by Wesley Ellis
“Is it safe?” Maria asked.
“If you mean will they hurt me—no. If you are asking if they will realize where I have come from, I don’t think so. I have another way to go... a way which, if you will excuse me, for our own safety no one not in my order must know about. If you would perhaps turn your backs.”
Ki glanced at Jessie, shrugged, and turned away. They heard a small sound, rasping and hollow, and then the friar was gone. They turned to face the empty chamber.
“Very useful,” Ki murmured. He had seen such things many times in Oriental temples. The monks there had also had cause to conceal themselves at times. And from time to time to conceal a wandering fugitive warrior.
“You can’t let this woman talk you into fighting Don Alejandro,” Maria said, but she drew no response from Ki. She took his arms and turned him to face her. “It is death to do battle with him. He has more soldiers than Mono, although it is said that Mono can call a hundred men to him anytime he wishes. Don Alejandro has a virtual army and he keeps them around him.”
“What will be will be,” Ki said, an answer Maria found flippant and distinctly unsatisfying.
“If I have to,” Jessica Starbuck said, “I can find some pretty good fighting men of my own. Don Alejandro can’t hide behind his army.”
“And I thought I was a strong-willed woman,” Maria Sanchez said with an exasperated sigh. “For now, however, Don Alejandro does not matter, does he? We are trapped by a very small and very violent army. Mono is up there and he will find us. It is a dream even to think we can slip away into the darkness. He will find us in time. He will find us and kill us—unless we elect to remain here, to live like moles the rest of our lives.”
Maria sounded just a little hysterical. That was understandable; the past day and night had been enough to strain anyone’s nerves.
Unfortunately, she was right about the main point. They were trapped and it was unlikely they were going to slip out and cross the desert without being spotted by Mono. Since Ki had no intention whatever of living like a mole the rest of his life, there was only one option left—a frightening option.
They were going to have to take the war to Mono and finish the bandit gang once and for all.
Chapter 9
It was dark outside by the time the friar finally returned to Jessica, Maria, and Ki. He simply inclined his head and they followed him up the stairs to the church proper.
It lay in ruins. The pews had been tipped over, the altar cloths and draperies scattered, a great wooden cross torn down.
“Savages,” the friar said very softly but with an emotion that bordered on outright anger. “This is the kind of man Mono is. Is he a man?”
“I’m sorry,” Jessica said. “I’ll pay for this damage.”
“Why should you pay?” he asked in surprise. “Is it your doing?”
“In a way. Besides, I’ve got the money to do it.”
The friar shrugged as if to say, whatever pleases you. He stopped, picked up a small item of cloth, and kissed it, crossing himself.
“We can eat in the rectory,” Brother Joseph said. “The gates are closed outside and we have watchers in the bell tower. Excuse the appearance of my chambers.”
Mono had done a job on the friar’s apartment as well. Nevertheless, the table had been set with simple food and they sat to eat, the friar saying a brief grace.
The meal was short, silent, flavorful. A young man in white served, bowing to Brother Joseph each time he neared the table. There was tea after dinner, and during that Ki and Jessica told the friar and a fascinated Maria about the cartel and Don Alejandro as Brecht was calling himself.
“It is nearly hard to believe,” Brother Joseph said.
“That there are greedy men out there, unscrupulous men? That there are and always will be forces trying to siphon off the wealth of America?” Jessica shook her head. “It’s true, all of it. It’s only the scope of the cartel’s operations that encourages disbelief.”
“Slavery,” the friar said, “I thought we had done away with that. Is it so profitable?”
“If it wasn‘t,” Ki pointed out, “it wouldn’t have flourished for so long in every nation in the world. A lifetime of labor from a man or woman without the expense of wages—yes, it’s worth it; yes, it continues in parts of Mexico. Don Alejandro is behind a large part of it, which is to say the cartel is behind it. Perhaps this, more than an urge for vengeance, is behind Jessica’s insistence that we must crush this man.”
The friar looked to Jessica who might have added more if the door behind her hadn’t suddenly opened. A small, bedraggled Mexican, sombrero in hand, rushed in.
“What is it, Domingo?” the friar asked.
The little man was breathless. “The town—Mono is destroying it. Burning it. Breaking it up.”
The friar’s heavy chair screeched across the tile floor as he hurriedly rose. He walked quickly toward the outer door, Jessie and Ki following in his tracks.
Outside, against the night sky, they could see the red glow of fire, the accompanying smoke. The friar said something under his breath that didn’t sound particularly holy. They climbed to a parapet that ran around the bell tower and stood looking down on the pueblo of San Ignacio.
There were three different fires, one of them raging out of control in the direction of Femando’s house. Two or three men rode their horses down a street, guns firing. Someone screamed. The cantina was ablaze with light as was the general store, apparently broken into and now being ransacked.
“Animals,” the friar said. “Animals!”
“What started this?” Ki asked Domingo.
“What? You, señor. You and the lady. Mono wants you and he says the town will be destroyed if you are not given up.”
“Domingo ...” the friar began to warn the man.
“Don’t worry. I will tell no one where they are. But after a while, will Mono not guess?”
“We’ll go, Ki,” Jessica said abruptly.
“Yes.”
The friar was the one to object. “Go where? How? Look down there near the gates. One of the bandidos in the shadows. I have no horses for you now, and to try obtaining them would certainly let Mono know where you are.”
“And if we don’t go, they’re going to destroy the town,” Jessie said.
“And after you are gone,” the friar commented, “will Mono know that you are gone? Will he cease his persecution of San Ignacio? I think not. He will destroy us for having let you go. There is no option but for you to stay hidden.”
“Or to turn them over,” Domingo said. His voice was far from harsh; there was only a sadness and a little fear perhaps in his voice. “Turn them over to Mono.”
“To be killed!” The friar asked, “To have their heads cut off? Even then, Domingo, will Mono stop this warfare against our people? He is in a savage temper. San Ignacio would not be the first town he obliterated.”
Ki said, “Then we have only my option.”
“What option is that?” the friar asked.
“Fighting.” Ki turned his dark, firelit eyes to the friar. “Fighting Mono, finishing him before he can finish the town—killing innocent people, raping, looting.”
“And this you think you can do alone?” Brother Joseph asked incredulously.
“Alone?” Ki looked to the fire. “No, I do not think we can do it alone. We need allies, weapons ...”
“Will I do?” the voice from behind them asked. Turning, Jessica and Ki saw Diego Cardero, smiling as usual and smoking a thin cigar as usual. In his hand was a small chamois sack. “Will these help?”
He tossed the sack to Ki who caught it and opened it with curiosity, with suspicion. Inside were his shuriken, his deadly throwing stars.
“Where did you get these?” Ki demanded.
“From Carlos.” Cardero leaned against the wall behind him, blowing blue smoke skyward.
Ki put the throwing stars away as Jessica stood staring at Diego Cardero who was still tilted lazily against the wall. W
here had he come from? How had he gotten in and why?
“Now you have weapons,” Diego said, “such as they are—I can’t understand what you do with those things myself. And you need allies. Allow me to offer my services.”
“The services of a bandit?” Jessica said.
“Yes, the services of a bandit,” Diego said. “Perhaps a bandit is what you need to combat a bandit.”
“Perhaps.” Jessie was suspicious. Still, at some deeper, indefinable depth, she trusted Diego Cardero.
“May we ask,” Brother Joseph said, “why it is you wish to help us at all, Diego Cardero? You are Cardero, are you not?”
Diego bowed from the neck—a small, nearly mocking gesture. “I am he. As to why, it is simple. Your enemies are mine.”
“You rode with Mono!”
Diego shrugged and flipped his cigar away into the darkness where it fell with a shower of sparks.
“I rode with him because he was a key to something I wanted.”
“To what?” Ki asked.
“To Don Alejandro. You see, Jessica, that was why I could not release you—I wanted to be there when Mono delivered you to Don Alejandro. I wanted to have a way into his confidence, a way past his gates.”
“And then what?” she asked.
“And then,” Cardero said, “I would have killed him.”
“Why?”
Diego told them. “Do you know what I am? A Spaniard, no? This is not exactly true. My father was a Spanish land surveyor, my mother a Papago Indian. I had nothing as an Indian, so I decided to make my fortune with my weapons. I became a bandit. I have robbed banks and wealthy men’s haciendas. I have done many things, Jessica Starbuck, but I have never killed wantonly, never raped, never destroyed people’s homes or their means of survival. I have not been good, but I am not a man such as Mono.” Mentioning the name caused Diego’s face to harden, to set into rigid planes.
“But you rode with Mono.”
“To get to Don Alejandro. Mono is his tool. Mono has entrance to the great house. I meant to go with him. I waited for the time when we would ride to the hacienda of Don Alejandro. Waited to kill this man.”
There was something terrible and cold in Diego’s voice. The friar shuddered a little.
“What did he do to you?” Ki asked. “What is it that makes you want to kill Don Alejandro?”
“Simply this, my mother was an Indian, as I have told you. Frail, gentle, happy. Her life was hard and she would not allow me to make it easier for her, not with stolen money. She was a Christian and a woman of honor. She grew her corn, gathered roots and berries, and lived quietly—until the slavers came.
“The slavers came and the people of her tribe resisted—not that it did them any good against the guns of Don Alejandro’s army, but they resisted. They were beaten, of course, and the young, the strong, the men were put in chains.”
Diego Cardero lit another cigar and the orange-yellow light of the match revealed a taut mask.
“My mother was not young or strong. She was taken with the other old ones, the very young, the crippled—and they were slaughtered so that they could not tell the authorities what had happened and who had taken the slaves away.”
Cardero said no more. He didn’t have to. Jessica tried to imagine how it was—the innocents taken out and killed, the screams and crying. A small hiss escaped involuntarily from her lips.
“This is the work of your cartel?” Brother Joseph asked.
“Yes,” Jessie said. “Don Alejandro is a part of the cartel. This is how they work. Ruthless and grasping.”
“I understand now,” the friar said, “understand why you, too, must try to go south and destroy this Don Alejandro. And, God save my soul, I can find no fault with you for wanting to end his dirty life.”
The friar then turned and walked away. The fire from San Ignacio still burned and it backlighted his cowled figure.
“Am I to be allowed to fight with you?” Diego asked.
“How can we refuse? But how are you going to gain entrance to Don Alejandro’s house now?” Jessie asked.
“Some other way. There will be a way, though not as simple.”
Perhaps, Ki thought, by delivering our heads himself after this is over. Ki glanced at Jessica, but no such doubts seemed to cloud her eyes.
You trust too easily, Jessica, Ki thought. She was a woman who made decisions with her heart at times and a surprising amount of the time her heart was right in its judgments. Ki only hoped she was right this time about the bandit, Diego Cardero.
The three of them found the friar in the rectory. He told them what he had done.
“Cardero is to be one ally, but I doubt he is enough. I have asked the alcalde and several men from San Ignacio to come to the church.”
“Will they fight?” Ki asked.
“Quién sabe?” He shrugged and looked from Jessica to Ki and back. “Nor will I ask them. I have invited them here so that you may speak to them, so that you may ask them to fight beside you.”
There was a drawback to this plan, Ki thought. More of the townspeople would know where Ki and Jessica were hiding, and perhaps it would make more sense to the alcalde and his delegation simply to turn them over to Mono rather than to try to fight the bandit leader.
Their town was burning; their people were being hurt. They might go to any length to end the savagery of Mono.
There was no other choice, however; they would speak to the people of San Ignacio and tell them how it must be, ask them to help drive Mono away or kill him.
Ki could only hope they would listen. If they didn‘t, they could expect another visitor—Mono would return and this time he wouldn’t be satisfied until he had the heads of Jessica Starbuck and Ki in his saddle bags.
Chapter 10
The alcalde of the town of San Ignacio was named Rivera. He was squat, heavy, balding, but there was something in his eyes that said he had once been a fighter. Ki saw that and approved.
They were introduced to Rivera and the other three important men of the delegation, and then they sat around the friar’s table. Fire from the town cast bright reflections on the window of the rectory. Now and then they heard gunfire from San Ignacio as Mono continued to assault the little border town.
Rivera spoke, “So you two are the cause of this destruction.”
“Mono is the cause of it,” Jessie answered. “We aren’t the ones responsible for what’s going on out there; it’s the bandits, and perhaps the people of the town who have allowed Mono to have his way in the past.” She spoke sharply, her eyes glinting, and Rivera, running his tongue across his upper teeth, nodded with apparent admiration. He looked more closely at the blond gringa now, seeing her differently.
She was a woman with a remarkable body, breasts straining against the fabric of the white blouse she wore, her face lovely and appealing. But Rivera had expected little from the woman. The man was a different story; the Oriental looked like a warrior. The alcalde had expected the man to do the talking, but there was fire in the woman as well, fire and intelligence.
“Mono would not be here if not for you,” a second man, one called Contreras, said. “He would have come, drunk his liquor, watered his horses, and ridden on.”
“After stealing, raping, killing.”
“A few incidents always occur,” Contreras said, accepting the state of affairs with amazing readiness.
Another man, Arano, said, “We are at the mercy of these men. What are we to do? We have no army garrison; not more than half a dozen men in the town have weapons. Mono sometimes comes with fifty men. We have learned not to struggle.”
“Maybe it’s time to learn to struggle,” Jessica said. “These bandits come and have their way. Then they leave and you’re all relieved. But they’ll be back, again and again. I saw a man killed last night while trying to protect his wife. Perhaps next time it will be your wife, and it will be you who is killed—if you had enough nerve to walk up to Mono and try stopping things, that is.”
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br /> Arano winced under that stinging remark. “If we do nothing, perhaps we will pay a price,” Rivera said, “but if we do something, we know what will happen. All of us will be ruined; many of us will be dead.”
“What do you think’s happening out there right now!” Jessie snapped.
“Because he wants you,” Rivera responded with a slight smile, “because he wants you and your friend.”
“Because,” Jessica Starbuck, her voice barely under control, said, “he is a mad dog and a murderer.”
“What would you have us do?” the alcalde asked. San Igancio’s mayor spread his hands. “I have no weapons. If I did, how would someone like me fight Mono and his bandits. They would kill me in a moment. You speak of fighting for our homes, businesses and families—what good does it do me to have a home if I am dead? What good am I to do for my family if Mono kills me and they bury me?”
“At least,” Diego Cardero put in, “you would die like a man instead of hiding like a cowering dog.”
Rivera didn’t like that a bit. He knew Cardero as well, knew him as a bandit. “Your way of life has been the gun, Cardero. It is easy for you to speak. Besides, what are you after here? What profit is there for you in asking us to fight Mono?”
“No profit but justice.”
“Justice! You don’t know the meaning of that word. Caballero, you are an outlaw as bad as any of these others. I don’t know what you want here, but it makes a man think to have one such as you come to us.”
“Believe what you want,” Cardero said. “I’m just telling you this—Mono won’t stop until he is killed.”
Contreras said, “Or until he has these two back.”
The friar was glowering. “I have given these two sanctuary, Señor Contreras. Perhaps that means nothing to Mono. It should mean something to you.”
“Yes, and the lives of my wife and children mean something as well!” Contreras wagged his head. “I am sorry, but to ask us to fight—it is something I am unwilling to do, unwilling to ask others to do.”
Maria Sanchez had stood quietly in the shadows of the rectory. Now for the first time she came forward and made her presence known. “These are the men of San Ignacio? These are our respected leaders? Cowards! Fight now or watch the town burn.”