Gringos #9 by JD Sandon

Author:JD Sandon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mexican revolution, pancho villa, gringos, piccadilly publishing, merceneries, angus wells, luis alberto urrea, sofa segovia, martin luis guzman, mexican rebels
Publisher: Piccadilly

Chapter Nine

THE SUN SHREDDED its way through the sky with a sense of purpose that was not to be denied. Bits of cloud flaked down towards the land and finally disappeared into the purple-black tops of hills. Yates McCloud turned in his saddle and shrugged his coat from his shoulders, pushing it beneath the straps of his saddle bags. The mare that he was riding tossed its head and her tail flicked at a small swarm of flies. McCloud untied the water canteen, freed the top and drank—just three quick swallows, the last of which he washed around the inside of his mouth and spat down into the dust. It sizzled in the grey surface and dried almost before it touched.

Getting his way out of the Gomez camp had been a whole lot easier than getting in. He’d said something about taking off for a couple of days, doing a little whoring around and playing a few hands of serious poker. Nobody seemed to have any objection and no one behaved as though what he was suggesting was out of the ordinary. Even when he saddled the mare and led her to the edge of the corral, McCloud had been tense, waiting for some approach, an interjection that would mean a lot more explaining. He wouldn’t have been too surprised if he’d no sooner set his foot in the stirrup than some of the rifles he’d sold had been loaded and pointed at him.

‘Where you think you’re riding, gringo?’

But there had been no guns, no interference; no one seemed even to have noticed that he had left. In a way, there was little reason why they should. He had brought them guns and they had bought them; for a few days they had talked in a desultory fashion, drank wine and tequila and that had been that. Of their leader, Christo Gomez himself, he had seen nothing. There had been rumors enough: Gomez was leading a raid on a train, on a bank, on Pancho Villa, on the Federales. When he returned with the cream of his men, he would have a great horde of gold, of guns, of wine, of beautiful women.

McCloud had listened and tried to sift rumor from fact, but this had proved difficult. Maybe, when the Major heard the list of possibilities, he would be able to sort out the truth.

Truth! Damnation, what kind of truth could a man find for himself in this wilderness of heat and sand and hills?

What kind of a life?

Yates McCloud wiped the ever-present sweat from his forehead with his arm and before he had time to count, fresh beads had appeared. Whatever kind of life—or death—Mexico offered it was all that was available to him and he knew it. To go back north of the Rio Grande was to invite arrest, a length of best hemp and the thunderous clap of the trap door letting him fall all the way down. As far as a man might fall.

So it was

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