Comanchero Blood (A Dragoons Western Book 2)

by Patrick E. Andrews

  Behind this strange and noisy group were several wagons loaded with loot. Off to one side, but well within sight, was a small herd of oxen being attended to with a bit more care and consideration than the prisoners. All of this had been part of the loot taken during the raid on Nadezhda.

  The man in charge of this conglomerate was a short and very muscular individual named Guido Lazardo. The two-day growth of beard on his swarthy jowls was of a quantity that most men would require two weeks to raise. A large, black moustache, carefully waxed and curled completely on the edges, dominated the area between his thick lips and large nose. Heavy eyebrows, formed into a perpetual frown, ran together to form a bushy roof over his small, beady eyes. A greasy, leather wide-brimmed hat covered his bald head, and large gold earrings decorated ears that sprouted so much hair it seemed a wonder he could hear any of the clamor going on around him. More hair showed all around his collar, giving evidence of the thick mat of fur that covered his body.

  Lazardo was very energetic like his men. Excited and tense, he rode back and forth along the group, shouting and gesturing at everyone in a strange mixture of languages. He cursed the guards with as much fervor as he did the prisoners.

  “Presto, by God!” he yelled. “I going to kill the bastardo! Keep going! Pronto!”

  He rode a rapid circle completely around the moving crowd, pausing to look into the wagons filled with loot, then inspecting the oxen.

  “Pretty damn good!” he said to the herdsmen. “We’ll make ’em fatter and have big feast!”

  Next he galloped up to where the prisoners stumbled along. The man in charge there was named Monroe Lockwood. He was a heavily bearded individual whose large amount of body fat hid tremendous physical strength and agility.

  He nodded a greeting to Lazardo. “How’s it all look to you, Mr. Lazardo? he asked.

  “Pretty damn good, I say,” Lazardo said. “Look at them men. Big, hardworking fellows, eh? We get a good price from the mines in Mexico. It would take nearly half a year to work them to death, eh?”

  “You bet!” Lockwood said. “Some o’ them gals is gonna fetch a fancy price, too. Take a gander at that one there, see?”

  Lazardo looked into the group of prisoners and spotted the one pointed out. “She is big.”

  “That gal could take on a whole mining camp and not blink an eye,” Lockwood said. “She’s gonna make some whoremaster a lot o’ money.”

  “She is too big, make better sense to sell to Indians for worker,” Lazardo said.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Lockwood allowed. “I bet some squaw’d be glad to have her to boss around during buffalo-skinning time. That big ol’ gal could take a buffalo apart faster’n you could blink your eye.”

  “Maybe she wouldn’t need a knife,” Lazardo suggested. “She could pull the buffalo apart like a roasted chicken.”

  Both men laughed at his humor. The woman they talked about, Irena Yakubovski, walked in a bold, defiant way, keeping her head high. The only time she turned her eyes was to give Natalia a visible inspection to make sure she was able to keep up.

  “Wait!” Lazardo said. “See the small blonde on the other side of the big one?”

  “That li’l ol’ thing?” Lockwood said. “What about her?”

  “Bring her to me,” Lazardo commanded. “I want to look at her close.”

  Lockwood slipped his bulk from the saddle and quickly darted in, grabbing Natalia Valenko by the arm. Irena followed, cursing and threatening in her native tongue while the Comanchero dragged the struggling girl over to where Lazardo waited.

  “Here she is, Mr. Lazardo,” Lockwood said. He gave Natalia a gaze of measurement. “She ain’t much.” He glanced at Irena, who glared at him in bold hatred. He grinned and stuck out his tongue at her, wiggling it back and forth.

  Irena spat and cursed him, his mother, and all his ancestors in fine Russian swear words.

  Lockwood laughed. “I think she’s taking care of the littler one, Mr. Lazardo.”

  “That is fine,” Lazardo said as he leered openly at Natalia with such intensity that she turned her eyes away from him. He smiled. “Don’t let nobody else touch this one. She is mine.”

  “Suit yourself, Mr. Lazardo,” Lockwood said. “Make sure nobody don’t put no marks on her,” Guido warned him. “I don’t like bruises and scrapes.”

  “I’ll see to it personal,” Lockwood promised. “You want this big’n to go with her?”

  “Sure!” Lazardo said. He laughed loudly. “She can probably protect her better than any of you.”

  “You could be right,” Lockwood allowed. He turned and hollered over at another Comanchero. “Big Joe!”

  A black man kicked his horse into a trot and rode up. “What?”

  “This here is Mr. Lazardo’s woman,” Lockwood said. “The other’n is looking after her. You make sure nothing happens to either of ’em.”

  “I gone put the wimmen in one o’ them wagons, then,” Big Joe said. “Is that all right wit’ you, Mr. Lazardo?”

  “What you need to do to keep the small one clean and nice for me, you just do it,” Lazardo said.

  “Yes, sir!” Big Joe said. He dismounted and took Natalia from Lockwood. “Now looky here, missy. If’n you do what I say, I won’t get riled at you. Now c’mon!” He frowned at Irena. “You come, too, you big ol’ gal.”

  Lazardo watched Big Joe take the women over to one of the wagons. He laughed, saying, “I’ll have a nice time when we get back to camp, eh?”

  “I prefer the big’n,” Lockwood said.

  “Then, she is yours until we sell or trade her to Indians,” Lazardo promised. “Now I go look around again!” He kicked his horse’s flanks to begin another circuit of the column.

  Guido Lazardo had been born thirty-five years earlier in the highlands of his native Sicily. His birthplace was in the upper reaches of craggy canyons in a small mountain range known as the Montagni Roccicio. This was wild country where outsiders dared not venture. The people there were an inbred but clever lot of yokels who lived by a fierce code in which honor and acts of valor were everything while personal wealth and possessions—outside of weaponry—meant nothing.

  The history of Lazardo’s homeland was one of foreign colonization and conquest. The Sicilians had been ruled over the centuries by Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, and Bourbons. Rather than be cowed by such manipulation and oppression, the wily people had learned to adapt and be servile on the outside while fighting back the best way they could in subtle but deadly ways. Bandit raids, thievery, vandalism, and other small, brief violent acts were the only way the Sicilians could strike at their rulers. It was impossible to fight a grand revolution against a foe that could completely and ruthlessly crush any rebellion against its authority. Therefore, unable to attack like lions moving in for the kill, the Sicilians made hit-and-run attacks like swift wolves.

  The people of the Montagni Roccicio were on different. Isolated for the most part, their contacts with others in the lower regions generally meant trouble for all concerned. Soldiers bullied them and made them obey the laws, other Sicilians were openly insulting, and with no money or means to purchase much, they were not welcome in the towns that dotted the island nation. Known contemptuously as Rocceri, they were considered only slightly better than Gypsies.

  The Rocceri fought back, giving and taking their lumps. Finally, it dawned on them that as long as they were bashing heads they might as well do it in a manner that guaranteed success for the most part, such as sneaking up behind some other fellow and slamming him good and hard when he wasn’t expecting it. After that, the Rocceri noticed that when that victim was lying still and unconscious, he was helpless to stop anyone from stealing whatever possessions he had on his person.

  This led to violent robberies in which several Rocceri banded together to guarantee success. It wasn’t long before a gradual ascension into criminal activity and outright banditry of travelers turned to raids on
towns and isolated farms. When the frightened citizenry of one small village made an arrangement to pay in silver coins for the Rocceri’s promise to leave them in peace, the enterprising mountain men began to tribute from other areas in exchange for not attacking and robbing the people living there.

  The authorities tried to put an end to the crimes, but whenever the law showed up in any force, the Rocceri simply ascended into the craggy shelter of their mountains and waited out the inconvenience. As soon as the forces of order withdrew, they went back to their old ways. Unknown to the Rocceri, in the thirteenth century another group, better organized and located, emerged to do exactly the same thing, but on a grander scale. This was the Mafia, who could commit crimes on a level unimaginable in the Montagni Roccicio, but perhaps not with the same zeal when compared individual by individual.

  By the time Guido Lazardo’s mother writhed and groaned on a crude pallet in a mountain hut to push him from her belly in 1811, the Rocceri were well-established in their own area, earning their daily bread from extortion mostly and outright robbery when either necessity or boredom dictated it. Guido grew up unschooled in anything except hunting and crime, and by the time he reached his nineteenth year, he had established himself as a solid citizen of the Rocceri from having participated in all manners of criminal activities in which he had managed to murder no less than five people in the lower regions.

  It seemed that Guido Lazardo was destined to become a leader in his family’s group, but the temptations posed to him by a fourteen-year-old girl of another Rocceri clan proved his downfall. Her name was Liliana Bonabella. At her age, she was ripe to get married and begin birthing other little Rocceri to grow up and make the world a bit more miserable for other people. Lazardo saw her on a festival day in early summer. He felt a wild and passionate attraction to her, and was determined to have the girl as his wife.

  One balmy evening, when the sun hung high for a bit longer than usual in the Sicilian sky, Lazardo slicked down his hair and waxed his moustache to a shiny pair of curls. Even at that age, his beard and body hair could nearly match the pilosity of a bear. After dressing in his best suit and putting on a pair of boots recently pulled from the feet of a frightened traveler on the road between San Cipirello and Camporeale, Lazardo stuck his stiletto in the bright-colored sash around his waist and strode off to make his honorable intentions known to Liliana’s father.

  What was supposed to be a fine evening turned into an embarrassing ordeal for the young man. Not only did Liliana Bonabella loudly express her dislike of him, she compared his appearance to that of a monkey and shrieked to her father that before she would marry Guido Lazardo she would hurl herself off the highest peak in the Montagni Roccicio. Like most men of the Montagni Roccicio, Signore Bonabella didn’t give a damn whether his daughter wanted to marry any particular individual or not. Her opinion did not matter. However, in this case, the father most especially did not care to have grandchildren who resembled Lazardo. For that reason, he gave in to his daughter’s wishes and told the young man to give up any plans for courting her.

  Lazardo went home to sulk and have a fine outburst of temper. He kicked his dog, threw the family cat against the wall of the hut, broke up the kitchen table, and would have done more had not his mother begun beating him with her broom until the handle broke. Sicilian men respected their mothers, and he made a quick exit to sit in the dark of the mountain forest and ponder his humiliation.

  Lazardo decided that the only answer to having Liliana Bonabella as his wife was to use the time-honored tradition of ratto della donna. This was the custom in which a young man, spurned by his ladylove or her family, would kidnap her and take the girl away to rape her. Since she would be violated and impure, no self-respecting swain in the Montagni Roccicio would deign to marry her. Even though the act was against her will and forced on her, the young woman in question was humiliated and shamed by the affair. Therefore, she would have to marry her rapist to avoid any blemish on her reputation. To refuse him would put her outside normal society, and she would be considered a common whore. .Her marriage would restore her as a decent woman, and her family’s honor would be upheld.

  It took Lazardo several long weeks of careful stalking before he managed to find Liliana in an isolated place where she was alone. She had gone to pick berries and had wandered a couple of kilometers from her family’s home. Lazardo skillfully crept up on her to pounce and drag the struggling, screaming girl to a place he had prepared in a cave.

  Liliana fought back fiercely, screaming insults and scratching until Lazardo was forced to beat her into unconsciousness. It was then that he ripped off her long skirt and deflowered her as she lay in a moaning swoon with one eye swollen shut and her nose broken. When he finished, he slapped her face to bring her around.

  Liliana’s discovery of her condition brought her out of her state of insensibility into another fit of rage. She hit, kicked, and even bit his hand. Lazardo’s hysterical anger took him beyond rationality as he fought back. The muscular youngster punched and booted the girl until she fell to the floor of the cave once again. But he didn’t stop. In his fury, he continued to kick her until only physical exhaustion calmed him down.

  By then Liliana Bonabella was dead.

  Now Guido Lazardo was in serious trouble. If her family discovered he had murdered her, they would do more than take it out on him. His relatives would also suffer. The Bonabella clan was an extremely large and powerful one. There wasn’t a single area in the Montagni Roccicio where a member of their numerous group didn’t live.

  Guido decided he had two choices. He could hide the body and carry on as if he knew nothing about her disappearance. That stood a slim chance, because her people probably already figured she was a victim of ratto della donna. That would make him a prime suspect, and any interrogation from them would be thorough and unpleasant. That left only the alternative of his fleeing the scene and getting not only out of the Montagni Roccicio, but off the island of Sicily. Either way, some of his family’s blood was going to be spilled. Therefore, Lazardo reasoned, there was no real reason not to save himself.

  The rapist-murderer waited for night to settle in; then he began a rapid but careful descent down the far side of the mountains. His plan was to reach the port of Marsala and get aboard a ship.

  When he finally reached the base of the mountains and found himself on the main road, the young Sicilian didn’t bother to rest. He started out toward his destination with worried glances behind him, concerned that some of the Bonabella clan were already trying to find him.

  When Lazardo reached Marsala, he found it easy to get a berth aboard a ship. A sailor’s life was one of drudgery and isolation, and most crews were short at least a dozen men. The first ship the fugitive approached was merchantman, and the first mate was more than glad to accept Lazardo’s request for work to fill out the under strength crew that sailed the vessel.

  At first Lazardo worked as a simple deckhand. He knew nothing of ships and had no skills required of an able seaman. But, with a quick mind, he soon mastered such things as knot tying and other rope work. Strong and agile, he could respond with vigor once he learned what was expected of him. But where the new sailor really shined was high in the masts, where the sails were furled and unfurled. Used to scampering thin mountain trails, the heights held no fear for him, and he soon became a permanent part of that team that toiled in the upper regions far above the decks.

  Lazardo spent almost two solid years aboard the ship, going ashore to squander his meager earnings on port city whores and cheap liquor all over the Mediterranean and northern Atlantic. His fall from grace came when one of the crewmen commented on the Sicilian’s hairiness while toiling under a hot sun, voyaging between Corsica and France. All the sailors were stripped to the waist, and one, noting the heavy cover of fur on Lazardo’s body, made a joke that sent the other members of the crew into spasms of laughter.

  “Why don’t you take off your shirt like the rest of us, Lazardo?
” the man asked. “That wool one you’re wearing must be hot as hell.”

  Liliana Bonabella had spurned him because of his body hair, and Lazardo wanted no reminder of his physical repulsiveness. Rather than go at the man at that moment, however, the Sicilian waited his chance. It came during a late-night watch when he snuck up on the unfortunate joker, slicing him across the throat with his knife and dumping the man overboard.

  One hell of a row was raised by the ship’s officers, and an investigation was launched. Although no proof of the murder could be found, Lazardo was invited to leave the ship when it docked in Marseille a week later. Paid off and willing to get on another ship, Lazardo went to a cheap waterfront bar to have a few drinks. In that piss-soaked saloon, he met some people who changed his life. They were Italian-speaking Corsicans who operated a crude crime syndicate involved in prostitution, gambling, robbery, and murders for hire. They immediately made an approving judgment of the muscular Sicilian and invited him to join their group. Thus, Guido Lazardo’s education in the world continued.

  Lazardo adapted as easily to Marseille’s underworld as he had shipboard life. Utterly without a conscience, there was no act he would not commit for money. He beat up rebellious whores, pulled burglaries in the city’s well-guarded residential areas of the wealthy, killed three men on an agreement worked out with the gang’s boss, and worked his way up to the exalted position of managing one of his crime union’s better saloons and gambling houses.

  The latter position brought about the third downfall of his life.

  Temptation proved too great for Guido’s growing ambitions. At first he crudely embezzled funds from the establishment and also began to run his own string of whores in a bordello he set up smack in the middle of the waterfront. It took his bosses less than a month to find out about the whorehouse. A bit of further investigation on their part revealed the theft from the saloon. An immediate assassination was ordered, but the wily Roccero was already aware they were after him from the attention they were showing the books of the saloon. He didn’t bother to pack, only concentrating on being able to get away in time. With plenty of cash, he headed for Italy and lived in a high, wild style before finally running out of money in Napoli. This reverse in his fortunes took him to the sea once again.