Lone Star 03 (22 page)

Ki's first quick glance at the bullring told him it was not more than sixty feet in diameter. Any full-grown bull that Ki had seen on the open range needed fifty feet to reach its full speed in charging.

Once he'd satisfied himself that the size of the ring would sharply limit the speed the bull could attain in a charge, Ki looked at the ring itself. The perimeter fence was made from timbers three inches thick; they were held in place by wide, thick iron straps, a greatly oversized version of the hoops that hold a barrel's staves together. The
barrera
was also made of massive timbers, and like the walls of the bullring, it bore the splintered scars of many places where it had been struck by the horns of the Mendoza bulls.

To test the footing, Ki took several steps into the ring. The sand covering was no more than three or four inches thick, raked smooth, and only lightly compacted. It gave with a springy feel under his bare feet, and did not seem treacherously soft enough to cause his feet to slip when he launched a jump or landed when completing one.

Looking up at the seats that rose in tiers above the sides of the ring, Ki saw Jessie. She was standing between Don Almendaro and Lita, and Lita was arguing with her father. Aware that the two minutes promised him were ticking away, Ki quickly scanned the remainder of the ring. He saw the two riflemen, and across the ring from the
barrera
was the wide gate in the fence through which he guessed the bull would soon emerge.

A metallic clicking reached Ki's sharp ears, warning him that the gate was about to be opened. He gave in to the temptation to display a bit of bravado to Mendoza. Turning his back on the gate, he made a sweeping bow to the
hacendado.

At the lowest point of his bow, Ki heard the grating of the gate's hinges and the snorting of the bull as it came charging out at full speed. The pounding of its hooves on the packed sand allowed Ki to judge his timing. Just as Lita screamed a warning, Ki sprang straight up. As the black shape of the bull passed below him, he caught the animal's hump of shoulder muscle with a sideways chop of his steel-hard feet, and used the impetus given him by the blow to carry him past the animal's tail and land upright on the sand.

As Ki landed near the center of the ring, he heard behind him the crash of the bull's horns hitting the sturdy wall of the arena. Ki whirled and saw the bull head-on for the first time when it finished swinging its massive body around after its collision with the thick boards that formed the ring's wall.

Only now did Ki realize that the description given him of the Mendoza
toros bravos
had been understated. The bull he faced was midnight-black; even its shining horns and deerlike hooves were ebony-hued. Its head was broad, with a massive swelling at the base of its outspread horns. Set in the huge head were eyes as black as the horns and hooves; except for a thin rim of white around them, they would have been invisible.

It was the bull's horns that Ki noted most carefully during the few seconds while the animal stood swinging its head from side to side. Ki guessed the bull was getting ready for another charge, and held himself in readiness while he examined its gleaming black horns.

They were as thick at the base as Ki's muscular forearm. Their spread was wider than his chest, and the horns tapered symmetrically in a forward arc to menacing points. The neck of the bull was short, and it bulged with taut muscles. Behind the neck was the muscular hump of which Don Almendaro had spoken. The mound of muscle rose like a hillock on top and tapered down the bull's shoulders to merge with the animal's surprisingly thin, almost spindly legs.

While Ki's quick eyes were noting the body formation of the bull and contrasting it with that of the range bulls with which he was familiar, the great black animal charged again. Unlike bulls Ki had observed on the range, it did not paw the ground or lower its head and snort threateningly before moving. One instant the bull was standing where it had stopped at the end of its turn away from the wall, and in the next second it had covered half the distance to where Ki stood waiting.

As quickly as the bull moved, Ki moved faster. He saw the bull beginning to turn its head to impale him on one of its horns, and rose straight into the air again. When the bull's head was passing below him, Ki's foot lashed out in a kick that caught the muscle of the animal's neck on the side opposite the one he'd hit before. In the fraction of a second that his foot rested on the bull's neck, Ki flexed his knees and leaped. The jump carried him over the bull's body and he landed erect on the sand, only inches behind the still-moving bull.

Ki waited with his back to the bull, confidently expecting to hear a crash that would tell him the bull had hit the fence on the opposite side of the ring. When he did not hear the clash of horns on wood, his instinct told him to leap aside instantly. It was Ki's first lesson in the speed with which a bull bred for the ring can turn and charge. His leap carried him out of danger, but barely so. The needle-sharp tip of the bull's horns tore through the loose fabric of his shirt, and Ki felt the cold horn when its curve behind the tip brushed against his skin as the bull thundered past.

Knowing now how quickly the bull could turn, Ki whirled at once to face its next charge. The bull was already turning to come back at him, its legs bunched like those of a deer about to spring while it swung its massive head to one side in order to provide extra momentum that would pull its body around faster and in a tighter turn. Ki could see no sign that the two blows he'd administered with his hard feet had affected the bull in any way.

As quickly as he'd formed his strategy of attacking the bull by weakening its shoulder muscles until it dropped its huge head and gave him a clear blow to its neck, Ki changed his tactics.

When the bull's charge brought him within range of its horns, and the animal moved its head to one side to bring the swordlike tips of the horns in line with Ki's body, Ki feinted a move that would have sent him beyond reach of the horn aimed at him. The bull began to shift its head to spear Ki with the opposite tip.

In the instant when the bull's horns were centered, its head and Ki's chest exactly in line, Ki dropped into a compact ball and rolled toward the bull.

In the split second that passed before Ki touched its glistering wet muzzle, the bull could not reverse the direction in which it had begun to move its head. It lowered the massive horns to butt at the swiftly rolling ball that Ki's body had become, but lowered them too late. The horns were past Ki. He was now in the small triangle between the bull's widespread front hooves and its lowered muzzle.

Safely behind the lethal horns now, Ki unrolled his body in the same fluid motion with which he'd folded it. When he stood erect, the bull's neck was even with Ki's chest, and as Ki rose, he raised his arms high, clasping his hands together and going on tiptoe to give him a valuable inch or two of added height.

His fingers locked together, the toughened heels of his palms a single entity, Ki focused every muscle in his body into his sinewy arms. He brought his locked hands down between the base of the bull's horns and the hump of shoulder muscle, on the single three-inch gap that left the bull's vertabrae vulnerable.

Ki's hands hit with crushing force. They struck the key point for which he'd aimed his blow with the impact of a sledgehammer. The bull had swung its head fully to one side now, and the spinal cord that ran through the channel in its vertabrae was stretched tight. Ki felt the bones of the spine crushing under his blow. Then, with a small wet-sounding pop, the bull's spinal cord snapped, cutting of the vital impulses from the animal's brain to its muscles.

Though the bull was dead the instant its spinal cord broke, the momentum of the charge it had begun carried its body forward for a few more seconds. Ki used those few seconds to jump backward, carrying his body away from the bull. He turned and looked just as the black beast's forelegs began to bend. The bull slowly leaned forward. Its hind legs were still pushing it, responding to the impulse transmitted from its brain a split second earlier. The pushing of its legs speeded the bull's collapse. Its back arched as the rear hooves tried to move its huge chest ahead. Under the driving of its hind legs, the animal's forelegs bent and buckled.

Its head sagging now, the bull lurched into an ungainly heap and toppled forward to the sand. Its eyes were still open and glaring, throwing out tiny spears of light from the high noon sun until their pupils were covered with the film of death.

Ki was facing the fighting bull when it crumpled and fell, and he did not look away from the carcass until he was sure the animal was dead. Then he turned toward the stands, where Don Almendaro and Jessie and Lita were watching. He saw that they'd risen to their feet. Lita was holding her father's arm, and the two were arguing. Ki extended his arms, his hands spread wide.

“Don Almendaro!” he called. “I have proved to you that I could do what you said was not possible! Now tell your riflemen that I am free, and I will leave your ranch!”

Don Almendaro glared down at Ki, and his arm moved upward. Jessie, standing beside him, grabbed the
hacendado's
wrist, but he shook her hands away. He started down the tiers of seats to the wall of the bullring. As he jumped from one row of seats to the next, he pulled a heavy revolver from beneath his coat.

“Brujo! Bastardo!”
he shouted.
“Hijo de puta!
You have blackened the fame of the Mendoza bulls.! What my brave bull could not do, I will do myself!” Bringing the pistol up, the enraged
hacendado
leveled it at Ki.

Ki had dropped his arms after his appeal to Mendoza. He had no time to free his
surushin.
Snapping his right forearm sharply downward, Ki clasped the
shuriken -that
slid from its spring-loaded sheath into his hand. He saw Mendoza's finger on the trigger of his revolver and knew that if he threw the
shuriken
to cut into the
hacendado‘
s arm, he could not stop that finger from tightening. Ki took the only alternative he had.

Before Don Almendaro could bring his pistol to bear on Ki, the star-shaped steel disc was singing through the air, its razor-sharp edges glittering in the bright noonday sunshine. The shining blade sliced into the
hacendado‘
s right eye, smashed through the fragile frontal bone of his temple, and cut deeply into his brain. The revolver sagged from the dying man's hand and fell to sand of the bullring while Don Almendaro was crumpling in death.

Ki glanced quickly around the seats. Neither Jessie nor Lita nor the riflemen had moved. The
shuriken
had sailed so swiftly to its target that it had been almost invisible, a gleam flashing through the sunlit air. In a mere instant it reached its target and performed its deadly mission in total silence. Only Jessie understood what had happened. Lita and the two riflemen were still staring at Don Almendaro. They saw him drop his gun as he bent and lurched forward before he fell, but until a stream of blood began pouring from his head, they did not realize that he was dead.

Lita understood before the riflemen did. She stifled the small shocked scream that rose in her throat, stared for a fleeting second at Ki, who still stood in the ring beside the dead bull, then started toward her father. Jessie grabbed Lita's arm and stopped her. She leaned forward and began speaking. Ki could see her lips moving, but the distance between them was too great for him to hear what she was saying.

Lita's eyes were still fixed on her father's prone form, and she struggled to break away until Jessie slapped her sharply. Lita had her arm raised, ready to strike back, before the reality of the moment came home to her. She stopped struggling then, and just in time. The riflemen stationed to kill Ki if he should try to run from the bull had been standing watching, waiting for their
patrón
to stand up.

When the seconds passed and Don Almendaro continued to lie motionless, it dawned on the two marksmen that through the same form of black magic that had brought death to the brave bull, their master had been killed by the man standing in the bullring. They started to level their rifles.

Jessie spoke quickly to Lita, and Lita raised her voice in a quick command to stop the men from shooting.

“Perez! Aleman!” she called.
“No les tiran! Obedecen! Mi padre es muerte! Soy ahorita la dueña de la casa de Mendoza!”

Slowly the men lowered their guns. They stared wide-eyed at Ki, who still stood calmly, his arms folded now, in the center of the bullring.

One of them called out,
“Señorita! El hombre en la plaza es brujo! Permiteme matele!”

Aleman said insistently,
“Pero el brujo, Señorita Adelita—”

Lita cut him short.
“No tengo miedo del extranjero.”
Then her inheritance from Don Almendaro showed in Lita's voice as she added curtly,
“Obedecen!”

Slowly, with every movement showing their reluctance to leave Lita unprotected from the man they were sure had killed Don Almendaro by some witch's trick, the two men went to obey her command, to tell the ranch's people that their
patrón
was dead.

Lita waited until they had gone before saying to Ki, “Come up to the fence, Ki, where we can talk without shouting.”

Ki did as she asked, and as he came closer, Jessie moved unobtrusively aside. Ki looked for hatred or disgust in Lita's face, and saw nothing except calmness. He said, “I'm sorry, Lita. I killed him only to save my life.”

“You don't need to apologize to me, Ki, or feel sorry about killing my father.” Lita's voice was as calm as her face. “While my mother was alive, he made her life unendurable, and he's done his best to make mine the same way since she died.”