The Red Sombrero Read Free

some place climbing the Mount of Venus with the latest chiquita to share the pleasure of his name and the cooks were quartering carcasses to provide the morrow’s grubstake. Only Descardo of those entitled to be resting now was off by himself in the blue-black shadows following his bent in the places most likely to provide gratification.
    The hour was late. Distance mellowed the fading sound of the guitars and the murmur of jaw wagging which still sporadically rose about camp fires, now burnt down to where little was discernible beyond the red glow of coals. Far out in the moon-dappled darkness a coyote lifted his lonesome voice while the general stalked the post of the sentries.
    At the Number 4 stretch Descardo’s prowl was rewarded. No tramp of feet was to be heard, no moving shape was visible. Beneath his bristling mustache the general’s thin lips grinned.
    Like a lynx he crept through pear and catclaw, rigid when Number 3 went past, on the hunt again when the man’s shape faded. No sound came out of the gloom from Number 5. “Jesus!” Descardo whispered — “two of them!” and wet his lips in anticipation. Minutes later he was crouched above a shape that tiredly snored. There was a brief glint of metal as the general’s hand appeared to merge with the sleeper. The snoring quit in a convulsive gurgle. Descardo wiped his blade on the soldier’s ragged pants.
    • • •
    Boca Grande was a settlement of less than thirty families and it was not to be wondered at, Reno decided, that when at last they were able to look down upon its rooftops there was no evidence of life to be anywhere seen. Only two hours past, the sun had dropped behind the rimrocks but the place was as still as though even the crickets had been run off with the livestock which would otherwise have managed to have made itself heard by this time.
    The peones had fled and Descardo cursed. The day had been hot and tryingly tedious and all through the long hours the general had sustained himself with looking forward to the sport he invariably got from fools who surrendered. He was a man who liked to see a little blood run and no one yet had gotten blood from a turnip.
    Last night, at Laguna Guzman, he’d been reasonably affable. But all this day his irascible temper had been feeding on disappointments when neither Perron nor Reno would rise to his pointed barbs, until now, with this place looming black as a stack of stovelids, he was in a mood to strike his mother.
    Reno yawned, rubbed his eyes and took a pull at his bottle — the last he’d fetched with him — indifferent to the scope of the general’s abusive language. It was Reno’s belief that every man had a boiling point; some like Sierra, were able to let off their steam in recurrent orgies of the flesh. But this was denied the general. For Descardo women, as females, simply did not exist.
    The general’s first rude jolt of the day had come with the dawn when Sierra had summoned the pair of them before him. Descardo, Tano said, was to accompany Reno and a number of picked troopers on a trip to the Cordray ranch where they would pick up the new repeating rifles their army must have if they were to advance on Agua Prieta with any likelihood of success.
    Descardo said gruffly the chore did not require a general. “A child could pick up those rifles — even such a dimwit as this borracho jellybean.” This he said in English, jerking an insulting thumb at Reno. Switching to Spanish he said, “I’ll be needed when you take Palomas. You’ll want news of the Federals and who can pry news out of prisoners like I can? God’s blood! Send the gringo.”
    “And who’s to make sure he doesn’t ride off with our money? Those rifles don’t come three for a dollar and Cordray’s ranch is across the Line. You’ll go with him, taking ten of your Dorados, the fiercest fighters you can find. You will lead the attack on Boca Grande, General. Take the four biggest guns. When the town has ceased