What caught her attention was his stance. This man stood like a warrior. He stood tall with a straight back, his body turned at a slight angle to present the smallest possible target area toward her. Did he see her as a potential foe? His body was clearly well muscled, and he stood slightly up on the balls of his feet, ready to move in any direction at the slightest provocation. And move he did. Toward her. She took another step back. This second man, the warrior, did as the first and offered his hand. As he moved the dusty jacket he wore flapped open and she saw a glimmer of hope. A star was pinned to his shirt below the jacket.
She spoke her first words in that simple, crudely built shelter. “Ranger?”
* * *
“You are Ronin,” Sakai-san spoke in reverent tones as he placed the tachi sword in her hands.
“A Ronin is a masterless samurai,” Karin shook her head in disagreement. “I am no samurai, and you are my master.”
“You are as much a samurai as any other of your father’s retainers, and we do this to honor your father, not me, that is why you are the only one worthy to wield this tachi, my Lotus Ronin.” The sensei tapped the sigil on the hilt of the sword as if to emphasize his point. A crane standing over a coiled dragon. The family crest. It hadn’t meant much to her growing up, but now it was everything.
The freezing wind blown December rains sliced across the open spaces of Wakayama docks, chilling the workers, crewmen, and any passengers who were still boarding, to the bones. Sakai and Karin had ignored it as they performed their small personal ceremony. With her family sword now wrapped in canvas bedding roll and slung across the back of her soaked jacket, Karin Konishi stepped toward the gangplank of the steamer Tenyo Maru of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha line “I am the only one who can do this.”
“The others will be waiting,’“ Sakai shouted over the winds as she started her ascent, unclear as if she had heard him.
Karin heard his shout, but the words were carried away on the cold winds.
She stared up at the sides of the great ship, its twin funnels belching black smoke into the stormy leaden skies, the sight of it matched her mood. She felt no honor, no longing, no excitement, just an oppressive foreboding.
She was headed to a place she’d been told was named San Francisco, although that meant nothing to her. It was just the first step in her journey of revenge.
She was headed for another place entirely.
* * *
“Yes, ma’am I’m a Ranger,” the warrior responded. “And who might you be?”
She remained quiet. She would only share her name when this man had earned her trust.
“Want to tell me what you were doing in the sands?” he asked pointing behind him as if at a distant point well beyond the walls of the dwelling.
“I am looking for someone?” her response was hesitant, as if she was feeling him out, only sharing what she was comfortable with.
“Anyone in particular?”
She looked puzzled.
“A name?” he asked again, “does the person you are looking for have a name?”
“Yes he does.”
The Ranger sighed to himself. “This is going to take some time.”
“Leave her be with your fool questions,” the woman at the stove berated him, as she approached the table and put a bowl of the hot meat stew down. She pointed at the bowl and then at the girl. “That’s for you when you feel you want it.”
“She ain’t movin’, Ma,” said one with the rounded shoulders. “Should I fetch her over to the table. I could pick her up easy.” With that he lunged at the girl, who, without seeming to move, bent her body so that he sailed past her and fell headlong onto the floor behind her.
“I don’t think she wants to be got, Andy,” said the woman. She smiled and looked back at the girl. “Please forgive my boy, he’s a little on the eager side. You probably caught that he goes by the name Andy, it’s short for Andrew Tiberius James, named after both his grandpappys. I’m Lizzie by the way, that one’s just short for Elizabeth, Nothing more fancy than that.”
The girl bowed her head in acknowledgment of the names.
“As we’re making introductions,” the Ranger added, “I guess I’ll join in. The name’s Farnell, David Farnell.”
He waited expecting her to respond, but once again there was just the silent bow.
The first shot shattered the cooling bowl of rabbit stew, and carried across the table tearing into the hip of Lizzie, sending her spinning to the floor.
“Ma!” Andy’s scream of anguish as he ran across the hut toward his stricken mother was cut short by the second bullet smashing into his back and piercing his heart on the way out. He was dead before he hit he ground.
The Ranger had also dropped to the floor, looking for cover and searching for a position where he could take the fight back to the attackers. He glanced over to make sure the girl had also found cover. The blanket was empty. There was no sign of her in the hut.
The sudden hail of bullets prevented any thoughts about looking for her. Whoever she was she’d have to look after herself for the moment. He threw the table onto its side, the remnants of the stew rolling onto the back of Andy’s corpse, and pushed it in front of him, using it as a shield as he edged toward the open doorway.
Borrowing one of the oldest tricks in the book, Farnell used his gun as a prop to stick his hat above the safety of the table edge. Sure enough it was instantly riddled with several bullets. The Ranger pulled the hat down and examined the pattern left by the bullet holes. The projectiles were clearly coming from two separate sources, one positioned each side of the doorway to provide a lethal crossfire, but obviously close enough to be able to get a line of sight of anyone inside, a narrow dispersion pattern. He was taking it on faith that there was no one else waiting further out.
It was a fifty-fifty choice as to which gunman to engage with first. He mentally flipped a coin and decided to take out the guy on the left. He pulled his rifle tight to his shoulder, popped up and sighted on where he believed the shooter was located. He held the position, taking his time, playing the odds that the other guy wasn’t a professional. He wasn’t. The gunman got too excited at what he thought was an easy target. He rushed his shot, not taking time to calm his breathing or check his line of sight properly. The shot passed about two inches over Farnell’s right shoulder. Farnell ignored it, held his breath, steadied his arm and gently squeezed the trigger of the Lee Enfield .303 rifle he habitually carried. The vicious recoil kick in the shoulder was almost like the comforting hug of an old friend; an old friend who hugged too hard and left a permanent bruise to mark his affection.
The excitable gunman’s head snapped backwards and he slid to the ground behind the dirt berm he’d been using as cover.
It was only then that he realized that there hadn’t been a single shot from his right. He looked in the direction of the fence where he believed the second gunman to be. Nothing.
Cautiously Farnell stepped out from behind the fallen table shield. Still no shots. Still alert he walked to the fence and peered over the top. Sprawled on the floor was the second gunman, his head lolling at an unnatural angle, his neck clearly broken.
Placed on the body was a piece of paper carefully folded into the shape of a flower.
* * *
“Where did you find the paper?” Sakai-san had asked her when she had come down from the mountain.
“Open it and you will understand,” Karin answered, eyeing the steaming bowl of soup that sat on the table in front of her sensei. She was chilled to the bone and starving. At that moment she wanted nothing more in the world than the contents of that bowl, but she held station, not letting the hunger and desire show.
“To open the folds will destroy your work and the beauty of your creation.”
“To reveal the truth,” she replied, “we sometimes must destroy the surface beauty to show the foundations of what we have built.”
“Now you are the teacher,” Sakai-san smiled, “and t
he teacher shall eat.” With that he pushed the bowl of soup in her direction.
She sat down on the wooden bench opposite him, grabbed the bowl, raised it to her lips, and drank the steaming liquid in large ravenous gulps, not caring if it burnt the roof of her mouth. As she sated her hunger and need for warmth, the sensei began to carefully unwrap the intricate folds of the paper flower. With all the folds undone he pressed the paper flat and slid it in to the middle of the table between them.
“You would sacrifice this to meet my challenge.” He pointed down at the paper. It was a creased and faded photograph of a family. A young girl and her parents.
“It was no sacrifice, it was the repurposing of one life to start another.”
* * *
“The taking of one life, any life, should not be taken lightly. Every soul deserves its passing to be marked.” The voice from behind Farnell made him jump with a start. He turned slowly to find the girl standing calmly just a foot behind him. He hadn’t heard her approach, she had moved silently across a ground littered with dry twigs and leaves, crackling tumbleweed, and stones. She stood impassively in front of him, and for the first time he had a good look at her.
In height the top of her head lined up with his shoulders, making her, he judged, to be about five feet five inches in height. Like his, her clothes were covered in dust, more so from the recent firefight as well as remnants of her time in the desert. They were torn in places from thorns, while in other places the tears were larger and jagged as if from close hand-to-hand combat. He saw at least one tear that was the result of a blade edge. Faint traces of dried blood clung to the edge of that particular tear. Her outfit was a pair of loose black pants, a black workers shirt, with a loose lightweight denim jacket over the top. Her feet were wrapped in a soft-soled shoe and wide black ribbon binding her leg from foot up to mid calf. On her head was perched a battered black Stetson which, as he hadn’t seen one in her belongings before, nor one near the corpse, he assumed she had just acquired from the gunman with the broken neck. Like himself she had pulled the hat down and forward to mask part of her face in shadow.
Despite her attempts to mask her face, he had managed a good look at her features. Her black hair, which looked like it had once been long and thick had been cruelly cropped. Her face had a round shape, with blue eyes that hinted at a depth of soul. Small dimples on either side of her mouth indicated that she used to smile on a regular basis, but now the lips were held tight and flat. There was no trace of emotion on her features, but he sensed that emotion was all that was driving her at this point.
“How old are you?” he asked. “Twenty, Twenty two?”
She didn’t respond.
“What do you want here?” he asked trying a different tack to try and get some sort of response. This time it worked, up to a point.
She indicated the hut. “I want my sword.” Then she pointed at him. “And I need the Ranger.”
“You also need a bath and a change of clothes.” He pointed back at her.
“Sword first.”
The Ranger shrugged and headed back toward the hut, with the girl a few steps behind him.
Death waited for them.
* * *
“Death.” The word hung between them, while she felt the tip of the tachi start to bite into the fleshy part of her neck. She froze, not daring to breathe or swallow in case the mere movement of her muscles would cause the blade to bite deeper. She was afraid. “Fear can paralyze.” Sakai-san had sensed her hesitation. He twisted the blade, so the tip cut in. She felt the first drops of blood collect and slowly run down her neck. “You must not let the fear dictate your actions. Let your actions dictate the fear.” He pulled the sword back, turned it with the cutting edge down and tucked it into the sash around his waist. At the completion of the movement, his hand continued in an arc as he pulled a square of silk from a hidden pocket, and threw it in her direction.
“Thank you,” Karin said as she caught it, and started to dab at the droplets near her throat.
“Do not thank me,” her mentor countered, “for I offered you no service. I offered you only death at the tip of your father’s blade.”
“I knew you would not carry through your threat,” Karin announced with a tone of newly found arrogant certainty. “You would not kill me.”
“Yet you still showed fear. Instinct can overcome logic if you do not have discipline.”
Karin bowed slightly, placed the blooded square of silk in the folds of her own jacket, and started to turn away back toward the tavern. “I am hungry, Sakai-san. You must be too, for we have worked hard, long hours today without a break for refreshment. Now that we are done I will attend to our needs.”
She never sensed the blow coming. There was no sound, no movement caught in her peripheral vision, just the pain of impact that drove her to her knees. Before she had time to react a second blow to her back drove her face forward into the dirt. She could feel the weight of her sensei on her back. The pain grew from the pressure of his mass; her breathing became difficult. As much as she tried to twist she could not dislodge him. Her arms flailed, she started to feel light headed. The only thing she was going to eat anytime soon was dirt.
Suddenly the weight disappeared. She felt a hand grab the back of her jacket and pull her to her feet. Gasping lungs full of air, she staggered around as her head cleared and her balance returned. Enraged she ran after her sensei who had already moved a considerable distance down the pathway.
“Why did you attack me like that? The lesson was over.”
Without stopping he turned his head and asked over his shoulder, “No one said that the lesson was over. You just assumed it.”
“But,” she stammered in indignation, as she continued to brush the dirt from her clothes as she raced to catch up, “you sheathed the sword.”
“Remember, it isn’t about the steel. You may not always be able to rely on a weapon. You need to be the weapon instead.” He pointed to the tavern. “But now I need my soup.”
* * *
The discarded bowl still sat incongruously on Andy’s back, a singular tombstone marking the boy’s untimely and unnecessary death.
Beyond lay the body of his mother several feet from where she had first crumpled to the floor.
“I don’t understand.” said the girl, “she was wounded but should not be dead.”
“We missed one.” the Ranger pointed to the body of a man laying in the dark corner of the hut, a bullet hole in his chest. A shotgun lay by Lizzie’s side. “She must have staggered to the mantel and grabbed the gun just in time to see this one off, but it looks like she took another bullet in the process. Saved us from having someone sneak around our backs.” Farnell removed his hat and bowed in the direction of the fallen woman.
“The fireplace,” the girl looked at the mantel the Ranger had indicated, “they hung my sword there, I saw it when I woke up but the opportunity to retrieve it did not arise.” She stepped over the body and examined the area around the fireplace. Her impassive face showed a flicker of sadness and anger. “It is gone.”
“Before y’all head off on a wild goose chase lookin’ for it,” remarked Farnell, “we got duties to perform.” He took turns pointing at the three bodies spread around the hut.
Between the two of them it took several hours to dig five graves, for the three inside the hut plus the two gunmen, in the sun-baked ground. During the long hot afternoon, neither of them spoke.
The exertion left them both covered in dirt and dust and in need of a good wash. “I don’t know about you,” The Ranger broke the silence, “but I could do with a good wash, a hot meal, an’ a soft bed.”
“I am still hungry.” admitted the girl.
“Bless me, I forgot you never did get to eat poor Lizzie’s stew earlier, did ya?” He shook his head. “Come on.”
“To where?” she asked.
The Ranger pointed to the far horizon. “Dallas.”
She couldn’t see any sign of habitatio
n in the distance, never mind a city. “It will take us a long time to walk, we will not eat this evening.”
“Who said anything about walkin’?” The Ranger laughed.
He walked over to a barn at the back of the house, and indicated something inside. “You ever ride in one of these?”
The girl walked over and looked in the direction he had indicated. Inside the barn was a beat up old-fashioned motorcar, much cruder than the ones she had ridden in back in Osaka. Where did he think she came from that she had never seen a car before?
“No,” she answered truthfully, “I have never ridden in a vehicle like that before.”
“Well are you in for a treat. This piece of genuine American engineering is a Ford Model T. She may be getting on a bit, but she’ll get us where we need to go.”
The girl doubted that, but she kept her thoughts to herself.
* * *
The lack of suspension on the old car made the rutted dirt road feel twice as rough as it actually was. Making the same trip on the back of a mule would probably more comfortable. The vehicle bounced from rut to rut rather than travel over them, each impact with the dirt road throwing up clouds of fine dust as the skinny tires fought for traction below them. Despite this they did make progress, and it was quicker than walking.
“Do we have far to travel?” the girl asked.
“ ‘Bout 50 mile I reckon,” the Ranger answered.
“What do you intend to do when we reach the city?” She looked across the bouncing car at him, the first time she’d taken her eye off the road in front of them.
He turned and grinned at her. “Try and find out why folks seem so keen to kill you.”
They had chosen the wrong instant for both of them to divert their attention from what was in front of them. The first that they were aware of the big sedan was when they heard its V8 engine roar as it accelerated toward them from a side road. The impact of the big heavy car on the small Model-T was immediate and violent. The small car buckled and ground to an immediate halt, its chassis bent, water and steam hissing out of the broken radiator and hoses in the crumpled engine bay. The girl and the Ranger were thrown together by the impact. He wrapped his arms around her and jumped backwards out of the car putting the wreck between them and their attackers.
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