by Lou Cameron
Gaston said, “I have heard tales of this notorious Yanqui. It is enough to melt the marrow in one’s bones to think of him at large, and possibly so near. But tell us, Officer Lopez, how do you know it is he leading the revolution against our beloved Presidente Diaz?”
The young cop pointed out across the now-empty harbor and said, “Those Yanquis from the ship he dynamited told us. Can you believe it? They say they had him under lock and key, to take him back to los Estados and hang him. Yet, he somehow managed to blow up the ship and escape! Is this not a matter of awesome wonder?”
Now it was Captain Gringo’s turn to nudge Gaston’s boot with his toe, as Gaston smiled sardonically and said, “I don’t think it’s that simple. He must have had confederales, here, to torpedo the Yanqui gunboat on the same night they planned the mass jailbreak, no?”
Lopez gasped and said, “Madre mia! I did hear some boys talking about a torpedo just now! They said two shabbily dressed strangers told them, down by the boatyards! Forgive me, señorita y señors, I must tell this to my captain!”
Gaston chuckled fondly as the young cop dashed away. Captain Gringo could have killed him. He knew sooner or later someone was bound to ask Lopez where he’d heard this latest development. But he couldn’t curse in Spanish or English in front of a lady.
He was wondering which way to head now, knowing they had maybe five minutes on the outside, when Felicidad called a couple of kids over and asked them if they’d roll her back to the market sheds if she let them eat the last of the tacos. When they agreed, she turned to Captain Gringo and said, “You’d better come with me. Both of you. Lopez is stupid, but he’ll be back.”
The two soldiers of fortune exchanged glances. Felicidad got between them, took each one by the arm, and said firmly, “Let’s go. I can’t hide you at my place. Those filthy police recorded my official address when I took out my vendor’s license. But we’ll be safe at my Tia Monica’s. And I am sure she will like Tio Pancho!”
*
Tia Monica liked Gaston just fine. Felicidad’s older female relative was fatter as well as older, but she had a nice smile, if a guy admired gold teeth a lot. The house wasn’t near the plaza, which was just as well, when one considered all the police whistles blowing in Mazatlán right now. They didn’t get a good look at the place from outside. Felicidad had led them through a maze of dark alleyways and across a churchyard full of moonlit tombstones before they climbed through a break in a wall, crossed the patio of a roofless, burned-out building, and suddenly found themselves having coffee and tostadas in a dark but cozy kitchen while Felicidad explained to her aunt that the three of them would be staying with her awhile.
Tia Monica didn’t ask why. She just sat close to Gaston and purred at him until Felicidad turned to her own date, or whatever, and said, “Bring your cup along if you like. We have to have a serious discussion, Captain Gringo.”
He shot Gaston a thoughtful look as he rose to follow her. In English, Gaston said, “I don’t think so. She would have turned us in already if that was the plan. What are you waiting for, my blessings?”
So Captain Gringo followed Felicidad out of the room. It was dark as hell, but she seemed to know her way in the dark. She led him to a small room with a big four-poster bed. As she lit the candle, he noticed that the walls were painted purple. He wouldn’t have chosen that orange bedspread if it had been up to him. The clash was even more violent when she sat on the bed to spread her electric-blue skirt on it, exposing one tawny knee as she leaned back on locked elbows and said, “Well, here we are. Take off your guns and anything else you like, Captain Gringo.” He removed his hat, jacket, and bandoleer, but kept his pants and gun rig on for the moment as he sat down beside her and said, “That’s the second or third time you’ve called me that, doll face. What gave you the idea I’m this Captain Gringo?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, who else could you be, Roberto? Do you want to play games, or shall we get down to business?”
He let the mistake about his name stand, but took her in his arms as he murmured, “Yeah, why don’t we get out of this ridiculous semi-erect position?”
She laughed and said, “Wait, I don’t want to talk about semi-erections just yet. You know what I am doing for you. The question is: what can you do for me and mine?”
“Tia Monica wants some too? I thought she had old, ah, Pancho.”
He kissed her. She kissed back, giggling, before she said, “My, they must have had you locked up for a while indeed. Slow down, Roberto. You know you’ll be staying the night with me. More than one night, if you’re a good boy. But I don’t mean that kind of good boy. Oh, I like that blond hair. Are you blond all over?”
“I’m not going to tell you. There’s only one way for you to find out. But, okay, let’s get all the cards on the table, Felicidad. If you know who I am, they must have told you there’s a price on my head. Why were you such a good sport back there at the beach?”
She shrugged and said, “I owed you that much. One of the men you let escape tonight was my cousin. By now he will have made it to the hills and El Aquilar Negro’s band.”
He whistled softly and said, “Can I take it this black eagle bandit is a cousin of yours, too?”
“El Aquilar Negro is a distant kinsman, it is true, but he is not a bandit. Like me, he fights for la revolución!”
“Yeah? Which one? Last time I passed this way there were at least a dozen rebel factions, all killing each other off when they weren’t shooting it out with los rurales. You know why Diaz keeps running Mexico, kitten? He’s what Washington calls a ‘stable government’ because he’s taught all the guys working for him not to shoot each other so often.”
“El Aquilar Negro is different. He and his men and their adelitas have great discipline. They never rape. They only loot enough to get by. But enough of that. Is it true you know how to work those terrible new machine guns our government buys from abroad?”
He pressed her down on her back and began to fumble off his gun rig as he said, “I’ve traversed a Maxim in my time, kitten. Is that the play? Your El Aquilar Negro has some machine guns but doesn’t know how to set the head spacing? A guy has to be careful when the action heats up, doll. Unless you know what you’re doing, your gun can explode unexpectedly when it, ah, overheats.”
He tossed the gun rig aside, and she didn’t resist when he kissed her some more and got to exploring with his free hand. Everything he felt seemed soft and sweet as angel-food cake. Or maybe jelly roll, he decided, as she let him get to home plate with a long slide up her inner thigh.
But as he started to check out her lubrication and head spacing, she sighed and said, “My comrades in the mountains have no machine guns at all, alas. That is why you must help us get some.”
He said, “We’ll talk about it later. Do you want the candle out?”
“No, por favor, I wish to see if you are blond all over as you put it in me, Roberto mio,”
That sounded fair. So they both stripped as fast as they could and fell into each other’s arms, laughing like kids stealing forbidden fruit.
After they’d just gone crazy and come old-fashioned to get to know each other, Felicidad insisted on having a better look at him by candlelight. He was as curious. So he stood up, struck a muscle-man pose, then pulled her to her feet to turn around for inspection, saying, “Oh, very nice,” as he saw she was a bit too dark for angel-food cake, albeit as soft and yummy. He knew she’d be fat by thirty if she didn’t watch out. But meanwhile she was a lush complex of soft but not sloppy bulges connected by smoothly flowing curves. Her dark hair hung down almost to the middle of her thighs, in back. Thanks to some Indian blood, she had very little hair in the soft V between her plump tawny thighs.
He didn’t want just to look at all that nice stuff. So he pulled her closer and, still standing, tried to put it in her again. She giggled and said, “My legs are too short, even standing on tiptoe. We’ll never manage this way, querido!” And then she gasped, “Oh!
” as he did get it back in by spreading his legs to lower his center of gravity while holding her in place with a palm cupped behind her on each round buttock. She gasped, “I’ll fall!” as she started grinding against him side to side in time with his thrusts. He had to lean back to keep from falling forward with her as she, in turn, arched her spine until her bounding nipples were aimed at the ceiling. She laughed and said, “You are blond all over. But if I come in this position I know I’ll fall! My legs are already turning to jelly, Roberto mio!”
He moved her over to the bed, turned her around, and directed her to bend enough to brace her palms on the spread as he held her, still erect from the hips down, to enter her from behind. She moaned and leaned back into it as he parted her black hair and tawny plump buttocks to enjoy the view as he humped her, doggy-style. They exploded together and fell forward on the bed to recover their winds, with him still in her and her soft back pressed to his body as, inside, she pulsated on his shaft and crooned, “Oh, if you are half as good with a machine gun as you are with that marvelous thing in me right now, el Presidente Diaz is doomed!”
He laughed and said, “Speaking of soldiering. I think it’s time to set up new positions and fire at will.” She didn’t know what he was talking about until he rolled her on her back and was in her old-fashioned again, leaning most of his weight on one braced shoulder as, cocking one leg up, he settled in for slow steady thrusts that didn’t have to prove anything, but just felt marvelous.
She said, “Stop for a while, Roberto. We really haven’t settled anything yet.”
He grinned and thrust to the roots. She laughed and said, “Oh, that was settled from the first time you smiled at me, you naughty! I mean we should talk. We can’t talk and fornicate at the same time, can we?”
Then she said, “Oh, I see we can. Now that it is settled I am to be your adelita as we fight for Mexico together, we are going to need machine guns, no?”
“Don’t look at me, kitten. This is the only rapid-fire weapon I have handy at the moment.”
“Oh, it feels better than you’re handy. I know you don’t have your own machine gun, querido. The stupid government has all the heavy weapons. Is that just?”
“No, but that’s life, Felicidad. That’s how you start a government. You get all the heavy weapon. Nobody would ever pay taxes to a government that wasn’t pointing a gun at ’em.”
“We know this all too well, querido. The government has many rifles, cannon and machine guns stored atop Cerro de Basilio, down the coast at San Blas.”
“Yeah? How far is this San Blas, Felicidad?”
“One hundred and fifty kilometers, Roberto. By sea it is not so rough as by land, but the seas are not to be sneezed at along rocky coast.”
He stopped moving in her as he thought. He made her estimate a little less than a hundred Anglo-American miles. It was still too far to walk or swim. He said, “Those U.S. Navy guys will be stuck here until someone comes with another gunboat to pick ’em up. Add their shore patrol to the local cops, and stealing a boat doesn’t sound like such a hot idea. How’s it by land, Felicidad?”
“Impossible, unless one knows the way through the box canyons, and El Aquilar Negro has no wish to stop them. Not even federales dare the land route now that El Aquilar Negro has risen to lead the wild ones of the hills.”
“But we’re on his side, right?”
“Of course. All rebels must stick together. Who did you think I wished you to steal the machine guns for in the first place, Roberto?”
“Yeah, it would be dumb to think of going into business on our own. But, speaking of our own business, can we talk about those other guns later? I’ve got a full magazine again and—”
“Oh, yes, Roberto mio! Empty it into me! It makes me so happy when you pump me full of such lovely love bullets!”
So he did, and although they didn’t get very much sleep that night, they got enough, and by morning he’d agreed to lead a band of rebels into a federale fort and raid it for enough heavy weaponry to scare the shit out of everyone, including him. But what was a guy to do when a beautiful passionate woman was on top when she asked him to promise, say no?
*
Gaston thought it was a lousy idea. Gaston was like that. After breakfast the two women left the soldiers of fortune holed up in Tia Monica’s house while they went out to cover, scout, and make some connections. Thus, Captain Gringo and Gaston sat alone in the kitchen as the younger man filled in the older and, he said, wiser one.
Gaston said, “Getting to San Blas, oui. Attacking the fort atop Cerro de Basilio, non! I know the place. It is a ruin, left over from Spanish colonial days. The last time I was there, the fort was half-drowned in encroaching jungle. Vines, palmetto, wild banana, wild cabbages, for all I know or care! If los federales have reactivated the old fort, I don’t want to know about that, either!”
Captain Gringo started rolling a smoke from some loose-leaf Tia Monica had left them as he mused, “Look, you say from San Blas there’s a trail leading across to the east coast where we can catch a boat out, right?”
“Oui, I know that trail. It’s one the less intelligent Americans used during the California gold rush. It’s terrible, it’s trés dangerous, but, oui, it leads to Vera Cruz.”
“Okay, let’s eat this apple a bite at a time. To get to Vera Cruz we have to get to San Blas. To get to San Blas, we need the help of Felicidad’s rebel pals, right?”
“I said I voted oui on going to San Blas, Dick. It’s after we get there that you lose me with mad plans about attacking forts filled with soldados and heavy weapons!”
“Look, we’ll never get there without help from the local rebels. We already owe the girls for shelter and other comforts. If Felicidad can swing us safe passage through the rebel-controlled rough country to San Blas, said rebels are going to expect a payoff, and I don’t have twenty pesos.”
“Neither do I, Dick. But here’s my plan. We agree to anything the girls and their friends ask. I will assume for the sake of the argument that Tia Monica is a girl and El Aquilar is a friend. Mon Dieu, you should see that tub of lard with her clothes off, and this Aquilar person sounds like the usual backwoods bandito. But, oui, we go along with them as far as San Blas before we cross them double, hein?”
Captain Gringo sealed his improvised smoke with his tongue and observed, “That’s pretty shitty, Gaston. Felicidad said she could get some better sidearms and extra change for us before we even leave this place. And fat or not, her aunt took care of you, didn’t she?”
Gaston shrugged and said, “The feeling was no doubt mutual. I had been locked up for a while, and she acted in bed as if nobody had been in her for at least ten years. When a man makes a woman come, he owes her no more. It is a myth that the favor is one-sided. For a man who spent four years at West Point, you certainly have a poor grasp of physics, Dick. Where does the law of gravity say that women and other bad habits should be harder to drop than they are to pick up? When we get to San Blas, we shall say we have to scout the federale fort atop that jungle-covered hill. Then we shall make like jolly snakes in the grass and slither on our merry way, hein?”
Captain Gringo lit his crude cigarillo and said, “We’ll cross that one when we come to it. It’s easier to act enthusiastic for a cause if you tell yourself you may just fight for it. I got the joke when I read Don Quixote. But, shit, it may be possible to raid the fucking federale fort.”
Gaston sighed and said, “Alas, I recognize that look in your crazy eyes, my tactical genius! I too enjoy a challenge. But I just told you I have seen the old Spanish fort above San Blas. I was up there hunting iguana for my supper. The walls were still solid. Lime mortar and lava blocks, ten or twelve feet thick at the base. If los federales have reestablished the post, they will have cleared the second growth. So let us forget this tedious discussion of Cerro de Basilio, hein? There is no way anyone without field artillery and a willingness to accept heavy casualties is about to make the top of the cliff, let alone the
walls. The girl said they have machine guns in the fort, non?”
“Of course. That’s the whole point of taking the place.”
“Merde alors, how? A corporal’s squad could hold off a whole army from atop Cerro de Basilio without automatic weapons! The Spaniards did so, more than once, back when they were fighting the English privateers with such monotonous regularity! ”
Captain Gringo blew a thoughtful smoke ring and said, “The troops of Imperial Spain were better than history books written by Protestants let on. Cortez took Mexico City with less than a regiment and they were no sissies. On the other hand, el Presidente Diaz recruits his gun waddies from the scum of Mexico. Every Mexican I’ve met who had a lick of sense seems to want to fight the sonofabitch!”
“That may be so. It is true both federales and rurales are recruited from the dregs of village society, with a few literate sadists as officers. But while government gunmen may lack finesse, Diaz buys nothing but the best when it comes to the guns that said gunmen bully the countryside with, hein?”
“We’re talking in circles, Gaston. Yes, federales have good guns. But federale troops are led by officers who should be locked up in lunatic asylums with their presidents. So, like I said, we’ll see.”
Gaston still would have gone on arguing, had not Tia Monica come in just then, carrying a big shopping basket and wearing a self-satisfied smile. The fat woman dumped the contents out on the table between them, saying, “Felicidad told me to get these things to you poco tiempo. La policia are making spot checks in the marketplace. She says she hopes the guns are as you described them.”
The two soldiers of fortune blinked in pleased surprise at the two .38s in shoulder holsters lying atop the pile of peso notes and boxes of spare ammo. As Captain Gringo helped himself to a sidearm and checked the action, he asked Tia Monica where the hell all the money had come from.
