Lone Star 33

Chapter 1

The whistle rang out again. Across the night-darkened desert a coyote turned its head briefly and then returned to baying at the pale rising moon. White smoke spewed from the locomotive’s diamond-shaped stack and ran back along the spine of the train, dissipating in curlicues and puffballs behind the red caboose.

Inside the private car just ahead of the caboose, a sleek honey-blonde woman dressed for dinner. Her name was Jessica Starbuck, and if she paused a little longer than necessary before the mirror as she slipped into her camisole, she could easily be forgiven.

A lot of men had lingered a lot longer, looking at the full high breasts, the long tapered legs and generous hips. A lot of them had felt their pulses quicken at a glance from those green eyes, at a smile.

She was totally feminine, Jessie Starbuck. All woman. She finished dressing now, putting on another petticoat and then her green velvet dress, which was a little warm for the desert country even at this time of evening, but she hadn’t had a chance to wear it for a while.

After buttoning her shoes, she finished dressing by tucking a little ivory-handled, engraved derringer into the garter holster just above her knee.

She patted her hair once more and then turned away from the mirror as someone tapped at her compartment door.

Yes?

Are you ready to eat now? Ki opened the door and peered in. He wore a blue-gray tweed suit and a blue shirt with a black string tie. His straight dark hair had been brushed to a gloss. His dark Oriental eyes were alert and a little admiring as he smiled at Jessie.

All ready, she answered, turning in a slow circle to show off her dress.

The railroad car belonged to the Starbuck business empire. It was equipped with four sleeping compartments, a bar, crystal chandeliers, a conference room, and a dining compartment, but it hadn’t been used for a while and there was presently no kitchen staff, so Jessie and Ki had to use the railroad dining car.

They turned the lamp down and went out, walking over the deep red carpet to the door.

Sound and smoke rushed over them as they opened the compartment door and started forward. The train rocked along. Jessie could smell sage and greasewood. The door closed behind them and there was no sound, no scent but that of polished wood as they walked along the lush carpeting of the Pullman. The next car up was the diner. A dozen people sat at small round tables tended by two black waiters in white jackets.

Miss Starbuck, Miss Starbuck, the older waiter said, smiling, lowering his silver-haired head slightly. Such a pleasure to have you with us. Haven’t seen you since your father brought you on the old Dallas Special when you were maybe seven, eight years old.

They were shown to a comer table. Eyes followed Jessie and Ki as they crossed the car, but then eyes always followed Jessica Starbuck.

Who is that? Ki asked quietly. He nodded toward a tall, dark man with a strong nose, broad forehead, and narrow lips. He was in his late twenties, arrogant-looking.

I don’t know, Jessie shrugged.

I have seen him before. Somewhere. But Ki couldn’t bring the memory to the front of his mind.

That didn’t mean he forgot about the man. Too much could be lost by ignoring coincidences, little prodding messages sent by the subconscious mind. Jessie and Ki had lived too long in the path of violence to grow too comfortable.

The war had gone on for a long while. It had started before Jessie’s birth, when her father was not much older than Jessie was now. While the ambitious young Alex Starbuck was sowing the seeds of the international network of businesses that bore his name, he had antagonized the leadership of a powerful European alliance of incredibly wealthy but completely unscrupulous men whose aim was nothing less than the commercial and political domination of the entire world. The war that ensued was as bloody a conflict as many another war, though its battles went largely un chronicled in the popular press and the history books, and were often fought with gold and silver rather than bullets.

But sometimes they were fought that way, too, and the deaths were as real and tragic as those that befell the victims of other wars. Ultimately, Jessie lost first her mother and then her father at the hands of the cartel’s assassins.

Alex Starbuck was gone, but the cartel went on, and so did Jessie, uncovering its corruption and thwarting its attempts to bleed America of its precious resources. She was her father’s daughter and she was a fighter. Ki, half-Japanese, half-American, a martial-arts master, was equally a fighter, and his life was dedicated to Jessica Starbuck.

Here he comes, Jessie said.

Ki glanced across the car. The tall dark man was striding toward them. Ki noticed that he maintained his balance easily, that his movements were light and swift. A rolling ship’s deck or a railroad car could make a man look awkward. Not this one. Perhaps he had been a sailor.

Or perhaps he was a warrior.

Miss Starbuck? The tall man stood over them.

Yes.

I overheard the waiter addressing you. Forgive the interruption. My name is Andojar.

Only Andojar?

He smiled easily. Yes, only Andojar.

Jessie’s eyes measured the man, taking in the width of his shoulders, the animallike grace of movement, the strong column of copper flesh which was his throat, the competent, bronzed, but not work-hardened hands.

Please sit down. This is my friend Ki.

Only Ki? Andojar asked with another quick smile.

.Only Ki, Ki answered.

The two men looked at each other in frank appraisal. Ki wondered briefly what had prompted Andojar to abandon his own real name, for surely that was not the name he was born with.

I will be open with you, Andojar said. I know where you are going and why. Father Carrillo is a very old friend of mine.

Yes? Jessie prompted. He could be open with them all he wanted. He hadn’t explained yet, however, why he was there on the train, riding into Arizona.

He shrugged. I was sent to Phoenix to try to find help, federal soldiers, an Indian agent, perhaps a United States marshal.

You had no luck?

We are far away. The people are of little interest to anyone.

Ki looked at Jessie and shrugged. The man knew what their business was. Ki didn’t trust him or believe his story entirely, but there was no point in not discussing the problem with Andojar. They knew little themselves, only that the Napai Indians who lived at a small Arizona mission were being brutalized by a gang of outlaws. There was no clear motive, no certainty who the outlaws represented.

Father Carrillo is not young, Andojar said. He leaned back and lit a thin cigar. He has tried very hard to continue the tradition of the mission fathers at Vera Cruz. It is a small place, very far from civilization, from everything. The Napai are new to the modern world, they are new to Father Carrillo’s religion and to almost anything of the white man.

Their home is on the Colorado River.

Yes, that’s right. Once, I believe, they lived farther south, deep in Mexico, but the conquistadores chased them from their homeland. Andojar shrugged again. That was the way of the world. There were always vigorous, hungry people ready to push aside an older or more placid nation. Andojar knew history; he knew it had always been so.

You aren’t Napai yourself, Jessie said, and Andojar answered with a one-handed gesture that could have meant anything.

Father Carrillo is afraid that if he can’t protect the Indians, they will run into the hills again and live as they have for centuries—in deep poverty, with the children and the old dying too easily, in hunger.

And without his God? Ki suggested.

Yes. It would be strange if a priest did not consider-that.

Do you have any idea who these men are that are molesting the Napai? Jessie asked.

Andojar blew a plume of smoke toward the ceiling. Before answering, he let his eyes search Jessie’s.

I do not know, he said at length. "I know what they are—a rabble. Bandidos from Chihuahua, Comancheros pushed out of Texas by the Rangers, bad Apaches. Scum, but very vicious men, men unafraid to die, expecting to die."

When men like that fight, it is usually for profit, Ki said.

Andojar hesitated. That is so, yes.

So that if the Indians are poor, it can be for nothing they have that the outlaws fight.

You are, Andojar said with a wide smile, a logical man.

Ki didn’t like that remark, but he was above taking of fense at every trivial slight. It follows, then, he said in more measured tones, that someone is paying the outlaws to harass the Indians.

Maybe, Jessie said. But there are men like these everywhere, who only torment the helpless because it gives them perverted pleasure.

Yes. It is possible. Anything is.

Neither of them believed it.

Father Carrillo’s letter had been filled with accounts of atrocities, with desperate pleading. Carrillo hadn’t always been a priest. Once, years ago, he had been a sailing man, a man of Cádiz who had roamed the world from Africa to the Orient. He had worked for a man named Starbuck, an ambitious and upright American who believed he had the right to make money, and that people who worked for him had the right to dignity and respect.

Carrillo had been a sea captain, but one night, rounding the Horn, he had seen his Maker and returned to Cádiz to study for the priesthood.

He knew America, he spoke English, and so he had been sent back here, to Arizona, and had gone out among the Indians, teaching them the simple things they didn’t know about sanitation and agriculture. A primitive people, the Napai had slowly emerged from the hills along the Colorado River, where they had run in terror from the shining conquistadores.

They had trusted Carrillo and come to his mission to speak to his God. And then the bad ones had come. Children had been ridden down, trampled. Corn crops had been burned. Houses had been torn down around the heads of the Napai. And Father Carrillo could do nothing about it.

He remembered a man named Alex Starbuck, who had had many resources, and he remembered that Starbuck had a daughter, and so he had written his letter, begging for assistance.

And so Jessie had come. It was that simple; they needed help, and maybe Jessie and Ki could give it.

How do you come to know Carrillo? Ki asked.

Long ago our mothers knew one another.

In Spain?

Andojar made a gesture as if it were of no importance. The man was much too evasive to suit Ki—although apparently Jessie found he suited her well. From time to time their eyes met and the messages passing between them had nothing to do with Spain or the Napai.

What is it you do now? Ki asked.

Little. As little as possible.

You have money, then.

A little.

Ki fell silent. It is a waste of time to speak to a liar, he thought. What can you learn?

The door to the railroad car opened with a bang. A rush of soot-scented wind rolled through the dining room. The clatter of wheels, iron against iron, was loud and disturbing.

There were two of them, big men wearing heavy jackets, although the Arizona night was warm. They wore torn, dirty hats. The bigger of them had flaming red hair and a mustache that sprayed out wildly beneath a crooked nose. The other was dark and cautious, but Ki would have bet he was the more dangerous of the two by far.

The waiter rushed toward them, trying to close the door, but the big redhead slapped him aside. His eyes, bleary and pale, were fixed on Jessie’s table.

On Jessie herself, or on Ki. Or on Andojar.

If you will pardon me, Andojar said abruptly, and he rose. Ki thought he had measured his man wrongly. Andojar quickly strode away, exiting through the far door as the red-haired man’s pale eyes followed. It was, Ki thought, very nearly a cowardly exit.

The two men still stood there. Jessie’s green eyes narrowed as she watched them. All right, she said, that’s enough.

You are ready to go back to your compartment? Ki asked.

Yes. If you are.

I am without appetite, Ki answered. But perhaps ... He looked at the two men, at the waiter crumpled against the wall.

Jessie was truly and unexpectedly angry. Because of the waiter or Andojar, Ki didn’t know. You know what? she said. I’m damned tired of letting people like this do what they want while we look the other way, pretend we are blind and deaf. These men are the sort we’re going to Vera Cruz to eliminate.

And very possibly the same men, Ki pointed out. They have the stamp of brutality on them.

Good. Jessie rose before Ki could get to his feet and hold her chair for her. I hope they try to bother me.

They didn’t. The two men had moved into the dining car, the door slapping shut behind them. The waiter had gotten slowly to his knees, holding his hand to the trickle of blood on his temple.

When Jessie swept toward them with fire in her eyes, the men stepped aside. When Ki followed her they closed ranks, figuring perhaps that they had found a proper target.

The big redhead stepped in front of Ki so that he couldn’t pass. Where are you going, China boy?

Back to my compartment, Ki replied with restraint.

With that blonde?

No, Ki answered.

Because I’d hate to see a white woman with a China boy.

I am not Chinese.

The redheaded man turned