by Wesley Ellis
Ki saw an Indian slave break free of the group he was standing with, snatch up a dead guard’s rifle, and fire it into the body. Jessica was kneeling, carefully picking her targets. Her ears were filled with the roar of the guns. Acrid smoke burned her nostrils.
Still, she was steady enough to pick off one fleeing guard, to see him stumble and topple into the pit dug for the slaves. She glanced toward the house, reloading automatically. There was little fire coming from the windows on this side. If they could breach the wall and reach the house, there was a good chance they could finish this.
She rose and trotted to where Ki stood, his face immobile and eyes set, as he stared at the dead, at the grim crater in the ground. Other slaves were arming themselves and gathering around Diego who instructed them.
“Ki,” Jessie said, taking his arm, “if we strike now, we can win.”
“Yes.” Still, Ki had that far away look in his eyes, a grim reflection of the terrible slaughter around them. He blinked away his meditative mood and his eyes came alert again. “Diego, take your Indians and half of our people. Surround the house. Don’t let anyone out. I won’t take a chance on Brecht escaping now.”
“No one will escape,” Diego promised.
“Jessica, I want you to stay with Diego.”
“Not a chance, Ki,” the blonde said. Ki didn’t try to argue with her. He had never had much luck in that department.
“All right. You men, we’re going to climb that wall. Watch yourselves. There’ll be bandidos in the windows once they know what we’re up to. Six men. You men, watch the windows and keep their heads down.”
He turned to Jess one last time, “Jessica—”
“Let’s go, Ki,” was her terse answer.
“Keep your head down,” he growled. Ki was armed now. There was a place for firearms. This was it. He checked the loads in the Winchester repeater he had collected and nodded to his soldiers.
“One minute. Wait until the house is surrounded.”
Diego had already led his men out, hurrying them back through the trees and around the far side of the house, stringing them out to form a deadly picket line. Ki gave him another two minutes.
“Now,” he said nearly under his breath, and Ki started loping toward the house, graceful and silent, weaving through the shadows as gunfire erupted again from somewhere in front of the house.
As Ki reached the wall, someone opened up from an upstairs window. A man beside him staggered and went down. Ki’s sharpshooters laid down a hail of bullets at the window. They heard glass shatter and saw a bandido fall from the second story.
Ki turned, cupped his hands, and boosted up his first soldier. A second man followed, and then Ki leaped up, caught the edge of the wall, and rolled over, dropping to the courtyard beyond as the rifles from the house opened up again.
In a crouch Ki ran to the wall of the house and pressed himself against it. Jessica Starbuck was running toward him now, zigzagging to where Ki waited, his chest rising and falling steadily.
Two overeager peons were trying the back door, battering at it with their rifle butts.
“No!” Ki cried out a warning, but it was too late. Bullets from inside tore through the oaken door. One of the peons staggered backward, pawing at his face where a mass of heavy splinters had embedded themselves in his flesh. The other man never moved. His head had been blown away.
Ki looked to the wall where his men were now swarming into the courtyard; then he nodded at the window behind him. “I’m going in, Jessica.”
Ki raised his rifle and fired through the curtained window four times. They heard a muffled moan and then a thud. Ki smashed the remaining glass from the frame and stepped over the sill, rolling into the room, his rifle ready. But the room was empty, except for the bullet-riddled bandit on the floor.
Jessica was into the room now, eyes flashing, rifle muzzle searching for a target.
Ki jabbed a finger in the direction of an inner door, and they started that way, crossing a deep red, expensive Turkish rug that was now bloody and passing heavy dark oak cabinets and a gilt table set with candelabra.
Ki was on one side of the door, and as Jessica pressed herself against the wall on the other side, he kicked it open, drawing a spate of gunfire from the other side.
Crouching, Ki stepped into the doorway and returned the fire.One bandit stood at the foot of a long curving staircase, rifle on the floor before him, his hands futilely trying to hold his guts in. His eyes empty; his face etched with pain.
“Where is he?” Ki said to the man, shaking his arm and feeling only anger toward the badly wounded warrior. “Where is Brecht?”
“Brecht?” the bandido repeated and blood frothed from his lips.
“Don Alejandro,” Jessica said, “where is Don Alejandro?”
“Up ...” the bandido’s arm lifted, gestured vaguely up the stair case, and then fell as the man died, falling to the tile floor. Ki’s eyes lifted to the stairs and he smiled faintly, ferally.
He glanced at Jessie, considered asking her to stay below, and discarded the idea. Her own eyes gleamed with the need to find Brecht, to find this cartel thug and finish him.
Ki started cautiously up the stairs keeping close to the wall and low. A door opened above, and from out of the darkness, a gun blasted three times, sending Ki to the floor. From behind him, Jessica’s rifle spoke and the door was slammed shut again.
After glancing at Jessie, Ki started toward the landing. A single lamp illuminated the stairs softly. Outside, the guns continued to fire, their reports only small popping sounds inside the thick-walled house.
Ki stopped abruptly and lifted his head. He smelled smoke.
He turned and looked at Jessica who eyes had narrowed. She smelled it, too. Ki reached the landing on all fours and then rose sharply to his feet. Smoke was billowing from beneath the heavy door before him.
Ki moved to the door and kicked at it. A shot rang out, smacking dully into the wood. “Brecht!” he called out and again a gun fired. Ki kicked at the door again. The smoke was thick now in the hallway, and touching the door, Ki could feel the heat within.
He backed off quickly and just in time. The door caught like kindling, exploding into flame, and in seconds the landing was engulfed in twisting, angry red fire.
“Get back, Jessica; the house is on fire!”
“Brecht’s in there,” she shouted back.
“If he is, he’s dead. We’ll be dead as well if we don’t clear out. Now!”
Ki felt the fire against his flesh, smelled his own hair singeing as he returned to the staircase, grabbed Jessie’s arm, and started toward the outer door. The flames behind them moved like a whirlwind of fire, sweeping down the stairwell. In what seemed a matter of seconds, the entire upper story of the house was engulfed in flames. Smoke clotted the lower story as well. Ki still had Jessie’s arm as he fought through the firestorm and smoke toward a window. He kicked it out and they rolled through, breathing fresh air in deeply.
Ki glanced up. It was no good. The entire house was going. He could smell the coal oil in the smoke clearly. Brecht had planned ahead. When he saw which way the battle was going, he had splashed fuel oil throughout the house and then struck a match. Now Brecht was going up in flames, wrapped in crackling fiery tongues of his own funeral pyre.
“God,” Jessica said, “what a way to go!”
“Pity for the man?” Ki asked stiffly.
“For anyone who goes that way, Ki. Never mind—let’s go.”
As they crossed the courtyard, something upstairs gave, and with a shuddering moan, half the second story floor fell, caving in to send sparks and flames out the windows and leaping into the night sky like a vast, vengeful torch. Jessie and Ki climbed the wall again and returned to the pit. There Diego, Maria, and the remainder of the peon army stood in awe, watching the house burn, crumble, sag, and die.
Chapter 21
Around Jessica Starbuck and Ki, the cheers sounded as loud as the roaring of flames.
The night was bright with fire, alive with high spirits. The people of San Ignacio broke into impromptu dances, and this time Maria had no reason to scold them for their joy. This time their was nothing to diminish their joy.
The Indians stood in small groups, some still clinging tensely to their captured weapons.
“What is it they want?” Ki asked Diego.
“Permission, perhaps? Permission to go, to leave this place of horrors.”
“They don’t need our permission to do anything,” Ki answered. “Tell them to go wherever they choose, to do as they like.”
“Diego,” Jessica Starbuck said, “tell them one more thing. Tell the Papagos that they had a great warrior among them, a man much responsible for saving their lives. Tell them that they must honor the memory of Fly Catcher.”
Diego nodded and walked off to talk to the Indians. Maria clung to Ki’s arm, tearful yet smiling. Jessica stood alone for a long while, listening to the flames and watching the great house die as the flames went out. There was only the moon above the vast desert then, its cool light soft and peaceful.
“Let’s go,” she finally said to Ki. “I don’t want to watch this anymore.”
Ki was surprised. “No? I thought you would enjoy this moment, Jessica. It’s over now, all over.”
“Not over, Ki. You know it and I know it. Sometimes I wonder if it will ever be over.”
Ki didn’t answer. He left her to her thoughts. Jessica Starbuck turned, sighing. Then she walked slowly away from the scene of destruction. On a night like this, she thought, on an endless empty night like this one... but Marshal Longarm, her special someone, was far away. She could only walk on as the pale moon rose over the destroyed cartel house.
Watch for
LONE STAR AND THE GUNPOWDER
CURE
forty-seventh novel in the exciting
LONE STAR
series from Jove
coming in July!