The Mission War (12 page)

Chapter 10

The alcalde of the town of San Ignacio was named Rivera. He was squat, heavy, balding, but there was something in his eyes that said he had once been a fighter. Ki saw that and approved.

They were introduced to Rivera and the other three important men of the delegation, and then they sat around the friar's table. Fire from the town cast bright reflections on the window of the rectory. Now and then they heard gunfire from San Ignacio as Mono continued to assault the little border town.

Rivera spoke, “So you two are the cause of this destruction.”

“Mono is the cause of it,” Jessie answered. “We aren't the ones responsible for what's going on out there; it's the bandits, and perhaps the people of the town who have allowed Mono to have his way in the past.” She spoke sharply, her eyes glinting, and Rivera, running his tongue across his upper teeth, nodded with apparent admiration. He looked more closely at the blond
gringa
now, seeing her differently.

She was a woman with a remarkable body, breasts straining against the fabric of the white blouse she wore, her face lovely and appealing. But Rivera had expected little from the woman. The man was a different story; the Oriental looked like a warrior. The alcalde had expected the man to do the talking, but there was fire in the woman as well, fire and intelligence.

“Mono would not be here if not for you,” a second man, one called Contreras, said. “He would have come, drunk his liquor, watered his horses, and ridden on.”

“After stealing, raping, killing.”

“A few incidents always occur,” Contreras said, accepting the state of affairs with amazing readiness.

Another man, Arano, said, “We are at the mercy of these men. What are we to do? We have no army garrison; not more than half a dozen men in the town have weapons. Mono sometimes comes with fifty men. We have learned not to struggle.”

“Maybe it's time to learn to struggle,” Jessica said. “These bandits come and have their way. Then they leave and you're all relieved. But they'll be back, again and again. I saw a man killed last night while trying to protect his wife. Perhaps next time it will be your wife, and it will be you who is killed—if you had enough nerve to walk up to Mono and try stopping things, that is.”

Arano winced under that stinging remark. “If we do nothing, perhaps we will pay a price,” Rivera said, “but if we do something, we know what will happen. All of us will be ruined; many of us will be dead.”

“What do you think's happening out there right now!” Jessie snapped.

“Because he wants you,” Rivera responded with a slight smile, “because he wants you and your friend.”

“Because,” Jessica Starbuck, her voice barely under control, said, “he is a mad dog and a murderer.”

“What would you have us do?” the alcalde asked. San Igancio's mayor spread his hands. “I have no weapons. If I did, how would someone like me fight Mono and his bandits. They would kill me in a moment. You speak of fighting for our homes, businesses and families—what good does it do me to have a home if I am dead? What good am I to do for my family if Mono kills me and they bury me?”

“At least,” Diego Cardero put in, “you would die like a man instead of hiding like a cowering dog.”

Rivera didn't like that a bit. He knew Cardero as well, knew him as a bandit. “Your way of life has been the gun, Cardero. It is easy for you to speak. Besides, what are you after here? What profit is there for you in asking us to fight Mono?”

“No profit but justice.”

“Justice! You don't know the meaning of that word. Caballero, you are an outlaw as bad as any of these others. I don't know what you want here, but it makes a man think to have one such as you come to us.”

“Believe what you want,” Cardero said. “I'm just telling you this—Mono won't stop until he is killed.”

Contreras said, “Or until he has these two back.”

The friar was glowering. “I have given these two sanctuary, Señor Contreras. Perhaps that means nothing to Mono. It should mean something to you.”

“Yes, and the lives of my wife and children mean something as well!” Contreras wagged his head. “I am sorry, but to ask us to fight—it is something I am unwilling to do, unwilling to ask others to do.”

Maria Sanchez had stood quietly in the shadows of the rectory. Now for the first time she came forward and made her presence known. “These are the men of San Ignacio? These are our respected leaders? Cowards! Fight now or watch the town burn.”

Rivera's mouth was set. The eyes were no longer amused. Perhaps American women talked like that, but it was wrong for this daughter of San Ignacio to speak up.

“Go back to your father,” Rivera said to her. “Go back and clean up his house. Comfort your mother.”

Maria made an exasperated sound and turned away. Chairs scraped against the floor as the three important men from San Ignacio rose. The meeting was over.

“You have given us no answer,” Brother Joseph said.

“What answer can we give? I have said we are not warriors—we are not. Fighting Mono will only cause more trouble.”

“You must consider this further,” the friar said as he walked with the townsmen to the heavy door. “Something must be done.”

“There is nothing to be done.”

“Please,” the friar said, taking Rivera's arm, “consider it. Consider fighting this evil, this Mono.”

Simply to free his arm and get out the door, Rivera said, “We will consider it further. Yes, yes.” And then they were gone, the door closing behind them. Those remaining were silent for a long while. Maria, her back still to them all, was furious. Ki and Jessie looked at each other across the table. Cardero kept his thoughts to himself.

“I am going to pray,” the friar said. No one responded and he walked away silently, arms folded.

“Maybe that will do some good,” Cardero muttered a bit skeptically. “These people... what are they thinking? When has it done any good to back away from evil and let it have its way?”

Maria commented acidly, “Now we have morality spilling from the lips of a bandit.”

Cardero didn't respond to that. He stood and walked to the window to watch the fire.

“There are only ten of them, Ki.”

Ki looked up with surprise. “Yes, just ten bandits.”

“Do you think we could do it?” Diego mused.

“Perhaps—if everything went right. How often does everything go right?”

“Ten men,” Cardero repeated, “and an entire town cowed by them.”

“They'll tell Mono,” Maria said. “Cowards—they'll tell Mono where Jessica and Ki are.”

“Perhaps we underestimate them,” Ki argued.

“Didn't you see the fear on their faces? I did. They had already made up their minds.”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” Ki said. And if that were the case, Ki and Cardero would have to try taking on Mono alone. The odds for success there weren't very high.

Ki rose and stretched. “We had better rest. Whatever happens, we will need it. Where do we sleep, Maria?”

“There are sleeping chambers in the hidden basement. I will show you.”

Jessica was more tired than she realized. Sleeping on the ground or in a chair with her hands and sometimes her feet bound couldn't be called restful. When Maria guided her to a small, monkish room beneath the church, it was enough to discover that the chamber had a bed with a clean blanket on it.

She nodded her thanks to Maria and began undressing even before the door had closed. Distantly she could hear shots and occasional yells. She tried to put that out of her mind. She rinsed off in the basin that had been provided, stretched out naked on the bed, and left the candle to burn itself out.

Despite the tension, she fell off to sleep easily, sleeping deeply until a dream came. In the dream a naked man entered her chamber, quietly closed the door, and stood over Jessie with his manhood standing proud, needful, until she sat up and cupped it in her hands and kissed it as his hands rested on her head.

In the dream, the man who looked for all the world like Diego Cardero, lay beside her, stroking her breasts and thighs, letting his fingers dip inside of her, touching her sweet warmth.

Then, in the dream, Jessie straddled the man, her thighs against his chest and shoulders. She sat there, her head thrown back as Cardero, or the dream man, tasted her.

When she could stand no more of that, Jessica Starbuck slid slowly down onto his ready shaft. Without using her hands, she eased onto him, feeling the pressure of his erection against the walls of her womb, feeling the steady pulsing there, the nudging of his body against hers, the clench of his hands on her buttocks.

In the dream he began to arch his back and lift himself against her as she nearly slept against his chest. He worked deftly against her, inside her, his swelling and thrusting becoming a crazy, urgent pounding that flooded Jessica with pleasure.

She rode him long, this dream man, until she felt his hot rush of release inside her and felt her own throat constricted with emotion, her breasts ready to burst. Her body trembled and seemed to explode with pleasure.

Then the night was still again and Jessica dozed. When she awoke an hour later, there was no one there. It had only been a dream.

She arose at first light, her spirits dimming as she came fully awake. She was rested at least, rested and ready for anything to come. But what was there to do?

Uncharacteristically, Ki also looked depressed this morning. Neither of them was aware of the little tragedy taking place in the main street of San Ignacio, a tragedy that would turn everything around and carry them on toward more violent tumult.

 

 

Mono was sleeping in a wooden chair in front of the cantina. Other bandits were inside on the floor. Arturo had taken the horses to the plaza fountain to water them. The fires had gone out overnight; the adobes didn't burn that well.

Arturo was in a foul mood. He had had enough of San Ignacio. The women were all hidden. He had had too much to drink. The prisoners, worth their weight in gold, had escaped. His throat still hurt where the Chinaman had kicked him.

The horses were balky and Arturo had a throbbing tequila headache. And Mono slept. They should be riding by now—forget the woman and the Chinaman, find some bank, and open it up. But Mono stayed. Mono wanted to find the prisoners, although Arturo's own idea was that they were far away by now.

The sun was already hot, the air dusty. Arturo took the horses to the fountain and watched them drink. He ducked his own head in, wiping back his long stringy hair as he straightened.

“Damn this town; damn San Ignacio,” Arturo muttered.

A small boy was behind Arturo's bay horse. He was five or six and wearing a new straw sombrero. He looked at Arturo and the bandit snarled.

“Go away, boy. Get out of here.”

“Whose horses are these? Are they bandit horses?”

“I said get out of here.”

“Can I look at them?” the boy asked brightly.

Arturo turned, kicked out, and caught the boy painfully on the hip. The boy went to the ground, sprawling in the dust.

“Now beat it,” Arturo said. “Beat it before I shoot your ears off.”

“You won't shoot me.”

Arturo said, “Don't bet on it.” His head throbbed. The little bastard was bothering him. Arturo had never liked children, though he suspected he had some of his own somewhere.

“No, you won't. You can't do anything to me because my father is the alcalde.”

“I don't care if he's the Pope. Get your ass out of here.”

The next time Arturo looked the child was gone. That didn't help his headache nor the thickly coated tongue that sat like an iron bar in his mouth. There was only one way to solve everything and that was to start drinking tequila again, which was just what Arturo meant to do as soon as the horses drank their fill.

He walked behind his own bay, put his hands to the small of his back, and stretched. From the comer of his eye, he saw a rock, but it was too late to do anything about it. The boy had a good aim and he stung Arturo's bay on the flank. The horse reared up in panic, and instantly five of the ten horses Arturo was watering took off at a run down the street.

A second rock narrowly missed Arturo himself, and in a rage the bandit swung aboard his still shying bay. Ahead of him horses raced down the street.

Ahead of him as well was the barefoot smart-ass kid. Arturo saw the dark eyes look back in fear, saw the sombrero fly from the kid's head. The kid hesitated, stopped, and tried to recover his hat.

Arturo rode over the hat, trampling it, and then he rode the boy down.