by Lou Cameron
As he stood up with a hatful of salad, he saw Gaston to the north. He waited. The Frenchman joined him to announce, “Nothing too interesting. The trail we left leads across the valley from wall to wall. I saw nothing like a trail running farther up. There is no sign of grazing. Too many quail to indicate that anyone has been through here too often avec a gun. I was going to try for some quail, mais in this light, with solid ball ammunition—”
“Don’t mention quail to the quiff,” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “They’re going to bitch about short rations as it is.”
He was right. They didn’t like it at all as darkness fell to find them sipping weak black coffee and nibbling insipid cactus pads. He told them they were free to ask for second helpings. But there were no takers. Prickly pear or, as they called it, nopal, was okay for a salad course but didn’t qualify as a square meal.
It was probably no later than five-thirty or six when Captain Gringo hauled his bedroll up the slope to spread in the sand by the machine gun. He hadn’t been intending to turn in for the night, until Anita joined him there. She sat on the bedding and proceeded to strip, saying, “We do not seem to be in the fog tonight after all. But I still wish for to be sheltered from the cold, Ricardo.”
He laughed, cast a look down the slope to see that, sure enough, they were secluded enough to do it on top of the covers, and hung his own stuff on surrounding cactus spines to see how warm they could get.
They got warm indeed. Anita said doggie-style was a new one on her, but she was willing to try anything that didn’t hurt. So he was on his knees behind her, humping her good, when something shiny caught the corner of his eye and he looked that way, still fornicating, to mutter, “Oh, shit, not again.”
Anita, her face pressed to the bed clothes, asked in a muffled voice what was wrong, adding, “I told you I was not sure how one did it this way, Ricardo.”
He said, “It’s not you. It’s our old amigo, El Duende, again.”
She tried to raise her head, saying, “Let me see.” But he held her firmly by the hipbones and replied, “Now now, for God’s sake. I’m almost there, and the spook light’s way the hell down the valley, not doing a thing for me.”
She giggled and arched her spine to take him deeper. He felt her contracting in orgasm and let himself go in her. As they fell together across the bedroll she asked if the spook was still there. He sat up, groping for a smoke while he was at it, and said, “Yeah. It seems to be bobbing along the edge of that cliff down that way. It must be some funny charge set up by the updraft over there. Son of a bitch if it doesn’t look like a jerk pacing back and forth with a lantern. But now that I know it can’t be, I don’t think I’ll chase him off any more cliffs.”
She said, “Bueno. Let me get on top so I can see it too.”
He did, although from the way she bounced, Anita wasn’t really as excited about El Duende as she was about his dong. She said it was still there as they both got there some more, and then they forgot the dumb electrical phenomenon to settle down for some phenomenal fornication. But she’d had a rough day, and he wasn’t feeling as athletic as he might have under other circumstances. So when she started to softly snore while he was in her, he just finished, gently, and rolled off to see about that smoke.
He’d about finished his claro and was about to see if he could catch some shut-eye as well when he heard a distant noise. He sat up again and cocked his head. It sounded like women in the distance, yelling at each other. The only women he knew of around here were down the other way, and as the voices got closer, he knew that whatever they were bitching in, it was neither English nor Spanish. He whistled like a bird. It was a signal that he, the Apache, and Gaston knew well. Then he hauled on his pants and boots, picked up the carbine, and rose to his feet. Anita didn’t wake up. Gaston came up to join them, muttering, “This is a fine time to play cowboys and Indians, you species of mescalero. Is there any reason for all this noise, or do you simply disapprove of oral sex?”
Captain Gringo said, “You can eat her later. Cover me while I check out some other dames. They chirp like Indians too.”
Gaston had picked up on the distant voices too. He dropped to his knees by the Maxim as Captain Gringo picked up his carbine to head down the far slope. As he vanished into the darkness Anita reached out languidly to see if the man she’d gone to bed with was in the mood for more. She grabbed Gaston’s thigh, opened her eyes with a puzzled frown, and asked, “For why do you have your pants back on and ... oh, who are you?”
Gaston whispered, “Kindly remove your hand and shut your adorable lips before we both get in trouble, cherie. Dick is off hunting Indians. Let us make them guess where we are, hein?”
She sat up, covering her breasts with her hands, and gasped, “Oh, you must have seen me naked!”
Gaston groaned and said, “I am not concerned at the moment about such mundane novelties, I assure you. Be still. I mean it.”
Out near the trail Captain Gringo was having his own problems with confused women. There were three of them. An older one and two younger ones. All three were dressed in the same striped skirts. All three hoisted their skirts high to expose their privates as they spotted him in the dim light, carbine held at port. The older one wailed in Spanish, “Do not kill us, Señor Bandito! As you see, we are only helpless women! We have no money. Only our bodies. You are most welcome to our virtue if you will but spare our lives!”
He said, “Take it easy, I’m not a bandit.”
One of the younger ones flopped to the ground on her back, legs spread as she offered her all up at him, sobbing, “Kill the others if you must. But spare me. Spare me and I will do anything!”
He had to laugh. That scared the others into rolling around at his feet, offering to do all sorts of interesting things to him or, if need be, his horse.
He said, “Cut that out. I don’t have a horse. I’m not going to hurt you. I just wanted to know what the three of you are doing out here, see?”
The older one sat up, her bare ass in the dust, to demand, “Es verdad, you are not with El Condor?”
“Do I look like a big bird? I’ve never even seen El Condor, or any other bandits, up here in this cloud forest, señora.”
She crossed herself and said, “You soon will, if you stay here. For he is right behind us. We thought you had ridden ahead for to cut us off.”
He moved over to help all three to their feet as he explained the situation and added, “Let’s all go to my camp. You can explain what’s going on over coffee.”
The older one sobbed. “There is not time. There is nothing to explain. El Condor just raided our village. We have been running for our lives since. We must keep running. They are brutes. Even when a woman gives herself, they kill her, just for to hear her scream.”
“I heard El Condor was a great guy. But before you go anywhere, I still want some answers. How far up the valley was your village?”
“Fifteen, maybe twenty kilometers, señor. We have been running forever, it would seem. The raiders hit us just as darkness was falling. Only the three of us escaped, I think.”
He shook his head and said, “If you’ve been running since it got dark, you haven’t run that far, and nobody atop a horse could be serious about catching you, see?”
“Pero no, we ran most fast, and El Condor always tracks down the survivors. He is most serious about such matters. He simply takes his time. They will no doubt wish for to drink and rape a bit before they fan out searching for anything they might have missed. Let us go so by the time they get here we can be out of the valley, see?”
“One more question. Where do you think you’re going? Where does this trail lead?”
She said, “Over the hills, through the clouds, to the mission run by kind Cristianos. We are not Cristiano, pero they will not let us be killed, we hope.”
He nodded and said, “You’d be even safer with us, if only you’d wait up a bit. We’re trying to find the same mission, and we have guns.”
&
nbsp; One of the Indian girls was already moving along the trail. The older one replied, “So does El Condor. We dare not stay another momento. If you have any sense, you will not be here when El Condor comes, either!”
Then all three of them were running off as if the devil were right behind them. It was possible that they were right. Captain Gringo turned to run back to camp. As he approached he called out, “Everybody up! Gaston, help me break camp, on the double. I know where the mission is now, and this ain’t such a hot campsite, either!”
It still took them a good twenty minutes or so to make it back to the trail. As they reached it Captain Gringo heard distant singing and spotted a glow on the horizon to the northeast. He didn’t think it was El Duende. He turned to Gaston and said, ‘Okay, you know the way. I’ll cover you with the Maxim.”
“One man against a whole band avec little cover and only one escape route, Dick?”
“Get going. The passage out of this valley will be the first thing they make for. I’ll keep them away from it as long as I can. Then I’ll fall back.”
Gaston started to argue. Then he called out, “Let us be on our way, children. Good hunting, Dick.”
Captain Gringo slung the carbine, picked up the Maxim, and let the others fade out of sight before he, too, followed the trail a ways. He didn’t go all the way to the exit. He didn’t want anyone else to. He hunkered down behind a yucca-covered hillock and armed the heavy machine gun. As long as he had time, he started linking extra belts to the one already feeding the action. He only had five all together, damn it. He coiled the linked belt of death around his left forearm to keep the longer end out of the sand. This was no time to risk sand in the effing action.
A million years went by. He could see more lights now, small and red. Some riders were smoking as they approached. From the way the glimmers were spread out, they were spread mighty thin, or there was one hell of a lot of them.
Someone called out, “The pass to the mission trail has to be just ahead, Jefe.”
A colder voice called back, “It had better be. Are you sure you have ridden this way before, cabron?”
“Si, pero it was a while back. I told you that even the chickens were ugly in that last village. I’ll ride ahead. It is difficult to find in the dark, El Condor.”
Captain Gringo didn’t want them to find it at all. He rose and moved sideways toward the center of the valley as he called out, “That’s far enough, muchachos. I don’t know who you are. I don’t care who you are. But you are on my range.”
There was a long moment of stunned silence. Then a sinister voice called out, “Hey, where are you, Ranchero Grande? Come closer so we can see you, eh?”
Captain Gringo called back, “You don’t want to see me. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll turn and ride home to your mother. The poor thing hasn’t had a good fuck since you and the pig ran away.”
That did it. El Condor bellowed, “¡Mataros!” and from all the hoofbeats coming his way at once, Captain Gringo knew that it was one hell of a gang.
He gritted his teeth, braced the Maxim on his hip, and opened up full automatic, hosing blindly. He couldn’t see what he was doing, but he could hear men and horses screaming as they thudded down. So he knew that he was doing something right.
Before they could do something right, he ceased fire and crabbed sideways to flop behind more yucca. Sure enough, gun muzzles flashed in the darkness, and the last place he’d been got shot to shit.
The firing began to die away, and El Condor, blast his luck, yelled, “Stop wasting ammunition, damn it. He’s either down or somewhere else by this time. Pedro, go forward and have a look.”
“Pero Jefe, that was a machine gun, no?”
“Do as I say lest you discover what this Winchester can do, you cowardly cabron.”
Captain Gringo trained the sights he couldn’t see on the sound of a voice he wasn’t sure of. But he held his fire. The longer they played cat and mouse with him, the farther Gaston could get the girls. He knew he couldn’t nail enough of them to matter in nearly total darkness.
The one called Pedro finally called back, “Hey, there is a lot of spent brass over here but no sign of the cabron.”
Captain Gringo called out, pleasantly, “Just trying to give you a break, Pedro. Your leader is the one I want, but he’s too worried about his ass. Hey, El Condor, why are you so worried about your ass? Are you saving it for a lover?”
That got them moving his way again. He fired a withering blast into them, had the satisfaction of hearing another couple of riders go down, gut shot from the way they carried on, but then it was time to crab back the other way and let them charge through the place he’d just been.
He had them on the flank now but held his fire and kept his mouth shut. He was in line with the route Gaston had taken out of the valley. He didn’t want them headed that way. He moved on down the valley, closer to the northeast wall. He heard El Condor call out, “This isn’t working, muchachos. Spread out, we shall form a skirmish line from wall to wall and simply sweep him into a corner. Gomez? How far down does this flat extend?”
There was no answer. Someone else called, “Gomez is down, Jefe. I mean no disrespect, pero a lot of us are down, and that cabron still has a fucking machine gun!”
But El Condor seemed made of sterner stuff, as he had every right to be if he had enough men to form a mile-wide skirmish line. He yelled, “Fuck him as well as his mother! I spit in the teeth of his Yanqui toy. He is one. We are many. Are we not men?”
Captain Gringo called out, “You’re not men. You’re not even boys. If any of you had cocks, you’d be home in bed with your mothers and sisters where you belong!”
That got them to charge a blank cliff. But from the way they went at it he could see that whatever El Condor was, he was no sissy. Nuts would probably be the word for him.
By this time the cat-and-mouse game had Captain Gringo far down the valley they’d abandoned just in time. Remembering the rise, he moved that way. He found it despite the darkness. He could still smell wood smoke. He glanced back and made sure the fire was really out. This was no time to be outlined on a rise. This was no time, in fact, to be boxed like this at all. He knew he couldn’t move much farther back, thanks to that cliff, and if they just settled down to wait until morning, there was no cover worth a damn on this side of it.
He didn’t want them to start thinking clearly. If he could keep El Condor pissed, he might be able to keep him from seeing the obvious. A good burst of fire from up here ought to shake them up. But then what?
He glanced back the way he’d been running, a short time ago. That same funny, static glow was still winking at him, for God’s sake. He knew it wasn’t going to drift either way from the updrafts that seemed to create it out of confused mountain air. So there was no way El Duende could be used to scare other spooky guys.
Or was there? He had to so something, and he was running out of ammo as well as ideas. He moved through the cactus to where he and Anita had been making love. He hunkered down, found some grass they’d found useful for other purposes, and twisted it into a knot. He lit one end of the improvised torch and waved it wildly above his head, shouting, “Hey, El Condor, you couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn if you were inside it!”
Then he hit the dirt, dousing the light, and rolled as far into the prickly pear as he could get. The spines weren’t so bad, close to the ground. But he still got punctured pretty good. He could only hope, as galloping hoofbeats came his way, that the horses might not want to be punctured at all.
They didn’t. As he’d hoped, the horses actually topping the rise had better night vision than their riders and swerved to either side to miss the cactus. Few experienced night riders argued with their mounts, charging in the dark, and the brush of nopal spines on one’s knee was enough to shut up anyone about to. As the skirmish line swept past he heard El Condor shout, “There he is! He must be mounted, too, and riding like the wind! After him! Don’t let him get a
way before he drops that light!”
Captain Gringo grinned down at his Maxim and said, “I don’t believe this! It’s working!”
Many of the bandits probably couldn’t believe what was happening, either, as they chased what they thought was Captain Gringo’s taunting lantern off a sixty-foot cliff. They hit the edge riding abreast, and before someone could shout, “¡Pero no!” three-quarters of the gang, including its leader, were falling ass-over-teakettle into the darkness below as the indifferent ghostly glow of El Duende bobbed in the air currents stirred up by their charge of death.
Captain Gringo got back to his feet with the Maxim braced as the survivors rode madly back his way, sobbing about ghosts and begging the saints to forgive them. He didn’t want them digging in. He waited until the sound of shouts and hoofbeats drew abreast of his rise and raked them with a withering blast of automatic fire, spilling more riders and causing someone to shout, desperately, “¡No mas! ¡No mas! For the love of God, we’ve had enough!”
He fired at the sound. A horse screamed and went down. The others kept going, as fast as they were able, until the sound of their pounding hooves faded off up the valley. Captain Gringo patted the hot action of his overworked Maxim and told it, “That’s it, old pard. Let’s get the hell out of here before some wiseass figures out what just happened.”
It wasn’t that simple. He was tempted more than once to leave the Maxim behind as he groped his way along the winding trail after Gaston and the others. He was down to one belt. It made almost as much sense to strip it and keep the rounds for his carbine.
Almost but not quite. If and when the remaining bandits screwed their balls back on, it would be no great mystery where he’d gone. He knew that there was always room at the top in bandit circles. Everyone wanted to be a chief, and nobody wanted to be an Indian. If he’d left more than a dozen alive, the law of averages said some punk would want to prove that he was a natural leader by sending some other guys on ahead.