by Dale Cramer
Then he froze, peering deep into Jake’s eyes as the answer came to him. He crept closer so that their faces were mere inches apart, and a knowing grin turned up the corners of his lips.
“Aaaaahhh, now I see. A young man would only do this if he was not thinking. A young man would only do this if he was in love with the girl! Tell us the truth, gringo. This girl, she is your lover, no?”
Jake swallowed hard, but said nothing. It was answer enough—the bandit read his eyes.
“Rodrigo!” he shouted. “Bring the girl!”
One of the older bandits trotted away toward the barn. A few minutes later he came back dragging Rachel by an arm. He flung her down next to the fire, and she looked up at Jake, her eyes red with weeping.
She shook her head slowly, mouthing the word no.
His heart melted when he saw the terrible sorrow in her eyes, for he knew his Rachel did not fear for her own life. He nodded to her, slightly, his heart grieving already over the life they would never share, and hoping his own glance conveyed as much as hers. Even now, she was the finest sight in all the world.
Chapter 26
El Pantera paced back and forth between them.
“Do you see my problem, young buck?” He spread his hands and collected devoted gazes from his men. “We are having a fiesta! My men are weary, and like any benevolent leader I want to entertain my troops.
“Now, I have had a taste of tequila and I am in the mood for a fight, but if you will deprive my men of their sport, then I think the next best thing is to offer them this little red-haired girl as a reward and let them amuse themselves. For me this would be a shame because my men, they are rough, and they will ruin her. She is a great prize and I would lose a lot of money, but what else can I do? I have already promised and I cannot disappoint them. I am a man of my word, young buck.”
Their eyes locked and El Pantera waited for his answer, the only sound the crumbling of a spent log in the campfire. Sparks danced upward, and one last desperate gamble came to Jake’s mind. There was still a small chance.
“I will fight you,” he said at last. “But not with a knife. I will wrestle with you.”
The men laughed uproariously at this, slapping their knees and pounding each other’s backs.
Grinning, El Pantera held up a hand to silence the laughter.
“Wrestle?” He raised his knife between them in a clenched fist. “To die on an enemy’s blade is an honorable end, a warrior’s death. You would rather have your neck twisted like a chicken? I do not understand you at all, gringo.”
He stared a moment longer in silence. When Jake didn’t answer, the bandit shrugged, tossed the knife away and took off his jacket, still shaking his head in disbelief. “But if this is your choice I suppose I must honor the wishes of a guest.”
Jake reluctantly tossed his hat aside and took off his work coat, the gravity of the situation only beginning to sink in. His chances against this seasoned warrior were extremely slim. He would most likely lose—and die. But a slim chance was better than none, and El Pantera had given his word in front of his men that he would let Rachel go if Jake won.
The bandits made a great happy fuss as they moved back to make room, tipping the short log sections they’d been sitting on and rolling them out of the way while El Pantera dropped his gun belt and stripped off his shirt. A scattering of glossy scars pocked his lean frame, the residue of many battles.
Jake declined to take off his shirt with Rachel watching, but he removed his suspenders. No sense giving El Pantera one more thing to grip.
The bandits closed about them in a ring, shouting and cursing, cheering on their leader. Jake and El Pantera circled each other in a crouch, feinting and testing, looking for an opening until suddenly the bandit rushed him and they locked arms.
El Pantera tried to sweep his legs right away, but Jake was ready. He kept his feet back, wide apart, so as the bandit tried to sweep he took advantage of the split second when the taller man was off-balance. He surged forward and both of them toppled to the ground with Jake on top.
But he couldn’t hold El Pantera, who was lean and strong, with ropy muscles as hard as iron. In a wild, unexpected flurry of twisting and writhing and jolting elbow shots, the bandit escaped his grasp and crabbed away.
They both jumped up and circled each other again, the hoots and shouts of El Pantera’s cheering section more raucous than ever. They went at each other for ten minutes, neither of them able to get a clenching hold on the other, but then Jake began to notice that the older man was panting. He pressed, keeping the pressure on, never giving El Pantera a chance to catch his breath, and finally found an opening.
He noticed that every time he charged, El Pantera tried to hook him with his left arm and take him down.
Jake charged again, but this time he blocked the left with a forearm, ducked under it, and before the bandit knew what was happening Jake’s arm was locked around his neck from behind. El Pantera fought like a wildcat, clawing at Jake’s forearm, hooking his legs, flailing with his elbows, but Jake had him. He would not let go.
They toppled over, Jake landing on his back in the dust with El Pantera on top of him. The bandit flung himself from side to side, twisting, squirming, trying to turn over or find some leverage so he could get that crushing arm off of his throat, but Jake had him and would not let up.
Suddenly El Pantera’s hand ceased clawing at Jake’s forearm and flopped into the dust beside him. His whole body went limp. Assuming the bandit had lost consciousness, Jake released the pressure on his neck, shoved El Pantera aside and rolled away from the limp body.
He crawled a few feet and stopped to catch his breath, still on hands and knees, his heart already swelling with joy and pride. By some miracle he had won, and now he would claim his prize.
There was a strange murmur among the bandits as Jake drew himself up onto his knees, but he didn’t realize what was happening until a boot crashed into the side of his head. He spun around and hit the ground, dazed.
El Pantera leaned over him, his grinning face swirling among bright spots of light.
“Perhaps next time you will not be so quick to believe your victim has gone to sleep. Ahh, but then there will be no next time for you, young buck.”
Jake tried to roll away and get to his feet, but before he could get up El Pantera’s bony fist smashed into his ear. This was not wrestling, and Jake knew nothing of boxing, but they were in El Pantera’s camp and the rules, apparently, were flexible. A rousing cheer went up from the other bandits as Jake staggered to his feet and stumbled backward, reeling before a hail of blows to his face, and went down again. This time the bandit pounced on him, straddling his chest and locking his long fingers around Jake’s throat.
Jake bucked and fought with all his remaining strength, trying to pry the bandit’s hands from his throat, but there was no escape. El Pantera’s iron claws held, and his thumbs pressed hard into Jake’s windpipe. The cheer began to fade into the distance as Jake’s vision narrowed so that he saw only the bandit’s grinning face.
He had lost. As the world began to slip away his last thought was of Rachel, and how he had failed her.
But then, amid angry shouts from the bandits, the hands released their hold as El Pantera was violently wrenched from his chest. Jake rolled onto his side, coughing, gasping, and opened his eyes. El Pantera lay on the ground with Domingo on top of him, pummeling his face for the few seconds it took for the others to close in and drag him off their leader. A half dozen of them threw Domingo to the ground and attacked him, all of them at once.
El Pantera sat up, wiping blood from his mouth. Domingo lay six feet away, facedown, unconscious, with a bandit’s pistol pointed at the back of his head. The bandit, a toothless old man in a straw sombrero, held a tenuous finger on the trigger and looked to El Pantera for approval.
But El Pantera shook his head, raised a hand. “No, Miguel, save that one. If you shoot him now he won’t even feel it. I want to take my time
with him. Before I am finished he will beg for a bullet, but it will not come.”
Getting slowly to his feet, El Pantera limped over and picked up a bottle, bit the cork out of it and took a long pull. When it came back down, he wiped his mouth with the back of a sweaty hand and waved roughly at the prisoners.
“Take the three of them and chain them in the barn. Tomorrow, after the jefe comes for the girl, we will take our time with the other two.” He glared at Jake as he said this, and the look in his eye sent chills down Jake’s spine.
Rachel lay curled up in the dirt, weeping into her hands. One of the bandits grabbed her arm, yanked her to her feet and shoved her toward the barn. Another very large man lifted Domingo like a rag doll and slung him over a shoulder while two others prodded Jake toward the barn with their rifles. Rachel broke away from her captor and threw herself at Jake.
He wrapped his arms around her and felt her warmth, a touch of heaven in the middle of hell. She looked up at him, her eyes full of questions.
“How did you find me?” she whispered, in Dutch, so the guards wouldn’t understand.
The two Mexicans behind him cursed and jabbed Jake with their rifles, but he only held her tighter and kept walking.
“Ada,” he said. “She made it all the way home—with Little Amos.”
“Oh, thank Gott! Did you find Aaron?”
A guard clouted his ear with a fist, but he clung to Rachel, shielding her.
“Jah, and he was still alive when I last saw him, but just barely.”
She buried her face against his chest and wept.
The guard punched him in the back of the head, shouting, but then the one carrying the lantern intervened and said, “Let the two young lovers have their little moment. They don’t know what is coming tomorrow. A moment of bliss will only make their torture worse.” All the guards laughed, as if this was a cheerful thought. They kept on prodding Jake with their rifles, but at least they let Rachel walk with him to the barn.
She looked up at him, her eyes full of tears, and cried, “Jake, why? Why did you come to this awful place?”
He tried his best to smile with his swollen face, refusing to let even a hint of regret tinge his voice. “Rachel, how could I not come for you? How could I live with myself if I didn’t try?”
“But now they will take your life!” she wailed.
He pressed her head to his chest and whispered into her ear, “You are my life.”
Once inside, one of them grabbed Rachel by the hair and snatched her away. She screamed, reaching out to Jake, and he fought to get to her, but two others took his arms and dragged him to a stall on the opposite side of the barn.
As the bandit flung Rachel into her stall, he could hear her sobbing, even above the rattle of the chains.
The big man dumped Domingo’s limp body in the same stall with Jake, then turned around and left. Domingo never even twitched.
Two bandits remained in the stall with a lantern. One of them knelt down with a pair of irons, pulled out a little T-shaped key and fastened the irons onto Domingo’s wrists.
A log chain snaked through the dirt and straw of the stall, its ends padlocked to the corner posts. The bandit snapped a padlock through a link in the middle of the log chain, securing Domingo’s shackles to it.
Tightening the screws on Jake’s handcuffs, the other one said, “There is enough slack in the chain so you can reach the water bucket, gringo.” He nodded toward a grimy oak bucket against the wall. “We wouldn’t want you to die of thirst—El Pantera knows much more interesting ways to die. Someone will bring food later, if there is anything left after the hogs are fed.”
Both bandits laughed at this, but the younger one, lifting his lantern and looking around the stall, said, “Miguel, where is the other lock?”
The toothless old bandit shrugged. “No sé.” I don’t know. “Maybe Pablo took it with him. He’s an idiot.”
The younger one railed, “There were six locks in here only a few days ago! What do these morons do with them? How can you expect me to put this gringo on the chain without a lock?”
“No sé!” Miguel repeated with raised eyebrows and an exaggerated shrug. “I work the garden. I don’t know nothing about no chains—you’re the jailer.”
Both of them were weaving and slurring a bit. The mescal had been flowing all night, and it made Jake think maybe there was one slim chance left. Maybe they didn’t know. It was worth a try.
“Um, excúsame,” he said, and both bandits stared at him as if they didn’t know he could talk.
“Do you have a key to that lock?” he asked, pointing to the padlock that held the end of the log chain around the corner post.
“Sí,” the younger one said, holding up a key ring full of keys.
“Well then, why don’t you just pass the chain through my arms and lock it back to the post? It will be easier for me to move around the stall, and you won’t need another lock.”
Jake held his breath, afraid the two bandits would know what he was up to, but they just looked at each other, shrugged and went to unlock the chain from the corner post. After they passed the long chain through Jake’s arms they padlocked it back to the post, picked up their lantern and left him in the dark.
Chapter 27
Jake smiled, hardly daring to believe his captors were really that gullible. But he would do nothing yet—best to wait a while and let things die down.
“Rachel!” he called.
“Jake?” came the answer from the darkness.
“Are you all right? Have they hurt you?”
There was an awkward pause that worried him.
“No, I am unharmed,” she finally said. “Jake?”
“Jah?”
“I love you.”
Those words, from Rachel, even from the darkness in the middle of hell, warmed him. But they also broke his heart.
“I love you too, Rachel. Try to rest.”
He would say nothing of the trick he had up his sleeve for fear the guard might hear him, even though there was little chance of the guard understanding Pennsylvania Dutch.
He knew a trick, a way to get off the chain, but despite the overwhelming urge to free himself and go to Rachel’s side, instinct told him to talk to Domingo first. The native had not moved, and Jake was afraid he might even be dead. A little moonlight angled through the cracks of the barn, enough so that Jake could see his friend lying motionless in the dirt where they had dropped him. Jake brought the water bucket and knelt beside him. Untying the bandanna from around Domingo’s neck, Jake wet it, squeezed it out and wiped the native’s face with it. There was a gash on the side of his head where someone in the melee had pistol-whipped him, and a cut on his chin, probably from a boot.
After a while, as Jake swabbed the wounds on Domingo’s face, he started to come around. He squinted through swollen eyes, trying to focus in the dark stall.
“Jake?”
“Jah. I am here.”
“Where are we?”
“In the barn, chained in a stall. I guess they use it like a holding pen for the girls they kidnap.”
Domingo groaned. “Is Rachel all right?”
“Jah. She’s in a stall on the other side. I saw them put her in there. She’s on a chain, like us.”
Domingo’s hand lifted the log chain, held it to his face. “Too heavy,” he muttered, dropping it. “We will never be able to break this.”
“We don’t have to. They locked your handcuffs straight to the chain, but not mine. They only passed the chain through my arms. I can get loose.”
Domingo blinked, raised his head and stared.
“How?”
Jake smiled, remembering. “When they made us go to public school, Rachel and I got to be friends with an Englisher boy named Anthony. He called himself The Great Antonio. He did little magic tricks for a hobby, and sometimes he would show me how he did them. Look . . .”
Jake took a loop of the long chain and poked the links up through the iron
cuff against the flat of his wrist. When the loop was big enough he passed his hand through it and then pulled the loop back out.
“See? Simple,” he said, holding up his hands. He was still wearing the handcuffs, but the chain was no longer between his arms. “I can’t believe they fell for it.”
“That’s a good trick,” Domingo said, laying his head back down and closing his eyes, “but it won’t do me any good. Or Rachel.”
This was true. Domingo’s handcuffs were padlocked directly to the chain. Jake had no answer for that.
“Can you put it back on?” Domingo asked. He winced, and laid his arm over his eyes.
“Jah, sure. Same way. But I want to go see about Rachel first.”
“No. It’s too risky,” Domingo muttered from behind his arm. “We have an advantage—they don’t know you can get free. There will be a guard with a lantern right outside the barn door, and if he hears you and comes in we lose our advantage. We will only get one chance, so we must make it count. Do you have a plan?”
Jake shrugged. “I don’t know where I am or how to get home. Even if I did, I don’t know how to get you and Rachel free. But I did have a plan. My plan was to wake you up and ask you what I should do.”
Another groan. “My head is killing me.”
He lay still for a long time, and Jake thought he had gone to sleep until he grunted, “We have to take a guard, get his key. There is no other way.”
“But you have no weapons.”
“Then we will take him with our hands. I can’t do it alone—you will have to help me, Jake.”
Jake sighed. “I don’t think I can do that.”
Domingo moved his arm from his eyes and stared at him in the striped moonlight. “Then you will die, and I will die, and Rachel will be sold into slavery.”
The harsh reality of his words struck Jake like a slap to the face, but he didn’t answer.
