Renegade 21

by Lou Cameron

  Nature had played tricks on the women of the household. Señora Trujillo had obviously been a beauty in her day. She still had a pretty face despite the double chin. But she’d gotten fat and dumpy presiding over all these before-dinner snacks over the years. Her two daughters still had trim figures. Very nice trim figures, as a matter of fact. But they took after their father when it came to handing out the faces, and while Don Javier was a nice old guy, he was way too homely to consider kissing. Captain Gringo knew he was drinking too much when he caught himself speculating on what it would be like if he could somehow graft the mother’s pretty face onto one of her daughter’s nice little bodies. He hung on to his glass to keep them out of it as he inhaled some tostada and bean dip to dilute his libido. To get his mind off the subject of impossible if not dangerous sexual adventure, he tried getting more about the mysterious dam project out of Palmer.

  The Englishman was even drunker than he looked, it seemed, as soon as he tried to carry on a sensible conversation. But, ignoring the slurs, blank owlish stares, and obvious lack of interest, Captain Gringo was able to establish that the coffer dam, a temporary fill of earth and timbers meant to hold the waters back long enough for the main dam to be built, was already in place and already backing up the Dorado farther downstream. Palmer said the coffer dam would back up a fifty-foot head of water before it crested. Captain Gringo whistled softly as he considered what a flood that added up to, even without the main, higher dam in place to finish off the valley.

  He told Palmer what the locals had told him about navigation on the Dorado and asked what sort of vessels the projected locks of the mysterious dam could handle. Palmer took a gulp of wine, shrugged, and said, “If it floats, it’ll fit through those perishing great locks. I told them how stupid the design was. I mean, dash it all, no river steamer I’ve ever seen was more than fifty feet across at the beam, eh what? Chumford’s blueprints call for locks a hundred feet across. I ask you, what in blue blazes would anyone do with a bloody ocean liner on a bloody little river like the Dorado?”

  “Hmm, if they flood the whole valley, it won’t be a bloody little river. It’ll be more like a big lake. The contours on my map make it a lake say ten or more miles across and sixty or seventy long.”

  “So what? Bloody lake won’t connect with anything you’d want to steam a bloody gunboat or ocean liner up to, what? I looked at the bloody map too. The high-water mark will offer them a totally deserted shoreline. The few ranches, villages, and so forth in the valley will all be under water, eh what?”

  Captain Gringo nodded and said, “You’re right. It’s stupid.” He caught Don Javier’s eye across the room and called out, “Are there any settlements at all on the slopes above this valley, Don Javier?”

  The ranchero shook his head and replied, “Not that I know of, and I should know, señor. My naughty cows wander all over the slopes during the wet season. When it is dry, thank God, they know enough to stay down here where the water is all year.”

  Captain Gringo had neglected to guard his glass during the three-way exchange. So one of the daughters ran over to refill it, giving him a good view down the front of her low-cut blouse. He smiled up at her pleasantly and she dimpled coyly. But, God, what a disgusting sight that was. Nice tits just didn’t go with old Don Javier’s face. It might have helped if she’d had her father’s bushy mustache as well as his long nose..

  He found her rear view more inspiring as she moved away to fill Gaston’s glass. Gaston and Ruth Palmer were chatting in French on the next leather-covered sofa. Her husband was on Captain Gringo’s far side and hopefully didn’t understand much French, even sober. Captain Gringo tried to catch Gaston’s eye as he picked up on their conversation. But the dapper little Frenchman didn’t want anyone to shoot warning looks at him. He knew what he was doing. The dumb dame had somehow gotten onto the subject of books. That was okay, but she was talking about the forbidden writings of Sir Richard Burton. The Perfumed Garden was a privately printed translation from the Arabic that you had to carry home in a plain brown wrapper after they sneaked it out from under the counter for you.

  Gaston’s angle was that the Englishman, Burton, had really translated The Perfumed Garden from the French, after a young and obviously depraved French officer in North Africa had almost been court-martialed for typing up the original translation in French—plain French—without the Latin terms Burton had used to avoid steaming the glasses of his Victorian readers. Captain Gringo shot a quick glance at Ruth Palmer’s husband when she said in French, “Oh, so that’s what they meant when they referred to the tongue of a woman’s privacy?”

  Palmer wasn’t paying attention. He looked, in fact, like he was about to fall on his face. He probably didn’t know as much high-school French as Captain Gringo, anyway. Even a drunk should have noticed when his wife asked another man if it was true that Arabs had longer dongs than Englishmen.

  Gaston said modestly, “I have never slept with an Englishman, madame. As for the manner in which a Frenchman probes the depths of Arabesque desire—”

  “Gaston, for God’s sake!” Captain Gringo growled in a no-nonsense tone. The English girl turned, stared innocently at him, and said, “We’ve been talking about the disgusting habits of the Wogs. Have you ever been in the Middle East, Dick?”

  “No. I notice you speak pretty good French, ma’am. Ah, does your husband, here?”

  “Heavens, poor Edward can barely understand English, after a few drinks. Why do you ask?”

  “No particular reason. I read the book. So pray continue.”

  She laughed and said, “Oh, dear, I seem to have an embarrassment of choices if both you naughty boys are interested in, ah, Arabesque!”

  He turned away and got to his feet. Gaston had seen her first, and, in truth, she disgusted him with her brazen flirting in front of her poor dim-witted husband. He meant to smoke alone on the veranda. But of course Señora Trujillo followed to ask him what was wrong.

  He smiled down at her in the doorway and said, “Nothing is wrong, señora. I just didn’t want to disturb you and the other ladies with my foul tobacco.”

  “I am called Carlota, Deek. I am most used to cigar smoke.”

  “Not this kind, ah, Carlota. My last claros have sprouted mold from the damp. But I’m not used to dining late and so I thought—”

  “Oh, forgive us, we forgot you Anglos eat at sunset!” she cut in, adding something about better smokes as she turned away and started clapping her plump hands for the house servants.

  So he didn’t get to smoke his moldy cigar after all. They sat down to dinner at last. All but Palmer. He tried to rise and follow them all into the next room, but he only made it to his face on the floor. Don Javier said it was his fault, and had a couple of servants carry the dead-drunk Englishman to one of the guest rooms.

  By the time they were halfway through the huge meal, Captain Gringo envied Palmer. He wasn’t really hungry to begin with, and the local idea of a proper dinner for company consisted of course after course of solid food with wine by the pitcherful to wash it down. Captain Gringo left rude amounts of food on his plates as the servants kept changing them. It was still knocking him out. He could see that old Don Javier, at the head of the table, ate lighter when he wasn’t entertaining honored guests. The old guy was getting glazed and dopey, too. His wife and daughters weren’t, They just kept shoveling and gulping, course after course. The girls would be as fat as their mother by the time they were thirty, but what the hell, he wasn’t going to hang around that long.

  Gaston and Ruth Palmer had their heads together across the table as they toyed with their food, drank more than Captain Gringo, and talked dirty in French. She kept steering the conversation into oral and anal channels. Gaston kept assuring her that anything between a man and woman that didn’t hurt was probably nature’s plan. Gaston was welcome to her, orally, anally, or hanging from the roof beams like a sex-mad bat. Captain Gringo wondered idly if Gaston was going to score at all. Dames who
talked about sex at dinner parties often seemed to want to say nighty-night with a handshake and a dumb remark about such an enjoyable evening. But Gaston had been around, and if he felt like wasting his time on a prick-tease, who cared?

  By the last course, even their hosts were looking whipped. Captain Gringo knew that no polite Hispanic host would ever suggest an end to the entertainment, so he said something about it having been a long day, and old Don Javier looked like a condemned man who’d just been pardoned by the governor as he begged them all to forgive his thoughtlessness and asked his wife to put everyone away for the night.

  One of the daughters led Captain Gringo to a guest room, down a long hallway and around a corner into a wing of the sprawling old house. As she placed a candlestick on the oak dresser near the four-poster, she turned her homely face up to him, said, “I am called Susana,” and put her arms around his neck to haul him down for an open-mouthed kiss.

  She was the one with the longest nose and nicest tits. They tended to cancel each other out as she squirmed against him. Her body felt great in his arms. But her nose felt silly as hell no matter how they tried it. When they came up for air, he warned, “The door is open behind you, Susana.”

  She said, “I know. I chose this guest room because nobody ever comes down this way at night. My parents and older sister are sleeping in the other wing. Your French friend and the English couple have rooms around the corner.”

  “Close to each other?”

  Susana laughed and said, “Not too close. You noticed what the wife was up to with your friend, too, eh?”

  He smiled and said, “They might have known some French words are close to Spanish. Uh, this is a swell room, Susana, but it’s late and I’m sort of tired and—”

  “Bueno,” she said, turning away to shut and lock the door, without leaving. Then, as he saw she was slipping her dress off over her head, and how great she looked in the buff from behind, he sighed and gave up on his intended virtue. She was going to be even more upset if he turned her down now. And if her parents found out that she’d as much as closed the door to be in here alone with a stranger, they were bound to assume the worst. So what the hell.

  She turned with a shy smile on her ugly face, a vision of voluptuous charm, from the lantern jaw down, as she walked back bold and naked. He snuffed out the candle as they met for a rematch by the bed.

  Kissing her wasn’t half-bad, in the dark. Once he learned to ignore that nose, lips were lips, and the rest of her felt fantastic as he ran his hands over her while she undressed him.

  He started to drop across the bed with her when he kicked off his dropped pants and boots. But she had other ideas. As she started kissing her way down his naked belly, he realized she’d been listening with interest to some of Gaston’s translations of The Perfumed Garden. The only thing that kept her from swallowing his erection to the roots was the way her nose rubbed Eskimo kisses in his pubic hair. He laughed aloud as he couldn’t help picturing what they’d look like with the light on. He thanked God nobody seemed likely to peek. Hispanics tended to get excited when one merely screwed their daughters.

  He told her he didn’t want to waste it and pulled her up beside him to mount her more sedately. Her body was really beautiful. So when he buried his face in her long black hair to nibble her ear as he humped her, he could almost convince himself she was pretty all over. She responded eagerly and came ahead of him. Then, as he was almost there himself, she suddenly shoved him off and said, “That’s enough. I have to get back to the room I share with my horrid sister before she suspects something.”

  “Swell, but, Jesus, Susana, I haven’t come yet!”

  He reached for her in the dark. It didn’t work. She slipped off the mattress, giggling, and groping for her dress on the floor as she said, “You men are all alike. You always ask for more after a woman gives you all you really deserve!”

  Then she ducked outside as he rose to go after her. The door slammed in his face, leaving him on his bare feet, bare ass, with a raging full erection, to mutter, “Shit! I don’t believe this!”

  Then he laughed at himself and moved back to the bed. He sat down, shaking his head in wonder. Then he saw a slit of candlelight under the door just slammed on his hard-on and grinned. We were playing games, it would seem. He waited, and the door opened again.

  But it wasn’t Susana back for a rematch. It was her mother, Señora Trujillo, or, since she was wearing a kimono she’d neglected to fasten securely, perhaps “Carlota” was more suited to the occasion.

  The kimono was gaping because the fat woman had the candlestick in one hand and a box of cigars in the other. She saw that he was naked. She saw what he was trying to conceal with his naked thighs as he sat on the edge of the bed. She fluttered her lashes and said, “Oh, forgive me. I should have knocked, but, as you see—”

  “Yeah, your hands are full. Forgive me for not rising.”

  She laughed, her plump face flushing, as she murmured, “I see you already have. May I speak frankly with you, Deek?”

  “May as well. Your husband’s going to shoot us both if he catches us like this anyway.”

  She closed the door behind her with her more than ample rump and moved to place the cigars and candlestick on the bedside table as she said, “My poor Javier is old and tired. Very old and very tired. I brought you some of his cigars, since I knew you were out of tobacco. But that is not the real reason I came.”

  “Well, sit down and let’s come, then.”

  “Don’t be fresh. I am not a wicked woman. I am a mother with a motherly concern for her children. I want you to promise me that when I leave you will lock the door and not let anyone else in.”

  “Oh? Who are we talking about, Carlota?”

  “One of my girls. Never mind which one. In God’s truth, one of them is as proper a young lady as a mother could wish. The other, alas, must be watched.”

  He nodded soberly and said, “Well, you can see she’s not here. Would you like to look under the bed?”

  Carlota laughed and said, “Had my wayward child been here, you would not be in the, ah, condition I find you in. Are you, ah, uncomfortable?”

  “Very. Would it be asking too much of a gracious hostess if we, ah, did something to ease the pain?”

  She shook her head but sat down beside him and opened her kimono more as she sighed and said, “I am not sure the duties of hospitality go so far, Deek. But, on the other hand, if my wayward daughter were to find you in such an aroused condition … well, all men are the same when a woman tempts them, no?”

  “Yeah, I’d have a hell of a time resisting temptation right now. But look, as long as you’re here to comfort me …”

  She moaned in pleasure as he took her in his arms and kissed her. There was one hell of an armful. But her face was beautiful in the soft candlelight, and as he lowered her to the mattress and ran his hands over her under the silken folds of the kimono, the sheer novelty of her ample curves began to drive him wild. As he rolled aboard her, she protested, “Oh, I’m not sure we ought to go so far. Perhaps if I just played with it for you, as a friend … I mean, I’m not a wicked woman and … Oh, yes, that feels so, ah, proper, after all!”

  He fired almost at once, his teased erection ejaculating almost before he could get it in. She felt it, and when she felt that he was still moving after such a quick come, she wrapped her arms around him, hugged him close to her big soft breasts, and crooned, “You certainly know how to flatter your hostess, Deek! We should not be doing this, of course, but since you insist, mi casa es su casa and—”

  He kissed her to shut her up as they mutually went crazy for a time. She wanted the candle out when he undressed her all the way. That was the trouble with dames who had really unusual sexual scenery to offer a guy. But when he gave it to her dog-style, later, there was enough soft moonlight through the window slits to impress the size of her wide pale rear forever in pleasant memory.

  He wanted to share one of her husband’s smokes w
ith her and do it some more. But she said he’d already been free enough with her dopey old man’s creature comforts, and he didn’t try to stop her when she left.

  He left the door unlocked after her. At the rate this weird night was going, the other sister or old Ruth Palmer ought to be showing up any minute now.

  But nothing like that happened, in the end. In the morning he remembered putting the cigar out somewhere and lying flat with a semi sated and still adventurous erection. But there were nights when a guy just couldn’t win ’em all, he supposed.

  By noon the peones loaned by Don Trujillo had helped the two soldiers of fortune pack their remaining vital supplies four miles or more to the tea-colored Rio Dorado. Others had run ahead to cut and lash together a raft of balsa logs before they got there. So all Captain Gringo had to do was to say adios and push off down the Dorado.

  This far upstream the river was maybe fifty yards across and less than a yard deep between the many sandbars. They had of course lashed the tarp-covered supplies to the middle of the six-by-thirty-foot raft and could manage it pretty well by poling as they stood fore and aft with the cargo between them. Of course, they had their side arms and rifles slung across their backs. The machine gun amidships was primed but under the top tarp, to keep out of trouble and to keep anyone who spotted them from the jungle-lined banks from writing home about it.

  As the locals had warned, the Dorado ran south over shallow steps of black basalt placed every few miles. None of the rapids were really dangerous. There wasn’t enough current for white-water running. They just had to haul the fucking raft over the fucking black rocks in shin-deep water.

  Gaston said he found it trés fatigué. Captain Gringo told him it was his own fault, adding, “Never give a dame a lecture on oriental love techniques if you have anything important to do the next day.”