Gaston laughed and called back, “Do not knock it until you try it, my fastidious youth. But I can see you have something at least as nice, so I shall not insist.”

Pilar turned too, and waved at Concepción, calling out, “Isn’t this more fun than being alone on the trail, Concepción?” Then she took another look at Gaston and added, with a lewd laugh, “Madre de Dios, I thought he was little!”

It started raining even harder, hiding some of the other couple’s charms and cooling Captain Gringo’s own erection more than he really needed. He was about to suggest getting back under shelter when a lightning bolt hit a tree not far away, and the two mules tried to bolt. They couldn’t, thanks to the way he’d tethered them, but they were fighting the leads like hooked bass now. He said, “I’d better take some slack out of the ropes. I thought you said they never ran away, Pilar.”

She said, “Get Eduardo. I’ll take care of Roberto.” So he ran over and hauled the nearest mule in closer to the tree it was tied to, punching its muzzle when it tried to bite his bare ass.

He got the mule tethered right, glanced around to see how Pilar was making out, and blinked in surprise. The shapely little mestiza was on her knees beside the mule, playing with its long dong as she cooed lovingly to it. The mule’s eyes were closed in pleasure as the pretty girl jerked its ugly prong with both hands.

He moved closer, observing, “Well, he sure does seem to like what you’re doing, doll box.”

She said, “Si, and it’s making me hot, too! Why do you not take care of me as I take care of this big thing, Deek?”

He said, “That’s just plain silly, Pilar.” But she moved into a new and rather interesting position, with her bare brown rump thrust teasingly up at him as she knelt on both knees and one hand, jerking off the mule with the other. So he laughed, dropped behind her, and shoved it into her dog-style while the mule brayed in what sounded like passion, pain, confusion, or all three. The whole weird scene seemed to drive Pilar crazy, too. She started making hee-haw noises back at him, the mule, or both, as she arched her spine to respond to his thrusts while she went on stroking the full length of the rain-slicked pecker of the mule.

The two humans climaxed almost together, with Captain Gringo’s coming in her triggering the excited Pilar’s orgasm. Any lust he might still have felt was rapidly cooled by the sight of the mule’s awesome ejaculation. He said, “Glugh!” withdrew from her, and added, “Let’s go back to the lean-to and finish right. This is getting a little too rich for my blood, doll box.”

She said, “I’ll be with you in a minute. I have to take care of the other mule. The poor thing loves me.”

He grimaced, got to his feet, and walked naked through the clean rain, feeling sort of dirty. He ducked under the overhang, lit another smoke, and reclined on one elbow, bemused, to watch Pilar jerk off the second mule. It was hard to tell, from here, which of them was enjoying it more. The oversexed little mutt was playing with herself with her free hand while she drove the excited beast nuts with long teasing strokes with the other. Captain Gringo couldn’t have gotten his own dong back up with a block and tackle right now. Like most healthy young men, he liked his sex a little dirty. But enough was enough.

The second mule hee-hawed and shot its wad. Pilar laughed, got up, and ran over to the lean-to through the rain, shouting, “Oh, I am so passionate this afternoon, Deek!”

He said he’d noticed that as she dropped to the ferns beside him and pleaded, “Make me come again, por favor!”

He shrugged, put his free hand in her lap, and proceeded to massage her slippery clit. She thrust her pelvis up at him and hissed, “No, not with your hand, querido! I have my own hands, if I wished for to come that way! I wish for to be filled with cock!”

Somehow, that seemed more reasonable now than it had a few minutes ago. So he rolled her over, lifted her to her hands and knees, and got back into her dog-style. She giggled and said, “Si, that does feel beastly. Put it to me that way as deeply as you can.”

 

So he did, enjoying his claro as he smoked and humped her at the same time. His casual strokes drove her wild and she did most of the work as they had sex that way. She lowered her face to the ferns, with her back arched to thrust her brown rump higher as she moaned, “That is muy fantastico, Deek. It could not feel any better. But I can’t help wondering what it would feel like if a woman could do it this way with a mule’s big thing in her! Do you think I could be a little crazy?”

He said, “Yeah. Don’t ever try it. For one thing, it’d probably kill you. For another, while I might be broadminded about sharing you with a banana, I’ll be damned if I’ll go sloppy seconds with a jackass!”

~*~

The rain stopped later that afternoon. So they all got, dressed and moved on. Fat Concepción was walking a little funny, and the mules were easier to handle now. So Captain Gringo made a mental note to tell Gaston to take it easy with his newfound girlfriend, at least during daytime trail breaks. Pilar was chipper as ever, and he felt, if not really rested by his siesta, okay. Or at least he did until they topped a rise, he climbed another tree, and looked back.

The smoke he’d spotted rising from the Red Cross camp wasn’t there now. They’d obviously moved on after the rain, too. But another column of smoke was rising above the treetops due west, between him and the village they’d left that morning!

He climbed back down and asked Gaston, “Could you have left a lit cigar under your lean-to, Gaston?”

“Merde alors, how? Everything was soaking wet by the time we broke camp. I built my own shelter a bit too low for a man aboard a rather immense femme who bounces awesomely, and so after she’d shoved my poor skinny derriere through the roof a few times—”

“Never mind your sex life, dammit. I know I tossed my own butts out into the rain and we built no campfires back there.”

“Oui. So what are we talking about, Dick?”

“Smoke signals, I think. Can’t say if it’s rising from our siesta camp or just near enough to matter. But someone’s sending up a hell of a lot of smoke back there. Green wood, too, like the Apache use when they want to signal pals a long way off!”

“Merde alors! Do you think we are being followed?”

“Think, hell, isn’t it obvious?”

“Oui, our secret admirer who played sneaky sneaky with our guns has to be tailing us for Los Rurales, unless the smoke you spotted is Los Rurales!”

Captain Gringo shook his head and waved Pilar over to join them as he told Gaston, “If it was more than one or two scouts they’d have moved in while we were playing bare-ass slap and tickle in the rain back there. The real thing would hardly want to give their position away with a campfire. That’s why I wouldn’t let Concepción make coffee.”

Pilar asked him what was up. He said, “We’re being tailed. One, maybe two people. Have you girls been getting along with your neighbors in the village lately?”

She shrugged and said, “If we had any real enemies back there, they would have simply turned us over to the law by now, no?”

He thought, nodded, and said, “Los Rurales don’t get over this way much, and when they do, they’re not after little fish, no offense. Some village two-face is after the rewards on Gaston and me. They contacted Los Rurales to intercept us and we got lucky. But to cover all bets, the informer or informers were keeping an eye on us and we didn’t throw them off our trail. The pricks are dogging us, trying to signal Los Rurales. So here’s where you and Concepción get to show how good you are.”

“What do you mean, Deek?”

“Hell, isn’t it obvious, doll box? We have to either ambush the sons of bitches or throw them off our trail. You girls know this country better than we do. So which works best?”

Pilar looked confused and said she didn’t know. He snorted in disgust and said, “Dammit, Pilar. You’re supposed to be a guide, not a don’t-know!”

The mestiza looked like she was about to cry. Gaston said, in a gentler tone, “What my overexcited young companion is trying to say is that it is up to you to show us either to some jolly rise where we’ll have an open field of fire down our back trail or, better yet, lead us through some species of terrain where we might find it easier to lose them.” He turned to Captain Gringo and asked, “How far behind us are they at the moment, Dick?”

“Who knows? The smoke signal’s a good four or five miles back. But there’s nothing saying they had to stay there once they’d lit it!”

“Oui, and one can only see a few dozen yards through the shrubbery all about. I doubt they would be dogging us too closely. Regard how that disgusting species of mule left a clear hoofprint there and a steaming bowel movement over there, hein?”

Captain Gringo nodded and said, “Right. We have to get to a mile or so of bedrock or rough gravel at least. That’s your department, Pilar. There ought to be some places in these hills where the bones show through better. So where do we go from here?”

She said, “I do not know, Deek. I told you before, this is not the route Concepción and I usually take to the Sierra Madres!”

The tall American muttered, “Oh, shit. Okay. Let’s just cut south for openers. We’re on a ridge. So there ought to be some rimrock some damned where along it.”

There was. But it wasn’t close. It was almost sundown when the lead mule’s steel-shod hoof struck sparks on a slab of old lava and, better yet, pissed and moaned when Captain Gringo led it onto solid rock beyond.

He slowed down, allowing the mules to pick their way gingerly across the smooth black shiny rock as it rose steeper. Gaston, leading the mule behind, was an even older hand at covering his tracks. So he didn’t ask what they were doing, and when his own mule dropped a turd, Gaston stopped, picked it up, and threw it into the nearest cactus patch.

There was more cactus on all sides now as the ridge got too barren to support anything but dry country shallow-rooted vegetation. When Captain Gringo paused on a rise of the roller-coaster ridge, Gaston handed the lead to Concepción, joined the taller American, and observed, “If anyone is at all curious, within miles, they can see us up here, Dick.”

Captain Gringo said, “I want ’em to. I don’t know how far this rocky stretch runs south. Moonrise should be about eight tonight, right?”

“Oui. So what?”

“The sun’ll be down in less than an hour. That gives us a couple of hours of total darkness. Come on. That next rise is even higher and dominates this stretch of open ground. We have to set up, up there, in broad daylight.”

Gaston shrugged and went back to Concepción and the rear mule as Captain Gringo and Pilar led the way across the shallow saddle and up to the crest of the highest rise within miles. He told Pilar to hold the mule as he unlashed the machine gun and positioned it on a basalt outcrop to cover their back trail. Gaston led Concepción and the other mule beyond his improvised machine-gun position, tethered the mule, and walked back to Captain Gringo, saying, “Eh bien. Obviously anyone stupid enough to come along the ridge after us will be walking straight into a machine-gun muzzle. Mais just as obviously, anyone watching us from a discreet distance at the moment can see this if he has the brains of a gnat, non?”

“I sure hope so, Gaston. But just in case they’re too shy to move in for a closer look, you’d better tell Concepción to make us some coffee. We can use it. We might not get much sleep tonight.”

“You know, of course, that the smoke of even a discreet fire will be seen for miles if we build it atop this ridge?”

“That’s what I just said.”

Gaston shrugged and went to help Concepción gather fuel among the rocks. So in a little while they had a modest fire of dry yucca stalks and smokier cactus roots. By the time the coffee and beans were ready, Captain Gringo had forted his machine-gun position with an imposing wall of rocks and the sun was about to wink out on the western horizon.

He joined the others around the little fire, hunkered down, and said, “Okay, boys and girls. Eat your beans and wash ’em down, pronto. We’ll be moving out in a few minutes.”

Gaston nodded. But the girls looked confused. So Captain Gringo explained, “We’re not making camp here. We want them to think we’re making camp here, see?”

Pilar asked, “But, Deek, where are we to camp tonight?”

He said, “Beats the shit out of me. If the moon stays up and the country’s open enough, we may wind up a hell of a ways from here before morning. Eat your beans.”

They did, and, as each finished, Captain Gringo took their cans and peeled the paper off the shiny tin. Then, in the purple light just after sundown, he placed the cans artistically around his machine-gun nest to catch the next dawn light. Pilar asked him what the people following them were supposed to think the cans were, and he said, “Let them worry about it, doll box. Would you rush madly up a slope at anything going glitter glitter by the dawn’s early light?”

Concepción said she was tired. Gaston made her get up anyway, and as they joined Captain Gringo and Pilar, he said, “Eh bien, I like it! Now, since it is dark enough, we backtrack, non?”

Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “Why bother? Pilar says she doesn’t know where the hell we are anyway.”

He picked up the Maxim, carried it to his mule, and lashed it back in place under its tarp as he explained, “We’re bound to leave signs going down the slope to the east. Doing so closer to them would just make it easier to cut our trail. How would you move in on this position if you were them, Gaston?”

“I wouldn’t. I’d dig in at the tree line and wait for my Rurale friends to catch up with my smoke signals. They don’t pay police informers enough to rush uphill at machine guns, hein?”

“Not unless they’re nuts. Okay. It’s too dark now for anyone any distance away to see what we’re doing. But it’s still light enough to get down the slope to the east without busting our necks. So what the fuck are we waiting for?”

~*~

Crossing the woody valley to the east in the dark was a bitch. They’d never have made it up the far slope had the moon not risen in time to give them a little light on the subject. After that the going got easier. They found themselves atop a flat mesa, paved with rimrock and open, save for an occasional clump of cactus or yucca. So they made good time, for a change, and moonset found them threading their way up a sandy dry wash. Concepción and both mules were starting to balk at going on, and not even Captain Gringo fancied tripping over chaparral in the dark, so he called a halt.

Pilar flopped to the sand and told Concepción to build a fire. Captain Gringo said, “We’ll do no such thing. We won’t camp in this wash, either. I don’t like to wake up under a flash flood. We’ll bed down up above, in the brush. If we throw tarps over the branches we won’t have to leave lean-to evidence in our wake and we’ll still be dry enough if it rains again.”

Nobody bitched about it much but the mules, who were tough to get up the steep bank. They tethered them farther into the chaparral, unsaddled them, and, since they couldn’t graze in such dry brush, watered them and put nosebags with some parched com on them. Captain Gringo told the girls not to jerk them off and set up his own bedroll under a tarp near the rim of the wash, with his machine gun handy.

The night was clear and the tropic stars were bright, but it was still dark as hell, now that the moon was down. So he assumed the lady joining him right after he’d undressed and stretched out naked atop the bedroll was Pilar, until he started to take her in his arms and found his arms were full indeed. He frowned and asked, “Concepción?”

It was a dumb question. Nobody else within miles could have been shoving such huge bare tits against his naked chest. But he had to say something.

She snuggled closer, which was a little awesome when that much naked flesh was involved, and said, “Si. Gaston said to tell you he and I had made a ghastly mistake. I do not know what that means, but I think you are pretty.’

“You’re pretty, too,” he lied gallantly. “But I’m not sure there’s room on this roll for you, me, and Pilar.”

The fat girl giggled and said, “Silly. Pilar is with Gaston tonight. You see, when I told her of his odd habits in bed ...”

He laughed and said, “Yeah, she would want to try sixty-nine with a novel partner. But what was that about you and Gaston making some kind of mistake?”

“He is crazy. Do you know where he wishes for to put his thing all the time?”

“I sure wish you wouldn’t tell me. I’m having enough trouble adjusting to this weird situation. Suffice it to say you’re an old-fashioned girl, right?”

“Si. I do not mind a little silly business with an hombre, if he treats me right once I am inflamed. But Gaston and I do not seem to have been made for each other.”

He was too polite to observe that she didn’t feel like she was made for anyone, save perhaps an elephant seal. She had to weigh two fifty or more, and she was short. He had to admit her smooth skin felt sort of nice against his as she moved ponderously to press more of it against him. But when she slid one huge thigh over his waist it felt like a side of beef.

Even knowing that her movement had positioned her love box, wide open, inches from his own confused virility wasn’t doing as much for him as she no doubt expected it to. She hugged him closer with an arm as big around as either of his legs and asked shyly, “Aren’t you going to kiss me, querido?”

That seemed fair. Her face, at least, hadn’t been too awful the last time he’d looked. She wouldn’t have been half-bad, in fact, had she been maybe a hundred or so pounds lighter. But he had to think about this situation. Damn that goofy insurance company. Couldn’t they have hired a couple of better-looking girl guides, if they had to be nymphomaniacs?

She sobbed, “I knew it. That damned Pilar always gets the good-looking ones. Everybody thinks I am too fat!”

“Well, fair is fair, Concepción. Maybe if you cut down on starchy foods ...”

She started to cry. He said, “Oh, for God’s sake,” took a deep breath, and kissed her. It wasn’t as awful as he’d expected. She kissed back sort of sweetly. More like a little girl than a sea elephant in fact. But from the way she tongued him and ran her hand down between them to grab his confused manhood, he knew she was no blushing virgin.

She whimpered as if in pain when she felt, still kissing him, how soft he still was. He kissed her harder to cheer her up, put a hand to one of her huge breasts, and, what do you know, he wasn’t quite as soft anymore. But it still felt weird as hell to fondle and kiss so much female all at once. He felt revolted and attracted at the same time. He knew she’d be hurt as hell if he stopped now. So, since he needed her services as a guide a hell of a lot more than he desired her as a woman, he gallantly rose to the occasion and threw caution to the winds. But even after he’d made up his mind to give her the old college try, it was sort of complicated.

He rolled Concepción on her broad back and got on top of her. He sure as hell didn’t want to be under her. He had it up enough to serve an average woman now. But Concepción wasn’t an average woman. She was fat as hell. Her big belly felt like an extra, misplaced breast, a big one, against his own, and though she’d spread her huge thighs as far as they’d go, his hips were still cushioned in a soft smooth cradle a hell of a ways off the ground. Her huge rump, however, presented her pelvis at an angle most women would have needed two pillows or more under their hips to manage. So it tended to even out, and with some effort he was able to get the head in position to enter her. When he did, she sobbed, “Oh, glorioso!” and bear-hugged him tightly to her big soft torso as she dug her heels in and thrust her considerable hips up to meet him. He was pleasantly surprised, too, to find such a nice love box throbbing along the full length of his now fully aroused shaft. So the rest was easy and not bad at all, if a man enjoyed playing bouncy bouncy on a feather bed with a very pleasant hole in the mattress.

She crooned, “Oh, you are so big, Deek!” and didn’t get it when he laughed like hell. She giggled and said, “Si, I know we are both being wicked and we shall no doubt land in hell someday. But tonight I am in heaven and, quién sabe, the padres could be wrong, no?”

He kissed her to shut her up. She was fat and stupid, but not a bad kid, once you got to know her. So he concentrated on knowing her, in the biblical sense, and since she’d started out a lot more eager to get laid than he had, she came first.

It felt sort of like screwing an earthquake. Her big body heaved and trembled under him in wave after wave of passion as he just hung on for dear life, afraid to fall from such a height, while she moved it inside her with no effort on his part at all, until near the end, when he pounded her hard and ejaculated in her deeply, They both went limp in each other’s arms and Concepción sighed and said, “Oh, that was so lovely, Deek. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. That was just the way I wished for to be loved.”

Love was a pretty strong term for the way he felt about the fat mestiza, but she was a nice change from the prettier but dirtier—in every way—Pilar. So he kissed her again, as a pal.

She sobbed. “Oh, Deek! You do not find me loathsome, now that you have had your way with me?”

He chuckled and said, “As a matter of fact, I think you’re kind of pretty.” What else was a guy supposed to say on top of a lady?

Concepción must have been used to rougher gentlemen. She gasped and asked, “¿Es verdad? You do not use me as a fat cow when you can get nothing better?”

“Don’t talk dumb, Concepción. I’ve never laid a cow in my life.”

She giggled and said, “Your thing is twitching inside me, Deek. For why is it doing that? Are you making it do that?”

“No, I guess it has a mind of its own. You’re twitching pretty good too. We’d better do something about that.”

As he started moving again she gasped and said, “I can’t believe it! You wish more, without even changing positions?”

He just kept laying her without comment. He couldn’t think of any other position that would work with a dame this size, and the one they were in was already unusual as hell. He supposed it could be said that they were doing it old-fashioned. But it was still quite a novelty to be on his knees, almost dog-style, with the dame face up on the bottom. She was much shorter than he was, standing up, but there was so much of her to cover, lying down, that he felt like a little boy making it with a grown woman and had to crane his neck to kiss her. He settled for kissing her under the chins, all three of them, as he started moving seriously again.

She climaxed twice, awesomely, before he did again. So he felt it wouldn’t be considered impolite if he rolled off after doing his duty to her. He’d been pleasantly surprised at how nice it had been, but while he was usually up to more than twice with a really attractive partner, there was no sense being silly about old Concepción.

He lay flat on his back, glad to be once more on terra firma, as Concepción sat up to stare down adoringly at him in the starlight. It was cooler and drier at this higher altitude. But not cool enough to get under the blankets. He smiled back, wondering if he wanted to. smoke first or just go to sleep. Concepción said, “Oh, you make me feel so passionate, Deek.”

He said, “That’s nice. You make me feel passionate, too.”

He didn’t mean it. He was naturally still semi-erect after being treated so nicely. But he’d had a hard day and two women, so what the hell. Concepción said, “Bueno,” and proceeded to get on top.

He gasped and said, “Hold it! I’m not sure we’re going about this right, querida!” But she’d already forked a huge thigh over him and was lowering her awesome mass on him. So he braced himself for a steamroller attack as she reached down, grabbed him by the root, and lowered herself onto it.

She said, “Oh, it goes even farther up inside me this way, no?”

That was for damned sure. With her own weight on her thighs, they spread farther and, to his pleasant surprise, held most of her weight as she arched her spine, threw back her head, and rested some more of it on her locked elbows with her hands on the ground behind her. She didn’t look nearly as fat in that position. The arch of her torso pulled her soft belly up and flattened it some as she thrust her big nipples up at the Milky Way and tried to scrape stars from the sky with them as she bounced up and down the full length of his shaft.

He reached down and started working on her clit with his thumb to help her, and it helped her a lot, since she was already hot as a two-dollar pistol. She contracted almost painfully on him in orgasm and fell off backward, just as he was starting to get interested. So he rolled to his hands and knees to finish in her right, making her come yet again and, this time, with him.

That did it. So as they lay together, sharing a smoke before going to sleep, Concepción said she had never been so happy before. But Captain Gringo was beginning to feel like a shit. Fun was fun, but he doubted that he could sustain a romance like this very long.

~*~

The next morning they worked upslope through the chaparral to a much higher ridge. Beyond, to the east, loomed the jagged sawteeth of the Sierra Madres. Behind them, to the west, rose a column of white smoke. Gaston said, “Merde alors! They didn’t fall for our ruse, Dick!”

Captain Gringo said, “Tell me something I didn’t know. They’re using green wood in that soggy valley we cut across in the dark after dropping down off the rimrock. So tell me how they trailed us in total darkness?”

Gaston shrugged and suggested, “Perhaps they assumed it was a ruse because you were so obviously bent on setting up an ambush in plain view. If they were closer in than we assumed, they might have simply moved in as we were moving out, heard us crashing through the brush below us, and—”

“That still makes them damned good, as well as mighty determined,” Captain Gringo cut in, scanning the rest of the skyline as he added, “If Los Rurales are following smoke signals, they’re not sending any of their own.”

“But of course not, Dick. They only have to ride in the direction of the smoke their triple-titted scout or scouts keep sending skyward. But look at the bright side. If Los Rurales had caught up, there would be no smoke, hein?”

The girls of course had been listening, and since Pilar was the smarter as well as the dirtier of the two, she asked, “Is it not possible that what we see is the Red Cross people having breakfast, Deek?”

He shook his head and said, “Not unless their own guides like to go out of the way. They were following the regular trail to our north, last time we spotted their smoke. We’ve been working our way up here for quite a while. So by now the Red Cross expedition should have been moving pretty good for a while, too. They sure as hell wouldn’t have cut in back of us across our trail. Thanks to the easier going on the road, they should be, hell, way over that way. We’d better do some moving too, if we expect to catch up with ’em.”

He started to lead them down the eastern slope of the ridge. Gaston handed the lead of his own mule to Concepción and fell in beside the other soldier of fortune as he asked, “Just how much catching up do we intend, my long-legged youth? I thought the idea was to tag along behind them at a trés discreet distance, non?”

“It still is. I want them to catch any heat ahead.”

“Oui, but there seems to be more heat behind us at the moment, if I am any judge of smoke. Once we cut over to the main trail, won’t that make us easier for our followers to track?”

“Hell, Gaston, they’ve been tracking us just fine ever since we left the village! So let’s at least have those Red Cross greenhorns between us and anyone coming the other way. I don’t intend to follow in their footsteps blindly, of course. As it gets more open and easier to see from ridge to ridge, we’ll shadow the Red Cross expedition bandito-style, see?”

“That part makes sense. Meanwhile, what are we to do about the people shadowing us bandito-style?”

“I don’t know yet. First we have to figure out how in the hell they’re doing it! We might make it a little tougher for them if our trail cut across another party’s now and again, right?”

“Oui, that makes sense. A mule track is a mule track and the Red Cross people &re leading a droll number of mules. If we dropped onto the road behind them, followed it as far as some hard pan or solid rock, and simply faded into the bushes for a peep-peep—”

“That’s what I just said. Go back and make sure we don’t lose that other mule. Ah, you and Concepción are still on good terms, right?”

Gaston chuckled and said, “We are old friends, even if she does not enjoy French loving as much as Pilar. Why do you ask? Do you want the skinny one back already?”

“You and the mules can have her. Just wanted to clarify the current sleeping arrangements. Let’s move it out.”

They did. The next slope was even steeper and the cover was lousy. So when Concepción begged him to stop halfway up so they could rest, Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “I told you to get some sleep last night, querida. We’re pretty little moving dots to anyone who’s watching from that ridge behind us, and somebody probably is. We’ll take a break in that saddle up ahead. I want to see if any pretty little dots are dumb enough to follow us up this open slope in broad-ass daylight!”

By the time they reached the saddle, even Captain Gringo’s legs were feeling it. So they pushed into the denser chaparral along the ridge and flopped down wearily. Captain Gringo was covering their back trail. So it was Gaston who spotted what was in the valley beyond and crawled back to tell him about it.

Gaston said, “The Red Cross expedition has left the road over the Sierra to follow an adorable streambed south, over in the next valley.”

Captain Gringo whistled Pilar over, told her to watch and give a holler if she spotted anything moving up the bare slope at them from the west, and moved across the saddle with Gaston for a look-see.

The valley to their west was wide and flat-bottomed with a winding mountain stream running north against the Red Cross expedition’s line of march to the south. They made an imposing sight, strung out like that. The ten nursing sisters were mounted sidesaddle aboard as many Spanish mules. The khaki-uniformed men were on foot, leading the others, loaded with supplies. Two white-clad Mexicans led at the head of the long column, each leading a more modestly laden burro. They looked like they knew where they were going. A narrow path ran alongside the stream, cutting across most of the oxbows through the wild mustard and cactus clumps down there. Captain Gringo turned to wave Concepción over to them. When she joined them, he said, “There they are. So where are they going?”

Concepción frowned thoughtfully and said, “¿En verdad? I do not know, Deek. I know that rio. We have often watered there. But that is not the way for to get to Guatemala.”

He asked, “Are you sure?”

She said, “Si. At the south end of the valley the rio comes out of a box canyon. That path they are on is merely a deer trail. It leads nowhere important. They must be most estupido, no?”

Captain Gringo said, “Son of a bitch!” and ran for the tethered mules, yelling at Gaston to stay with the other and the girls as he started to lead the mule with the machine gun riding on it along the ridge to the south.

Gaston did no such thing. He caught up, panting, and asked, “Where are we going in such a hurry? I agree our European and Yankee friends have been sold out. But what is that to us? They said they did not need our services, remember?”

“They were wrong. I told you to guard the girls, dammit.”

“Against what? The ambush is most obviously the way you are going. Nobody is seriously after the girls, and Concepción for one is not about to run away. You should be ashamed of yourself, Dick. I told her to tell you she was a delicate child.”

“Shut up and drag this fucking mule if you want to help. I’ll take the point.”

He handed the lead to Gaston and moved up the next rise in a running crouch, dropping to his knees behind some brush for another look-see. Nothing. He ran down into the next saddle and up the next rise. He was even with the head of the column to his left now. That wasn’t good enough. So when he didn’t spot anything from that rise either, he moved on.

They’d outdistanced the slower-moving column by a quarter of a mile when Captain Gringo spotted what he was looking for, turned on one knee, and called back to Gaston, “Leave the mule there. But break out the Maxim and get it up here on the double!”

There were a good two dozen men down the slope below him to the east. But they were not the Rurales he’d seen before. Rurales didn’t dress like Mexican bandits, even though they acted just as nasty at times.

The guys lying in wait for the Red Cross expedition had chosen pretty good cover behind rocks and bushes, as far as anyone looking up from the valley floor went. They were wide open to Captain Gringo, with their backs to him. So that part wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the damned Red Cross column was coming around the bend right now and a jerk-off in a big black sombrero was getting to his feet, waving it. The egg was about to hit the fan, and where was his damned machine gun?

He turned to curse Gaston as the Frenchman staggered up the slope to him with the Maxim on one shoulder and an ammo box in his free hand.

Captain Gringo grabbed it, armed it, and turned to move down the slope with it just as the bandits opened fire on the Red Cross column!

The treacherous guides, of course, had lit out cross-country to get out of the line of fire the moment they spotted the signal. So the first thing the bandits hit was the poor khaki-clad sucker leading the first supply mule. Another Red Cross worker folded like a jackknife to hit the dust beside him, while the rest of the column scattered in every direction, abandoning their supply mules just as they were supposed to.

It was a swell little ambush, until Captain Gringo opened up with the machine gun as he charged down the slope behind them.

It wasn’t scientific. The book said the new weapon was supposed to be mounted on a tripod and adjusted for elevation and traverse with cute little knobs. But for a guy firing a machine gun from the hip, Captain Gringo did a pretty good job on the bandits. He swept from right to left, sending big hats and little gobs of bloody flesh flying, then dug in his left heel and traversed right at lower elevation to make sure of any possible survivors. He managed two full sweeps and a half before the belt ran dry. Gaston ran down to him with another and he put it in. There was only one slob trying to rise from the dust and busted-up chaparral now. So Gaston said, “Allow me,” and blew the side of the bandit’s head off with his .38.

Captain Gringo nodded in satisfaction and moved down through the grim results of his machine-gun fire, saying, “Reload and cover me. They might not know we’re on their side.”

“Merde alors, what difference does it make, since they were stupid enough to come out here without guns of their own?”

“They’ve got guns now. If they’ve seen the light yet. We just bought ’em two dozen here, to go with the Spencers I picked up for the dumb bastards.”

By the time they’d crossed the valley floor, the shaken survivors were starting to make sense out of all the noise, and a couple of Red Cross men were coming to meet them. One called out in very bad Spanish and Captain Gringo replied, “We’d do better in English or French, pal. I don’t see your guides anywhere. So they’re probably on their way to rat on you to some other bandits they know! In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this primrose path they led you down doesn’t go anywhere. Where’s Dr. Fitzke?”

One of them turned to point at two women kneeling over a still figure on the ground near the stream as he said, “He’s dead. The bastards killed him, and we came here to help these people!”

“Welcome to Mexico. If you still want to go to Guatemala, this ain’t the way to get there. I’m Dick Walker. This is Gaston Verrier. We do know the way to Guatemala. If you want to get there our way. Who’s in charge now, with Doc Fitzke dead?”

They looked at each other blankly. Captain Gringo said, “That’s what I thought. Oh, well, you’re a new outfit. We can probably whip you into shape before you all manage to get yourselves killed.”

~*~

He could see soon enough that it wasn’t going to be easy. He sent Gaston to bring the girls and their mules down from the ridge as the scattered survivors of the Red Cross expedition either chased other mules or gathered around him like lost sheep, which they were, in a way.

One stupid American girl in the party must have been reading the papers a lot, since she was the one who said, “There’s a notorious American renegade and soldier of fortune named Richard Walker. They call him Captain Gringo. I surely hope you’re not another Dick Walker!”

He shrugged and said, “What can I tell you, it was a bum rap? I didn’t just smoke up those bandits for you to win a popularity contest. If you don’t like my company, find someone else to lead you through the Sierra Madres. You kiddies must have noticed by now that the rules of polite society ain’t as polite down here.”

Another girl, who looked like the little brunette he’d saved in the marketplace the other night, said, “We’re Red Cross workers, not a judge and jury. I vote we settle the matter here and now with a show of hands. All in favor of following this gentleman and his friends, raise their right hands like so!”

Most of them did. But a red-faced guy with a clipped British accent said, “Not so fast, you lot. We don’t know a thing about this man, and Gloria says he’s an outlaw! How do we know he’s telling us the truth? How do we know he won’t lead us into something sticky?”

Before Captain Gringo could hit him, the little brunette stamped her foot and said, “Oh, don’t be such an ass, Cecil! The guides poor Dr. Fitzke hired just led us into something sticky, and Dick here was kind enough to get us out of it with that nice machine gun! He saved Trixie and me from another sticky wicket in the marketplace the other night as well, now that I’ve had a closer look at him.”

Another British male accent, to the credit of the empire, said, “Here here, Pam’s right, you know. Wouldn’t make sense to shoot bandits if one was a bandit, what?”

Cecil muttered, “Not unless he was with another gang. But I see I’m outvoted. So I suppose we’ll just have to see who’s right, in the end.”

The other Britisher said, “I’m Lauder, ah, captain. Since you seem to know the form here, what do you suggest we do next?”

Captain Gringo glanced at the sun and said, “There’s plenty of daylight left. You can begin by breaking out some shovels and burying your own dead. Don’t bother with the bandits. That’s why buzzards was born. But we’d better send a detail upslope to gather their guns and ammo.”

“I say, the Red Cross doesn’t carry weapons, captain.”

“That’s what those bandits just noticed. Any other outlaws in these hills have you down as sissies too. But two dozen rifles and at least that many pistols ought to make it tougher for the next bunch we run into. I’ve got some Spencer repeaters for you, too, if my pal ever gets here with ’em.”

The one named Cecil shook his head and said, “Impossible. The charter is quite clear on the matter. We are simply not allowed to wear these armbands and carry guns at the same time!”

Captain Gringo swore under his breath, then said, “So take the armbands off and arm yourselves, dammit! Do you think anyone up in these hills gives two hoots and a holler about international Jaw? Man, they don’t pay any attention to Mexican law, and as far as Mexico City cares, you guys and gals are completely on your own up here. There’s nobody looking out for this outfit but thee and me, and if thee doesn’t start to make some sense, I’m going on without you! There is no way in hell my pals and me can cover a column this size with our own few gun hands. So what’s it gonna be?

They had to think about that. So he let them mutter among themselves as he spotted Gaston coming in alone with one mule and went to meet him.

Gaston wore a puzzled frown as he said, “The girls must not have enjoyed our company as much as I assumed from the way Pilar blew me last night. They took off with the other mule and no doubt their silver.”

Captain Gringo nodded and said, “They didn’t have any silver.”

Gaston frowned and asked, “Are you suggesting they were up to some sort of skullduggery, Dick?”

“Who else stuffed that adobe in our guns, the tooth fairy? The insurance company offered them a lousy four hundred bucks to get us across the border and back alive. We’re worth over a thousand apiece to Mexico alone. So why go to all that work when you don’t really have to?”

“Merde alors, you might have let me in on your suspicions before I ate both their pussies, Dick!”

Captain Gringo chuckled and said, “I didn’t have anything to go on but suspicion till they verified it just now by tipping their mitts. But you’ve got to admit there were a lot of funny things going on around those funny dames.”

Gaston thought before he nodded and said, “Eh bien, I can add the figures, now that I observe the final equation. Either of them slipping out to mayhaps take the pee-pee could have stuffed our gun barrels within a few seconds, and I did find it odd that though they said they were carrying silver to smuggle, they never bothered to check it, after knowing we had been alone with their own packsaddle. The wild sex was of course to keep us contented and off guard, although one hopes they didn’t fake every orgasm, hein?”

Captain Gringo said, “All but the banana bit back there in the grove when Los Rurales rode by. Pilar needed an excuse to be flat on the ground when she gave out such a good yell. Fortunately, they failed to hear her. They were anxious to meet us at her house, I guess.”

“Ah, oui, that was the only time she seemed so delicate. But may one assume they’ll pick up their confederate who was trailing us so well on their way back to town?”

“What confederate? Nobody trails me that good, dammit! I was using tricks I learned in Apache country, the hard way.”

“But the smoke signals ... Ah, how stupid of me.”

“Don’t feel bad. I wasn’t sure either, until just now. But, yeah, it would have been easy enough for either of ’em to leave a cigar butt burning with its unlit end under a hastily gathered pile of tinder and green wood from time to time.”

“Perfidity, thy name is Woman. May we assume it’s safe to forget about Los Rurales for now?”

“For now, probably. They won’t want to go anywhere near Rurales on the trail, after failing. When they said they were nervous about Rurales they were telling the truth, as well as showing common sense. Our oversexed police informers are still petty criminals and Los Rurales are bound to arrest somebody after riding all this way.”

Gaston stared beyond him at the Red Cross column and said, “Oui, we are well south of the road, and in bandit country where possible victims of Los Rurales tend to shoot back. But that, unfortunately, is all I can tell you. I have no idea how to get to the border from here, do you?”

Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “No. But don’t tell any of these greenhorns. I just told ’em we were fixing to lead them through the Sierra Madres.”

“But how, Dick? Their guides betrayed them and our guides were trying to betray us. How on earth are we to lead them anywhere in these hills without one trustworthy guide?”

“I never said it was going to be easy. I just said we’d do it.”

~*~

The Red Cross workers weren’t all stupid. So a couple of dozen of the men and a couple of the girls decided it would be fair if they carried guns without their red crosses showing. One of the nursing sisters, of course, was little Pam, who turned out to be Canadian and said she’d hunted some with her dad’s old Spencer and knew how to handle a .45 as well.

Captain Gringo left them to tidy up as he and Gaston borrowed a pair of riding mules to scout upstream, just in case Concepción had fibbed about that box canyon, too.

She hadn’t. The water came over an imposing sheer cliff at the head of the valley in what would have been a pretty waterfall, if they’d been looking for such scenery. As Captain Gringo sat atop his mule, bareback, staring morosely up at the falling water, Gaston observed, “Eh bien, the trouble with lying women is that sometimes they tell the truth. At least now we know that they were the real guides the company hired and not a pair of ringers, hein?”

“Yeah. I said I figured they left the silver behind because they didn’t intend to travel all the way with us. That bullshit about old Caballero Blanco was more razzle-dazzle. So watch out for white hats. He could be on either side of the border.” As he wheeled his mule around, Gaston drew his .38 without a word of warning and emptied it into a nearby clump of greasewood. Captain Gringo swore as his mule shied, steadied it, and asked, “Gaston, why in the hell did you do that?”

“You told me to watch out for white hats. I just spotted a white shirt in those bushes, I think.”

“You think, you trigger-happy old goat?”

Gaston dismounted, reloading on the safe side of his mule as he replied. “Cover me if you persist in making such an obvious stationary target of yourself, hein?”

Captain Gringo dismounted, pronto, and drew his own revolver as the little Frenchman moved in, gun leveled. Gaston circled the clump, lowered the .38 to his side, and said, “Eh bien. I don’t need reading glasses after all.”

Captain Gringo joined him to see two white-clad bodies sprawled in the dust on the far side of the greasewood. He whistled and said, “Nice shooting, Gaston. I didn’t see a fucking thing!”

“In truth, I only saw a patch of white. But as you say so often, what the hell. We knew these runaway guides had to have run somewhere, non?”

“Yeah, and, dammit, neither of them had guns, thanks to the odd views of the late Herr Doktor Fitzke! They were only hiding from us, scared skinny, no doubt. I wish you’d given me a chance to have a chat with them first, Gaston.”

“Had I known they were both unarmed, I would have. But in these hills one does not meet many such people, Dick. Let us regard what they might have in their pockets, non?”

They each dropped by a different corpse to pat it down. Both false guides were packing a little pocket change, which could always come in handy. Captain Gringo pocketed his, saying, “Nothing but Mexican money on this guy. Wait a second. He had something in his shirt pocket.”

Captain Gringo took the folded paper out and opened it as Gaston said, “This one had a couple of Guatemalan coins as well. So, like the girls, they might have known the way, but just did not wish to show it to anyone. Like our own amusing guides, they saw an easier way to make the buck. What is that, Dick, a map?”

“Yeah. Unfortunately, not a good one. It’s hand-drawn. Shows how to get this far and ends with a big fat question mark above that waterfall over there. This X marks the spot where the bandits were waiting. The sons of bitches really set old Fitzke up in advance.”

“We knew that already. None of the bandits we shot up just now could have been this species of Caballero Blanco. But if one band of outlaws knew that all these good things, and lovely ladies, were coming this way, who is to say what our gallant Guatemalan liberator knows, hein?”

“Do you always have to be so fucking cheerful? Hold it. There’s a dotted line here. Or there was. Someone tried to erase the pencil marks with a lousy eraser.”

He held the map at a different angle to the light and said, “Yeah, it’s some sort of trail, leading down into this valley from due east. Those bandits must have taken the next north-south valley down from the main post road through the Sierra, then cut over that ridge to the east and dug in on the west slope to wait for the column.”

“How sneaky of them. But so what?”

“If they used another trail in another valley, they must be used to riding it. If we go over that ridge to the east, we’ll wind up on the same trail.”

“Or perhaps their hideout, Dick? Bandits down here move about like the armies, rebel or official, avec baggage and dependents. They never send their full force on a raid and—”

“Dammit, Gaston,” Captain Gringo cut in, “I keep telling you I scouted Apache in my misspent youth. I know all too well how the guerrilla bands down here are set up. Naturally we’ll scout ahead before leading our greenhorns over the ridge into quién sabe land. Meanwhile, this box canyon makes a good campsite for us to leave them forted up in. Help me drag these guys over to the stream. Some of the dames might have delicate feelings. But the current will carry them for miles before they start to stink.”

It only took a few minutes to send the two dead rats bobbing off down the, rio. It took a little longer to catch the spooked mules. But they managed, and rode back.

When they rejoined the others, Captain Gringo announced, “Numero uno, don’t drink the water until those guides who led you into ambush float by. Shouldn’t take ’em long now. Numero segundo, we’re going to lead you up into the box canyon at the head of this valley, and you ought to be pretty safe there for now. Then Gaston and me are going to scout the way out of here.”

Someone asked, “Don’t you know the way out, Captain Gringo?”

Captain Gringo said, “Call me Dick. Do you really want to pop your heads over that ridge to the east without knowing if anyone’s laying for you on the far side with a gun?”

That made sense, even to a greenhorn. So, having buried their dead, pissed in the bushes, or whatever, they all fell in to follow him as he took the point, with Gaston trailing behind to cover their rear, just in case.

Captain Gringo walked this time, having resaddled and returned the riding mule to one of the women. The little brunette Canadian girl, Pam, walked her own mule beside him. She was prettier than anything else ahead, and since they’d flushed the two outlaws in the canyon it seemed safe enough. But she kept pestering him with questions he either didn’t want to answer or had no answer for. He lit a claro and spent a lot of time puffing in meditation as he answered her in monosyllables.

As the path swung near a bend in the stream, Pam gasped and said, “Oh, dear, is that a body I see there?”

Captain Gringo glanced at the white-clad peon, face down in the water with a damned boulder he’d snagged on keeping his corpse in place, and grunted as he said, “Yeah. Don’t worry. He’s way downstream from where you’ll be getting your coffee water this evening, Miss Pam.”

“Brrr, you make it sound so clinical. Tell me, what does it feel like to kill a man, Dick?”

“I didn’t kill him. Gaston did. Oops, here comes his pal around the bend.”

“Oh, my God, they both look so ... so dead. You were the one who machine-gunned those others back there, weren’t you?”

“I cannot tell a lie. I done it with my little Maxim. Is there any point to this discussion, Miss Pam?”

“I’ve just always wondered what it would feel like, if I had to kill somebody. How many people have you had to do it to, so far?”

He shrugged and replied, “Who counts? If you’re asking if I get a kick out of it, the answer is no. It doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t feel bad. I know you’re supposed to feel guilty about it. Maybe I would, if I had to murder somebody. But I’m a soldier of fortune, not a hired assassin. So it’s never come up.”

“I’m glad. That means it’s not true what they say about you murdering a fellow officer back in the States, right?”

He took a thoughtful drag on his cigar before he said, “I killed the officer of the day, breaking out of an army guardhouse. They were going to hang me in the morning and he came to gloat about it. I killed him and changed the plans Uncle Sam had for me. I guess you could call what I did murder. I know the U.S. Army does. It felt more like self-defense to me at the time. Since then I’ve killed other guys, because it was me or them. If that makes me an ogre in your eyes, go back and chat with less-exciting guys, Miss Pam.”

She didn’t take him up on it. She said, “My, you are bitter, aren’t you? Why are you so bitter if it doesn’t bother you to kill people?”

“Because the bastards keep trying to kill me, of course. Like I said, I don’t shoot at people because it’s fun. I’m a very easy guy to get along with, if you don’t point a gun at me. But there seems to be a lot of that going around, down this way.”

She sighed and said, “So I just noticed. We were warned in advance the people down here were all pretty nasty but—”

“You were told wrong,” he cut in, adding, “Ninety-nine out of a hundred people down this way are just as decent as those you’d meet anywhere else. I like most Hispanics. It’s that one out of a hundred you have to look out for. The problem down here isn’t so much the culture as the law, or the lack of it. Leave a mess of poor downtrodden people to fend for themselves as best they can, and some are bound to wind up fending a little more than they really need to.”

“But the other night in the market, when you had to save us from those awful greasers, Dick—”

“One reason I had to save you was that you were acting like you thought of them as greasers. The politer term for people down here of mixed blood is ‘mestizo’ in Mexico or ‘ladino’ in South America, with either term likely to be used in between. Blacks are called mulattoes whether they’re part white or not, because they, all say they are. The Creoles of pure Spanish blood are called Castilians, no matter where their ancestors came from, or simply blancos, meaning whites.”

“A Spanish Creole is a white? In New Orleans they say—”

“You’re not in New Orleans,” he cut in, explaining, “French colonists picked ‘Creole’ up from the Spaniards and used it, wrong, as a polite word for people they otherwise looked down on. Since the breakup of the old Spanish empire, some pretty dark Latin Americans seem confused about the term, too. So it’s better to avoid ‘Creole’ when you don’t know the local meaning. But if a Hispanic calls himself a Creole, he’s telling you he’s from an old Spanish colonial family, see?”

She frowned and said, “It’s all so confusing. But I’ll try not to call them anything if they don’t call me a gringa. That’s their insulting term for us, right?”

“Not really. They’d call you a puta if they really wanted to be nasty. Gringo or gringa doesn’t mean anything at all in Spanish. Some say they got the term from the first American settlers in Texas when it was still part of Mexico. As the wagon trains rolled in, a lot of them were singing Protestant hymns for some reason. An old song called ‘Green Grow the Lilacs’ was a favorite that became the ‘Battle Hymn of the Texas Republic.’ The local Mexicans of course had no idea what a Green Grow could be, but it was easy to say.”

She laughed and said, “You’re joshing me!”

He said, “You can look it up. Meanwhile, ride on up into that canyon ahead and we’ll talk about it later. This is where I get off the train for a while.”

She looked confused. He pointed at a heel print in the mud by the rio and explained, “This is where those bandits forded the stream. So they must have come from the next valley east via that gap in the rimrocks over yonder. They didn’t bring their mounts or adelitas, I mean girlfriends. Lieutenant Verrier and I’d better check it out.”

She said to be careful and rode on. Captain Gringo stood by the side of the trail, directing others who approached in turn to follow Pam up into the box canyon and dig in. At last Gaston approached, leading their last mule and yakking in French with an Italian-Swiss and a Swede who didn’t speak English. So Captain Gringo had him chase the Red Cross workers up the trail and told Gaston, “I’m going over that ridge to the east for a look-see. How do you feel about it?”

Gaston shrugged and said, “When one must go to the dentist, it is better to get it over with, hein? Hopefully they had a lookout posted up in that gap, and, even more hopefully, the adelitas and sissies ran away when they saw the Red Cross was not as helpless as they’d been led to feel. Otherwise, we shall of course be walking into an ambush.”

Captain Gringo nodded and unlashed the Maxim from the packsaddle again as he said, “When you’re right you’re right. I’ll take the lead. Can you handle that mule and a Winchester at the same time?”

“I’d rather not. But let’s get it over with. My Italian-Swiss chum just told me they shall be serving French cuisine for supper this evening. So I want to get back in time.”

They waded across the thigh-deep stream and forged up the far slope with the heavy weapon riding Captain Gringo’s left shoulder. The game trail the outlaws had used wasn’t much more visible in real life than it had been on their map after being erased. But from time to time the big Yank in the lead spotted a boot-heel mark and, once, a broken match stem only someone lighting a smoke could have dropped.

Going through the obvious pass like a big-assed bird could have been injurious to one’s health. So, near the top, Captain Gringo crabbed to one side on the now steep and treacherous slope to scramble up and flop behind a yucca clump for a peek over the crest.

The valley to the east was much higher and drier. It was little more than an arroyo just below the ridge itself. A campfire’s ashy remains were still smoldering a hundred yards beyond the notch the bandits had used. There was nothing much else in sight. Captain Gringo stood up and signaled Gaston to move on up through the pass with the mule. Then he trudged down to the abandoned fire to see if he could cut any sign.

As Gaston and the mule joined him, he pointed at the confusion of hoof and human prints all around and said, “They must not have liked noise. I make it thirty-odd ponies.

The adelitas got to ride, for a change, when their lookout ran down here to tell ’em things weren’t going so hot. They took off to the south at full gallop. Would you say that means they’re headed for the border?”

Gaston kicked an egg-sized object in the dust with his toe and said, “Perhaps. I like this evidence better.”

“What is it? It looked like an acorn, but I’ve never seen an acorn half that big before.”

“I have. The live oaks in the highlands to the south grow to a trés formidable size. They are too bitter for human consumption, of course, but horsemen in the high sierras carry them along as fodder for their mounts. Perhaps they are an acquired taste for mountain ponies, hein?”

Captain Gringo nodded and said, “One and one makes two, then. They were in contact with treacherous guides from that coastal village to the west. But I’d say they’re based in the border country. They probably spend more time as smugglers than bandits. A bandit could starve up here, waiting for anyone worth a full-time bandit’s time.”

“Oui, had they not been a bit bush of the league, even you and me would have had a little more trouble with them on the other ridge. They should have had at least one man posted to guard their derrieres, non?”

“That’s what I just said. The ridges running south-southeast look pretty rugged. We’d better scout the one we just came over as far as the rocks above the canyon we herded our flock into.”

Gaston shook his head and said, “Mais non, why waste time? Had they been able to approach the canyon rim above the falls they would have set their adorable ambush up there instead of the more mundane slope we blew them down, non?”

Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “We just agreed they were half-assed bandits. Might have been lazy as well. I want to make sure there’s no way a really determined guy couldn’t work his way up above the falls. Before we settle down for that French cooking, I want to know nobody figures to drop a boulder in my soup!”

They moved back up to the craggy ridge and followed it as far as they could to the south-southeast. It soon became obvious that if the thugs lying for the Red Cross column had considered ambushing them in the canyon, they’d had a good enough reason for dropping the notion. The slopes on either side got steeper and steeper until the mule could go no farther on the razor back of broken basalt, and, while Captain Gringo thought he could probably work his way a little farther toward the canyon rim, he wasn’t about to make it all the way without Alpine gear.

They turned back, led the mule as far as the game trail through the gap in the ridge, and made their way down and back across the stream to rejoin the Red Cross team.

Captain Gringo nodded approvingly when he saw how some of the men had formed a barricade of bales and boxes across the trail where it bottlenecked between two huge andesite boulders. He told them what they’d found on the other side of the ridge to the east and added, “It’s going to get hotter before it gets cooler. This canyon’s about the coolest place to siesta within miles. I doubt anyone will hit us before three-thirty or four this afternoon. But a couple of you should keep an eye on things here anyway.”

One of them asked, in a Dutch accent, “Then we’ll be staying here tonight at least, ja?”

Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “Just until moon-rise. You can’t beat a moonlit night for traveling in Apache country, even when it’s not Apache country.”

He led Gaston and the mule up the canyon to where the rest of the party had spread out and mostly flopped around the pretty little pond at the base of the waterfall. He raised his voice to be heard as he called out, “Okay, gang. We’ve scouted some and you’ll be glad to hear they can’t get at us from those cliffs above us. But, as you see, the sun can. You’d better break out your tents and put up some shade. I want you to rest as much as you can until dark. So if any of you are up to sleeping, for God’s sake sleep. Whoever’s cooking, plan on a good solid meal before we leave here. But don’t serve it any later than five. We’ll be moving out around eight this evening and, sorry, ladies, but I have to say it’s better to relieve your bowels in the bushes here before we hit the trail. That water should be safe, since it’s coming out of mountains people can’t get to for miles. I don’t have to tell you to fill your canteens and water bags. Since some of you might not be used to arid country, I’d better tell you to drink as much water as you can this aftemoon and then drink some more. We don’t know how soon we’ll be in such good shape for water. Water your mules well before we leave, if you have to shove their noses in it. Meanwhile, I see a couple still wearing their packs and tethered. You’re not old cavalry troopers, so I won’t cuss you out about that. Just get those damned mules unloaded and free to water and graze. Don’t waste any oats on ’em here. There’s plenty of grass and forbs. Any questions?”

The red-faced Englishman named Cecil raised a hand and said, “I have one, sir. You told us you know the way. Yet you just said you had no idea where the next water might be. Explain yourself, sir!”

There was a worried murmur from the others as Cecil’s question sank in.

Captain Gringo raised a hand for silence and said, “We know the direction to the border and the grain or general lay of the ridges between here and there. You should have noticed by now that the water situation in these hills is a sometimes thing. Right now this waterfall is running pretty good. A few days from now this whole valley could be bone dry, while the dry valley we just scouted to the east could be in full flood. That’s why I may lead you into the Valley of Death before I’ll let you camp in a dry wash. Next question.”

Cecil sniffed and said, “In other words, you two are just guessing at the best route to the disaster area.”

Cecil was right, but Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “We were on our way there ourselves when we bailed you greenhorns out this morning. We’re still headed that way, whether you want to follow us or not. Frankly, we don’t give a damn. We could move faster on our own, and I think we just proved we can take care of ourselves up here. If you people would rather select another leader, do it now. Once I lead you out of here, I’ll get testy as hell if anybody doesn’t follow my orders on the trail.”

Pam, the little brunette, sat straighter in the grass to call out, “This is no time to bicker amongst ourselves, dammit.” To Captain Gringo’s surprise, the big dumb blonde, Trixie, backed her, saying, “Here here. Captain Gringo’s already gotten me, for one, out of more than one sticky wicket! You’re acting like an old woman, Cecil. You know perfectly well you couldn’t lead a line of ducks across Regent’s Park without getting lost!”

Cecil grumbled, “Maybe so. But I say, I’m not a perishing Yankee renegade!”

Before Captain Gringo could say anything, Gaston nudged him, stepped forward, and in a grotesque French-accented parody of an Oxbridge accent said, “I say, old bean, would you like to have a fight with a frog?”

Cecil blinked up at him, gasped, and said, “A fight, with you?”

Gaston said, “Oui, it would be trés ridicule to expect you to fight this adorable moose avec moi. But I am smaller and older than you. So it should be fair, non?”

“Dash it all, Frenchy, I never said I wanted to engage in fisticuffs with anyone!”

“Non? Then why do you persist in speaking like a man looking for an argument? Are you just a silly species of, how you say, twit? Down here, mon ami, when a man is not looking for a fight, he keeps his lips from waving in the breeze, hein?”

Cecil looked as if he’d certainly like to crawl into a hole about now, if one were handy. Captain Gringo laughed easily and told Gaston to simmer down, adding, “We’re all friends here, Gaston. I’m sure Cecil knows as well as you that we’ve all the enemies we really need in the surrounding hills.”

Cecil nodded eagerly. So Gaston said he could always beat him up another time and led the mule away to unsaddle and graze it. Captain Gringo laid the machine gun on the grass near Pam and Trixie and sat down beside them as others moved closer to hear if he had any further words of wisdom. He didn’t. He placed his sombrero upside down in the grass to hold the smaller parts as he proceeded to fieldstrip the machine gun. Pam was too smart to ask him why. But Trixie did. So he explained that after one had fired a gun it was a good idea to clean it.

Pam said, “Speaking of cleaning vital parts, I wish that pond were a bit more private. I haven’t had a bath since we left the coast and that water certainly looks inviting!”

He laughed and said, “That’s a good idea. We have to wait for moonrise before we leave this canyon. That means a good two hours and a change of total darkness. We’ll let you nursing sisters take the first skinny-dip. Then us guys can slosh the grime off while you dry out, and we’ll all start out squeaky clean.”

Trixie asked dubiously, “What if someone peeks? None of us girls thought to bring bathing costumes, Dick.”

He removed the Maxim’s bolt, wiped it with the oily rag he’d taken from a hip pocket, and set it aside with a silent shrug. Pam giggled and said, “Pooh, what can anyone see in the dark? I’m already hot and sticky and it won’t be dark for hours. You do as you please, Trixie. I, for one, mean to scrub my bod in that yummy pond as soon as I can. Do you think it’s going to get any hotter before sundown, Dick?”

He unscrewed the recoil rod and said, “Yes. If you girls are sharing a tent, you’d better put it up. Face the opening toward the cliff and you’ll be able to siesta with your duds off.”

Trixie gasped and said, “Really!” but Pam laughed and said, “That’s a good idea. Actually, we each have our own pup tents. Poor Dr. Fitzke said they’d be cooler.”

He shrugged and said, “Well, at least the mosquitoes have less room to dodge, in a pup. You of course brought plenty of mosquito netting?”

“No. Should we have?”

He grimaced, worked on a screw that wanted to argue with his jackknife, and, when it gave, said, “I didn’t think he’d been down here before. Have either of you ever had yellow jack?”

“Good heavens, no! Why do you ask, Dick?”

“You may get lucky. It’s drier up here than in the lowlands. Won’t have to worry about the bugs, much, when we’re not camping near still water. But that Guatemalan disaster area we’re headed for should have well water and irrigation ditches no matter how dry the country between the villages might be. I sure wish you people had mosquito nets. Gaston and me have already lived through yellow jack. So we’re okay.”

Trixie asked, “Do you believe that superstition about mosquitoes transmitting tropic fevers, Dick? Modern medical opinion dismisses it as an unproven native notion.”

“I don’t know who’s right or wrong. Vampire bats were a native superstition too, until some educated people got bitten by ’em down here. I do know that fevers, mosquitoes, and swamps seem to go together down this way. I’ve never seen yellow jack in dry country. I’ve seen a mess of it where it’s wet. But let’s not worry about it this afternoon. You won’t meet many bugs in this particular canyon.”

They got up to go pitch their pup tents. Others around him who’d heard the conversation nodded and did the same. Gaston rejoined Captain Gringo, hauled off his boots, and sat closer to the water, soaking his feet as he said, “Eh bien, the Spencers and their ammo have been issued to the troops and I am hungry. How is that adorable gun’s digestion this lovely afternoon?”

“Not bad. That new smokeless powder doesn’t gum the works up much. But it’s more acid than black powder, so it evens out. Keeping the weapons in order could be a problem in the next big war, though. Even green troops can see a gun needs cleaning after it’s fired black powder. But the noncoms are really going to have to ride herd on guys too lazy to worry about steel that still looks clean.”

Gaston lay back on his elbows, splashing his feet, and said, “In that case k shall try to avoid the next big war. The little ones you keep dragging me through are quite enough. That is one of the things I am sitting in this hot sun with you to discuss in private, Dick. I have been discussing the situation ahead with some of these Red Cross types.”

“And?”

“It seems we have once again been handed a man’s job for a boy’s pay. The insurance company did not know, or neglected to inform us, that the first rescue team, who now seems to require rescue, managed to get several messages out before they were cut off in the disaster area. Disaster would seem to be an understatement of the situation in the Guatemalan highlands. Holocaust would have been the term I would have used. The first team reported themselves up to their adorable derrieres in volcanic ash and rotting corpses. Unfortunately, at least half of the natives they went in to help were still alive when they arrived. But dying like flies with trés monotonous regularity even as they watched. Such food as they had to begin with, which is never much in a peon community to begin with, has been buried under tons of ash. In case you are wondering why they didn’t simply dig it up, the ash would seem to be trés poisonous. All sorts of amusing acids seem to go with fresh ash falls from Boca Bruja, the adorable bigmouthed witch. They call her Boca Bruja because her vomit is cursed with a chemical brew their own white witches do not understand. Getting back to the first Red Cross team and the trés fatigue nurse we were sent to rescue, I doubt we’ll find any of them in condition to be anything but buried, if the volcano hasn’t already done so. Their last runner made it out, just, by skirting a rapidly rising lake of boiling acid water.”

“We already knew they were cut off by a dammed mountain stream.”

“Oui, but did they tell us the main village up there lay in the tainted headwaters of that very stream, or that we are discussing the only source of drinking water for miles?”

“Oh boy. But by now they’ll have moved to higher ground and drilled some wells.”

“How? If the area was not a jumble of cliffs and canyons, nobody would need to be rescued. They would have simply moved themselves and the native survivors out of the disaster area, non? As to the drilling of wells, where would you suggest one drill a well in poisoned ash? La Boca Bruja coughs up a witch’s brew of lava, ash, and steam. Said steam is laced with sulfuric acid, florine, lead arsenate, and other salts one would hardly wish to drink tequila with! Before you ask if the Red Cross team did not pack water in with them, they did. But hardly enough to last themselves this long, let alone desperate natives!”

Captain Gringo dropped a length of fishing line down the Maxim’s disassembled barrel to pull an oily patch through it as he nodded and asked Gaston if there was any point to all this gloom and doom.

Gaston said, “Oui. By now those adorable sluts who tried to betray us to Los Rurales will have gossiped about us back in town. So everyone should assume we are on our merry way toward the border. If we simply went back, changing our clothing discreetly and keeping out of the limelight until we could hop a coastal freighter—”

“You’ve been out in the sun too long,” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “You’re crossing your bridges before you come to them, too. We don’t know what lies ahead of us. We know for sure that at least two dozen Rurales and a couple of putas who know us on sight are laying for us back where we came from. Besides, I just told these other Red Cross people we’d get them through, some way.”

“Mais to what, you species of braggart? Nobody named that volcano Boca Bruja because of her lovely smile, and even if we can get to her, there is no way to go, afterwards, but back the same way! So why do you like to walk so much? Sooner or later, the only way out will be through that same disgusting little seaport, non?”

“Maybe. Meanwhile, the longer we stay away from it, the longer the law has to lose interest in us.”

He started putting the gun back together as he added, “Go find some shade. That’s what I’ll be doing as soon as I finish here. I guess it’s safe to leave the water jacket empty for now. On the other hand, I don’t know when we’ll ever see so much water again. Let me think about important matters for a change, dammit!”

Gaston sat up, called him a species of idiot, and picked up his boots to walk off barefoot through the grass. Captain Gringo finished reassembling the Maxim, decided it was safe enough where it was, and got up stiffly to look around for some shade, too.

There wasn’t much. The sun was to the west now, but not as far as it would have been had it wanted to show any consideration. The few trees in the canyon were low and scrubby and their meager leaves didn’t cast enough shade to matter. He saw that most of the Red Cross team had pitched pup tents and, smarter yet, mostly along the base of the now shaded cliff. They were half in shade and half in sunlight, since the afternoon sun cast a narrow ribbon of shade near the grassy base of the sheer rock wall. He nodded and legged it over that way. He got to the cliff and sat down in the grass with his back to the rock. The rock was still warm, but not as warm as it had been. By doubling his knees he could brace his heels in the sod with his feet in the shade as well, and the strip of shade would widen more in a while, so things could have been worse. He took off his hat again, wiped his face, and lit a claro. The sunlit pond and waterfall in the distance sure looked inviting. But ladies brought up under Queen Victoria’s odd rules screamed so loud when they saw a naked man in public.

He couldn’t imagine what in hell the dame screaming in the nearest pup tent had to scream about. But she was screaming pretty good. So he drew his .38 and rolled to his feet to run over and find out.

As he dropped to his knees and opened the flap of the pup, he saw Pam huddled against the far end, wide-eyed, yelling for help, and brunette all over. She didn’t have a stitch on. She was staring not at him but at another visitor. A nasty-looking but harmless vinegarroon was crawling across her bedroll toward her as if it meant to crawl up her snatch or worse.

Captain Gringo laughed, reached in, and grabbed the vinegarroon, saying, “Take it easy. You’ll have the whole camp here in a minute and it’s too hot to get dressed.”

She gasped and said, “Are you crazy? You can’t pick up a scorpion with your bare hand!”

He said, “I know. It’s not a scorpion. It only looks like one to keep birds and pretty girls from eating it. They call it a vinegarroon. They always seek shade in the heat of the day. It wasn’t out to hurt anybody.”

She heaved a sigh of relief, suddenly noticed what she was wearing, and gasped as she said, “Oh, I’m naked and you’re looking at me, you beast!”

He sighed, said, “Come on, vinegarroon. Us beasts ain’t welcome here,” and backed out, dropping the tent flap back in place. He tossed away the harmless mock scorpion, put his .38 back in its holster, and moved back to keep his sombrero company some more. He’d dropped his smoke in the grass when he’d heard Pam scream. So he picked it up and got it going again just as a couple of other men moved toward him along the cliff, guns in hand, to ask what was going on. He grinned and said, “False alarm. One of the nursing sisters saw a big bug.”

They looked relieved and went back to their own shelters.

Captain Gringo enjoyed a few minutes’ peace and quiet. Then Pam came out of her pup, bareheaded and barefooted, but wearing her blouse and skirt again, to come over and say she was sorry for calling him a beast.

He shrugged and said, “You had every right to feel upset. Forget it.”

She didn’t. She sat down beside him and said, with a becoming blush, “I’m not used to men popping in on me when I’m not wearing a stitch. Not lately, anyway. But it was still very silly of me. I mean, when a lady screams for help, someone is supposed to come, right?”

He smiled as he considered how nice it would be to come indeed for her, now that he’d seen what she had to offer under that prim uniform.

But he knew how she’d meant it and answered, “You weren’t silly. You were scared, as you had every right to be. Vinegarroons are ugly little buggers and they do sort of look like scorpions.”

“I thought it was going to sting me to death. Harmless or not, I’m glad you killed it.”

He frowned and asked, “Why would I want to do that, Pam?”

“You didn’t kill that ugly creature?”

“No. Just tossed it away. Vinegarroons can’t help being ugly, to us, at least. It could have been a pretty girl, to a boy vinegarroon. I’m not sure how you can tell. Anyway, it’s long gone by now.”

She stared at him thoughtfully and said, “I just don’t understand you at all, Dick. Just a few hours ago you mowed down a whole band of men, and yet you worry about the feelings of a bug!”

He took a drag on his claro and said, “You’re right. You don’t understand me. It’s too hot to pontificate on the difference between harmless creatures and killers. Let’s hope you never have to worry about it as much as I do.”

“At the rate we’re going, I’m afraid I might! I understand the difference, Dick. I’m not that stupid. What I’m trying to understand is how you make your mind up so quickly. I mean you don’t seem to hesitate a split second. You seem to be able to take a life or spare it, without taking time to think!”

He shrugged and said, “Killing’s not a thinking man’s game, Pam. I think pretty good when I’m playing chess or poker. But taking the time to ponder the best game plan can get you killed in a firefight.”

“You’re so gentle. Yet you can strike like a cobra with no more feeling than a deadly reptile. I’ve never met a man like you before.”

“You’ve already said that more than once, Pam. Let’s talk about the kinds of men you have met before. You said before that nobody’s seen you naked lately. What are you, a reformed hoochie-coochie dancer?”

She giggled and said, “That’s silly. I meant my husband, back in Canada.”

“Oh? I’m sorry to hear you’re a widow, Pam.”

Her jaw clenched firmer as she said flatly, “I’m not. If you must know, I’m divorced.”

“I didn’t say I must know anything. What happened back home is your own business. So don’t tell me about it if you don’t want me to hear about it.”

She must have wanted him to hear about. She spent the next twenty minutes or so telling him a very boring story. He knew the moment she said her ex-husband had had a drinking problem how the rest of it went. But Pam must have wanted to get it off her chest to someone who couldn’t gossip about it in Canada. So he had to listen to all the dull details of a young wife trying over and over to straighten out a hopeless drunk until, in the end, she’d somehow wound up trying to save other lost causes for the International Red Cross. It could have been worse. The last dame who’d told him the same story had wound up an oversexed missionary and they were really no use to Spanish Catholics.

He knew he was supposed to render a value judgment as Pam wound down at last. Instead, he asked her if she wanted a drag on his cigar. She said she didn’t smoke, and it was a little early to ask her about other vices she might have. She saw he wasn’t about to tell her the story of his own life and finally said, “My, I do go on, don’t I? All I really meant to say was that I’m really grateful for the way you helped me and, well, you’re forgiven for peeping at me like that.”

He grimaced and said, “I didn’t peep, dammit. It was your idea to yell for help in your birthday suit.”

“Don’t be angry, Dick. I just said I wasn’t, dammit! A lot of girls would be very cross with you for, ah, seeing so much of them.”

“A lot of girls are dumb, then. This may come as a hell of a surprise to you, shorty, but in my day I’ve seen lots of naked ladies and more than one was built a lot better.”

She blanched, called him a bastard, and flounced back to her tent.

He chuckled and took another drag on his cigar, trying to remember just when he’d seen a nicer little naked body. But, come to think of it, old Pam made the last two dames he’d seen that way look pretty sick. The insurance dames had been stacked pretty good. As good as Pam? It was hard to say. He’d have to get another look at Pam in some more interesting positions if he really wanted a fair comparison.

He told his cigar, “Don’t talk dumb. We have enough to worry about right now. Besides, we haven’t seen any of these other dames naked, yet.”

~*~

They ate at five. The food was the best Captain Gringo and Gaston had tasted in some time. The International Red Cross might not carry guns as a rule, but they traveled first class. After sunset the ten nursing sisters took a bare-ass dip in the pond in the dark, and, though their girlish giggles were more than a little stimulating to the glands, none of the men saw anything, dammit.

Later the other men joined Captain Gringo and Gaston in the water in turn. So they started out cool and clean. But by the time they’d loaded up and were on their way, the warm dry air had them all feeling as if the refreshing plunge had been but a childhood dream. At least none of them would stink for a while.

Captain Gringo left the machine gun lashed to his mule as he led them over the ridge to the higher valley. At night, automatic fire didn’t offer such an edge, but dew condensing on old cold steel at night could play hell with the mechanism. So the Maxim was better off under its tarp for now.

As he’d timed it, the moon was just right for reading hoofprints in the dust as he led them south-southeast after the runaway survivors of the bandit gang. He’d turned the mule over to an otherwise useless unarmed Danish medic so that he and Gaston could scout ahead with their holstered pistols and ported Winchesters. From time to time Gaston insisted on pointing out a hoofprint Captain Gringo had already spotted. Gaston was like that. The moonlit road was clear and looked more well traveled than anything one figured to find on any official map. There wasn’t much cover to worry about on either side of the smugglers’ road, deer trail, or whatever the hell it was. When Gaston pointed out more sign, Captain Gringo said, “Dammit, Gaston, those adelitas left on ponies, not big birds. Of course they went this way. Where the hell else could they have gone?”

“Eh, bien, but when one goes anywhere, one has a destination in mind, and if we are marching on some bandit enclave—”

“There you go with your fucking bridges again. This trail leads toward Guatemala. We’re trying to get to Guatemala. Maybe they are, too, if they came from there.”

“But why? Would people with sense enough to run away from machine-gun fire be dumb enough to march on a very nasty volcano in full eruption?”

“I’ll ask ’em when we catch up with ’em, if they’re dumb enough to let us. Uh-oh, here’s where life starts getting complicated.”

Gaston said, “Oui, I warned you it was scabland,” as they both stared down at the solid rock surface ahead of them. The old lava flow was flat and offered no hindrance to further progress, but it stretched flat and featureless as far as they could see in the moonlight. The man leading their mule caught up with them to ask what was going on. Captain Gringo said, “Keep us in sight and let the mule have his head on this slick rock.” Then he started on as if he knew where he was going.

They marched across the flat lava for a little over three miles and saw a solid hedge of thorny chaparral ahead in the moonlight. Gaston said, “Merde alors. Know any other shortcuts, Dick?”

Captain Gringo dropped to one knee, felt the hard lava flow with his fingertips, and said, “Yeah, east. That’s where this shit flowed from, so it has to lead to higher ground.”

He led the long straggling column east along the south edge of the old flow for about another mile. Then, as they came to a gap in the chaparral and spotted the sandy trail leading south in the moonlight, he said, “As I was saying, guys running silver into Guatemala and guns into Mexico have to trend generally north and south.”

He started down the new trail. He saw hoofprints going south and said, “I see ’em, Gaston. No, I don’t know if we’re talking about the same band. There must be lots of people in the smuggling business this close to the border.”

“Oui, avec guns. Anyone could be covering this trail from the adorable brush on either side right now, too!”

“Stuff a sock in it. Who the hell could be waiting to ambush us around here, Gaston? We didn’t know we were coming ourselves until just a few minutes ago. If this is the same trail at all, that dogleg crossing the lava was a pretty neat way to get a stranger lost up here. I’m beginning to see why Los Rurales don’t like to patrol this far south.”

“I don’t like it either, Dick! Los Rurales are tits tough! If they feel nervous about this country, that is good enough for me!”

Captain Gringo told him to shut up again and trudged on. The new trail ran fairly straight and was easy to follow, for about a mile. Then they came to a fork in the road. Captain Gringo cursed and stopped. Gaston said, “Me too. Both those trails can’t lead to Guatemala.”

“When you’re right you’re right. But don’t tell the others we’re lost just yet.”

“It should not take them long to guess, if we don’t choose one or the other, non?”

“I think it’s time we called a trail break anyway. We’ll let ’em piss and smoke here while each of us scouts ahead. You want the right or left fork, Gaston?”

“I hate them both. But I’ll take the left. What difference does it make?”

“Probably not a hell of a lot. But who knows what may lie around the bend or over the next hill, as the poets say? We’ll each scout a couple of miles, come back, and compare notes.”

They stopped worrying about it as the others began to catch up. Captain Gringo called out cheerfully, “Take ten or more, and smoke if you got ’em. But no other fires, and go easy on the canteen water for now. We’re going ahead to scout for bad guys.”

Someone of course had to ask why they had to scout both roads, and Gaston snapped, “Merde alors, has it not sunk in yet that these hills are trés lousy avec bad guys? Enjoy your break while you can, you species of idiot. We shall not give you long here.”

Gaston strode out of sight up the left fork, cursing. Captain Gringo laughed, told everyone he’d be back sooner or later, and took the right fork.

He hadn’t gone far when he began to wonder why. The narrow trail was beginning to trend downhill now, and he knew the Guatemalan high country had to be uphill, if they were still in the foothills of the Sierra Madres. On the other hand, mountain trails sometimes dipped down where they didn’t rise up. So he decided to give it a chance. He found himself in a tunnel of mesquite as the already narrow trail punched through higher ground on either side with the thorny branches meeting overhead. They shaded the dust too well even to look for sign. But when he stepped in horseshit he knew someone had ridden this way recently, so he went on.

Over on the other fork, Gaston found himself moving uphill in less brushy country. He instinctively hugged the uphill side, and as he saw he was about to top a rise, he dropped his smoke and crushed out the glowing tip with his heel before moving on.

He went over the rise and beyond, then stopped, with a dreadful Arabic curse, when he saw yet another fork ahead of him in the moonlight!

“By the multiple tits of the Pope’s Protestant mistress, enough is enough!” he told himself as he stared morosely at his multiple choice. The fork to his left seemed less well traveled, but trended upward. The other ran straight the way he’d been going. He shook his head wearily and told his unseen comrade, softly, “If you want my considered opinion, Dick, we are, no shit of the bull, really lost!”

He started to turn back. Then the gray hairs on the back of his neck tingled as he heard the scrape of a hoof on stone. He moved into a clump of mesquite, as silently as a snake on tile, and hunkered down to cover the trail with his cocked Winchester.

A million years later a white-clad figure came down the trail to the left, leading an overloaded burro. Gaston watched until he saw the peon-costumed figure was alone, then stepped out on the trail to say politely, “Buenas noches, señor. Is it not late for you to be out alone?”

The man with the burro froze in place and gasped as he said, “In the name of Santa Maria, do not shoot me, por favor! I am only a poor old gatherer of firewood! I am not worth robbing, I swear!”

Gaston said, “One can see your burro is overloaded with dry sticks, viejo. But I seldom hold people up for firewood in a land so filled with it. Where you intend to sell it is no concern of mine. But let us discuss the distressing condition of the highways in this part of Mexico. If I wished to get to Guatemala from here, which way would you suggest I go?”

The old man shrugged and said, “In God’s truth, I do not know, señor. The trail I just came down leads nowhere. I have never followed the other path, so quién sabe where it may or may not go, eh?”

“Merde alors, you are a big help, I must say. Let us begin with the trail you do know, since you just came down it.”

The other man said, “It winds up into well-wooded country, as you can see from my load. I think perhaps Indios used this trail in the old days, since there are some Indio ruins up in the valley where it ends. Unfortunately, it leads nowhere else important,”

“Eh bien, and you insist you have never followed this other trail to the right, viejo?”

The old man shrugged and said, “I have been down it perhaps a kilometer or more. But some cabron has cut all the good firewood down that way. So I did not have any reason for to follow it further. It may go on to some important place. You can see it is wider and how the dust of many animals covers it. It must go somewhere important, no?”

Gaston said that sounded reasonable, thanked him for his modest directions, and stepped out of his way. The old man said he was glad to be of service and started to lead his burro on. Gaston shifted his Winchester to his left hand, reached up to draw the dagger from his neck sheath, and stabbed him in the back, twisting the blade inside to sever the aorta as well as the kidney under the victim’s floating rib.

He left the knife in the body for now and grabbed the lead of the nervous burro as its master flopped face down in the dust with a sad little sigh. Gaston led the burro to a clump of brush and tethered it, saying, “Easy, mon petit. You were not the one who fibbed to me so outrageously, so you have nothing to fear, hein?”

He leaned his rifle by the side of the trail and moved back to recover his knife and wipe the blade clean on the seat of the dead man’s white cotton pants and put it away before he searched the corpse. He found a bigger-bored derringer than one might expect a peon woodcutter to pack and put it in his own pocket, saying, “Shame on you. Ah, what a nice money belt. The price of firewood must have risen lately.”

He dragged the dead man well off the trail by the boot heels, stood up, and said, “Eh bien. My regards to the carrion crows and ants, mon ami. If you will excuse me, I would like to see just what your sweet little burro is carrying under that camouflage of worthless sticks.”

He went back to the burro, muttering, “Firewood indeed. More than a day’s march from the nearest stove, in hills trés lousy with such dry chaparral?”

He petted the burro, told it he loved it, and cut the cords to let the outer layer of brushwood fall away. The packsaddle under the camouflage was loaded with a substantial ammo box on either side. The moonlight was bright enough to read the stenciled letters, which said, in English, Remington ARMS, BALL AMMUNITION .30-.30.

Gaston chuckled and told the burro, “Just the size we need for our machine gun, mon petit! We are well met this evening, non? I knew the moment I regarded your lovely form in the moonlight that you were overloaded with something more than firewood! But let us rejoin the others and I shall relieve you of some of that load, hein?”

Meanwhile, on the other trail to the west, Captain Gringo had seen nothing so far and was about to turn back. But there seemed to be light at the end of the mesquite tunnel, and since it was too orange for moonlight, he decided he’d better check it out.

He moved cautiously out of the brushy cut, noting that the trail curved down and around into a flat-bottomed valley. The orange glow he’d noted was reflecting off the bare slope ahead. It was being cast by a burning shack below him, on the floor of the valley. There was a pole corral with no livestock in it. Three human figures were just visible, clear of the burning shack. Two of them were bending over a third on the ground. He heard a long keen of hopeless grief. The last time he’d heard a similar sound it had been an Apache squaw, keening over a brave who’d zigged when he should have zagged, going up against the old Tenth Cav. Gaston had said the Indians down here were, well, Indians. But the people down there were dressed Mexican peon. The one on the ground was the only one in pants.

He headed on down to see what all the keening was about, holding his Winchester down at his side politely. It still seemed to scare the shit out of them when they spotted him. One of the women leaped up and ran away. The other, holding the man’s head, didn’t.

When he got within earshot, Captain Gringo called out, “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.”

The one holding the man’s head sobbed and replied, “In the name of the Virgin, how much further can you hurt us, now? Why did you come back? You raped us both, you took everything we had, and my father is dying, you filthy ladrón!”

He came on in, saying, “You have me mixed up with someone else, señorita. I am called Ricardo Walker. I am not a ladrón. What happened here?”

The mestiza girl, for she was sixteen at the most, said, “See for yourself. They were not content for to shoot my father and rape both my mother and me. They torched our house after robbing us. Then they drove off all our stock. They even took our chickens!”

He nodded and knelt on the other side of the wounded peon to feel the side of his neck. He said, “He still lives. Where was he hit?”

“What difference does it make? Are you a doctor?”

“No, but have I got a nice surprise for you! First let’s see if he’s good for another half-hour or so. It’s going to take me that long to get help for him.”

“Do not hurt him,” she warned, as he gently opened the bloody front of the wounded man’s thin shirt. Captain Gringo whistled softly and said, “He’s lung shot. But it could be worse. I’m traveling with a medical team. Are either of you women hurt?”

“They beat us and raped us many times. The women with them laughed while they were doing it. Why would men who already have women with them wish for to humiliate us like that, eh?”

“We’ve agreed they were bastards. I think I know the band. If it’s any comfort to you, we’ve already shot about half of them.”

“It is no comfort. It will be no comfort if you shoot all of them. We have both been raped. I was a virgin, until tonight, and now I may be carrying the child of a filthy ladrón!”

He said, “Take it easy. The nursing sisters may be able to do something about that, too. I can’t do anything more here, now. But I’ll be back in less than an hour with medical attention for all three of you. Try to keep your father quiet and don’t try to move him. The less he moves, or breathes, the better. Understand?”

She shrugged and said, “Go with God, then. But my poor papa is still going to die, and I shall have to kill myself if I am pregnant by a damned ladrón!”

He got up and took off, jogging fifty and walking fifty in turn, and it still seemed to take forever to get back up the hill and along the trail to where he’d left the others.

He got there at last to find Gaston yakking with them about some damned burro. He shouted, “I need an emergency medical team on the double. Two raped and beaten women. A middle-aged man with a bullet in his chest and I think a collapsed right lung. I’m riding back on this mule, sidesaddle or not. The rest of you follow as best you can. But I’ll be mad as hell if there’s not at least one doctor with me as I dismount!”

 

He mounted one of the women’s riding mules, sitting it right, even if it did mean riding with only one stirrup, and headed back. He heard trotting hoofbeats coming after him, looked back, saw at least two other riders close enough to matter, and heeled the mule into a lope. So it was only a few minutes before he, Pam, and the Italian-Swiss doctor who thought best on his feet reined in near the burning shack.

The older woman had come out of hiding now. She still looked scared as hell. The Italian-Swiss, whose name was Luigi, Pam said, dropped to his knees by the wounded man and opened his medical kit to go right to work. Pam asked if there was anything she could do to help. Captain Gringo said, “Both the women have been raped. What do you suggest?”

Pam took her own black bag from her saddle and, in not too great Spanish but a no-nonsense tone, said, “You two had better come with me. We won’t want the boys watching what we have to do.”

As she led them into the darkness, Captain Gringo asked Luigi what the wounded man’s chances were. The Italian-Swiss said, “It depends on how healthy he was to begin with. A collapsed lung is not a matter to be taken lightly, even by a younger and stouter man. This poor specimen is undernourished, and from the color of his skin I would say he’s had a bout of malaria or jaundice lately. Maybe both. The sanitation down here I’ve seen leaves much to be desired. Let me see, now... Ah, here is the bullet, and thank God it did not break up when it went through the rib cage. Infection inside is in the hands of God. All I can do is clean the entrance wound and close it. His lung will reinflate in time if he lives that long. But how are these people to keep from starving to death first? You say the bandits took all they had?”

“Yeah, they didn’t even leave ’em a chicken. How soon will it be safe to move that guy, doc?”

“He’s hardly going to get much bed rest here. Are you thinking of taking him along with us, captain?”

“Got to. You just said we can’t leave them here without a bite to eat. The people in Guatemala need us too. What happens if we rig up a litter for him between two burros?”

“It can’t hurt him worse than leaving him behind. But it’s not what I’d order for a patient anywhere at all civilized. The odds are fifty-fifty he’ll die on the trail. I suppose that’s better than the certain death of leaving him behind.”

Captain Gringo couldn’t argue about that. Others were coming into view now. Gaston had mounted up to lead the way, on a little burro he was riding bareback. As he joined Captain Gringo he said, “Meet Pepito. He used to belong to a gunrunner who overloaded him shamefully. The .30-30 rounds I relieved Pepito of are coming aboard larger and stronger mules, hein?”

“Would you run that by me again, Gaston? What was that about a gunrunner?”

Gaston said, “I encountered a dear old man who lied like a rug. Do not worry about him anymore. He’s no longer with us. The point is that the lying bastard informed me the trail I met him on did not lead to Guatemala. Ergo, it must lead to Guatemala. He never picked up brand-new Yanqui ammunition on this side of the border. That is not how the game is played. Mexico has guarded seaports and an oppressive government but plenty of silver. Guatemala has a more relaxed customs service but is very poor, so—”

“I only asked what time it was, not how to build the clock!” Captain Gringo cut in with a laugh.

He saw the Italian-Swiss doctor consulting with some other medics on how best to sling the wounded peon between two beasts of burden, while Pam was returning from the darkness with the subdued but relieved-looking peon women. He nodded and asked in English how she'd made out. Before Pam could answer, the young girl dropped to her knees in front of Captain Gringo and took his hand to kiss it. He said, “Oh, hell,” and Pam said, “Her name’s Fabiola. I told her you were our leader. They both seem pleased with my, ah, standard first aid in such cases. The mother here is going to have a real shiner by morning. But they’re both in pretty good shape now.”

He helped Fabiola to her feet and told her they were taking the three of them along to Guatemala. Her mother keened some more and the peon girl explained that they didn’t want to go to Guatemala.

He asked, in that case, where they did want to go. Fabiola said, “We have friends and relations higher in the hills, señor. We are not supposed to discuss family business with strangers, but you are not strangers, you are lifesavers. If we can but make it up to some old Indian ruins our friends and relations sometimes use for to hide from Los Rurales ...”

Gaston had been listening, bemused. He asked, “Would any of these relatives of yours include a man about my size and a little older, who, ah, cuts firewood on occasion?”

Fabiola replied, “That sounds like Tío Heman. Do you know him, señor?”

“We ah, traded burros earlier this evening, I believe. He said something about not wanting someone to recognize his burro, wherever he was going with his, ah, firewood.”

She nodded and said, “That sounds like Tío Heman. He has always been the clever one in the family business.”

Captain Gringo just looked at Gaston, who looked back innocently and said in English, “How was I to know? She just said he was a liar.”

~*~

Gaston was too polite to point when the column passed the spot where he’d left the dead smuggler. He simply dropped back with a shovel and made sure no buzzards, or relatives, would find the remains by the dawn’s early light after all.

Since he still had the dead man’s burro to ride, it was easy enough for Gaston to catch up and rejoin an expedition forced to move no faster than its slowest pedestrian could walk. As he moved up to fall in beside Captain Gringo in the lead, Gaston didn’t mention what he’d just been up to. Little Fabiola and her mother were in earshot, leading the burros her wounded father’s litter was slung between.

Captain Gringo didn’t have to be told what Gaston had done. He had the natives near the head of the column both to verify the way and hopefully to keep their friends and relations from opening up on the Red Cross expedition on sight. It was clearer now what the wounded peon and his womenfolk had been grazing back at their out-of-the-way rancho. The bandits who’d shot them up had known about the fresh horses in their corral, too.

The moon was low and they’d covered lots of ground despite trail breaks when Fabiola showed that she’d recovered enough to think clearly once more. She called out, “Let me run ahead and tell our people who is coming and for why, Captain Gringo. They are not used to meeting strangers so high in these hills. It might be better if you all waited here until I return, eh?”

Captain Gringo nodded and called out, “Trail break, but no smoking and keep spread out.” Then he told Fabiola to go ahead. As the girl jogged out of sight up the trail, he saw the Italian-Swiss doctor and a Dutch medical opinion move in for another look at her wounded father. So he moved back to his own pack mule and unlashed the machine gun. He left it atop the saddle to be polite, but had it armed and handy just in case.

Pam and Trixie joined him as he draped the tarp, loosely folded, over the water jacket and let the ammo belt dangle. Pam asked if he thought there’d be any need for machine-gun fire and Trixie asked how he was making out with the pretty little greaser. He grimaced and said, “You keep talking like that and I probably will need to use a gun on her people, Trixie.”

Pam said, “She’s a mestiza, right, Dick?”

He shook his head and said, “For the record, I’d say nearly pure Indian. Probably a distant relative of the ancient Maya. This was Maya country, once. But they won’t mind if we mistake them for Spanish.”

Pam said she’d try to remember that and asked if there was anything they could do to help. He said, “Yeah, move back down the trail and give me a clear field of fire up it.”

Pam said, “Oh, he’s bitter again,” in a hurt voice and led Trixie away, bless her.

Gaston came over, leading his stolen burro, to ask what he could do to help. Captain Gringo said, “You might have gotten rid of that burro by now, you asshole. These people don't think every burro looks alike.”

Gaston shook his head and said, “Mais non, that would be even more suspicious, Dick. I introduced Pepito to them just in case they had recognized him back there. Leave it to me should anyone ask for a bill of sale. You know how well I can shit the bull, hein?”

“You may be right. But for God’s sake watch your step. Fabiola’s friends and relations are only one step removed from out-and-out bandits themselves!”

“Oui, that is why I took out Tío Heman. Had I let him move on to meet the rest of these greenhorns, he might not have met them. He might have gone back for assistance in relieving them of their goodies. To these Indio hillmen, our boots alone represent a fortune, hein?”

“Okay. You probably did the right thing. What do you want, a kiss on both cheeks and a medal from me?”

Gaston laughed and said, “I’ll settle for that big blonde, Trixie. I can see you have the inside track with the petite brunette.”

“Don’t talk dirty. Don’t mess with that dumb blonde, either. She’s trouble with a big fat T!”

“Merde alors, all women are trouble with a species of T. But what else is there to fuck that is not disgusting and probably just as much trouble? I don’t think any of the men with us are mariposo, anyway, and the female mules are a little too big, even for me.”

Captain Gringo laughed at the picture but warned, “Stay out of that blonde anyway. If Fabiola can get us an Indian guide, we’re as good as there, and I don’t want any lovesick Red Cross dames slowing us down once we grab and run.”

“Can I make nice-nice with the over insured M’mselle Swann, if you don’t want her? She’ll doubtless be easier to convince, once one of us has seduced her, non?”

“For chrissake, don’t you ever think of anything else, Gaston? For all we know the dame’s a dog. Nobody told us what she looks like.”

“True, but who cares what she looks like? She has to be prettier than my fist. I am getting hard up again, since those adorable treacherous bitches ran away.”

Captain Gringo suggested he go into the bushes for a while .and, spotting the Italian-Swiss passing, called him over to ask what was up. Luigi said, “Actually, I’m on the way to take a piss. We think the wounded peon will live if the village his daughter mentioned is not too far from here.”

“Can we afford to leave him in their care, doc?”

Luigi shrugged and said, “He’d be far better off in a hospital, of course. But if infection doesn’t set in, bed rest and a lot of warm soup will do as much for him as we can, dragging him along. Dr. Kruger and I were just discussing it. Kruger agrees it’s better to risk leaving him behind as the lesser of more than one evil. We still have many more patients to worry about up ahead, and—”

Captain Gringo cut in to say he understood, and Luigi went to take his leak. Captain Gringo stepped into the nearest clump of chaparral to do the same while he had the time. Pissing was no problem. But it was sort of annoying to do so with a semi-erection. He wondered why he had one. He’d had more than enough sex with Pilar and Concepción the night before, and nobody around here seemed to be offering. So he told it to behave and put it back in his pants.

He moved back to the machine gun fast when he heard voices, a lot of voices, coming down the trail toward them. Some of the voices sounded like they wanted to argue.

Fabiola and a male chorus of bigger and tougher-looking natives joined him as Gaston drifted closer, Winchester lowered politely.

Young Fabiola introduced everyone. For some reason, all the Mexican Indians seemed to be her uncles. The one doing most of the bitching was Tío José. He said, “We mean no disrespect. The girl has told us what you people did for her own. But strangers are not welcome on our land.”

Captain Gringo smiled thinly and replied, “Your land? Funny, on the map it says these uninhabited hills belong to Mexico.”

Tío José spat and said, “I piss on the map. I piss on the grave of El Presidente’s whore of a mother, too!”

Captain Gringo laughed easily and said, “Great minds run in the same channels. We don’t like dictators either. Has Fabiola explained we’re only passing through on our way to Guatemala?”

“She has. You can’t go there by way of the trail we used to travel. It crosses the border near Boca Bruja, and the volcano has devastated everything for kilometers around.”

Another tío said, “Es verdad. Our amigo Heman just came from there with the last, ah, firewood. He said he was afraid he would not make it, as Boca Bruja rained cinders on him and his burro. When he topped a rise and looked back, near the border, everything in his wake was covered with smoldering ash.”

Tío José stared thoughtfully at Gaston and said, “Speaking of Heman’s burro. How is it this girl says you have it now? I do not wish for to call any man a liar, but I find it most strange that Heman would trade beasts with a total stranger, señor!”

Gaston shrugged and said, “I found it strange too. But what could I do? He was pointing a derringer at me.”

One of the other tios chuckled and said that sure sounded like old Heman. But Tío José said, “Not to me. Heman was a most cautious man. He lived to be very old by stealth, not gunplay. There is something most peculiar going on here!”

Gaston snorted in disgust and said, “Eh bien, if you must know, I stabbed your friend and robbed him of his burro. Then, having nothing better to do, I joined my friends in rescuing his relatives here. You know how idiotic we Frenchmen are, hein?”

It worked. Tío José still grumbled. But when Fabiola’s mother came over and wailed at them to cut the bullshit and get her man to safety, they grudgingly turned to lead the expedition on. As they did so, one of them warned Captain Gringo to consider it a one-way trip and that all bets were off if they ever spotted strangers on their smugglers’ trail again. The tall American assured them he had no idea how he’d ever be able to point it out on any map in any case. They told him not to try.

It wasn’t a village they led the expedition to. A side trail a casual passerby would have had trouble spotting led up to what looked at first like an outcropping of jumbled black rock but turned out to be on closer inspection a complex Maya ruin, overgrown with cactus and chaparral. The semi-permanent smugglers’ camp was set up in what had once been some sort of ceremonial courtyard. The substantial campfire in the center was invisible from any distance but illuminated the facade of Maya glyphs and gods all around. The Indians had erected brush lean-tos along the walls, and naturally a mess of women and children boiled out to giggle and point as the Red Cross column marched in. The tíos told them to move back and behave themselves as the wounded man was carried into one of the shelters with his worried wife and daughter. One of the tíos told Captain Gringo they could corral their mules and burros in another courtyard with their own stock and that they were welcome to use the fire, but that the smugglers had no food to spare. Captain Gringo said that was only just, but asked if they could hang around until daybreak. His informant nodded and said, “You will break your necks if you try to follow the trail south after moonset, sehor. As you shall see, it runs along the sides of sheer cliffs in places.”

“Could one of you guide us, if we paid well?”

“No. Do not press your luck with us, señor. We are desperate people leading desperate lives. We would have had to kill you, had you come this far as total strangers. But we owe you for the lives of three of our friends. So you are free to go in peace. But that is all we owe you. Besides, even if one of us wished for to go on with you to the border, the border is not there anymore. Everything is covered with hot ash and lava down that way. We are, how you say, out of business until Boca Bruja goes back to sleep for a while.”

Captain Gringo agreed to the terms of the smugglers’ rough-and-ready hospitality, directed his followers to corral their stock and share some coffee with the somewhat surly band, and hunkered down to eat, himself, as both the unreconstructed Maya and their ancient gods frowned down at him from every side. He ate because he didn’t know when he’d get another crack at a warm meal, not because he was really hungry. The situation was still a little tense. But by the time some of the Indians had joined them around the fire to accept coffee and smokes, he figured it was going to be okay. He’d seldom met an Indian anywhere who didn’t consider smoking with a stranger a friendly act. Some of the nursing sisters helped even more by breaking out some chocolate for the kids.

But Captain Gringo wasn’t about to go to sleep in such unfamiliar surroundings, and in any case the night was more than half shot. So as things settled down he got up and went for a walk alone. Nobody seemed interested in following him as he left the firelit courtyard and mounted the slope of what had once been an imposing flight of steps. At the top, he found himself on an elevated ceremonial platform of some kind. It was pretty dark up here, now that the moon had set, and the blocky weathered statues of forgotten Maya gods and goddesses all around looked sort of spooky. But not as spooky as the glow he spotted on the southeast horizon.

He moved across to a waist-high parapet and leaned on the weathered blocks for a better look. The skyline down that way was etched black against the orange sky glow. He didn’t see anything that looked like a volcanic cone. So the peak of Boca Bruja itself was still far to the south. But from the way it was illuminating the sky above it, the volcano was still erupting pretty good. That smuggler Gaston had knifed had said the ash was falling as far north as the border, and the disaster area was said to be almost a full day’s march beyond!

He heard a soft footstep and turned to see a dimly visible white-clad figure approaching. It was little Fabiola. She said, “I saw you going up here. I wished for to be alone with you. We have not had time to speak alone together, señor.”

“Call me Dick, Fabiola. What’s on your mind?”

She joined him at the parapet, looking down as she murmured, “I do not know much about talking to men, Señor Deek.”

“Is there anything I can do for you? Are you feeling better now?”

“Si, much better, but confused. That nurse was most simpatico about what happened to me. She did things for to keep me from having a baby and told me how to do things for myself until such time as I might wish one. You Anglos are so wise about such matters.”

“I wish we were as wise as you about your country. You, ah, wouldn’t want to show us the way south, would you?”

“Alas, I do not know the trail, even if my people would let me. We shall never see each other again, after this night ends, Señor Deek.”

“That’s what I thought. So what else are we talking about, Fabiola?”

She wiped her nose and said, “That most simpatico nurse told me many things about men and women as she treated me. She was very wise. When I told her I had never lain with an hombre before those men ravaged me, she said she understood how I felt and why it was natural for me to be most confused.”

“I understand. As a woman who’d once been married, old Pam would be up on such girl talk. But I’m not a girl, Fabiola. So what do you want from me?”

“I want for you to fuck me, I think.”

He laughed incredulously and asked, “Did Señorita Pam put you up to that?”

“No.” Fabiola sighed. “She just told me it was only natural that, toward the end, as the last and most gentle bandit did bad things to me, I was not sure about my feeling when he ... stopped.”

Captain Gringo nodded and said, “I see. Our bodies are like that, I guess. But don’t you think it’s a little early to find out if you were, ah, missing something?”

“Señorita Pam asked me if I knew what an orgasm was. She was so simpatico I could not lie to her. I confessed how even a virgin’s natural curiosity can lead her to sin, with her hand and things. She said she thought the best way for to get over my confused feelings about that one handsome bandit would be to do it some more, with someone I liked better.”

“That makes sense. Sort of. I never would have thought old Pam held such advanced views, though. But I’m afraid you came to the wrong guy, nina. Don’t you have an Indio boyfriend who’d be willing to help you out with your, ah, problem?”

“Si, many of our young men have serenaded me in the past, before my papacito chased them away. But you are very pretty, and I wish for to thank you properly as well, Señor Deek. Can we fuck now? Nobody ever comes up here this late at night.”

He laughed gently and said, “Thanks, but no thanks, Fabiola. No offense, but I don’t think it would be a good idea.”

“Don’t you think I’m pretty?”

“Very pretty. And very confused. I know a little bit about the way a woman’s head works, too, and I’m afraid we’d both regret it in the cold gray dawn. I’m leaving at sunrise. You’re just too young and, well, confused, for a one-night stand with a passing stranger.”

She sobbed as she said, “Oh, I hate you! You think I am not worthy of you because I am an Indian!”

“Querida, I want you so bad I can taste it. But someday you’ll thank me for passing on your generous offer.”

She didn’t thank him. She called him a stuck-up gringo son of a bitch and turned to flounce away, sobbing. He sighed and muttered to himself, aloud, “Now why in the hell did I do that?”

A nearby feminine voice replied in English, “Perhaps because you’re a gentleman after all?”

He blinked in surprise and almost went for his gun as he whirled, spotted a more rounded “statue” sitting nearby with her back against a rose in the parapet, and asked, “Is that you, Pam? I thought you were a gargoyle or something.”

She chuckled and said, “I know. I beat you up here and I don’t know why I didn’t say something before I saw you had company and decided to just keep quiet.”

“I’m sure glad the two of you didn’t make a sap out of me, then. Did Fabiola know you were so sneaky?”

“No. I never expected her to take my motherly advice so literally, so soon. You were right, you know. A love-’em-and-leave-’em quickie was not what I prescribed for such a young rape victim.”

He moved closer, saw she was sitting with her knees up and barefooted under her whipcord skirt and asked casually, “Have you ever prescribed anything like that for older women, Pam?”

She shrugged and said, “I didn’t really enjoy the rather wild fling I had after my divorce. It got me through some otherwise lonely nights. But I’m a Red Cross girl now, so down, boy!”

“Aren’t you being a little presumptuous, Pam? I generally get to make a pass before the lady says no.”

“Don’t make one, then, and I won’t have to say no. I know what they say about gay divorcees, but I’ve outgrown that nonsense.”

He didn’t answer. So she said, “Naturally, you don’t believe me. You think I’m a tease, right?”

He shrugged and said, “Let’s not worry about it. I just turned down something younger and prettier.”

“Why, you insulting unwashed gun thug!” she said with a gasp, as he turned away, having seen the light in every way up here. He made it halfway across the platform before Pam called after him, “Come back here, damn you!”

He shrugged again, returned to her, and asked her what the hell she wanted. She sighed and said, “I give up. Aren’t you even going to try, you brute?”

He laughed dryly, took her in his arms, and kissed her, leaning her back against the weathered but smooth basalt. She kissed back passionately until he ran a hand up under her whipcords and discovered to his mild surprise that she wasn’t wearing anything under her skirts. But as he parted her pubic thatch with his exploring fingers Pam stiffened and said, “No! I don’t want to go that far!”

He kissed her some more and began to rock the man in the boat as she struggled weakly and tried to cross her naked thighs, as she sobbed and said, “Dammit, I don’t want to be raped, you animal!”

He said, “Sure you do,” and rolled her over on her belly with her breasts and everything else at that end hanging over the sheer drop into darkness as she spread her knees against the inside of the parapet to brace herself from going over the side head first, gasping in fear. So all he had to do was unbutton his fly, hoist her skirts, and shove it in, deep and hard, before she knew what was happening.

Pam moaned and said, “Oh, Jesus, you are raping me!”

He said, “I sure am. How do you like it so far?”

She giggled and asked, “Well, aren’t you even going to move it, you terrible man?” So he did, and in no time at all they were old friends. He assured her he really thought she had a nicer ass than Fabiola, and she admitted that getting laid in such an odd position was a totally new experience for her. But after they’d come together that way and he hauled her back to do it right, she protested that lying down on solid rock was a bit much. So he leaned her against a flat-faced Maya god and wall-jobbed her, standing up. That was a new position for even a gay divorcee, too. She was so short that he had to hook an elbow under each of Pam’s knees to brace her shapely little rear high enough against the carved stone, and she said it felt like a washboard rubbing her fanny as she clung to him, returning his thrusts with interesting gyrations she’d obviously practiced before. She’d been going without sex far longer than he had, so she found it easy to climax in any position and complimented him on his ingenuity. But she added, after climaxing again in such an odd one, that she really thought they should do it in her pup tent in the future. He said, “We’ll be pushing on at daybreak, so this is the last chance we’ll get for a while, doll box.”

So she said, “Oh, in that case push me up a little higher so you can push it to me good.”

~*~

They left as the eastern sky was just pearling gray, and it was broad daylight by the time the trail south started getting complicated. This was just as well, since the trail led over razor-backed sierras and along some ravines not even a Spanish mule would have wanted to meet in the dark. Nobody in the expedition had gotten much rest the night before. So when they found themselves high in a saddle cooled by the trades, Captain Gringo ordered a siesta break and they all caught a few hours’ sleep. All but Captain Gringo and Pam did, at any rate. She’d been right about it being much nicer with their clothes off in her tent.

Gaston got into Trixie’s tent, and Trixie, at the next campsite. Other couples had made similar arrangements by this time, if they hadn’t before. But most of the men and at least three or four of the girls were starting to look a little jealous around the campfires. So Captain Gringo pushed hard for the border to get rid of his greenhorns before someone started a fight.

It was hard to say just where the border was. But they must have crossed it somewhere as the hills around them got grayer and grimmer by the mile. The trail was covered with what now looked and drifted like cigar ashes. But when anyone inhaled it, it tasted and felt like ground glass. It helped if one tied a bandana across one’s nose and mouth. So they began to look more like train robbers than a relief expedition as they forged south and, once over a pass, saw the slopes of Boca Bruja looming ahead.

There was no mistaking Boca Bruja for anything else. The volcano was a big gray bastard with a wide crater that made it look more like a distant butte than a peak. The slopes were eroded into a pleated skirt of deeply cut ravines. A dirty gray mushroom cloud of steam and ash rose impossibly high above the mountain, illuminated from time to time by flashes of hell fire from the seething caldron below.

As they worked their way closer, the trail vanished completely under drifting dunes of gritty ash with an occasional blackened something sticking out of it. Most of the charred remains they passed were of course burned cactus or chaparral. Some of them weren’t. Dead livestock was bad enough. One of the charred women had a well-baked baby under her when the Italian-Swiss and Dutch doctors were dumb enough to turn her over. After that they just walked past the charred bodies. There was nothing a medic could do for them now.

As they were working up an ashy slope, closer to the volcano, Gaston joined Captain Gringo in the lead and said, “This is senseless as well as trés fatigué, Dick. We are not going to find anyone alive ahead.”

Captain Gringo said, “We can’t go back. Besides, the wind seems to be from the southwest. So the ashfall might be worse this way. If the first team’s holed up in the lee of some ridge, they could still be breathing.”

“Merde alors, breathing what? It stinks like rotten eggs and kitchen matches this far from that species of volcano, and you want to get closer?”

“Don’t want to. Have to. It doesn’t matter if we find Miss Swann alive or not, now. The only way out is by way of Guatemala, and that fucking mess ahead is between us and the lowlands. So pick ’em up and lay ’em down. The sooner we get past Boca Bruja, the sooner we’ll be enjoying a cool drink in some nice steamship lounge.”

“That’s the first good suggestion I’ve heard in some time from you. What about these others? How long are we to be saddled with such greenhorns, Dick?”

“Depends on them, I guess. Are you tired of Trixie already?”

“Mais non, she uses that big mouth of hers most delightfully in the dark. But last night she said they meant to stay here until the emergency is over.”

“They figure to be here some time, then. Look at that volcano go!”

Boca Bruja was clearing her throat now, with a roar that could be heard for miles. House-sized, white-hot boulders were flying up like chimney sparks to arc away from the main plume and bounce down the gray slopes, trailing cinders and smoke. Gaston sighed and asked, “May I be excused for the rest of the afternoon? All in all, I think I’d rather associate with bandits and Rurales.”

Captain Gringo told him to shut up and struggled to the crest of the slope. Then he paused, nodded, and said, “We made it.”

Gaston joined him to ask, “Made what?” as they both stared down into the next valley. A village was spread out below. What was left of it anyway. The walls rising above the ash were flamingo pink, with pastel blue doors and window shutters. It would have been a pretty little highland village, had not the tile roofs been covered with a foot or more of gray ash, or had said ash not risen almost as high as the windowsills between the houses. Here and there a tree rose, leafless, in a land where trees didn’t drop their leaves if they felt at all well. As others struggled up to join them, Captain Gringo said, “Welcome to the last days of Pompeii. If that volcano doesn’t shut up. soon, there’ll be nothing but a stretch of gritty-gritty down there in a day or so!”

Luigi asked if he thought there was a chance anyone was still alive down there. Captain Gringo said they weren’t going to find out unless they went down for a look. So they started down.

They’d only gotten a third of the way down when people came out of the half-buried houses, yelling a lot. Pam shouted, “I see Red Cross uniforms! We got here in time!”

Gaston grunted and said, “In time for what?” but everyone else acted cheerful as hell, considering. The villagers and members of the cut-off first team helped them get the supplies down to the old Spanish mission, now serving as a hospital and supply camp. The nave wasn’t very big. But there weren’t a hell of a lot of survivors and the relief expedition hadn’t brought a hell of a lot of supplies, so it tended to even out.

Captain Gringo let everyone sort things out and settle down a bit before he took a dusty doctor from the first team aside and asked which of his nursing sisters might be Cynthia Swann. The Red Cross man sighed and said, “Poor Cynthia’s dead, I’m afraid.”

“You’re no more afraid about it than I am, doc! What happened to her?”

“Yellow jack. She and seven others in our party came down with it, and four, including poor Cindy, didn’t pull through. I’d show you her grave, if I could find it now. But it’s under tons of drifting ash. She and the others were buried in the village graveyard. We don’t have one of those things anymore. As they drop, we just have to bury them wherever the ash is still soft enough. It tends to set like cement after a few days. Moist, you know.”

Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “That’s that, then. How do you go about getting out of here, doc?”

“You don’t. I thought you knew we were cut off. The road we took in is covered by water that’s acid enough to eat you alive. It seems to be going down a bit now. Probably leaking under the lava dam down the valley. But at the rate it’s sinking, we’ll be stuck here at least another few weeks. I hope you people brought enough food to last us and the villagers that long.”

“How many mouths are we talking about feeding, doc?”

“Four hundred and forty-eight, assuming the last fever victims recover. Why?”

“We didn’t bring enough food. A week’s rations at most. We’re going to have to get everyone out.”

“But the road is blocked and—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know about the sluggish sewer drains, doc. But I just brought a mess of people in where the map said there was no road.”

“Good! You can lead us all out that way, right?”

“Wrong. Aside from bandits, there’s no telling what Los Rurales would do to a mess of Guatemalans too poor to bribe them. There’s got to be another way. What happens if we just sort of ease around that volcano, low on the slopes? We’re not that far from the west coast and it should be mostly downhill, past Boca Bruja.”

The doctor shook his head and said, “We can’t. We’re cut off that way, too.”

“By what, lava?”

“Worse. Bandits. A guerrilla band led by some idiot in a white hat has taken up positions in the next valley over. So far our alcalde and our military escort have kept them from raiding us through the one pass. But they say they won’t let us through unless we give them a hundred thousand dollars, U.S., and we just don’t have it!”

Captain Gringo grimaced and said, “They’d double-cross you once they had it, if you did. The ghouls want the women and supplies we have between us as well.”

“That’s what the alcalde says. He says medical supplies are worth their weight in gold to any rebel force and—”

“I just said that,” Captain Gringo cut in, turning away to see where Gaston might be. He didn’t see Gaston. A tall redheaded woman who was either about forty or very very tired had been listening to their conversation. As she came over, the Red Cross man introduced her as a Mrs. Parkhurst and added that she was not with his expedition. The redhead said to call her Ruth and added, “I’m a geologist, or the widow of one at any rate. My late husband and I were up here studying the volcano when it started teaching us some tricks that are not in the books. I couldn’t help noticing you seem to have a machine gun on your mule, Captain Walker.”

He nodded and said, “Yeah, but it won’t work, if those bandits are dug in behind a razor back. I’m sorry to hear about your husband, though. What happened?”

She pointed at the church wall, albeit really in the direction of the volcanic slope to the west, and said, “Boca Bruja happened. I told him it was time to get out of there. But he thought he knew better. We were camped in the crater. He said he was sure it was extinct.”

Captain Gringo whistled softly and said, “You sure must run pretty good, Miss Ruth!”

She smiled wanly and said, “I do. But not that good. Actually we had a tiff the night before the volcano blew. So I was staying here in the village when it happened. Hopefully, the first explosion killed him and our workers before they knew what hit them. I’ve been stuck here ever since. I certainly would like to get out of here.”

“That sounds reasonable. Any ideas, Miss Ruth?”

“One. It may seem a little wild. If you’re interested, I’d be glad to show you my plan on the map in my quarters.”

He nodded and she led him out of the mission and up the street through ankle-deep loose ash with a yard of solidified crud under it.

Ruth Parkhurst’s rented rooms were on the second story of the village posada. It was just as well. The cantina below had gone out of business after the ash drifting in had covered everything with what looked like gray cement. The roof beams above bowed ominously, and as he glanced thoughtfully at them she said, “I know. Some of the less substantial roofs have already caved in. Sit down. I’ll get the map. I’d offer you refreshments if I could. But I can’t. We’re rationed one canteen and three tortillas a day. I hate tortillas. Don’t you?”

He sat at the table in the center of the room and said, “They’re okay if you have something to go with ’em. Living on tortillas alone can get to be like eating old blotters.”

“You have been down here awhile,” she said, as she spread a very well detailed topographical map on the table before him. She put a once-manicured and now grimy nail to the map, saying, “This is where we are, of course. The lake of acid water doesn’t show, since it’s not supposed to be there. But it’s about here and, as you can see, blocks the only practical way out. The bandits are holding this valley to the south. As you see, there’s only one easy way over into it, and they have it guarded by at least a dozen riflemen. So it’s one of your typical Mexican standoffs.”

He nodded and traced the valley they were in west until it turned into a ravine running up the slope of the volcano. All the other local drainage seemed to work the same way. He asked, “What if we just worked up to about here, moved along the side of the mountain well above the bandits, and took this other ravine down behind them to this valley?”

“You can’t. At the moment it’s full of lava. The flow is slow but sure. Lava moves like that, when a wind blows steadily across it to cool the crust. But at the rate it’s going, in no more than a day or so it will have filled the valley beyond the bandits. Then they'll be cut off too.”

“Ouch! Once Caballero Blanco figures there’s no way out but through us, he’s bound to try a little harder, right?”

“Exactly. I told the alcalde that, but apparently Mexican men don’t listen to women, either.”

“I think they’re Guatemalan. But I get the picture. I'm listening to you, Miss Ruth. What’s your plan?”

“Heavens, can’t you see it? If we were simply to divert that lava flow into the valley the bandits are holding, they’d have two choices, and they’d have to make their minds up fast!”

“If I was Caballero Blanco I’d rather run like hell to the southwest than through a lot of rifle fire, too. But how do you go about diverting a lava flow, Miss Ruth?”

“I’ve got dynamite. Need I say more?”

“I wish you would. I’m a soldier of fortune, not a geologist, and you just told me Boca Bruja eats geologists for breakfast!”

She put her finger in a spot two-thirds of the way up the cone and said, “If we dynamited this knife-edged ridge, right here, the lava might find it easier going down this ravine instead of the other, since it’s sheltered from the cooling effects of the prevailing wind, see?”

“Not really. You’re talking about blowing a hole in the side of the flow way the hell above its moving front.”

“Exactly. Where the lava is thousands of degrees hotter and a lot more fluid, Dick. The cooler foot of the flow is moving, but it’s also acting as a dam ahead of the hotter and more fluid flow from above. Break a new conduit out for it, and it should spurt like puss and flow like the devil!”

“Oh, swell. And we’re supposed to stand in front of it like big birds without wings?”

“Don’t be silly. We’ll light a very very long fuse and be well up the far slope before it blows, see?”

He fished out a cigar to give himself time to think it over as he studied her map. She asked if he could spare a cigar and he said, “Sorry. Wasn’t expecting to meet a lady who smoked cigars so soon. Here. Let me light it for you.”

He did and she inhaled as if it were a cigarette as she sat beside him, sighing as she said, “God, that tastes marvelous. I haven’t had a smoke for weeks. My damned husband had all the tobacco with him up in the crater.”

He didn’t comment on her unusual views on widowhood. The map was more important. Like most West Point graduates, Captain Gringo had a good grasp of terrain, and even Washington had known you were supposed to take the high ground. He said, “Now I can see why those bandits didn’t just work up and over. It won’t work. The ridge between us and Caballero Blanco stays razorback, all the way to the top.”

She nodded and said, “It’s a basalt dike. Sheer-walled and slippery black rock, where the mountain filled a crack with lava ages ago and then let the rains erode it into a sort of Chinese Wall. So what?”

“So how do you get through it to cross the head of the bandit-held valley to your pet lava flow?”

“Easy. I told you I was here before the mountain went crazy. So I got to explore some on my own.” She stabbed the map with her nail and said, “The bandits don’t know it. My husband didn’t even know it. But one day as I was picking flowers I found a lava tube running under and through the dike.”

“You were picking flowers up there?”

“The mountain and surrounding countryside are quite pretty, between eruptions. Give the new ash a couple of years to weather and the villagers will actually have more fertile milpas to plant.”

“Swell. But meanwhile we have to keep ’em alive that long. Okay. You’re on. I’ll carry the machine gun and some of the dynamite. How much can you carry?”

“Enough. But are you talking about leaving right now?”

“Why not? Let’s get out of here before your roof caves in!”

~*~

Captain Gringo said Gaston couldn’t come along and told him to get over to the alcalde and his boys with as many guns as he could get to follow him. Then Captain Gringo followed Ruth Parkhurst up the side of Boca Bruja. For a lady packing thirty pounds of high explosives, wearing an ankle-length cotton smock, she moved pretty good. As he struggled after her with the Maxim on one shoulder, extra ammo belts around his hips, and another case of dynamite under one arm, he complimented her on her likeness to a mountain goat. She said her late husband had commented, not as nicely, on her restless nature. Captain Gringo could see how it might have been tough concentrating on geology and old Ruth at the same time. Aside from being tall and apparently tireless, she filled out that smock pretty nicely. The sun was high and as it shone down through her thin cotton skirts at him he couldn’t help noticing how muscular the redhead’s long legs were.

She suddenly crabbed sideways across the dusty gray slope and led him into the mouth of what looked like a railroad tunnel blasted through the wall of basalt columns otherwise blocking their further progress. She put down her own load in the welcome shade inside and said, “We’d better rest a moment, if you’re tired.”

“I’m not tired. I’m anxious to see if this works.”

“I’m glad you’re as strong as you look. It has to work. But I wish we had more dynamite. Why did you insist on dragging along that heavy weapon, Dick?”

“I’m not dragging it. I’m carrying it. To get the rest of the way we have to expose ourselves to the bandits in the valley below. I don’t like to do that, even when I’m packing a machine gun. But what the hell.”

She laughed, picked her own load up from the sandy floor of the lava tube, and they went on. It wasn’t easy, and the ravine between them and the lava flow was steep and slippery. Worse, they heard a distant shout and, looking down, saw someone below in a white hat and once white charro outfit, pointing up at them and yelling a lot. Captain Gringo said, “Keep moving. We’re out of range.”

The bandits didn’t know this, or perhaps they just liked noise. For guns started popping down below and gouts of dust flew from the sides of their ravine, fortunately far too short to worry about.

Ruth dropped to her knees and began picking away at the wall of solidified ash in front of her with a geologist’s hammer. He offered to help and she said she knew best. So he sat on a dynamite case with the Maxim across his knees and let her. Down below, the bandits couldn’t have known what they were up to. But whatever it was, Caballero Blanco must not have approved. A skirmish line was moving upslope at them, blazing away and cursing at impossible range. As Captain Gringo watched bullets hit far down the slope, he grimaced and muttered, “Stupid bastards.”

But it got less sillier as the sombreros down the slope kept moving closer, perhaps encouraged by the lack of return fire. Captain Gringo had found in other similar situations that people down here who had guns tended to fire them a lot. The guy in the big white sombrero yelled, loud enough to be heard all the way up the mountain, “What are you waiting for, estupidos? Anyone can see they have no guns, and one of them is a woman!”

Ruth chopped away a big chunk and asked, “Did he mean that the way I think he meant that, Dick?”

Captain Gringo said, “Yeah. How’s it coming?”

“Hot, dammit. The lava on the other side can’t be far now. I can’t dig much deeper without burning myself. Help me charge and pack this hole, will you?”

“Can’t. I’m going to have to open fire in a minute if they don’t wise up.”

She looked downslope, gasped as she saw how close the bandits were now, and broke open her first dynamite box, asking, “Why don’t you shoot, dammit?”

“You do your tricks and I’ll do mine. I could probably hit ’em with plunging fire now, but we’re still out of their range. So why waste good ammo?”

She charged the hole with her own dynamite and told him to move his big ass so she could get at the other. So, as long as he was standing up anyway, Captain Gringo braced the Maxim on his hip and opened fire down the slope.

The results were gratifying. When a guy got hit with a machine-gun round on a steep dusty slope, he seemed to roll forever, ass over teakettle like he was on fire. He sent the skirmish line back down to Caballero Blanco with his compliments. But when he tried to lay some lead on the white-clad bandit leader in person, the son of a bitch was just out of range and getting more out of range by the frantic leap.

As he ceased fire, Ruth was cursing like a sailor getting tattooed with a rusty can opener. He thought she was unsettled by the noise of gunfire and said it couldn’t be helped. She snapped, “Fuck the gunfire! How am I to detonate this fucking dynamite now?”

“Jesus, didn’t you bring fuses and caps?”

“Of course I brought fuses and caps, God damn this country and its acid rain! The stupid caps are corroded green as an Irishman’s shamrock and this fucking fuse is moldy, too!”

He said, “Okay. Run back up to that lava tube and hit the dirt. Be with you in a minute, I hope.”

“I can light the fuses as well as you, dammit. I just don’t know if they’ll bum, or if the caps are any good if they do!”

He snapped, “Do as you’re told and do it now! Don’t argue with me, woman. Move your ass!”

She gasped and said, “That’s not fair! I’m not packing a gun!” But then she saw something in his eyes that made her decide to move away, and once old Ruth moved, she moved good.

Captain Gringo looked down the slope, saw nobody moving down there, and reloaded his Maxim. Then he moved back to about pistol-fighting range with the muzzle trained on the unpacked hole filled with dynamite and fired a whole belt’s worth into it. Or almost. He still had a couple of rounds left when a lucky round hit a lucky cap and the whole mess exploded in his face, knocking him on his ass to roll down the steep slope!

He spread his arms and legs to stop himself and caught the Maxim as it almost slid past him. He staggered back to his feet, ears ringing so hard he couldn’t make out what Ruth was yelling about from the lava tube above. He moved up the slope to see that it had almost worked. A big black bubble of what looked like steaming tar was oozing out of the big hole he’d blasted. But he could see it was too crusted really to flow. He reloaded with the last belt, leveled the muzzle on the big boil of lava, and lanced it with another full burst.

Then he was running as if his life depended on it, because it obviously did. With the scabby crust blown away, white-hot lava was shooting out of the hole like the Devil’s firehose, and this was no time to hang on to an empty machine gun. He dropped it and scrambled up the slope toward the lava tube as the ravine he was vacating filled with a sloshing flash flood of newer liquid lava. It picked up his abandoned machine gun, exploded the ammo still belted to it like a string of firecrackers, and carried it down the mountain glowing white hot as Captain Gringo made it to the entrance, turned, and saw he’d just missed getting his boot heels burned off. The whole ravine was filled with lava as liquid as molten steel and moving down into the bandit-held valley at express-train speed!

Below, they could hear the distant crackle of small arms, and Ruth asked if the bandits really thought they could stop a lava flow with guns. He shook his head and said, “No. The ones trapped on Gaston’s side are trying to get over the ridge in a hurry. That’s not an easy thing to do, with Gaston manning the fireline. Uh-oh, I see a white hat on a white horse, and, talk about dumb, he’s trying to run down the valley away from the flow!”

“There’s no way out farther down. The valley’s blocked by that same acid lake!”

“That’s what I just said. Let’s move back to the other side of this dike. It’s getting soft of hot in here.”

She said, “I know,” and wrapped her arms around him to kiss him, with considerable appetite. He kissed back. Any man would have. But when they came up for air, he said, “You sure pick a funny time and place for romance, honey.”

She said, “I haven’t had enough romance to matter since I married a damned geologist. Do we really have to go right back down to the village, Dick? You know they’ll want to talk and talk about what we just did, and it won’t be dark for hours, outside.”

He grinned, carried her deeper into the tunnel, and lowered her to the sand. As he’d expected, she wasn’t wearing anything under her thin smock, and they used that under her to keep her back from getting gritty as he shucked his own clothes and mounted her. She wrapped her long muscular legs around his waist and sobbed as she said, “Oh, Jesus, I’ve been wanting that big cigar since you offered me the other one a million years ago! I’m never going to let you stop unless you promise to take me out with you!”

He suggested they come before they go anywhere, and she thought that was a great idea. By the time he’d climaxed in her twice he would have promised to take her anywhere. She was younger and prettier than he’d thought, under the dusty clothes and hair. So he wanted to try her at least once in a bed after they’d both had a bath. She said that was a swell idea, too, and said she was looking forward to taking a shower with him. They rested in each other’s arms, shared a smoke, and tore off another piece before she agreed, reluctantly, that they really ought to have a look at the current situation.

They dressed and moved out the other side of the lava tube. As they moved down the slope hand in hand, he stared beyond the village at the pea-green lake in the distance and said, “Hey, I can’t be sure, but from the yellow rim around the edges that wasn’t there before, I’d say that lake is sinking, doll.”

She shielded her eyes, gazed thoughtfully, and said, “From the steam clouds down that way, I'd say hot lava’s hit water by now, and you know what they say about underwater shock waves. That yellow rim is exposed sulfur oxide. You’re right, the lake’s draining faster now.”

As they got down near the village, others rushed up to meet them, demanding to know what they’d done, since they’d obviously done something marvelous. Captain Gringo let Ruth explain to the others as he spotted Gaston in the crowd and joined him to ask how the firefight had gone.

Gaston spat and replied, “What firefight? It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Lava did most amusing things to the ones we rolled all the way down the slope into it. That lava was your notion, of course?”

“Tell you how we did it, later. Ruth’s coming with us to the capital. I know Trixie and the other Red Cross girls will have to stay here to clean up. But you might find a Guatemalan girl who’d like to see the sea, right?”

~*~

Gaston’s traveling companion was a mulatta named Lola. As Captain Gringo had assumed, both Red Cross teams meant to take more time getting the sicker villagers in shape to move. Dr. Luigi gave them a message to deliver, asking for more food and medical supplies, now that the trail to the lowlands was open again. Some of the Guatemalan soldiers who’d been cut off up there, and who, according to Gaston, had helped do a pretty good job of El Caballero Blanco’s band, offered to go with them. Captain Gringo told them they’d better stick around, just in case any of the bandits had gotten away, or new ones showed up, attracted by carrion.

So in the end the two soldiers of fortune and the two girls left with the pack burro Gaston had acquired so dishonestly. Once they’d worked past the still slippery and acid slopes of the drained lake, the trip was more pleasure than work. As he’d expected, Ruth was even better looking after they’d showered together under a jungle waterfall. She tried to tell him the story of her life as they spent the next few days, and nights, together. But he knew all he really needed to know about her and she didn’t really want to hear all the details of his wild career, either, as they made love wildly every time they could get out of sight of Gaston and Lola, who probably had other things to talk about.

Ruth said it seemed all too soon when they came at last to the outskirts of Guatemala City. But by the time they got her to the cable office she was already walking a bit more primly and answering his cruder suggestions about hotels with thoughtful faraway looks. So when they got to the cable office, he held out his hand and said, “Well, I’ll see you around the campus, doll. Thanks for the lovely evening.”

“You do understand, Dick?”

“What’s to understand? You gotta go back to the States and play respected widow of a distinguished scientist, right?”

“I’m afraid so, dear. What are you going to do now?”

“Duck a lot, I guess. Come on, Gaston. What happened to the burro and Lola?”

Gaston shrugged and said, “The last I saw them, they were going down an alley somewhere. One assumes she did not want to come all the way to the sea with us after all, hein? Don’t worry, I knew better than to let her steal anything we still might have need for. We have our money and guns and, once in such civilized surroundings, what else does one need?”

Captain Gringo said he wanted to talk about money with other people. So they left Ruth at the cable office and legged it over to the hotel Gaston had already told him about along the trail.

It was the best hotel in town and, naturally, where insurance agents and other rich folk were likely to stay. They’d already changed back into their linens, which, if rumpled, were good enough to check in with, if they paid in advance. But nothing happened until later that night.

They were seated in the taproom, nursing their drinks, when a large, florid fat man in a panama suit came to join them. He handed Captain Gringo a business card and said, “Heard you were in town. How did you boys make out? Is Miss Swann with you?”

Captain Gringo read the card, shook his head, and said, “No. She died before we could get to her, Mr., ah, Smith.”

Smith, if that was his name, heaved a long weary sigh and said, “Shit, there goes the ball game, then. I guess we can’t fault you if she was killed before you even got there. But the company’s still going to miss the over insured little bitch!”

He started to rise. Captain Gringo said, “Sit down, Mr. Smith. We’re not finished yet. You owe us some money.”

The insurance troubleshooter sat back down, but said, “I’m afraid you’re laboring under some misapprehension, Captain Gringo. You boys got your front money. We can write that off. But one could hardly expect my company to offer you another dime for failing to carry out your mission!”

Captain Gringo took out a folded paper he’d been working on along the trail and said, “We didn’t fail you. We went exactly where you sent us, and it wasn’t easy.”

“Of course you did. But if the client we sent you to rescue was dead before you got there, you can hardly expect us to pay you for rescuing her, dammit!”

“We want half. If you’ll read this prepared statement, you’ll see we pulled half your chestnuts out of the fire, at least.”

Smith unfolded the paper and asked, “What’s this? I can hardly make it out.”

“So it’s written in pencil on soggy map paper. It’ll still hold up in court, once I sign and notarize it for you. The pencil’s indelible. Borrowed it off a lady who draws maps a lot.”

Smith read the prepared statement, frowning at first, then breaking into a grin as he said, “By God, that’s right! The double indemnity was for violent death! But isn’t yellow jack a pretty violent way to go?”

“I’d rather be shot. But she still died of natural causes. Gaston here will sign it too. If we see a checkbook poco tiempo.”

“But you two are notorious outlaws and—”

“You know that won’t come up in any Chicago court,” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “I’ll sign my name Smith, too, and Gaston here can be Jones if you like. The point is that once you can present that, notarized by Guatemala ...”

Smith said, “You got it,” and took out his checkbook.

They all parted friends at the notary public’s office down the street when Smith took off to wire the good news. When the two soldiers of fortune were free to talk again, Gaston laughed like a mean little kid and said, “You know, of course, he could have gotten a death certificate free from the International Red Cross?”

Captain Gringo patted the breast pocket he’d put his check in and asked, “What can I tell you? I paid for my education. Let them pay for theirs. Which way’s the railroad station, Gaston?”

“That way. But what is the great rush, my young and headstrong? We have booked two adorable rooms for the night, and the paseo in the plaza is about to begin. Have I failed to mention that the girls of Guatemala are trés attractive, or that they are, how you say, nuts about handsome strangers?”

Captain Gringo laughed and said, “No, but why don’t we go find out if you’re right or not?”