“Okay, let’s eat this apple a bite at a time. To get to Vera Cruz we have to get to San Blas. To get to San Blas, we need the help of Felicidad’s rebel pals, right?”

“I said I voted oui on going to San Blas, Dick. It’s after we get there that you lose me with mad plans about attacking forts filled with soldados and heavy weapons!”

“Look, we’ll never get there without help from the local rebels. We already owe the girls for shelter and other comforts. If Felicidad can swing us safe passage through the rebel-controlled rough country to San Blas, said rebels are going to expect a payoff, and I don’t have twenty pesos.”

“Neither do I, Dick. But here’s my plan. We agree to anything the girls and their friends ask. I will assume for the sake of the argument that Tia Monica is a girl and El Aquilar is a friend. Mon Dieu, you should see that tub of lard with her clothes off, and this Aquilar person sounds like the usual backwoods bandito. But, oui, we go along with them as far as San Blas before we cross them double, hein?”

Captain Gringo sealed his improvised smoke with his tongue and observed, “That’s pretty shitty, Gaston. Felicidad said she could get some better sidearms and extra change for us before we even leave this place. And fat or not, her aunt took care of you, didn’t she?”

Gaston shrugged and said, “The feeling was no doubt mutual. I had been locked up for a while, and she acted in bed as if nobody had been in her for at least ten years. When a man makes a woman come, he owes her no more. It is a myth that the favor is one-sided. For a man who spent four years at West Point, you certainly have a poor grasp of physics, Dick. Where does the law of gravity say that women and other bad habits should be harder to drop than they are to pick up? When we get to San Blas, we shall say we have to scout the federale fort atop that jungle-covered hill. Then we shall make like jolly snakes in the grass and slither on our merry way, hein?”

Captain Gringo lit his crude cigarillo and said, “We’ll cross that one when we come to it. It’s easier to act enthusiastic for a cause if you tell yourself you may just fight for it. I got the joke when I read Don Quixote. But, shit, it may be possible to raid the fucking federale fort.”

Gaston sighed and said, “Alas, I recognize that look in your crazy eyes, my tactical genius! I too enjoy a challenge. But I just told you I have seen the old Spanish fort above San Blas. I was up there hunting iguana for my supper. The walls were still solid. Lime mortar and lava blocks, ten or twelve feet thick at the base. If los federales have reestablished the post, they will have cleared the second growth. So let us forget this tedious discussion of Cerro de Basilio, hein? There is no way anyone without field artillery and a willingness to accept heavy casualties is about to make the top of the cliff, let alone the walls. The girl said they have machine guns in the fort, non?”

“Of course. That’s the whole point of taking the place.”

“Merde alors, how? A corporal’s squad could hold off a whole army from atop Cerro de Basilio without automatic weapons! The Spaniards did so, more than once, back when they were fighting the English privateers with such monotonous regularity! ”

Captain Gringo blew a thoughtful smoke ring and said, “The troops of Imperial Spain were better than history books written by Protestants let on. Cortez took Mexico City with less than a regiment and they were no sissies. On the other hand, el Presidente Diaz recruits his gun waddies from the scum of Mexico. Every Mexican I’ve met who had a lick of sense seems to want to fight the sonofabitch!”

“That may be so. It is true both federales and rurales are recruited from the dregs of village society, with a few literate sadists as officers. But while government gunmen may lack finesse, Diaz buys nothing but the best when it comes to the guns that said gunmen bully the countryside with, hein?”

“We’re talking in circles, Gaston. Yes, federales have good guns. But federale troops are led by officers who should be locked up in lunatic asylums with their presidents. So, like I said, we’ll see.”

Gaston still would have gone on arguing, had not Tia Monica come in just then, carrying a big shopping basket and wearing a self-satisfied smile. The fat woman dumped the contents out on the table between them, saying, “Felicidad told me to get these things to you poco tiempo. La policia are making spot checks in the marketplace. She says she hopes the guns are as you described them.”

The two soldiers of fortune blinked in pleased surprise at the two .38s in shoulder holsters lying atop the pile of peso notes and boxes of spare ammo. As Captain Gringo helped himself to a sidearm and checked the action, he asked Tia Monica where the hell all the money had come from.

 

She said, “El Aquilar Negro takes care of his friends and relations in town, señor. Naturally, people who do not wish to attract the attention of the thrice-accused tax collectors can’t afford to spend a lot in one place, so it tends to pile up. Felicidad has been, how you say, passing the hat. Everyone is happy to know the great Captain Gringo has joined forces with El Aquilar Negro. They are most tired of the dictatorship of Diaz.”

The new .38 was new only to Captain Gringo. It was an old Harrington & Richardson nickel-plated cheapo that had seen better days. The nickel plate was chipped off in places and the hard rubber grips were worn. But it was double action and when he looked down the barrel he saw someone had cleaned it from time to time over the years. The rifling was a bit worn, but the thing would still shoot reasonably straight, at close range.

As he put the shoulder rig on under his jacket and holstered the .38 after loading it, Tia Monica asked if they wanted her to cook up something for them. When they said no, she sat in Gaston’s lap and started running her thick fingers through his thin gray hair. In English, Gaston said, “I should have asked for a full-course dinner. Do you want any of this, Dick? God knows there’s enough to go around!”

Captain Gringo laughed and said, “It’s all yours, you lucky dog. I don’t think my member of the team would like it, even if I wanted to help you out, which I don’t.”

He looked at the watch he’d stolen the night before from the men’s shop and saw the day was still young. He asked Tia Monica when they could expect Felicidad back. She said, “Not until after nightfall. Late. She is going to make for the hills during la siesta, when nobody is on the streets. It is a long hard journey to where she can safely meet with El Aquilar Negro. She will no doubt rest and eat supper in the rebel camp before she returns with our orders.”

She kissed Gaston and added, “I will not be going with you boys. But we have the whole day to ourselves, no?”

“Dick, you have to help me! She weighs a ton and she likes to get on top!”

Captain Gringo chuckled as he stuffed half the peso notes and a couple of boxes of .38 ammo in his pockets. Then, since Gaston most obviously was not about to rise with Tia Monica in his arms and sweep her off to his castle, the younger man got up and said he’d see ’em around the campus.

He went to the room where he’d spent the night with Felicidad. It was early for a siesta. But he couldn’t go anywhere until Felicidad got back, so he took off his clothes and flopped across the rumpled sheets. He couldn’t lay anybody, either, until Felicidad got back. But sometimes it was a sort of pleasant novelty to sleep alone, especially when a guy needed sleep. And he knew he did. Even without Felicidad’s active little body to distract him, he’d been too tightly wound from the recent excitement to relax completely. But now that he’d spent some time making sure this was a reasonably safe hideout, and now that he had a decent gun and money again, he felt a hell of a lot more relaxed. He knew there was no telling when he’d get to flop in a feather bed again once he left here. So he closed his eyes and just let go.

Like most knock-around guys who managed to stay alive long enough to be experienced at the life style it called for, Captain Gringo could sleep almost anywhere and anytime it seemed safe to do so. Professional soldiers, like sailors, tended to spread out such sleep as they had to have in short catnaps instead of snoring eight hours all at once and waking up dopey.

He knew he’d never sleep until Felicidad got back, so he didn’t have to worry about setting the alarm. He knew he’d be wide awake, bored shitless, and ready to go by nightfall. That relaxed him even more, and he was out like a light in no time.

He’d slept a little more than four hours, a long rest for a knock-around guy, when he suddenly woke up to return the kisses of whoever in hell was kissing him. He hadn’t covered his naked body with a sheet. The woman lying atop him was naked too, so his erection was rising to the occasion between her smooth thighs as she ground her hair apron around on his bare belly and tried to lick his tonsils with a passionate tongue indeed. The room was semi-dark, thanks to the shades across the narrow window. But he knew this couldn’t be Felicidad. It felt more like a sea lion had beached herself atop him to mate.

He shoved her off enough to get her tongue out of his mouth as he said, “For Pete’s sake, Tia Monica!”

She said, “Please do not call me your aunt, Roberto. I do not even feel sisterly to you, and I can feel between my thighs that you are also hot, no?”

“That’s for sure. But let’s think about this, Monica! What time is it?”

“About three in the afternoon. Felicidad has left for the hills, and your Tio Pancho is fast asleep, so nobody will ever know. Won’t you put it in me, por favor? I have been trying to fit myself over you, but I am too tiny.”

He was too polite to laugh in her face, but he couldn’t keep from grinning like an idiot, and she took his smile for agreement. So she rose on her locked elbows, her huge brown breasts still brushing his chest with their moist nipples as she wiggled her monstrous thighs farther apart and got her knees under her center of gravity, which of course was in line with her big fat ass.

He decided he was in trouble no matter what he did now. So he tried to slide a hand down between them to guide it up into her. It wouldn’t work. Even with most of her considerable weight on her hands and knees, her smooth fat belly was still pressed hard to his.

He said, “We’d better let me get on top, doll.”

She giggled and rolled off him, saying coyly, “I have never been called a doll before, querido!”

That made sense. Yet, as he rose to his own hands and knees to consider his options, he saw that, at least in dim light, old Monica looked a lot better with her clothes off than one might have expected. Like her much smaller niece, Felicidad, Tia Monica was made up of well-stuffed pillows connected by sensuous curves. Her double chin and fleshy jowls were treated kindly by gravity as she lay on her back, with the bone structure that now showed revealing that she’d once been beautiful, give or take twenty years and five times that many pounds. Her curves were a lot flatter this way, too, but she still looked like she was smuggling a pair of full-sized pillows under the brown skin of her chest. Thanks to her ample rump, there was no need of a pillow under her hips to present her yawning gates of amour to the ceiling for full inspection. He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and climbed aboard. He didn’t like sloppy seconds, even from Gaston, and he was pretty sure the old bat would tell on him when Felicidad got back. But he knew if he rejected her this late in the game she’d probably stab him, so what the hell.

As he entered her, Tia Monica gave a pleased little gasp. He was pleasantly surprised, too. He could tell from the cool wetness deeper in her that she’d douched after screwing poor Gaston to sleep, and her cunt wasn’t just whistle clean, it was little-girl tight.

But he soon found he was in no innocent child. For Tia Monica needed lots of muscle to move all that lard around, and she started bouncing him in her lap like he was a kid on a friendly adult’s knee, a very friendly adult who enjoyed adultery a lot. Seeing that she seemed willing to do all the work, Captain Gringo just relaxed atop her, at a considerable angle, thanks to her big tits, and smiled down at her as she rolled her head from side to side and told him what an athletic lover he was.

He had to crane his neck down to kiss her when she said she was coming. She was well in the lead. For although any woman was more fun than the best fist, this one was right on the razor’s edge between just okay and' repulsive. She had an almost pretty face and a marvelous box, but she .more than satisfied his curiosity about fat girls. He knew lots of guys preferred their women pleasantly plump, but when he made love to a dame he liked to get closer to her than was possible with Tia Monica. Aside from having to stretch his neck to kiss her over the mountain of breasts, he wasn’t getting all he had inside her, even at this angle. Her big brown rump held back his balls, and, shove as he might, her fleshy thighs and fat lower belly cradled his pelvis so that almost an inch of his shaft was left out on the down stroke. But what the hell, this sure beat pissing, so he just stayed in the over padded saddle and posted at a comfortable mile-eating lope.

Of course, she took his don’t give-a-damn lovemaking for passion rather than a way to kill some otherwise dull time. So it drove her even wilder and she pleaded, “All of it! Bruise my womb with your mighty tool, my toro!” He said, “I can’t, from this angle. Let’s see, now ... oh, I know. Let’s get up a minute.”

He rolled out of her and got to his feet by the bed. But as he helped her rise, like a walrus from the waves, Tia Monica fluttered her lashes and asked, “Standing up, Roberto? Impossible. Please do not ask me how I know this, but take an experienced woman’s word for it,”

He told her the position he wanted her to get into. She gasped and said, “Oh, I couldn’t! It sounds so undignified!”

He said, “It is. But every position looks sort of silly when you watch another couple making love. Come on, I learned it from a very dignified Chinese lady. They call it Walking the Duck.”

Tia Monica giggled and asked if it was true what they said about Chinese women, as she turned her broad back to him, locked her knees stiffly but well apart, and bent over to clasp her own ankles with her hair spread across the floor at their feet. He steadied her with a hand on each big hip, and, as he re-entered her, with his own legs spread even farther to lower his hips even with hers, she gasped, “Oh, I can see your dangling things, and I can see it going in me, and I … Ay, ay, ay!”

It did fit deeper that way, and since most of her was out of sight as well, he could close his eyes, lean back his head, and let himself go as if she were as pretty as she felt, where it mattered. He came, hard, and kept going. He knew she wanted more, but getting it up again if he took it out was going to be a problem. She moaned in pleasure as their mingled juices ran out of her, down her big belly, and between her big breasts. He could tell she was climaxing from her astounding internal contractions. He wanted to come with her. But she suddenly fell off his shaft to lay quivering on the floor, delirious with passion.

So, not wanting to waste it in midair, he dropped down on her, got its questing turgid tip between the first folds he could find, and proceeded to hump like hell. As he came again, Tia Monica giggled and said, “You silly thing. You just fucked me between my titties!”

He moved experimentally and muttered, “So I did. It felt as fine as the real thing.”

“Not to me! Let’s get back on the bed and finish right.”

“Okay. But first let me check the time. I don’t think my, ah, uncle would mind all this, but have you and Felicidad worked out any ground rules about the men in your life, Monica?”

She sat on the bed beside him as he dug for his stolen watch, saying, “You must promise never to tell my niece. She is not a woman of the world like me. Felicidad has a very jealous nature, poor thing.”

“Mum’s the word, then. Let’s see, it’s going on four. La siesta is about over.”

A distant male voice bellowed, in English, “Dick? Monica? Merde alors, where is everybody?”

Tia Monica giggled, reached for the wrap she’d draped over the foot of the bed, and whispered, “I must go to him, lest he find out how naughty we have been. You promised not to tell, eh?”

“Well, I sure wanted more, but, yeah, it’s better to be discreet.”

So they parted on friendly terms. She shut the door quietly after her as he rose, grinning, to take a whore bath at the washstand in the corner. He was starting to feel human again. Thanks to the timely interruption he hadn’t had to prove anything, and, to his mild surprise, his teased dong was still semi erect. He lay back on the bed and told it to go back to sleep. The stuffy little room was boring, now that he was alone in it again. He knew he’d awaken with a headache if he dozed off again in this airless heat, so he got up again and went to the shut window.

The sun would be low now, and the window faced east. He opened the drapes. As he’d expected, there was no glass. A slatted wooden shutter faced the street outside. But, with the hanging cloth out of the way, a little air seemed to be coming in. He heard voices outside and pressed his face to the shutter to peek out. He froze as he heard a familiar voice say, in English, “We’ll cover you as you scout that next corner ahead, Moran.”

He moved his eye to another slat. He could see them now. There were eight enlisted men with Carson. They had canvas leggings around the bottoms of their white bell-bottoms and carried Krag rifles at port arm, bayoneted. Captain Gringo wondered what the hell they thought they were doing. The C.P.O. with Carson’s shore patrol must have wondered too. He said, “Begging the lieutenant’s pardon, them Mexican cops said this part of town was dangerous, even for them. We’re liable to catch a brick from one of them flat roofs all around any minute, sir!”

Carson stared after the scout he’d sent ahead as he replied, all-knowingly, “I didn’t expect to find the escaped prisoners at the American consulate, chief. Walker and Verrier are professional rebels. I heard what the greaser cops said, too! They’re somewhere in this native quarter, and I mean to find them if I have to search every house!”

The C.P.O looked startled and said, “Begging the lieutenant’s pardon, we don’t have any search warrants.”

“So what? Mexico doesn’t have a constitution, either. Trust me, chief. I’m an old hand in greaser land. You just have to show our little brown brothers who’s boss.” He called out, “See anybody up there, Moran?”

The point man called back, “Negative, sir. We seem to be getting to the edge of town. There’s nothing but scrubby hills rising from behind some garden patches to the east.” But this time, Captain Gringo had of course gotten his gun. He was gripping it in a suddenly sweaty palm as he stood naked behind the shutter and heard Carson say, “Okay, we’ve run out of streets. So now we have to do things the hard way. Let’s have a peek through that nearest window over there.”

That meant the one he was peeking out! Captain Gringo rolled away and flattened out against the wall beside it, watching the zebra stripes of shadow and sky light spread across the bed and far wall until the shadows of two heads peering in through the slats chopped up the pattern. They sounded like they were in the room with him as the C.P.O said, “Nobody in there, sir. Siesta hour’s over, so whoever lives here must have gone back to the marketplace or something.”

Carson answered, “I have eyes, dammit. What’s that draped over the chair by the bed?”

“A jacket, sir. I make it out a regular Mex jacket. Walker and the little Frog were dressed like white men when they got away, if they got away. I still ain’t sure they didn’t go down with the gunboat.”

“They got away. I don’t have to wait for those divers to get here to tell me that. The explosion was internal, and starboard, under the after turret where we were holding them.”

“Yeah, but they had no explosives, sir. That ammo locker was cleaned out and repainted long before we put anybody in it.”

“Okay, they had confederales waiting here. Verrier used to be a Mex officer. What do you need, a fucking diagram on a blackboard, chief? Some sonsabitching greasers got ’em out. So some sonsabitching greasers have to be hiding ’em! One empty room doth not a city make. Where the fuck is the door to this house?”

“Probably on the far side of the block, sir. They build ’em wall-to-wall down here. But, begging the lieutenant’s pardon, we’d better not go busting down no Mex doors until we clear it with the skipper and the Mex police.”

“I’ll take full responsibility, chief. Don’t worry. I’ve dealt with our little brown brothers before. Let’s circle and find some entrances.”

But the burly C.P.O. shook his head bullishly and said, “I’ve tangled with some natives in my own time, too, sir. I’m not worried about busting any rules. I got my crew mates’ heads to worry about, and it smarts to get hit with bricks and roof tiles! We’re a hell of a ways from the harbor and the rest of our guys, lieutenant. If we have to fight our way back through this maze of narrow streets with everybody in the Barrio mad at us, people on both sides will get hurt. So, begging the lieutenant’s pardon, he ain’t gonna bust down no doors unless I hear it from the skipper!”

Carson turned away from the window, bless him, as Captain Gringo heard him say in an ominously polite tone, “You’re speaking to a commissioned officer, chief.”

The C.P.O. said, just as formally, “I’m aware of that, sir. But if push comes to shove, I’ll take my chances before the mast court-martial before I’ll take a chance with the lives of my men! This is just too big a boo you’ve led us into, lieutenant. There’s probably a dozen Mexicans watching us right now, waiting to see if we’re out to start something. So we’ll be heading back to the beach now, sir. If you still want to lead this patrol, I suggest you walk in front!”

Carson turned to someone Captain Gringo couldn’t see through the slats and snapped, “Seaman, place this man under arrest! He just refused a direct order from an officer!”

A voice replied, “Make that two of us, then, lieutenant. I’m more scared of the chief than I am of you.”

There was a round of derisive laughter. Captain Gringo bit his knuckles to keep from joining in as the pompous Carson cried out, “Very well, I’ll deal with all of you once we get back to the others!”

Captain Gringo lowered the sweaty .38 and allowed himself to breathe freely again as he heard them marching away. He’d been hoping Carson would be asshole enough to stay behind. But nobody was that dumb, even in the navy, and, what the hell, he couldn’t complain about the luck he’d had so far this afternoon.

~*~

El Presidente José de la Cruz Porfirio Diaz did not look or act in mixed company at all what most people expected a wild Mexican bandito to look or act like. That was one of the things that made him such a danger to his own and other decent people. El Presidente was a distinguished, fatherly-looking man in his middle sixties. His neatly cropped white hair and carefully kept white walrus mustache helped to give him the look of a refined Spanish grandee of the better sort. Which was just as well, since he tended to shoot people for mentioning his Indian blood on the poorer side of the family tree.

The richer side hadn’t started out all that rich. Born a peon in Oaxaca back in 1830, Diaz had discovered at an early age that he was too refined to hoe corn and too nervous to be a bandit, so he had joined the army just in time to fight los Tejanos and other hated Yanquis under officers he soon came to loathe almost as much as he loathed gringos. It being safer by far to shoot a superior officer than a Texas Ranger in those days, Diaz had come out of the lost war of ’48 a regimental commander. Apparently a pretty good one since los Americanos had never managed to wipe out his particular outfit. So when Juarez rose in the sixties and needed good soldiers, Diaz had joined Juarez, helped Juarez, and won Juarez.

After that, of course, he double-crossed Juarez in ’67, lost the first round, then came back to win big after Juarez died. He’d been el Presidente ever since. He liked being el Presidente. He meant to stay el Presidente and lead his dear children, the people of Mexico, if he had to kill every one of the stupid pobrecitos.

He wanted Washington and London to admire him, because rich friends are always handy when one has lots of poor enemies. So he kept his keen dislike of Anglo- Americans a state secret as he assured the outside world that he stood for peace, law, and order. His arguments were convincing. Few welcome guests were robbed or murdered in Mexico these days. Los rurales saw to that. They patrolled the highways and byways of Mexico, shooting anybody who looked the least bit suspicious. Hence, admiring American businessmen could travel from Nuevo Laredo to Ciudad Mexico without seeing one bandito, or much of anyone else. No Mexican with a lick of sense got anywhere near a paved road when los rurales were riding, and they always rode ahead of people approved of by their government. Executions, of course, were conducted out of sight of the main roads or the windows of the better-class hotels nice people stayed in.

That evening, as el Presidente was about to leave for the Austrian Embassy to attend a ball given in his honor, a uniformed aide came into the presidential office to hand a telegram to the nice-looking old man behind the acre of presidential desk.

Diaz glanced at the ornate clock on the marble mantel across the room and said, “Just give me the gist of it, major. I forgot my glasses and I have little time.”

The aide knew the old man couldn’t read without moving his lips, so he said, “It is from Mazatlán, my Presidente”

“Ah? How is Project Sinaloa going these days?”

“Strangely, sir. A Yanqui gunboat has been sunk by a torpedo or something in Mazatlán harbor. Our people there say a U.S. Navy unit has requested permission to pursue outlaws deeper into Mexican territory.”

Diaz frowned and said, “This is strange indeed! I gave orders not to blow up any Yanqui gunboats while I am trying to borrow money from those puffed-up swine in Washington! Tell me more about these people their navy is after. Are they Mexican? Nobody is allowed to chase Mexicans in Mexico but us, God damn the milk of Cleveland’s mother!”

“I know that, my Presidente. But it seems the outlaws they are after are Americanos. One of them is, at any rate. The other seems to be a French national.”

“Oh, in that case wire them permission to chase all they like. With luck, the U.S. Navy will tangle with that silly boy El Aquilar Negro and perhaps save some bullets for us. Speaking of those annoying guerrillas, is there anything new from Sinaloa in that wire?”

“No, my Presidente. But if it was not going according to plan, no doubt Mazatlán or San Blas would have wired, no?”

Diaz shrugged and said, “You are right, of course. El Aquilar Negro is boxed in Sinaloa and a deadly trap awaits him if he accepts the bait in Nayarit. San Blas would have informed us if any of his advance scouts had been spotted slipping across the state line.”

He glanced at the clock again, got to his feet, and said, “I must go home and dress properly for the ball. I shall leave the matter out on the coast to you and the U.S. Navy for now. By the way, did they give us the names of the two outlaws Tio Sam is after?”

The aide consulted the opened telegram and said, “Si, my Presidente. One is a Gaston Verrier. The other is named Richard Walker, alias Captain Gringo.”

Diaz muttered, “Madre de Dios!” and moved back to sit down at his desk again as he reached for one of the phones on the green blotter. The aide stared down in confusion as the sly old dictator barked into the phone, “Connect me with army headquarters. Then stay on the line. I want to be connected with rurale headquarters, too!”

He looked up, saw his aide still standing there, and snapped, “Go wire the U.S. Navy. Tell them they have my blessings and they can send in the U.S. Marines if they want to, too! Don’t you know who Captain Gringo is?”

“I have heard the name somewhere, my Presidente. Didn’t he cause some trouble for us a while ago?”

“Trouble? You call that one-man tidal wave of destruction trouble? Go wire the policia in Mazatlán to put themselves at the complete disposal of the U.S.. Navy and, oh yes, contact the Austrian embassy and give them my regrets. I shall not be attending their stupid ball tonight. With that maniac Captain Gringo loose in my country again, I have to stay right here until he’s caught! He won’t get away with it this time! This time I, Porfirio Diaz, am taking personal charge of the manhunt!”

~*~

The moon was high and the scrub was too low for comfort as Felicidad led Captain Gringo and Gaston out of Mazatlán that night. The girl had changed to more practical peon dress and wore crossed ammo bandoleers and a carbine across her shapely chest. She’d brought carbines for the two escapees, too. They didn’t start to get heavy until the trail got steeper and the chaparral started getting higher and thicker. As they got farther from town, beyond the usual haunts of ranging herds of goats, the natural vegetation of the tropics began to replace the chaparral that custom decreed for any part of the world Hispanics settled. The slopes were getting too rugged even for charcoal burners, now. How Felicidad found her way once tree branches started blotting out the sky eluded them.

As they topped a rise with a view of the lights of Mazatlán below them to the west, Captain Gringo called a trail break. He wasn’t tired yet. That was the point. He knew he and Gaston weren’t legged up to par after their long confinement, and the way you kept recruits from cramping on the trail was to fall out for ten and a smoke before anyone started hurting.

They didn’t light up. But as Gaston sat down beside Captain Gringo and the girl, he said, “God bless you, my son. Great minds run in the same channels, non?”

Felicidad bitched about stopping so close to town. Captain Gringo said, “I know we can still see the lights of Mazatlán, honey. That’s the general idea. You see lights whizzing back and forth when a posse is being formed. Let’s just get our second wind while we study whether we walk or run to the next ridge.”

“But, Roberto, at this rate it shall take us all night to reach the stronghold of El Aquilar Negro!”

“So what? I like to scout strongholds by the dawn’s early light before I walk in like a big-ass bird.”

“Don’t you trust my friends?”

“We have no choice. But they may not trust mysterious footsteps popping out of the bush at them in the wee small hours. Sentries on duty after three o’clock tend to be trigger-happy if they’re awake at all. You’re with a couple of old soldiers, kiddo. The way you get to be an old soldier is to avoid needless complications in an already complicated world. Old soldiers never run when they can walk. You cover a surprising amount of ground if you just take it easy and keep going. Guys who dash madly hither and yon are usually pooped out long before steady plodders are even tired.”

Gaston nudged him and murmured, “Hold it down. I hear something!”

Captain Gringo answered, “I think I do, too. I make it someone on foot, running. Alone?”

“Oui, but bursting through the brush with no regard for the slope, as if the devil was in hot pursuit! Don’t you think we’ve rested long enough?”

“Hold it. Let’s see what he has to say for himself.”

To lever the Winchester action would be noisy. The guy puffing up the trail would probably fall down just as well with pistol balls in him. So by unspoken agreement the soldiers of fortune drew their revolvers and waited, covering the trail. As a light below was blocked out by someone’s bulk in front of it, Captain Gringo called out, “¿Quien es?”

Tia Monica replied, with a wheeze, “Is that really you? Thank God, I thought I would never be able to catch up with you!”

They put their sidearms away as the fat woman staggered up to them, gasping, and weakly flopped down. Felicidad asked her aunt what on earth had made her rim up the trail so fast. It took Tia Monica a while to answer. Then she got her breath, enough to talk anyway, and said, “I got out the rear window. I don’t know how either, but I did. They were breaking down the front door. We have been betrayed!”

Captain Gringo asked, “Who was it, a shore patrol of Yanqui sailors?”

“No. La policia! They knew right where to come! They did not knock on any other doors. That was how I knew they were on serious business.”

Felicidad gasped and asked, “Who could have told them? Nobody but a few of our trusted friends knew!”

Captain Gringo grimaced and said, “Next time, be careful who you trust. That’s one of the problems when you start any revolution. The government always pays better, and some sonofabitch is always greedy. Did they see you sneaking out the back, Tia Monica?”

“Would I have made it this far if they had, Roberto?”

“Right. It was a dumb question. Okay, how far are we from the rebel stronghold, Felicidad?”

“It is hard to count kilometers when the land rises and falls so. In hours, it is six or more, depending on how fast we move.”

He thought, then said, “Yeah, it’s too far to carry Tia Monica, and she’s too bushed to go much farther. Okay, Tia Monica, here’s what you do. Go back to Mazatlán and turn us in.”

Even Gaston blinked at that one. Tia Monica gasped and asked, “Are you mad, Roberto? I am a woman of la revolución! I could never tell la policia anything!”

“Sure you could. Just go to the station and tell them you heard they were looking for you. That ought to get you off the hook. They’ll sit you down and either offer you a cigarette or shine some lights in your face. Either way, they won’t torture or even arrest you if you cooperate like hell.”

“Now I know you are mad! I have never been a good liar, and I know too much! What if they forced me to tell them about you and where you are going?”

“That’s the whole point, Tia Monica. They already know you girls hid us out last night, that we’ve left, and that we’re heading for the hills to join the other rebels. If you say we forced you to hide us, and that you’re mad as hell about it, they ought to believe you. The rat who turned you in has already told them pretty much the same story, see?”

Tia Monica started to cry. As Gaston comforted her, Felicidad said, “If what you say is true, Roberto, why are we just sitting here instead of running like the wind?”

“Hills are too steep. Don’t worry, doll. If they had any intention of chasing us tonight, they’d have been here by now. You get to be an old policeman the same way you get to be an old soldier—by not making dumb moves.

They know we’re armed and dangerous. They know we’re too far ahead to chase on foot and that we’ll hear horses far enough off to set up all sorts of neat ambushes in the dark. They went to Tia Monica’s hoping to nail us before we left. Now that they know we have, they’ll wait until dawn to come after us, if they come at all. I don’t think they will.”

Tia Monica asked, “What if they ask me where the stronghold of El Aquilar Negro is, Roberto?”

He said, “Tell ’em. If they have paid informants working for ’em, they already know. That’s why I don’t think they’ll ride after us, now that they know what a lead we have. If they had the manpower and manhood to ride into El Aquilar Negro’s guns, they’d have done so by now, see?”

She did. Her voice was filled with wonder as she said, “Oh, Roberto, you are so wise! Even I can see, now, that the best way to fool la policia can be to cooperate with them at times. How did you learn so much about fooling the authorities?”

“By not fooling them a lot of times. We’re going to have to shove on now, Tia Monica. Get your breath. Then walk, not run, back to town. Try to make it to the police station without getting arrested on the street. Ask them if it’s true there’s a reward on Gaston and me. That ought to keep anyone from hitting you before they figure you’re on their side. Tell ’em Gaston and me held guns on you girls and that the last you saw of us we’d kidnapped Felicidad. She may want to go back to Mazatlán someday.” Felicidad asked, “Why should I wish to go back before we win la revolución, Roberto?”

He sighed and said, “Trust me. I know more than you do about revolutions, kiddo.”

~*~

As they approached the rebel stronghold by the dawn’s early light, Captain Gringo felt even smarter. He knew Tia Monica never would have made it this far, and he was pretty sure nobody else was going to try without more men, more guts, and more mountain artillery than the Mazatlán police had handy.

On the map, the foothills of the Sierra Madre ran more or less in line with the coast to the west. In real life, the jagged ridges and deep canyons ran just about any way they damn well pleased. Something awful had happened to this part of Mexico a while back. Mile-thick slabs of stratified bedrock had been heaved up at crazy angles. Then volcanic crud of every description from natural cement dust to ropy black lava that still looked fresh had bubbled out of the planet’s bowels to mess up the landscape further. Time and water searching for a way to the sea had eroded the already steep slopes to add a maze of jungle-choked, hairpin canyons to the confusion.

The trail Felicidad knew zigzagged and roller-coastered through endless natural ambushes formed by hogbacks, buttes, castellated rim rock, and weird formations a geologist would have gone nuts trying to classify. They crossed a white-water stream, a quarter-mile below them, via a sickeningly swaying rope bridge that some optimist had built long enough ago that the yucca cables looked dangerously rotten. On the far side, Captain Gringo looked around for the guys he’d have posted here to cut the ropes when and if gray rurale sombreros appeared on the Mazatlán side. He didn’t see any.

When he asked Felicidad how come, she just shrugged and said she was an adelita, not a soldado. Gaston nodded and said, “Merde alors, it is as I feared. The rebel soldados are not soldados, either. Mexican revolutions are trés fatigué, Dick. As I keep trying to tell you, Diaz hired all the real professionals, or shot them, as soon as he took over.”

Captain Gringo didn’t answer. Gaston wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know. He and the dapper little Frenchman had met during another rising against Diaz, not all that long ago or far away, and had as much trouble with the guys who were supposed to be on their side as they’d had with the rurales and federales on the enemy side. Meanwhile, since nobody but Felicidad had any idea where they were at present or where they were going, they had little choice but to follow. Gazing to the south across the endless sea of jagged peaks, he figured he could possibly bull through to San Blas on his own, in a year or so, given a year’s supply of rations and the mules to pack them. There had to be an easier way.

Felicidad stopped on a steep slope to catch her breath as she pointed up at what looked like a thousand-foot-tall potato, stood on end and split to the ground with God’s ax. She said, “Beyond that portal lies the camp of El Aquilar Negro.”

Gaston said, “Eh bien, he is well named. Eagles usually live in high nests.”

Captain Gringo didn’t answer. He was looking for the lookouts he’d have posted up there where the trail followed the hog back between the natural gateway of granite. One man with a little hair on his chest and a lot of ammo for his rifle could probably stand off an army from up there. But he didn’t see man, boy, or anything else living except a big turkey buzzard perched atop one fang of the natural gateway as if it were trying to tell him something. He muttered, “If there was anyone posted within rifle range of that buzzard, it wouldn’t be sitting there. Rebel armies always use buzzards for target practice.”

This time Gaston didn’t answer. Felicidad started walking again, so they followed her. When they passed through the cleft in the rock, the buzzard was wheeling aloft at a safe distance. There wasn’t even a cigarette butt to indicate anyone had ever noticed they could cover the trail to the west pretty good from up here.

When they came out the far side, they saw the camp of El Aquilar Negro spread across the valley floor beyond. It was a nice place to camp. The valley floor was flat and covered with grass. A stream of cool mountain water meandered across the natural meadow. The tents and brush shelters of the rebel “army” were strung along the banks of the winding stream. Horses and other livestock grazed about the camp freely and untended. Their owners were doubtless right in assuming the stock wouldn’t stray far from good grass and water. It was still a hell of a way to run a railroad, As if he’d said so aloud, Gaston nodded and said, “Oui, Saint Cyr and West Point both agree that one occupies the high ground and sets up some sort of perimeter. At least they have a flag,”

Captain Gringo didn’t think much of that, either. As a vagrant puff of breeze lifted the red flag over a bigger tent, he saw that it was a red flannel bedspread on which someone had crudely painted a black Aztec eagle. He didn’t ask, but Felicidad said that was where they’d find the great El Aquilar Negro. So they followed her down the slope.

Some women, children, and one guy with a rifle slung over his shoulder showed some interest as they approached the headquarters tent. Another guy in peon white cotton and a stolen army cap stood in the open entrance and, as they got within earshot, called out to ask if they had any quinine, They said they didn’t. He waved them closer anyway, saying, “The general is in a bad way. It is the ague, we think.”

The newcomers crowded into the tent. There were others on their feet or hunkered down inside. A rather handsome but pudgy-looking guy of about thirty lay on a cot, covered with quilts but shivering anyway. Felicidad gasped, “What has happened, El Aquilar Negro? You were all right when I spoke to you just last night!”

The rebel leader tried to sit up, gave it up as a bad move, and smiled up weakly at them as he said, “It is nothing. It will pass. Are these the professionals you told me about, Felicidad?”

The girl introduced him to Captain Gringo and Gaston. El Aquilar Negro said, “Forgive me for not offering to shake hands, señors. I do not think what I have is catching, but why take chances? You are most welcome indeed. Your fame has preceded you, and God knows we could use some professional advice! What do you think of my little army, so far, Captain Gringo?”

“You’re right. You need professional advice. Fortunately, the Mazatlán authorities do too. So you guys are probably okay for now.”

“It is said the U.S. Navy has come ashore to help the government search for us. Es verdad?”

Gaston nodded, but Captain Gringo said, “I’d better level with you, general. Those gunboat troops aren’t after you. They’re after us. All in all, it might be in your best interests to show us the way out of here, to the south. If we’re not here, they won’t come here after us. Without heavy weapons, we’re no great addition to your forces.”

“But you are a most famous machine-gunner, no?”

“That’s what I just said. Gaston, here, can drop mortar or artillery shells in a barrel from a mile or more away. But do you have anything heavier than a saddle gun to issue anybody?”

El Aquilar Negro sighed and said, “Not yet. We were just about to raid the federale fort at San Blas to get lots of good things. Alas, as you see, I am not in shape to make it to the latrine on my own at the moment. But I have had this fever before. It will pass, in maybe a few days. Meanwhile, consider yourselves at home. We have plenty of food, plenty of wine, and plenty of women, if you do not already have an adelita ”

Felicidad put a possessive arm around Captain Gringo’s waist as he said, “We’ve got everything but plenty of time, you mean, general! We know the guy who’ll be leading the shore patrol ahead of God knows how many Mexican government men. We know he’s a fanatic who enjoys hurting people. We know some of your so-called friends in Mazatlán are informers. So what will you bet they have this camp pinpointed on the map? The only reason they haven’t hit you already is because, yeah, you and your people are forted up pretty good in these hills, and, up to now, they’ve overestimated your forces and were waiting for somebody to lead them.”

El Aquilar Negro looked even sicker than he said he was and asked, “What can we do? This valley is too perfect to give up without a fight. I know we could hold it against the whole federale army if we only had a few good weapons. But I won’t be able to lead the raid for them for at least a few days more!”

Captain Gringo turned to Gaston and said, “You know Mexican S.O.P., Gaston. How long do you think it will take them to probe this far?”

Gaston shrugged and said, “You said those other navy men showed common sense. The Mazatlán police will be even more hesitant. To keep from having distressing Little Big Horns in rough country, one moves into it with caution. Each natural ambush must be well scouted before the main column marches on. We passed more natural ambushes than I could count. Say at least a few hours to circle each with a diamond patrol, and hopefully they won’t get close enough to worry about, for, oh, a few days.”

Captain Gringo nodded in agreement and said, “We could get luckier and they could be waiting for some backup from the rurales or federales. But we have to assume they’ll make it to that big potato within seventy-two hours. San Blas is a hell of a lot farther, but legged-up guys not expecting to be ambushed on their own ground could make it there and back easy.”

“Mais non. They could make it, just, but it would not be easy! Assume a ferocious forced march, both ways, and it still leaves no time to scout the fort atop those cliffs, let alone take it! Forts are built with the droll intention of withstanding sieges, my enthusiastic marathon runner! Do you seriously think anyone could march almost a hundred miles, through rough country, reduce a fort with a handful of guerrillas, and march back with heavy loads in seventy-two hours?”

“Of course not. It’s impossible. But when the only choice is to try, you gotta try, right?”

Gaston turned to the pallid rebel leader and said soothingly, “He talks like that a lot. Pay no attention. His parents never told him the facts of life. He thinks everyone is made out of whalebone and rawhide. I, Gaston, will think of a more sensible way.”

But El Aquilar Negro stared up at them thoughtfully and asked, “If I gave you the men to do it, could you do it, Captain Gringo?”

“I said I could try. It would have to be my way. Picked men, no adelitas slowing us down, and stragglers shot on the trail. It’s a job for real soldados, not guys who enjoy shooting pigs and chickens and yelling viva a lot.”

The rebel leader smiled crookedly and said, “Alas, I know all too well what you mean. I think I may have at least two dozen good men among my pobrecitos, Captain Gringo. But if I let you take all my real fighters, and they get here from the coast before you get back ...”

“I’ll leave Gaston here with you to secure the post, general. He was whipping Legion recruits into shape before you or I were born. If you’ll give him the authority, he’ll make the sons-of-bitches work for this valley whether I get back or not.”

Gaston said, “Oh, merci trés bien, you big blond sucker of cocks!”

The man on the cot said, “Agreed. You two are professionals and, as you see, I can barely sit up.” He turned to one of the others in the tent and said, “Major Gomez. You have been listening. These are my orders. See that they are carried out. Captain Gringo is to lead a picked raiding party to get us the guns and ammunition we need to do this business right. Lieutenant Verrier is promoted to brevet colonel and will take command of the remaining forces until I recover.”

Gomez, a husky, bully-boy type with gold teeth, scowled and asked, “May I ask why me and my men are to be placed under gringo strangers, my general?”

Captain Gringo smiled pleasantly and said, “I can answer that, general. Do I have your permission to take this silly cabron on mano-a-mano?”

El Aquilar Negro didn’t get a chance to answer. Gomez gasped, “Hey, can’t you take a joke, Captain Gringo?”

The tall American nodded and said, “Sure, I admire a guy with a sense of humor. Let’s all get out of here now, gang. The general needs his rest and we’ve got some moves to make, poco tiempo!”

Gomez led the way out. Others, more reasonable aides who’d followed the exchange fanned out to gather in the guerrillas. As they waited, Felicidad plucked Captain Gringo’s sleeves and said, “I do not understand, Roberto. Why did the general call Tio Pancho by another name?”

He said, “I guess our reputation’s gotten around. We fibbed to you, doll. My real name’s Dick Walker and Tio Pancho is Gaston Verrier. By now you’ve figured out I’m American and he’s French. I was hoping to' leave a few red herrings across our trail, but between those navy guys and the traitors in your movement, it seems to be a waste of time.”

“I think I shall still call you Roberto. Deek is a silly name. What did you mean about taking along no adelitas? Who ever heard of a Mexican army marching without women to carry the supplies and make nice-nice in the sleeping bags at night?”

“Nobody. That’s how come I hope to outmarch the other side a lot. We’ll talk about it later, when and if. The guys are starting to line up.”

The guerrilla band was, but they lined up sloppy as hell. Gomez must have wanted to keep his gold teeth. He sounded enthusiastic as hell about the idea, now that it had been properly explained to him. Captain Gringo let Gomez fill them in until he was repeating himself, then held up a hand for silence and called out, “All right, muchachos. The sun’s up and it’s getting late for any further bullshit. You know the score. I’m marching south to San Blas. Double-time on the downhill slopes and quick-march going up. We’ll travel light. You can piss or smoke when I give you a trail break every other hour. Don’t bring food or water. They both weigh you down. We’ll drink when we cross a stream. Seventy-two hours without food or sleep won’t kill anyone but a sissy. I want two squads. That’s sixteen men and two noncoms. Step forward if you’re tired of living. I ain’t got all day!”

Almost all of them stepped forward a pace, though some looked worried about it. He picked two guys wearing stripes on their cotton sleeves and concerned expressions on their faces. He said, “You and you. I can’t stand non-coms who look confident. Let’s hear some names here, dammit!”

One said he was called Morales and the other answered to Robles. Captain Gringo said that was good enough and added, “You know these men. They all look brave to me. Pick out your own squads. Make sure everyone has good shoes or tough feet. I’m going to be mad as hell at you if any of them don’t know how to shoot straight and carry out orders to the letter.”

They saluted awkwardly and turned to choose the men they’d be leading as he heard someone mutter, “Madre de Dios, he’s a nasty one, no?” But an older soldado laughed and said, “I’m going with him, if they pick me or not. It’s the tough ones who bring you back alive, see?”

Robles did pick the old soldier. So, not waiting any longer, Captain Gringo said, “Follow me!” and started walking south, not looking back. As the two squads followed Captain Gringo, Gaston stared fondly at the much larger group left and said, in a parade ground voice. “Eh bein, my children. I see what my good fortune has left me. I assure you I feel no better about it than you scum do.”

There was a low, angry murmur from the assembled guerrillas. Gaston snapped, “You are at ease, God damn your eyes! When I want you to speak I will order you to. When I want you to roll over, I will order you to. At the moment, you are supposed to be at ease. That means you keep your moronic mouths closed while I tell you all a touching story.”

They subsided into sullen silence. Gaston nodded and said, “Once upon a time, when I was just a little boy, I was given a box of tin soldados for Christmas. I loved my. little tin soldados. I used to line them up neatly and tell them how much I loved them. All but one, who refused to stand straight and had to be thrown in the stove to melt, hein? Alas, we had to move, and somehow my little tin toys got lost along the way. I was trés heartbroken! I cried and I cried for my tin soldados, but they were gone, it seemed, forever. My grandmother, a wise old woman who sold violets and picked pockets by La Opera, took me in her arms and consoled me. She said not to worry. Someday, she assured me, I would get my dear tin soldados back.”

Gaston rocked back on his heels as he gazed at them fondly and added, ‘‘My grandmother was right. Today I have my tin soldados back! Your paint has rubbed off and I see none of you can stand straight now. But, by my grandmother’s bones, I have you little tin bastards back at last, and I mean to have you looking and acting like soldados again! We shall begin by coming to attention. I said, attention! Right dress and cover down! Move it, you species of triple-titted toads!”

Some of them tried. Others just stood there, gaping. One made the mistake of laughing out loud. Gaston walked over to him, asked, “Is something funny?” and kicked him in the balls.

As the guerrilla dropped at his feet, moaning in agony, two of his buddies surged forward, then stopped, as they saw they were staring down the muzzle of Gaston’s .38. Gaston smiled pleasantly and said, “Do not try it, muchachos. I am not attempting to win any popularity contests here. We have less time than we need to shape up and secure this stronghold. I can’t use men who argue with me. So do yourselves a favor. Don’t argue!”

They got back in line, at attention. Now that they saw Gaston wasn’t kidding, the others tried harder to form a straight line. He nodded and said, “You still look like the snaggle teeth of a badly beaten whore. But that’s better.”

Major Gomez had been watching all this, of course. He came over to Gaston and said, “Hey, why are you picking on my boys, Frenchman?”

Gaston shot him.

The lined-up guerrillas gasped collectively as their major sank to his knees with a startled expression, then flopped forward to lie dead at Gaston’s feet. Gaston said, “Eh hein. As I was saying, we do not have time to argue among ourselves. You have my permission to hate me, you poor stupid children. But the childish game of playing rebels and rurales is over. The real thing is marching on us as we attempt at least to stand at attention. You, you, you, take this carrion somewhere and bury it. The rest of you follow me. We are going out across the meadow for some close-order drill. I intend to shoot every mother’s son who fails to leap when I shout Froggy! Then, with what is left of you sorry sons-of-bitches, I intend to set up defenses that one hopes the other bastards shall not be able to overrun with one lousy charge, hein?”

~*~

Since he’d started with a much smaller bunch of picked men, Captain Gringo didn’t have to shoot anyone with him the first day on the trail. He had to kick a couple to their feet after trail breaks as the day wore on, but that was only to be expected and they took it in good humor for the most part.

His men were well legged up from raiding the lowlands and cutting off occasional travelers unwise enough to attempt the mountain trails without military escorts. But they were also used to knocking off every afternoon for la siesta and protested, as the sun rose to the zenith, that he was going to kill them all. He admitted they had a point. Their big sombreros didn’t help much as the noonday sun blasted down at them at well over a hundred degrees in the shade, if there’d been much shade. He announced, “I’m about to drop, too. But look at it this way. Would you rather die of sunstroke or with hot lead in your guts? We can walk faster and not screw around with scouting when not even a lizard would be dumb enough to move in these hills. Los rurales aren’t as tough as you guys. So they’ll be holed up somewhere with a cerveza, a puta, or both.”

Someone croaked, “Let them keep the whore. Just give me the beer!”

Captain Gringo laughed and said, “You never had it so good. We’re topping the rise. So ... double-time, march!”

Behind him, as he jogged down the slope under the tropic sun, he heard someone gasp, “He’s inhuman! I can’t run another step!”

But Corporal Robles snapped. “You will run as far as he says, or I will kill you. I picked you for a man, niño! Are you going to make a fool of me? No, by the beard of Christ, you are not going to make a fool of me! If you let me down, I shall leave you by the trail with both kneecaps blown off. Then, when we get back to camp, I will ravage your adelita cruelly before I shoot her, and your children, too!”

That seemed to work. When Captain Gringo called quick-march up the next slope, all his guys were still with him.

He drove himself, and them, until the sun was lower and a more reasonable shade of orange. He halted the column near the top of a ridge to the south and told them to fall out. They did so, literally. A couple just flopped on the trail as if they’d been shot. He didn’t want them getting shot. So he called out, “Morales, bring the map and follow me.” Then he eased up the trail a way, stepped off it, and dropped to crawl the rest of the way over the rise through the brush. He stopped with his outline hopefully broken by the chaparral all around and was staring down across the valley to the south where Morales joined him to ask what was up.

Captain Gringo said, “Anyone could be up, now that la siesta is over and this chaparral is down. Look at the bushes around us. Goats have been grazing this ridge.”

Morales said, “Si, but we know the people who ranch down below. They are simpatico to our cause, Captain Gringo.”

The American spotted the outlines of a ranch house, almost hidden by the trees around it. He asked. “How simpatico?” Are they fellow rebels or just people who don’t like the current government all that much?”

Morales shrugged and said, “Nobody likes the current government, Captain Gringo. They allow us to water our horses there and they never turn us in to los rurales. In return, we never raid them.”

“I get the picture. Let’s see that map now. If we’re still on El Aquilar Negro’s hunting grounds, we’re not far enough south to matter. We’ll have to make up the lost time by pushing harder in the cool of night.”

Madre de Dios, Captain Gringo, you expect us to march faster?”

The American spread the map and found their position. He swore under his breath and said, “I know it’s impossible. We have to do it anyway. We’re not even halfway to the border between Estados Sinaloa and Nayarit yet, dammit!”

“I know. My feet are killing me. Forgive me. I mean no disrespect, but I know my men, and their feet are killing them, too. We have bullied an amazing march out of them. Perhaps they can walk almost as far once it cools off, as you say. But they must have some rest before pushing on. Food would not hurt them, either. The rancheros down there have food. They are far from any rurale post. God knows when we shall encounter such good fortune again, Captain Gringo. I do not know the country beyond the next spur running west to the sea.”

Captain Gringo muttered, “That makes two of us,” as he studied the map. There wasn’t much to study. The guerrillas had lifted it from an unfortunate traveler who’d used it to get lost in their part of the hills a while back. It was a standard Mexican ordinance map, with gross features probably about where they should be. There was a hell of a lot of blank paper between inked-in roads and towns. Neither this ridge nor the ranch in the valley below were on it. The bright side was that the enemy might not know the country any better. He said, “Well, we’re still close to seventy miles from San Blas. We’ll have to slow down even more and put out point and flank scouts once we get closer. Okay, run down there and ask ’em if they want a fight or extra dinner guests. If they don’t kill you, I’ll bring the others down when you signal.” As the man turned to go, he added, “Oh, yeah, Morales?”

“Si, señor?”

“If I see you just waving, I’ll know they have the drop on you. So I’ll rescue you if I can, and if I can’t, tough shit. If it’s really all clear, signal me by hopping on one leg. That’s about the last thing I can think of them forcing you to do.”

Morales chuckled and said he understood. Captain Gringo watched with approval as Morales crabbed sideways through the brush a hundred yards before rising to approach the ranch below from another angle through the waist-high chaparral. He nodded and silently said, “Good thinking. Don’t get killed if you can help it. Good noncoms are hard to find these days.”

~*~

Morales looked pretty silly hopping around on one foot. The vaqueros of the rancho were still grinning about it when Captain Gringo led the others down the slope. They crossed a wagon trace running east and west. Captain Gringo raised an eyebrow when he saw the rubber-tire tracks edged sharply by the setting sun. He kept his thoughts to himself. Damned few people could afford the new horseless carriages back in the States. They cost even more down here. While waiting up on the rise with Robles, Robles had filled him in more on this spread. Apparently there was a lot more money in raising beef and goats than he’d thought.

As the half-dozen vaqueros escorted Captain Gringo and his men over to the main house, a woman in black widow’s weeds was standing on the veranda. This didn’t surprise him. Robles had said the valley was held by the widow Perez. But Robles hadn’t told him what she looked like. So he was surprised to find the dame was gorgeous.

As he approached, doffing his sombrero, she said, “I am called Pilar and of course my house is your house. But thank God you did not arrive less than an hour ago! You just missed los rurales, or, to be more accurate, perhaps they just missed you! You caballeros are of El Aquilar Negro’s band, no?”

He studied her words, and her, before answering. Pilar Perez was about thirty. Tall for a Mestiza, albeit shorter than most American girls. He figured she was maybe three-quarters white and one-quarter very pretty Indian. Her face was dusky rose in the sunset light. Her eyes were big, black, and slightly slanted by her high cheekbones. Her hair was parted in the middle and hung down to her shoulders, shiny and black as raven’s wings. She was built like a well-known brick edifice and he could tell it was all her under that thin black dress. She hourglassed naturally, without the corset most women would have needed for a waistline like that between such heroic upper and lower halves of her torso.

He said, “We may know El Aquilar Negro, señora. Tell us more about los rurales.”

“They were just here, in an armored motorcar. They drove in from San Blas, they said, to make sure nobody was here but us and my livestock. We were very frightened. But, come, they are gone for the night, I am sure. They said they were patrolling back toward San Blas, along the coast road. You and your men must be hungry after such a long journey over the rim rocks.”

That was for sure. But Captain Gringo turned to Robles and said, “You and your squad stay out here and set up a perimeter. When Morales and his men have eaten, they’ll relieve you. Post your guys under the trees and make sure they don’t smoke after dark. Any questions?”

“No, Captain Gringo. I am an old night fighter.”

The tall American nodded, motioned to Morales, and told the woman he’d pay for some tortillas and beans for his men. She sniffed and told him not to insult her. So they all went inside.

A couple of vaqueros followed, but the widow turned to one who seemed to be her ramrod and said, “Tico, with rurales in these parts, you and the muchachos had better round up the stock. Especially the horses, no?”

The ramrod nodded and led his segundo out to attend to it. The woman ushered them back to the large combined kitchen and dining room, where two older peon women were already preparing food on the hearth of a beehive fireplace in a corner, and another woman, younger and better dressed, sat at a big plank table, nursing a mug of coffee and a sullen expression. Pilar said, “This is my little sister, Carmencita.”

Captain Gringo nodded pleasantly to her. Carmencita didn’t even look at him, so he said, “Up yours,” in English, and took the seat the older and better-mannered sister indicated. Morales of course rated another chair. The men with him knew their places in polite Hispanic society and squatted against the walls to be fed, if and when.

Pilar took her place at the head of the table as Captain Gringo studied Carmencita and tried to figure out what was eating her. She was a pretty little thing, whiter-looking than her older sister, with just a hint of Indian in her cheekbones and straight black hair. She, too, wore black. Her figure was more willowy, but she was a long way from being flat-chested.

Pilar caught the thoughtful look in Captain Gringo’s eye and nodded to say, “Si, she is a little snip. She’s not angry with you. She’s angry with me. I have refused to receive a certain young officer who keeps arriving with flowers, books, and candy.”

The younger girl flushed crimson and started to say, or spit, something. Then she lowered her eyes to her coffee cup and murmured whatever it was under her breath. Pilar said, “Don’t pout in front of company, you silly child. I agree he’s very pretty, but no woman of this house will ever keep company with a rurale as I draw breath!”

Captain Gringo was embarrassed for them both, and wasn’t interested in family quarrels in the first place. So he said, “Your government seem to be pretty busy around here lately.”

She said, “Mexico has had no government since Juarez died. We do not consider that bandito, Diaz, a government.”

“Yeah, but he’s got a rural gendarmerie and a federal army just the same. You told us about los rurales patrolling the roads in an armored motorcar, señora. What can you tell us about los federales?”

Before she could answer, her chicas started putting cups of coffee and bowls of food in front of everyone who rated a seat at the table. Their hostess said, “Please call me Pilar. I only insist on señora from those others. Los rurales are always with us. My late husband taught me how to deal with them. By politely asking the local rurale commander if he would be kind enough to forward your land tax, paid in cash, one tames the beasts at little extra cost. The soldados who’ve just moved into the area are another matter. They have yet to approach me, so I don’t know how big a bribe it will take to keep my livestock and the virtue of my sister and me. They are stationed to the south, between here and San Blas. We do not know just where, but they are said to be patrolling the hills between the two routes south.”

Captain Gringo took out the map, spread it between her bowl and his, and said, “I have the roads. That’s about all. The surveyors who drew this map must not have known how to draw mountains or canyons. Could you fill in some of the blank space for us, ah, Pilar?”

She turned and asked one of her servants to fetch her a pencil. Then she turned back to him and said, “I can try. By the way, I forget how you are called, señor.”

“I am called Dick. That’s Anglo for Ricardo.”

“I prefer Ricardo. Deek sounds undignified.”

The chica handed her a pencil stub and Pilar started marking up the map as she said, “This coast road ends at Rosario, to the north. They say someday they mean to extend it up the coast to Mazatlán, but sea cliffs still block the way. To the south, the coast road runs all the way to San Blas and the western terminus of the new railroad.”

“There’s a railroad depot in San Blas? That explains a lot!”

“Ah, you heard of the new ordnance depot atop Cerro de Basiho? I was wondering why El Aquilar Negro sent you this far south. Unless you and your men are just an advance patrol, you don’t have the strength to take the fort.”

“Is that where los federales are, Pilar?”

She shook her head and said, “Not all of them. Others have been seen much closer!”

She ran the pencil along the mapped inland trail and went on, “This is the logical way people who do not wish to be bothered by rurales in armored motorcars on the coast road would naturally take. You can reach it by traveling west, up this valley, to where the trail crosses it. I don’t think I would do that if I were you. Nobody has come up the inland trail from the south for at least a week.”

“Right. Armored patrol on the low road, cavalry troopers on the high road, and nobody gets to Scotland either way, right?”

She looked confused but didn’t ask what he meant. She was drawing another line. She said, “I cannot do this in detail from memory. I have only ridden a few kilometers of it in any case. But here, midway between the better- known routes south, a goat path follows the ridges south. It is difficult, even on foot. Nobody remembers who laid it out originally. Perhaps the Indians, in the old days. I shall not try to draw in all the curves and passes. My goatherds tell me once you are on it, it is not impossible to follow. The tricky part is that in places it doubles back on itself to avoid running over thin air. The hills are badly cut up by canyons. A stranger in these parts would think the old Indio trail led nowhere. That is why I don’t think you would be as liable to meet anyone on it.”

“I hope you’re right. Where does it end, to the south, Pilar?”

“Nowhere, officially. Actually, after crossing the Rio Grande Santiago, it comes to a railroad cut east of San Blas and keep going, God knows where, to the south. When the government surveyors laid out the new railroad, they apparently didn’t even notice the narrow path along the crest of a ridge they had to cut through. I have never followed the old forgotten trail all the way, of course, so I cannot tell you exactly how far it leaves you from San Blas at the south end. It is said los federales patrol the tracks with cannon and machine guns mounted on armored flatcars. On the other hand, the jungle is quite thick in the lowlands near San Blas.”

He nodded, took back the map, and folded it, and put it away as he said, “You’ve been a great help, Pilar. Now I’d better finish up and let you feed the next shift so we can be on our way by moonrise.”

She gasped and said, “Oh, no! You can’t take the old Indian trail at night, Ricardo! Did you not hear me when I said it was most treacherous? You must wait until morning. Until just before dawn, at least. It is hard to find even by daylight. Walking it in the dark is suicidal! In some places it winds along the edges of sheer drops. The vegetation grows thicker as one goes south. Some parts lead through tall timber, to hairpin on the edges of tall cliffs!”

He nodded politely as he went on stuffing his gut with refritos and coffee. The coffee would help him and the others, some. He noticed that neither of the women were eating. He’d thought they’d arrived past suppertime. Pilar watched with polite concern as he grubbed. Young Carmencita was chain drinking coffee and trying not to squirm in her seat. He repressed the impulse to tell her she was never going to get to sleep tonight if she added caffeine to the other ants she obviously had in her pants. Her problem wasn’t his. It was all hers, and it seemed to be driving her nuts.

He excused himself from the table and went out to relieve Morales after telling the guys with him to hurry it up. Outside, Robles told him all the vaqueros had ridden off someplace in a hurry. Captain Gringo said, “Roundup time, she says,” as he stared west at the sunset. Others who’d eaten first, with him, came drifting out as he filled Robles in on his conversation with Pilar. Robles said it made sense. He’d heard of the old forgotten trail, though he’d never traveled it. He said, “Federale troopers on horseback would not be able to move any faster than men on foot along such a treacherous route, even if they knew about it. I doubt if they could, since they are new in these parts.”

Morales came out, belching contentedly, and said la señora wished to speak to Captain Gringo again. The tall American said, “Take over here. How far does that wagon trace run down the valley before it meets the main coast road? Do you know?”

“Si, it is about ten kilometers, Captain Gringo. Why? Surely you do not mean to lead us that way! The woman says los rurales are patrolling it in armored motorcars!”

“Yeah, I can still see the tracks. Come on, Robles. Time to feed your squad and see what the lady wants.”

Inside, neither sister was seated at the table. One of the chicas led Captain Gringo to another wing of the house, knocked on a stout oak door, and ushered him inside. Pilar was seated on the edge of her bed. She was fully dressed, but he was still surprised. Hispanic ladies just didn’t receive gentlemen in their bedrooms, even chaperoned, and the chica closed the door after her as she left.

Pilar patted the bedspread beside her and said, “Sit down, Ricardo. We must talk. I know how you men are in front of others. You are afraid your men. will think less of you if you show any signs of being afraid of the dark, no?”

He sat down beside her, placing his hands politely on his own knees as he replied, “I don’t worry much what other men think of me. I’m not afraid of the dark, either. Old soldiers know how hard it is to snipe at anyone from ambush in the dark. I’ve made night marches through places you’d think I was bragging about, Pilar. Don’t worry about us. I hardly ever lead a column off a cliff. Not under a full moon, anyway”

She sighed and said, “All right, let us say I am worried about us. My sister and me. Say you will stay at least until my vaqueros return, no?”

“What’s up? Are you afraid Carmencita’s rurale admirer will come calling again by moonlight?”

“Him I can handle. It is his friends I am afraid of! The ones in the armored motorcar were unknown to me. They had been drinking. A drunken rurale, an armored motorcar, and a machine gun are a frightening combination, Ricardo! They were very insolent, even with my men here. If they should return, to find us alone ...”

“Yeah, that could be a problem. You say they have a machine gun?”

“Si, mounted in a little cheese box turret atop the motorcar. I am not afraid of being machine-gunned, however. One of them was more specific about what he would like to do to my little sister.”

The windows were shuttered against the night, but he could see through a slit that the sun was almost gone for good. That left twelve hours of darkness, and that wasn’t enough. He asked, “How soon should your ranch hands return, Pilar?”

She shrugged and said, “¿Quien sabe? Perhaps a few short hours. I told them not to worry about the goats grazing the hills around. Just so they drive in all the horses and my prize breeding stock. Say you will keep me company until then, at least.”

He sighed and said, “I’d like to, Pilar. I don’t see how I can. My men and I are already trail sore. If I let them relax after a warm meal, God knows when I’ll ever get them on their feet again. I figure a twelve-hour forced march ought to get us through the federale lines by dawn and..

“You are not thinking. You are too tired to think straight,” she cut in, placing a hand high on his thigh as she continued, “If you leave now, and don’t fall off a cliff in the dark, you will make San Blas by day. And then what will you do? You cannot attack the fort atop Cerro de Basilio in broad daylight. You will only have to hide in the bushes all day, you silly boy! On the other hand, if you spent the night with me, left at dawn, and got to San Blas after dark tomorrow evening ...”

Her hand was even higher now. He moved it away from his fly and said, “God knows that’s a tempting offer, honey. It makes a lot of sense, too. But, meanwhile, my men out there are within easy reach of a motorized machine-gun crew, and you just said they may be back! I don’t have a machine gun, Pilar. So, thanks, but no thanks. My muchachos will be a lot safer up in the hills tonight than they would be here. I don’t think those rurales will try anything serious with you girls. They’d have done so by now if they didn’t know Carmencita has one of their officers sweet on her.”

He rose to his feet as she pleaded, “Wait!” and then, having run out of sensible arguments, proceeded to use womankind’s oldest and most convincing one. He stood dumbfounded as she rose, too, and proceeded to take off her clothes.

He said, “You sure must want me to stay, doll!” as she unfastened her bodice and drew the black dress off over her head. His breath caught in his throat as he saw she’d been wearing nothing under it. The candlelight molded her voluptuous nude flesh in high relief and glistened on the tips of her pubic hairs as she cast the dress aside, put her hands on her naked hips, and brazenly smiled up at him as she asked, “Well, do you still want to leave?”

He grinned down at her, said, “Not really,” then cold- cocked her with a hard left hook to the jaw!

Pilar’s head flew back, and the rest of her followed to land spread-eagled across the bed, out like a light, of course. He sighed and added, “That hurt me more than it did you, doll.”

He half-turned away, had another look at the inviting way her pink slit was gaping between her widespread thighs, then grunted, “Forget it. A guy’s got to draw the line somewhere.”

He cracked open the door, saw that nobody was outside, and moved along the hall until he saw light under another door. He opened it without knocking. Carmencita was on another bed, fully dressed, bound hand and foot with a gag in her mouth. He moved over to her, sat on the edge, and removed the gag as he said, “Don’t scream. I’ll have you out of these other ropes in a minute, Señora Perez.”

She looked up at him like a condemned criminal who’d just been granted a stay of execution as she whispered, “How did you know? Carmencita said she’d kill me if I breathed a word to you!”

“I noticed she talked more than she should have. If she’s really Carmencita, you’re really Pilar, right?”

“Of course. Oh, get my feet, por favor! Where is Carmencita? She has a gun under her dress!”

“Not anymore. I’ll explain it along the way. We’ve all got to get out of here before those rurales she sent her so-called vaqueros for get here with that armored car!”

He finished untying her, pulled her to her feet with one hand, and drew his .38 with the other before leading her back to the kitchen. As they entered, his men looked startled and the two chicas looked terrified. He said, “Robles, tie up those two police informers and hide them someplace. Don’t let anyone rape them. We haven’t time. Oh, yeah, you there, run down the hall and tie up the naked lady you’ll find in one of the rooms. Don’t rape her, either. She doesn’t deserve it.”

His men were still confused, but moved to obey him as he led the real Pilar outside and called in Morales and his squad. He said, “I’ll explain later. I want you, you, and you to go back to the work sheds and find some picks and shovels. Move it!”

Then, as they started running, he turned back to Morales and the still-confused young widow and explained, “Nobody rounds up horses grazing in the dark, then puts them neatly in a corral, when one’s worried about rurales stealing stock. The real vaqueros have all been arrested, along with the household servants, right, Pilar?”

“Of course. They kept me here in case anyone who knew me came by. Since you were strangers, she took my place to do the talking and ...”

“Hey, let’s not waste time on things I know, honey! That goat path she drew for us is a blind alley, right?”

“Yes, it only goes to a charcoal burner’s camp, in a box canyon. I know it well, since I ride my own range when ladrónes do not have me tied up!”

“Gotcha. She was a sweet kid. Just in case she couldn’t hold us till machine-gun-toting rurales got here, she meant to send us into a corner for them!”

The men with the shovels got back. At the same time, Robles and his squad came out of the house. Robles said, “The women are all securely bound. J am sorry, one of the boys did something bad to the one you left on the bed. I thought I’d better tell you before I shot him.”

“Did she wake up while he was raping her? No? Okay, forget it, for now. But tell him if he disobeys another order, I’ll shoot him myself.”

He raised his voice and called out, “All right, muchachos! Follow me! We’ve got some ground to cover and some ground to dig. So pick ’em up and lay ’em down!”

He was glad to see that Pilar was able to keep up with no trouble. The young widow had horsewoman’s hips and seemed used to hard, healthy living. As she trotted at his side, she giggled and said, “I am glad they raped her. But is this not bad for discipline, Ricardo?”

“Yeah, but what can I tell you? Some guys don’t have as much character as me, and she sure looked tempting in that position.”

~*~

Captain Gringo and Pilar sat together on a boulder as his men worked. The red laterite soil was almost as hard as brick, so they had time to tell each other condensed life stories. Her tale was shorter than his. Both of them had been in trouble for a long time. Pilar had been born and raised on the high, dry central mesas of Mexico. She’d married a nice young vaquero who’d heard rangeland was cheaper down on the rugged west coast. He’d been right about that. He’d learned why not many people tried to raise beef in the tropic lowlands when his longhorns died of rinderpest and he died of vomito negro.

Pilar, and a very few cows and horses and a lot of goats, was made of sterner stuff and had acclimatized to the hotter and wetter range after being sick a lot at first. She said the fake Pilar had told him the truth when she’d explained how small-holders managed to hold los rurales at bay by paying their land tax directly to them in cash. It had been the older and meaner woman who had the boyfriend riding for los rurales, and she hadn’t been sending him away at all. The real Pilar frowned in the moonlight and said, “Yet, she told the truth at least half the time. I do not understand this, Ricardo. She did not have to tell you los rurales had been by with an armored motorcar just before you arrived, did she?”

He said, “Sure she did. The tire tracks were in the dust out front. Like all good liars, she larded her lies with truth to confuse the issue.”

“I was so furious when she said it was I, not she, who admired los rurales. What will happen to her and those other women now, Ricardo?”

He shrugged and said, “They’ll work loose or they won’t work loose. They may be found before they die of thirst or they may not. Never mind about them. What about you? Do you have people you can go back to, up in the high country, Pilar?”

“Of course. My parents love me. But my father’s rancho is far away. How am I to get there? I owned nothing but this range, a few animals, a casa with a roof that leaked in the rainy season. Now I have nothing but the clothes I wear, and ... my body.”

“Don’t knock ’em. It’s a pretty dress and you have a nice figure. I’d say you need a railroad ticket and enough eating money to get home to your people. We’ll work it out later. Right now, no offense, I’ve got other things on my mind.”

He stood up and called out to Morales, “That’s enough, Cover the hole as I told you and then take cover.” He turned and yelled to Robles, “I can see patches of white cotton in the moonlight, dammit! Get your damn squad farther back in the bushes! Haven’t you guys ever ambushed anyone before?”

There were curses and the sound of dry chaparral scraping on men and metal until he called out, “That’s better. Hold those positions, and remember, nobody fires till I give the command!”

Morales and his work crew finished on the moonlit wagon trace and faded back into the brush as well. Captain Gringo led Pilar behind the boulder they’d been seated on and said, “Sit down here and stay put. Don’t peek over the top when the egg hits the fan. It can ruin a girl’s complexion to take lead and granite dust at high velocity.”

She did as she was told, but asked, “How long do you think we have to wait, Ricardo?”

He said, “God knows. A soldier spends most of his time either hurrying up or waiting. Sit tight. I have some inspecting to do.”

He moved away from her through the waist-high chaparral, checking each man’s position and having to move only a few to better positions. The guerrillas were no soldados, but at least they were experienced banditos and the plan was simple. He’d just finished and gotten back to Pilar and the rock overlooking the trap when, in the distance, he heard the tinny popping of an internal combustion engine. He drew his gun and told the girl, “Here she comes. Keep your pretty head down.”

The improvised armored motorcar was a German Benz horseless carriage with a two-lung rear-mounted engine that hadn’t been designed to push a mess of boiler plate, and so complained loudly about it. The armored car was much smaller than armored cars would become once people began to build them that way from scratch. It was top-heavy on its leaf springs even without the little pillbox on the roof of the box. It would have looked funny if the muzzle of a Maxim machine gun hadn’t been stickling out of the turret.

The crew was too slick to drive with their carbide headlights lit but they were dumb to be driving that fast by moonlight. The driver could no doubt make out the twin ruts of the wagon trace and was depending on them to act like railroad tracks in the shady places.

Since Roman chariots had started out with a four-foot- eight gauge, every wagon, railroad train, and now horseless carriage built by western Europeans or their colonists had the same wheel gauge. Thus, the wagon trace was deeply rutted to fit the tires as the armored vehicle followed them, or thought it was.

Captain Gringo had of course told his men to dig where a wild fig tree spread its inky shadows across the trace. The driver didn’t slow down for one lousy island of shade. He should have. The right-hand wheels broke through the dust-covered twigs covering the knee-deep slit trench dug along one rut. Since the other rut was still solid, the armored motorcar flopped over on its side with a tinny crash, slid in a cloud of dust, screams, and curses, and came to rest with two wheels spinning up at the moon as the dust began to settle.

Captain Gringo waited as the echoes faded. The driver opened the door facing the sky and stuck his head out to see if he could climb out. He could have, but then somebody blew his brains out with a carbine and all hell broke loose!

“Hold your fucking fire!” shouted Captain Gringo as bullets spanged uselessly off the boiler plate. Morales and Robles were yelling the same thing up and down the line. So as the fusillade faded, sheepishly, Captain Gringo jumped over the rock and advanced on the careened vehicle. Before he could get to it, the trapdoor of the turret, now facing him, opened. He fired into the black opening as a hand grenade came out to bound like a bunny across the red clay at him. He caught it with the toe of his boot, really just trying to get it the hell away from him before it went off. But, as luck would have it, he kicked it right back into the turret. So it exploded inside!

He grinned and said, “I’ll be damned!” as he moved closer, out of the line of fire from the hatch, as blue smoke rose from it to drift lazily away in the moonlight. He got to the vehicle, stood to one side of the open hatch, and called, “I’ve got a grenade of my own. Throw out your guns and follow them before I count three!”

He counted to three. Nothing happened. Robles ran up to him and asked what happened next. Captain Gringo said, “One of your men fired too soon. So you get to look inside, you trigger-happy sonofabitch!”

Robles sighed, “That is not just. I shot him for doing that. He was the man who raped that puta back there. I told him what you said, but some people just don’t listen.”

Then Robles struck a match and looked inside. He whistled and said, “Ay caramba! There were three of them. They are all in the condition I like to see rurales – bloody and dead. Shall I see about salvaging their weapons and the contents of their pockets before we burn this creation?”

Captain Gringo said, “We’re not going to destroy it if it still runs. Haul the bodies out and hide them in the brush. Then see if you and the guys can lever it back upright. Use some of Morales’s squad if you have to, but do it pronto!”

He returned to Pilar. The girl was chewing on her kerchief like a locked-up pup chews a slipper. He said, “It’s over. You can get up now. But be ready to duck, just in case I’m wrong.”

He sat on the rock and lit a smoke as he added, “I’ve been thinking about how we’re to get you home. The railroad’s a long way to walk, but if we can get that horseless carriage to run, we can have you in San Blas in no time.”

“But, Ricardo, Carmencita said los rurales are patrolling the coast road!”

“Yeah. Maybe she lied. Maybe she told the truth. I hate inconsistent dames.”

With the gang of guerrillas putting their backs into it, they had the armored motorcar on its wheels and backed out of the trap in no time. Captain Gringo rose, helped Pilar to her feet, and said, “Let’s see if we can crank her up again". Do you know how to drive a horseless carriage?”

“Are you serious? I never saw one of the things before that one drove up to my casa the other day. That was when they arrested my servants. They had two motor vehicles. One was an open truck to carry rurales and another to carry my people away.”

Captain Gringo led her to the armored motorcar. His men were standing around, grinning. He didn’t have to count noses to see that even after Robles had shot one idiot, he had too many people to stuff in the vehicle. He climbed up the side and dropped into the turret. By moonlight through the open hatch he saw the grenade had only chipped a little paint and splattered a lot of blood on the inner steel walls. He could see the whole construction formed one hollow shell. He saw the driver’s seat and steering tiller, forward. He could see how one could get at the engine to the rear from inside. The machine gun was mounted in the slit with a full belt dangling. A crank to the left of the Maxim’s breech block turned the turret either way on its circular track. There were extra cases of ammo and a box of grenades racked on either side. A couple of five-liter fuel cans had been securely racked, too, and by some miracle hadn’t been punctured by the grenade that had finished off the crew. Things were looking up, if he could start the engine. He stuck his head out and asked, “Do any of you guys know how to drive a motorcar?”

He’d known it was a dumb question when he asked, it. But there was always a chance, and he couldn’t man the Maxim and drive at the same time.

As they all stared blankly up at him, Captain Gringo said, “That’s what I thought. Let’s see, we have room for maybe four in here, crowded. Six or seven might be able to ride outside, hanging on a lot. This isn’t going to work, gang. Not unless I send one squad home.”

Then he cocked his head arid hissed, “Everybody take cover! I hear another engine coming from the west!”

He dropped down inside and started cranking like hell as his people ran for cover. He had the gun slit pointed back down the wagon trace and was peering through it along the sights of the machine gun as the brazenly lit headlights of another motor vehicle approached. He muttered, “What the hell? Oh, right, the mop-up crew in the truck. This one was supposed to hit hard with its lights out, and to hell with their own police informers. Then, gunmen following in a thin-skinned truck could fan out through the brush around the ranch house and make sure. I guess it would have worked.”

The oncoming truck slowed down as its headlights picked up the stalled armored motorcar on the trace ahead. He said, “Come on. A little closer, dammit! Don’t you guys have any curiosity?”

They did. The truck stopped just a few yards away and a voice called out, “What happened? Did you get a flat?”

Captain Gringo aimed just above the headlights and replied by traversing a burst of Maxim lead across the black bulk outlined by the sky. His guerrillas opened up with their own guns, pumping lead into the truck from their flanking .positions. Captain Gringo traversed back, for luck, then called out, “Hold your fire!” He didn’t want to put the truck out of action.

Robles was starting to think like him about motor vehicles. So he charged out of the bush, zigzagging, and flattened out against the side of the truck to have a look inside. He called out, “All down, dead or dying, Captain Gringo!”

The tall American put the Maxim on safe and climbed out of his turret, calling back, “Bueno. Haul them out before they ooze all over the floorboards. Morales, to me on the double!”

Morales ran up to him, grinning like a mean little kid in the moonlight. Captain Gringo led him around to the rear of the armored motorcar, lit up by the carbide lamps of the shot-up truck. He said, “See this? It’s the starting crank. I kicked the lever inside to neutral. That’s important. I’ll show you that part in a minute. First, let’s see if she still runs.”

He cranked the engine. It was warm, so it started on the second try. He grinned and said, “Bueno. Now we’d better give you some driving lessons. We’ve got a few minutes.”

“Por favor, Captain Gringo! Can it be possible to learn how to drive a horseless carriage in a few minutes?”

“No. But it’s all the time we have, and I’m depending on you to drive that other truck down the coast road after me.”

~*~

Actually, it took over an hour before he had Morales steering well enough to keep the wheels more or less in the ruts as they tooled up and down the wagon trace a few times. By then, the others had the truck bed rubbed fairly clean with dry grass. Robles acted a little hurt that he’d not been offered driving lessons. So Captain Gringo explained, “The girl, you, and a couple of your best men will be riding with me in the lead. I’ll let you man the tiller on the straighter stretches as we go, if there’s a chance. Morales and most of the guys will follow us in the truck, if it still runs.”

It did. As he’d noticed, both vehicles had the same Benz chassis and rear-mounted engines. So, though the truck’s dash had some bullet holes in it and the seat was a little sticky, nothing important had been damaged. After putting out the headlights, Morales was able to start it and turn it around without help. Captain Gringo said, “I’ll drive slow, at first. Don’t follow me too close, but for God’s sake keep me in sight.” Then he yelled, “Everybody mount up!” and went back to his own stolen vehicle.

As he sat at the tiller beside Pilar, with Robles and a couple of others hunkered behind them on the flat floor under the turret, Robles asked him how he could shoot and drive at the same time. Captain Gringo said, “I can’t. So make sure you don’t block me if I hit the brakes and come over the back of this seat poco tiempo!”

He threw the armored motorcar in gear and lurched it out across the grass in a circle back to the wagon trace. He told one of his men to stand up and see if Morales was following. The guerrilla said he was. Captain Gringo resisted an impulse to give her the throttle. They were moving only a little faster than a man could trot. On the other hand, he didn’t want Morales hitting a tree any faster than that.

By the time they reached the mouth of the valley and saw the moonlight on the sea ahead, Captain Gringo was used to the feel of the tiller and, assuming Morales might be, too, speeded up to about ten miles an hour. At his side, Pilar said, “Oh, we are going so fast!” and he said, “Relax. They drive even faster than this in Paris these days. These gas buggies can do fifteen, even twenty miles an hour.”

“Heavens! What is the world coming to? How shall people ever cross the street once these things become popular?”

“Very, very carefully, I suppose. But look on the bright side. Even though they come down the street like horse-drawn buggies whipped to full stride, they take up half the length of a buggy and team. So there’ll be fewer traffic jams, most likely, and the cities should smell a lot nicer, without all those horse droppings on the cobbles.”

He coasted out onto the main highway, saw it was clear both ways at this hour, and swung south with the moonlit Pacific to their right and the black hills rising to their left. He chuckled and asked, “Isn’t this neat? This would be like a romantic carriage ride in the country if we were going a little slower and knew no rurales were around the next bend in the road.”

She said, “Nobody will ever take girls for romantic rides in these things, silly! What girl could feel romantic with her hair being blown and her, ah, nether parts being bounced so?”

“I guess you’re right. Would you like to take the tiller, Pilar?”

“At this speed? With sea cliffs just to the side?”

“Slide your hand under mine. I’ll guide you till you get the feel of it. Come on, Pilar. This could be important.”

She gingerly put her left hand on the tiller between them as he slid his hand over hers. He still guided as she got the feel of it. Her hand felt cool and a lot nicer than the tiller handle. He felt her confidence growing and eased up his own pressure. Then he grabbed harder as he warned, “You’re over controlling. This is not a handful of reins, Pilar. You don’t have to neck-rein a motor vehicle to make it turn. Think of it as a very responsive cow pony that only needs a hint, see?”

She did, and as she started, steering better, she said, “This is fun! I did not think it would be so easy to steer this thing. You are right, it does not have a mind of its own, like a horse. It is most obedient, no?”

“Yeah, but on the other hand, you can’t depend on it to sidestep any bumps, and it’ll run right into a tree a horse would walk around no matter what you did with the reins. Put your foot on my instep and feel. I may as well teach you how to brake, just in case. This lever, here, is the throttle. It stays where you set it, so you don’t have to worry about it. I’m not up to teaching you about the gears or spark lever just yet. If I can teach you to hold her on the road or to stop when I yell to, we’ll be ahead of the game.”

He was aware of Robles glaring at the backs of their heads, so he laughed and said, “I know I told you I’d show you how to drive, Robles. Later. You can shoot a gun better than a pretty girl, and, what the hell, she’ll be getting off soon.”

Robles didn’t answer. Pilar said, “You can’t leave me anywhere, Ricardo! I have no money. I have no friends in San Blas. What would I do alone there? I am not the sort of woman who can sell herself for money in a seaport, and I have nothing else to sell!”

He said, “We’ll drop you off well this side of town. Don’t walk in before daybreak. By then it should be over whether we’re alive or not. I just went through the boxes in back. Here – take this and stuff it somewhere it won’t show.”

He reached into his side pocket with his free hand and put the roll of bills in her lap, adding, “Relax, Robles. There’s plenty left for you and yours. Apparently the guys who drove this thing collected the egg money for their rurale captain. They had a whole ammo box stuffed with bills and some poor bastard’s gold teeth. We can spare a lady train fair home.”

Pilar picked up the roll with her free hand and gasped, “My God, how shall I ever be able to repay you, Ricardo? There must be a thousand pesos here!”

“More like fifteen hundred. Why should you worry about paying us back? It’s not our money. Buy yourself a new hat or something with the change.”

He heard Robles unsnapping the metal box in back. He said, “That comes later, too. I want the loot shared evenly among the men. You and Morales get time and a half, of course.”

“That is most generous Captain Gringo. What about your share?”

“I don’t want any. My comrade back in camp and I have enough to buy drinks, smokes, and railroad tickets, if nobody’s shooting at us at the time. I’m trying to encourage you guys to make that possible.”

The man standing with his head out the turret hatch called down, “I see lights in the road ahead!”

Captain Gringo peered through the slit ahead of him and slowed down as he made them out a few seconds later. He said, “Looks like a checkpoint. Some guys with guns standing between a fire on either side of the road. Hang on, kiddies. They don’t look like rurales. Those are federale uniforms. The army’s getting into the act.”

“Are we going to run the roadblock, Captain Gringo?” asked Robles, adding, “They can’t hurt us in this thing.”

Captain Gringo said, “They can sure hurt the guys behind as in that open truck. Silencio. The next few minutes may get tricky.”

He braked to a stop a pistol shot from the troopers and missed, “Out of the way!” as he rolled over the back of the seat and elbowed his way up into the turret. A noncom stepped out in the road and called out. “Hey, rurales. Why you stop there? Come closer and show us your trip ticket, eh? We have no instructions about you guys.”

Captain Gringo opened up with the machine gun, feeling almost sorry for the federales as he chopped them down, whether they ran, fired back, or just stood there, until all eight of them lay twitching in the firelight.

He stuck his head up out of the hatch and saw Morales had stopped in hailing range. He yelled, “Detail some men to shove those bodies out of sight over the cliff. Then kick out those fires.”

He tapped the man nearest him in the turret and said, “You, take your machete and shinny up one of those poles on the landward side. Hack away the wires. Do it now.”

As he made room for the grinning guerrilla to climb out, Robles said, “Ah, I see why you wish the fires out. It will take them until morning to find where we cut the wires. But why are we cutting the wires at all, my captain?”

“Jesus, that’s a dumb question, Robles. If we have time, we’ll cut some more. They’re already expecting us in San Blas. The one thing we have going for us is that they think we’re walking! When the line goes dead, they’ll start looking for the break way to the north. Before they can compare notes, we should be there and halfway back.”

“Ah, si, and with this grand vehicle, we can simply drive into the fort atop Cerro de Basilio and load the truck with guns and ammo for El Aquilar Negro, no?”

“No. That’s a dumb question, too. Haven’t you figured out by now that they haven’t reactivated that old Spanish fort above San Blas?”

Robles gasped, “The thought never crossed my mind! How did you know this thing, Captain Gringo?”

“The thought crossed my mind that if I had a mess of goodies hidden in an old Spanish fort, I’d sort of like to keep it a secret. Police informers keep telling us the stuff is there. El Aquilar Negro was told it was there. By who? A government official who gossips to rebels a lot? It’s an obvious setup, muchacho. They tried to bait you guys out of a stronghold they’re hesitant to attack by telling you there was a good reason to come out and get shot.”

“Madre de Dios, it is so obvious, once one thinks about it! But, Captain Gringo, if the guns are not in the old fort above San Blas, why are we going to San Blas?”

“To get guns and ammo, of course. Those guys I just shot were federales, and the army’s just moved into this area in force. Armies need supplies. A lot of supplies. The railroad only carries stuff as far as San Blas. So San Blas is where we’ll find their quartermaster depot. Not up on a stupid mountain abandoned as useless years ago. By the railroad tracks where guys like los federales, and us, can get at ’em!”

~*~

They hit another checkpoint at about three in the morning. This time Pilar, at the tiller, just kept driving while Morales, another quick study, lagged a quarter of a mile back until Captain Gringo simply machine-gunned the roadside troopers, who’d been set up to stop regular road traffic, not armored vehicles that bore down on them spitting automatic fire.

Captain Gringo liked to vary his methods to confuse the other side. So he didn’t stop to clean up or cut wires. Less than an hour later, still riding up in the turret, he saw he might have made a mistake. Ahead, in the moonlight, he saw a whole troop of cavalry coming up the road! He growled, “Smart thinking. The guys back there were supposed to check in from time to time by wire, and they missed an all’s-well, right?”

The cavalry troopers spotted the armored motorcar at about the same time. Whatever they’d been riding hard to intercept, it hadn’t been a horseless carriage bearing down at them at twenty miles an hour!

They reined in and an officer yelled to dismount and take cover. Not the smartest thing he could have yelled on a narrow road hemmed in by a rock wall on one side and a sea cliff on the other.

The smart riders wheeled their mounts and headed south at full gallop as Captain Gringo opened up with the Maxim, blowing horses and riders to hash on the road or sending them off the cliff to the sea-washed rocks below.

As Pilar steered around a fallen horse and the rider, the top-heavy armored vehicle swayed dangerously. He called down, “Run over the bastards, and let’s have some more speed! We can’t let any get away!”

So Pilar swallowed hard and opened the throttle, whimpering with fear as she clung to the tiller with both hands and tried to keep them on the road. She scared the hell out of Captain Gringo, too. But he saw they were gaining on the wise-asses who’d retreated down the road ahead. They were doing at least thirty and swaying like a steel ship in a heavy sea as he stuck to his gun and proceeded to empty saddles as they overtook them. As he spilled the last rider over the edge of the sea cliff, horse and all, Captain Gringo dropped down and yelled, “Slow down! We’re coming to a curve!”

Pilar wailed that she didn’t know how to slow down! Then she stood on the brakes with both feet, and at least they were sliding instead of rolling when they hit the rail of boulders some thoughtful road builders had put along the curve. A couple of rocks rolled down the slope to the sea below, but they stayed on the road, with the front wheels on the very edge of the drop.

He climbed over beside her and threw the gears in reverse, saying, “Good girl. I knew I could bank on you.”

Pilar didn’t answer. She’d buried her face in her hands and started to bawl. Behind him, one of the men was crying, too.

Captain Gringo backed to safety, then squinted out the slit on Pilar’s side and saw that Morales, in the truck, had made it this far, too. He grinned and reversed gears again to continue on their way.

It was almost dawn when they passed through a little seaside village. It wasn’t on his map, but Pilar remembered it from her trip up from San Blas with her late husband. She said they were about three miles from San Blas itself. He braked to a stop on the far side of town and said, “Okay, doll. There was a light over the door of a posada back there. Walk back and tell them your mount threw you and that you’ll wait there until the morning stage arrives. Don’t show them your Wad. Haggle for food and a seat by the door. The southbound stage won’t get here before full light. Act surprised if you hear anything about us, either way. Make sure it’s all over before you go to the depot for your ticket home. Go with God, muchacha, and have a nice life.”

He reached across her to open the steel door on her side. She sobbed, “You do everything so suddenly, Ricardo! Is this really adios? I can’t believe it!”

He kissed her, then shoved her out. She was crying as he pulled the door shut, threw the vehicle in gear, and drove on, saying, “Robles, get your fat ass next to mine and let’s see if I can teach you to steer in the next couple of miles.”

Robles chuckled and said, “I think that one liked you, Captain Gringo.”

The American shrugged and said, “I liked her, too. But there’s a time and place for everything. Put your hand on this tiller. I’ll hold your wrist till you get the feel of it. Damn, you have ugly hands, Robles.”

“Your great paw does nothing for me, either. But I am beginning to see why you northerners do not march with adelitas. Marching with such uncivilized people must be very frustrating, especially at night around the fire. But I must say we made better time than anyone in Mexico would have considered at all possible!”

“That’s the general idea, Robles. You guys would still own Texas if Santa Anna hadn’t given Houston a couple of extra days to set up at San Jacinto. Your general had more guns, more men, probably the same guts. But he didn’t like to sleep alone and he didn’t like forced marches. So he rode to battle in a carriage with a sixteen-year-old mistress and a wagon train of luxuries, slow, while a mess of desperate and doubtless less comfortable Texans dug themselves in, just in time.”

“You do not have to rub it in, Captain Gringo. I said I got the point. Where are we going to hide these vehicles when we get to San Blas? I do not know the town.”

“That makes two of us. We’d better ask directions. I see buildings ahead, so we must be there. You’re on your own. Steady as she goes while I get back up in the turret.”

As he started to climb out of his seat, Robles said, “Hey, not so fast! I do not know how to stop this thing!”

“We’re going slow. Just run it into something solid and it should stop. But don’t stop unless I tell you to, right?” He left the cursing Robles at the steering tiller and stuck his head out the top. He saw Morales in the truck behind and waved him closer. As the truck got within shouting distance, Captain Gringo yelled, “You don’t know nothing. You just work for me, and I’m working for our beloved el Presidente! Got that?”

Morales beeped the bulb of his tin horn twice. Captain Gringo laughed and turned to face forward. The buildings were rising on either side now. He called down to Robles, “Swing inland at the first broad street. There has to be a civic center some damned place.”

He saw he’d guessed right when they turned the corner and he spotted an imposing customs house of lava blocks with a plaza beyond. A couple of men in uniform were standing out front. They gaped as they saw what had just turned the corner. He cupped his hands to his mouth to shout, “Hey, which way to that army depot? We need gasolino!”

One of them pointed the way they were going and shouted back, “By the railroad depot, that way. Are you guys army?”

“Hell, no, can’t you see we’re desperadoes?”

They laughed, the dumb bastards.

Robles had heard the exchange and steered them along one side of the plaza. There was an old church one way and a newer cluster of functional stucco buildings dead ahead. In case anyone was lost, a handy sign on a lamp post had an arrow and was lettered 39th Quartermaster Depot.

Robles could read. So he simply followed the arrow until they saw a gate ahead. There was a sentry box and, of course, a sentry came out to stand in the center of the road, gun across his chest at port arms. Robles didn’t know how to stop. So he didn’t. The guard yelled, “Are you loco en la cabeza?” as he leaped out of the way at the last minute and fell on his ass. Captain Gringo didn’t want to make more noise than he had to. So as the guy started to get up, he just shot him with his .38.

It wasn’t silent enough. As they drove into the depot, doors started opening and soldados came boiling out as, somewhere, a bugle sounded. The tall American in the turret shrugged, dropped behind the Maxim, and squeezed the trigger with one hand while he spun the turret around and around with his crank in the other. The turret began to reek of cordite and hot brass, but he wasn’t nearly as unhappy about that as the quartermaster troops he was smoking up. So the ones who could still stand staggered back inside the barracks to shoot at him from cover. He called down, “Robles, steer over there and see if you can run me along those windows! Close! Scrape the bricks!”

Then he told one of the others riding with him to hand up the grenades one at a time. Robles drove in a circle, swung toward the barracks, and as a bullet spanged off the steel armor, point-blank, Captain Gringo began to heave grenades, blind, with his head safely down. Some of them hit brick and bounced off to explode behind them on the hard-packed dirt. Others went through windows, where they did a lot more damage. Robles got to the end, swung away, and circled back as Captain Gringo, out of grenades, covered the gaping glassless windows with the muzzle of his Maxim. There was nobody peeking out just now, so he held his fire. He called down, “Robles, step on that brake pedal and see what happens.” So Robles did. They slid to a stop and, since they were in gear, killed the engine.

Then sudden eerie silence was broken by Morales driving in through the gate. He stopped nearby, his own engine running, and called out for some instructions.

Captain Gringo yelled, “Those crates piled by the tracks – get over there, bust ’em open, and load all the ammo you can find. Machine guns, if they got ’em. Don’t worry about smaller arms. I’m covering you here, so move it!”

Morales drove away, beeping his horn.- This time Captain Gringo didn’t think it was funny. They could get at the engine from inside their armor. But the damned fool who’d designed this thing had left the starting crank on the outside, and Robles had stalled broadside to the barracks!

Captain Gringo dropped down inside, adjusted the spark and gears, and said, “I have to go out and crank. If I don’t make it, do the best you can, muchacho.”

“No, you are too valuable, Captain Gringo. Let me! It was my fault we stalled, no?”

“No, it was mine. I ordered you to stop,” sighed Captain Gringo, opening the door on his side. It was the safe side, so nobody could hit him until he got to the rear. Then he took a deep breath, stepped out in the open, and grabbed the crank, growling, “One crank’s all you get baby!”

But it took three, and then, as the engine caught on, someone in the barracks caught on and bounced paint and lead confetti in his hair as he ducked back around the tank, muttering, “I’ll get you for that!”

But when he got back up behind the machine gun, he saw nothing but a haze of gunsmoke in one window. He fired a short burst through it to let them know he had them zeroed in. Then he called down to one of his men, “Let me know when Morales starts back. What are they up to right now?”

“They are putting boxes on the truck, my captain. But how long can we safely stay here?”

Another bullet spanged off the turret. Captain Gringo put a burst through that window, too, and called down, “Who said it was safe here now? We stay till we go. Uh-oh, some guys never learn!”

This time, when he fired, he caught the first sniper just as he was propping his rifle over the window sill. The federale’s head exploded in a cloud of red mist.

The belt was about used up, too. Captain Gringo reached down for another and just had it threaded in when he heard two beeps and his lookout said, “Morales is coming, my captain!”

Captain Gringo yelled, “Robles, move that lever to your left and circle when she starts crawling forward. The throttle’s set. Try and keep between the truck and that damned barracks as we pull out.” And then, not waiting for an answer, he cranked the turret around to cover his other vehicle.

Nobody bothered them as they drove out side by side. But when they reached the plaza at least a regiment of soldados were milling there in confusion as their officers and noncoms tried to line them up and get a handle on the situation.

Captain Gringo didn’t give them the chance. As he traversed hot machine-gun lead back and forth, aiming low to do as much damage as possible with flying stone splinters and screaming hot ricochets, the plaza cleared miraculously. Partly, anyway. Most of the already-mixed- up soldados ran for cover. But a lot still lay where they’d dropped.

He signaled Morales to fall back and follow as the armored motorcar took the lead out of town. He changed the belt again, dropped down, and reached over Robles to open the throttle. Robles gasped, “I can’t control her at this speed, dammit!” But Captain Gringo said, “Try,” and climbed back up in the turret. He saw what Robles meant as they rocked from side to side with Robles over-controlling from curb to curb as they tore back the way they’d come. As they rounded the curve to the coast road on two wheels, some guys in federale uniform were rolling a wagon out onto the road to block it. Captain Gringo opened up on them with the Maxim just before Robles, having no choice in the matter, plowed into the wagon at thirty or so. As they tore on through the cloud of flying kindling, the American laughed and said, “Remind me never to try that against a boiler-plated horseless carriage!”

The road ahead seemed clear but winding, so he dropped down beside Robles, took the tiller, and said, “Nice going. The idea is to stay more or less in the center of the lane, though.”

Robles made the sign of the cross and said, “You are crazy! We had heard you were crazy before you joined us. But nobody said you were really crazy! For God’s sake, slow down!”

“Later. Morales is crazy too, and we’d better put some road between us and whatever they have to chase us with.”

They whipped past the posada he’d told Pilar to stay in. He didn’t see her in the doorway. He was glad, he guessed. Jesus, she’d been a pretty little thing. But a guy couldn’t expect to win ’em all.

As they reached open country again, Robles said, “If you won’t slow down, will you at least tell me where we are going? This road does not go all the way to Mazatlán, and los rurales are headquartered in Rosario, where this road ends.”

“That’s where we’re going. We’ll need mules to transport all the stuff we stole over the mountains to the stronghold. The map says Rosario is only about seventy or eighty kilometers from El Aquilar Negro’s camp, as the crow flies. We’ll pick us some pack mules there and..

“Pick up whose pack mules?” Robles cut in, adding: “Didn’t you hear what I just said? Los rurales, a whole company of los rurales, holds Rosario! No peons there will have any animals for us. Los rurales even steal the pigs and chickens!”

“I’ve noticed that. There should be a big corral somewhere near rurale headquarters. Do you know where that is?”

“Of course. But are you talking about stealing the mules we need from the corral of los rurales?”

“Why not? We need mules, and I wouldn’t want to let the motherfuckers feel left out, would you?”

Robles smiled grimly and said, “You paint pretty pictures, for a madman. But it won’t work. By now they know we stole these two vehicles from them. We won’t be able to simply drive in, boldly, as we did back there.”

“Yeah, I know. We’re going to have to do it some other way.”

“Ah, you have a way, then, Captain Gringo?”

“Not yet. I’m still working on it. But what the hell, it’s going to take us a while to get there, right?”

~*~

In Mexico City, el Presidente Diaz was not enjoying his breakfast. It was a nice breakfast. Few of his subjects could have afforded it, or the pretty young woman seated across from him in a see-through black lace dressing gown. But el Presidente still had heartburn. He glared up at his uniformed aide and said, “There is only one possibility. I thought when those first reports came in that our informants were confused about the names. I thought Captain Gringo and that damned little Frenchman used aliases and that they, Duran, and Tio Pancho were all the same bastards. Now I see we have at least four, not just two, soldiers of fortune to deal with. Their friends are good, too. Has anyone figured out exactly how many rebels hit our depot in San Blas?”

“Si el Presidente. From the damage and casualties, they make it out at least a full battalion attacking far from where we thought they were holed up above Mazatlán!”

“A full battalion, in two vehicles? Never mind, if Captain Gringo led the attack, they doubtless thought it was a full battalion!”

Diaz got to his feet and began to pace in his bathrobe as the mistress and aide watched, respectfully silent. The Liberator could order anyone shot when he was in a pacing mood!

The white-haired dictator stopped, turned, and snapped, “Wait. If Walker and Verrier hit San Blas, they can’t be with the rebels above Mazatlán. Duran and that other soldier of fortune can’t be as good as the real thing. I’d have heard from them before if they were half as good. I keep an eye open for real talent. Damn, I wish those boys would work for me! But, no matter, the point is they are not with El Aquilar Negro, either. Are we in direct communication with the column I sent up into the hills after El Aquilar Negro’s band?”

“More or less, sir. We have runners as well as direct communication with Mazatlán.”

“Bueno. Signal a change in orders. I knew from our spies where the camp was, but, being prudent not to take on too great a force, I told them to circle and move in carefully. But Captain Gringo and Gaston Verrier are not there. Our spies say El Aquilar Negro is sick and helpless. Order our men to advance boldly and wipe out the camp before those more dangerous soldiers of fortune can possibly get back! After they take the stronghold, they are to tidy up and set a trap for that crazy Yanqui and his French companion. What is the latest on those American navy men?”

“Another Yanqui ship is coming to pick them up, el Presidente. It is my understanding that their intelligence officer and a shore patrol mean to stay behind and search for the escapees. They wished to accompany our column, but of course I relayed your orders not to let them.”

“Bueno. I do not like to have visitors returning to the outside world with tales about my methods. Los Yanquis are so silly about the women and children of unimportant people. Send word to let the gringo shore patrol come up and identify the bodies after Captain Gringo and his Frenchman are dead. Not before. What are you waiting for? Can’t you see I’m having breakfast?”

The aide saluted, spun on his heels, and left. Diaz sat down at the table again and sighed. “I don’t know. I think I may be getting an ulcer. It used to be so much fun to run a country. But nobody seems to understand, how much I’ve done for Mexico, and outsiders meddling with my rebels really puts me off my feed. I can handle children like El Aquilar Negro without getting out of bed. But that Captain Gringo is unsettling as a mad dog running loose in my house. I must be getting old. I used to enjoy crossing swords with a master. Now it just gives me a stomach ache.”

“You are not old, my hero,” she replied, slipping out of her chair to crawl to him, open his robe, and lower her head to his lap. He sighed and ran his hand through her hair as she began to suck. Then he said “No, child. I know you mean well, but I’m too worried right now!”

~*~

Later, up in the Sierras above Mazatlán, Gaston was worried, too. He’d done his best to whip the guerrillas into shape. They were a hell of a lot better than when he’d started. But he still wasn’t ready to pit them against a band of determined bloomer girls. He was sure the new feminist movement had more real fighters in its ranks. These pobrecitos now at least moved when he told them to move and then watched them to see that they did. But he couldn’t be everywhere at once. The stronghold was too spread out to set up a decent perimeter, and when he’d ordered them to move up to one end of the valley and dig in, some snitch had run crying to El Aquilar Negro and the delirious, useless leader had countermanded the idea.

Gaston heard a shrill whistle as he hunkered in the meager shade of a rock on the ridge east of camp. He turned to see Felicidad coming up the slope. The girl flopped beside him and said, “Our lookout atop the potato rocks to the east says he sees dust to the west. You said if they attacked before Captain Gringo and the others get back, they will hit us from the east, no?”

Gaston said, “I still say so, my worried beauty. I have a map of the hills all around etched in my fantastique brain, in ink. I used to serve in the Mexican army. Before that, I fought them as a Legionnaire. Don’t tell anyone, but Mexicans are smarter. What the lookout saw to the west was the dust of a dispatch rider. If your spies are correct, and a column of federales is moving in after failing to trap our friends to the south, which I could have told them was impossible, they will not be allowed to raise dust. They will have dismounted and they will move in on foot, as usual. Los federales are good dragoons. They know better than to try cavalry charges over hogback ridges and through boulder fields sloping at crazy angles. Mais non, if they intend to do it at all, they will do it right! They have El Aquilar Negro down as an untrained bandit leader, which is only just, when you think about it. They will expect him to prepare for an attack from the west, as unskilled military minds are prone to assume. Ergo, they will attack from those higher hills, over that way. Trust me. I, Gaston, am never wrong.”

“You were wrong about how soon they would be arriving. Both you and my Deek said it would not be for days.”

“Girls do not have dicks, but no matter. I confess we assumed we were up against the usual cautious mind of a sensible professional. Since your spies from town tell you a battalion of manic federales marched over the coast hills with orders to get right to it, I take it on faith they mean to throw some caution to the wind. No doubt they have heard that your leader is ill and your best men are not here. Nonetheless, federale officers are not picked for stupidity. Knowing our location, they may advance with uncharacteristic boldness. Nonetheless, they will want to attack in a manner offering them the advantage, hein? Eh bien, to the west, the approaches are trés steep. The few men I posted on that side have trés formidable cover. The reason I have most of our so-called soldados on this ridge with me is because, as anyone can see, it’s trés lousy. The slopes to our east are gentle. The next ridge to the east is higher. If they mass behind it, dust us with artillery, and make a determined downhill charge... ah, well, we shall doubtless beat them back at least once or twice. After that, I promise nothing. You are pretty, Felicidad. When the shooting starts, you and the other pretty girls had better run over the western ridge and make yourselves scarce, hein?”

“Never! I have spoken to the other adelitas. We too are armed and dangerous. We mean to fight shoulder to shoulder with you hombres!”

Gaston grimaced and said, “I wish you would not. It unsettles a green soldado to see a woman hit nearby. As it is, I expect half of them to run as soon as they see the enemy. Can’t you girls find something better to do?” She stuck out her lower lip and said, “We are determined to man the front line!”

“That is a contradiction in terms. But if you have to woman some line or other, you have my permission to set up on the ridge across the valley.”

“But you said nobody was liable to attack from that direction!”

“Oui, but you said they might. Tell your savage Amazons to dig in and keep their heads down as we guard each other’s rears, hein?” He laughed and added, “Speaking of rears, you said something about a friend of yours who admires older men, remember?”

“Si. If we live through the battle, I will introduce you to her. I must go now. There is so much to do if we girls are to be prepared in time.”

He watched her fondly as she scampered down the slope. He wished there were some way to leave women, horses, and other pretty creatures out of wars. If she and the other girls were on the far side when things got bad, at least they’d have a chance of getting away. He knew that was more than he could say. He muttered to himself, “Really, Gaston, my old and wiser, this is no time to consider promises, even to Dick! Oh, I know he’s depending on you to hold here until he gets back. But he’s an idiot, too! This position is hopeless, the men are worthless, El Aquilar Negro did not have a chance even before he came down with the fever, and what do we owe him? Surely not our lives!”

He grimaced, stood up, and started walking the ridge to make sure every man was in place. He knew it really didn’t matter. But he had said he would try.

~*~

Getting rid of the stolen vehicles was no problem. Packing all the loot was going to be the problem. Less than an hour’s hike south of Rosario, Captain Gringo ran the vehicles up a wooded ravine, emptied the truck, and stripped the armored motorcar of its machine gun, ammo, and grenades. Then he and Morales drove back to the coast road, saw nobody coming either way, and sent the two vehicles over the edge of the cliff to vanish at sea with q pair of mighty splashes.

Now came the hard part. Leaving Morales, the supplies, and most of the men in the ravine, Captain Gringo took Robles, four scouts, and the machine gun farther into the chaparral to see if they could scout the rurale-held village without being spotted.

They could. They ran into a young goatherd and his goats on a north-south ridge. He called out, “Viva la revolución!” even before they could ask him his political persuasion. So Captain Gringo knew he was a smart kid and enlisted him on the spot as a guide.

He told the goatherd to leave his damned goats where they were and told Robles to kill him if he made a break for it. Then he had the goatherd lead them along the ridges to a saddle overlooking Rosario.

They had a neat bird’s-eye view from up here. The village lay by an inlet with an offshore bar forming a natural harbor. The goatherd said most of the people were fishermen. It was just as well. Los rurales could use only so much fish. As Captain Gringo had hoped, the rurale corrals lay south of die village, beside the highway they patrolled. But then the bastards had gotten even smarter and built their headquarters between said corrals and an easy romp south. The solidly built semi-fort controlled all entry and exit from Rosario. The goatherd said no pretty girl or man with a gold watch could get in and out of Rosario these days, since the route north to Mazatlán was blocked by mountain spurs running out into the sea.

Captain Gringo stared thoughtfully up that way. On the horizon he could see purple mountains getting their feet wet. Closer in, he saw the smoke plume of a vessel moving their way, fast, with a bone of white water in its teeth. It was a gunboat – American, by her lines. It figured that someone had picked up those seamen stranded in Mazatlán by now.

Turning his attention back to the business at hand, Captain Gringo gazed down at the rurale post. The slopes running down to it from here were steep and, thanks to the damned goats, covered with dusty scrub instead of the natural vegetation these hills should have had. He asked Robles what he thought. Robles said, “We could most probably slip down to the corrals without getting shot. We could most probably gather some mules to ride and head south without getting shot. Getting them out of the corrals past that outpost without getting shot is impossible. Even if most of los rurales are out bothering people, there are always some left behind to guard the post. Those walls are thick. Those loopholes are narrow. There is no cover around the place within carbine range. Not even your machine gun would be able to make much of an impression on that place. But the noise would surely bring every rurale within kilometers.”

Captain Gringo nodded, but asked the goatherd if he knew how many rurales there were to worry about down there. The kid said about a dozen. Most of the company had headed north into the mountains at dawn for some reason. The route over the spurs toward Mazatlán was supposed to be impassable. But rurales had ridden that anyway.

Captain Gringo nodded and told Robles, “There’s always a way. And we don’t have much time. The only reason those guys would have to ride for Mazatlán would be if someone told them to. They’ve been sent to beef up God knows who, to attack the stronghold!” He asked the goatherd if he’d seen any federales from his hilltop range. The kid nodded and said a steamer carrying army troops had stopped at Rosario the day before. Captain Gringo swore and said, “That ties it. If we abandon the fresh supplies and ammo, we could just about leg it back to the stronghold in time to get in on the fighting.”

Robles said, “But, Captain Gringo, if we go back without ammo, what will we fight with?”

“Yeah, meanwhile it would take at least a couple of shells to reduce that post down there, and this Maxim only fires .30-30s.”

He saw the gunboat was close now. The skipper must have been a curious cuss. He was steaming a lot closer to shore than Captain Gringo would have. They were passing Rosario just outside the bar. He could make out the Stars and Stripes and faces gawking shoreward on the bridge. It was probably dull, looking at most of Mexico from out there. A village of whitewashed walls and red tile roofs was apparently worth going out of one’s way to see. Captain Gringo snapped his fingers and said, “That’s it!” Then he said, “Everybody on the far side of this saddle and keep your heads down!”

He followed, flopped on his belly with the dismounted machine gun angled skyward over the ridge, and muttered to himself, “Let’s see. Forty-five degrees is too much. There, that ought to do her.”

Meanwhile, out on the gunboat, the skipper was watching with some disdain as Lieutenant Carson scanned the shoreline with his binoculars. They’d been told to cooperate with Intelligence. But Carson wasn’t showing much intelligence, in the skipper’s opinion. Even if the men Carson was hunting were skipping down along the coast road in broad daylight, what the hell were they supposed to do about it? There was no place a deep-draft gunboat could put it, this side of San Blas.

Something thudded solidly on the steel plate roofing of the wheelhouse. It was followed by a burst of five more solid bangs. The skipper blinked and said, “Jesus, we seem to be under fire!”

Another burst of automatic fire fell short, off their port bow. It gave the men on the bridge a line on where it was coming from. The skipper swore, picked up his speaking tube, and ordered battle stations.

In an era of gunboat diplomacy, vessels flying 'the Stars and Stripes were not allowed to be used for target practice. By this time Carson had ducked below the armored sill of the bridge wing, but he’d ranged on the mystery bursts, too, and yelled, “They’re firing on us from that fortress like whatever just south of town!”

The skipper said, “Teach your granny how to suck eggs! Fire Control! I want a salvo on that blockhouse two points aft my port beam, and I want it now!”

The gunboat tingled all over as both turrets belched smoke and flame from opposite ends of the gray superstructure. Gunners who enforced gunboat diplomacy got a lot of practice, so they were good. As their shells lanced down through the tile roof of the rurale post and blew said roof to red confetti rising on mushroom clouds of brown cordite smoke, the skipper ordered, “Give ’em another salvo! I’ll show the bastards for chipping my paint!”

On shore, Captain Gringo waited, watching with delight, as the U.S. Navy blew the shit out of the rurale post for him. The livestock in the corrals down there were milling wildly in panic as roof tiles fell among them. But the corral walls held. Captain Gringo turned to his men and said, “Let’s go! The shelling’s stopped!” and, suiting action to his words, charged over the ridge and down the hill with his Maxim braced on his hip.

~*~

Later in the day, at the stronghold, Gaston blinked in surprise as he heard the crackle of small-arms fire. There was nobody visible on the slopes to the east. The fire was coming from the west, where nobody was supposed to be dumb enough to attack!

Some of the others Gaston had posted on the east ridge started to rise. Gaston yelled, “Hold your positions! It may be a ruse! Noncoms, see your squads stay in place here. I’ll find out what species of idiocy is taking place over there!”

It took Gaston a few minutes to traverse the valley to where Felicidad and the other adelitas had taken their positions in what Gaston had assumed to be a foolish girls’ errand. Fortunately, the rebel adelitas were a lot tougher than they looked. They got to carry guns and ammo a lot, and since women are curious by nature, most of them had demanded and received permission from their soldados to fire said guns once in a while.

The federales and rurales attacking up the steep slope from the west were, as Gaston had foretold, at considerable disadvantage. Their leaders had been as smart as Gaston. They would never have hit the rebel stronghold so directly, had it been up to them. But they had orders from el Presidente and they’d been told it would be a pushover with El Aquilar Negro out of action and most of the best men gone.

They’d been told wrong. The girls strung out along the ridge proceeded to cut them down with well-aimed rifle fire as they struggled up the slope. By the time Gaston flopped down beside Felicidad to ask her what on earth was going on, the earth below was soaking up a lot of gore. He stared soberly down at the uniformed bodies scattered among the boulders like discarded rag dolls and whistled softly. Felicidad laughed and said, “They are running back down to safety, the cowards! This is fun. I did not know it was so easy to be a soldado. I thought one had to be a man to be a hero!”

Gaston said, “Do not get carried away, my little Amazon. You and these other women were not the heroes just now. Those poor bastards down there were the heroes! Being a hero can take fifty years off a man’s life.”

A woman nearby called out, “Felicidad, do you have any bullets you can spare me? I only have two clips left!”

Felicidad called back, “Make sure you make every bullet count, then. I have none to spare, either.”

She turned to Gaston and said, “We need more ammunition. As you see, we can hold this ridge if only we can keep shooting. But I must say it takes a lot of ammunition to stop a charge.”

Gaston thought, shook his head, and said, “If the enemy leader has the brains of a gnat, he’ll try the next time from the other side. My boys over there will need even more ammunition, since their position is trés lousy compared to yours.”

Felicidad sighed and said, “It’s not fair. Oh, look, they’re coming at us again!” and Gaston blinked and gasped, “Merde alors, you are right!”

There was no time to make any smart moves. So, as the long ragged line of uniformed government men waded up the slope at them, Gaston propped his own rifle in position with his elbows and called out, “Hold your fire, muchachas! Wait until I open up. Then make every shot count!”

At his side, Felicidad complained, “They are almost within range! Why don’t you shoot?”

“Because almost is not good enough, of course. Keep your pretty head down. You are sky lining yourself. Hold your fire. Easy, easy, let them move a little closer.”

“Closer? They are close enough to see the whites of their eyes!”

“That, my child, is the general idea. Eh bien, see that idiot with bars on his shoulders? He is mine. Take the noncom to his left. Now!”

Their rifles spoke as one. Their targets rolled back down the slope together, too. Some of the enemy were of course firing back as the other adelitas opened up all along the ridge. The smarter ones just ran back down the slope as the riflewomen aimed at the closer ones and dropped them among the rocks and other bodies.

Felicidad laughed, changed her clip, and then made a funny little sound as her rifle went off aimed at the sky. Gaston swore, emptied his own rifle into the retreating skirmish line, then rolled over to pick up Felicidad’s fallen rifle. When he had it aimed, he saw no likely target. So he looked down at Felicidad.

The girl lay on her side, staring intently at a rock a few inches from her pretty face. A trickle of blood ran out one corner of her mouth. Gaston made the sign of the cross and gently closed her eyes with his fingers.

The other girl who’d asked about ammo crawled over to them, saying she’d used up her last round. She saw Felicidad and asked, “Is she?” and Gaston said, “Oui,” as he handed her a clip from his own ammo belt, saying, “Make this last. It’s the only one I can spare. I am called Gaston. How are you called, muchacha?”

The girl, a woman, really, said, “I am called Rosita. What does it matter now?”

“I may wish to say goodbye properly. You are very attractive, Rosita. I never expected to end my days between two beautiful women, but then, I have always been lucky.”

Rosita, who wasn’t really all that pretty, but had a great derriere, said, “This is no time for flattery. All three of us will be cadavers if you don’t get the others over to this side poco tiempo! Do you wish me to run for them?” He said, “You’d better get off this ridge. But don’t bother the hombres over there. They will be having their own problems any minute, if the idiot in charge of this attack comes to his senses.”

“What if he does not? If they charge up this slope again, I don’t think we can stop them with the ammo we have left, Gaston!”

“I know we can’t. You’d better move back to safety, Rosita. Try to remember me fondly in days to come, hein?”

“I shall fight at your side, Gaston. Poor Felicidad told me about you. Is it true you have chosen no adelita? I lost my soldado in a raid a month ago.”

“Dear heart, this is a very silly time to discuss our possible future relationship. Observe, those insects down the slope are forming up for another charge!”

He made sure he had a round in his chamber as he lay prone by Felicidad’s corpse, with Rosita at his other side. As they watched the ominous advance, Gaston muttered, “The bastard in command has little regard for his men, but he must have noticed how ragged that last volley from up here was. All shitting of the bull aside, Rosita, you’d better move back. This does not look good. Unless the other girls have been hiding extra rounds in their hair, I doubt if we can stop them this time!”

“We can try. What are those shiny things they have on their rifles?”

“Bayonets. One forgets you children have hitherto only tangled with rurales. Eh bien, if you insist on dying with me, take this pistol. It should stop a couple for you at close range. Save the last bullet for your pretty self. They shall not be gentle with prisoners after taking such heavy casualties, hein?”

She didn’t answer. Gaston chose another squad leader as his first target and shot off the side of his head. As Rosita and the others opened up, Gaston heard only half of them were firing now.

The oncoming enemy heard this too. Somewhere, a bugle began to blow full charge, so the skirmish line staggered into an uphill run. Some of them were still dropping, but a lot were not. Gaston’s hammer clicked on an empty chamber. He reached for another clip. He didn’t have one. He’d even given his damned pistol away!

Then, just as Gaston braced himself to rise and run like hell, a Maxim machine gun opened up from somewhere to the south. Gaston blinked and muttered, ^t(Sacré bleu and what the hell?” as people on the slope started falling down a lot. The machine gun wasn’t firing at the rebels. It was taking the skirmish line on the flank, and cutting hell out of them!

The confused survivors started moving back down the slope as Captain Gringo changed his belt and told Robles, “They’ll be retreating through that cleft in the potato rocks. Can you and your squad beat them there with those grenades? Bueno! Get going!”

Then, as Robles and his men squirmed away through the boulders, Captain Gringo opened up again on the men running wildly down the corpse-infested slope to his north. He ceased fire with half his belt left. He hadn’t force-marched men and mules over the hills this far to waste ammunition.

He waited. At his side, Morales said, “I think they have given up.”

But Captain Gringo said, “Sit tight. I think so too. But Mother War doesn’t give her children many bum guesses. Go back and make sure the pack mules are secure. They’ve had a rough day and gunfire is hard on everybody’s nerves. Cover down on me and don’t move on until you see me getting away with it.”

Morales left him alone. Captain Gringo waited until he heard cheers and saw the red flannel flag of the rebels waving wildly atop the ridge to his right. Since nobody shot the idiot waving it, he figured it was safe to break cover now. He picked up the dismounted Maxim and started legging it up the slope at an angle. When he looked back, Morales and the mules were following. Off to the west, he heard the tinny crumps of grenades going off and knew Robles was on the ball, too.

Gaston and a gal with an okay face and a big ass came part way down the slope to meet him. Gaston said, “It’s about time you got here. Did you get the ammo? We just used up half of what we had. They foxed me by attacking the dumb way. It would have worked, too. But, regardez all the dead they left behind! This place is going to stink like hell in a little while.”

“Yeah, I’ll have to talk to the boss about moving camp. Obviously the other side knew all too well where it was. Is Felicidad okay?”

Gaston’s face fell. Captain Gringo sighed and said, “Shit. What happened, Gaston?”

“She took one at the base of her throat, angled down. At least she never knew what hit her, Dick. You should have seen how she and the other women fought! I still can’t believe it, and I was there. This is Rosita. I saw her first. Do not trifle with her. She is a formidable gun- fighter!”

Captain Gringo nodded at the Amazon and led the way over the ridge. As he approached the idiot waving the flag, he saw it was El Aquilar Negro in the flesh. He frowned and said, “I see you’ve recovered from your fever.”

The rebel leader grinned boyishly and replied, “Si, just in time to lead my people to victory. Did you fetch my arms and ammunition?”

“Coming on those mules. I’m sure glad to see you so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. We’re going to have to move this camp.”

“But why? We just won the battle, Captain Gringo!”

The trail-sore American looked disgusted and didn’t answer.

Gaston said, “One swallow does not a summer make, nor one battle a victory. We have given them something to ponder before they attack again. But, rest assured, they will return, the right way, with mountain artillery and someone who knows his business better.”

El Aquilar Negro shrugged and handed the banner to an aide before he turned away, saying, “We shall discuss the matter further, later. Right now it is time to celebrate my victory!”

As he swaggered downhill toward his camp, Captain Gringo swore and muttered, “His victory? Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Gaston?”

“Oui, we used to shoot malingering cowards in the Legion, top. It is amazing how much that improves the health of fever victims. But it is not our place, Dick. The others would probably resent it if a gringo shot their leader. Besides, if you did, you would automatique be stuck with leading these children, hein?”

“Yeah, and that’s the last thing I want. These poor assholes don’t have a chance with anybody leading them!”

~*~

The problem was solved by Robles. El Aquilar Negro was holding court, seated in a camp chair in front of his tent, when Robles and what was left of his squad came up. Robles had lost another man and had himself been creased by a federale bullet. But he said the grenades had done a real job in the cleft of the potato rocks. He added, “I left a couple of lookouts there. Some few of the animals got away to run back to Mazatlán with their tails between their legs. I am surprised to see you so recovered, El Aquilar Negro.”

Captain Gringo knew better, but he couldn’t keep from saying, “Yeah, if he’d bounced out of bed a few minutes sooner he’d have gotten to fight with the adelitas.”

El Aquilar Negro got to his feet with a scowl and demanded, “Was that a remark about my manhood, Gringo? Do you doubt I was really ill?”

Captain Gringo smiled thinly and met the rebel leader’s gaze as he said, “I think you were sick, all right. The idea of a stand-up fight in place of a brag gives many a village bully a tummy ache. I’ve been comparing notes with the guys you sent on that suicide mission with me, chico. It’s odd that none of the raids that band have made have ever been led by you in person. But it’s not my gang. So I guess they can go on being dumb if they want to. Gaston and me are leaving. We’ve done all we can.”

El Aquilar Negro roared, “I shall say who leaves and who does not! I have been insulted! I will not have it! I demand an apology, Gringo! You will take back what you said, or you will die!”

“Okay, do you want to fight me with knives or guns?”

“Fight you?” The rebel leader blanched, adding, “I do not fight like a peon! Madre de Dios, I am a general! I am king of these mountains and rebel leader of Estado Sinaloa!”

Robles said, “Not anymore.” Then he drew his gun and put three rounds into El Aquilar Negro’s plump chest. As the braggart fell at his feet, he turned mildly to the others, gun muzzle smoking, and said softly, “I am the general. Are there any objections?”

There was a moment of stunned silence. Then someone threw his hat in the air and yelled, Viva Generale Robles!” The others seemed to think it was a hell of a good idea. So Robles started to reload his revolver as he asked Captain Gringo, “Before you leave us, is there anything we can do for you, amigo mio?”

Captain Gringo said, “Yeah. Gaston and I have to rest up before we push back down to San Blas. I’ll leave the heavy stuff and show some of your men how to shoot it, if you can spare us a couple of mules.”

Robles smiled boyishly and said, “Take mules, take any woman from the band as adelitas. Let us give you money and anything else you like. By the beard of Christ, you have earned more reward than we can ever hope to offer you, you crazy Yanqui cabron!”

Captain Gringo smiled and said, “Virtue, and killing guys working for Diaz, is its own reward. When things have settled down, we’ll talk about some moves you can have your people make, General Robles. The smartest thing you could do would be to disband. But Mexico needs gallant idiots if it’s ever to be free again. Right now, I need some coffee and a warm meal. You could use a bandage for that bullet crease. You’ve bled enough to show the others how tough you are.”

Robles laughed and said, “Es verdad! The two of us are the toughest sonsofbitches in all of Mexico, no?”

“Let’s not get sickening about it. Gaston and I still have to make it over to Vera Cruz, and there may still be some tough guys left on the other side.”

~*~

Now that he knew the way, Captain Gringo managed to cut a few corners as he led Gaston over the same route south to San Blas. Riding mule back sure beat walking, too. He was still leg-sore from having done it the hard way. Gaston was exhausted from the night he’d spent with the buxom Rosita before bidding her a tearful farewell.

Captain Gringo was still worried about the other friends they’d left back there. Robles was a good soldado, but the odds were still God awesome, even if they made it to the new hideout deeper in the Sierra Madre Occidental. Gaston was used to parting from old comrades in arms. So he was bitching about the modest rewards for their considerable effort.

He brought it up again as they stopped in a clump of trees to rest the mules and catch some shade. Captain Gringo put a hand in his pocket and said, “Oh, I forgot about that. Here – this is your share from the tribute money I found in the armored motorcar.”

Gaston stared at the thick wad of peso notes in his hand and said, “Sacré goddamn! One of those rebels back there told me the trés generous Captain Gringo refused to help himself to any loot.”

“I lied. Do I look that dumb? Aside from building character with guys I’d just met, I figured if nobody knew I was worth robbing, nobody would try. There’s always a couple of sneaks in any outlaw band, right?”

Gaston put his wad away with a fond chuckle and said, “Alas, youth and innocence are so fleeting. Where is the trusting child I first met facing a firing squad with me? Can this cynic be the boy we used to have to lecture on the rules of the game down here?”

Captain Gringo smiled back and said, “It took me a while. But I’m learning. Getting shot at and betrayed a lot does wonders for one’s education.”

They rode on without getting shot at or betrayed, since they made sure nobody spotted them as they stuck to the high timber. They swung inland and forded the Rio Grande de Santiago where it was shallow and uninhabited. Gaston agreed that trying to board a train in San Blas itself right now could be a little noisy. But the train stopped at Tepic, about fifteen miles east of the seaport, and nobody had shot up Tepic lately.

They abandoned their rifles in the woods, rode into Tepic, and stabled the mules at a livery. Then they bought new suits and hats before risking the ticket office at the Tepic depot. The ticket agent said they were in luck. The trains were just starting to run again. Captain Gringo managed to look innocent as the chatty ticket agent explained there’d been a hell of a battle down the line at San Blas but the army had announced a victory and everything was getting back to normal.

They went to mass at the church across the plaza from the depot while they waited for the east-bound train. Captain Gringo had been raised a Protestant and Gaston said he was an atheist, save in tense moments. But how often would rurales pester nicely dressed men in church?

Sanctified, they came out when they heard the whistle blowing and timed it so they had to run for the train, in case anyone on the platform was being a pain about I.D. Nobody was. They swung aboard as the train pulled out. As they stood on the platform between cars to get their bearings, they saw the cars to their rear were second-class coach. They’d asked for Pullman compartments in Tepic and been turned down. All compartments were booked. Captain Gringo said, “Stay here. We may work something out with the conductor.”

They didn’t. The conductor was polite when he punched their tickets and pocketed a healthy tip. He said he could see they were caballeros and they could have the run of the train as far as he was concerned but, alas, the compartments were all taken. He added that there was a nice club car to the rear and said, “When we stop at Guadalajara, some first-class passengers may be getting off. I shall keep it in mind you wish to ride in private.” He moved on. Captain Gringo said, “Well, we can’t stand here all the way to Guadalajara. That would be as suspicious as chancing the club car.”

Gaston said, “Oui, but let me scout it first. With this hat, I tend to blend into any crowd. You, alas, are a big blond moose to be recognized for blocks. Uh-oh, someone’s coming!”

They stood clear of the sliding door as it opened. It was Pilar Perez! The young widow gasped, “Ricardo! What are you doing aboard this train? I thought I would never see you again!”

“That makes two of us. But let me figure it out. This is the first train out of San Blas since the shoot-up right?”

“Of course. I had to spend some time in a hotel. I must say you made an awful mess back there, Ricardo. They are still cleaning up after you.”

“I see you’ve had a bath and bought a new dress, too. Nice. Did you manage to get a compartment?”

“Naturally. It’s an overnight trip to my father’s hacienda. I have to change to a coach, of course, and...”

“Never mind all that. I’ve got to stay out of sight till we’re at least out of this state. Let’s go. Coming, Gaston?”

“Mais non, , my children. You two doubtless have things to talk about, while I, the invisible Gaston, had better do some scouting. If you hear shots, keep the door locked. Otherwise, I shall meet you when we have to change trains tonight, up in the high country.”

Captain Gringo nodded and turned to follow Pilar to her compartment. Gaston sighed, “Lucky devil,” and headed the other way.

There was nobody he knew in the first coach car he entered. It was crowded. A baby was crying and somewhere a chicken was clucking. Gaston moved on to the next car. It was even more crowded. There would have been more room had not an eight-man squad of men in U.S. Navy tropic whites and canvas leggings occupied facing seats, two by two, with Krag rifles braced against their knees.

Gaston kept walking, hoping they would take him for just another well-dressed, Mexican as he raised his hands to light an imaginary smoke until he’d passed them. None of them even looked up at him. It was just as well. He recognized a couple of them from the gunboat he’d sunk.

There was a less exciting coach behind the one the sailors occupied. He saw the next, and last was the club car the conductor had mentioned. Gaston didn’t go right in. He pulled his hat brim down as he stood on the platform between cars and peered through the dusty glass. He swore softly, then muttered, “But of course!” as he spotted Lieutenant Carson seated at the bar, profiled to Gaston.

The Navy man had changed to civvies again, in an apparent attempt to be sneaky, or perhaps because it was more comfortable to travel that way. Gaston knew Carson well enough to know why none of his enlisted men were drinking with him.

Gaston lit a real smoke as he considered his options. Unlike Captain Gringo, nobody had invited him to a private compartment. Carson might or might not prowl the train. Carson would certainly recognize his escaped prisoner. He’d spent more time gloating over them than had any other member of the crew.

Gaston made sure nobody was coming either way. Then he got a good grip on the rail, squatted, and stretched his free hand down to uncouple the rear car from the train.

He was naturally aboard the coach car still going somewhere as the club car began to fall back on the uphill grade. He resisted an impulse to wave bye-bye as the club car rolled to a halt, hesitated, then rolled back the other way. It might jump the tracks before it reached Tepic. Then again, it might not. Gaston moved innocently inside the car ahead to sit down and think about that.

~*~

In her private compartment, up forward, Pilar moaned, “Oh, that is too deep, querido! It has been so long since I have been with any man like this!”

Captain Gringo moved less passionately as he lay naked in her arms, with her slender, ankles locked atop his rump. She said, “That’s better. But I cannot believe I am letting a man I am not married to treat me like this in broad daylight! How did you get me out of my clothes so swiftly, Ricardo? I do not remember telling you I wished you to be so forward, even though you know I needed this!”

He didn’t answer. High-class dames always talk like that at first. It would have been rude to point out that she’d started unbuttoning her bodice as soon as he’d kissed her. Or that she’d invited said kiss with the smoke signals in her dark Spanish eyes before he could get the damned door locked.

The mattress under her naked firm flesh was firm, too. So even though she had slim horsewoman’s hips, her love gate was presented at a nice angle to his thrusts, and the click-clacking wheels under them vibrated her teasingly on his shaft even when he moved it gently in her. He wanted to make it last. She was the best he’d found since escaping from that gunboat, and she wouldn’t be getting off for hours, thank God.

But the wheels were clicking slower now. The damned train seemed to be stopping at every village. He started moving in her at his own pace, on his own. She moaned, “Oh, that feels lovely. But why are we stopping, Ricardo?”

“We’re not. I’m getting ready to come, baby!”

“Oh, me too! But if we stop at a station, someone might peek in!”

“The shades are down. Don’t you remember pulling them down? Oh, yeah, I’m almost there!”

“Ay, Maria! Me too! I don’t care if anyone’s watching! I wish to come and, madre mia, I am coming!”

Out on the platform, Gaston was blissfully unaware of them as he ran over to the public pay phone and called police headquarters in Tepic. They said the runaway club car had indeed rolled into the Tepic yards and smashed into a box car, and they were mad as hell about it. When they asked who Gaston was, he said, “Lieutenant Verdugo, Federale Intelligence. There is no time to talk. I called you because there are no federales in Tepic. You must not let him get away!”

“Get away? Who is trying to get away, lieutenant?”

“The notorious Captain Gringo! I am about to leave the train to go after his confederate, another soldier of fortune. It is obvious what happened. As you can easily check with San Blas, a detachment of Yanqui navy police are aboard this train. When Captain Gringo saw them, he uncoupled the club car, hoping to coast back to town so he could catch a safer train. Ah, I see some muchachos with machetes, so I must organize a sweep of the hills for the other one! Be careful about the one who rode the club car back. He is armed, dangerous, and a most dreadful liar! Don’t let him trick you!”

Then Gaston hung up and ran to catch the train as it started rolling. The conductor was standing on the rear platform. He said, “Hey, did you see what happened to the club car? It was there a minute ago!”

Gaston said, “I just called Tepic about it. They will arrest the Yanqui bastard who did it.”

“You know who stole my club car, señor? Who on earth are you?”

“Keep it under your hat. I work for the government. But I promise you shall be shot if you breathe a word about it to anyone.”

“Ah, in that case silence is golden, no? The other secret agent you came aboard with is up forward. Questioning a suspect, from the moaning sounds I just heard.”

“Bueno. See they are not disturbed. We are on a mission of grave delicacy. If the woman talks, we may let her get off alive at her stop. But why am I telling you all this? Remember, not a word to anyone!”

So the conductor didn’t go near Pilar’s compartment again. He had his wife and kids to think of.

So, as Captain Gringo made undisturbed love up forward, Gaston kept a lookout in the forward coach, seated with his back to the bulkhead where he could watch for wandering U.S. sailors. None came. As he’d passed them a second time, they’d started a poker game. It would take them a while to miss their officer. Gaston doubted they’d miss him much.

Meanwhile, back in Tepic, the police, who had their own wives and kids to think of, had turned the case over to the tougher rurales. Lieutenant Carson laughed like hell when they told him he was Captain Gringo. He faced the trio of hard-faced men in big gray sombreros who’d just led him to the end of the tracks and said, “This is ridiculous! I am not Walker. I’m a U.S. Navy officer, you idiots!”

The rurales exchanged thoughtful glances. Carson took out his I.D. and said, “Here, if you can’t read, maybe the pictures will help. You see that American eagle? Take me to your superior! You’re fucking with the U.S. Navy, and nobody fucks with the U.S. Navy unless they like noise!”

One of the rurales smiled gently and said, “We have heard this. Yesterday, just up the coast, a Yanqui gunboat shelled a rurale post. Many of our comrades were killed, Señor U.S. Navy. Perhaps you would like to tell us why you shelled rurales? It seems a most cruel thing to do, in peacetime, no?”

Carson muttered, “Jesus!” then pasted a smile across his face and said, “Hey, guys, that wasn’t my outfit! I don’t know anything about any, ah, misunderstanding like that.”

“It was nothing to be misunderstood, señor. The shells came down. The men inside went up, through the roof. We understand you Yanquis do not seem to like us. It is not important. We don’t like you either.”

One of the others muttered, “Enough. Why do we waste time with this gringo, eh?”

Carson pleaded, “No, wait! Please!” as the rurale drew his .45 and cocked it. Carson dropped to his knees, whimpering, “You’re arresting the wrong man!”

The rurale looked puzzled as he growled, “Arrest? What is this arrest shit?” and pulled the trigger.

Carson’s face vanished in gunsmoke. When the smoke cleared, he was stretched out at their feet, still twitching. The man who’d shot him spat and said, “Bueno. That is how one deals with big-mouth Yanquis, no?”

One of his comrades said, “We should have questioned him some more, first. Now we’ll never know whether he was this Captain Gringo or some other gringo motherfucker!”

The man who’d shot Carson holstered his gun, saying, “You must be new at this game, nino. We must wire Ciudad Mexico as soon as we find someone to bury this carrion. El presidente will be pleased to learn Captain Gringo is dead,”

“But, Paco, he said he was someone else, and now, with his face blown off, it may be difficult to tell if he told the truth or not, no?”

“Estupido! That tip said he was a big liar. Of course he was Captain Gringo. A real Yanqui-gunboat man would have never identified himself as such to us after shelling one of our posts! This renegade could not have known about the international incident, so he outsmarted himself with some stolen I.D. They told us he escaped from a Yanqui gunboat, remember? Look at him. You can still see he was tall and blond in life. He fits the damned description. The case is closed. The renegade is dead. So nobody has to look for him anymore. But let us get out of this hot sun, muchachos. The shooting of gringos is thirsty work, even though it gives one pleasure.”