The Adventurers

by Harold Robbins

  I was also disappointed. I was just as anxious as she to find out what would have happened.

  “I didn’t like Diego anyway,” Vera added quickly. “He would have killed us after he killed Papá.”

  “He would have raped you first,” I said with the voice of authority.

  My tone impressed them. “How do you know?”

  “You always rape girls before you kill them.”

  “Why?” Marta asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “How do I know? That’s just the way it’s done.”

  Vera stared at me curiously. “You know a lot, don’t you?”

  “Enough,” I answered importantly.

  “Can you make yours hard like Diego did?”

  “Of course,” I answered brashly. “It’s easy. Any man can do that.”

  “I bet you can’t,” Marta said. “You’re too little.”

  “I am not!” I retorted angrily.

  The sisters looked at each other, a strange excitement in their faces. “Prove it,” Marta said, in a hushed voice.

  “Why should I? Maybe I don’t feel like it.”

  “You’re too little,” Marta replied. “You’re afraid you can’t do it!”

  “I can so!” I said. “I’ll prove it.”

  I could feel their eyes following my hand as I unbuttoned my fly. I took out my cock and began to fondle it as I had seen Roberto do. After a moment I looked down. Nothing was happening.

  “Maybe you’re doing it too fast,” Marta whispered. “Diego did it much slower.”

  I looked at her in bewilderment. I wondered if she could know more about it than I did.

  She saw my hesitation. “Here,” she said, reaching out her hand, “let me show you.”

  Her hand felt hot and damp. I began to feel its heat and a pressure began to build up in my abdomen. I looked at them both. They didn’t raise their eyes; they were too busy watching. I could see Vera move her tongue over her dry lips, and for once she wasn’t giggling.

  I began to feel a spastic shudder in my loins. I looked down at myself. Pride came surging through me like the heat of the sun in the morning. My pecker was hard. It wasn’t as big as I thought it would be, but it was hard.

  “I told you I could do it. You better stop or I’ll rape you.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!” Marta whispered.

  “No? You better let go and get out of here fast!”

  They didn’t move. I took a step toward them. Their eyes were still on my pecker. I could feel it throbbing. “You better leave!”

  “Which one would you rape first?” Marta asked in a low voice.

  “I don’t care which one,” I said. “You just better go, that’s all.”

  The sisters looked at each other. “You’re the oldest,” Vera said.

  I stared at them. I didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t expected this. “Are you going?” I asked in my most threatening voice.

  Marta looked at me. “All right. You can do it to me first.”

  “You won’t like it. You better go.”

  Marta lifted up her skirt. “Are you going to or not?” she asked impatiently.

  I stared at the thin black fuzz between her legs. There was a challengingly expectant look in her eyes.

  “All right,” I said. “But just remember. You wanted to.”

  I went at her the way I remembered Roberto had done with the putas in the forest. We tumbled backward to the ground. I shoved her legs apart and climbed between them, jerking my hips in a sudden spasmodic motion that seemed to come from deep within me. I could feel myself going everywhere but where I wanted to go. Then I felt her hand on my prick as she guided it to where she wanted it to go. The hair was thin and prickly there, and felt like a thousand tiny needles.

  “Stop wriggling,” she whispered angrily. “Push!”

  But I couldn’t. There was a wild exciting pain tearing through my loins that wouldn’t let me. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get past the very edge of her flesh. I heard her grunt with the effort of trying to get me inside her.

  “Qué pasa?”

  I turned around and looked up. Fat Cat was standing in the doorway, a look of incredulity on his face, and Vera was nowhere to be seen. He came over and angrily pulled me to my feet. His hand cuffed me across the side of my face. “Is this the way you return the hospitality of your host?”

  I was too out of breath to answer. I looked for Marta. She was already on her feet, running out the doorway. I turned back to Fat Cat.

  He was no longer angry; his face was covered with a broad grin. “You’d better button your fly.”

  I looked down at myself. Embarrassedly I buttoned up quickly.

  He rubbed his hand across my head affectionately. “I was wondering how long it would take those two little cunts to get to you,” he said, then laughed again. “Come, let us get the wagon ready for an early start.”

  He started for the barn door. I stared after him. In the doorway, he turned and looked back at me. He saw the wondering expression on my face.

  “Do not look so surprised. I told you it would not be long before you became a man!”

  15

  A shot rang out and before its sound had finished echoing in my ears I had rolled over and was lying flat in the wagon. Another sounded and Fat Cat was on his belly in the ditch at the side of the road. A moment passed and he was on his feet, dripping mud and water, shaking his fist angrily at the mountainside and yelling at the top of his lungs: “Santiago! You blind idiot whelp of a hyena! You jackass braying from your mother’s womb! Can’t you see it is I, your comrade?”

  Ping! A bullet kicked up the dirt not three feet away and Fat Cat was back in the ditch. This time he did not get up. He lay there on his belly in the water, screaming: “Price! Indian shit! It is me, Fat Cat!”

  “Fat Cat?” The older Santiago’s voice echoed hollowly down the mountainside.

  “Yes, Fat Cat, you sightless, crawling maggot! Fat Cat!”

  There was a scrambling through the brush and Santiago suddenly appeared at the edge of the ditch. He looked down into the ditch. “Fat Cat!” he exclaimed. “Why did you not say it was you?”

  Fat Cat came up out of the ditch even more bedraggled than before. Water dripped from his hat brim down onto his face, and he sputtered speechlessly.

  “Fat Cat, it is really you!” Ecstatically the Older threw down his rifle and embraced his friend. “You are alive!”

  “I am alive!” Fat Cat shouted angrily, trying to escape the Indian’s grasp. “No thanks to you!”

  “We thought you were dead,” Santiago said in wonderment. He stepped back and examined Fat Cat. “You are alive and safe. Not a mark on you!”

  Fat Cat looked down at himself. The new shirt and pantalones that Señor Moncada had given him were filthy with mud. “Not a mark!” he bellowed, lashing out with his fist.

  The blow caught Santiago on the side of his face and tumbled him backward into the road. He looked up at Fat Cat with a hurt expression on his usually impassive face. “Fat Cat,” he asked in puzzlement, “why are you angry with me? What have I done?”

  “What have you done?” Fat Cat roared. “Look at my new shirt. Look at my new trousers. Ruined! That’s what you’ve done.”

  He aimed a kick at the Indian’s head, and Santiago rolled quickly out of the way. Fat Cat’s foot went up and suddenly he lost his balance. Backward he tumbled, straight into the ditch. He lay there out of breath, screaming curses into the air.

  I heard someone else coming through the brush, and suddenly Manuelo emerged. He glanced at the Indian lying in the road, then walked over to the edge of the ditch and looked down at Fat Cat. After a moment he said in a flat, emotionless voice, “Perhaps when you have done with your childish games, you will tell us what you have in the wagon?”

  It had been only twelve days since we had left the mountains for Bandaya, though it seemed as if I had been gone a year. We went on into the camp, where they clustered around us and tr
eated us like heroes. They could hardly wait until the first barrel was opened and the women took the meat away to the cooking pots. For almost all the time we had been away they had been living on small game and roots. Mostly the latter, for the game had fled the mountains because of the drought.

  There were eight men, four women, and four children in that small camp in the mountains that Diablo Rojo used as his headquarters and hideout. Three of the women were his, as were three of the children. The other woman and child belonged to Manuelo.

  Each of the general’s three children had been born of a different mother. Roberto, the oldest and my companion, was dark. He had an Indian cast to his features, as well he might, for his mother was a distant cousin to the Santiagos. Eduardo, the younger son, resembled the general most, though he also bore the mark of his mixed blood in the coarseness of his features. Only Amparo, the daughter, and the youngest, was fair-skinned and blond. Her body was slim and lithe, her eyes bright and alive. They always sparkled with an inner kind of excitement. And there was no doubt that she was the general’s favorite, just as her mother was.

  The mother was slim and blond, unlike the other two women, who were dark and rather pudgy. They were extremely jealous of her but dared not speak out against her. She had come from somewhere on the coast and it was said that the general had found her in a whorehouse there, though she claimed to be the daughter of an impoverished Castilian gentleman and a German refugee. At any rate she acted the grand lady and the others had to cook and wait on her like servants.

  She spent most of her time when the general was away playing with Amparo, dressing and undressing her as if she were a doll. This, plus the favored treatment she received from the general, and every other male in the camp for that matter, was enough to completely spoil the child. For a seven-year-old she was imperious and quick to show petulance when she did not get what she wanted. Most of the time she did, and then everyone basked in the warmth and brightness of her smile.

  Amparo stood beside the wagon now, in a pretty white dress, as I climbed down from the seat. “They told me you were dead,” she announced in a rather disappointed voice.

  “Well, I’m not.”

  “I already said a novena for you,” she replied, “and Mother promised we could have a Mass said the next time we went to church.”

  I studied her. We had been children together, and now I felt suddenly as if she had remained a child. “I’m sorry. Had I known, I would have allowed myself to be killed.”

  A sudden smile brightened her face. “You would, Dax? You would have done that for me?”

  “Certainly,” I said, humoring her.

  She threw her arms around me and kissed my cheek. “Oh, Dax,” she cried, “You are my very favorite! I’m glad you weren’t killed. Really I am!”

  I pushed her away gently.

  She looked at me, her face glowing. “I’ve made up my mind.”

  “To what?” I asked.

  “I’m going to marry you when I grow up!” She turned and started to run off. “I’m going to go tell Mother I’ve decided!”

  I watched until she reached the house, a half-smile on my face. Before I had gone away she had thrown a tantrum because she had decided to marry Manuelo and her mother had told her she couldn’t because he already had a woman. And just a few weeks before that it had been a young messenger who had come from the general bearing the latest news. I turned back to the wagon and began to unhitch the horses.

  On the other side I could hear Fat Cat bragging to the others about the black stallion. Then I became aware of Roberto and Eduardo.

  I turned to look at them. “Hello.”

  Eduardo answered immediately. He was only a few months younger than I but much smaller and thinner. Roberto merely stared at me sullenly. His face was pale, his eyes looked yellowish and sick.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I asked.

  Eduardo answered before his brother could speak. “He’s got a dose.”

  “A dose? What’s that?”

  Roberto still did not answer, and Eduardo shrugged. “I don’t know. The Santiagos and Manuelo caught it too. Manuelo’s woman is mad at him.”

  “Eduardo!” his mother called from the house.

  “I gotta go.”

  I finished unhitching the horses in silence. Roberto stood there watching me, so I tossed him one set of reins. “Help me get them into the corral.”

  He took the bridle and we led the horses off. I opened the gate and we pushed them inside. Immediately they began to graze on the far side, away from the others who warily watched the newcomers out of the corners of their eyes.

  “Look at them,” I said. “They pretend they don’t even see each other. By tomorrow they’ll be friends. Horses act like people.”

  “Horses don’t get the clap,” Roberto answered sullenly.

  “No? How did you get it?”

  He spat on the ground. “From the putas. We all got it. Manuelo’s woman is furious at him.”

  “Is it bad?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Not so bad. It hurts when you pee.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “You’re stupid! That’s where you get it, in your pecker. You’ll get it too. Manuelo says you’re not a man until you’ve had the clap.”

  “I had a woman.”

  “You did?” Roberto said, disbelief in his voice.

  I nodded. “Marta, Señor Moncada’s daughter. Where we got the meat. I jumped her in the barn.”

  “Did you get in?”

  I wasn’t quite sure what he meant. “I think so. Anyway, I wouldn’t have noticed. I was too busy. I would still be raping her if Fat Cat hadn’t pulled me off.”

  He stared at me. “How old was she?”

  “Fourteen.”

  He sniffed. “She’s just a girl.”

  “Do you think I’ll get a dose?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Nah, she’s just a kid. It takes a woman to give you the pox. Does Fat Cat have it?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

  “Maybe he was lucky,” he said. “Maybe he didn’t catch it.”

  He began to walk off and I followed him. I didn’t understand. If you weren’t a man until you got it, how could you be lucky if you didn’t catch it?

  16

  Fat Cat sulked as I followed him up to the lookout post. He turned and looked back at me. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “To take a look around,” I replied innocently.

  “Go ahead and look, but do you have to be behind me every time I turn around? Someday I’m going to trip over you. You’ll be squashed like a bug.”

  I didn’t answer as he turned and continued up the path, kicking angrily at the rocks. I followed at a safe distance, not wanting to be squashed like a bug. Fat Cat had been like that all week. Ever since Manuelo refused to let him go back for the black stallion. We were too shorthanded, Manuelo had said.

  Ordinarily ten men guarded the hideout. But two of these were already dead. One by the army sergeant, the other before we had gone out for meat. He had got drunk and tried to rape one of the general’s women. I think it was Amparo’s mother but I wasn’t sure. All I had heard was a scream, then two shots. By the time I had got there he was already dead.

  The younger Santiago was in the lookout. “It’s about time,” he grumbled. “I am starving.”

  “The best thing for a clap,” Fat Cat replied maliciously, “is an empty stomach.”

  The Younger glared at him. “In that case I would advise your getting a dose. If you eat any more, no horse will be big enough to carry you.”

  “Bah!” Fat Cat snorted. “My black stallion could carry me easily were I five times as large.”

  “I don’t believe there ever was a black stallion,” the Younger said sarcastically as he started down the path.

  “You are only jealous,” Fat Cat shouted after him. “Dax was with me. Dax saw him. Didn’t you, Dax?”

&nb
sp; “Sí, I saw him.”

  But Santiago was already out of sight down the path. I turned to Fat Cat. He was looking out over the mountains toward Estanza.

  “He is a great stallion, eh, Dax?”

  “Un caballo magnífico!”

  Fat Cat sat down, his back against a rock, his rifle across his knees. He still faced south. “Manuelo does not understand what it is to own such a magnificent beast. He never had one, so how could he?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “You’d think I was asking for the borrow of his woman,” he continued. “Not that she wouldn’t appreciate it, the way he is. But, no. You have to stay here, he says. We’re too shorthanded.”

  He shrugged. “What would they have done if we hadn’t come back? I wouldn’t be here for Manuelo to refuse such a reasonable request. And they would be starving, eating field mice and rabbit turds and road apples.”

  I still didn’t speak.

  But Fat Cat didn’t seem to care whether I did or not. “After all I’ve done for them they have the nerve to doubt I even have such a beautiful beast.” He put down his rifle and lit a cigarrillo. “I’m telling you it’s more than a man can bear.”

  I watched as he blew out a puff of smoke, then took a last look around. The hillside was peaceful. Dusk was little more than an hour away. “Good night, Gato Gordo,” I said, and started down the path.

  I looked back for a moment as I rounded the bend. He was still sitting there, letting the smoke curl reflectively from his nostrils. Halfway down the path I heard the cry of a wild turkey. Almost immediately, my mouth watered. It had been a long time since we had such a dish. I was sick of our steady diet of salt beef.

  “Gobble—gobble-awk,” I called.

  It answered, but the sound seemed to come from off to my left. I crept into the brush. I called again. It answered. But it still was moving away from me. It was dusk by the time I caught up to it.

  I don’t know which of us was more surprised when the turkey’s head popped up suddenly out of the bush right in front of me. For a moment we stared at each other incredulously, then the huge bird raised his head to gobble in protest. But he never finished, for quickly I flat-edged my knife like a machete and chopped off his head.