A mounted soldier lassoed her and pulled her off her horse. She hit the ground hard, crying out in pain. The mounted soldier dragged her into the nearby building, while two of his comrades followed.
A blind man could see what they planned to do. Spurring Tempest hard, I pulled the deer off and galloped straight at their building. In the damp drizzle neither my musket nor pistol were reliable, but then neither were theirs. Taking the reins in my teeth, I nocked an arrow. One of the men, who had pulled Marina inside, came to the doorway when he heard the hooves of the stallion. I released the tri-bladed broad head. It struck his chest with a thrumming thwack!, knocking him off his feet and back into the building.
I steered Tempest into the doorway, a new arrow nocked, ducking down as I came through, horse hooves trampling the impaled, supine corpse. A man behind Marina had twisted the rope around her neck into a tourniquet, while a companion was restraining her flailing legs. Both men had their pants pulled down. The men let her go as I came through the door. My triple broadhead took him in his left eye. Slipping the strung bow on my saddle pommel, I charged his companion whom Marina was grappling with. He broke loose from her, and I caught him between the neck and shoulder with the machete blade, sinking it deep.
I wheeled Tempest and grabbed Marina, dragging her up, as she kicked the floor twice, then swung up behind me. Galloping through the doorway, we charged across the yard. I dropped her by her horse. “Ride!” I yelled.
The commotion had attracted other soldiers and constables. Four of them charged me. To draw them away from Marina I rode straight into them, machete swinging like Death’s scythe, sending them scattering. As I thundered off in the direction opposite, the one Marina had taken, a horseman tried to cut me off with his sword swinging. I slipped by the sweep of his sword and struck him across the back with the machete as I passed.
Tempest ploughed into another mount. My stallion stumbled but quickly got his footing as the other horse and rider went down. Their flintlock weapons misfired in the drizzle as I galloped through their ranks and another arrow from my bow went true. A musket ball grazed my left arm, but the flesh wound did not crimp my strong sword arm.
I rode out of town with several of the soldiers on my tail. The rain was intensifying, their muskets useless but my bow still lethal. After a hundred meters, I wheeled Tempest around, reins in my teeth, bow in my fist, and thrummed an arrow that hit a soldier’s chest.
With Tempest I could outrun them all, their small wiry mounts no match for a purebred stallion. The harder they chased me, the more quickly I turned and fired. Another soldier fell from the saddle. Halting their mounts, the disheartened survivors turned back.
I kept riding until I was sure there was no pursuit. Finally, with Tempest breathing heavily and my left sleeve soaked with blood, I worked my way into thick brush to make camp.
The arm wound was not serious. I cleaned and bandaged it. Fearful of lighting a fire, I ate the last of my tortillas and salt beef cold.
Lying down, exhausted, I still worried for Marina. But she was well mounted and knew the territory. I doubted harm would come to her. She had committed no crimes, and Spain viewed all women as incompetent except for housework and sex. She would be all right; it was the bandido Zavala they would come after and flay whole if they found him. By tomorrow, the constables might pick up my trail.
¡Ay! . . . what kind of man was I? I had handled the bow and arrow not as a Spaniard, but as an Aztec warrior. Many a night I had fallen into a deep sleep during which I had fought and killed Spaniards. This day my nightmare had come true. What was I becoming?
I put on my monk’s robe to keep warm and fell asleep, wondering which direction I should take in the morning. None seemed promising.
TWENTY-NINE
TEMPEST’S WHINNY BROKE my sleep. Another whinny echoed his, then another. Leaping to my feet, I had taken but a few steps to where Tempest was tied when a group of horsemen crashed into the clearing. Surrounded by six stamping horses, I stared up at a mounted Spaniard who looked as astonished to see me as I was to see him.
“Thank God we’ve found you!”
Besides the Spaniard, a man who appeared little older than me, five vaqueros had gathered around me. My first instinct was that word of my crimes had traveled fast.
“You are desperately needed, padre.”
Padre? Eh, I was wearing the monk’s robe.
“Uh, señor . . .” I didn’t know what to say.
“My apologies. I realize you’re a lay brother, not a priest, Brother Juan. But you are much needed at my casa.”
“At your casa?” I repeated.
What the hell was I into now? I hoped his señora was not having medical problems. My knowledge of female anatomy was restricted to bountiful breasts and other voracious private areas.
As we rode, he told me his name was Ruperto Juárez. He was the son of a large hacienda owner. His father, Bernardo, was ill, thought to be dying; an injury to his leg had become infected. Two days ago Ruperto had come to Dolores to find “Brother Juan,” the famous “miracle worker,” and someone in Dolores told him I’d gone hunting in the wilderness. Ruperto and his men had been searching for me. They apparently didn’t know about the raid on the padre’s crafts yesterday. They were on their way back to the hacienda and had stumbled upon me by accident.
No, not by accident, but now another time that Señora Fortuna dangled a rack, red-hot pincers, and a blazing stake before my eyes. I had unwittingly camped near the trail that led to their hacienda, and they had camped not far away. Tempest’s neighing—no doubt provoked by the scent of their mares—had drawn them to me. At least the Bitch of Fortune had not told them I was a wanted man.
Yet.
“You have an amazing horse for a monk, señor,” Ruperto said, as we rode side by side. “I have never seen such a fine stallion.”
“A gift from a grateful marqués whose precious life I saved.”
“You shall not find us ungenerous when you save my father’s life. It is most urgent that he not die, he has matters that must be straightened out. The hacienda naturally should go to me, the eldest son. But after my mother died, my father wed a succubus from hell, a woman only a few years older than me. My stepmother hates me. She tells my father lies about me. She claimed I tried to have intercourse with her.” He made the sign of the cross. “¡Dios mío! The woman is a she-demon. Hearing the lie, he changed his will to leave the hacienda to my stepbrother, an infant.”
He gave me a hard look. “He has to live so he can hear the truth and change his will, making me his heir again. If he does not revive long enough to make things right . . .”
He let the sentence hang . . . like a rope around my neck. It was obvious that I was being rushed to save his father’s life not for love but for money. And if I failed . . . This Ruperto was going to send me to hell along with his father.
“I hope we are in time,” Ruperto said. “I left my wife to watch over my father and make sure my stepmother doesn’t hasten his death. If he passes before I return, I will know they killed him. Then there will be trouble. Half of the vaqueros support me, half my stepmother.”
They kidnapped me to fight in a family war.
The reception committee at the house included the father’s wife, Ruperto’s wife, and vaqueros, all of whom stared at me impolitely. Their faces were a mixture of frowns, disapproval, hope, and expectation. Whatever I did, I was doomed to displease someone.
“How is the poor man?” I asked the wife, hoping he was dead. I tried to look serene and holy.
She gave me a hostile stare. Still I could see why the hacendado was taken by her. She had something I knew too much about: the cold, calculating yet seductive eye of a puta. Her eyes said she could be mine . . . for a price. She would be hard to turn down indeed.
“My husband is sleeping. He will pass very soon . . . unless God grants us a miracle.”
It would be a miracle if I escaped the crossfire when it started.
I mumbled something unintelligible in Latin, stared solemnly heavenward, and made the sign of the cross in the air.
“Padre Juan will save him,” Ruperto said.
I didn’t remind him that I wasn’t a priest—it would be a bigger sin to kill a priest than a lay brother, no?
“No one but the padre will be permitted into my husband’s room,” the lovely wife said. “Come with me.”
I followed her, smelling her exotic perfume. She wore a silk house dress that showed more of her figure than was considered modest. Watching the sensuous swing of her buttocks, I found myself getting aroused by the seductive witch. Ay! What kind of man has a pene that swells when his neck is in the noose? I crossed myself as I followed her, knowing I had been raised badly, thinking with my garrancha when the noose is tightening.
For most of my life, I had not found a need to ask the Almighty for help. My parish priest warned me that someday I would need divine intervention. Eh, this was one of those days.
We entered the large bedroom, and she locked the door behind us. She paused and stared at me for a moment, her eyes inviting. I glanced around her, over to the bed. The hacendado was flat on his back, his mouth hanging open, breathing hoarsely, saliva drooling and slavering on his chin. His eyes fluttered open as we approached the bed.
“The priest is here, my love,” she told her husband.
He lay silent, the embodiment of death. The only reason I knew he was still alive was the rise and fall of the bedcovers as he breathed.
She pulled the blanket back and I was assaulted by the stench of rot. His leg was swollen and discolored. The wound where the infection started exuded a brownish, foul-smelling pus. Other areas around the wound also erupted with purulence.
I’d seen the symptoms before: The leg of one of my vaqueros had been crushed when he fell under a wagon wheel. When I arrived at the hacienda and saw the wound several days later, it looked and smelled like the rot before me, and he was dead hours later. I was later told that once the poison started to spread, the only solution was to cut off the limb above the poison line.
“You must cut off his leg,” his wife said.
I almost jumped out of my monk’s robe.
“No!”
“No?” She raised her eyebrows. “Then what is your advice, padre?”
“My advice? My, uh, advice, is to leave the matter in the hands of God. If our Lord has called for your husband, we can do nothing.”
“But we must do something to try and save him.” Her voice was unconvincing. She didn’t want him saved, but I understood her reasoning: If she didn’t genuinely try, Ruperto would accuse her of pushing his father into the grave. She knew as well as I did that he was too far gone to survive amputation of his leg. And when he died under my hand, she would have her status as the grieving widow who had done all she could. And Ruperto would roast my cojones over a fire.
And if a miracle occurred and I saved him . . . ¡Ay de mí! I’d face the wrath of this demon-woman.
I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t.
“What do you have in mind?” I asked.
“Everything humanly possible must be done. Naturally, I love my husband and want him to live.”
She sounded as convincing as the last puta who told me my garrancha was the god of thunder, lightning, and storms—the Spanish Poseidon.
“I also have a problem with my stepson, Ruperto. My husband’s will names my own son as heir. Ruperto will contest the will. Disinheriting the eldest son goes against custom, does it not? If he alleges that I let my husband die without struggling to save him, he may be able to break the will.” She nodded at the infected leg. “My understanding is that the leg should be cut off above the wound.” She smiled. “So cut it off.”
I cleared my throat. “I don’t have my medical tools with me. I shall go to Dolores and—”
“There’s no time. We have a sharp saw.”
A sharp saw. ¡María Madre de Dios!
“You expect me to . . . to . . .”
The charnel stench was overwhelming. I wanted to gag.
Something tugged at the bottom of my robe and I almost jumped out of the robe again. It was an ugly little mutt.
“This is Piso, my husband’s dog. He loves the animal.”
Someone knocked on the bedroom door, pounded actually.
“That’s Ruperto,” she said.
She went to the door with tight lips. I went with her. She opened the door, and Ruperto stepped by her to get a look across the room at his father.
“He’s still breathing,” Ruperto said.
“The padre will cut off his leg. It’s the only way to save him,” the soon-to-be widow said.
“Yes, I understand that,” Ruperto said. “But what are his chances of surviving if his leg is cut off? Don’t most people die when it’s done?”
“It’s in the hands of the Lord,” I croaked.
“When you do the deed,” Ruperto said, darkly, touching the sword strapped to his belt, “make sure you are able to call on God for one of those miracles you are famous for.”
“He needs a sharp saw,” the almost-widow said.
“He needs a barber. I’m not a surgeon.”
“You are the only medical man we have,” Ruperto said. “We have a saw for you.”
A vaquero gave him a saw, and he handed it to me. I almost dropped it.
The wife asked, “Are you all right, padre? You’re sweating and shaking.”
“A fever I picked up,” I croaked. I stared at the saw. A metal blade with jagged teeth and wood handle. There was dried blood on it, no doubt from the last cow they butchered. I’d never used a saw in my life. Now I was supposed to . . . Oh, ¡mierda!
I needed a priest. I needed to confess my sins, to get absolution. I needed a drink, many drinks.
Four men brought in a long table and laid my patient on it, covers and all, allowing his legs to hang over the edge. They placed a washtub underneath the diseased limb.
“You must all leave the room,” I croaked.
After they left, I closed and locked the door. I stood trembling with my back to the door to gather my courage. With saw in shaking hand, I approached the table. As I stood over the man his eyes opened again, and he mumbled something unintelligible before his eyes fluttered shut.
The door exploded with banging. I raced back and opened it, hoping God had answered my pray for salvation.
“Don’t you want the brazier, padre?” Ruperto asked. Two men stood behind him holding an iron tub blazing with white-hot coals. A steel rod stuck out of it.
“To stop the bleeding,” he said.
“Of course,” I said gruffly. “What took you so long?”
Other men brought in a blacksmith’s stone table and the men holding the brazier placed the pan of burning coals on it. After the men left, I locked the door again.
Was I really expected to saw off the man’s leg and stop the massive bleeding with a hot iron?
I approached the table with the saw as if I were sneaking up on a snake with a club. I pulled down the covers and opened the bandages to expose the leg. The stench of rotting flesh was now incomprehensibly sickening. I gagged, and my knees went weak. Gathering my strength and courage, I held the wood handle of the saw with two shaky hands and lay the sawtoothed edge of the ragged steel blade on the flesh of his left leg, just above the knee. I closed my eyes and began to mutter what I could remember of a prayer I had had to recite in seminary a decade ago. I pulled back and forth, feeling the blade bite into the leg.
Liquid splattered my face. Blood. I wiped my face. ¡Ay! What did I do to deserve this? I swayed, faint again. Determined to see it through, I got a grip on the saw and began sawing again. Soon I hit bone. I kept my eyes shut and kept sawing, working my way through the bone sawing, sawing, sawing. Sweat poured off my face. My knees trembled. I kept my eyes tightly shut as I pushed the saw forward and pulled it back, back and forth, back and forth . . . with each swipe the teeth of the saw rippe
d through flesh and bone.
When I felt the saw bite the wood table and the leg clunked into the washtub, I opened my eyes and stared down at my handiwork—a stump and a severed leg lying in a washtub filled with blood. The stump itself was ragged and red, with bone and arteries exposed, blood pumping into the blood-filled washtub below.
I grabbed the hot poker and poked it at the bloody stuff to stop the bleeding by broiling the end of the stump. His body had unconsciously convulsed throughout the operation. He did not cease his violent shaking until I touched the stump with the poker one last time, at which point I heard a sigh and then a throaty rattle. The hacendado’s features relaxed and a breath expelled from his lungs. His last breath.
¡Santo mierda! He was dead.
He had no sooner given up the ghost then banging started at the door.
“I’m not ready yet!” I shouted.
My knees shook so badly I leaned against the bed frame for support. What was I to do? I checked the window. Tempest was below, still saddled, but I had two problems. I’d break a leg in the jump, and standing watch were two vaqueros who would cut my throat while I lay screaming. The only way out of the casa was through the bedroom door, except the grieving widow and loving son were there, at each other’s throats and ready to cut mine.
As I faced these decisions of life and death, the nasty little dog lifted his foot and pissed on my pants leg.
I stared down at the little bastardo the hot poker in my hand, ready to stick it in his crotch and broil his minuscule balls. Then a revelation struck me. ¡Madre de dios! The dog was my savior!
Tearing off a strip of the bedsheet, I tied his jaws shut so he couldn’t bark. With more strips, I tied the struggling animal tightly to the chest of the dead man. When I was finished, I pulled the blankets up on the hacendado’s chest until the dog was covered. Then I stepped back and looked at my handiwork. The chest area of the man rose and lowered, rose and lowered, just like a man breathing—I hoped.