The Mission War

by Wesley Ellis

  Cardero was still down on the rooftop.

  Now from the cantina windows, the bandits opened up; perhaps they believed they were under a full-scale attack. Perhaps the smoke within had maddened them. Ki hoped it was the latter, although there were no signs of smoke issuing from the broken cantina windows.

  From the surrounding rooftops, the unorganized San Ignacio militia opened up, firing into the cantina. This fire didn’t do much to chase the bandits away from the windows. The entire Mexican force seemed to have fired their weapons at first and were now simultaneously and laboriously reloading.

  As if a cease-fire had been called, the guns from the cantina halted also, and the street was deadly silent. Jessica’s ears rang still. She looked to the rooftop opposite and saw that Cardero and Fly Catcher were gone, and in another minute the two men hobbled into the stable, Diego holding his chest and leaning heavily on Fly Catcher’s shoulder.

  “Didn’t expect that,” Diego panted. “Didn’t expect that bastard to be in the alley.”

  “Shut up,” Jessica said, “and lie down. Over there on the straw. How bad is it?”

  “Haven’t looked. Hurts like hell.”

  “Most gunshot wounds do.” There wasn’t much sympathy in her voice. Maybe she was still angry with Diego for having tried this foolhardy stunt.

  “Smoke. Any smoke, Ki?”

  “I don’t see any.”

  “You will—have to.”

  Ki nodded, though he figured if he hadn’t see it yet, he wasn’t going to see any fire and smoke. Mono had gotten it out. He didn’t say any of that to Cardero who was lying back on the straw, bleeding profusely.

  Jessie tried to stem the flow of blood but wasn’t having much luck at it. Fly Catcher put his bow and quiver aside, took a rawhide sack from around his neck, and got to work.

  He sprinkled some sort of powder on the wound—Ki guessed it was powdered deer antler, but couldn’t tell for sure. Whatever it was seemed to coagulate the blood some so that Fly Catcher could get to work with something else from his medicine sack: a steel needle and deer-gut thread.

  The Indian’s hands were deft and knowing. Fly Catcher had seen battle wounds before. When he finally straightened up and indicated to Jessie that he was through, the wound had been closed tightly, the blood flow slowed. The bullet that had caught Cardero had cut through his chest muscle from side to side, burning a bloody groove across Diego’s body but luckily causing little permanent damage.

  Cardero wouldn’t lie still. He struggled to his feet, making his way to the door where Ki still stood watching the cantina.

  “No smoke.” Diego chuckled a little. “What the hell—we tried. And what now, Ki? What exactly do we do now?”

  Ki had no answer. The choices were to assault the cantina and lose a lot of people or wait and get caught between Mono and Halcón coming with reinforcements. There wasn’t a hell of a lot of pleasure to be derived from contemplating either alternative.

  “Ki?” Jessica asked, but he was silent, strangely silent, and Jessie knew that they were in deep trouble, very deep trouble indeed.

  Dawn brought no change in their situation. Ki’s eyes were heavy. The men on the rooftops would be haggard from a night’s watching with their nerves on edge.

  “We should send half of them home,” Jessica said. “They won’t be of any use to us if they’re falling asleep up there.”

  Cardero said, “They won’t be much use to us at home.” But either way it probably didn’t matter—not if Halcón brought help. Mono had to be extracted from the cantina before Halcón came. How long did they have? A day? Two?

  “There must be a way,” Ki said as if he had been sharing Diego’s thoughts, “some way.”

  “If we could—” Diego’s words were cut off by a shout from a sentry atop the roof next door. Ki turned around and looked up into the brilliant morning sun.

  “Now what?”

  The man was waving his arm furiously and now others rose mirroring the gesture. Ki started up the side alley at a run, Jessica at his heels and Diego hobbling behind. He reached the rooftop in minutes and had time to look out toward the south where the sentry was pointing before Jessica joined him.

  “What is it, Ki?” she asked, already afraid that she knew the answer.

  “A body of men, many men, riding this way.”

  “It can’t be Halcón—not so soon.”

  “Can’t it?” Ki asked, shading his eyes against the glare of the sun. “Who else can it be?”

  “Not so soon,” Jessica said.

  “Perhaps he met Don Alejandro riding north for some reason. Riding to find us, to see how his plan had succeeded for instance.”

  “Ki ...” Jessie’s mouth dropped into an unhappy frown that tightened minutes later into anger. Around them the peons stood in bewildered pairs or alone with ancient, futile weapons in their hands.

  Diego, with a deal of effort and a lot of help from Fly Catcher, had just achieved the rooftop. Now the bandit stood—bare-chested, bloody, staring southward. He finally turned to Ki and Jessie and told them the news they had feared.

  “Halcón—that’s his horse in the lead.”

  The peons overheard him and there were angry shouts, fearful cries, and anger directed at Ki and Jessie.

  “Six men you told us! We would have to fight six men. You told us Mono was defeated. You have cost us our town, our lives, the lives of our families!”

  Ki didn’t argue with them. How could he when apparently they were right?

  “What now?” Jessica asked practically.

  “The mission.” Ki looked to the structure with its imposing bell tower now framed in brilliant sunlight. “It’s the only place near enough, the only place we have a chance.”

  If they had a chance at all. The Mexicans were in near panic. One who had been sitting stood up and was shot down by bullets from the cantina.

  “We’re all going to be slaughtered!” one of the townsmen yelled. He started to throw his weapon down, but Diego Cardero shifted his hands slightly so that they were near his holstered gun.

  “Throw that musket away and I’ll shoot you.”

  Jessica didn’t approve of the method, but it worked. She was crouched now, glancing southward where the long line of horsemen was approaching quickly.

  “Ki!” she called, nodding at the Mexicans in the streets below. They were running for their homes and Ki growled under his breath.

  Ki told those around him; “Get your families. Quickly. Don’t stop for blankets, for food, for anything! Get to the mission—and bring your weapons!”

  “We haven’t got a chance,” someone wailed. Ki didn’t respond to that. How could he when he felt much the same himself?

  “Any ideas?” Diego asked dryly. He was unsteady on his feet, the loss of blood beginning to tell on him.

  “None at all. Jessie, to the mission. Fast.”

  They reached the street again as the guns in the cantina opened up once more. The citizens of San Ignacio had gotten careless in their blind panic. Some of them had exposed themselves blatantly. A peon lay crumpled in the center of the main street.

  With the guns still roaring, Jessie, Ki, Diego, and Fly Catcher made their way back toward the mission. People were streaming toward its shelter. Women with children in arms, old men, dogs.

  To the south of town, the first shots from the newly arrived force sounded. Jessie looked at Ki, but there was nothing he could say—now they would be the besieged, Mono and his army the besieging force.

  A woman slipped and fell. Ki snatched her to her feet with one arm and ran on. A bullet from somewhere whipped past his head and slammed into the walls of the old mission.

  Brother Joseph was inside, waving his arm furiously. “Hurry, hurry!” he called, though there wasn’t anyway they could have gone any faster. It was a headlong dash toward the supposed safety of the walled mission.

  The friar asked Ki what had happened and was answered with a few brief, words.

 
Diego, still hobbling and helped by Fly Catcher, entered the massive gate. He was surrounded by the crush of peasants, wailing women, pale men, and frightened children.

  “Get them organized,” Ki said. “Up there.” He looked to the wide, solid mission walls. “Everyone with a muzzle loader get on the walls. On this side—keep the retreat covered.”

  “You—” Jessie started to say.

  “I’m going up there.” Ki nodded toward the bell tower. “With a repeater I can do a job on them if they try rushing us.”

  “I’m going, too,” Jessica said. Ki didn’t take the time to argue with her.

  Together they went into the church, the friar in front of them and leading them hastily to the stairwell leading up to the bell tower. They passed Maria who looked confused, angry, but not frightened. She was holding one of the muzzle loaders.

  “Ki,” she asked, “what can I do?”

  “Stay low.”

  “No! I’m fighting.”

  “Then report to Diego. At the gate.”

  Maria turned away, halted, kissed Ki, and scurried on, lifting her skirts.

  Jessica and the friar were already at the stairwell, Jessie peering up a long, steep, and dangerous flight of wooden steps.

  “Please be careful,” the friar said with all seriousness.

  “Yes,” Ki answered, “we will try to be.”

  Then, with Jessie leading the way, they climbed the four flights of stairs, past the ancient bronze belts—six of them in different sizes and used for tolling the births and marriages of the people of San Ignacio.

  And for tolling their deaths.

  They emerged on a small deck thirty feet square and just below the curved, uppermost bell house. Below, they could see everything that was happening, spread out in a panorama like a painting of a famous battle.

  Mono had come out of the cantina and was leading his men toward the church. Southward the line of attacking raiders had nearly reached the town, chasing people before them.

  The citizens of San Ignacio were still streaming toward the mission. Below, Diego had his soldiers prone along the wide wall of the mission. Puffs of smoke began to appear, rising from the muzzle of their guns. Answering puffs of smoke rose from the guns of Mono and his men, from the repeaters of the raiders. Then a sound reached Ki’s ears, the distant, somehow harmless sounding reports of guns, like Fourth of July fireworks in the far distance.

  A bullet from across the flats rang off the bell behind Jessie and Ki, and it rang clearly. The illusion of harm lessness fell away. The guns were coming nearer, bringing death with them.

  The battle of San Ignacio had begun.

  Chapter 15

  The first wild charge the bandidos made was a vast mistake. Perhaps they believed the peons had no weapons or that they could simply overwhelm them with numbers and superior arms. But they were fighting from horseback and the people of San Ignacio were behind heavy adobe walls. The outlaws spent a lot of ammunition, but as Ki and Jessie found out later they actually hit only one man and that was by a ricochet. Firing from the backs of their running horses, the bandidos were lucky if they hit the mission walls while the peons, even considering the unreliability of their weapons and the slowness of reloading them, managed to score numbers of hits.

  From the bell tower it was like shooting ducks on a pond for Jessica and Ki, armed with borrowed repeating Winchesters.

  Ki put a bullet through the chest of a leading rider, and the bandit was yanked from the saddle as if jerked back by an invisible wire. Below, Diego, firing rapidly without removing his repeater from his shoulder, was able to score three hits in seven shots, taking down two horses and removing the top of the head of another bandit. An arrow from Fly Catcher’s bow caught a charging bandido in the throat, passing completely through. He rode all the way to the gate of the mission before he fell dead.

  Jessica had a shot at Mono himself, missed as the bandit leader inexplicably stumbled and went to the ground, switched her sights to a pair of riders who were trying to flank the mission from the south, and took both of them down to stay.

  The bandidos retreated rapidly, another man falling from his horse as a musket ball bored into his spine.

  Then it was still, amazingly still. The silence lasted for a long minute, and then the Mexicans along the wall set up a racket, rising to cheer, to throw their sombreros into the air, to wave triumphant muskets.

  “Poor dumb bastards,” Ki muttered. “It hasn’t even begun yet.”

  And the next time it would be completely different. The first wild charge of the bandidos had been the result of exuberance and of badly underestimating the enemy. With their dead comrades littering the ground, that mistake wouldn’t be made again.

  They would come stealthily, perhaps after dark, led by Mono, and whatever they did would be carefully planned. A dozen obsolete muskets wouldn’t hold back a planned assault.

  “Better get them organized, Ki,” Jessica said. Around her feet spent brass cartridges littered the parapet. “I’ll keep watch from up here.”

  “Yes,” Ki replied flatly, “I’d better see what can be done—if anything.”

  Diego, his face gray, smudged with powder smoke, met Ki below. On the walls the peons were still celebrating. Neither man commented on that folly.

  “Any ideas?” Diego Cardero asked.

  “Not many. Make preparations for when they breach the wall. And they will do that—given time. Barricade the doors of the church itself; give everyone instructions to fall back to the parapet up there.”

  “It’s not enough, Ki. They have us.”

  “Yes.” Ki didn’t need to have that pointed out to him. “They have us.”

  There wasn’t much hope of federales arriving at the mission in the nick of time. There wasn’t much hope that a band of unorganized, poorly equipped civilian soldiers could hold off these well-equipped bandits who made war for a living.

  “We’ll do what we can. After that...” Ki shrugged.

  Inside the church they met with the friar, who was anxious but determined. He walked along with them as they examined the layout of the church.

  “The women and children,” Brother Joseph said, “can be hidden in the basements. No one will find them there. It has been a sanctuary for two hundred years.”

  “All right,” Ki said, “we’ll get them down there as soon as possible with all the food and blankets you can scrounge up.”

  No one mentioned the obvious—it wouldn’t do the women and children much good to be safe in the church’s basements if the bandidos overran the church. They wouldn’t be able to come up again, wouldn’t be able to stay below forever.

  “We just don’t have enough weapons,” Diego said. “If they come to the walls after dark and use any sort of judgment, they’ll get over.”

  “We can’t do a thing about it,” Ki said. “There’s just nothing to use.”

  “Olive oil,” the friar said obliquely and both Diego and Ki stopped to look at the friar. Had his mind snapped?

  “What did you say?” Ki asked.

  “Olive oil.”

  “What are you talking about?” Diego asked impatiently.

  “I have, if you may believe it,” he told them, “made a considerable study of medieval warfare. In those time, I believe, a weapon much in use was boiling oil rained from the walls of the besieged castle by its defenders. I have a considerable store of olive oil.”

  “Crazy,” Diego said, dismissing the suggestion.

  “I’m not so sure,” Ki responded. “How much olive oil have you exactly?”

  The friar waved a hand. “Hundreds of gallons. Some of it going rancid. Once the grove behind the mission was our hope for solvency. Unfortunately, there was no way to transport the olive oil to market. The grove is withering, but we have barrel upon barrel of oil in the cellars.”

  “Iron pots?” Ki asked. Diego was watching him as if the madness had infected Ki as well.

  “In abundance,” the friar said. “Hundr
eds of years old. They were brought from Spain at great expense, I would imagine, with the idea of giving them to the local Indians. The Indians, it turned out, preferred their own clay pots.”

  “Show us,” Ki invited.

  Diego whispered, “Ki, this will never work.”

  “What else have we got to try?” Ki asked. “It has worked in the past. Boiling oil is a fearful weapon when used properly.”

  “But can our army use it properly?”

  “That is something we will discover in time,” Ki answered.

  The friar had moved down one of the many corridors and toward a stairway. Looking back across his shoulder, he beckoned to Ki and Diego who followed him downstairs to examine his stores.

  An hour later, the Mexicans, to their confusion, were brought in to carry casks of rancid olive oil, iron pots—very rusted now—and fuel for fires to the walls of the old mission. Ki stood aside, watching. Diego muttered under his breath continually, shaking his head in wonder.

  It was Maria who made the next suggestion. “Fire,” was all she said at first, and Ki turned to look at his dark-eyed woman.

  “What is it, Maria?” he asked. Her mind was turning over a problem and an apparent solution.

  “Set the town on fire,” she said.

  “That’s no good,” Diego said.

  “Why not? What is going to happen to the town anyway? It’s mostly burned now. It will be a wonder if Mono doesn’t finish it before he leaves. San Ignacio will be destroyed. Why not burn it ourselves? Use fire as our weapon. If they are caught in the fire, many might die. At least they wouldn’t have the shelter of the buildings there.”

  “The people of San Ignacio would never stand for that,” Diego objected.

  “‘Then,” Maria said practically, “we will not tell them.”

  It was bold enough to be unexpected, and there was a chance of doing considerable damage. Ki didn’t like the idea of destroying a town he had been trying desperately to protect, but it beat having the people of that town killed. As Maria had pointed out, the odds were very good that Mono was going to destroy San Ignacio when he was through using it. Why not do it first?