Lone Star 03

by Ellis, Wesley

  “We’ll hold our own with the men we have, Lita,” Ki assured her. “We’ve got the advantage, even with so few men, because we’ll be in the house and the rurales will be exposed. This house is built just like a fort.”

  “Ki’s right, Lita,” Jessie said, emerging from the trapdoor that led to the attic. “As long as your men follow orders and don’t expose themselves when they’re shooting. Rifle and revolver bullets won’t go through these stone walls.”

  Before Lita could reply, they saw the dust. Ki frowned when he saw how slowly the cloud above the road was advancing. A band of riders should be moving much more swiftly. He tried to pierce the dust cloud with his eyes when through the dust he could see the first line of the rurales, but there had been no rain for months, and the cloud that hung over the approaching horsemen was too thick for even his sharp eyes to penetrate.

  “There’s something wrong,” he told Lita. “Guzman might have a trick up his sleeve that we don’t know about.”

  “What kind of trick, Ki?”

  “I can’t even guess. But I’m not impatient. We’ll find out soon enough, and when we know what it is, we’ll find a way to stop him from using it.”

  While they were still well out of rifle range, the rurales halted. The day was totally windless, and the cloud of dust the attackers had raised was slow to settle. The trio on the roof grew more and more impatient as they strained to try to penetrate the settling cloud. It dissipated at last, and when Ki saw what it had hidden, his confidence almost evaporated.

  From some source known only to himself, Guzman had managed to get a cannon. Ki squinted through the diminishing dust cloud at the artillery piece. It was very old, so old that it might have come out of some military museum, and very small. Its barrel was brass, mounted on a low-slung wooden undercarriage. The rurales had loaded the ancient fieldpiece on an open wagon to transport it to the Rancho Mendoza, and were now setting long wooden planks at the rear of the wagon bed, preparing to unload the weapon.

  In spite of its antiquity and small size, the cannon was an unexpected threat, one that Ki had not counted on when making plans to defend the hacienda.

  “Guzman’s given us an unpleasant surprise,” he told the women. “That cannon changes all the plans I’ve made.”

  “Ki, it’s such an old cannon, and so little!” Jessie protested. “Surely it can’t make all that much difference!”

  “It’s not much of a cannon,” Ki agreed. “But small and old as it is, it’s got more range than our rifles. If we let him get that cannon into action, he can knock down this house and all the buildings around it while his men stay out of range until it’s time for them to ride in and wipe us up.”

  “Surely such a small gun can’t break down the stone walls of the hacienda!” Lita protested.

  “Yes, Lita, it can,” Ki assured her.

  “Then we’ll have to find a way to stop him from using the cannon,” Jessie said.

  Ki did not reply. His mind was busy considering alternatives while he watched the rurales. Guzman, limping badly, was waving his arms at his men, and though the distance was too great for his voice to carry, his mouth was working furiously as he hobbled around the spot where the wagon had stopped. The way the rurales were wrestling with the fieldpiece told Ki that they were completely unfamiliar with the weapon. That, Ki thought hopefully, might give him time to work out a way to forestall them before they’d done too much damage.

  His eyes still fixed on the rurales, Ki muttered to himself, “What we need is what we don’t have and can’t get. Unless—”

  “What did you say, Ki?” Jessie asked, turning away from watching the rurales trying to wheel the cannon around.

  “Nothing,” he replied absently, his mind still working at top speed. “Or perhaps everything.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jessie frowned.

  “You will,” Ki said. He turned to Lita. “Who treats the bulls when one of them gets hurt? Or when they get infested by ticks?”

  Lita stared at him, bewilderment on her face. “Ki, why do you ask about sick bulls and ticks when Guzman is getting ready to fire his cannon at us?”

  “I have a good reason, believe me, Lita. Who would be the one I’m looking for?”

  “Why . . . Eusebio, I suppose. He’s the mayordomo, he has charge of everything.”

  “Tell him that I want to talk to him, quickly. And I need a few more things that you can help me with—a yard or two of silk cloth, and some very strong thread. Do you have them?”

  “I’m sure my maid has both. Shall I ask her?”

  “Don’t just ask her. Tell her to get the silk and thread and several pairs of scissors together, and bring them out to the building—I don’t know what you call it, but it’s where I spent my first nights. And bring two or three more women with you. But before you do anything, tell Eusebio I want to see him at once.”

  “I’ll go along and help Lita,” Jessie volunteered.

  “Lita can manage her people without you, Jessie,” Ki told her. “I need you to stay here and watch the rurales. Guzman may get tired of waiting for his men to get that cannon ready, and decide to attack us without it. But if it takes them as long to get ready to fire as it’s taking them to get it off the wagon, maybe I can get together what I need in time to stop them.”

  Jessie nodded. “I think I’m getting a very shadowy idea of what you might be planning, Ki, and I certainly hope it works.”

  “So do I, Jessie,” Ki said fervently. “So do I.”

  Ki hurried to the building behind the main house and waited impatiently for Eusebio to show up. He’d seen little of the mayordomo during the short time he’d been at the ranch; as the second in command after Don Almendaro, he spent most of his time supervising the activities of the hands.

  “I need some things, Eusebio,” Ki told the tall, aging man. “You must use sulfur here. And after looking at Don Almendaro’s collection of guns, I’m sure there’s a keg or two of gunpowder somewhere around.”

  “Of course, Señor Ki. Sulfur we use to treat the bulls when the tick season arrives, and there is much gunpowder.” He cocked his head and squinted shrewdly at Ki, then added, “There is also a small amount of dynamite and some caps and fuse, if they will help you in your preparations.”

  “How do you know what I’m getting ready to do?”

  Eusebio smiled. He said gently, “I am an old man, Señor Ki, and I have lived through three wars since my youth. I served with Juarez when he drove out Maximilian, and later I marched with Lerdo to help defend our land in his battles against Díaz. I have made more than my share of smoke bombs and grenades, and what else could you be planning to make, with the devil Guzman and his cursed rurales attacking us with a cannon?”

  “Will you help me show the women how to make smoke bombs, then? I only need a few—five or six. And if there’s dynamite, I won’t need grenades. When you’ve got the women started to work, I’d like for you to cut two sticks of dynamite in half and put fuses in them. And I’ll want matches too.”

  “Of course. I have some match-blocks that the herders use. How long do you wish the fuses on the dynamite?”

  Ki frowned. “Fuse the smoke bombs very short. As for the dynamite, fuse two of the half-sticks for a quarter minute and the other two for a half minute.”

  “Those are very short fuses, Señor Ki. Are you sure—”

  “I’m sure,” Ki said firmly. “How long will it take you to do all this?”

  “Twenty minutes, a half hour. The sulfur is in the shed next to this building, the dynamite and gunpowder only a bit further away.”

  Lita arrived within the next few minutes, with her maid and one of the women from the kitchen. Ki started them cutting the silk cloth into large squares. While the women began snipping at the silk, he took Lita aside.

  “I’m going to need your landaulet,” he told her. “It’s the only closed carriage I’ve seen here on the ranch.”

  “Yes. Use it any way you need to, Ki.”r />
  “It may get ruined, or even destroyed,” he warned her.

  “I wouldn’t care. It’s old, and I don’t like it anyway. I only used it because Father insisted.”

  Eusebio returned at that moment and interrupted them. For a few moments, Ki watched while the old man mixed gunpowder and sulfur together and then showed Lita and the women how to spread a thick layer of the mixture on a square of silk and fold and roll the fabric into a tight cylinder, then wrap the cylinder with the heavy thread to hold it together. Satisfied that Eusebio could be trusted to finish the job, Ki went to the shed where the landaulet was stored.

  Over the protests of the tottery coachman, Ki attacked the varnished wooden panel below the driver’s seat. With a hatchet he cut a narrow slit in the thin panel, an opening wide enough to allow the reins to have free play and for the driver to see where the carriage was heading. Then, after instructing the coachman to harness the carriage horse, he went back to the roof.

  “They’ve finally got the cannon off the wagon, Ki,” Jessie announced as he emerged from the trapdoor. “It won’t be much longer before they’ll be shooting it.”

  Ki looked at Guzman and his men. The old fieldpiece was off the wagon now. It stood in the center of the road, its muzzle pointing menacingly at the hacienda. Rurales were bringing up bags of gunpowder and cannonballs and stacking them beside the ancient cannon, obviously getting it ready to be fired.

  “They’ll need a shot or two before they get the proper elevation,” Ki said. “And we’ll be ready to move in a few minutes. I’d feel better about this if I had real nage teppo, and could blind the rurales instead of depending on smoke bombs, but old Eusebio seems to know what he’s doing.”

  “Can you disable it, Ki? Without flares, and out of practice as you are?”

  “I’m rusty at it, but I’m sure I can get close enough to the cannon to put down a smokescreen with the makeshift nage teppo Eusebio’s got Lita and the women making, and I’ve got dynamite to finish the job with.”

  “Ki, it’s a long way from here to that cannon,” Jessie protested. “Even a ninja would think twice before trying to cover it, even with the right kind of equipment.”

  “I think I can do what I’ve planned. I’ll use the old landaulet to get as close as possible. I’ve fixed it so that the reins can be handled from inside.”

  “Then I’m going to be handling the reins!” Jessie announced firmly. “This isn’t a one-man job!”

  “No, Jessie. The rurales will be shooting at the landaulet from the minute they see it. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Dangerous or not, I’m going to be inside it!”

  Knowing when Jessie had made up her mind so firmly that he could not change it, Ki surrendered. “All right. Let’s start now, then. By the time we get downstairs, everything should be ready for us to go.”

  After a last look at the rurales, who were now clustered around the cannon, getting it ready to fire, they went down the ladder to the second floor and started for the stairs. They’d taken only a step or two when Ki stopped short.

  “You’d better put our gear in the landaulet, Jessie. Rifles, saddlebags, everything. We don’t know what we might need. I’ll have our horses saddled, and we’ll put them on lead-ropes behind the carriage. After the job’s done, we’ll want to get away faster than that old landualet will move.”

  As Jessie and Ki rounded the corner of the hacienda, the landaulet swaying gently, they heard the first cannon shot. They peered through the hole Ki had cut in the front panel, and saw the cannonball send up a spurt of dirt when it struck the ground a hundred yards in front of the hacienda and almost as far from the side of the building.

  “They’ll need two or three more ranging shots,” Ki said. “With a little luck, we might get there just in time to spoil Guzman’s plans, Jessie!”

  Absorbed in the cannon, the rurales paid no attention to the landaulet for a few minutes. Then one of them pointed to the ancient carriage, and Guzman detached himself from the cluster of men around the fieldpiece to come to the front of the group and look. He waved to his men and shouted an order. Two of the rurales detached themselves from the huddle around the cannon and started for the picket line a short distance from the artillery piece, where the horses were tethered.

  “Faster, Jessie,” Ki urged. “I need to be closer before I become a ninja!”

  Jessie was slapping the reins on the back of the carriage horse, trying to get it to move faster. Without taking her eyes from the road, she said, “I wish you had more cover, Ki. This ground is too bare even for a real ninja to cross without being noticed.”

  Ki had been thinking the same thing. Ninjas, the professional assassins of Japan who specialized in the art of approaching their victims unnoticed, wore skin-tight coveralls matching the terrain on which they worked. Dodging from one bit of cover to the next, creeping on hands and knees, belly-crawling when the ground was bare, these silent killers had perfected their skill through centuries of practice.

  “I don’t want to get too close to the cannon,” he told Jessie. “And the nage teppo will give me enough cover to get to a place where I can throw the dynamite.”

  “Those rurales Guzman sent to cut us off are on their horses now,” Jessie said.

  “When they’re halfway between us and the cannon, pull off the road and go across the range. The wind’s coming from our left, so wheel that way when you pull off.”

  Jessue gauged the distance between the landaulet and the rurales’ position with an expert’s eye. “Three or four more minutes, Ki. Get ready.”

  Ki poised himself at the door opposite the rurales’ position, and released its latch. Jessie kept looking straight ahead. The two rurales were midway between the landaulet and the cannon when she yanked hard on the left-hand rein, and as the carriage horse wheeled sharply, she gave Ki the word.

  “Now, Ki! I’ll pick you up on this side of the road when you’ve finished.!”

  Ki jumped. The body of the landaulet shielded him from the eyes of the approaching rurales, who were interested only in watching the carriage and changing their course to follow it.

  Because the rurales around the cannon fired the second shot just as Ki leaped from the landaulet, they were for the moment unconscious of their surroundings. Their eyes were on the cloud of dust raised by the cannonball, which had fallen only a few yards short of the hacienda this time, squarely in front of the entrance door.

  He might as easily have walked up to the men around the cannon openly, on the road, Ki thought. Then, as the rurales moved to reload the fieldpiece and reset its range and elevation, Ki began using every scrap of cover and every subtle movement that his ninja instructors had taught him.

  An instant before he reached a spot where he could throw the nage teppo, the rurales fired the fieldpiece for the third time. Before the smoke from the cannon shot had dissipated, Ki took one of the makeshift nage teppo from his blouse, snapped a match from the block he carried in his hand, and lighted the short-fused smoke bomb. The rurales were clustered around the cannon, reloading it. Ki tossed the nage teppo.

  It hit less than a yard from the knot of rurales, and at once began pouring out a dense cloud of yellow smoke as the gunpowder ignited the sulfur folded inside the silk.

  Ki had the second nage teppo in his hand while the match he’d used to ignite the first still burned, and within seconds the new smoke bomb was adding its blinding, choking fumes to those of the first.

  Before a minute had passed, Ki had tossed four of the nage teppo, and the cannon and the rurales around it were engulfed in fumes and blinding smoke.

  While the rurales were milling in blind confusion, rubbing their eyes to restore their vision, Ki lighted the fuse on the first half-stick of dynamite. He counted to eight, giving himself a six-second margin of safety, before throwing the dynamite under the fieldpiece.

  Before its fuse burned the remaining seconds, Ki had a second stick ready to throw. The first half-stick exploded while the second
was in midair. The fieldpiece rocked with the blast, and the rurales around it were thrown like dolls, landing in a rough circle around the cannon, which now sat lopsided with one wheel of its carriage shattered.

  Guzman had not been in the group clustered around the fieldpiece; he had been giving orders to the rurales forming into attack groups on each side of the road. The rurale commander wheeled his horse and galloped toward the cannon. The second dynamite blast spooked his mount and it began to buck. Guzman was thrown from the saddle, but he got up and began limping to his objective.

  Ki had seen Guzman and waited to light the third fuse until the captain was at the fieldpiece, trying to comprehend the reason for the explosions. Guzman saw the dynamite when it hit the ground, and started running away, but the short fuse ignited the explosive before he’d gotten to safety. A chunk of the cannon’s undercarriage caught him in the back of the head and Guzman sprawled to the ground, his skull crushed.

  From both sides of the road, the mounted rurales were spurring toward the scene of the blasts. Ki waited until most of them had reached the shattered fieldpiece before throwing the last half-stick of dynamite. He started running toward the landaulet, no longer trying to hide. The rurales saw him, but before any of them could ride after him, the dynamite went off and men and horses were toppled like dominoes to the ground.

  Jessie had gotten out of the landaulet and untied their horses the instant the two rurales who’d been sent to intercept her were drawn back to the cannon by the first explosion. She met Ki by the time he’d gotten halfway to the landaulet. He swung onto his horse.

  “I don’t think Guzman’s rurales will be able to bother Lita or anyone else,” Jessie commented. “Your ninja tactics weren’t as bad as you thought they’d be, Ki.”

  “I’m rusty. I use the ninja approach too seldom.”

  “You did well this time.”

  They rode toward the hacienda for a short distance, then Ki suddenly reined in.