Rosalita yawned against his chest and murmured, “That was very nice, my toro. But I keep wondering if there is anything we have not tried,”
He took a drag on his cigarette and said, “Be damned if I can think of it. What’s the matter? Didn’t you come?”
“Oh, many times, my toro. It’s just that I’m afraid we’ve missed some way more, well, naughty.”
“Listen, I know a few states where a man could go to jail for doing some of what we’ve tried to his own wife. I’m sorry if it’s getting dull, but I don’t know how to turn into a woman or a dog.”
“You have much experience in these matters, no? Tell me: Do other women have the same organs, or am I lacking in anything?”
He laughed and put a finger to her forehead, saying, “The sex organ that counts is right inside your pretty skull, querida. Acrobatics are fun, but when you get right down to it, what matters is not what you’re doing but how you feel about it.”
“I don’t understand. Don’t you like to do it dog style to me?”
“To you? Sure. Dog style, horse style, any style, because I like you and you’re pretty. If I didn’t like you and you were ugly it would be no good no matter what we tried. I think that’s why people invented so many ways to make love. If you settle for someone you don’t really find exciting you have to stand her on her head or something.”
“You find me exciting?”
“Very,” he lied. She really was a beautiful little animal, but the bloom was off the rose for him and Rosalita. She had a tight little box and moved it like a saloon door on payday, but her endless experiments were getting tiresome and he couldn’t help remembering that girl in Fort Sill who’d had a brain.
“I want to play you are my cigarette,” said Rosalita, proping herself up on one arm to switch positions again. He lay there smoking as she moved her lips down his body, trailing her long black hair teasingly over his warm, moist flesh. What had been that other girl’s name? Oh yeah, Martha. Post librarian at Sill. She’d been a widow for some time and had read a lot of books. Mousy little thing about thirty-eight or so, and sort of flat-chested, once they’d gotten down to business. Thinking back on it, Martha hadn’t been that great a lay if one wanted to get technical, but Jesus, the nights they’d had!
Rosalita began to suck him and he helped her get it up by thinking of that crazy night when he and Martha had lasted for hours. It had been an oddly piquant experience. Martha had been an old-fashioned girl about sex, so he’d simply been in the saddle, making old-fashioned love, and for some reason, as they screwed, they’d started talking. She’d read an interesting book about socialism and he’d started to argue politics with her, right in the middle of laying her, and they’d both gotten so interested he’d sort of stopped and just stayed there inside her, arguing the pros and cons and enjoying a good intelligent conversation between adults until Martha had suddenly laughed wildly and said, with her lips on his, “My God, do you realize we’re still fucking?”
And then he’d laughed, and they’d both gone kind of crazy for a while and after one of the best orgasms he’d ever had, she’d said, “I still think your wrong about Karl Marx,” and they’d just stayed that way, melted into one another, and laughing into one another’s eyes for … How long? How long did anything good ever last? He wondered what ever happened to old Martha. She’d been too old for a new second John, he’d thought, and he’d been a little ashamed of her in public. But if he’d had any sense he’d have asked her to marry him. He’d lost count of how many women he’d had since then, but he’d never forgotten that one magic moment in time.
Rosalita was getting excited, which she tended to do with monotonous regularity, and he knew she expected him to perform. He said, “It’s up. Let me put it in you.”
“Eat me! Eat me!” she gasped, returning to her fervid oral stimulation. As she cocked a thigh over him and snuggled her buttocks down against his face he wondered if it would thrill her to have a lit smoke shoved into that moist, pink slit, but resisted the impulse. He reached out and stuffed the smoke out on the dirt floor before taking a cheek in each hand to position her for a skilled but lackluster repetition of what was a really silly way to come, when you thought about it.
He’d never been able to talk Martha into it. She’d been a bit mid-Victorian about sex. He’d never really gotten a view like this of Old Martha, but he wished … and then, to Rosalita’s delight, he began to do what she wanted. As the little sex maniac went wild with him he wondered who she was daydreaming about at the moment. Eating Martha was exciting.
Captain Gringo sat behind the improvised desk in the cantina with the professor and other guerrilla leaders, explaining, “We’re low on ammunition, even with the rounds we salvaged from the soldiers. Their carbine rounds fit the belt of my machine gun, but it chews up a lot of brass in even a short fight, and we’ve lost the element of surprise. By now they know we have the Maxim.”
A sergeant asked, “How is this possible, Captain Gringo? There were no survivors and—”
“There are always survivors. Even if we did mop up every one, we have to assume one or more lay doggo and crawled away in the brush. Counting bodies is no help. We have no way of knowing just how many there were.”
“The new men say we got them all.”
“The new men may be lying. Don’t bank on all of them really wanting to liberate Mexico. Some of the older and wiser hands may have known what was coming and snatched at the straw we offered. They could switch back just as easy, once the army hits this area in force.”
“Then maybe we should shoot them, too?”
“No. It’s good policy not to shoot men who offer to surrender. It’s not just sentiment. I don’t want it to get around to give no quarter. Many a man who might otherwise give up will fight to the death if he has no other choice. Just keep an eye on the new recruits and let me know, at once, if any turn up missing for meals.”
The professor said, “I never thought Colonel Gaston would desert us like that. Do you have any idea where he’s headed, Captain Gringo?”
“No,” the American lied. He didn’t give a damn where Gaston had gone and he didn’t want his men wasting time looking for the little soldier of fortune.
He said, “We have to move our people out of here. Whether they have us pinpointed or not, they’ve been sending troops into this part of the country to back the Rurales and sooner or later they’ll secure this strategic water hole. So the sooner we leave the better, and tonight is better than tomorrow night.”
There was a murmur of displeased surprise and the professor gasped, “That’s ridiculous! This is the best hideout we’ve ever had!”
“You mean it was. I’m not asking you, Professor, I’m telling you. If I’m still charged with defending these people I’m going to start by getting them out of here. If you want to fire me, I’ll just be on my way. It’d be a hell of a lot easier just to save my own ass.”
“I forbid you to desert. You know we need your skills. But where would you have us go? The mountains are infested with Yaqui. The last time we were chased north your American Army arrested us. The government controls all the other water on this desert.”
“I know. We’re going south, out of the desert.”
“Are you mad? The farmlands to the south are crawling with Rurales, and the frightened villagers will have no choice but to report our every movement once we’re that close to the capital!”
“We’re not going to hide out in the Valley of Mexico. We’re going through it to the wilder country south of it. They tell me the mountains of Oaxaca are sparsely inhabited and covered with rain forest. It sounds like natural guerrilla country and—”
“Now I know you are mad, Captain Gringo! Even if over a hundred men and their families could somehow sneak through the Federal District, it’s too far! We are nearly fifteen hundred kilometers north of Oaxaca and we only have seventy-six horses.”
One of the others swore and said, “I will not leave my woman behind! She is with child!” and there was a grumble of agreement.
Captain Gringo said, “I don’t leave my wounded or women and children behind. The pigs and chickens are out of luck, but we’re taking everyone else with us.”
“On foot, Captain Gringo? You expect the children and expectant mothers to walk fifteen hundred kilometers?”
“No. We’re going to have to steal a train.”
There was a long silence. Then someone muttered, “Cabrone! The heat has fried his brains!”
The American shrugged and said, “We’ll load all our supplies and the weaker women and children on the ponies we have. The rest of us will have to walk to the rail line. I’ll explain the details as we go. We have a long hike ahead of us at best. So we’d better get a move on.”
One of the men stood up and said, “I vote we stay here and defend this place. It is a good place and I am desert-bred. I spit on the jungles to the south. I prefer the devil I know!”
Captain Gringo said, “Sit down and shut up or you’ll meet the devil sooner than you might expect. You’re in an army, not a debating society. As long as I’m in command, you’ll do exactly as I say or I’ll feed you to the vultures.”
The professor sighed and said, “He is insane, of course, comrades, but he has been right about everything else so far.”
“But Professor, even if we can steal a train, how can we hope to go anywhere with it? The federales control the tracks and every switch point!”
“What about that, Captain Gringo?”
“Damn it, I said I’d explain as we moved out. Let’s gather all our gear and people together and start breaking camp. You noncoms had better have your followers load up on all the water they can carry. Then I want a work detail to start filling in the well.”