Then she hauled the blouse off over her black curls, and dropped her ample skirts around her ankles to simply step out of them, as well as her braided leather sandalias, and stand there, hands on hips in the candlelight, asking how he liked it so far.
He gulped and allowed she’d make a fortune posing for an art class in Paris, France, provided she’d learn to hold still a bit. But she was bumping and grinding with a wicked smile on her pretty but sort of coarse face by the time Longarm had propped the Big Fifty in one corner and gotten himself undressed.
So he was showing it hard as he stepped out of his pants and moved to join her. He’d figured on lowering her to the bedding, but she said she liked it better standing up, and swung her bare back and ample behind to face the smooth oaken door as Longarm just followed the head of his turgid organ-grinder where they both wanted it to go.
He had to spread his own legs wider to lower his center of gravity as Ampollita gasped, “Ay, Dios mio, que grande! Chinge me! Chinge me mucho, El Brazo Largo!”
He did. Most men would have. But it almost went soft on him when that shit about him being El Brazo Largo sank in. He reached down to hook an elbow under either of her plump bare knees and slide her up the oak paneling to pound her big soft rump against the door with his own legs straight. She found it more comfortable too, judging by the feline sounds coming out of her as she clung tightly to him, inside and out, while he shot his wad inside her.
She sighed, “I felt that and I am so happy, El Brazo Largo!”
He left it in her, but stopped moving as he quietly replied, “So am I. But could we keep it down to a roar, and how did you ever get the notion I was this Largo gent, mi corazen?” She said she was still too excited for talk, and suggested they do something less tiring aboard her bedstead. He figured that would be a better place to talk. So a good time was had by all as he enjoyed her again with one of the pillows under her gyrating hips while she boxed his ears with her bare feet every time he slowed down. It was easier to see, in this position, how she had been getting more satisfaction in the kitchen than in bed. From the way she was sweating and gasping as she did at least two thirds of the work, he felt certain he’d just helped her shed a few pounds. He knew he was getting hungry again. It seemed a swell way to stay in shape, if only it didn’t make you come so soon whenever it got this good!
He finally had her calmed down enough to answer questions as he lit a cheroot to share with her on top of the rumpled sheets. She said it was well known that El Brazo Largo rode with the rebel leader, El Gato, and that everyone knew El Gato’s band was somewhere in Sonora at the moment because so many rurales and federales were concentrated over to the east right now.
He let her have a drag on their cheroot as he soberly observed she sure seemed to make up her pretty head at short notice. He said, “I’ve heard a tall gringo with a mustache has been seen in the company of El Gato on occasion. Since you called El Gato a rebel instead of a bandit, I’d hazard a guess you don’t share your Tio Hector’s political opinions. But a heap of us old West-by-God-Virginia boys grew up long and lean to grow some hair on our fool faces.”
Ampollita snuggled closer and put the cheroot to Longarm’s lips as she confided, “Everyone here, save for the old fool in charge, prays for the fall of Diaz and La Causa de Libertad. I guessed at who you had to be because you rode in on that sorrel, with those four notches carved on the handle of that six-shooter, eh?”
Longarm snorted, “Mierda, I never cut those fool notches on that old army thumb-buster. It came my way like so.” She said, “I know. The two riders you must have met before you got here stopped by a day or so ago. The one who was carrying the same six-shooter was riding a palomino. After they had eaten, and left us unharmed, Tio Hector sent a rider for to tell los rurales anyway. He said they were bonds he had read about in the newspapers. Later on, los rurales told us not to worry, because they knew the two of them were headed for El Norte for to rob a gringo trading post and blame it on Los Indios.”
“Great minds run in the same channels,” Longarm sighed as the coy cantina gal toyed with his damp pubic hairs. He chanced saying, “Esta bien, I did meet up with those two ambitious bonds, and it would be false modesty to say they won. But why does that have to make me this wild and woolly gringo who rides with Mexican rebels?”
She answered simply, “Because you won. They were not a pair of schoolchildren out for to have some fun. They were well-known killers. Both of them. When we saw one man alone had helped himself to one of their mounts and pistols, we knew he had to be better. So what do you get when you add up a deadly tall Anglo with a mustache and admiration for El Gato, when you know El Gato is riding nearby, and-“
“You said we,” Longarm cut in, demanding, “Who’s we, Ampollita?” She shrugged and said, “La raza, here at this fonda. Tio Hector told one of the muchachos for to ride into Sonoyta and tell los rurales you were surrounded here with jaded mounts.”
Longarm gasped, “Kee-rist, it’s about time you told me! Were you telling the truth about being able to fix me up with fresh mounts?” She sighed and said, “No se p reocupe, querido. I told the muchacho for to ride slow. Nobody but Tio Hector would wish for to make El Gato cross with them. I shall have you on your way in no time. But first do it to me one more time for to steady my nerves when los rurales arrive.”
Chapter 8
So Ampollita’s nerves were likely steadier than Longarm’s as he rode by moonlight with fresh mules carrying the same loads at a brisker pace.
He was tempted to push them faster to make up the time he’d lost—it had hardly been wasted—at the roadside fonda. He forced himself to take it slow but steady, knowing there was just no way he was going to make it in to Puerto Periasco before daybreak or, hell, in one jump. The fugitives would have to hole up in such shade as they could manage for most of the coming day and push on to the Sea of cortez the following night. If Ampollita had been right about that Yuma-bound coastal steamer, things might work out even better if he got in just before the fugitives boarded it.
He thought he’d heard something in the distance, and reined in for a tighter listen. The night sky wasn’t as easy to keep time by as his missing pocket watch, but he figured they were better than two hours south of that fonda now. So what sure sounded like hoofbeats, a lot of hoofbeats, was coming from somewhere closer.
“Those rurales made good time from Sonoyta, didn’t they?” he asked his mules in a disgusted tone as he dismounted to lead the two of them off the road towards the moon so everything would be outlined in the same shade of blackness. He led on foot to choose his path with care. A furlong out, he tethered both mules behind the same clump of organpipe and told them he’d be right back.
As he and the Big Fifty moved toward the road again, he looked back the way he’d just come, and saw nothing much but organpipes, separated just enough to peer between, rising higher than either mule.
On the way back to the moonlit road Longarm got out that knife from the trading post and cut a willowy branch of paloverde. When he met up with the sign he and the mules had left in the pale crust as they’d left the trail, he cradled the Big Fifty in one arm and got busy with his improvised broom. He swept sign to where hardly anyone but a desert Indian, scouting hard in the moonlight on foot, was likely to notice a slightly darker and rougher patch of caliche. He kept at it as he crawfished back between some cardon and prickle-pear. He’d chosen that gap through the cactus with exactly this move in mind.
Once he’d crawfished that far, he figured they’d either spot sign and rein in or they wouldn’t. So he moved on back to the mules and stood between them with the rifle braced in the organpipe clump that made a better screen than a fort. As those other critters got nearer, at a brisk trot, Longarm put a palm over either mule’s velvety muzzle, but didn’t pinch any nostrils just yet. Mounts could be divided into those who nickered at strangers and those who didn’t. A nose bag or gentle palm seemed to have a calming effect. If gentle methods failed, neither a horse nor mule could breathe through its mouth, and like anyone else, they had to take a deep breath before they let out a serious yell.