Gringos #8 by JD Sandon

Author:JD Sandon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mercenaries, mexico, old west, mexican revolution, pancho villa, carlos fuentes, old gringo, piccadilly publishing westerns, mariane azuela
Publisher: Piccadilly

Chapter Seven

JONAS STRONG WAS wearing a battered Stetson to shield his bald head from the fierce sun. His khaki shirt was thickly stained with sweat; his denim pants almost black at the crotch. The leather strap which held the sawn-off Browning automatic shotgun close to his right side shone with sweat; the metal of the gun’s barrel gleamed.

Strong wiped a film of perspiration from his eye lids and set the field glasses to his eyes, scanning the rocky terrain to the north-east.

‘See anythin’?’

‘Sure,’ said Strong after a few moments more. ‘There’s one bitch of a lot of empty land out there.’

‘That all?’

‘Uh-huh. That’s all.’

Strong took the glasses away from his face and offered them across to Jamie.

The Kid shook his head. ‘If they ain’t there, they ain’t there. No amount of lookin’ through them glasses is goin’ to change that.’

Strong nodded and set the glasses back in the leather case that hung from his neck. ‘Guess you’re right.’

Jamie flopped onto his back and squinted up into the bright blue of the sky. They’d been away from the camp since just before dawn and it had got hotter every hour they’d been in the saddle; hotter and drier till you thought the air was going to break like some twig each time you breathed.

He pulled up the sand-colored kerchief and used it to wipe his forehead and the right side of his face. A pair of flies sat on the black mask to the left and he left them undisturbed.

‘Thing is,’ said Strong, squatting down beside him, the powerful muscles of his limbs showing through the material of his pants and shirt, ‘if they ain’t out there, then where in the Lord’s name are they?’

‘Presidio?’

‘They should’ve left there a couple of days back at the latest.’

‘Maybe things went wrong.’

‘That’s what worries me.’

‘I don’t mean with Kennedy. The major and Yates can settle him. I mean with those guys from the film company.’

‘Yeah.’

They fell silent again; the flies on Jamie’s mask got bored with just sitting there doing nothing and started to chase one another around and buzz like crazy until Jamie finally flashed out his hand, catching one and knocking the other aside.

He was thinking he wouldn’t have minded being in Presidio himself—laying down in that white bed with those white fingers cooling his body and the touch of a needle against the skin of his arm.

He was ...

‘Kid!’

Jamie roiled over and pushed himself up onto one knee. Strong was pointing towards the north-west, the glasses already back in his hand. Jamie followed the line of Strong’s arm and finger and saw a cloud of dust, slow-moving but moving all the same, west to east.

‘Is it them?’

‘Uh-uh. Wrong direction.’

‘I know that, but... ’

The column of riders came slowly into focus in the twin rings of the field glasses. Strong held them there for a moment, then handed the glasses across. He pursed his lips in a slow, low whistle.

Jamie saw and nodded, giving the field glasses back. ‘How many would you say?’ Strong asked.

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