Aztec Rage (73 page)

I whistled as I took the stairs up to the second floor two at a time. I was at the top of the stairs when the door to Isabella's room opened. Renato came out. Isabella came out the door and grabbed him to pull him back in. She saw me and stepped back, slamming the door.

Renato stood perfectly still, his hand on his dagger.

I nodded at this hand. “Someday you will lose that hand.”

ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

W
E SET OUT
the following morning for León, fifteen strong: the twelve vaqueros, Isabella, Renato, and their generalíssimo, namely me. The trip would be another hard ride but was less than half the distance we had covered to reach Guadalajara.

At our encampment on the first night, Isabella whispered to me, “You're a fool, Renato is family. It is not what you think. He had been telling me a story about my husband in his youth.”

“You're right. I am a fool.” I gave her my back and went into the woods
to relieve myself. I didn't know what to think of her and Renato, so I tried to not to think about them and focus on the mission.

I was familiar with León, the city we would stop at before going on to the village where the general named López ruled. I had stopped there many times on hunting trips. As with so many cities in the colony, León's namesake was a great and famous city in Spain. The colony's city was in a fertile river valley, a day's ride from Guanajuato.

This was dangerous territory for us because a major royal force under the command of General Calleja of San Luis Potosí was known to be on the march.

When León was visible in the distance, I ordered our men to make camp and went into town in the company of just one vaquero. From the frightened townspeople I learned that López was the terror of the region. He had established himself in a small village on the road that led north and was collecting a “toll” from all who passed. Though he professed alliance to the padre's cry for liberty, his only interest in “governing” was in how much booty he could plunder . . . before he was caught and hanged.

I told Renato that only three of us—he, a vaquero, and I—would go into the village and negotiate for the marqués's release. We'd take an extra horse for the marqués to ride and a vaquero to watch our horses if we had to go inside to negotiate with López. Isabella and the other vaqueros were to wait outside the village for us.

“Shouldn't I come?” Isabella asked. “If my husband is too weak to travel, he may want to whisper to me the location of the gold.”

I laughed. “Before you put a knife in his gut?”

Both of them flushed.

“That's not—”

Renato held out his hand to stop her. “No, you'll hold us back if we have to run for it.”

“We won't run for it,” I said.

“How do you know? You think this bandido—”

“We'll be outnumbered a hundred to one. If we can't bluff or negotiate our way out, they'll kill us.”

They took a moment to appreciate our plight. Isabella clutched her neck. “What will they do to me before they kill me?”

I ignored the question. The answer was obvious.

“We should bring the men into the village with us, make a show of strength,” Renato said.

“Twelve against hundreds are a show of strength? Our strength is an unknown factor to López if we leave the men out of the village. If we take them in, he'll murder the bunch of us and keep the ransom and the marqués.”

“Why don't we have the bandido bring my husband out of the village, meet us in the open?” Isabella asked.

Renato shook his head. “He is right. We can't let him see how few we are. If he came out, he'd have his whole army with him and see that we're little threat. We have to go in. Have courage, my darling, we will not fail.”

I had to give Renato credit; he questioned my decisions, but he wasn't stupid. He acquiesced when he saw I was right. But he did have a loose tongue, calling his “aunt” darling. It was pretty obvious he had been poaching on his uncle's woman. I would have to kill the dishonorable bastard.

I was after the same woman, but it wasn't dishonorable; I wasn't family.

When the village came into sight, I posted ten men in the high rocks above the road. I gave them instructions on how to use the mercury-flask bombs. They were to light them on my signal and throw them down onto the road.

Renato nodded at the flasks. “How many men will they kill when they explode?”

“None. They're to raise a commotion, simulate cannon fire, and make the bandidos think we're a large force with artillery.”

“You don't think this López will simply take the ransom money and turn over the marqués?”

“What would you do if you were López?”

He shrugged. “As you suggested, kill the emissaries, rape the woman, keep the gold. I'd then hold both her and the marqués for another ransom.”

“So we'd better let him think we're an army.”

I left Isabella and her mule litter with a vaquero who would tend the horses for the ten other men. The twelfth man went with Renato and me.

“¡Ay!”
I whispered between clenched teeth as we approached the village. Two naked bodies hung from a tree. Both the men had been flayed and burned alive, their eyes and tongues pulled out . . . before they were strung up. A crudely lettered sign on a piece of wood hung from their necks. Each sign read:
NO RANSOM

It wasn't much of a village: a few dozen shacks, a humble church, and a pulqueria. The only people I saw were bandidos. The villagers had either fled or had been murdered.

About fifty of López's cutthroats were waiting for us.

Under my black frock coat, I wore three oiled-silk money belts with four long pouches to each belt. Two of them I strapped across my shoulders, crisscrossing my chest. The third I'd buckled around my waist. They averaged seven pounds of gold each. Not that these curs needed gold to kill someone. They would have cheerfully killed us for the boots on our feet. Hell, they'd have killed us
por nada
.

I sucked on a cigarro and grinned at the welcoming committee. I knew exactly where the so-called “General” López had found them. They were charter members of the same scummy brotherhood I'd jailed with in Guanajuato.
López had emptied the prisons and scraped the gutters to recruit them.

One of the bandidos staggered drunkenly toward me, waving a pistol, his other hand out as if he expected me to fill it. I kicked him in the face, catching him under the jaw with my heel. The kick lifted him off his feet, snapping his neck with an ugly-sounding
crack
! He flew back onto the ground.

His compañeros laughed at the show. When I glanced back, two of his amigos were already fighting over the man's heel-less, floppy-soled boots.

Another fifty or more of the creatures waited in front of the village church. They looked like cannibals waiting for dinner guests. Canek the Bloodthirsty was a cultured hombre compared to these slimy, two-legged centipedes.

A fat, drunken beast bursting out of an undersized Spanish officer's uniform staggered out of the church and hailed us.

“Welcome, amigos. You bring me dinero? No dinero—?” He made a hanging gesture with his hand and a strangling sound.

The gaggle of human nightmares laughed uproariously.

I left the horses with the vaquero and went inside with Renato behind me. We followed General López to his “office,” a thronelike chair on a platform in front of the altar. The men outside followed us in. He flopped onto his throne, took a big swig from a mescal jug, belched, and wiped his mouth with his uniform sleeve. I didn't hurt his feelings by pointing out that his uniform was that of a lieutenant.

I gave him the written authority from the padre, commanding him to turn over the marqués to me. From the way he looked at the message, I realized he couldn't read. He stared at the message for a moment, wadded it into a ball, and bounced it off my chest.

I said, “As you can see, Miguel Hidalgo, Generalíssimo of the Army of America, sends his greetings. He commands you to turn over the prisoner Humberto to me. Naturally, you will receive an accommodation in the amount of three thousand pesos.”

The price was five thousand, but it was better to let him negotiate me up.

He drank and belched again. “Your generalíssimo has had some difficulties lately.”

I raised my eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“We captured a royal messenger today. He died under, uh, questioning, but he told us that an army under General Calleja had routed the padre's army at Aculco.”

I suddenly felt ice cold. “Is the padre—”

“He wasn't captured. The messenger said he escaped with some of his army.”

He was telling me we had just lost a negotiating point.

“The Bajío has reinforcements that will swell the padre's army till it envelops
all of New Spain. No royal force will stand before it,” I told him, “and the padre will remember your kindness.”

“
My
army will drive the Spanish from the land and place the padre on a throne as king.” López waved at the scum in the church.

I could see war and politics were not his strong suit. I cut short the haggling. “I have your gold.”

“I want ten thousand.”

“Five is all I have, there is a large force waiting for me, they'll get restless if I don't hurry back. We need to move on and meet up with the padre. Bring in the prisoner. We must confirm his good health.”

They brought him in through a side door. In the capital, I had only seen Don Humberto from a distance. Now he was no longer the fat, arrogant aristocrat who wiped his boots on the lower classes. He was pale, emaciated, his eyes hollow and haggard, with no flicker of recognition. The bandits had replaced his fine clothing with filthy rags. I could not avert my gaze from his hideously haunted eyes: They were like the broken, empty windows in an abandoned building.

López stared at me with half-closed eyes. “What is so important about this merchant that the generalíssimo himself is ransoming him?”

I grabbed the marqués by the back of his shirt and propelled him toward the door. “The ransom money is outside.”

Rabble went out the door in front of me, thinking they would grab the gold off Tempest. The gold wasn't there, and the stallion's ill temper turned explosive when dirty hands and smelly bodies got too close. He kicked a lépero in the head, another in the pelvis, and I sent the rest scattering with my flashing blade as I broke through.

Lopez had followed me out with a bloody machete in hand. The vaqueros' first flask bomb boomed in the distance. The blast stopped everyone cold.

“My army's firing its cannons,” I said. “Next they'll shoot nail canisters in.” I shrugged. “They're restless. They haven't killed anyone today.”

Another blast thundered, its echo replicating over and over again against the rocky hills outside the village.

I unbuttoned my loose-fitting black frock coat, exposing the two money belts crisscrossing my chest like bandoleers and the third strapped around my waist. I unhooked all three and threw the twenty pounds of gold bullion at the bandido leader's feet, one belt at a time. They each landed with a thump.

“You can keep the belts,” I said.

Throwing the marqués up onto a big deep-chested roan, I lashed his hips to the cantle and pommel, then cross-tied his wrists to the saddle horn. I knotted the reins across his mount's neck. Grabbing the twin ends of the mecate, which I'd attached earlier to his roan's headstall, I vaulted Tempest. The mecate would serve as a lead rope.

Behind me López was busy keeping his “soldiers” from the gold. A man bent down to grab at the gold, and Lopez's machete sang through the air and into his nape. Blood detonated, and the severed head hit the dirt with a
thunk
as I mounted Tempest. Another echo rang and replicated through the camp.

Renato cut out of the village at a high hard lope. I followed, leading the marqués by the mecate, slashing out at rabble with my saber when they got too close, while the vaquero took up the rear.

Lopez was shouting and pointing at us. I didn't need a gypsy to tell me that he hadn't bought my story about having an army. The flasks had made a loud noise but no cannon balls had exploded nearby.

Tempest caught up with Renato. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the older man was trying to clutch the pommel but was barely hanging on.

“They'll be riding up our back trail!” I shouted. “We need to get off a musket volley!”

“I'll take Don Humberto to Isabella and join you afterward.”

I handed him the mecate, and he continued past our men up in the rocks. The vaquero and I dismounted, tied our horses, and joined the other men.

“Load both your muskets.”

I put five men on my left and told them to fire the first volley on my command, the men to the right to fire the second.