by Lou Cameron
She said, “El Aquilar Negro takes care of his friends and relations in town, señor. Naturally, people who do not wish to attract the attention of the thrice-accused tax collectors can’t afford to spend a lot in one place, so it tends to pile up. Felicidad has been, how you say, passing the hat. Everyone is happy to know the great Captain Gringo has joined forces with El Aquilar Negro. They are most tired of the dictatorship of Diaz.”
The new .38 was new only to Captain Gringo. It was an old Harrington & Richardson nickel-plated cheapo that had seen better days. The nickel plate was chipped off in places and the hard rubber grips were worn. But it was double action and when he looked down the barrel he saw someone had cleaned it from time to time over the years. The rifling was a bit worn, but the thing would still shoot reasonably straight, at close range.
As he put the shoulder rig on under his jacket and holstered the .38 after loading it, Tia Monica asked if they wanted her to cook up something for them. When they said no, she sat in Gaston’s lap and started running her thick fingers through his thin gray hair. In English, Gaston said, “I should have asked for a full-course dinner. Do you want any of this, Dick? God knows there’s enough to go around!”
Captain Gringo laughed and said, “It’s all yours, you lucky dog. I don’t think my member of the team would like it, even if I wanted to help you out, which I don’t.”
He looked at the watch he’d stolen the night before from the men’s shop and saw the day was still young. He asked Tia Monica when they could expect Felicidad back. She said, “Not until after nightfall. Late. She is going to make for the hills during la siesta, when nobody is on the streets. It is a long hard journey to where she can safely meet with El Aquilar Negro. She will no doubt rest and eat supper in the rebel camp before she returns with our orders.”
She kissed Gaston and added, “I will not be going with you boys. But we have the whole day to ourselves, no?”
“Dick, you have to help me! She weighs a ton and she likes to get on top!”
Captain Gringo chuckled as he stuffed half the peso notes and a couple of boxes of .38 ammo in his pockets. Then, since Gaston most obviously was not about to rise with Tia Monica in his arms and sweep her off to his castle, the younger man got up and said he’d see ’em around the campus.
He went to the room where he’d spent the night with Felicidad. It was early for a siesta. But he couldn’t go anywhere until Felicidad got back, so he took off his clothes and flopped across the rumpled sheets. He couldn’t lay anybody, either, until Felicidad got back. But sometimes it was a sort of pleasant novelty to sleep alone, especially when a guy needed sleep. And he knew he did. Even without Felicidad’s active little body to distract him, he’d been too tightly wound from the recent excitement to relax completely. But now that he’d spent some time making sure this was a reasonably safe hideout, and now that he had a decent gun and money again, he felt a hell of a lot more relaxed. He knew there was no telling when he’d get to flop in a feather bed again once he left here. So he closed his eyes and just let go.
Like most knock-around guys who managed to stay alive long enough to be experienced at the life style it called for, Captain Gringo could sleep almost anywhere and anytime it seemed safe to do so. Professional soldiers, like sailors, tended to spread out such sleep as they had to have in short catnaps instead of snoring eight hours all at once and waking up dopey.
He knew he’d never sleep until Felicidad got back, so he didn’t have to worry about setting the alarm. He knew he’d be wide awake, bored shitless, and ready to go by nightfall. That relaxed him even more, and he was out like a light in no time.
He’d slept a little more than four hours, a long rest for a knock-around guy, when he suddenly woke up to return the kisses of whoever in hell was kissing him. He hadn’t covered his naked body with a sheet. The woman lying atop him was naked too, so his erection was rising to the occasion between her smooth thighs as she ground her hair apron around on his bare belly and tried to lick his tonsils with a passionate tongue indeed. The room was semi-dark, thanks to the shades across the narrow window. But he knew this couldn’t be Felicidad. It felt more like a sea lion had beached herself atop him to mate.
He shoved her off enough to get her tongue out of his mouth as he said, “For Pete’s sake, Tia Monica!”
She said, “Please do not call me your aunt, Roberto. I do not even feel sisterly to you, and I can feel between my thighs that you are also hot, no?”
“That’s for sure. But let’s think about this, Monica! What time is it?”
“About three in the afternoon. Felicidad has left for the hills, and your Tio Pancho is fast asleep, so nobody will ever know. Won’t you put it in me, por favor? I have been trying to fit myself over you, but I am too tiny.”
He was too polite to laugh in her face, but he couldn’t keep from grinning like an idiot, and she took his smile for agreement. So she rose on her locked elbows, her huge brown breasts still brushing his chest with their moist nipples as she wiggled her monstrous thighs farther apart and got her knees under her center of gravity, which of course was in line with her big fat ass.
He decided he was in trouble no matter what he did now. So he tried to slide a hand down between them to guide it up into her. It wouldn’t work. Even with most of her considerable weight on her hands and knees, her smooth fat belly was still pressed hard to his.
He said, “We’d better let me get on top, doll.”
She giggled and rolled off him, saying coyly, “I have never been called a doll before, querido!”
That made sense. Yet, as he rose to his own hands and knees to consider his options, he saw that, at least in dim light, old Monica looked a lot better with her clothes off than one might have expected. Like her much smaller niece, Felicidad, Tia Monica was made up of well-stuffed pillows connected by sensuous curves. Her double chin and fleshy jowls were treated kindly by gravity as she lay on her back, with the bone structure that now showed revealing that she’d once been beautiful, give or take twenty years and five times that many pounds. Her curves were a lot flatter this way, too, but she still looked like she was smuggling a pair of full-sized pillows under the brown skin of her chest. Thanks to her ample rump, there was no need of a pillow under her hips to present her yawning gates of amour to the ceiling for full inspection. He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and climbed aboard. He didn’t like sloppy seconds, even from Gaston, and he was pretty sure the old bat would tell on him when Felicidad got back. But he knew if he rejected her this late in the game she’d probably stab him, so what the hell.
As he entered her, Tia Monica gave a pleased little gasp. He was pleasantly surprised, too. He could tell from the cool wetness deeper in her that she’d douched after screwing poor Gaston to sleep, and her cunt wasn’t just whistle clean, it was little-girl tight.
But he soon found he was in no innocent child. For Tia Monica needed lots of muscle to move all that lard around, and she started bouncing him in her lap like he was a kid on a friendly adult’s knee, a very friendly adult who enjoyed adultery a lot. Seeing that she seemed willing to do all the work, Captain Gringo just relaxed atop her, at a considerable angle, thanks to her big tits, and smiled down at her as she rolled her head from side to side and told him what an athletic lover he was.
He had to crane his neck down to kiss her when she said she was coming. She was well in the lead. For although any woman was more fun than the best fist, this one was right on the razor’s edge between just okay and’ repulsive. She had an almost pretty face and a marvelous box, but she .more than satisfied his curiosity about fat girls. He knew lots of guys preferred their women pleasantly plump, but when he made love to a dame he liked to get closer to her than was possible with Tia Monica. Aside from having to stretch his neck to kiss her over the mountain of breasts, he wasn’t getting all he had inside her, even at this angle. Her big brown rump held back his balls, and, shove as he might, her fleshy thighs and fat lower belly cradled his pelvis
so that almost an inch of his shaft was left out on the down stroke. But what the hell, this sure beat pissing, so he just stayed in the over padded saddle and posted at a comfortable mile-eating lope.
Of course, she took his don’t give-a-damn lovemaking for passion rather than a way to kill some otherwise dull time. So it drove her even wilder and she pleaded, “All of it! Bruise my womb with your mighty tool, my toro!” He said, “I can’t, from this angle. Let’s see, now … oh, I know. Let’s get up a minute.”
He rolled out of her and got to his feet by the bed. But as he helped her rise, like a walrus from the waves, Tia Monica fluttered her lashes and asked, “Standing up, Roberto? Impossible. Please do not ask me how I know this, but take an experienced woman’s word for it,”
He told her the position he wanted her to get into. She gasped and said, “Oh, I couldn’t! It sounds so undignified!”
He said, “It is. But every position looks sort of silly when you watch another couple making love. Come on, I learned it from a very dignified Chinese lady. They call it Walking the Duck.”
Tia Monica giggled and asked if it was true what they said about Chinese women, as she turned her broad back to him, locked her knees stiffly but well apart, and bent over to clasp her own ankles with her hair spread across the floor at their feet. He steadied her with a hand on each big hip, and, as he re-entered her, with his own legs spread even farther to lower his hips even with hers, she gasped, “Oh, I can see your dangling things, and I can see it going in me, and I … Ay, ay, ay!”
It did fit deeper that way, and since most of her was out of sight as well, he could close his eyes, lean back his head, and let himself go as if she were as pretty as she felt, where it mattered. He came, hard, and kept going. He knew she wanted more, but getting it up again if he took it out was going to be a problem. She moaned in pleasure as their mingled juices ran out of her, down her big belly, and between her big breasts. He could tell she was climaxing from her astounding internal contractions. He wanted to come with her. But she suddenly fell off his shaft to lay quivering on the floor, delirious with passion.
So, not wanting to waste it in midair, he dropped down on her, got its questing turgid tip between the first folds he could find, and proceeded to hump like hell. As he came again, Tia Monica giggled and said, “You silly thing. You just fucked me between my titties!”
He moved experimentally and muttered, “So I did. It felt as fine as the real thing.”
“Not to me! Let’s get back on the bed and finish right.”
“Okay. But first let me check the time. I don’t think my, ah, uncle would mind all this, but have you and Felicidad worked out any ground rules about the men in your life, Monica?”
She sat on the bed beside him as he dug for his stolen watch, saying, “You must promise never to tell my niece. She is not a woman of the world like me. Felicidad has a very jealous nature, poor thing.”
“Mum’s the word, then. Let’s see, it’s going on four. La siesta is about over.”
A distant male voice bellowed, in English, “Dick? Monica? Merde alors, where is everybody?”
Tia Monica giggled, reached for the wrap she’d draped over the foot of the bed, and whispered, “I must go to him, lest he find out how naughty we have been. You promised not to tell, eh?”
“Well, I sure wanted more, but, yeah, it’s better to be discreet.”
So they parted on friendly terms. She shut the door quietly after her as he rose, grinning, to take a whore bath at the washstand in the corner. He was starting to feel human again. Thanks to the timely interruption he hadn’t had to prove anything, and, to his mild surprise, his teased dong was still semi erect. He lay back on the bed and told it to go back to sleep. The stuffy little room was boring, now that he was alone in it again. He knew he’d awaken with a headache if he dozed off again in this airless heat, so he got up again and went to the shut window.
The sun would be low now, and the window faced east. He opened the drapes. As he’d expected, there was no glass. A slatted wooden shutter faced the street outside. But, with the hanging cloth out of the way, a little air seemed to be coming in. He heard voices outside and pressed his face to the shutter to peek out. He froze as he heard a familiar voice say, in English, “We’ll cover you as you scout that next corner ahead, Moran.”
He moved his eye to another slat. He could see them now. There were eight enlisted men with Carson. They had canvas leggings around the bottoms of their white bell-bottoms and carried Krag rifles at port arm, bayoneted. Captain Gringo wondered what the hell they thought they were doing. The C.P.O. with Carson’s shore patrol must have wondered too. He said, “Begging the lieutenant’s pardon, them Mexican cops said this part of town was dangerous, even for them. We’re liable to catch a brick from one of them flat roofs all around any minute, sir!”
Carson stared after the scout he’d sent ahead as he replied, all-knowingly, “I didn’t expect to find the escaped prisoners at the American consulate, chief. Walker and Verrier are professional rebels. I heard what the greaser cops said, too! They’re somewhere in this native quarter, and I mean to find them if I have to search every house!”
The C.P.O looked startled and said, “Begging the lieutenant’s pardon, we don’t have any search warrants.”
“So what? Mexico doesn’t have a constitution, either. Trust me, chief. I’m an old hand in greaser land. You just have to show our little brown brothers who’s boss.” He called out, “See anybody up there, Moran?”
The point man called back, “Negative, sir. We seem to be getting to the edge of town. There’s nothing but scrubby hills rising from behind some garden patches to the east.” But this time, Captain Gringo had of course gotten his gun. He was gripping it in a suddenly sweaty palm as he stood naked behind the shutter and heard Carson say, “Okay, we’ve run out of streets. So now we have to do things the hard way. Let’s have a peek through that nearest window over there.”
That meant the one he was peeking out! Captain Gringo rolled away and flattened out against the wall beside it, watching the zebra stripes of shadow and sky light spread across the bed and far wall until the shadows of two heads peering in through the slats chopped up the pattern. They sounded like they were in the room with him as the C.P.O said, “Nobody in there, sir. Siesta hour’s over, so whoever lives here must have gone back to the marketplace or something.”
Carson answered, “I have eyes, dammit. What’s that draped over the chair by the bed?”
“A jacket, sir. I make it out a regular Mex jacket. Walker and the little Frog were dressed like white men when they got away, if they got away. I still ain’t sure they didn’t go down with the gunboat.”
“They got away. I don’t have to wait for those divers to get here to tell me that. The explosion was internal, and starboard, under the after turret where we were holding them.”
“Yeah, but they had no explosives, sir. That ammo locker was cleaned out and repainted long before we put anybody in it.”
“Okay, they had confederales waiting here. Verrier used to be a Mex officer. What do you need, a fucking diagram on a blackboard, chief? Some sonsabitching greasers got ’em out. So some sonsabitching greasers have to be hiding ’em! One empty room doth not a city make. Where the fuck is the door to this house?”
“Probably on the far side of the block, sir. They build ’em wall-to-wall down here. But, begging the lieutenant’s pardon, we’d better not go busting down no Mex doors until we clear it with the skipper and the Mex police.”
“I’ll take full responsibility, chief. Don’t worry. I’ve dealt with our little brown brothers before. Let’s circle and find some entrances.”
But the burly C.P.O. shook his head bullishly and said, “I’ve tangled with some natives in my own time, too, sir. I’m not worried about busting any rules. I got my crew mates’ heads to worry about, and it smarts to get hit with bricks and roof tiles! We’re a hell of a ways from the harbor and the rest of our guys, lieutenant. If w
e have to fight our way back through this maze of narrow streets with everybody in the Barrio mad at us, people on both sides will get hurt. So, begging the lieutenant’s pardon, he ain’t gonna bust down no doors unless I hear it from the skipper!”
Carson turned away from the window, bless him, as Captain Gringo heard him say in an ominously polite tone, “You’re speaking to a commissioned officer, chief.”
The C.P.O. said, just as formally, “I’m aware of that, sir. But if push comes to shove, I’ll take my chances before the mast court-martial before I’ll take a chance with the lives of my men! This is just too big a boo you’ve led us into, lieutenant. There’s probably a dozen Mexicans watching us right now, waiting to see if we’re out to start something. So we’ll be heading back to the beach now, sir. If you still want to lead this patrol, I suggest you walk in front!”
Carson turned to someone Captain Gringo couldn’t see through the slats and snapped, “Seaman, place this man under arrest! He just refused a direct order from an officer!”
A voice replied, “Make that two of us, then, lieutenant. I’m more scared of the chief than I am of you.”
There was a round of derisive laughter. Captain Gringo bit his knuckles to keep from joining in as the pompous Carson cried out, “Very well, I’ll deal with all of you once we get back to the others!”
Captain Gringo lowered the sweaty .38 and allowed himself to breathe freely again as he heard them marching away. He’d been hoping Carson would be asshole enough to stay behind. But nobody was that dumb, even in the navy, and, what the hell, he couldn’t complain about the luck he’d had so far this afternoon.
*
El Presidente José de la Cruz Porfirio Diaz did not look or act in mixed company at all what most people expected a wild Mexican bandito to look or act like. That was one of the things that made him such a danger to his own and other decent people. El Presidente was a distinguished, fatherly-looking man in his middle sixties. His neatly cropped white hair and carefully kept white walrus mustache helped to give him the look of a refined Spanish grandee of the better sort. Which was just as well, since he tended to shoot people for mentioning his Indian blood on the poorer side of the family tree.