by Lou Cameron
“You know Goddamn well what’s up under that skirt,” he warned himself, adding a mental note to behave. The rebel band had accepted him as a natural leader, but he knew at least some of the other men had noticed this kid’s ass by now and Spanish-speaking guys took their jealousy more than seriously. They tended to go nuts when another guy aced them out.
Diablilla suddenly vanished like the imp she was named after, as if she’d read his mind and wanted no part in his sexual fantasies. He blinked and muttered, “What the hell?” as he heard her laughing somewhere.
He hopped from boulder to boulder and then stopped short, grinning in surprise as he saw the girl again. She was down in a hollow the size and shape of an old Greek theater. His first thought was that some freak natural event had formed the crater. Then he saw the stone steps she’d scampered down and that the ground around the little pool she stood beside was paved with cobblestones. There were fluted mossy stone channel ways leading up and down slope from the circular pool. As he moved down to join her, he spotted the foundations of what looked like housing around the evenly sloping banks of the depression. He nodded down at her and said, “Somebody went to a hell of a lot of work here.”
She sighed and said, “I know, but they had a lot of time. This place could have started as a natural low stretch where one could get to the running water from the surface. The Quechuas stationed here to aid passing packers and messengers on the road below must have simply started moving rocks, one at a time, until this was the result.”
She pointed at a wall nearby arid added sadly, “They never finished. Quechua ruins don’t fall down once they have been built for the ages. This way station was abandoned about the time of the Spanish Conquest. I doubt if anyone has ever been here since.”
“It sure offers a great campsite, Diablilla. But how come you know so much about Indians? You sure don’t look Indian, meaning no disrespect.”
She smiled bitterly and replied, “My late father liked to say he was descended from El Aquilar, a noted Spanish general who in turn claimed second cousinhood to the Inca himself. But you are right, I am a blanca, or so I considered myself until they, classified everyone who did not agree with the government as an animal to be exterminated. Despite his dramatics, my father was a university professor before he took up politics. He was a noted anthropologist. As a child I accompanied him and my late mother on field trips. I probably know more about the native cultures in these parts than the sadly abused natives. They make such terrible Spanish peasants and, of course, one can hardly consider them Indians anymore.”
Captain Gringo saw she was sort of cut up inside and resisted the impulse to console her by putting a hand on her shoulder. He didn’t know how she’d take it. The sky above them was purple and the hollow was filled with a soft romantic light from the glowing peaks around them. He broke the spell by saying, “Why don’t you look around for some firewood here? I’ll go get the others,” and she looked disappointed when she agreed.
Chapter Twelve
The sun was setting in Bogotá, too, when the telephone on Colonel Maldonado’s desk rang. El Arano picked up the receiver to answer. It was his superior, General Reyes, and the President for Life did not sound happy as he asked, “All bullshit aside, Maldonado, what in God’s name are you up to?”
“I am serving yourself and Colombia to the best of my limited powers, my General.”
“Hey, don’t fence around with me, muchacho! I’ve been getting reports all day about that crazy Captain Gringo and his little French partner. Do you know what the bastards have done now?”
“Si my General. I, too, have been keeping tabs on their somewhat over dramatic escape to the southeast. At the moment, hopefully, they are crossing the Orientes with the machine gun and a band of dangerous outlaws we are well rid of.”
“So I hear. You know I generally give you a pretty free hand, Maldonado, but this time your web spinning is making me very nervous. First you lure those maniacs back up here after I thought we’d seen the last of them. Then you as much as hand them guns and followers, and every time some of our guys start to close in, you countermand the orders. Damnit, muchacho, they’ve killed a mess of our followers and wrecked an expensive automobile and—”
“The few deaths were unfortunate,” El Arano cut in. “But, as someone said on another desperate occasion, to make an omelet, one may have to break an occasional egg. We would have lost far more than a dozen people in a border war with our Brazilian neighbors, no?”
“Border war? With Brazil? What in the devil are you talking about? We just wrapped up a fucking revolution! I’m in no shape to have a war with Brazil or anybody else, goddamnit!”
“I am aware of that, my General. So are the goddamned cocky Brazilians. You are aware, of course, that our eastern jungle frontiers have been invaded by Brazilian adventurers?”
The general hesitated before he replied. “I’ve heard the complaints from over there beyond the mountains. I’ve passed them on to the Brazilian Embassy. They claim they’re as shocked as we are and that they have no control over their rubber barons.”
El Arano smiled thinly and said, “I know what they say. They are still shipping rubber stolen from Colombian trees out of Manaus. Our jungle outposts are still getting hit by desperate Indians who can’t tell one of us from a slave-raiding flagelado. I, too, have mentioned the matter to my opposite Brazilian number. He literally smirked as he told me there was little he could do about the situation. You are aware, of course, that the Brazilian army has been sharing in the rubber boom via a certain amount of rather open bribery?”
General Reyes growled and said, “If it’s that serious, I can authorize a military sweep of the jungles on our side of the border, Colonel. How big an operation would it take to clean the pests down there out?”
El Arano said, “It would probably cost us many men in snakebite and Indian arrows alone. It would also get us into a war with Brazil at a rather awkward time. That is why I have sent in Captain Gringo.”
There was a long, stunned silence. Then General Reyes said, “Wait a minute. Are you telling me that that crazy Americano has gone to work for us?”
The crafty Maldonado chuckled dryly and answered, “You might say that, although he doesn’t know it. We have gotten his services at a bargain, my General. He and the Frenchman usually ask at least a thousand U.S. dollars a month for such services and, of course, we are paying nothing for the platoon of guerrillas I managed to supply him with, either.
“They should be hitting the rubber country in a few days now. I am looking forward to my next conversation with that smug military attaché from the Brazilian Embassy. I intend to listen with grave respect as he tells me his tale of woe. Then, of course, I am going to look the son of a bitch straight in the eye as I explain, alas, that there is nothing I can do about it. After all, if Brazil is not able to control her bandits, how can Colombia be expected to control her own, eh?”
General Reyes sounded somewhat relieved but still dubious as he asked, “How do you know this Captain Gringo will tangle with the flagelados? What if he joins them?”
El Arafio said, “An outsider would have more chance joining the headhunting Jivaro. The Indians are just savages. Los Flagelados and the rubber barons they work for are totally dedicated bastards! Trust me, my General. I know this Captain Gringo and the crazy little Legion deserter he runs with. They are hard and desperate men. But I have found them to be decent enough enemies in the past. The kids I allowed to escape with them are from the old Blue Brigade. Another band of rather quixotic types I was not, alas, able to recruit for our side. Altogether, I feel I have handed Brazil a problem we are well rid of, and the bastards had it coming.”
Mollified for the moment, General Reyes said, “Well, I would rather the Brazilians killed our unruly idealists than us. It is hard to convince the world of my sincere desire for peace and stability if I have to keep putting people against the wall. I suppose they’ll cause some grief to the other side, but
are you sure it will be enough, Colonel?”
El Arano said, “Captain Gringo has been more than enough everywhere he’s been so far. He doesn’t have to wipe out every trespasser inside our border. I doubt very much that he’d be able to. But I have high hopes for him making enough noise to discourage further invasions for a time. After all, they have more than enough rubber growing on the other side of the border, and they may find it less noisy to search for it in their own backyard.”
“I’m beginning to like this Captain Gringo, after all. Have you done anything to, uh, encourage trouble with the rubber barons?”
“No, my General. Once our own domesticated guerrillas make it over the mountains they will be on a mission of vengeance on their own. One may say I have rather skillfully herded a wild bull into the china shop and what happens from now on should be most interesting.”
“Yes, but what if they kill our bull? Those rubber barons and their flagelados are supposed to be tough, too.”
Maldonado shrugged and answered, “That will be unfortunate, my General, but what the hell, we got our bull cheap, and we certainly don’t want him, alive or dead, in our china shop!”
Chapter Thirteen
The hollow in the rocks was a literal life-saver. By the time the Andean sky had turned to star-spangled India ink the temperature had plummeted a good sixty degrees. But the thinly clad fugitives were out of the wind around the long-lost Inca oases and knew enough to build a circle of small campfires close to the rock walls instead of one or two big ones where you could roast one side of you and freeze the other. They were above timberline, but the woody roots of alpine brush and the torn-out turf of the thickly matted grass all around offered a smoky slow-burning fuel. As Captain Gringo looked back down from the stone steps he’d climbed, the hollow sort of resembled a corner of Hell with the rising smoke plumes illuminated blood-red from below. He knew nobody more than a mile away could see the glow from their pit, so what the hell. They’d be at a warmer altitude this time tomorrow night.
As he legged it across the rocks to relieve Gaston he heard a Christ-awful bleating somewhere in the night. He called out to Gaston and when the Frenchman rose from the lee of the boulder he’d been sheltering behind, the American asked him, “What’s that noise out there?”
Gaston laughed and said, “It’s our lovesick llama. She can’t reach us over the rocks and the four others we tethered out there to graze can offer her no consolation for her condition. It was your cruel idea to choose four other females!”
“Jesus, she sounds like she’s dying. I wonder how far that sound carries?”
The llama called again. It sounded like the bray of a donkey mixed with the bleating of a sheep and the squeal of a pig caught under a fence. Gaston said, “At least as far as a Swiss can yodel, and they yodel from one Alp to another. I have never understood why. Are you expecting company, Dick?”
“I hope not. But we are just off a trail and this is no time to shout about it!”
“Eh bien, in that case we have two choices. We shall either have to shoot the foolish creature or put her out of her misery.”
“Aren’t you being redundant?”
“Mais non, shooting her would put her out of her misery by killing her. Screwing her would put her out of her misery, and leave her trés grateful!”
“Glugh! You can’t be serious. Who the hell would want to fuck an animal?”
Gaston shrugged and said, “When one considers some of the women I have picked up in my time, the difference is not as great as it might seem. What about you and that hairy beast you had in Panama? She looked like a monkey with a rose in her hair, remember?”
Captain Gringo chuckled and said, “Come on, she wasn’t that bad.”
“She wasn’t that good, either. How about that six-foot voodoo queen who liked you so much? She was black as the ace of spades and slicked her hide with palm oil, remember?”
Captain Gringo remembered. He said, “Voodoo was the least of her skills. Cut it out, you randy old goat. You’re giving me a hard-on. Do you want to go back to the fire and catch forty or do you want to stand out here in the wind talking dirty? Give me that fucking poncho. It’s cold up here.”
Gaston chuckled and slipped the blue military poncho he’d been wearing off. He handed it to the American, along with his rifle. As Captain Gringo slipped the still-warm poncho over his head, Gaston said, “I thought you’d want the Maxim we’ve been packing up here, Dick.”
Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “Not for sentry duty in the dark. This Winchester’s the weapon for in-fighting. Machine guns are only better when you have a mess of targets lined up. Too clumsy for man-to-man stuff.”
Gaston said, “Well, you’re the machine-gun expert,” as he started to move away. Captain Gringo asked where he was going and the Frenchman said, “To answer a call of nature,” and the American nodded and hunkered down behind the boulder. Having those girls along was becoming a bother. There weren’t enough to go around, so nobody could sleep with them. But they made taking a crap a delicate matter on the trail. He hadn’t seen one of the girls take a leak all day, but he knew they all must have by now. The idea of La Diablilla squatting behind a rock sent a twitch through his groin again, damnit. He felt pretty disgusted with himself. It hadn’t been that long since he’d been with a woman. Gaston had told him once that his problems were no doubt aggravated by his Puritan upbringing. Most professional soldiers and sailors masturbated often, with enthusiasm, and, as Gaston said, the nice thing about masturbation was that one did not have to look one’s best. But the tall New England Yankee didn’t like it. It made him feel stupid. So Gaston was right that he’d screw almost anybody first.
The crotch of his pants seemed tighter than usual as he crouched in the lee of the boulder, trying not to think about sex. But there wasn’t much else to think about, damnit!
The moon had risen, oddly shrunken but ever so bright in the thin mountain air. He could see well down the slope to the chalky trail below. The wind was soft, despite the cold bite of its teeth, and the night was so still he was sure he’d hear any hoof beats if anyone was dumb enough to be moving about at night at this altitude.
There was little point in planning beyond the following day’s march, which promised to be much like the one they’d just completed, save for feeling safer and getting to go downhill by noon. He’d been through a few jungles by now. He knew that you didn’t plan a jungle trip. It just happened to you. You never knew what lay beyond a fallen log until you got to it. The Colombian rebels with them knew little more about the country they’d be marching in to than he did. So what the hell, they’d take it as it came. All they had to know was that if they made it to Manaus alive they could hop a tramp steamer out.
Gaston had been to Manaus years ago. He’d said it was one wild town. A sort of degenerate Paris shoved up the Amazon to serve the get-rich-quick adventurers who either wandered out of the surrounding jungle with plunder or left their bones in the jungle to slowly molder in the constant damp heat. Gaston had said the women of Manaus were wild as hell, and that they came in all sizes, shapes, and colors. He’d mentioned a Polish virgin of thirteen who’d been imported all the way from Warsaw by an enterprising Brazilian whoremonger. He’d said he’d had the famous Tiger Lady, a Eurasian lady who danced naked, painted with black stripes on her tawny yellow body.
Somewhere in the night that goddam llama bleated again. He turned his head but couldn’t spot her. He grimaced as he thought of the oddly human snatch he’d spotted earlier. It was sort of weird, when you thought about it. The Tiger Lady tried to look like an animal to excite her customers. The fucking llama was an animal, with a human snatch, and, damnit, the idea was sort of intriguing. He wondered if it would feel like there was a woman tucked inside that big shaggy brown beast, and if it would be thrilling or disgusting to find out.
“Jesus, maybe you’d better jerk off,” he told himself, as he realized he had a raging erection now. The llama burbled and
bawled like she was calling to him. He considered his options. He could just tough it out. He could beat his meat. He could mosey over and find out what all the sheepherder jokes were really about. Nobody would ever know, no matter what he decided. Sure, he’d feel stupid as hell, but who was the lovesick llama going to tell?
He decided he wasn’t really that hard up. Then he wondered just how you went about it. Did you just walk up behind it and stick it on, or did the stupid critter require some foreplay? He laughed to himself as he pictured himself saying, “Easy, honey. I’ll stop if you tell me I’m hurting you.”
He remembered the old joke about the sheepherder counting his herd and saying, “One, two, three, good morning, darling, five, six …” It didn’t sound as dumb, once you reconsidered what it would be like to spend a whole summer on a mountain with no women around. What the hell, it wasn’t as if anybody or anything was likely to be hurt. Guys pulled all sorts of shitty tricks on women to get in their pantaloons, and left a lot of them crying and feeling used and abused. Was that any nobler than, well, sort of petting a pet more than society approved?
“I think I’m more curious than in love,” he decided. He knew that a lot of the trouble men—and probably women— got into was simple curiosity. Nobody wanted to take a dwarf home to Mother, but a lot of people wondered what it would be like with a dwarf, a tattooed lady, or whatever. He remembered how oddly exciting it had been to kiss Max with that dumb waxed mustache pasted to her lip, and the way those tribal markings on that black girl had felt as he explored her curves with his hands that time. He knew he’d never miss either sudden surprise again. But they had been sort of interesting. He’d never really been tempted by another man. But he’d often wished a couple of homosexuals would let him watch, just to see what the hell they did. He wished, right now, that somebody would screw that llama and give him a full report on what it felt like. Was it really like having a woman in a fur coat, or was it different, maybe better?