Fistful of Hate

by Steve Lee

  Annotation

  THEY CALLED HIM EL MUERTE.

  DEATH WAS HIS NAME, AND DEATH HIS TRADE. ON HIS TRAIL RODE A MAN WHO HAD SWORN TO KILL HIM. DEADLY IN UNARMED COMBAT, IMPLACABLE IN REVENGE:

  SLOANE.

  Mexico: a sun-baked land of blood and superstition, where the curse of the Ancient Skull still had power to kill a man. Home of the most vicious gunmen in the West, and a legendary bandit who collected human heads. El Muerte's country. When Sloane tracked the outlaw through the desert into Mexico, he thought he had reached the end of the vengeance trail. But for Sloane, master of Kung Fu, trouble was only just beginning.

  * * *

  Steve Lee

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  * * *

  Steve Lee

  Fistful of Hate

  OCR Mysuli: denlib@tut.by

  Prologue

  Rearing up from a sterile expanse of barren red earth like heaven-pointed fingers, the square white towers of the mission of San Pietro suggested a fortress rather than a place of worship. And like a fortress it had squatted on the red dust for over two hundred years, stubbornly resisting the attacks of man and nature, of Indians, bandits, droughts and hurricanes. It would stand forever an old priest had foretold many years before, a tribute to the faith of the humble people of Lascara.

  Such devout faith demanded to be put to the test thought Don Luis Fernando de Silviera y Castilia as, from the cover of a verdant patch of low-lying manzanita, he trained his binoculars on the whitewashed adobe of the mission, his long uncalloused fingers teasing the instrument into focus.

  It was Sunday and a slack procession of penitents tramped the rutted path from the village of Lascara to the mission, the favoured amongst them carrying colourful banners of the saints which hung limply from their staffs in the hot, windless air. They were mostly peons and their families. Against the bleakness of the arid landscape, the men looked crisp and bright in their best white cotton pants and shirts. The fortunate ones led burros on the backs of which small children swayed. The women, all but the youngest in black, walked in the footsteps of their sons and husbands, their heads piously lowered. To Don Luis they had the appearance of a flock of starving crows pacing the soil, beaks dipped in the hope of a tasty worm. Shifting the binoculars he spied a taller, black-robed figure waiting beside the open doors of the mission. One of those treacherous dogs of a priest he realised and his proud Spanish features contracted in anger.

  From behind came a hissing whisper: 'Is it not as I have told, my chief? A nest of traitors, of guerrilleros…'

  Ramon, mozo to Don Luis, wriggled on his elbows through the brush to join his master.

  'With my own eyes I have seen those pigs of priests carry three wounded rebels inside, to care for them as a mother cares for her children!'

  Don Luis gravely lowered the binoculars.

  'If it is as you have said, Ramon, you will be well rewarded.'

  'Muchas gracias, my chief,' said Ramon, dipping his head in thanks, his dark face beaming.

  'And the widows of Lascara, every one of them, will have to say a mass for the souls of their dead sons,' Don Luis promised.

  Together the two men shrank back through the brush and scrambled down the slight knoll behind which their horses and thirty armed men awaited them.

  If anyone had been unfortunate enough suddenly to make the acquaintance of these men, each of them mounted on a fine horse, they would have seen a tough gang of leather-faced vaqueros such as might be found on any large ranch — except perhaps that they were still more arrogant and cruel in their expressions than is usual even amongst that hardened breed of men. But to Don Luis Fernando de Silviera they were a troop of cavalry of the National Army of the Liberation. He was their commander, and he was about to give them the order to attack.

  * * *

  At the first sound of the galloping horsemen, the villagers turned with lazy unhurried interest to watch their approach, not even pausing on their solemn trek towards the mission. Since Lascara lay on the route that wound inland from the border at Mexicali, cutting deeper into the interior of Baja California, such large parties of riders were not unfamiliar. Seldom did they stop however, finding the village too sleepy for their fast ways — for which deliverance the pious folk of Lascara weekly raised their voices to God in thanks.

  So the villagers continued their sober barefoot progress towards the mission and waited to taste the dust of those men of polished leather and steel who would thunder past, anxious to the point of madness to reach a distant place that would undoubtedly disappoint them when they reached it. The villagers had no such fine horses nor leather boots with jangling spurs yet they could afford to feel superior for, surely, in faith and piety there were none richer in all the world than the hard-working men and women of Lascara.

  But these furiously galloping horsemen were like none that had ever passed through the village before. Their business was not elsewhere but at this very place. They rode straight at the procession, their voices merging in a rising cheer of excitement. When they did not slow their breakneck pace, unease spread amongst the villagers… unease that rapidly became fear when they saw the faces of the vaqueros, fear that burst into fragmenting panic when the first shots exploded. Suddenly crying children echoed their mothers' screams. The charging vaqueros smashed through the column of penitents as a fierce wave sweeps away a sand-castle. The column disintegrated. Those that still lived ran for the sanctuary of the mission.

  Don Luis and his cavalry fanned out, hacking at the frantically running figures with shards of polished sunlight. Those that fell beneath their blades lay writhing, the red soil becoming redder beneath them. Yelling their triumph, the horsemen whirled their dripping sabres above their heads, wheeling in pursuit of further game…

  The doors of the mission were not wide. Wedged against them, a tight-packed mass of humanity pleaded for admittance. Children, women and men struggled to push through to safety. Those already safe inside struggled with equal desperation to shut the wooden doors on fast-approaching death.

  Above, in one of the towers, a weeping man attacked the mission's great bell with a metal bar, beating out a belated alarm that boomed insistently across the sunburnt plain. As if in reply a rain of bullets hammered the bell, tolling an angry, stammering tune. The man with the metal bar stumbled, his white clothes suddenly pocked with red splashes, and fell against the swaying bell. It met him with a dull indignant roar, tossing him from the tower to break in the dust eighty feet below.

  Before a shroud of dust had settled over the body, Don Luis rode up to the mission, his men a firm wall at his back. Into the shrieking crowd laying siege to the mission doors they emptied their pistols. Death reaped a good plentiful harvest. Bodies collected against the doors, whole families heaped together in a final embrace. Slugs ripped through living flesh, raked the dead wood behind.

  The doors swung together, those inside trying with mad urgency to shut them against the attackers. The villagers trapped between the closing doors and the guns of the vaqueros cried out in despair, begging to be admitted. A youth thrust his hands through the narrowing gap between the doors and tried to force his way inside. The doors closed on his hands, snapping the bones of his fingers, grinding them to fragments. His screams shrilled through the roar of gunfire. He tore his hands free and held the ribboned fingers before his eyes. A bullet slapped the horror off his fac
e, flung him onto a twitching heap of his comrades.

  Shut out from the mission, the remaining villagers turned and stumbled wide-armed towards their murderers, pleading mercy from God and the vaqueros. Through a curtain of harsh smoke, Don Luis and his men watched them advance. They reacted to pleas for mercy as if they were well-told jokes. Into the ranks of wailing villagers they laughingly poured a fusillade. The bullets punched them this way and that, spinning them round in a macabre dance that ended face-down in the bloodied dust.

  Presently there were only killers and killed outside the walls of the mission of San Pietro. Those who could not afford horses or boots had no money for guns and there were few firing pieces inside the mission; but these few were soon heard to speak. More than one of Don Luis' army sagged in the saddle or fell, blasted from his horse.

  The vaqueros dismounted behind the mission, out of the line of fire of the defenders. Backs against the walls, hidden from the overlooking windows, they worked their way back to the mission doors and regrouped.

  The priests had placed a bench against one wall of the mission so that the old ones might sit shaded and take their ease. Don Luis' voice rose in command. In a moment four of his men were battering the doors with the bench. At the third charge, a musket belched smoke from a window. One of the men carrying the bench cried out and pitched forward to join the bodies of those he had helped kill. Another man ran to take his place.

  Covered by a steady fire directed at the windows, the four men continued to pound the doors with the battering-ram. At each impact the ancient doors shook and the wooden bar holding the doors shut was heard to groan under the strain. A few more attempts and the vaqueros were rewarded by the cracking whine of snapping wood. The doors burst inwards. Don Luis led his men, cheering and laughing, through the gap, shoving aside a flimsy barricade of chairs and benches. They found themselves in church. Facing them stood a single man, a priest with an old Spanish musket raised to his shoulder. The sudden stillness was destroyed by the roar of the musket. Its load smacked against the wall high above Don Luis' head. About him, some of the vaqueros raised a mocking laugh, as much from relief as amusement.

  The priest let the musket drop. His face was disturbingly calm. He made no move to escape when Ramon stepped towards him.

  'Cabron!' the mozo hissed from between yellowed teeth and with slow deliberation he cut the priest's throat, releasing a fast gush of blood that splashed hotly on the bare stone floor of the church.

  Ramon yelled back to his companions: 'Remember, muchachos, kill only the ugly women!' Roaring their delight the vaqueros raised their rifles and sabres high in the air and pushed forward after Don Luis, trampling the body of the priest.

  They swept through the church, overturning plaster effigies of Christ, of headless bleeding saints, and of the Holy Mother weeping tears of blood.

  Most of the villagers had taken refuge in the mission patio. To one side of the open courtyard, by the small vineyard, a bed of white roses had been carefully nurtured. Amongst the pale blooms a young woman and her baby lay together, their eyes closed as if in sleep. It was a sleep from which neither of them would ever awaken. The knife which had taken their lives was still limply clutched in the hand of the mother who had preferred to embrace Death rather than a cruel-faced vaquero.

  The remaining women cowered in a corner of the patio, some whispering words of comfort to bawling children. Between them and the vaqueros the last of the menfolk stood in a defiant line. Each man held the weapon with which he had chosen to die: a knife from the kitchen, an axe, a rake… They launched themselves at the vaqueros streaming into the courtyard, striking out with the desperation of men without futures, men who are already dead and wish to see many of their enemies die with them. At least three of Don Luis' army fell beneath their hacking frenzy, two bleeding to death, a third blinded for life… It was over quicker than it takes a man to plant his seed inside a woman. A scattered burst of firing, a slashing flurry of sabres and the men of Lascara were no more.

  The vaqueros fell upon the women as starving dogs fall upon scraps of meat. Don Luis watched them coldly, his delicate lips pressed tight together. At times his men disgusted him. Yet he made no move to interfere. He knew that if animals are to remain loyal, they have to be fed.

  He walked stiffly over to where Ramon, assisted by three others, was helping an unwilling young girl, a child, out of her clothes. The dress at which they were tearing was white, for that day was to have been the day of her first Communion. Rusty stains streaked the dress — the blood of her brother.

  'Ramon…'

  'Si, Jefecito…' Ramon grinned. 'You wish perhaps to be first with this beauty who, I am sure, no man has touched but her father?'

  Don Luis glanced at the thin underfed body revealed beneath the tattered dress, looked into the wild, terrified eyes of the girl. He shook his head.

  'Where are they, these rebels?' he asked his mozo. Ramon motioned towards one of the square towers of the mission, the one that was not a bell-tower.

  'Come,' said Don Luis, turning on his heel, stepping over corpses as he crossed the courtyard towards the low wooden door at the foot of the tower.

  Following him, Ramon looked back over his shoulder with regret at the struggling girl pinned beneath one of his companions, her wide-spread legs kicking up the dust. He shrugged. The chica could wait. Others would smooth his way.

  Don Luis waited for Ramon to open the door. Ramon struggled with the latch without success. The door was bolted from inside.

  'Like the girl, the door must be broken before she can be entered,' Ramon chuckled.

  Raising his pistol, Don Luis blasted the door. It swung open before Ramon's touch. The two men entered the tower. Pistols in hand, they climbed the coiling stairs, their spurs clattering loudly against the stone steps.

  As they neared the top, they advanced more cautiously. If there were rebels in the tower they would be armed and waiting. Another turn of the corkscrew stairs and they might be looking into the barrels of their pistols… Ramon hesitated. He looked back for instructions. Don Luis nodded for him to proceed. With little enthusiasm, Ramon edged round the corner.

  Two shots rang out almost immediately, sounding strangely loud and resonant inside the tower of stone. Ramon tumbled back past Don Luis and lay sprawled head-down across the stairs, hands clutched to the ugly red flower blossoming from his belly.

  Don Luis inched forward and loosed off a shot at a figure glimpsed in a dark doorway above, jerking back instantly as an answering shot powdered stone close to his cheek. Don Luis reloaded with his back to the wall. He thought bitterly of his useless vaqueros chasing pleasure down below whilst he alone faced a dangerous band of cornered rebels. What if they should realise that he was but one man, a general without his army? Don Luis' hands trembled as he slotted cartridges. Nearby, Ramon moaned loudly and unpleasantly.

  Don Luis began to retreat down the stairs, a step at a time. He would return with more men. It was not cowardice, he told himself, but strategy… Abruptly two more shots echoed down from above. They did not seem to have been aimed at him. Don Luis listened… The ravished women wailed. There was no other sound, for Ramon's moans had ended and with them his life. There had been a finality about those last shots, thought Don Luis. Suddenly his fear was gone. He knew he had to see what waited above. He advanced impulsively up the stairs, taking cover where he found it.

  No blaze of guns greeted him at the top of the stairs. Only a calm silence, completely empty of life. Edging forward behind his pistol, Don Luis peered into the dark room before him. Close by the door, in murky half-light, three men lay awkwardly positioned by death. Three… Ramon had said there were three. One of them looked as if he had been dead for hours. The other bodies still bled. Don Luis realised that the trapped rebels had killed themselves rather than endure the tortures they would undoubtedly have suffered at the hands of the vaqueros.

  He followed his pistol into the room. There were no windows and it took
several seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dark. Sombre drapes, dark as old wine, curtained the room. Against them hung paintings depicting tortured saints and scenes from the crucifixion, painful in their detail. At the far end of the room rose a black-veiled altar flickeringly illuminated by candles and dozens of tapers, slim and white, like the fingers of ghostly hands raised in prayer. From the altar a pair of dead, empty eyes contemplated Don Luis. Don Luis' breath tightened in his throat. His heart hammered. He crossed himself, the first time in years.

  Back at his hacienda, Don Luis had many objects of beauty but none equalled the beauty of that which stared at him from the altar. It was a human skull — yet no skull that had ever been clothed by the flesh of man. Its beauty was ethereal, delicate as a snowflake. It was both ice and fire, frost and flame. Beneath the glacial features, behind the death-mask smile, red threads of vein seemed to pulse, dancing with life. The hollow eyes burned in darkness, blazing like sun-fired rubies. To look into the depths of those eyes was to see the molten pits of Hell.

  The moment Don Luis saw the crystal skull he knew he had to have it, possess it. He moved forward, the eyes of the skull drawing him across the room.

  'Por el amor di Dios, Señor.'

  A kneeling figure detached itself from darkness, rose suddenly in his path. Wide-sleeved arms were beseechingly raised, black smothering wings…

  Don Luis, his attention still on the skull, jammed his pistol into a plump belly and distractedly pulled the trigger. The exploding priest smashed against a wall, sank like a deflating pigskin.

  Gazing upwards, beneath the altar, Don Luis holstered the smoking gun. In a room strewn with the dead, he reached up, stretching out both hands reverently to touch the grinning face of Death.

  Chapter One

  There was something hanging from the tree and it wasn't apples. It wasn't the most welcoming sight in the world either. Buzzards had done unpleasant things to the face and body and so had the flies and dozens of other small eaters of men. Guts, black and withered, coiled downwards from the gaping belly like lengths of frayed rope. Sloane glanced at the hanging man as he rode by the lynching tree and he knew he was nearing the end of his journey; he'd reached civilisation.