by Lou Cameron
The water was colder than he’d expected. But it was cleaner by far than sweat and monkey poop, so he swished about in it until the linen felt brisker when he rubbed it between thumb and forefingers. He knew that was as clean as he was going to get it. So he stripped his wet duds off and spread them on the grass.
It was more a wide, deeper stretch of stream than a pool, of course. But he could swim nearly fifty yards before he ran into mossy bottom. He did it twice, getting the kinks out. As he swam back toward his belongings the second time, he heard someone else splashing ahead of him. He stopped, got his feet on the slippery bottom, and stood shoulder-deep to demand, “¿Quien es?”
Anita called back, “It is I, Ricardo. You told me for to do this after I was fed, no?”
He moved closer. Even though she was upstream in shallower water, he couldn’t see more than her head and bare shoulders, not very well, in the filtered moonlight. So he said, “So I did. I’d forgotten. I’d say to come on in, the water’s fine, but I see you already have. Where did you leave your clothes?”
“By your own, on the bank. I rinsed them out, a little, pero I fear that they will not be dry by morning. I hope you have plenty of blankets, Ricardo.”
He blinked in surprise. Then he shrugged. So he was wrong. This was something to get upset about? The dame was gorgeous. He moved closer to claim his just desserts. Anita didn’t resist as he took her nude, wet body in his naked arms, but he detected a flinch and heard the way her breath caught. So while he wasn’t about to let go as he held her wet, naked breasts to his chest, he asked her, “Is something wrong, querida?”
She put her arms around his waist, under the water, but her voice seemed more resigned than lustful as she replied, “No. We live in changing times. A survivor must learn to adapt or die. Pero would you please not call me querida? I am willing to be your bedmate, pero it seems silly to be called pet names by a man I hardly know.”
He was glad the cold water was keeping reasonably limp what she was rubbing her lower belly against as he told her, “You don’t know me indeed, señora. Who said anything about you having to go to bed with anybody against your will?”
She lowered her wet face to his wet chest as she sighed and said, “The others told me that you made Consuela pay for your services in the only way a woman with nothing else to offer must. I confess that I would rather do so with you than either of the other men in the party. You are very kind as well as handsome and—”
“And you’re trying to lay all the guilt on me,” he cut in, adding, “I’ve had this dumb conversation before. It’s starting to steam me. Where is it engraved on stone that men have all the fun and you dames are just suffering victims?”
She stiffened in his arms and rubbed her lower body against his in an apparent attempt to soothe him as she pleaded, “Oh, please do not be angry with me, Ricardo. I feel so helpless with no man of my own now, to protect me!”
It didn’t soothe him at all. His shaft was rising despite the cold water. She felt it and stood on her toes to hook her wet crotch over it and teasingly slide her cold lips back and forth atop it as she said, “I know we shall soon have to part. I know this is simply the way of attractive strangers thrown together by chance, pero—”
“You talk too much,” he cut in, reaching down to cup her naked behind with a hand on each cheek as, without being told, she raised her knees and fell back to float her upper body as he entered her right. It felt hot inside her. She giggled and said, “Oh, you feel so cold inside me.” Then they damned near drowned themselves before they managed to come together in such interesting surroundings.
He knew there had to be a better way. So as she clung to him with arms and legs, he carried her over to the bank and they did it again with their upper bodies on the grass and their lower bodies splashing like salmon spawning in the shallows. By the time he’d made her come twice, she said it was okay to call her querida. Though used as a term for a lover, it translated, literally, as the one who was wanted, and she wanted more too.
So they circled camp with their wet things and dried off with a blanket before getting into his bedroll to warm up. Anita said she liked it that way even better. But, of course, she cried after he’d made her come again and reached for a smoke. He didn’t ask why. Girls who’d been raised strictly tended to do that a lot once they found out how hard it was to follow Mother’s advice.
He assured her that he still respected her and started to light a claro to share with her. But he didn’t. He spotted another light, up the slope, where no light had any right to be!
He placed a warning finger to her lips and whispered, “We have company. It looks like that same wandering glow I saw last night.”
Anita rolled over and raised her head. As they both watched the same faint glow wink on and off between distant tree trunks, she gasped and whispered, “¡El Duende! Pero how could this be? We are not superstitious campesines. So why should we be seeing ghosts?”
He whispered, “I don’t believe in ghosts, and if you see it, too, it can’t be my imagination. Stay here. I’d better leave you my pistol. Do you know how to use one?”
“Si, pero where do you think you are going, Ricardo?”
“After it, of course, as soon as I can get my pants and boots on.”
As he did so, Anita protested, “No, don’t follow it, Ricardo. The old ones say that is just what El Duende wishes. Let it go. See? It is already drifting away!”
He growled, “Not good enough,” as he rolled out with his boots on and the carbine in his hand. He warned her, “Don’t shoot at anyone whistling ‘La Paloma.’ That’ll be me. Anything else coming at you from upslope is fair game.”
He moved sideways out of the amalgo, carbine at port, and headed uphill, silent as a cat, across damp forest duff. He lost sight of El Duende, if that was who it was, but kept going until he spotted the light farther off than it should have been. The son of a bitch was moving pretty good for a sneak with a lantern. How could anyone run through the forest at night without making a sound?
Captain Gringo didn’t try. He ignored the occasional crunch he made or the branch he whipped through as he broke into a long-legged double time in the dark. He cursed as he tripped over an invisible log and almost fell. But he kept going. He had to keep going, fast, if he meant to catch up with that light, and he meant to.
It still seemed to be leaving him behind. Then it stopped, teasingly, near what looked like the top of a rise. As Captain Gringo closed the distance he saw that it seemed to be stationary between two closely spaced trees forming a sort of V against the night sky beyond.
He ran toward the glow, calling out, “I’d like a word with you, amigo!” and then broke stride and froze in place, the hairs on the back of his neck a-tingle as he realized that he saw the light, the sky behind it, and nothing else between those inky black tree trunks.
He growled, “Okay, you want to be invisible too? Let’s see what a .44-40 slug does to you!”
But even as he raised the carbine to sight on the now fainter glow, it faded out like the grin of the Cheshire cat. He kept the muzzle trained that way as he gingerly moved nearer. When he got to the fork, he was sincerely glad that he’d moved in slow. There was nothing on the far side but air, all the way down to the valley below. The trees sprang from the rimrock of a sheer three-hundred-foot cliff!
He braced himself against the rough bark and ignored the tingle in his balls as he stared down at the basalt rock below. There was no way anyone could be climbing down it. The filtered moonlight wasn’t that dim. So how had El Duende done it?
Captain Gringo didn’t know. Nobody around here seemed willing to explain. So he headed back, every hair on his head tingling. He began to wonder about that after a while. Sure, he’d just had the shit scared out of him, and it still hurt to think about what would have happened if he hadn’t been paying proper attention to where he was going. But he was used to being scared. By now his hair should have settled down again.
He alm
ost got another scare when Anita called out, “¿Quien es?” and cocked the .38 he’d left her. He yelled, “It’s me. I forgot to whistle. I’m not sure I could right now.”
He rejoined her in their peppery love nest but kept his pants on as he told her what had just happened. She gasped and said, “It is just as the legends say, Ricardo! El Duende tried for to lure you to destruction!”
He reached in his hip pocket and took out a hard rubber comb as he replied, “That’s what it looked like. But let’s try it another way. Run this comb through your long hair, fast as you can.”
She took the comb but asked why, even as she began to comb briskly. He said, “You’re sure shooting sparks tonight.”
She said, “Si, I can hear the crackle. I do not understand it. It feels too damp tonight for the air to be so charged with electricity.”
He nodded and said, “What can I tell you? El Duende and Jack-O’-Lantern are unusual too. We’re at high altitude with the trade winds rubbing their bellies just above us. There’s a lot of static electricity in the air, and I’m not sure I understand what old Tom Edison is doing up in New Jersey right now with regular electricity. The dampness may have something to do with it. The Irish see Jack-O’-Lantern a lot when the sea winds blow constant over freshwater bogs, and they can’t all be drunk. I think it’s some natural whatever, like Saint Elmo’s fire. If I’m right, El Duende is neither a prowler with a lantern nor a ghost. He’s just something that happens when the air is funny, see?”
“Pero Ricardo, El Duende tried to lead you off a cliff, and what about all the others he has led to destruction in the dark?”
“It’s the dark, not the ball lighting or whatever,” Captain Gringo answered, going on to explain, “Peasants all over the world are right when they say that those mysterious night lights won’t hurt you if you just ignore them. But it’s just not safe to run all over the place in the dark when there are bog, cliffs, and poison snakes to run into while you’re looking at something else in the distance. We never hear about jerks who just chase the will-o’-the-wisp and give up once they lose sight of it. What kind of a legend would that make?”
“Si, pero that one did try to lead you off a cliff, Ricardo.”
He shook his head and said, “No it didn’t. It simply drifted with the wind till it ran into an updraft at the edge of a cliff and hung there till it lost its charge or whatever. The air coming up from below was wetter, drier, or something. But you have a good point. Tricky air currents caused by cliffs, bogs, or other sudden changes in the surface could account for a lot of tales of treachery. Let’s not worry about it now that we know that El Duende is just part of the local scenery. Where were we before I had to put my pants on in such a hurry?”
Since El Duende was never seen by daylight, the next day went uneventfully, though the grade got steeper and the overcast was now so close to the ground, it looked as if one could reach up and grab a handful of cloud.
By sunset nobody had to reach up. It sure looked funny to see a fluffy ball of cloud rolling across the ground at you like a big gray tumbleweed. Jesus explained that the tricky wind currents in the sierra ahead made some clouds act like that. They had to take his word that the main ridge was ahead in that direction. A constant roll of cloud broke over it, like a constantly breaking wave, mostly to evaporate above the drier earth and vegetation of the western slope.
As the sun began to sink behind them, the wall of cloud cover ahead turned to pink cotton candy. Jesus said it would be dark, very dark, before they could make El Paso Ruido. They didn’t even know where it was, so they took his word for it. The tree cover around them was now stunted and twisted, shortchanged by the prevailing winds on moisture but tortured a lot by tricky back drafts from the sun-baked slopes below. Captain Gringo found a thick, low growth of juniper to make camp in and told Jesus and the girls not to build a fire before dark. The juniper would hide camp-fire glow, but the slanting rays of the sun would make rising smoke visible for miles.
As he headed on up slope with his carbine Gaston fell in beside him to ask where they were going. He said, “You can stay here and play slap-and-tickle with Concepcion if you like. We won’t be pushing over the pass in the dark. But I’d like to scout it some before we try, come morning.”
Gaston shifted the carbine in his own hand and said, “Eh bien, my ancient pecker could use the rest. Mais how are we to find the pass without ’Sus, even by daylight? By the way, we seem to be running out of that très rapidly, in case you have not noticed.”
Captain Gringo said, “That was the general idea. It’s a bitch to ambush people in the dark. ’Sus says the pass isn’t on most maps because you can’t see it until you’re in it. The Spanish never bothered much with these mountains because it’s so much easier to cross the country via the Great Rift to the southeast. We’re to look for a break in that rolling wall of cloud ahead where the stuff squirts through closer to the ground and listen for the sound of howling wolves as we follow the jet upstream, see?”
“I had to ask. The thrice-accursed clouds ahead are turning très purple now, and they must be at least a mile away!”
“More like three. Distances are tricky in mountain country. You don’t have to tag along if you don’t want to, Gaston.”
“Merde alors, I don’t want to but I shall. You get in too much trouble by yourself and ... Regardez, over that way to our left!”
Captain Gringo spotted the distant antlike figure making its way up the same slope on the far side of a wide, shallow ravine and said, “Yeah, it’s one guy, riding a mule in an obvious hurry. Hold still. There’s no handy cover, but if he hasn’t spotted us, we might be able to pass for a couple stumps.”
They couldn’t. The distant rider changed course to head their way. As he crossed the dip in the general slope he waved to them. Captain Gringo said, “Well, so much for camouflage. At least he seems friendly. But cover him, anyway.”
Gaston snorted. “Merde alors, tell me what day of the week it is. He’s dressed charro. Bandito?”
“He hasn’t acted like one so far. Let’s move to join him and get it over with.”
They did. They’d just recognized the mysterious stranger as Lopez when he reined in and called out, “Thank God I caught up in time! Hakim’s set you up!”
Captain Gringo asked what else was new and where the gun slick’s accent had gone. Lopez said, “I’m with British Intelligence. They planted me in Hakim’s organization when they found out that he was mixed up in that recent power play down in El Salvador. I just had to give away my cover. So I was free to ride after you and warn you.”
“Warn us about what? Last time we looked, Hakim hired us to head this way. Who’s left?”
Lopez dismounted to rest his jaded mount as he explained, “He hired you to use as dupes. He had me hire others to set up an ambush in the pass you seem to be headed for. So don’t ask me how I know that you were about to walk into a death trap.”
Captain Gringo didn’t. He asked, “Why the hell would Hakim want to do that? If he wanted us dead, he could have killed us in San Salvador, or at least tried. So why should he go to so much bother?”
Lopez said, “Window dressing. To show good faith to his business associates. They don’t want Crawford to get through with those arms. Hakim obviously does. So he sent you to try and, naturally, fail. See?”
Gaston shook his head and said, “Mais non. I have worked for the species of two-faced bastard before, alas. So I can tell you that he does not give one shitting about the desires of business associates. If he told you that, he was no doubt trying to confuse you about his real motives.”
Lopez frowned and said, “We know Hakim lies just for practice. But he surely has some motive. Lying to stockholders makes more sense than anything else I can think of.”
Gaston insisted. “Try harder, then. Woodbine Arms is not a public company. Hakim owns all the stock himself. He has no stockholders to fib to or even fuck.”
Lopez shot a bewildered look at the
setting sun and said, insisting, “Whatever his real reasons, I know for a fact about the ambush. He knew you’d take this general route and choose El Paso Ruido because it’s the only logical way for Crawford to come over the sierra with those guns. I know he told you to tell Crawford to turn back. But I know, because I posted them there, that four killers are dug in behind a Maxim machine gun in the pass to prevent you from ever contacting that other party!”
Captain Gringo frowned and said, “That’s stupid. If he already knew the way Crawford was coming and could get guys there ahead of us, there was no point at all in asking us to … Do you know just where El Paso Ruido is, Lopez?”
The British agent pointed straight up the ravine they were near and said, “That’s it. They’re set up in the constant fog so anyone coming in from the sunny side will be outlined in their sights.”
Captain Gringo grimaced and said, “I forgot to tell you how lovely you look this evening. You did get here just in time. I guess we’d better wait until dark before we go on up.”
Lopez said, “You can’t be serious. If you think I can call it off for you, forget it. Hakim’s on to me. So even though they know me, they might not remember me fondly at this late date.”
Captain Gringo moved over to a big flat boulder and sat down as he said, “Tie your mule near that grassy patch over there. Once the sun’s down, the light will be with us. The moon will be rising behind them, right?”
Gaston sat on the same boulder and lit a cigar. But Lopez told them, “You’re both utterly mad. Aside from it being at least semi-suicidal, what point is there, now, in pushing on? I just told you that it was all some Byzantine ploy of that perishing old Turk or whatever.”