“You said your father and Guzman are friendly,” Ki frowned.
“No,” Lita corrected him quickly. “I said they have some small business arrangment between them. Even though Father does not speak of his business with me, I know that he has no greater liking for Guzman than I do.”
“And Guzman knows this, I’m sure,” Jessie said. “Do you think he might try to take me back by force?”
Lita shook her head. “He would not dare! Besides, we have more men on the ranch than Guzman has in his company of rurales, and there is also a room full of guns.”
“Will they fight the rurales?” Ki asked quickly.
“Of course, if Father orders them to. But I am sure Guzman would not risk a fight. My father has many friends high in the government. A snap of his fingers and Guzman would be moved or his rank as captain taken from him.”
Ki nodded. Lita’s remark confirmed still further the suspicion he and Jessie had discussed, that Guzman and Mendoza were linked through the cartel. They’d seen cases before where, to further the cartel’s schemes, the international cabal had used all forms of pressure from bribery to blackmail to force men who had little use for one another to work together.
Jessie saw that Lita was satisfied with the explanation she and Ki had given. To divert the conversation from what could quickly become dangerous ground, she asked Lita, “How far from here is your ranch, Miss Mendoza?”
“It is fifty kilometers,” Lita replied.
“Nearly thirty miles,” Ki frowned. “A long ride.”
“In the carriage, yes,” Lita agreed. “But we should be there in the middle of the afternoon.”
“Would the carriage move faster if Ki and I lightened its load by riding our horses?” Jessie asked.
Lita shook her head. “No. But I don’t blame you for preferring a horse to this old landaulet. If Father didn’t object so strongly, I’d ride my mare to San Pedro. But would you please call me Lita, Miss Starbuck? Surely the adventure we’re sharing is enough to let us put formality aside.”
“Of course. And you must call me Jessie.”
“Yes. We will have a chance to get better acquainted while we are at the ranch.”
“How large is your ranch, Lita?” Jessie asked.
“Oh, quite a number of hectares. Several thousand, I’m sure. You must ask Father, if you want to know how many thousand.”
“And your father would be the only one who knows about the other ranches your family owns?”
“Of course. Oh, I know their names—the Rancho Es trella in Tehuantepec, Rancho Manopla in Durango, Rancho Tres Cerros, the one closest to the Rancho Mendoza, here in Chihuahua. But I have not even visited all of them.”
At Lita’s mention of the Rancho Tres Cerros, Ki and Jessie exchanged another of their understanding glances. Don Almendaro’s daughter had just given them the last clue they needed.
“Don’t you even visit the one nearest here?” Jessie asked.
“Not anymore. We went there often when I was a young girl, but it’s been years since Father has felt like spending any time there. He seldom visits Tres Cerros himself.”
Ki looked out the coach window. They were crossing the top of a seemingly endless plateau to which they’d climbed soon after leaving the saucer in which San Pedro lay. It was rolling land, low hills and wide gentle vales, unlike the arid, barren strip along the Rio Grande. There were trees in scattered clumps, open range covered with grass that was thin, but adequate to sustain herds of moderate size.
“Is the country around the Tres Cerros ranch like this?” he asked, nodding through the window.
“Oh, no,” Lita replied. She pointed to the southwest, and in that direction they could now see a lower and even wider plateau than the one they were crossing. Beyond the plateau, through the thin, clear air, they could see rising the rugged, barren slopes of the massive Sierra Madre. Lita went on, “Our Rancho Tres Cerros lies that way; it is in the foothills of the mountains. There is much less good land around it.”
“Do you raise cattle there?” Jessie asked. When Lita nodded, Jessie went on, “The range there must be like it is on my own ranch in Texas.”
Lita looked searchingly at Jessie and asked, “Tell me something, Jessie. You are young to be a widow, but you must have inherited your ranch from a husband now dead—”
Jessie broke in. “Not a husband, Lita. My father.”
“Oh. I had not considered that. And you manage it alone?”
“With help from friends such as Ki, and others.”
“Your men obey your orders readily?”
“Of course. But I seldom give orders. I make suggestions.”
“I see. Of course, on your ranch you raise cattle; on the Rancho Mendoza, the toros bravos are bred.”
“That shouldn’t make a bit of difference,” Jessie said. “But I’ve never been to a ranch where fighting bulls are bred. I wouldn’t know how to compare it with the Circle Star.”
“You will have a chance to, when we get there,” Lita said.
Midafternoon brought them to the Rancho Mendoza. It stood in the shelter of a wide valley, and from the valley’s rim they looked down on a complex of buildings—barns, corrals, sheds, small houses, even a miniature bullring—spread in a rough semicircle around a large two-story main house built of the ubiquitous yellow stone of the area. Both Jessie and Ki gasped when they first saw the establishment; it was like no ranch they’d seen before.
“It—it’s certainly not like the Circle Star,” Jessie commented. “Maybe there is a lot of difference between raising cattle and breeding fighting bulls.”
“Father would know about that, Jessie. I don‘t, but you can ask him.”
“I will, when I meet him.”
Lita bounded out of the carriage without waiting for Jessie and Ki. She started for the door of the mansion, then remembered and waited while they alighted. The door swung open as they went up the broad flight of steps leading to it. As they went in, Ki got a glimpse of a white-clad youth standing behind the door, ready to close it. They’d gone only a few steps before another door opened and a tall, angular man stepped into the hall. Lita stopped, and so did Jessie and Ki. They did not need to wait for an introduction to realize that the man was Don Almendaro Mendoza.
“I am back, Father,” Lita said. Her voice was meek and a bit worried.
“So I see,” Don Almendaro told her. “I also see that you have brought guests with you.”
“Yes, Father. May I present Miss Jessie Starbuck, who owns a large ranch in the United States, and Ki—” Lita stopped, frowned, and then finished in a rush, “Ki works with Miss Starbuck on the ranch.”
Ki saw at once where Lita had gotten most of her features. Except for her mouth, which was rounded and soft, her father’s face was reflected in hers. They both had the same high forehead and overlong chin, but Don Almendaro’s mouth was a thin, severe line. He wore a charrocostume of fine gabardine, the jacket and flared legs of the trousers decorated with gold embroidery. He gazed at Jessie and Ki for a moment before turning back to Lita.
“Did you welcome your guests as our custom requires?” he asked. His voice was neither warm nor cold, approving nor disapproving; it was simply neutral.
“No, Father. I thought—”
“Then do so, please. They are your guests.”
Lita hesitated for only a moment before she said to Jessie and Ki, “Welcome to the Rancho Mendoza. Our house is yours.”
“You did that very well, Lita,” Don Almendaro said, still in a voice that held no expression whatever. “Since you are the hostess for their visit, I suggest that you take Miss Starbuck to the guest room reserved for the impresarios of the corrida. I will have Manuel escort Ki to a suitable accommodation.”
“But Father—” Lita began.
“Lita.” Don Almendaro’s voice was suddenly stern, almost to the point of harshness.
“Very well, Father,” she said. “Jessie, please come with me. Ki will be taken care of by one
of our house servants.”
Jessie and Ki avoided consulting even by a covert glance, under Mendoza’s sharp scrutiny. After Jessie had started down the hallway, following Lita, Don Almendaro looked at Ki with a frown. Ki met Mendoza’s eyes and kept his own face expressionless. For several moments the hacendado scrutinized Ki, then, still without speaking, disappeared into the room from which he’d come. Ki waited, his face inscrutable, until a man of middle age came up the hall to where he stood.
“Se llama Ki?” he asked.
“Ki, yes, I am Ki,” Ki replied. In the hostile atmosphere Don Almendaro had created, Ki intended to keep to himself the fact that he had a working knowledge of Spanish. It was one of the few assets on which he and Jessie could count.
“You do not speak the Spanish?”
When Ki shook his head, the man motioned for him to follow, and started down the hall. The servant led him out the back door and into one of the two-story buildings that stood in an arc behind the house. Inside, Ki found it much like some of the frontier hotels in which he’d stayed; it had a large central open area with small rooms closely spaced on both floors. The servant opened the door of one of them and indicated with a quick gesture that it was to be Ki’s.
“Momentito,” he said, then shook his head and went on, “Quick I bring su equipaje.”
Ki examined his surroundings. The small, neat room was furnished with a bed, a table, chairs, a washstand. Ki had occupied much worse rooms in many of the hotels where he’d stopped during his travels.
Shrugging, he went to the bed and tested it with his hand. Then he stretched out and gazed at the ceiling, his expression unperturbed, but his mind working at top speed. He had arrived at no plan of action before the door swung open and Lita came in, followed by the servant carrying Ki’s equipment.
Before she spoke to Ki, Lita told the house servant, “Pone el equipaje ahí, y vuelve a lacasa.” She waited until the man had placed Ki’s saddlebags and rifle in the corner she’d indicated and left the room before she said, “Ki, I’m sorry Father’s insulted you this way! I shouldn’t have let him!”
Ki sat up. “You didn’t know what he was going to do, Lita. And I can only be insulted if I allow myself to be.”
“I’ve explained everything to him,” she said. “That you aren’t Jessie’s servant, but the manager of her ranch. He said he didn’t intend to insult you, though I’m not sure about that.”
“I’ll be very comfortable here,” Ki said. He didn’t add that he’d also have more freedom to move about and ask questions than he would in the house, where her father could keep an eye on him.
“Just the same, it was not a hospitable thing for Father to do, and I’ve convinced him he was wrong. I’ll have your things carried to the house during dinner. Here on the ranch we eat early, usually about sundown.”
“Lita,” Ki said, choosing his words carefully, “I want to stay where I am. But if I do that, your father will be the one who’s insulted. Don’t you see? By inviting me to move to the house, he’s trying to apologize. If I stay here, I’ll be rejecting his apology.”
Lita thought for a moment, then smiled. “Your mind’s more subtle than mine, Ki. Father will be furious, and it will serve him right!”
“Besides,” Ki told her, “I’ll be very comfortable here.”
“As comfortable as you would be in the hacienda, I suppose,” she agreed. “It’s where the toreros stay during the season when they test the bulls. You saw the small bullring next to this building. It is not as big as the ones where the corridas are held, but is exactly like them in other ways.”
“I’m not really very particular,” Ki said. “As long as I have a place to wash—”
“I’ll send Manuel back with water and towels,” Lita said. “And he’ll show you where the dining room is when dinner’s ready. It’ll be just a little while.”
To Ki’s surprise, dinner went off very well. Though Don Almendaro was stiff at the beginning of the meal, the thin-bodied red wine served mellowed him a bit, and by accident Ki had opened their conversation by asking his involuntary host a question about the fighting bulls bred on the Mendoza ranch. Though he’d picked the subject primarily to keep the table talk from a discussion of himself and Jessie, it was perhaps the only topic that would have caused the stiff-necked Mendoza to talk freely.
“We call our bulls toros bravos,” Don Almendaro explained. “And they are not of the stock that produces animals slaughtered for food. They are as untamed as a wild beast, their horns as hard as ivory, with tips as sharp as needles. Their muscles are like bands of steel, and their hearts as stout as a lion’s.”
“But how do you train them to fight?” Ki asked.
“They need no training. Their instinct is to fight. Their only training is done by the toreros in the bullring, from the beginning of the corrida until it ends with the bull’s death.”
“I understand your daughter to say that you trained the bulls,” Ki said.
“No, no. I am sure Adelita said nothing of training. She would have told you we test the bulls,” Don Almendaro said.
“Yes, Father. That is what I said. Ki must have misunderstood,” Lita put in, her voice artificially meek.
Before Ki could ask the question he was forming, Don Almendaro went on, “We test our bulls for courage only. They must charge without hesitating when they see a man with a muleta, a small cape like a flag, moving in front of them.”
“What happens if they don’t charge him?” Ki asked.
“They are slaughtered for beef at once,” Mendoza said promptly. “You must understand that bulls of the corrida can only inherit their character, their courage. Here I have two bloodlines, Las Astas and Tierra Buena. Both have been bred in Spain for many centuries, and in their breeding, care has been taken to choose only the finest bulls for sires. My bulls move with the speed and agility of a deer, but have the strength and stamina of their own kind.”
“I know very little of your sport—” Ki began.
Mendoza interrupted him. “No! A corrida is not sport, not a game! It is a test of skill, like a duel between two swordsmen of equal ability. It is a measuring of the instinct of ferocity bred in the bull, and of the bull’s courage against the torero, who has not the bull’s great strength, but pits his skill and courage against the animal’s.”
“An exhibition instead of a game, then?” Ki suggested.
“Perhaps. If the bull learns quickly, it can sometimes keep the matador from plunging his sword through its huge shoulder muscles and a tiny gap in the bones, no larger around than a teacup, through which the sword must pass to pierce its heart.”
“And the bull has no other point where it’s vulnerable?”
“No. There is no man living who can kill one of our bulls as long as it holds its head high. The muscles of its shoulders must be weakened by the picador‘s spear and by the weighted darts the banderillero plants in the muscles.”
“Really?” Ki asked, his interest aroused for the first time. “Not one other vulnerable point, you say?”
“Perhaps I overstated,” Don Almendaro replied. “If the bull should by some accident be cowardly, a peón butchers it with a short, stiff knife thrust into the spine at the base of its skull, to sever the spinal cord. But that does not happen often, not to bulls of the kind we breed here.”
Ki grunted thoughtfully. “In my land we have the art of te, which means ‘hand.’ Those who have the skill can very easily disable or kill a man using no weapons at all.”
“I told you how Ki defeated eight or ten rurales who had guns, and he used no weapons but his little staff and his hands,” Lita put in.
“A man is not one of our brave bulls, Adelita,” Don Almendaro said reprovingly. He turned back to Ki and said,
“No man without weapons could ever stand against one of our Tierra Buena or Las Astas bulls. To think he could is foolish!”
“Perhaps so,” Ki nodded. “But it would be interesting, philosophically, of course, to s
ee te used on your bulls.”
“This is a thing you will never see, I’m sure,” Don Almendaro said brusquely. “It would not be permitted.”
“I suppose not,” Ki agreed, “since the rules of your exhibition are so narrow. Just the same, it would be interesting.”
“You might find it so,” Mendoza said curtly. He refilled his wineglass and stood up. “Now I wish to speak with you of something else. We will go into my office and leave the ladies to gossip. What I wish to discuss, I prefer to keep between the two of us, for the moment, at least.”
Not sure quite what to expect, Ki followed Don Almendaro out of the dining room. He glanced over his shoulder as he went through the door. Jessie was watching him, her face composed except for small worry-lines at the corners of her eyes, and the message she was sending was as clear as though she were speaking:
Don’t trust Mendoza! Whatever you do, be careful!
Chapter 14
Don Almendaro’s office was a large room, furnished spar tanly with four chairs, a large desk, and a tall walnut ar moire. Its only decorations were a shield bearing what Ki supposed was the Mendoza family escutcheon on one wall, and a pair of basket-hilted rapiers crossed on another. The hacendado settled into the high-backed armchair behind the desk. He did not invite Ki to take one of the other chairs, but Ki did so, uninvited.
“I will come to the point at once,” Mendoza said. “Adelita has told me that you believe Guzman will bring his rurales here to attack my ranch. I must assure you that you are mistaken. He would not dare to make such a move.”
“You must have a good reason for thinking that, Don Almendaro,” Ki replied. “I can’t see why he’d hesitate. Obviously, Guzman thinks he has the power to do what he wants to do, as long as he has his men to back him up.”
Before the rancher could reply, there was a knock at the door. Mendoza called, “Entrese!”
Ki recognized the man who entered as Eusebio, the mayordomo or manager of the household. He carried a folded paper. He said, “Es mesaje deSanPedro.”
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