Part 9 (2/2)
As the desperado leader put his horse up to the hitchrack, a face appeared just over the top of the roadhouse's batwing doors. It was a square, pale face with short gray whiskers. The light blue eyes caught the afternoon light and flickered humorously.
The man chuckled, pushed through the batwings, and said in a heavy Irish accent, ”Well, I be d.a.m.ned. Chacon was right-you boys were were headed this way, sure enough!” headed this way, sure enough!”
”Mick,” Considine said by way of greeting, then turned his head to glance at the rurales around the windmill. ”We got a welcoming party, I see.”
”How in the h.e.l.l Chacon knows you're coming, I'll never know!” Mick said, planting his small, freckled hands on his hips as he stood before the doors, running his gaze up and down the group flanking Considine, Anjanette, and Mad Dog McKenna.
The roadhouse proprietor wore a buckskin tunic and a bloodstained ap.r.o.n around his considerable paunch. A .36-caliber revolver was wedged behind the ap.r.o.n. His eyes settled on Anjanette for a time, the corners of his small mouth rising slightly as he said, ”I see you gotta new woman.”
”Anjanette, meet Mick O'Toole. Came to fight the French and stayed to run a wh.o.r.ehouse. Mick . . . Anjanette.”
Mick nodded, his eyes brazen.
”The pleasure's mine,” Anjanette murmured, the man's gaze making her aware of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pus.h.i.+ng out from behind the flannel s.h.i.+rt and fringed leather vest.
”My old friend inside?” Considine asked Mick.
Mick tore his gaze from Anjanette's b.r.e.a.s.t.s. ”Sure.”
Considine and Mad Dog shared a meaningful glance. ”Boys,” Considine said, lifting his voice so the others could hear, ”why don't you water the horses?”
He glanced at Anjanette. She was studying him, her fine black brows furrowed.
”You can stay out here where it's safe,” Considine told her, swinging down from his saddle. ”But the adventure's inside.”
Mick chuckled, adjusted the pistol in his pants, turned through the batwings, and disappeared into the roadhouse.
Anjanette threw her hair back from her shoulders, swung down from her saddle, and tossed her reins over the hitchrack. ”Well, then, I reckon I'm going inside.”
”I kinda figured you would.” Considine grabbed her shoulders and kissed her.
”Break it up, lovebirds,” Mad Dog said, mounting the porch steps. ”We got business.”
Considine chuckled and turned through the saloon doors behind his partner. Anjanette followed Considine, squinting against the hazy light and the wafting blue woodsmoke rife with the smell of roasting pig and harsh Mexican tobacco.
Considine and Mad Dog stopped a few feet inside the door, and Anjanette squeezed in between them. The three shuttled their gazes around the large stone-floored room and the makes.h.i.+ft bar on the right.
Mick had taken his place behind the bar, grinning, fists on the bar's rough-sawn planks. Several wizened peasants in serapes and frayed sombreros were playing dice on the floor in a corner, a scrawny, spotted cur gnawing a knucklebone nearby.
A couple of fat wh.o.r.es in sack dresses and heavy rouge were hunched over stone mugs and playing cards at a table close to the bar. One had a cigar snugged in a corner of her mouth. They glanced at the newcomers with interest, but when their gazes fell across Anjanette, hope leached from their eyes and they returned to their drinks and poker.
Considine's eyes were on the table at the far end of the room, near the narrow stone steps rising toward the roadhouse's second floor. Two men in rurale uniforms, jackets unb.u.t.toned, sat at the table, plates and bowls before them.
The man on the left-short, round-faced, and curly-haired-sat back in his chair, ankles crossed, thumbs hooked inside the bandoliers crossed on his chest. Seeds and dust matted his tight black curls.
He was grinning at the other man, Captain Chacon, a grossly fat mestizo with long silver-streaked hair hanging down both sides of his broad, fat face, and silver-streaked mustaches hanging down both corners of his mouth.
A young girl, no more than eighteen, straddled the captain's right knee, facing the table. She had full lips and wide-set light brown eyes, with a faint mole on the nub of her right cheek.
She was topless, and the captain was flicking the brown nipple of her right nubbin breast with his index finger, laughing and glancing back and forth between the girl and the curly-haired man, Lieutenant Miguel Pascal Ferraro, as if the jostling nipple were the funniest thing he'd seen in a long time. The girl stared down at the table, bored.
Considine turned to look past Anjanette at Mad Dog, then sauntered forward. Heading toward the captain's table, he called to Mick for a bottle.
Chacon and Ferraro jerked their heads up and around at Considine's voice. Chacon spread a grin. He was missing both his eyeteeth, and it gave his fat, savage face a strange, rabbitlike look.
”Ah, Senor Considine and Senor McKenna!” the captain said, removing his hand from the girl's breast but keeping his arm wrapped around her shoulders. ”It is an honor and a privilege to see you both again!”
Considine sighed. ”I'd like to say the feeling's mutual, but I never tell lies in Mexico. Too many Catholics.”
”Ain't it funny,” McKenna said, ”how you always seem to know when we cross the border.”
While Ferraro remained staring cow-eyed at the three newcomers, as if the English were too fast for him, Chacon threw his head back on his shoulders and laughed from his belly, shaking the girl sitting on his knee so that her long, dark brown hair fluttered on her shoulders.
When the captain's laugh had settled to a slow boil, he said, ”It would indeed be a strange coincidence if it were not for the fact that I watch the border so closely closely and have three Yaqui amongst my border guards. They, as they themselves boast, can smell a gringo from as far away as the last full moon!” and have three Yaqui amongst my border guards. They, as they themselves boast, can smell a gringo from as far away as the last full moon!”
Again, he threw his head back and laughed.
Ferraro glanced at his superior, skeptically amused, and his thick upper lip curled slightly.
”Yaqui, huh?” Considine said, hooking his thumbs behind his cartridge belt. ”Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned. That's almost like cheatin'!”
”Reckon you gotta watch them snake-eaters pretty close, don't ya?” said Mad Dog. ”I mean, I've heard they'd as soon cut a rurale's throat as look at him.”
The captain's laughter stopped abruptly, and he absently brushed his fingers across the wh.o.r.e's nipple, making it twitch. ”My men respect me, Senor McKenna. Even the Indios.” His gaze strayed to Anjanette, and turned smoky. ”I see you have, uh, found a new companion, Senor.” Again his left hand lightly caressed the young puta puta's tender breast. ”An especially fine one, if you don't mind my saying so, Senorita.”
He cupped the wh.o.r.e's breast with his hand, rubbing it, while staring lewdly into Anjanette's eyes.
Anjanette returned his stare coldly, saying nothing. Considine laughed and wrapped a proprietary arm around her neck, drawing her toward him and kissing her cheek. ”Captain Chacon . . . Lieutenant Ferraro . . . let me introduce the lovely Anjanette.”
The lieutenant's drunken gaze flickered up and down Anjanette's curvy body, a deep flush rising in his broad, dark cheeks. The captain closed his hand around the young wh.o.r.e's breast and gave a courtly nod. ”They are getting more lovely every trip, Senor Considine. My compliments. If only I could find one as lovely as she in this G.o.dforsaken country.”
He s.h.i.+fted his gaze to the desperado leader, slitting one eye. ”What will you take for her?”
Anjanette's back tensed. She opened her mouth to speak, but Considine gripped her more tightly and laughed, ”She's not for sale, Captain. Not this trip, anyway!” He laughed again, nuzzled Anjanette's stiff neck, and muttered in her ear as he glanced toward the bar. ”Mick's lookin' lonely over there, Chiquita.”
Meeting the captain's l.u.s.ty, gla.s.sy gaze with a hard one of her own, Anjanette turned slowly. ”Reckon I better buy him a drink.” She hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her long wool skirt, and strolled over toward the bar.
When Anjanette had gone, Considine glanced at Mad Dog, then kicked a chair out and sat down. During the introductions, Mick had brought two stone mugs and a bottle of the pulque that he brewed himself and mixed with tequila-a heady, gut-wrenching combo.
”Well,” said Considine, leaning forward on the table and popping the cork from the bottle. ”I reckon you're lookin' for what you're usually lookin' for.”
”Our border pa.s.s,” said Mad Dog, removing his hat and sweeping a hand through his long, greasy hair, jingling the hoops hanging from his ears. ”Me and Jack been wantin' to talk to you about that, Captain.”
Chacon exchanged glances with Ferraro. The girl sat on the captain's knee, seemingly oblivious of her exposed b.r.e.a.s.t.s, staring into s.p.a.ce.
Considine said, ”We work hard for our living-me and Mad Dog. Stealin' gold from stagecoaches and banks and trains-s.h.i.+t, that takes a lot out of a man. And me and Mad Dog ain't gettin' any younger.” He glanced at his partner. ”Ain't that right, Mad Dog?”
<script>