Ambush at Shadow Valley (10 page)

The priest almost gasped aloud. He shook his head and quickly made the sign of the cross. ‘‘You—you are one of them?'' the priest asked, nodding at the tattoo, his face growing even more troubled and ashen than before. ‘‘One of
el diablo's
—'' He caught himself about to speak in Spanish and stopped short. ‘‘One of the devil's own!''

‘‘I am one of the devil's own,'' said Soto flatly. ‘‘Now, call the Mayan out here. We both know what I have to do to him.''

The priest's eyes seemed to go blank for a moment. He glanced quickly toward the young nun as Clarimonde led her away toward the living quarters. Then he shouted loudly, cupping his hands to his mouth, ‘‘Run, Fiji, run! Do not stop! Do not look back! He is one of the cursed! Do not stop running—''

A bullet from Soto's Colt punched the priest in his right shoulder, silencing him. He staggered back against the closed door. Another bullet punched his left shoulder. He slid to the ground.

Ransdale raised his gun and aimed it, but Soto stopped him. ‘‘Don't kill him. Not yet.''

Ransdale stopped short of pulling the trigger. He grinned. ‘‘Whatever you say. What the hell is he jabbering about anyway, you being one of the cursed? ‘The devil's own'?''

‘‘It was nothing. Forget it,'' Soto said in a tight tone of voice.

‘‘Forget it?''
Ransdale chuckled and shrugged. ‘‘All right, if you say so. But I have to say it's piquing my curiosity something awful.''

The priest lay struggling to rise to his feet in spite of having lost the use of both arms. ‘‘He does not want to tell you . . . that he and his kind are devils . . .
demonios de los intestinos del infierno
!''

‘‘What did I tell you about Spanish?'' Soto said with an angry, disgusted expression. He shoved his Colt back into its holster and said to Ransdale, ‘‘Keep watch for an ax to come flying through the air, or a dart to nail you in the neck.''

‘‘Yeah? An ax?'' Ransdale spun back and forth with his gun pointed and cocked. ‘‘You mean that old Indian we saw is dangerous?''

‘‘He's a Mayan,'' said Soto. ‘‘It's his religious duty to try and kill me and anybody with me.'' He swung down from his saddle, stepped back to his saddlebags and flipped them open.

‘‘What the hell is this all about?'' Ransdale asked, looking back and forth, suddenly very serious. ‘‘Am I standing in the middle of some kind of religious rigmarole?''

‘‘Just stay on your toes, and watch my back,'' Soto said, taking a straight razor from his saddlebags and opening it.

‘‘Whoa!'' said Ransdale, eyeing the razor. ‘‘It looks like somebody is about to lose something awfully important to them?''

Ignoring Ransdale's words, Soto said, ‘‘The Indian will be back, in spite of what the old man says about Mayans being
timid
.''

Ransdale swallowed a dry knot in his throat, looking all around the courtyard. ‘‘I was kind of wanting to spend some time with that French sweet cookie, soon as she gets her head fixed up some. Suppose that Indian might have turned tail and run off, like the priest said?''

‘‘Don't call this old fool a priest,'' Soto said sternly. ‘‘And trust what I tell you—the Indian will show up any time. A Mayan must do what he is sworn to do.'' He held his bare hand toward the priest and made the sign of the devil with his fingers. ‘‘Then I'll do what I'm sworn to do.''

The wounded priest, unable to raise either hand and make the sign of the cross, murmured under his breath,
‘‘Dios me ayude.''

Giving him a look of raw hatred, Soto stepped forward with the razor in hand and said, ‘‘It's good that you're praying for help, old man. You're going to need all the help you can get.''

Ransdale watched and listened intently, noting that Soto's voice had begun to take on a trace of an accent since they'd arrived here. ‘‘Are you getting ready to cut him like a steer?'' he asked, watching Soto walk toward the priest.

Soto didn't answer. Instead, he walked past the priest, toward a fountain where water rose from beneath the earth and ran in a thin stream from the mouth of a laughing stone cherub. ‘‘Find a hammer and some nails,'' he said to Ransdale as he kneeled down at the short fountain wall and laid the razor on it.

‘‘Sure thing . . . ,'' said Ransdale, staring bemused, watching Soto take off his hat, raise a knife from his boot well and begin slicing handfuls of thick, dark hair from atop his head and let them fall to the ground.

Chapter 8

In the nuns' sparsely furnished living quarters, Clarimonde finished cleaning and bandaging the wound atop the young novice's head. While she'd attended to the wound she had told the woman everything, letting her know the kind of men they were both up against. The young Frenchwoman took her by the forearm and said, ‘‘I will choose to die before I will submit to them.''

‘‘I understand,'' said Clarimonde. ‘‘And if you choose to die, then I'm certain you will die.'' She pulled her forearm away from her gently but firmly. ‘‘They will think nothing of killing you,'' she added flatly.

The young novice asked, ‘‘Do you think staying alive has been worth it to you? Will you ever be the same after letting them take away your soul?''

‘‘Worth it to me?'' Clarimonde thought about her father and the dogs, and the good, clean, simple years she had spent there attending the goats. She started to tell the woman that it was not for herself that she had gone along with these men. But she stopped herself and said, ‘‘It doesn't matter what we think. Right now it matters only what we do.''

‘‘I will do what God leads me to do,'' the novice said, trying to sound strong through the raw, burning pain atop her bandaged head.

‘‘Listen to me, Cecille,'' Clarimonde said, using the name she'd heard the priest use. ‘‘If there is a secret way out of here, you had better take it. I'll tell them that you managed to slip away from me.''

‘‘If I know of such a secret way out, will you come with me?'' Cecille asked pointedly.

Clarimonde avoided the young novice's eyes. ‘‘No, I will stay. I know what I am doing. I will keep them busy while you get away.''

‘‘What will they do to you?'' the young nun asked. ‘‘Beat you, torture you, rape you? I cannot have you suffer that for my sake.''

‘‘I would not be suffering for your sake.'' Clarimonde continued to look away. ‘‘But let me worry about that when the time comes. If there is a way out of here, take it. Take it now.''

‘‘No.'' Cecille stood up, stepped over to a wooden trunk and lifted the lid. She took out a clay jar, set it on the table and took off the thick lid. She dipped her fingers into a thick, gray oil filled with flecks of herbs and, reaching up under her arms, rubbed it on herself. ‘‘You must use this,'' she said to Clarimonde, sliding the jar toward her. ‘‘It is something the old Indian's wife made for me when I traveled to the villages. It is made to repel men.''

The rancid smell caused Clarimonde to turn away from her again. ‘‘No, I won't use it,'' she said.

"Oh?" The novice gave her an almost accusing stare and said, ‘‘Don't you
want
them to leave you alone?''

‘‘No,'' Clarimonde said bluntly, ‘‘not if it means letting them see I have done something deliberately to turn them away. It will only make things worse for me . . . the same as it would only make it worse for me if they caught me trying to escape.'' She stared at the young novice. ‘‘You used this oil before we arrived. I'll tell them I couldn't get rid of the smell. Perhaps it will help you—''

Her words cut short beneath a long scream and the pounding of nails coming from the courtyard. ‘‘Father! Father!'' Cecille screamed. She tried to run out of the room to the courtyard, but Clarimonde, catching her around her waist, wrestled her back inside and slammed the heavy door. ‘‘Please, let me go to him!'' she sobbed.

‘‘There is nothing you can do for him now,'' Clarimonde said, shoving her back into the room. ‘‘When the time comes, they will do even worse to you, if you don't get out of here.''

The young novice only had to consider Clarimonde's advice for a moment, the pain atop her bandaged head throbbing, intensifying with each beat of her racing pulse. ‘‘All right, I'll go. But I will tell you the way to go, so that you can use it if you get a chance to get away from them.''

‘‘No, don't tell me.'' Clarimonde stopped her. ‘‘If they think you told me the way out of here, they will beat it out of me. I might not be strong enough to resist telling them.''

‘‘You would rather take a beating for something you do not know, than be able to stop it by telling them what you
do
know?'' The young woman looked confused by Clarimonde's logic.

‘‘Just go. Go now!'' said Clarimonde, taking no time to explain herself to an innocent. She gave the woman a shove toward a rear door and watched her hurry away. ‘‘Do not come back until you are certain we are gone.''

Cecille grabbed the jar of oil and its lid from the tabletop on her way, then ran out of the room, slamming the rear door behind herself. Clarimonde slumped down into a chair and held her head in her cupped hands for a moment, wondering when her nightmare would end. Then she stood up, walked out the door into a stone hallway and followed it to a room where she found stores of cornmeal, dried beans and other food supplies. Without hesitation she took down a stained apron from a peg, tied it around her waist and went to work.

Outside in the courtyard, Ransdale stared at Soto, still getting used to his freshly shaved head and the strange tattoos that covered the top of it like a decorative skull cap. ‘‘With every day that goes by, I learn something new about you,'' he said. As he spoke he pitched the bloody hammer to the ground and stuck his hands out under the water from the stone cherub's mouth, washing them.

‘‘Are you complaining,
mi amigo
?'' Soto asked in a firm tone.

‘‘No! Not at all,'' said Ransdale, stunned at hearing the words in Spanish coming from Soto's lips. ‘‘Just commenting is all.'' He slung water from his hands and finished drying them on his trousers. ‘‘Uh-oh,'' he said, his hands slowed to a halt, his right hand poised near his gun as he spotted the old Indian step into sight as if from out of nowhere. ‘‘Look who's here.''

A glistening machete hung from the Indian's right hand.

‘‘I see him,'' Soto said calmly. ‘‘I figured the old man's scream would bring him out. These Mayan converts never fly far from the nest.'' He nodded toward the wounded priest. ‘‘They need someone like this one to lay the whip to their backs.'' Stepping toward the Mayan, he spoke to him in a language that Ransdale did not recognize. The Indian replied in the same language and went into a crouch as if to defend himself.

‘‘Huh?'' Ransdale looked puzzled. ‘‘What did you say to one another?''

‘‘I asked him what kind of fool stands with a machete before a man with a loaded gun,'' said Soto. ‘‘He called me a dirty name.'' He gave a thin, cruel grin, lifting his Colt arm's length with his left hand, level to the Indian's naked chest. ‘‘Can you imagine that?'' He cocked the Colt. ‘‘He called me a
dirty name
?''

‘‘
Por favor
, let him go,
por favor
,'' the old priest moaned from against the thick wooden door where Ransdale had spread his arms and nailed him into place.

‘‘There this one goes again. He's talking Spanish to you again,'' Ransdale said quietly, to see what Soto's reaction would be toward the priest.

But Soto ignored him. Instead, he raised his right palm toward the Indian and took another step forward.

‘‘Yep, every day it's something new . . . ,'' Ransdale repeated under his breath, slipping his gun from its holster and holding it ready, even though Soto had the Indian covered.

Clarimonde had stiffened instinctively at the sound of the single gunshot from the courtyard. But she did not go to the stone window ledge and look out on the courtyard to see what had happened. Instead she kept herself busy kindling a small fire in a corner hearth on which to boil a pot of beans hanging on an iron pothook.

Had she looked out upon the courtyard she would have seen the Indian fall to the ground, mortally wounded, and she would have seen Suelo Soto walk over and take the machete from his hand. She would have also seen Bess, the shepherd bitch, slink into the mission through the open front gate and work her way around the perimeter, going unnoticed while the two men stood over the dying Indian like vultures, Soto taking off his shirt and laying it aside to keep from covering it with blood.

Clarimonde had no idea Bess had followed them across the high trails, until she heard a soft whine and felt a cold nose against her forearm as she fanned the small fire. ‘‘Oh my God!'' she gasped, turning and looking into the big shepherd's panting face. ‘‘Bess! Bess. How in the world have you found me?'' As she spoke she hugged the animal's coarse, brush-flecked head to her bosom. The big shepherd licked her face as if asking for her approval. Oh, Bess, yes yes, you are a
Gutes Mädchen.
Such a
good girl
indeed.''

But no sooner had she tearfully hugged and praised the big shepherd than she pulled back and looked toward the open, stone-framed window. ‘‘But you cannot stay here. We cannot let them see you,'' she said in a harsh frightened whisper. She hurried to the window and glanced out just for a second, just long enough to see Soto standing naked and bloody above the Indian, his freshly shaved head bowed, the machete rising and falling viciously.