The Mission War (22 page)

“We've started walking down this road,” Jessica Starbuck said. “We can't turn back now.”

“No,” Ki answered, “we can't turn back. But I don't have to enjoy the idea, Jessica.”

By late afternoon they were in sight of the house. It was an imposing sight perched atop the apparently insurmountable bluff. It had two stories of plastered adobe capped by a red tiled roof; two towers had been incorporated into the design. These overviewed the flats below where Jessie and Ki now lay prone, searching the desert valley.

“There's no way to get across the flats unseen,” Diego Cardero said gloomily. He shaded his eyes against the sun and shook his head as he studied the layout again.

“It will have to be after dark,” Jessica said, and both men glanced at her.

“We can't attack in darkness, Jessica,” Diego answered. “We would be lucky to find the road. If we did find it, we would find guards there. It's impossible to climb the bluff itself through that cactus.” He looked to Ki for agreement, but Ki wouldn't commit himself just yet.

“There aren't many options, Ki,” Jessie said. She had removed her hat, and now she ran a hand across her forehead, bringing it away streaked with dust.

“Maybe one other,” Ki replied. He was looking not across the flats toward the house itself, but eastward where a slow procession was making its way toward them.

“What's that?” Diego asked. No one answered. In another minute it was obvious what he was seeing. Ox carts and walking people. Men and women afoot, children in the carts. They were being watched by outriders. “Slaves. Slaves arriving at the ranch.” He said it with extreme bitterness. Diego hadn't forgotten that his own mother had been taken by these people, taken and killed.

“Why would they still be arriving here?” Maria asked.

“How would the slavers know anything about the trouble at San Ignacio? They are simply making their normal delivery.”

“If we only knew that Brecht was still here,” Jessica said.

Ki responded, “No matter—there are slaves there. I want Brecht as badly as you do, Jessie, but the Indians must be set free. And I think the slavers themselves have presented us with a way to do just that.”

“What are you thinking of, Ki?”

“Using the slave caravan to get into the ranch,” he answered.

“It can't be done!” Diego said.

“We don't know that,” Ki said with a soft smile. “We haven't tried it yet. But we will. I don't see an alternative.”

“They'd hear any shots from the ranch,” Maria said.

“Then it will have to be done in silence. In dead silence.”

They started to work their way down the hill to where their army waited. Jessie took Ki's arm briefly and, out of the hearing of the others, said, “Ki, I don't like this very much.”

“No, neither do I. In fact,” he added, “I don't much like anything that has happened to us since we crossed the border, but as you once said, ‘We've started walking down this road. We can't turn back now.'”

Jessie had no answer for him. She let go of Ki's arm and walked with him to where the others anxiously waited. Ki waited until they had gathered around and then he told them exactly what had to be done.

The slave caravan moved slowly. The oxen pulling the carts were weary. The carts rocked and swayed and bounced over each rut and rock. Behind the carts the Indians, some of them in chains, walked, shuffling their feet.

The caravan was guarded by six men, six heavily armed
bandidos,
but they, too, had come a long way, they, too, were weary. As they wound their way through the deep, shadowed canyon, they didn't bother to glance up at the craggy ridges. They were nearly home, nearly back to the ranch where their beds, tequila, slave women awaited them. And gold. Much gold, for Don Alejandro paid well.

Ki had worked his way halfway down the brush slope above the narrow trail. Now he waited, holding his breath as the carts and plodding slaves passed him. He let one guard go by and then another. When the last man in line appeared around the bend in the trail, Ki reached into his pocket and withdrew a deadly, bright
shuriken.

He scarcely changed position, but his body coiled, poising. He drew a leg under him, shifted his balance, and cocked his arm. Looking to his right where the bandits and their captives had lost themselves around a second bend, Ki waited.

One
bandido
was fat and sweaty and wore a black sombrero and black vaquero suit. He carried a shot gun and wore two pistols. Behind his saddle, half a dozen sets of manacles jangled softly. The
bandido
yawned and Ki's
shuriken
hissed savagely through the air to rip the throat from the fat man. He clutched once at the
shuriken
and then toppled heavily from the horse's back to lay dead against the dusty earth.

Ki scrambled down the slope, gesturing to the man behind him. The Mexican stumbled in his anxiousness but caught up with Ki. Ki ripped the clothing from the fat man and shoved it to him.

“Hurry,” Ki prompted.

“If they find out I'm not one of them—” the Mexican objected.

“Do it, now! Or they will find out.”

Ki watched briefly as the man from San Ignacio began stripping off his own clothes; then he turned and sprinted softly after the slave caravan.

Ahead of Ki, Diego Cardero, knife in hand, lay in a gully beside the trail. He heard the riders slowly rounding the bend and the screech of ungreased wheels against wooden axles. He lowered his head, gripping the knife more tightly.

Diego peered up through the screen of chia and sagebrush, seeing a horseman pass—a narrow, scarred man riding a gray horse with silver trappings.

That was one man—Cardero counted them as they passed his position. If Ki had done his work, the fifth man would be the last. And Diego had no doubt that the Japanese had done his work. He had never seen a warrior to equal Ki.

Four
bandidos
had passed. The next one then. Diego watched closely; the slavers ahead hadn't yet cleared the bend. If they glanced back... The fifth slaver appeared, straggling now, glancing behind him, perhaps realizing that one man was missing. Diego could see the perplexed expression in his eyes, could see him holding up his horse a little as he looked back down the winding, narrow trail.

Slowly the bandit halted his horse and turned it. He shifted the rifle he held in his hand and sat his blue roan, waiting for the man behind him, the man who would not be coming.

Cardero raised himself cautiously and then launched himself from the underbrush, leaping for the back of the bandit's horse. He was up behind the
bandido
before the man knew what had happened, and Cardero, one hand over the slaver's mouth, stabbed deeply with his knife, ripping at heart muscle and lung tissue as the bandit thrashed futilely in his arms. The bandit fell from his horse, rifle dropping free and Cardero bent low to recover the man's sombrero.

Ki was jogging around the bend in the trail now, pointing ahead. Cardero nodded and turned his stolen horse. Behind Ki, the second masquerading attacker came. He seemed relieved to see Cardero, grinned, and held up the shotgun taken from the dead
bandido.
Diego nodded and they started on together.

Rata was what the pocked bandit was called. Rat—it suited him well. Rata was riding beside the last cart. Where were that stupid Domingo and the equally stupid Ramon? What use were those two? Stupid and lazy.

Even back at the Indian village, they had been useless. They didn't fight worth a damn when those braves had decided to try making a stand. They stood back and watched. Don Alejandro himself would hear about that!

Rata saw them coming—finally. The two of them towing a slave between them. Maybe Rata had been wrong. They had captured an escaping slave at least. That was a thousand pesos they had saved Don Alejandro.

When had the slave gotten away? Rata frowned and started his horse toward the two slavers. The man they held between them was tall, very tall. His head was down, but even so Rata could have sworn he had never seen this one before. Even his face was not Indian. Nor was it Mexican.

“Hey, Domingo! What is this?
Qué pasa?
Who have you got there?”

Rata's beady eyes narrowed. Something was not right. He held up his horse again. That wasn't Domingo at all!

That was the last coherent thought Rata was to have in his violent life. As he watched, the slave between the two horsemen freed his hands and then something silver and flashing was humming its way toward him, something that sailed like a dragonfly, seemingly insubstantial. It buried itself in Rata's forehead with a force like a mule's kick.

Rata lifted his gun, but his fingers could not hold the rifle that was suddenly as heavy as an anvil. Rata watched his rifle fall to the ground. With a pawing gesture, he swiped at the thing imbedded in his forehead, and then he slid to the earth, his hand trying to hold his saddlehorn and was dragged a few feet by his horse.

From the brush, a man appeared, rushed to Rata's body, and began stripping it as Ki and Diego passed. The Mexican yanked the
shuriken
from Rata's forehead, glanced at it in wonder, and tossed it to Ki who caught it and tucked it away in his pocket.

 

 

Three. There should only be three of them left, Maria Sanchez thought, if everything had gone right. She was crouched in the tall, purple flowering sage beside the trail—listening, waiting, and watching. She let the first two riders pass her, watching them glance down across the valley and past the sheer drop that now sided the trail toward the Casa Don Alejandro.

She was silent and motionless, but when the third man appeared, she ripped open the seam of her riding blouse's sleeve and began to moan softly.

“Help me.
Por favor,
help me. In the name of God.”

The slaver was almost past her when he heard her cries, saw Maria stagger up from the brush and then fall back in a faint. He turned his horse, swung down, and walked to her.

This was something.
Madre
de Dios, a beautiful woman alone in the country. Smiling, the bandit walked into the brush, moving toward Maria who lay face up, her breasts straining at the fabric of her light blouse. Three buttons were open and the glimpse of smooth, coppery cleavage the bandit caught caused his breath to strangle off to a hiss. He worked his way down the slope toward Maria.

He never saw the other woman, the honey-blonde with the green eyes who moved silently behind him and drove her knife into his back as he stood slavering over Maria Sanchez, his body tightening with thoughts of what he could do with such a woman.

He never saw Jessica Starbuck, but he felt the razor-edged knife bit into his flesh, felt the sudden, jagged pain. He tried to turn, to fight off his assailant, but the woman on the ground suddenly rose up, slashing out with her own knife. The blade raked his throat, and then the bandit was aware of nothing else. He fell to the ground to die twitching.

Maria Sanchez spat into his dying face.

“Two left,” Jessica said. “Let's hope they die as silently.”

They did die silently. Quickly and silently. Diego rode by the line of carts, dragging a thrashing Ki by the collar. As the two lead
bandidos
turned to find out what was happening, Ki took the man on their left. Leaping from the ground, he took the bandit down by the throat, took him down and with a crushing blow to the man's throat, and left him strangling in the dust.

Diego had brought the rifle he carried up and around and, wielding it like a club, slammed it against the skull of the
bandido
to the right. He dropped from the horse in a tangle and rolled off into the brushy ravine below them.

And then there were none. Only the men of San Ignacio dressed in bandit clothes, the two women, Ki, and Diego—and half a hundred fearful, perplexed Indian slaves who stood or sat in the carts staring at these new-comers.

“What do we do with them?” Diego asked, dusting himself off.

“The slaves? We need them,” Ki answered.

“We can‘t, Ki,” Jessica interrupted, touching Ki's arm. “Look at them. How can we drag them on with us? They think they're still slaves. Let them go.”

“If we let them go—”

“Our people can take their places. No one will notice the difference, not right away.”

Ki looked again at the wretched Indians. Reluctantly he admitted that Jessica was right. “We'll let them go. Diego, are they Papago Indians? Can you talk to them?”

“I'll find out. These are not Papago. Maybe that one there,” he gestured. “What do I tell them?”

“To run. To turn and run and don't look back. To go home and hide in the hills.”

Diego found one old man who spoke many tongues. It was to him that Cardero gave the instructions. Even after the old man translated what Cardero had said, however, many of the Indians remained where they were, thinking perhaps it was a trick. It wasn't until Diego gave the old man a spare rifle and one of the Mexicans produced the key to the manacles that he found in the pocket of a jacket that a buzz of conversation and excited movement began.

“Tell them to keep quiet, Cardero. Just keep quiet and go.”Ki looked to those who had filtered down through the brush to join them. “Start getting up into the carts. No hats, for God's sake. Keep your weapons hidden.” Ki looked to the sky, seeing the sun start to drop toward the western mountains. “At dusk,” he told them, “when it will be difficult for any guards to make us out—at dusk we attack.”

They waited on the canyon trail, guards posted behind and ahead of the slave train. The Mexicans in the carts were unsettled, nervously watching the sun as it arced lower, flushed pink, and then vanished into the cradle of the dark mountains beyond the valley.