by Lou Cameron
Chapter Thirteen
Captain Gringo sat naked and bemused in the barber’s chair, wondering why the wallpaper was a red, white, and black design of dancing skeletons. People certainly had odd ideas of interior decoration down here and some of the skeletons were doing shocking things to one another. You couldn’t tell a male skeleton from a female skeleton, but he assumed the bigger ones were the boys, since they were mostly on top.
Two naked ladies came in through some red velvet drapes. They didn’t look like barbers, but the big blond said they were going to give him a good trim. The other was a shapely little brunette wearing black stockings and a veiled hat, so he couldn’t really see her face too clearly. They came closer and took one of his knees to hook it over the arms of the barber chair as he watched them casually. He asked the Divine Rowena, “Shouldn’t you or Miss Marvin be sitting like this? I’m a boy. You don’t have to spread my legs like this.”
But the Divine Rowena said to shush, they knew what they were doing. So he leaned back and let her pour coffee cream and sugar over his genitals until his shaft rose to the occasion. He’d never seen it so big and red before. The silent brunette cranked the chair down until they seemed to loom above him. His rump was now at almost floor level, but his tool stood proudly at attention, maybe three feet tall. It was hard to tell, the light was funny and things kept shifting in this barber shop. He asked who wanted to get on it first and the two of them laughed. The Divine Rowena snapped her fingers and the brunette dropped to her hands and knees, raised the edge of her veil, and began to suck. He said, “Okay, but I wish you’d take that fucking hat off. It looks silly.”
The Divine Rowena got on all fours beside Theresa Marvin and started playing with his testicles. Then the two big blond wolfhounds came in, tongues dangling, and he said, “This is really silly!” as Hengist and Horsa started sniffing at both of their up thrust rumps. Now the Divine Rowena was sucking and the one in the hat was tonguing his belly button while she tried to stick a finger up his rectum. He said, “Hey, watch it, those nails are sharp!” So she took off her fingernails and began to give him a prostate massage while the big blond tried to swallow him whole. He was sure he was about to come, but the damned dames switched heads and he had to get used to it again in the little brunette’s mouth. The dogs were distracting, too. They were grinning at him from above the naked spines of the two women as they rutted with them, wagging their fluffy tails. He said, “Shit, I’ll bet I could fuck better than either of those dogs.”
The Divine Rowena said, “You can’t. We’re having our periods.”
He wondered how she could speak so clearly with her mouth full and what the hell the woodpecker was doing in the next room. He asked, “Hey, do you girls hear that?” and the Divine Rowena started crawling away to investigate the noise.
The woodpecker hammered louder in the next room and the Divine Rowena screamed, “Oh, what’s happening?”
So he said, “Excuse me,” and shoved the brunette’s head out of his lap to investigate. He ran to the red drapes, but when he parted them there was only a blank wall. He turned. He groped along the wall as she called out, “What’s happening? Where are you going?”
“Your friend is being raped by a woodpecker.”
He found a doorknob sticking out of the weird wallpaper and opened the secret passage. On the other side, the Divine Rowena was crouched on all fours with the woodpecker pounding its beak up her from the rear. Only it wasn’t exactly a woodpecker, it looked like a Maxim machine gun with its thick barrel jammed up her rear as it fired. She grinned at him and said, “Whee, this is better than a Shetland pony!”
He said, “This is really getting stupid,” and opened his eyes. He saw he had his pants on and that he’d just opened the door of the room he shared with Liza. Liza was yelling at him from the bed. He staggered out on the balcony, remembered he didn’t have his gun, and ran back to get it as the machine gun on the roof opened up again. Liza thought ahead of him and tossed his gun belt to him as he staggered around, still half asleep.
She said, “Be careful. You don’t look like you’re awake,” and he stumbled out, cursing. The floorboards of the balcony were swaying as the ship took the swells on its starboard quarter, but the sky above was pearl gray and he knew it was almost morning, wherever the hell they were.
He made his way up to the roof and staggered toward the men firing the Maxim from the corner of the rooftop. The gravel hurt his bare feet and helped to clear his head. He dropped to one knee near Vallejo and asked, “What’s up?”
The sergeant pointed at the inky mass of trees they were shooting into and said, “We heard somebody over there.”
“You heard somebody, and you’ve poured at least a full belt into it?”
“Cease fire!” Vallejo commanded between bursts. The gun fell silent, but their ears still rang. The sergeant said, “If there was anybody there, we drove them away, eh?”
“That’s for damned sure. How do you know it wasn’t a cow, or, worse yet, some peon gathering firewood?”
Vallejo shrugged and said, “One does not take chances when there are banditos about. Cows are but cows, and people should know better than to move about when soldiers are on duty, eh? The local villagers know our methods, Señor Canada.”
“The local villagers must love you. But what the hell, I wanted to get up early anyway, and I didn’t bring an alarm clock. How soon will we be moving on, Sergeant?”
“¿Quien sabe? After everyone has eaten, if the coast is clear for to ride on. As soon as it grows lighter I shall send out a patrol to see if anybody was really creeping up on us, eh?”
Captain Gringo said that sounded peachy and, now wide awake, went down to rejoin Liza. The English girl was fully dressed as well as up for the day, so there went a swell idea he’d had about his unfinished dream. She asked what had happened and he said, “Beats me. I’ve met some trigger-happy guys in my time, but Vallejo beats ’em all.”
“How do you feel this morning, darling? You look much better, now that you’ve had a good night’s sleep.”
He grimaced and said, “I wouldn’t wish the night I spent on both of the Divine Rowena’s dogs.” He sat down to pull on his socks and as if she’d heard her name, the Divine Rowena opened the door without knocking and gasped, “They told me you were here, Mr. MacUlrich! Who were you shooting at just now?”
He said, “Nobody. The army was doing all the shooting.”
She didn’t look as good in the cold gray light as she had in his dream. She looked like a middle-aged frightened frump. He asked where her dogs were and she said they were under her bed and wouldn’t come out. The gunfire had upset them terribly. Both women exchanged puzzled looks as he laughed insanely. Then he recovered and finished dressing to escort them both downstairs.
Everyone else was up and milling around by now, of course. So the cantina was crowded and breakfast consisted of cold refritos wrapped in tortillas. Coffee wasn’t ready yet, either. He said he’d settle for cerveza. The coffee here was weird and it upset his stomach just to think about it.
Gaston came in, patting the bulge under his jacket. As he joined them, Captain Gringo asked where the hell he’d been while all the fun and games was going on. Gaston said, “Seeing to the horses, of course. There is a corral out to the northwest. The mounts we intend to ride had been left there for the night. I saw nobody else seemed sensible enough to drive them inside while all the shooting was going on, so I did it.”
The Divine Rowena asked, “Oh, wasn’t it dangerous for you to expose yourself like that m’sieu?”
“I assure you I kept my pants buttoned.”
She either didn’t get it or didn’t want to. Sergeant Vallejo came in, looking a bit sheepish. He said, “Well, as soon as you ladies and gentlemen are ready, we can push on.”
Captain Gringo asked, “Oh, did you find out what you were shooting at?”
“Si, you were right. It was an old Indian and his burro. They are not from the immed
iate area, so he must have camped there for the night and we heard him putting wood on his fire or something.”
“Jesus, is the Indian okay?”
“Oh, no, señor. We hit both him and his burro many times. But it will not delay us. I have told the alcalde to dispose of the remains.”
“Just like that?”
“Of course. As I said, he was only an old peon. Not even white. Nobody cares what we do to peones. The pobrecitos have no friends in high places.”
Chapter Fourteen
Between one delay and another the sun was up before they found themselves on the trail, but it was just as well since the trail was a bitch, even in broad daylight. Sergeant Vallejo had positioned his men at intervals along the column, with himself in the lead and the machine-gun section bringing up the rear. Captain Gringo knew he’d been instructed to do that, but he doubted if the burly man understood why.
He and the other first-class passengers rode horseback. Second class rode burros. Third class, of course, walked. As the trail wound up in a series of hairpin switchbacks, he wasn’t too sure who had the best deal. A burro was more surefooted than a horse or even a mule. He’d have felt even safer on foot along some stretches. But they faced a long trek and he was feeling bushed already, thanks to the lousy sleep he’d gotten the night before.
If the steep mountain trail made him nervous, its effects on the others were devastating. The Divine Rowena rode with her eyes closed, clinging to the horn of her side-saddle as her dogs trotted on either side. One of the other women in her road company kept screaming that she was about to fall to her death. Captain Gringo was about ready to push her. It wasn’t the little brunette, Theresa Marvin. She rode quietly behind Liza, who in turn sat side-saddle behind the tall American, with Gaston bringing up the rear. The Divine Rowena was up front with her manager Jason, and Gaston seemed anxious to avoid her. It was understandable. By day, with all her clothes on, the big blond kept batting her eyes and practicing her bad French on poor little Gaston. But he knew she’d turn into a pumpkin when the sun went down again, and it was hard not to get interested in a reasonably attractive woman after keeping company with her all day. They’d noticed old Jason seemed frustrated, too. He’d probably been going through this game of hers for some time.
Captain Gringo was still a little pissed off at Liza, but he rode too far away to chat with Theresa. He’d had a better look at her now, and she was better in the flesh than she’d been in his crazy dream. The hat wasn’t as dumb in real life and the veil didn’t really hide her cameo features. It just kept the flies off her face. As it started to get warmer he wished he had one, too. The well-traveled trail was littered with manure, human as well as animal, and the common fly seemed to take on new dimensions this close to the equator. They had a couple of nasty biting varieties as well. The latter seemed more interested in eating their mounts alive, but he’d have preferred them to go for human blood. There wasn’t much danger to a rider flinching and slapping, but a spooked horse on a yard-wide trail with a nearly vertical wall of rock on one side and nothing but air on the other was downright terrifying.
Everyone was of course alert as they started, but as the morning wore on and nobody seemed interested in killing them, the travelers and their military escort settled down to a slogging hot climb. The sergeant called a halt once an hour, of course. It probably did the mounts some good. But it was hard to really rest on the side of a cliff.
They stopped just before noon at a campground slightly wider than a city street. It was shaded by pepper trees and littered with the trash and filth of those who’d gone before them. The flies were waiting in drifting smoke-like clouds. But Vallejo said it was siesta and that there was no place else to stop for miles.
Captain Gringo knew it made sense to stop during the hottest part of the day, but he didn’t like it. Some of the peones built a fire and began to prepare meals, oblivious or inured to the flies. He tethered his horse and walked up the trail to the last tree. He sat under it on the packed earth, with his boots hanging over the edge of an almost sheer drop, and lit a smoke. He knew that if he opened his mouth to eat he’d inhale a fistful of flies with each bite, and his stomach felt like it was full of bugs already. He knew he could smoke with his mouth closed, and the flies weren’t so bad away from the smell of horseflesh and other food.
A soft voice asked, “Mind if I join you?” and he looked up to see that Theresa Marvin had followed him away from the crowd. He started to rise and she said, “Please don’t get up. It makes me nervous to see people on the edge of a cliff.”
He laughed and said, “I figured on rolling part of the way. It’s not a straight fall to the bottom. It only looks like it is.”
She took a grip on the tree and gingerly lowered herself beside him, but sat with her legs curled under her duster instead of over the side. She took a deep breath and said, “My, it does smell better over here. I suppose I should eat, but I don’t feel up to it. How high are we now?”
He said, “It’s not altitude sickness. That starts at about five thousand feet, it if bothers you at all. You might be seasick from that ride you just had. I don’t suppose you’d like a cheroot?”
She dimpled and said, “It’s not proper for a lady to smoke in public, but what the hell, as we say in Rome.”
He grinned and took out a smoke for her. As he struck a light he noticed the way she lifted her veil to smoke it and had to struggle to keep from laughing. She took a deep drag, blew it out through the black mesh and said, “Thank you, that certainly helps to kill the smell around us. Does your wife smoke cigars, Mr. MacUlrich?”
He knew she had to have heard he and Liza were married, so he assumed she was establishing the fact that she “knew” he was married. He nodded and said, “It’s better than dipping snuff like Queen Victoria. Are you English, by the way? Your accent seems American.”
“Oh, most of us are Americans. The Divine One picked us up in San Francisco. Apparently English Shakespeareans tend to laugh at her.”
“Well, As You Like It is a comedy, isn’t it?”
“Yes, not one of his better efforts, but it’s the only one she’s committed to memory. We were a disaster in Merry Wives of Windsor. Naturally she wanted to play Mistress Page and made me play Mistress Ford. Some of the audiences were quite rude about it.”
He laughed and said, “I can see why. She seems to have the ages reversed.”
“Oh, that was the least of our worries. I can play the older woman, but her Spanish isn’t very good and she forgets her lines in English.”
“You don’t sound like you care for her very much.”
“Good grief, who would? Poor Jason is gaga over her, but he’s the exception to the rule. Perhaps she reminds him of his mother.”
“Meow! Why do you work for her if you dislike her so much?”
Theresa shrugged bitterly, and said, “It’s a living. I’m actually not a very good actress, myself. But I thought if I could tour with a legitimate road company and collect some press notices …”
So that was it. She’d been told he was a newspaperman. He’d never realized the full advantages of being a member of the fourth estate. She was a pretty little thing and what could it hurt to write her up for his supposed Canadian paper? He could probably be in and out and on his way before she realized his rave notices weren’t going to appear in print after all.
But he decided his life was already complicated enough with a so-called wife that carried her act all the way to the vapors. He knew he’d probably never see any of these people again once they got to Bogotá, and there didn’t seem much chance of getting next to her on the trail. So he let the offer go over his head and said something noncommittal about looking forward to watching her play when and if they reached the capital.
As if she’d had her own lines provided by a very unimaginative playwright, Liza came to join them, saying, “There you are, darling. Have you been enjoying the … scenery?”
“No. When you’ve stared o
ff one mountain you’ve stared off ’em all. You’ve met Miss Marvin, haven’t you, dear?”
Liza smiled frostily and said, “Quite,” as she sat on the other side of him and linked a possessive arm through his. Theresa made small talk just long enough to keep her exit from appearing a complete rout, then excused herself to see about her horse.
As soon as they were alone, Liza asked, “Have you gone mad? I want you to stay away from that little slut.”
He frowned and said, “Hell, if I thought she was a slut I’d have never let her go. What game are we playing now, Liza? You keep changing the script too suddenly for a guy to keep up.”
“Look, I told you I was sorry about last night. We’re supposed to be an old married couple. How’s it going to look if anyone notices you flirting with that girl? What will they think?”
“That I’m an old married man, of course. Let’s get something settled, kiddo. We’re only pretending we’re married, see? You don’t really own that ring Greystoke issued you, so let’s cut this jealousy bullshit.”
She blanched as if he’d struck her and blurted, “How can you talk to me that way? I know this started as just an act, but … have you forgotten the other night, darling?”
“No,” he said. “It was marvelous. Being true-blue to you wouldn’t be such a chore, if all our nights could be like that. Or, hell, if half of them were! I’m not demanding. But you were the one who threw all that crap about feeling used and abused at me, Liza. I didn’t know the orgasm was confined to the male of the species, but if that’s the way you feel—”
“You old silly! I told you I was sorry! I prommy-wommis I’ll make it up to you when we get to Bogotá.”
“I thought we were going to split up, once I deliver you and your message or whatever.”
“Heavens, we’ll still see each other! We’re supposed to be married. My job is done once I contact my friends in Bogotá and deliver my … message. After that, I’ll be completely at your disposal and you can use and abuse me all you like.” She snuggled closer and added, “I’m rather looking forward to it. So don’t be naughty with those actresses, you lusty thing.”
