Then Longarm had her spread-eagle on the tarp, and his old organ-grinder hardly needed guidance as it parted the wet hair between her rain-slicked thighs and suddenly thrust, cold and stiff, into soft warm tightness as she stiffened in protest, sobbed, and then thrust upward with her firm young pelvis, pleading, “Ay, estoy embrujada! I cannot believe I am taking such a big gringo’s pipi in my only-human crica and, oh, Custis! Chinge me! Chinge me mucho!”
So he did, and they both agreed it felt swell to let themselves go at it hammer and tongs in the warm summer rain like a pair of frogs mating in a lily pond, only better. He reminded her that frogs didn’t get to stick it in, and she agreed the poor slithering things had to be missing a lot for all their croaking and splashing.
They tried it dog style in the rain, and managed to come that way as well, but then Consuela said she was getting chilled from all that rain on her back and running down between them. So they went inside and dried off to do it another way on a blanket by the fire. They agreed it was like starting all over with somebody new, save for the sweet fact you didn’t have to mess around as much before you got started. She said she’d always found getting started sort of awkward, and he said he’d noticed. That made her laugh, accuse him of rape, and thank him for being so understanding by getting on top.
So, with one swell position and another, it was broad day outside by the time both the rain and their passions let up for the moment.
Not knowing what the sky had in store for the rest of the day, they got dressed, polished off the last of the beans and tomato preserves, and saddled up to ride on.
Patches of jagged-ass rock extended all the way down to the seacoast, Puerto Periasco meaning about the same as Rockport, but they rode through a mile or more of cactus-hedged milpas of beans and corn before they drifted into the outskirts of the seaport via a farm lane instead of that coach road.
So not too many local folks seemed to pay them much mind, and she seemed pleased as punch by that. She said she had business that could wait, her southbound steamer not being due for a few days, and asked if they could find some out-of-the-way posada where her sordid but enchanting affair might not attract as much attention.
That was what some gals who just wouldn’t leave a man alone called the inevitable results, a sordid but enchanting affair. She seemed to have herself convinced he’d seduced her with some Casanova spell. It allowed her to act wild as hell, though. So he had no call to argue.
He wasn’t sure how much a man with a Mexican bounty posted on him ought to tell a gal of the currently ruling class down Mexico way. So he never did. He just said he was going out to see about innocent chores after they’d stopped at a dinky little inn near the waterfront. She said she’d let him, as soon as they tested the bedsprings just once. So seeing that he’d never had her in a real bed with a couple of pillows under her slim hips, they were going at it hot and heavy on the top floor while a Puerto Periasco lawman had a cup of coffee and some conversation with the innkeeper down in the kitchen.
Having been paid in advance, the heavy-lidded innkeeper didn’t care one way or the other, and it showed, as he told the town law that the mysterious gringo who’d arrived that morning was still screwing the not-bad-looking but rather skinny blanca he’d arrived with.
The lawman sipped thoughtfully and murmured, “The one they wired us about was said to be traveling alone, with two mules he stole from afonda to the north.”
The innkeeper shrugged and said, “They arrived on horseback. The four ponies are out back in the corral if you wish for to examine them. I can show you their vaquero saddles, if you like.”
The portly lawman shook his head and said, “Our country is so far from God and so close to Los Estados Unidos. There are gringos all over the place, and the one I seek crossed the border alone with one mule and one sorrel mare. After he had worn them out he stole two fresh mules. Nobody has reported any missing ponies. The couple upstairs may be just what they seem, a chingado gringo and a puta with poor taste in lovers. I shall keep an eye on them. But I do not see how either could be the notorious El Brazo Largo.”
The innkeeper made the sign of the cross and gasped, “Dios mio! Is that who you thought I had upstairs, trying for to break my bedsprings with that bag of bones?”
The Mexican lawman sighed and replied, “If only that were so. Is a handsome reward being offered for the head of El Brazo Largo. Some business about him siding with rebels against our beloved El Presidente. But the malvado they seek could hardly be down this way for to just get laid. So as long as that is all the one upstairs seems interested in, I shall only, as I said, keep an eye on him.”
He finished his cup and left while, blissfully ignorant upstairs, Longarm was washing up at a corner stand, anxious to get going while the naked lady he’d just withdrawn from lay slugabed with her eyes closed, a dreamy smile on her lips as she spread her lean thighs wide to cool things off for a spell.
Slipping out of their room and down the back stairs, Longarm went first to the docks, asked directions, and found his way to the steamboat office.
He bought himself passage to Yuma, at the north end of their line. They told him the northbound would get in late that afternoon, be in port perhaps four hours, and shove off for the night run north around ten P.M. That gave him more than enough time to sell those four ponies, buy himself another double-action .44-40 with a decent gun rig, take Consuela to supper after another good screwing, explain how he just couldn’t stay, and still have time to slip aboard that coastal steamer before Harmony Drake and his own pals were likely to make a last-minute run for the gangplank!
The sale of the ponies went off without a hitch, at a handsome profit, as soon as one considered how much he’d paid for them. The innkeeper, who seemed sort of anxious about something, helped Longarm out by telling him who to see about the deal.
He didn’t have to herd four ponies anywhere. The Mexican horse trader came over late that morning to look the four brutes over, then dicker a bit before they shook on a price they both knew to be fair, and that was that. The innkeeper witnessed the sale, and the horse trader said he’d send his hired help over for the stock and the saddles after la siesta.
That just gave Longarm time to arm himself more sensibly, now that he was getting to be so rich off Mexican outlaws and Indians. So he asked directions and, packing the Big Fifty, with the Schofield tucked in his pants, headed for the gunsmith both the innkeeper and the honest horse trader recommended.
He was almost there, with the sun getting higher and hotter, when he spied a pair of ponies tethered in the shade of a cantina awning.
They were both saddled Anglo-style, which might not have meant as much if one hadn’t been favoring its near hind hoof, having missed a shoe for many a weary mile. Longarm shut one eye to let its pupil adjust to dimmer
