by Lou Cameron
Stringer said, “I’ll tell him. I was looking for him to begin with. Do you know where he might be right now?”
The kid pointed to the distant brown dots splashing around by the dam and said, “Sure. Swimming. You got to grow up in Chihuahua to know how good it feels for to splash in water when you get the chance. He likes naked women, too.”
Stringer climbed back down the ladder laughing, and strode north along the bank. The swimming hole was farther away than it looked. The sun was hot and he was sweating in his none too clean blue denims long before he got close enough to hear Pancho Villa call out, boisterously, “Hey, Stringer, come on in. The water’s fine!”
The bevy of brown skinned beauties splashing about with the burly Villa looked fine, too. Even saggy tits looked swell when they were supported by water. Stringer started to object. But he had to get to the west bank, anyway. So he hauled off his jacket and gun rig to carry his possibles above his head with the rifle as he waded out, boots and all. The water was warm as stale tea, thanks to the desert sun. But it felt good as it rose to his armpits. He joined Villa and the bathing beauties to say, “There’s something coming in from the northwest. Looks like a small party. But I thought you’d like to know.”
Villa nodded, told the girls to climb out the far side and take cover, then called, out to some of his male swimming partners and said, “Let’s go. We left our stuff on the west bank with just such surprises in mind.”
So they all waded across. As Villa and the others climbed the clay bank bare-assed naked, Stringer tossed his rifle and possibles ashore and ducked all the way under, coming up to spout water like a whale and mutter, “That’s better. My stubble will just have to wait.”
It only took Villa and his four followers a few moments to look armed and dangerous again. Villa motioned everyone to spread out as they fanned away from the river. When Villa hunkered down behind a clump of prickly pear, Stringer took cover behind a mesquite and worked the bolt of his rifle. A million years went by. Then Villa muttered, “Bueno, it’s about time!”
Then he rose to wave his hat, calling out, “Hernan! Over here! Where in the name of all the saints have you been?”
As the very dusty and disgusted-looking Hernan came on in with his worn-out sharpshooters, he called back, “That damned gringo motor car blew up. We thought Los Federales had dropped a shell on us. But was only the engine. We’ve been walking all night and for hours since sunrise. I hope we got here in time for the fun.”
Villa laughed and said, “Was lots of fun, and now we’re going to have a fiesta. Only first we have to take a siesta. Is getting hot as the hinges of hell, no?”
The husky Hernan licked his dusty lips and said, “We had not noticed. Is that water I see shining through the brush behind you?”
Villa said it sure was and added, “Feel free to jump in and cool off. Then we better go back upstream and rest in the shade. We got it all thanks to Stringer, here.”
The sharpshooters Hernan had led this far were already on their way to the swimming hole, but Hernan stared thoughtfully at Stringer as he asked, “What did this gringo do that was so wonderful? I thought we’d agreed I was to fire the opening shots. How come you did not wait for us, Pancho?”
Villa snorted, “You’d better cool your head. The sun has fried your brains. We agreed the attack was to be at dawn. It is now closer to noon. You were not here to start anything, so Stringer made lots of noise down here by the dam and I led the others in from the east as planned. Was a nice little fight. It all went smooth as silk, even if you missed it.”
Hernan knew better than to glare at Villa, so he glared at Stringer instead as he complained, “I see it all, now. To get in good with you, this gringo did something to that Maxwell’s motor to make it blow up. It was my job to create a diversion, not his!”
Gently but firmly Villa said, “Go soak your head, muchacho. Stringer tried to show you how to drive that motor car. You did not listen. Was your own fault you got left behind. Stringer did a good job when you failed to do your part and I do not wish to argue about it. Cool your fevered brain. Enjoy a nice siesta. Then we’ll all feel better, no?”
Hernan growled deep in his throat, so Stringer was able to pretend he didn’t hear that part about his mother as the husky Hernan bulled his way through the chaparral toward the swimming hole.
Villa turned to Stringer and sighed, “I am glad you decided not to hear that. I like you both. Hernan is not usually so sullen. Let us hope it is over between you, eh?”
Stringer shrugged and said, “I was brought up to turn the other cheek and then kill the bastard if he slapped that one. So, what if it’s not over?”
“I just said I hoped it was. I can stop him if he challenges you. If he starts to play “Tu Madre” with you, well, you are on your own, as long as it’s a fair fight. I got to maintain some discipline, damn it.”
So there it was, like a gobbet of spit on the card table, and Stringer knew how “Tu Madre” was played. He knew he’d be in deep shit whether he won or lost. So he could only hope Hernan would cool down. There was nothing anyone else could do but wait and see.
By the time Stringer rejoined Bobbie Davis in her quarters with the canned provisions and jug of rum he’d salvaged, his duds were dry and his socks were getting there. Nobody who’d spent more than a day in Mexico had to have the almost sacred ritual of La Siesta explained. But the American girl wasn’t up on the even older custom of “Tu Madre,” so as they sat side by side on her bed, washing their beans down with rum and tap water, he explained, “I think it’s left over from the Aztec empire. Most Latins just get as excited as the rest of us when they’re looking for a fight. Mexicans with enough Indian in them to show play by a different set of rules. To begin with, you’re not supposed to scowl at the guy you’re out to pick a fight with. You just smile soft and sleepy at him and murmur sweet things to him.”
She swallowed some rum with a puzzled frown and said, “That sounds like a funny way to pick a fight, if you ask me.”
“I’m not asking you. Hernan is the bozo we have to look out for. He’s got it buzzing around in his empty skull that I made him look bad with Villa. He probably never liked gringos all that much to begin with. So he’s likely to start up with us and
“How did I get into your feud with some greaser I’ve never even met?” she said in a tone of injured innocence.
“You’re my adelita, for official purposes. I told the others you were mine to protect you. That was before I knew Hernan had it in for us, and I say us because a soldado and his adelita are one, as the game “Tu Madre” is played. Hernan doesn’t want to strike the first blow or be first to reach for a weapon. Villa told him not to start up with me.”
“Then what have you or, all right, we have to worry about?” she asked with an uncertain smile.
He said, “A lot. Hernan will start by spreading the word, behind my back, that I may act like a big shot but that I’m really afraid of him. That’ll be the cue for at least one or two born troublemakers to sidle up to me and tip me off that Hernan seems to have it in for me. If I just laugh and say I’m not worried about him, they’ll go right back to him with my implied challenge. If I don’t say anything they’ll think, and say, that I am afraid of him.”
She suddenly brightened and said, “Oh, we had girls like that at my boarding school. We called them sneaky bitches.”
Stringer nodded, “Hernan’s not out for a hair pulling contest. He’ll try to establish that we’re enemies and that I’m naturally the one to blame. To my face he’ll smile and sort of flutter his lashes like he’s flirting with me. He will be. He’ll want me to ask him why he’s acting so funny, so that he can say something funny, just short of an open challenge. Spanish is low on curse words. Most of the ones they have, they’ve picked up from us. But that doesn’t mean a Mex can’t talk dirty. They just have to put things more subtly. Instead of calling you a bastard, they might offer their respects to your mother, and even your father, if onl
y anyone knew who that passing stranger might have been.”
She nodded and said, “Oh, ‘Tu Madre” means Your Mother, right?”
He grimaced and replied, “Tu Madre is usually the last remark passed before the action starts. The insult’s so subtle that the guy who said it can insist, later, that he meant no harm and that you’d just gone loco and attacked him. There’s nothing wrong, on the surface, with say asking another gent, with a purr, how his mother is feeling this evening. On the other hand, it’s not Spanish Custom to even mention the women of a man’s family until and unless he’s introduced you to them, see?”
She tried to. She said, “It sounds sort of Islamic, if you ask me. Why can’t you just pretend you’re Christian and it’s all right to ask how someone’s momma feels?”
He said, “It is Islamic. The Spanish fought the Moors for eight hundred years and picked up lots of odd notions from them. The point is that both sides, and all the others watching, know the rules of the game. You can pretend the oily insults aren’t getting through to you. You might even avoid a showdown that way. Then you get to start all over with the next bozo who wants to show his stuff. Backing down gringos is a sort of national sport, like bull fighting or highway robbery. Sooner of later, I’ll have to stand up for my manhood, if only to keep from doing the dishes for some tough adelita. Meanwhile, guess how you’ll be treated as the mujer of a man who shows no balls?”
Bobbie blushed and flustered, “I wish you wouldn’t be so crude, Stuart. I’m not used to being spoken to that bluntly!”
He shrugged. “Facts are facts, and we’re going to have to face up to them unless you want to be treated crude as hell. By now Hernan should have heard I’ve claimed your fair white body. Don’t look so shocked. Somebody had to. A woman with no male escort is up for grabs among men of Villa’s class, and you wouldn’t be all that safe from old Diaz, himself.”
She said she understood why he’d had to fib about their, ah, relationship.
He washed that down with more rum and muttered, “Why me, Lord? I always thought Sir Galahad was sort of foolish about all those fair maids he got into sword fights over.” Then he told her, “In any event, Hernan is as likely to start passing remarks about you as my mother. Either way, I’m supposed to blow my top at him. This siesta gives us until three, four at the latest, before he can get at me. I can likely avoid a showdown the first time around. I don’t want you to show yourself outside at all. Everyone knows you’re pretty and I might be able to leave the party early by allowing I haven’t had all I want, yet.”
She gasped and demanded, “Stuart! Is that any way to talk to a lady?”
He said, “Forget you’re a lady. We’re two Anglos surrounded by a lot of people who’d rather say gringo. Should anyone be looking and you find my arm around your dainty waist, or up your skirts, for that matter, just grit your teeth and consider how much worse things will get if we act like we don’t like each other a lot.”
She started to cry. He put a reassuring arm around her shaking shoulders and soothed, “I know. It gets worse on the trail if we have to march on with this outfit. No way we can avoid sharing the same sleeping bag and I’m only human. So let’s study on how we can get away from here with your chastity intact. I haven’t seen any ponies since we took the site. If there’s so much as a burro, Villa gets to ride it. Might there be a railroad hand car around here anywhere, and would you know if there was one?”
She shook her head and tried, “There’s my bicycle in the store room, if some greaser hasn’t stolen it. I didn’t know when I brought it along that the roads around here were so dreadful.”
He laughed. Then he cocked an eyebrow and asked, “Just one?” to which she replied, “Of course. How many bicycles would I have brought out here to begin with?”
Before he could answer, there was a knock on the locked door and Villa’s voice called out, “Hey, Stringer. I’m sorry to spoil your fun, but I need you. Open up.”
“Si, si un momento,” Stringer answered in a sleepy voice as he sprang from the bed and proceeded to shuck off his jacket and pull his shirt tails out, whispering, “Under the covers! Now!”
When he just had to open the door, Villa was presented with the sight of Stringer putting his gun rig back on as, behind him, Bobbie demurely peered over the edge of the sheets at both of them with her long blond hair in romantic disarray. Villa smiled knowingly and told Stringer, “That telegrafo set in the office keeps clicking. I need you to tell me what the cabrones want.”
Stringer followed the chunky Mex the length of the veranda. Villa had been right about the telegraph set on the manager’s desk. Stringer sat down, found a pencil and a scrap of paper, and proceeded to decode the dots and dashes into block letters. He wasn’t too skilled at the craft to begin with and they were naturally sending in Spanish. When the message began to repeat he handed the paper across the desk to Villa. The “General” held it upside down as he scowled at it, saying, “You had better read it for me. I do not have my glasses on me right now.”
Stringer nodded and said, “They just want to know if anyone on the other side might still be here. They’re sending a troop train, with the cavalry mounts in box cars. They figure to hit between midnight and dawn. That leaves us eight or nine hours to make tracks, Pancho.”
Villa scowled and asked, “For why would Los Federales wish us to know this in advance? Is a most stupid way to launch an attack, no?”
Stringer suggested, “I don’t think the message was meant for us. They might not think anyone riding with you knows how to read. I told you those guys I brushed with looked Anglo. So they’re still missing, along with my blonde who used to be their company nurse. They have no way of knowing the company guards threw in with you. They may be hoping someone’s still holding out here and, if so, they don’t want them making any desperate moves with help on the way, right?”
Villa brightened and said, “That works. You say they got a train and horses on the way here? Bueno. Now I wish for you to send them a message for me.”
So Stringer did. He wrote it down and transcribed it in Morse before he sent it, lest they wonder about his hesitant hand on the key. Then he wired back that, as they’d hoped, a couple of company men and a handful of loyal guards were forted up in the headquarters building, surrounded by drunken savages.
The other side wired back that they should stay put and leave the rest up to Los Federales. Then they asked who they were talking to and Stringer decided that now would be a swell time for the rebels to cut the wire. So he told Villa, “We can’t push our luck any further. They’re getting nosy.” Then he disconnected one of the wires between the set and its battery and added, “You sure are hell on telegraph wires, Pancho.”
Villa laughed and said, “No matter. We have plenty of time to set up a nice ambush, no?”
Stringer frowned and replied, “There’s no such thing as a nice ambush, and we’re talking about a cavalry column, damn it!”
Villa nodded and said, “Bueno. I just said I could use the horses and extra guns. They think the company men still hold the compound. So they’ll expect to find my army in the bushes all around. When no bushes shoot at them, they should think we have run away. When they ride in to congratulate themselves, I will have them in a grand crossfire. We’d better build some camp fires further out. That will give us good light to shoot by while it makes them think they have driven us off.”
“Pancho, you don’t have the fire power. You don’t have the ponies you’ll need when they lick you, this time.”
But Villa just looked hurt and asked, “Who said anything about losing? I told you I needed a big win to get back my reputation. Once word gets out that I have beaten a whole army column and have my own train as well, all Chihuahua will rise up to follow me!”
Stringer didn’t argue. He got up to leave. “Screw that blonde all you like,” Villa told him, “but don’t get drunk. We got to start setting things up in five or six hours.”
Stringer agre
ed that sounded about right and left to get back to Bobbie. She was still under the covers. He locked the door again and told her, “There’s a military relief column on its way by rail. Villa thinks he can ambush it. I think he’s been smoking funny cigarettes. Either way, we can’t afford to be here when the shooting starts. Both sides tend to shoot at folk like us from force of habit. We’d better use your bike as soon as it gets dark.”
She asked how two people could ride one bicycle. He told her, “It won’t be easy, even with you riding the handlebars. The only route smooth enough to matter is that service road alongside the railroad tracks. It figures to be bumpy as hell, but
“What about that troop train coming the other way?” she cut in.
To which he could only answer, “Don’t be so optimistic. We figure to get shot by this side long before we have to worry about the other, right?”
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
La siesta ended way before dark. Stringer tried staying put in Bobbie’s room. But after someone had pounded on the door more than once to tell him they were missing supper, Stringer decided they were attracting more attention holed up than by just going along with the crowd. He told the American girl to stay put, explaining, “I’ll be able to get away sooner if I say I have to feed you in bed.”
She blushed again and asked, “Oh, whatever will they think of me?”
Stringer smiled and said, “Let’s hope they do. Most of them don’t know you on sight and your looks have probably improved in the telling. You don’t speak the lingo and if you did, the other adelitas would still want to start up with you. Natural brunettes are sort of jealous of blondes. Keep the door locked and if anyone yells through it at you, just keep saying ‘No comprendo’ ‘til they go away. If it’s important they’ll check with me. We want them to dismiss you as just a lovetoy I got first dibs on, see?”
