The Mule Tamer II, Chica's Ride

by John Horst

  “Shootin’ a man through the head at two feet with a scattergun?”

  “Right, right.” Arvel shifted in his chair. “And Will, get the word out to the boys, tell ‘em to enjoy themselves a little tonight. I’m not in any celebrating mood, with my girls still out there, but they should enjoy this a little.” He cast his eyes over the street, you could feel the energy in the air, it was going to be a big time.

  Some young boys were kicking a football around the street and it landed in Arvel’s lap. He laughed and grabbed the ball. He hobbled over, down onto the street and dropped the ball, kicking it with his left leg, nearly tumbling over onto the dirt street. The boys ran after it and he followed, limping as fast as his broken body would allow. Will looked on. For a man of nearly sixty, a man who’d just had a stroke, and a man who just now sat before him and told him he was a killer, he certainly didn’t look the part.

   XIII Nemesis

  Rebecca was so sleepy, she could not remember going to bed, but she was in her cot and someone had removed all her clothes. She lay on top of the blanket and was hot, despite the chilly evening. A single candle burned in her little room, offering an eerie yellow pallor to the canvas walls. She fell in and out of consciousness and she felt dizzy, a little sick to her stomach.

  The clown man was suddenly standing over her. His hair was wet with some sort of oil. She could smell lilacs, coming from his direction, from his hair. He wore a robe and began to untie the closure as he approached. He abruptly stopped and looked at the young nun as she opened the tent flap.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” He was angry and excited and his voice quivered as he spoke; his hands trembled as he fumbled with the robe’s belt. He was in no mood to be distracted by the nun.

  “I am here to help.”

  The clown man grinned a greasy grin. He had some fantastic notion all of a sudden. What could she mean? He watched her approach and looked on at the little girl, exposed, vulnerable, beckoning him to her bed. The candlelight danced across her face, he could swear she was smiling, certain she was happy to have him share her bed, she wanted him as much as he wanted her, he was sure of it.

  He did not see the branding iron in the little nun’s hand. He did not see it flash across his periphery as it crashed down on the side of his head. He was down, on his back, on the floor of the tent and the lithe figure was upon him. He could not move. He could not defend himself. He looked into the eyes of a wild creature. This was no nun!

  She hissed into his ear. “I am going to kill you now, mierda.” She turned and looked at the dreamy child. “Turn over, little one, I want you to look at the wall.” Rebecca complied.

  The little nun hissed again. “After I kill you, mierda, I will spread your guts across the desert, and the wolves will feast on them. Do you understand?” The clown man nodded briefly. “I will cut your goddamned head off so that you will walk through hell and not be able to see nothing. Do you understand mierda?” The clown man nodded.

  The little nun yanked the belt from around the fat man’s waist. She slowly and steadily wrapped it around his thick neck and then twisted it round and round the blade of her big knife, every turn sliced into the side of his face until the blood flowed into the silk robe. The clown man turned red, then purple, nearly black. His eyes bulged from their orbits, as if the belt might exert enough force to pop them out of his head. He was finally dead.

  The little nun covered the dead man. She reached over, covered the little child with a blanket and gently rubbed the little one on her back. “Wake up, Cielito.”

  Rebecca sat up with a start. “Mamma?” She was dizzy and thought she’d be sick. Was this just a terrible dream after all?

  “Sí, sí.” Chica was crying. She tore the shroud from her face, peeled the beeswax makeup from around her eyes.

  “It is you, Mamma!” She looked around the room, still too groggy to understand. She looked down at the form on the floor. “Is he…dead, Mamma?”

  “Sí, he is dead, Cielito.”

  “Oh, Mamma I missed you so. I have been so scared. My insides are shaking all the time. Can we go home now, Mamma? I miss Daddy. Is Abuelita okay, Mamma? I want to go home.”

  Chica grabbed her and squeezed her as she had never done before. She loved her so. She cried into her neck. “I missed you too, my darling. Abuelita is okay, she is good and she is waiting for you.” She hugged her again. “I am so, so sorry I did not save you sooner. I am so, so sorry. Please forgive me.”

  Rebecca had never seen her mother cry. She patted her on the back. “It’s okay, Mamma, I never thought you didn’t do your best. I always knew that you’d find me. Can we go now?”

  Chica regained her composure. “Not yet, my darling. Not yet. But soon. I need you to make a little trick on the bandits. Can you do this for me?”

  “Yes, Mamma.” She was drifting. The drink was too much for her little body and the emotion of seeing her mother accelerated the effect it had on her diminutive form. “What must I do?” She began to shiver and Chica pulled an extra blanket over her. Rebecca looked down at the dead man. “He was going to breed me, like a bull does a cow, Mamma. The other one, the one called maestro says I am to be his wife, Mamma. I don’t want to do this.”

  “No, darling, no! This will never be done, you understand? This will never happen, but I cannot take you from here now, there are too many and we will be caught if we leave now.” She pressed her cheek against Rebecca’s forehead. “Here is what you must do.”

  The little nun approached Marta as the girl sat at the dying fire, smoking the last of a cigarette and working on her tatting. She was all alone and she sat close to the fire, she’d gotten a bad knot and was trying to work it out. She looked absurd, the little girl, bent over her lace with a cigarette dangling from her lips. This was a thoroughly corrupt place.

  Marta liked the little nun. The men were afraid of her as they said she was a leper. She did not know what a leper was, but was glad to see the men afraid. She liked when the men looked stupid or foolish or afraid and this nun’s making them this way pleased her. The little nun never looked up from the ground and spoke into her chest in a tiny, afraid voice. This amused Marta too.

  “Where is the one named Jesus?” the little nun spoke into her chest.

  “The fat one or the thin one or the tall one or the short one, or the very ugly one who stinks?”

  The little nun was not certain which to choose. “The maestro said he was to guard the remuda.”

  Marta breathed her smoke and her answer at the little nun. “That’s the thin one.” She pointed with her cigarette butt, “He is over there, in the blue vest.”

  “Gracias.”

  Marta went back to working on her tatting as the nun approached the thin Jesus. The little group of men saw her and put up a hand for her to stop. “What do you want, bitch?”

  “The maestro said that I was to tell Jesus to guard the remuda tonight.” The men laughed at Jesus, who looked on forlornly. It would have been better for him to know this sooner, as he’d have gotten a little sleep and not had so much to drink. He looked at the nun and grunted, pulled himself up from his bed at the campfire, gathered up his saddle and blanket, and prepared for a long night.

  In another hour, all was quiet. The little nun surveyed the camp. She walked freely among the sleeping bandits and captives. She moved out to the perimeter and looked on at Jesus and the remuda, then to the northern border, then to the south to see the men guarding these places. She went back to the tent and moved Rebecca into the clown man’s little room. She placed her on his cot and covered her. She kissed her a few times before she pulled herself away. Rebecca did not wake.

  She went back to the room where the clown man lay to arrange his corpse. She removed the blanket she’d used to cover him and folded the collar and lapels of his robe up high on his neck to hide the marks left by her makeshift garrote. She did not worry about the wound on his head and face, as it would appear that he’d had a fit of some k
ind and fell over. It would appear that he had died of natural causes, the excitement over his own depravity too much for him to withstand.

  Just before two in the morning, she had everything prepared and moved on to her first chore.

  Jesus sat and dozed on his horse in front of the remuda. To hell with the maestro. If he was not to give enough notice so that the bandit would be well rested enough not to sleep on guard then the old bastard bandit boss would just have to accept the fact that he’d have a sleeping guard.

  He thought he’d heard something behind him and half asleep, turned to see the figure of a woman out of the shadows. He blinked to clear his vision and his head and looked again. He never saw this one before. He blinked again. He could not believe his luck. She was wearing a blanket, wrapped around her body, over the shoulders, and when she reached out to entice him, it fell to the ground, revealing a beautiful, ample form unencumbered, natural, seductive, irresistible, naked as the day she was born. She had beautiful raven tresses and was so clean. Her body and hair were clean and undamaged. She looked as though she’d just stepped out of an opulent California hotel.

  He’d seen and abused all the attractive captives, so he was certain he’d not had this one before. He sat, dumfounded for several moments and she held out a hand, beckoning him off his horse. As he hobbled his mount, she turned and began walking off, into the desert, up on a hill that overlooked the encampment. He had to jog to catch her, she was so far away now. Like a dog after a bitch in heat, he could think of nothing else.

  Marta sat and smoked close to the maestro as he slept, his mouth agape. She drew two long drags, filled her lungs to capacity and blew smoke directly into his mouth and up his nose. He awoke gagging and sputtering. He sat up with a start.

  “You might want to get up now.” She looked at him with disdain and loathing in her eyes, and without respect. “Your asshole is dead.”

  The maestro sat up straighter and looked around the room, as if he’d awakened in an alien place. “What are you on about, child?”

  She hated when he called her child. “The girl was too much for him last night. He’s dead,” she motioned with her head toward the little room on the other side of the canvas wall. “In there, on the floor. Looks like his heart went bad.”

  He just started to comprehend when a minion rushed in. “Maestro, up on the hill,” the man was sheet white. He had difficulty forming his words. “Up, up on the hill,” he pointed repeatedly.

  The old man and Marta made it up to the hilltop together. The maestro had to be carried on a litter, as his leg had swelled, blown like an eggplant that lain to long in the sun. It was beginning to turn from purple to black. He could not bear weight on it.

  “Jesus!” Marta exclaimed through a cloud of smoke.

  “I told you to never speak of Him!” the old man looked on at her and then at the horrible sight laid out before them.

  “Idiot! It is Jesus. Look. The one in the middle.”

  Marta was correct, Jesus sat, arms outstretched in mock crucifixion. He’d been dead several hours and looked like a porcelain recreation of Jesus. He looked skyward and he was uninjured except for the stigmata. Someone, or some thing, had pierced his hands and feet. There was a spear wound under his right breast. He wore a crown of mesquite thorns and dried blood pasted his curly black hair tightly to his head and more dried blood streams had run down over his forehead to his cheeks and into his eyes. He was naked except for a white cloth, covering his loins, just as they’d all seen in the churches all their lives, hundreds, thousands of times, of the statues and various paintings of the crucified Christ. These wounds were not fatal, yet, Jesus was as dead as a clay pot.

  On either side of Jesus lay two other guards, arranged so that their feet were all touching, creating the form of a cross, with Jesus at the top and his two companions forming each arm. They were stone dead too, except that they were covered by blankets, up to their necks. The Maestro began to call out in considerable anxiety, “get the whore nuns, now!”

  They were summoned and soon standing beside him. Both nuns dropped to their knees and crossed themselves, in unison spoke, "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti" praying desperately in a tongue that he did not understand.

  “Stop that!” The old man screamed. “Get up!” He pointed his finger at them. “You did this!”

  Marta interrupted. “They did no such thing. I was with them all night. They didn’t do anything, you fool.”

  He looked at her stupidly. “What does it mean?” He became distracted by some movement under the blankets. The two corpses were moving. The maestro began shaking, his eyes darting around, he was fully terrified now. “What does this mean?”

  Marta approached the corpses and pulled back the blankets. The men’s abdomens had been slit down the middle from sternum to pelvis, hollowed out, emptied of their contents. As she removed the covers, scorpions began to creep out of the abdomen of one, and juvenile rattlers the other, as if the two bandit were birthing the lowly creatures.

  The old nun crossed herself again, speaking automatically, as if she were reading, “Look! I have given you the authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to destroy all the enemy's power, and nothing will ever hurt you.” She began to pray.

  Marta looked on at the two dead men, sidestepped so as to give way to the scorpions and snakes, so that they could escape unencumbered. She pulled something from the mouth of the corpse closest to her. It was in a language she did not understand and she handed it to the old man. He looked at it and handed it to the nun. She read it aloud.

  “The worst is yet to come.” An audible groan rose up amongst the group of bandits, who had by now come out in full force. The old nun looked at her companion and crossed herself again. “It has begun.”

  “What, what has begun, you whore of Jesus, you stupid bitch, what has begun?” The old man was completely beside himself, overcome with panic.

  The old woman looked at him, solemnly, waved her hands in the air. “The day of days, the end of time, the apocalypse.” She looked at the other nun who was praying and staring at the ground.

  Little by little, the bandits began to leave. They were finished. The old maestro called on them to stop, to come back. He pulled his six shooter and tried to aim it at one of the nearest bandits. Two others came up behind him and grabbed the gun from his hand. Like a spoilt child, he was frustrated and furious at losing all his power. There was nothing he could do. The ones who’d carried him up the hill now grabbed him under his arms and unceremoniously dragged him back down, his mortified leg bounced over rocks and debris, leaving a little furrow in the patches of soft ground. He cursed them and cried out in agony and fury but no one paid him any attention. They plopped him down on his cot in the marquee tent and quickly walked out. He was all alone now and soon, there’d be no one to help him.

  By evening he’d listened hard, listened for any sign of activity, but he could hear nothing. He was alone with no one to wait on him, no food, no fire, no candles burning to light his little tent room. The bandits cleared out and now the nuns could attend to the captives. They were a pathetic bunch, the ones who’d survived. The gang had started out with thirty captives, including Rebecca, and now there were fewer than ten, a few more children than women. Marta was animated and began to take over, she was a natural little leader and had a good heart, despite being deprived of a proper upbringing.

  Once they were fed and given enough to drink and could fully understand that they were free and safe, the captives came to life. They hugged and cried and asked the nuns to perform a prayer service to celebrate their freedom. Everyone was happy and Rebecca stood by the young nun. She was not certain of her Mamma’s plan, but did not dare give her away. She asked Marta what happened on the hill and before the little bandit could open her mouth, she was firmly shushed by the diminutive nun.

  Marta looked her in the eye and decided that the little nun had changed and that she was not so timid anymore and that she sho
uld not be questioned or crossed.

  After the service, the little nun sauntered away from the celebration and slipped between the canvas flaps in the tent. The old man was sleeping. She lit a candle and put it near the maestro’s face. She sat close, stared at him until he awoke with a start. He sat up quickly. “What’s this?” He coughed and gagged and spit on the ground at the nun’s feet, looking on at her, hate in his eyes. “Ah, the younger one of Jesus’ whores. What are you doing, bitch? Fetch me some water and something to eat.”

  “Go to hell.”

  The old man looked up incredulous. “Such words from a nun?”

  She began the transformation before his eyes. She pulled back the veil, then the garment covering her head. She grabbed at the damaged skin around her eyes and peeled it away. He gasped and could not understand. She wrung out a wet rag and rubbed her face, then stood up and removed the rest of the habit, revealing the gunbelt with six shooter and a big vaquero knife. She shook her head until her beautiful raven tresses were released and fell around her little shoulders.

  “Do you know me, mierda?”

  “No.”

  “I am the one sent by God to kill you, mierda. I am not a nun.”

  “Mamma?” They both turned to see the little girl looking through the tent flap at them.

  “Go on out, Cielito. Go help with the people, I will be out soon.”

  “Come out now, Mamma. Leave him alone, he is a mean old man and he just needs to pray and tell God he’s sorry and maybe when he dies he’ll get to heaven.” She saw her mother stiffen, knew her mother’s body language, knew her resolution and tenacity. “Mamma, please, come away.”

  Chica exhaled through pursed lips, she looked on at the dying man. “Perhaps it is best.” She leaned a little closer to the old man, whispered into his ear so that Rebecca could not hear. “You know that smell, mierda? Your leg, it is mortified.” She smiled. “I did that to you, mierda. I shot you in the ass, when the Indian was trying to give you so many riches. Now, you have nothing but a rotten leg, and a hot tent in the middle of nowhere. You have nothing, mierda, and it is all because of me. You tried to take all that is dear to me, mierda, you tried to take my little girl, but I have taken everything from you. And now, we will leave you to rot, to die slowly, but before we do, I will go out and recapture those scorpions and snakes so that you will not be alone in your bed. You understand mierda?” The old man looked dazed, as if he were in some otherworldly place. “Wake up, mierda, wake up.” She squeezed his fat sweaty cheeks and he came to his senses. He began to breathe with difficulty.