Free TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border by Clifford Irving Page B

up. “They always do, mon jeune ami, “ she said sweetly.
    You could have hung all her towels on my pecker, and then some, as I followed Yvette upstairs to a second-floor bedroom. Marie-Thérése, almost a twin of her sister, bounced in a little while later to see what all the shouting and thumping was about, but it was only me expressing my feelings, and by then I was so carried away by French ways that I asked her to stay too.
    I had scooped up Hipólito’s purse for safekeeping, and around two o’clock in the morning, after I had paid my debt, I limped downstairs to see how my i>compañeros were faring. Some kind soul had hauled them out of the tub and dumped them into a single feather bed where they slept in each other’s arms like two bedraggled, soapy-smelling, large brown angels. But when I shook them back to the world of the living, they had headaches built for elephants. Whatever Doña Margarita poured into those bottles of scotch whiskey surely had never crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Hipólito began to sneeze.
    Candelario, as he pulled on his boots and dusty clothes, groaned. “Aaargh … what now?”
    “Let’s go home,” Hipólito said, “before I get pneumonia.”
    Soon we were mounted and back on the road to Columbus. The sky was solid with stars, and the night had that fine, quivering and thrilling silence that you know only in the desert. It was bitter cold, but I didn’t care. Candelario finally spoke. His voice was hoarse and sad.
    “Tomás, I wish to ask you a question.”
    “Go ahead.” But I was on my guard.
    “Have you no shame?”
    I explained that I had tried my best to wake him up, and I had a witness in Yvette. But he had passed out cold.
    “You weren’t drunk, Tomás?”
    “Certainly I was drunk.”
    “Ah,” he said sadly, “you’re younger than we are. In that way, life is cruel.” The horses’ hoofs clopped along the road, raising puffs of unseen dust. “And so now tell me what happened.”
    “What do you want to know?”
    “Everything, hombre! First of all, who did you fuck? Did you find either of the Frenchwomen?”
    I admitted I’d found Yvette first.
    “First? Son of a whore, don’t torture me like that! Am I not your friend? Don’t we ride together for Pancho Villa? I want to know everything!”
    As best I could, I told him how I had pranged Yvette, and then Marie-Thérése. I could hear his teeth gnashing again, so I kept the detail to a minimum, but that wasn’t good enough for him.
    “How many times, hombre? Válgame Dios, be honest.”
    “Yvette twice. And then Marie-Thérése … let’s see, once, I guess.”
    “Ya te chingaste !—now you’ve fucked yourself! You’re lying! Did you hear that, Hipólito? Three times, he says! By the Virgin, that’s not possible, not in your condition, in that short a time!” He growled, twisting his head toward me—but then he gave a mighty groan and gripped the pommel of his saddle to keep from falling off.
    I told him I wasn’t lying, but I decided I had better leave out the last part where both women had bent on their knees, coaxing my pecker out of its doldrums and putting it between their two sets of lips to torture the last drop of jizzum out of me. He would never have believed it.
    “And did they moan and groan a lot? Did they tell you they were dying? Which one was better? Describe their breasts and their private parts, Tomás. I need to know.”
    “Let him be,” muttered Hipólito.
    “What for? Should I be sorry for him? I’m the one who got nothing! Except you, you hairy oaf! Farting beside me in the bed, while he was upstairs fucking his brains out!” He addressed himself to me again. “So? Will you tell me?”
    When I finished with a more detailed description he gave a small, pained grunt, and he was silent for a while. Then he spoke quietly. “Tomorrow I’ll find out for myself if you were telling the truth . There’s only one way to do that. Meanwhile, I believe you. And I’m proud of you.