible above the crash of tables and the mariachi band.
“Go get one.” Miguel, boots propped up on a table, encouraged him. “And bring me one as well.”
“Don’t think I won’t. Where the hell’s Sanchez’s daughter?”
Behind the counter, Sanchez winced visibly and paled.
“Gone,” Sanchez said, but no one seemed to hear him.
“Come on.” Miguel got to his feet unsteadily. His sombrero hung by its string down his back. His crossed pistols rode low on his thighs. “Let’s go out and get some women.”
“Plenty of them,” the bandit named José shouted.
Mono said nothing. He watched his men without apparent interest. They wanted women; let them have them. Diego was smiling and smoking a cigar, his long legs crossed. Jessica could have killed him at that moment.
Miguel, José, and Arturo eventually staggered out the door to catcalls and encouragement from the other bandidos. The green cantina door stood open. Smoke seeped out into the night. Jessica saw the three men stumble toward the street and then they were gone.
Two bandits had begun a knife-throwing contest. Jessica watched them, listened to them, and watched the open door. She thought of making a desperate dash for it, but even as she thought that, she recognized the sheer futility of it. Eight bandidos remained in the cantina and there was just no way she was going to make it to the door and freedom.
“Oh, Ki,” she said under her breath, “we’ve really gotten ourselves into it this time.”
The noise and roughhousing went on. One of the bandits was stabbed in the hand, and Mono broke that skirmish up before it got deadly.
Miguel was back within a half hour. He was dragging someone behind him—a petrified, struggling girl of fifteen or so, her eyes wild with terror. Miguel was laughing.
“Here’s one at least.”
“Not quite ripe, is she?”
Miguel’s hands ran across the girl’s body and he smiled nastily. “She’s ripe. She’s ready.”
“Leave her alone.” The voice was Jessica‘s, sounding hoarse and furious. Miguel turned to look at her, mock fear on his dark face.
“Oh, so now the gringa shows fire, too.”
Miguel started toward her. There was no telling what his intentions were, but Diego Cardero halted him. He simply recrossed his legs, rested his hand near his sidearm, and shook his head. Miguel started to snarl something, grinned instead, and said to the girl, “Come on, little one, let’s see if you can dance.”
Mono applauded that idea. “Dance! By all means! Mariachis, why have you stopped playing? The little one here wants to dance for us.”
The girl was shoved to the center of the cantina floor. Chairs and tables were thrown aside for her, clearing an area.
She stood immobilized, her lips trembling as the band began to play.
“Well, dance, damn you!” Miguel shouted and the girl began to stamp her feet, to move around the floor, her face an iron mask, her hands clapping rhythmically.
“Yes, yes!” It was Arturo who did the shouting from the doorway. He and José had returned with a prize of their own, a middle-aged woman in black. She had a little too much weight, but there was still enough youth packed into her body to interest the bandidos. She had worn her hair pinned up, but now it hung in strands on one side. The top of her dress had been ripped open. There were long red scratches on the side of Arturo’s face.
“You dance too, fat one.”
“You kiss the devil!” she spat.
“Dance or go outside with me again,” Arturo said with a slow, leering grin.
“Pigs,” the older woman said, “all of you are pigs.” But she went to the center of the floor and began a slow defiant dance.
The musicians had just finished the first number when the door to the cantina burst open. A peon, a small man with a wilted straw sombrero and a face as dark as mahogany, stepped inside.
“My wife,” he said very slowly, very softly.
Mono’s massive head slowly turned toward the little man. There was wine and tequila in Mono’s tangled beard. His eyes glittered a little. Jessica felt her hands tighten on the arms of the chair.
“Señor?” Mono inquired softly.
“That is my wife, señor,” the little man said. The older woman had started forward toward him, but Arturo had yanked her back roughly.
“Is it now? Is she a good wife?”
“Yes, she is a good wife.”
“Good to take to bed?” Mono asked with a casual gesture.
“She is a good woman. This is not the place for her.”
“You know who I am?” Mono asked.
“I know who you are, Mono. Everyone in San Ignacio knows who you are.”
“Bueno.” Mono smiled indulgently. “Then tell the devil hello for me.”
His gun had been on his lap. Now he aimed and fired. Thunder filled the room as Mono’s Colt spat flame. The bullet hit the peon in the face, toppling him and spattering the wall behind him with blood. The woman screamed. Arturo laughed out loud at Mono’s little joke.
“You bastards,” Jessica said. Whether they heard h
er or not, no one looked at her—no one but Diego Cardero who was still smoking, still appearing unruffled by any of this. Jessica glanced at him once, her eyes cutting, and then she turned her head away.
“Get that thing out of here,” Mono commanded. “And dance! Who told you to stop dancing?” He fired again, a bullet punching through the fine polished wood of a guitar. “Sing, dance, drink. The night is young and we mean to fill it with pleasure!”
The sound of the shot had reached into Ki’s cell. His head came up, his mind filling with all sorts of possibilities as to the shot’s meaning. There had been other random shots throughout the evening, but this one had somehow sounded different. It had carried an echo of death.
Ki rose and paced the room again. He felt helpless and he despised the feeling. He was a man who was used to directing the course of his own fate with his two good hands and his mind. This, not seeing, not knowing, not having any useful course of action, was nearly insufferable.
Outside the door Ki heard a quick scuffling sound, a muted groan. He spun that way, waiting, expecting anything but what he saw next.
The door opened slowly and the woman named Maria and who had brought his food stood there, backlighted by the lantern. Behind her on the floor lay Halcón.
“Hurry,” she said impatiently. She gestured toward the corridor, and Ki, ready to take almost any chance no matter how small, followed her quickly.
He stepped over Halcón who lay still, a huge iron skillet beside him on the floor, and followed the girl down the corridor in the opposite direction from the cantina.
The girl had Halcón’s pistol in her hand. She slipped it to Ki who tucked it away almost carelessly behind his belt. “Here,” she hissed.
As Ki waited, she opened a back door, peered out into the night, and nodded her head. Ki went after her into the starlit darkness beyond the door. Muffled curses, shouts, whistles, music followed them and then were shut off as the door closed.
“Run now,” Maria whispered.
“No.” Ki stood before the much shorter young woman, rubbing his wrists.
“Run or they will kill you. I intend to run.”
“You should,” Ki responded. “Take this pistol if you want it.”