A fist flew up and struck her on the forehead, and as Lijuan flew backward, her arm jerked back involuntarily, and her Colt flew through the air, disappearing in the thick underbrush. Lijuan thudded to the ground with her head smacking the hard earth. For a moment, what they always said about seeing stars was true, she thought through her pain as she scrunched her eyes closed and tried to shake off the effects of the blow. The next thing she knew, she was being yanked to her feet.
Enraged, Wilkes was growling at her as blood trickled from his mouth, one of his two front teeth were now lying somewhere in the dirt. He slammed her body against the trunk of the dead tree his last bullet had struck. Staggering back, he let go of Lijuan, and she crumpled to the ground at the base of the tree.
Wilkes stood there half bent with his hands on his knees panting to get his breath. Lijuan was looking up at him through drooping eyes. For a slender moment in time, she stared down at her pant leg stained with her own blood, and that was the trigger for what would come next.
A door swung open deep within her that released the anger that forever seemed to roil deep inside her. It was anger born of the frustration that ruled her for a forbidden love she knew could never be … which of course, was the way it should be, she acknowledged, in those rare times she was honest with herself. In a way, there were times like now where she embraced that anger and welcomed a chance for an outlet to it. Now this man, this agent of Los Rey Lobo would be the one who paid the price as she vented that anger.
Lijuan sprang up and jabbed her fist straight out at the man, connecting solidly with his left eye. He didn’t have time to recover when Lijuan whirled, planting her right foot into Wilkes’ side. He grunted and swung one meaty fist aimed at her head, but she ducked neatly and came up with an upward thrust of her left fist. The blow to his solar plexus nearly knocked the wind out of him. He staggered back, shocked that this slip of a woman packed such a powerful punch.
The opponents stood facing one another for a split second. Lijuan didn’t give Wilkes time to recover his breath from her punishing blow, but whirled again, this time her foot aimed for his skull. Wilkes stumbled as reflexively one hand flew to his head.
The two combatants were unaware that a battered Montgomery had been slowly loping down the road from where he had fallen from the horse. Blood streamed from his ruined mouth and his jaw had been dislocated from the hammer. The painful wounds now drove him on with only one goal in mind, and that was to choke the life out the Oriental bitch that had wounded him so. A gun would have been a lot easier, but he had lost his when he had been thrown to the ground and unable to locate it. However, it didn’t matter, as it would be much more satisfying watching the life flicker out of the woman’s eyes as he wrung her neck.
As he drew closer, he was startled to see the impudent creature possessed some sort of fighting techniques he had never seen before and doubted Wilkes had either, seeing how he failed to be able to offer up much of a defense to counteract them. Summoning up his seething hatred for the bantam brunette, he launched toward the fight. Undoubtedly, the two of them could overpower this little whirlwind and see her dead.
Suddenly he knew, as they had yet to see him, it would be best to veer off the trail and circle around, hoping that he could sneak up behind Lijuan, grab her from the rear, and pin her down. But he didn't know Lijuan. She had caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye just as he had exited the trail in his attempt at stealth, and she was ready for him.
Wilkes had shaken off the last blow he’d received and lunged to tackle her. Lijuan, keenly aware of both men, sidestepped Wilkes’ lunge, and the two men collided with each other just as Montgomery sprang at her from the foliage at the edge of the trail.
“Come on! “Montgomery snarled through his bloody and broken teeth. “Let’s get her!”
“We’ll tear her in half!” Wilkes growled.
Spinning in his tracks, he lunged again for Lijuan, but she danced out of his reach. He swung a long arm at her, but she blocked the punch with her left arm and jabbed his soft abdomen with her right fist. Montgomery came around behind her again, but she spun on her left foot and caught him in the ribs with a swift kick of her right foot. Wilkes grabbed her from behind and tried to pin her arms to her sides, but she freed one arm, and in one fluid movement, reached behind her. With her arm suddenly around his neck, her adrenaline pumping, she dropped into a crouch and used every ounce of her might to lurch forward and flipped him over her shoulder.
It wasn’t the neatest layout she’d ever done, but this man was a good foot taller than she and outweighed her by a hundred pounds. Wilkes grunted as he hit the ground. His right shoulder landed on a jagged rock. He rolled away from his attacker and struggled to his feet. While his pal was regrouping, Montgomery threw a punch meant for the side of her head, but she blocked it again with one arm, then grasped his own arm with both hands and pulled him off balance and toward Wilkes.
Now, both men were in front of her. The pair had been in many fistfights together, some they won and some they lost. But never had they been in a fight with one woman that neither one could best. It was humiliating, to say the least. It also roused their anger and resentment. Glancing at one another, they each saw the determination in the other's eyes that this little hellcat was not going to whip them and would die at their hands.
Simultaneously, they both lunged for her but found they were grasping air when they got to the spot beneath the bleached and long-dead tree beside the trail that she had occupied a fraction of a second earlier. They looked around to see her just to the right of them, just inches from where they had been. How had that happened?
“What’s the matter, boys?” she taunted them. “Your aim isn’t too good today, is it?”
Wilkes, the agiler of the two, shot out his right arm with lightning speed and grabbed the front of her blouse near the neck. He yanked her toward himself and glared down into her face.
“Time to die, China doll!”
Her dark almond eyes blazed fury at him. "You broomtails are the ones who are going to die for threatening my sister and me."
Lijuan just stood there for a moment gazing at the angry looks they were giving her as they remained silent. Inside her, all the hurt and anger of her past still boiled up inside her. Right now, it didn't matter who the men were in front of her or what they'd said or done; they were just going to pay.
Mistaking her silence for fear, the two men relaxed somewhat and looked at each other. Taking their eyes off the woman was a big mistake. She took the opportunity to leap forward and land a double chop on Montgomery, the closest one to her.
One blow landed on the back of his neck and the other to his solar plexus. Quicker than he knew what hit him; she whirled and delivered a punishing kick to his kidneys with one move and a blow to his chin with another. He went down crumpled into a fetal position, next to some dead tree limbs that had broken off from the tree long ago.
Seeing his partner on the ground, Wilkes turned to dodge out of her reach, but she was on him like ugly on a dog. Lijuan leaped at him landing on his back and the pair crashed to the ground. Wilkes had the bad luck to have his head strike one of the fallen tree limbs that lay around the base of the dead tree, stunning him.
Lijuan scrambled to her feet. The snapping of dry, dead twigs from the tree alerted her that Montgomery was no longer down. Instead, he stood behind her, wielding her hammer that he had found while she had knocked Wilkes to the ground. He had it raised over his head, ready to bring it down on her when she threw herself at him.
She struck him full on with her shoulder in the chest, and he flew backward into the tree trunk. Her mouth fell open as the end of a broken branch protruding from the trunk burst through his chest. Montgomery didn’t even have time to form words or a scream as he died unceremoniously.
Turning away from the horrific scene and back towards Wilkes, she was somewhat startled to see he had gained his feet again, just like Montgomery and was staggering toward h
er. She knew she'd have to do to him what she'd accidentally done to Montgomery, put him down. But this time it would be on purpose as she could see from the revenge-fueled hatred that burned in his eyes. He wouldn't stop until she was dead.
Wilkes launched himself at her swinging first one fist and then the other. She dodged both, throwing him off balance again. She whirled and kicked him in the small of his back, sending him stumbling forward a step. Lijuan kicked again, this time catching him in the ribs. He roared with pain and turned to meet her. A left thrust to his groin and a right to the pit of his stomach rendered him immobile just long enough for her to deliver a chop with the side of her flattened hand to his neck with one hand and followed up by curling the same hand into a fist and striking a blow against his temple.
Staggering back, like a mighty oak he refused to fall. Instead, he reached down and picked up one of the dead tree limbs that made for a very solid and deadly club. He swung it at her, but she blocked the blow with her hammer she had just snatched off the ground. Undaunted, he regained quickly and took another swing, barely missing her face. She felt the tickle of the wind as it swept by her. Lijuan knew she had to end this and now.
Wilkes seemed to have a second wind, and he took yet another swing, and she ducked, and the limb struck the trunk of the dead tree and broke in two. His eyes wildly looked around for a replacement, but she wasn't giving him the chance. Lijuan leaped at him and threw her strength into a mighty swing. The man's skull caved in on its left side, and he was dead before he hit the ground.
Panting desperately to catch her breath, she looked at the carnage around her. Her pitiless eyes took in the dead man pinned to the tree trunk and another in a pool of blood at the edge of the trail. When at last she felt ready to continue, she took a few minutes to search the brush until she found her Colt and returned it to her belt along with her hammer. Without a backward glance, Lijuan walked back to her horse, mounted, and lit out for the Holmes’s settlement.
CHAPTER 11
In the courtyard of the old mission, a handsome, well-dressed man, somewhere in the middle of his third decade, with dark ebony hair and copper-colored skin that gave him a most handsome look paced back and forth near an ancient adobe wall. Nearby his coffee-colored eyes, flecked with gold, surveyed the sight of the man on his knees that was watching him with a hangdog look on his face. Gathered around the two figures in a loose U-shaped formation were about ten other men waiting for what was to come next. Some looked on in fear, others in anticipation.
Los Rey Lobo surveyed his audience with a smile and made a show of cracking the bullwhip he carried in his hand, not once but twice. Each time cheers could be heard. Carlos loved the theatrics of it all, as it brought him back to his youth when he yearned to be an entertainer. That had been long before he and his sister would be educated by the criminals that were their parents that one could make far more of a living operating on the other side of the law than performing on a stage. Even now, there were days he wondered what fame might have come to him on the stages of Mexico City.
Still, he did have fame in a manner of speaking. To these men and now the rapidly dwindling population of the valley he was the dreaded Wolf King, whose word was law and they followed him because the Villanuevas would carry them all to riches once control of the valley was absolute. Yes, obey, and they would share in the wealth, and yet here he found himself needing to mete out punishment to a wretch quaking on the ground.
“On your feet, dog!”
“No, no Rey Lobo I beg of you! I made a mistake. Please forgive me!
Rey Lobo made a show of stroking his chin as if he were considering the notion. For a brief moment, a flicker of hope shone in the man's eyes, but it was quickly extinguished when Rey Lobo spoke.
“Forgive you? When your actions threatened all that we have been working towards in this god-forsaken valley. Tell me, my friend, why should I do that?”
Trembling, the man made his pleas, “Cuz I promise you I will work harder than any man you see around here! I’ll work sunup till sundown on the excavations! All you’ve got to do is give me another chance!”
"An interesting proposition you make. What do you think, men, shall I consider it?" Rey Lobo smiled as he pivoted around looking at the assembled group. The crowd remained silent, however, not sure what answer Lobo was expecting of them. Each man decided better to remain silent than risk the wrong answer. With mock disappointment, he sighed,
“It appears I must make my decision myself …”
“Please, oh please!” the terror was instantaneous, and the gathered men shifted uncomfortably, all knowing it could be them should they too make some sort of transgression that angered the Villanuevas.
“You would not need to be begging me under this hot sun were you smart enough not to get drunk and blather on about our operations to a whore!”
“I know, I know-”
The feigned jocularity disappeared from Rey Lobo’s face as his handsome features turned into a mask of fury,
"You know nothing! I reward you and the other men with a break from your toils to journey the distance to Wayward beyond this valley, and you repay me be betraying our secrets! It was only good fortune and cheaply constructed walls that allowed Dogget in the next room overhear you bragging to the soiled dove how wealthy you would be!"
Rey Lobo looked momentarily into the scrim of his men and eyed Dogget, a hulking, brutish man whose low brow sat over eyes that were far too close together, standing there with his bulging, muscular arms crossed.
“Yes, sir! I know, sir.”
Not listening, Rey Lobo continued his castigation. “Had Dogget not known that it would be up to we Villanuevas to decide your fate he would have had to … shall we say added you into the containment of the situation.”
Again, he looked at Dogget and then at the other men. All of them knew that containment referred to the unsolved murder of a prostitute the local sheriff in Wayward was no doubt continuing to investigate hopelessly. Lobo didn't envy the lawman, as the suspect pool, no doubt ranged through a wide field of cowboys out to sow their wild oats with a cheap hooker. At any rate, her murder would not be traced all the way back to the De La Santa Barbara Valley. Their secret remained secure.
As quickly as his jovialness vanished it returned. “I have indeed come to a decision. Another chance shall be granted to you, my friend.”
Clasping his hands together the man dropped down to Rey Lobo’s feet rocking in total supplication.
“Oh, thank you, sir! Thank you! I’ll bust my ass for you, I promise! Sunup to sundown! I swear it.”
"I know you shall … however, you must earn my charity, Señor Jones."
As if to underscore his announcement, a chilling growl came from behind the walls of a pen that was constructed on three sides from sturdy tree trunks with their tops shaved to deadly sharpened points. The fourth side to the pen was the adobe wall itself.
The groveling man suddenly seemed to lose all color in his face. He knew what came; next, he had seen it but a week ago, when Rey Lobo's sister had caught a man appraising her shapely figure. What was left of that man now lay a quarter mile from the fort no doubt attracting everything from good-sized vultures to green bottle flies.
With a casual flick of his index finger, Rey Lobo issued a command, “You men! Make yourself useful and open the doors!”
Without hesitation, the men he had called out to turned and slid the wooden bolt to the left and with two on each side swung the doors open. Several men stepped back unconsciously as all eyes turned towards the pen.
An angry roar bellowed from inside from a grizzly bear. His massive paws swung at the air as it reared up on its hind legs and bolted forward. One man cried out in terror earning him a look of scorn from Rey Lobo. The bear surged ahead until it was stopped cold by the collar and chain leading to a post at the center of the pen.
The bear retreated with a growl before surging forward again, causing more of the men to step backward. Even Dogg
et, who feared little, kept a wary eye on the bear. He had felt the lock Rey Lobo had put on the collar was far too flimsy, but he had said nothing. One had to pick their battles, and this was not worth challenging his once good friend Rey Lobo on.
“Hold him!” he commanded to Dogget, who yanked the man to his feet and firmly held him in place as a smirking Rey Lobo walked up to the bear and paced back and forth just in front of it, safely beyond the reach of razor-sharp claws on the bruin’s massive paws.
Time for some more showmanship, he thought, as he stopped and began lashing the whip towards the bear with such tempo to his movements his arm seemed like a blur to the men. The whip cracked in the air all around the bear without touching it, but the grizzly responded in kind, its paws swinging helplessly at Rey Lobo, its enormous jaws snapping and spittle flying in all directions.
Rey Lobo reached around his neck and pulled a rawhide cord with three keys on it and tossed it to the nearest man.
“You! While I have the attention of my sister’s new pet, get in there and undo the lock on the pole!”
The man blanched and looked from side to side to be sure that Lobo was talking to him.
With a crack of the whip, Rey Lobo threatened, "I would suggest you get moving, Reyes or I may lose his attention, and you would not want that to happen while you were in there!"
In terror, Reyes raced around to the side of the pen, and as quietly as possible, drew back a slide bolt on a small door and entered the enclosure behind the grizzly. For a long instant, he hovered in the doorway watching as the bear continued to strain towards Rey Lobo intent on exacting revenge. Summoning up his courage, Reyes dashed to the pole and found the second lock that held the chain to a metal ring high up on the pole. With trembling hands, he shoved the key in it and began to work the lock.
“Release him, Dogget!” Rey Lobo shouted, feeling anticipation overwhelm him. Obeying his boss, Dogget let go of Jones as Rey Lobo approached him and shoved the whip into his hands.
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