Fascism did not originate with Adolph Hitler, nor was sadism the exclusive device of de Sade. In Argentina, mid-Nineteenth Century, a cruel and wicked man used both fascism and sadism to fulfill his various lusts. Women were his slaves-to be humiliated, used and disciplined at will. Their bodies were meant only to serve his sado-sexual needs. A tale, based on history, heavy with the evidence of unusual lusts and diabolically sadistic desires.
CHAPTER ONE
It was January, 1852. In the United States, Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was about to be published, a book that would divide the North and the South in an internecine war that would pit brother against brother. E. G. Otis had just invented the elevator with safety appliances, and Christopher Dorflinger had invented the lamp chimney. There were spiritualists' conventions held in Cleveland, Boston and Worcester. Five months later, the Democratic National Convention in Baltimore was to nominate Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire for President on the forty-ninth ballot, while some two weeks later, and in the same city, the Whig National Convention was to nominate old General Winfield Scott of New Jersey on the 53rd ballot. In San Francisco, the leading citizens had organized their Viligante Committee to deal with lawlessness. But even they would have been helpless to cope with the marauding and rapine, the bloodshed and the agony being unleashed in the sister nation to the south.
It was January, and it was the height of summer in the Argentine parripas. The small gray ornero (ovenbird) was busy making its own home of mud and straw with a curving entrance to protect it from the wind and rain which would sweep the great plains when winter came in June.
At the village of Lujan, thirty miles west of Buenos Aires, by noon the sun was already sweltering as the villagers prepared for the wedding feast of Maria Concepcion Villartes to Pedro Rosamonte. Already the altar boys were hastening into the adobe church of Nuestra Senora de Piedad where Fra Sierro would perform the ceremony that would unite Sancho Rosamonte's handsome twenty-four year old only son Pedro with the most beautiful girl of the village, slim as a reed, her black hair glossy as polished jet, not quite eighteen and her sweet, oval face radiant with that virginal glow which would soon, this very night, be transformed into the more ardent look of womanhood.
The alcalde himself, Manuel Villartes, vigorous and spry despite his sixty-two years, had announced that there would be a feast all afternoon following the wedding, and that even the poorest villagers would be welcome. He had come to this tiny village as a wanderer, some forty years ago, when the savage Chacabuco Indians had killed his father and ravished and tortured his lovely mother to death. Indigent and possessing only his health and his determination to conquer the pampas, he had taken a few humble acres, bought a few cows and a bull from a dying estanciero (ranch owner) and had thus begun his fortune. His first two wives, who had been barren, had died during the famines of 1813 and 1821. His third wife had been a fifteen-year old criatura, a timid indentured Corteleone Indian girl from the south, sold into bondage at the age of five, and destined to be the concubine of the brutal tavern keeper Manuel Durado who had bought her from her impoverished parents, members of a friendly tribe who often wandered to the north and worked in the fields and on the estancias to earn money for food and trinkets and clothing.
She had been the best, the most faithful wife of all to him, and the old alcalde sadly reflected, as he entered the church and piously crossed himself at the sight of the altar, how lamentable it was that she could not be here to see Pedro Rosamonte stand before Fra Sierro with their daughter Maria Concepcion. Alas, Triana had died of an undulant fever six months ago, in the prime of her life and beauty. And even though he prayed for the happiness of his son-in-law, he could not help coveting the beauty of his beloved daughter, for his bed was empty and yet he was still virile, still capable of carnal lust. How well he could recall the feverish eagerness of Triana when they came together in the night, her mouth and breasts and thighs seeking him, insatiable and fiery!
As he bowed his head before the altar and before he took his seat in the front pew near the rail, Manuel Villartes said a worried prayer. It was to be hoped that those accursed federalists would not have heard the news of this impending marriage. If the terrible gaucho soldiers of Juan Manual de Rosas were to hear of the chest of golden coins which he intended to give his adored son-in-law as a wedding gift, they would swoop down and loot the village. Those coins represented arduous years of growing cattle on the pampas, fighting not only disease and bad crops but also the banditos from the nearby province, occasional forays by the warring Indian tribes, and almost emasculated by the intolerable taxes levied by the tyrant.
The alcalde himself in secret shared the views of the federalistas whose leaders came from the pampas, even though they now ruled from Buenos Aires. But he abominated the bloodshed and the ferocity and the hatred which the tyrant Rosas had engendered. How long would it be before Nuestro Senor Dios would purge that arrogant and bloodthirsty man who had governed the province of Buenos Aires from 1832 and then, after giving up his office, turned the heads of the stupid masses by leading a successful expedition against the Indians? Yes, they had welcomed him back with open arms, the poor idiots. In 1835. And now he was virtual dictator over all Argentina.
There was much to be said about the cause of the unitarios. If only the matter could be resolved by a popular vote of the nation, the old alcalde thought. As for himself, he had earned his livelihood and all that gold he was about to give unto his beloved son, from the pampas so he could understand the cause of a man like Rosas, who believed in national unity. Well, that was all very fine, if there were no taxes, no troops to ride despotically into the tiny villages of the south and the west and to seize prisoners without warrant, to torture and execute them, to rape the women and to kidnap the youngest girls to be taken back to Buenos Aires to serve as whores to these vile wretches who themselves once had been the lowliest of gauchos and who now held military rank and rode fine horses and lived on the fat of the land.
Let Buenos Aires be self-ruling, self-sufficient, he said to himself, as his lips moved in that urgent prayer. It is not a city already rich enough to subsist on its own fat, like the camel. And yet, in the name of the federalistas and unitarios, each new day brought terror and death and torture to the pampas.
The villagers thronged around the little adobe church as the proud alcalde in frock coat and tall hat, with the silver chain of his office about his neck, led in his daughter on his arm, nodding and smiling politely to his neighbors. Every pew was crowded, and some of the peasants had managed to squeeze into the back of the church where they stood agog with excitement, for an event like this was rare in this quiet little village. Then at last the hubbub of murmurs died down as the gentle, stoop-shouldered priest approached, smiling at the young couple who knelt beyond the rail awaiting his blessing and the start of the ritual which would make them one. But Fra Sierro had hardly begun to invoke the Creator's blessing when suddenly a peasant at the back of the church shouted, "They are coming! Los Lanceros Negros!"
Cries of horror rose, and the priest himself went ashen-pale, crossing himself and mumbling prayers.
"Quickly, my daughter, go to the quarters of the good priest and hide yourself," the old alcalde gasped. Maria Concepcion uttered a sobbing cry, clasped the hands of her sturdy young husband-to-be, and then fled, clutching her bouquet and gathering up with the other hand the train of her gown as she took shelter.
And outside the church, thirty horsemen, dressed in the gaucho uniforms of the tyrant Rosas, black breeches and boots, black gloves and red tunics, wearing metal helmets to whose peaks were affixed plumes of horsehair, lifting the heavy wooden shafts of their lances whose last three feet were made of sharpened iron, dismounted to surround the little church. At the sight of these dread riders, the villagers who had clustered about the door of the church ran screaming down the street toward their homes.
But the leader of this troop, Teniente Porfirio Gonzales, carried a saber, and on his red tunic was a silver medal cunningly shaped in the form of a sun with many rays circling it. It was a medal which Rosas himself had had struck for this intrepid and merciless officer, whose name alone struck terror into the hearts of every villager between Buenos Aires and the Uruguayan border. He was stocky, with coarse, short black hair and a thick moustache, only thirty, but in a military career of a decade he had won the nickname of "The Bloody Butcher." He had begun his days under the Rosas regime as a private, and Rosas himself had watched the recruit tied to an X-shaped wooden whipping post to receive seventy-five strokes with a heavy leather belt for having cheated at cards. But so bravely had the recruit taken his lashing that Rosas had been impressed, and he had had Porfirio Gonzales assigned to his personal bodyguard. A year later, when a hysterical widow had tried to stab the leader for having her daughter abducted and brought to his quarters to satisfy his rapacious lusts, it had been Porfirio Gonzales who had interposed his body between the dagger and the dictator, sustaining a flesh wound in the arm. He had wrested the dagger away from the woman and stabbed her to the heart. For this he had been made a corporal and given a small piece of land just outside the great city of Buenos Aires. From then on, his career was marked by splendid accomplishments in the service of Argentina's bloodiest dictator.
Whenever a village resisted or revolted against the heavy taxes imposed by the dictator, it was Porfirio Gonzales who led a punitive expedition of lancers against the dissidents. He became a sergeant two years later, and last year been given the rank of Teniente in full command of these thirty expert fighting men.
"Diego, Jose, Manuelito and Hernando, follow me!" he barked as he strode into the church with drawn saber.
The spectators in their pews were rooted in their seats, their mouths agape with horror at this sacrilege. The kindly old priest, in a quavering voice, sought to placate the federalista officer.
"My son,' you are in the house of God. So sheathe your sword. We celebrate a wedding this day, and there is no need for soldiers on so joyous an occasion."
"That is where you are wrong, viejo," Porfirio Gonzales sarcastically chuckled as he strode down the aisle toward the altar rail. "There is no sanctuary for traitors, no refuge for the accursed unitarios!"
"But you are mistaken, my son," the old priest persisted. "It is well known that the village of Lujon thrives under the rule of Rosas."
In this, his gentle way, he sought to retaliate for the officer's sarcasm as well as to tell the truth. Indeed, the village had angrily paid its tribute levied by the tyrant and been left in peace.
"Go mumble your prayers, you old fool, and do not interfere in what does not concern you, or you will taste the fine edge of my saber," Porfirio Gonzales sneered. "Who is the Alcalde?" This dog who calls himself Manuel Villartes?"
"I am he," the white -haired father of the bride rose from one of the front pews.
"Then it is you I seek. There is word that you have hoarded much gold, Senor Alcalde. When a man conceals a treasure, it can only be because he has not paid his just taxes. You will give this gold to my men at once."
"But that's not so, Teniente!" the old man protested. "All these years I have saved what money I could after I met the levies of your master. Today, on this blessed day when my daughter is to be wed to the son of our largest estanciero, I mean to give the young people a gift for the future."
"Give it rather to the state, that it may grow strong in crushing the traitorous unitarios!" Porfirio Gonzales sneered. "Where is this moneybox of yours hidden, old man?"
"But even the priest will tell you that ... what are you going to do?" For even as he spoke, the alcalde saw two of the lancers hurry towards the back of the church and through the door which led to the priest's quarters where his daughter had taken refuge. A moment later, the two grinning soldiers dragged out the screaming and weeping Maria Concepcion, her veil ripped away, her gown wrenched from her shoulders to expose the olive-sheened satin of her naked flesh, almost to the valley of her high-perched, pear-firm breasts.
"Then, old man, we will take your daughter as hostage until you decide to give us the gold!" Porfirio Gonzales chuckled.
"No! Wait! In the name of human mercy-I will tell you where the gold is-it's in my house-at the bottom of a sewing basket."
"Jose, Hernando," Porfirio Gonzales turned to his other two subalterns, "ride to this old fool's house and take him with you to show you the way, so he will be pricked with the lance if he tries to trick you. You two-" gesturing with his saber at the weeping girl held between them, "take her out to the public square, bind her wrists behind her back and keep her prisoner until your comrades return with the gold!"
So saying, he turned his back on the altar and strode out of the church, while two of the lancers shoved him forward, their two companions dragging the weeping and pleading Maria Concepcion along with them. She saw them drag her father over to one of the horses, force him to mount up behind one of the lancers, and then the two rode off. Her captors, standing on either side of her, caressed her bare neck and shoulders, as she groaned and wept in her shame as she heard their lascivious appraisals of her young body.
"Captain, hola, amigo, what a lucky hombre will be the man who has this pretty wench to bed this night!-Si verdad, but what if the bridegroom is not there to take his right? Then, what would you? Perhaps one of us, humble though we are, may be privileged to aid this muchachita to become a woman!"
The two lancers rode back with the alcalde, one of them lifting up the treasure box to show that he had achieved his mission.
Porfirio Gonzales stepped forward and took possession of the box. Breaking it open forcibly, he stared avidly at the rows of shining golden coins.
"By frugality and hard work, eh, you traitorous dog?" he jeered. Then, drawing his saber, he thrust it to the heart of the alcalde.
Maria Concepcion uttered a shriek of incredulous horror and tried to run to her father, who had stumbled back, clutched at his bleeding chest, then crumpled to the ground. But one of the lancers beside her thrust out his booted foot to trip her, and sent her sprawling in the dust amid the jeers and the salacious comments of the other soldiers.
"Take that bitch along, too," Porfirio Gonzales commanded. "And find me ten of the least ugly girls of this insurrectionist hamlet as tribute to El Supremo!"
CHAPTER TWO
Pablo Montagna was one of those who opposed the tyrant Rosas, not only out of personal abhorrence for the dictator's unbridled lusts and sadistic acts of inhuman cruelty, but also because of the federalista cause was at the opposite pole of his own political thinking.
That wasn't really so strange. The unitarios desired the self-rule of the few large cities of Argentina like Cordoba and Santa Fe and, of course, Buenos Aires, while at the same time holding that the city itself should rule the entire individual province in which it was situated. And the irony of it all was that this tyrant Rosas who held sway from a virtual palace in the loveliest area of Buenos Aires, upheld the savage law of the pampas and wished even the tinest of provinces to unite into a cohesive Argentina under federal rule.
Pablo Morttagna had been born in Cordoba twenty-eight years ago, and his father, then a leading government official for the unitario cause, had been assassinated a decade ago. Worst of all, Pablo's lovely Chilean mother, with honey-colored hair and the figure of a Grecian goddess, had been seized by the federalista mob, dragged to the public square and there pilloried under the hot sun, while he had been compelled to watch, held by a dozen jeering ruffians. His patrician mother, who was noted for her charity and goodness, had been stripped naked, and for an hour pelted with refuse and offal, insulted with the vilest of terms. And then an illiterate gaucho designated by the mob to be executioner, had mounted the steps of the platform to the pillory, and with his rawhide whip had flogged Pablo's mother till she hung fainting in her bonds. This done, the gaucho had unlocked the pillory and dragged her bleeding, scarcely conscious body to the center of the platform and, lowering his baggy trousers and still wearing his broad-brimmed black hat, had fallen upon the naked woman and ravished her to the cheers of the multitude. And after he had quitted the platform, others emulated him, rushing up the steps to fall upon the feebly moaning, helpless matron until at last she expired.
Pablo Montagna could still not obliterate that hideous scene from his dreams. There would be nights when he would wake up screaming for vengeance, dripping with sweat, his eyes blazing, and his gentle wife Bruna had to hold him in her arms and stroke his head until the spasm passed. And this was why Pablo Montagna, ostensibly a rich grain merchant in the city of Cordoba, over three hundred miles to the northwest of Buenos Aires, had become the fiery and idealistic leader of the unitarios who were being rallied for a final stand against the detested dictator by the elderly statesman, Justo Jose de Urguiza. Now fifty-one, Urquiza had had political control of the Entre Rios province and had supported Rosas until just last year when, seeing how the bloody rule of the man he had once championed was rending Argentina to pieces, he had summoned the leaders of the unitarios and declared an all-out war to the death.
During his trips to the provinces of San Juan and Mendoza, Pablo Montagna called secret meetings with the wealthiest merchants in the leading cities there, urging them to contribute money for the purchase of arms and the hiring of mercenary soldiers from Bolivia and Paraguay and Uruguay. Despite the wealth of those allied behind Urquiza, all of whom unwaveringly had reason to abominate the tyrant Rosas, there could be no doubt that the dictator's army was the best equipped, the finest trained, and the most ruthlessly vindictive of any South American nation. To begin with, most of them were gauchos, the finest horseback riders in the world, expert with lance and saber and whip. To a man, the gauchos were poor and had been victimized by the great ranch holders who had treated them much as the Mexican peon had been for so many centuries. Thus when Rosas offered them recognition, the chance for advancement and wealth and the chance not only to avenge their own peonage but also to profit by pillage and rape, he had amassed a fighting force that had not yet been bested during the many years of his despotic rule.
On this January day, Pablo Montagna was lying abed with his beautiful young wife longer than he intended to, but he was still enamored of her and not without reason! Bruna Catrillo had been the only daughter of an innkeeper of Villa Maria, where Pablo Montagna had visited two years ago on the first of his dangerous missions for the cause of the unitarios. She was then eighteen, dazzlingly beautiful and equally virtuous. Slightly more than medium height, with dark-brown hair that tumbled nearly to her waist when unbound, a pure high-arching forehead, full generous mouth, flashing dark-brown eyes and an impertinent uptilted nose, she had enchanted Pablo Montagna with her unexpected intellect during his week's stay at her father's inn. He had been reading a book of poetry by the gifted Argentine writer Diego Hurcolos at breakfast on the terrace that morning. Bruna Catrillo had brought him his coffee and glancing at the book idly remarked that she found Hurcolos too idyllic and visionary, without real perception of the flesh-and-blood ways of the common people. Indignantly, he had challenged her, and she had seated herself and proceeded to quote from memory many of the poems of the volume.
A month later, business again took him to Villa Maria, and this time he asked for her hand in marriage. To her father's astonishment, Bruna refused, accusing her suitor of being simply a handsome young bourgeois whose inheritance had placed him above the suffering of the common people whom he professed to admire. It was only then that he had dared to divulge to her his secret liaison with Urquiza and she had promptly agreed to wed him.
"Amorcita," he murmured fondly, his fingers combing out her rich silken tresses, as he bent his head to kiss the dark-coral bud of one saucy nipple nearest him. "This time I may be gone for at least two weeks. I go to rally the leaders in San Luis and Mercedes, who have been slow with contributing to the war against the abominable Rosas."
"My dearest husband, why won't you take me into your confidences? You, know by now that I am as loyal to your cause as any of your patriots," Bruna passionately responded as she turned on her side to face him, her soft hand taking hold of his stiffening cock while with her other hand she stroked his cheek. "Do you think I am soft and pampered because I have become the wife of the rich Pablo Montagna? Devil take you if you do! When I was twelve, I rode a horse as ably as any gaucho, and I can throw a lariat with unerring skill. Also, I can shoot a rifle. These things I learned on my father's little farm outside Villa Maria. But you never thought to ask me about such talents."
"Are you suggesting that you accompany me on these dangerous missions, Bruna? It's unthinkable! It's dangerous enough for me to travel as I do, because I disguise myself and because fortunately I have a forged federalista letter of introduction baring Rosas' own signature."
"Dios!" Bruna gasped, her eyes wide with questioning, "how did you manage that?"
"It was simple. Just before I first met you, Linda, we captured a federalista spy who held a high post in the government of this abomination of Argentina. By a little persuasive argument, we were able to force him to write out this document for me, after which we mercifully killed him. But you, one of the most beautiful women in the world, to go with me on these secret missions? No, there's too much danger for you. And if you were to fall into the hands of those filthy gauchos, they would do to you what they did to my poor mother. I won't chance that, Bruna, I'm too selfish, I love you too much."
"If you loved me truly, Pablo, you would let me share the dangers as well as the pleasures of our life together. Don't you see, my beloved? In spite of all that Rosas talks of uniting the nation and giving opportunity to the downtrodden gauchos, he is no more on the side of the common man than the locust, and he is even more voracious in his appetites. Come, it's exactly because I'm a woman that I can be of value to you and the unitarios Pablo dearest, don't you see? If I'm stopped by one of those soldiers, I can always say I'm going to meet my lover. And this is a story that no one will disbelieve, least of all the stupid soldiers of that filthy pig of a dictator!"
"It's true, you could be of great service to our cause, my beloved," he said thoughtfully as he kissed her nipple again and let his other hand wander down the sweet goblet of her deep-dimpled belly towards the luxurious fleece of her cunt. Bruna sighed raptly and wriggled closer towards him, lifting her right leg and rubbing it against his naked calf to invite him to her, while her thumb and forefinger began to pinch the tip of his throbbing prick with quick little caresses which, she hoped, would accelerate his desire for her.
"Then it's settled!" she whispered huskily, "I want to go with you to San Juan and Mercedes. Besides, I haven't seen those cities. Maybe I can find some new books there for our library. But, oh, how hard it is-my dearest one, I can never get enough of you my Pablo!"
She arched to him, drawing his prick towards her moistening channel way. With a groan, Pablo Montagna seized her in his arms, his mouth burying itself in the soft fragrant hollow of her throat as he felt his prickhead pass through the gates of her temple, felt the hot enclaspment of the walls of her love-sheath cling about him as if reluctant ever to let him go.
And then, capriciously, with a flash of deliciously provocative and ribald wit, a quality which had intoxicated him with her during the early days of their honeymoon, when he had discovered that this cultured virgin was, for all her purity, as passionately imaginative as any courtesan, Bruna Montagna suddenly squirmed herself back until his prick-head nearly slipped out of her chasm, and, again clutching her right thumb and forefinger against the circumcisional grove of his organ, teased: "Before I let you have me, lover, you must swear to me you'll take me along this time and enroll me against the struggle against that pig! Otherwise, maybe I won't let you love me anymore. And besides, all these trips of yours, what do you think a healthy young bride like me needs if not her man beside her? You'll have me looking for someone else, maybe even a gaucho-"
"Oh, would you, now, you little hellion!" he chuckled hoarsely. Swiftly he knelt upright and, gripping her by the hips, pinned her on her belly to the bed." Then, kneeling astride her back, he began to spank her beautifully firm, upstandingly rounded olive-sheened bare bottom-cheeks with the flat of his hand as one would the posterior of a naughty child.
"So you'll let a gaucho get into bed with you, will you, Bruna?"-Smack, Smack!-"So you're getting tired of me, is that it?" Smack-Smack-Whack!-His hand rose and fell with gusto, and the sonorous crisp sounds filled the bedroom.
Bruna Montagna hammered her fists against the rumpled bedsheets, half-laughing, half-crying, twisting her face round to look up at him, kicking up her beautiful bare legs and trying to unhorse him. Her bottom was crimson now, and deliriously warm. She forced herself not to surrender herself too easily, knowing from ecstatic experience that the longer this mock-duel went on between them, the more furiously satisfying would be their reconciliation.
"Yes! You're a brute. Worse than a gaucho!" she complained. "Stop that! I shall go back to my father and tell him that you beat me! I shall even show him the marks, the poor dear old soul! Aiii! Owwhhh! Pablo, that's enough now! you're really hurting me, I tell you! Oouuu! I'll be good, I didn't mean it, you're better than a gaucho, truly you are-Oh, my! I promise to be good!"
This, as a last furious flurry of spanks assailed her bounding, wriggling naked bottom.
Instantly contrite, Pablo Montagna rolled over onto his back and held out his arms to the panting, sobbing, laughing naked brownette. With a mock-growl of fury, she got up onto her knees and moved over atop him, and while she rubbed her stinging bottom with one hand, she seized his prick with the other and guided it towards her eager cunt. Then she sank down with a groan of ecstasy: "Ahhhh, Pablo, my beloved one! Oh, yes, you're ever so much better than a gaucho! And now it's all settled, I'm leaving with you this afternoon, aren't I?"
There were no more words and there was no answer to that question. Instead, Pablo Montagna, his hands gripping his wife's flaming bottom-globes, arched and sank with her in timeless unison, their mouths fusing as their tongues engaged in the sweetest duel of all.....
CHAPTER THREE
At about the same hour that the wedding of Maria Concepcion Villartes was being interrupted by the dreaded Black Lancers, some fifty miles to the southeast, in the tiny village of Cuernaval, the federalista Sergeant Oswaldo Perez had tethered his exhausted horse to the picket fence in front of a weather-beaten little cabin on the edge of the village, the domicile of the old boatman Francisco Molinari. The little village was located near the Salado River which had its furthermost eastern outlet into the Pacific Ocean near La Plata. It was an area carefully watched by the tyrant Rosas, because about a decade ago a band of Chilean revolutionists from Santiago had made their way to the Diamante River which connected through a winding fork into the broader Salado and on down the Colorado, thence landing at Chascomus and attacking the Rosas forces in La Plata. Though the coup had been abortive, the Argentine dictator had been on his guard ever since lest this obscure little port which could be reached by both river and ocean might once again become the springboard for a new and more powerful blow against his reign.
That was why, after the news which had been sent to him by his couriers throughout the provinces that the unitarios who supported Urquiza were intensifying their alliance and trying to draw more soldiers to the final campaign, he had sent his own sergeant of dragoons, the notorious Oswaldo Perez, nicknamed "El Garrote," because this deadly assassin and torturer usually finished off his victims by strangling them with a rawhide thong under which he inserted a silver peg, twisting until the victim's eyes bulged from his sockets, and until the long and agonizing strangulation claimed his life.
Oswaldo Perez had been a gaucho, like most of the trusted body-guards and fiercely loyal officers who had pledged themselves to the death in support of Rosas. As a boy, he had seen his mother sent by order of the patron to the house of a cattle overseer, to whom the wealthy estanciero had promised her in payment of some debt for valiant service rendered. She had dared to' fight off the overseer, for she was then but newly a widow and still chaste to her husband's memory as she had been to him during his lifetime. For that crime of rebellion, Oswaldo Perez's mother was staked out naked near an anthill, her body smeared with honey, and left to die of the sun and the ants. He had killed the overseer with a hid-scraping knife and then fled from village to village until at last he had come to Buenos Aires. Rosas had heard his story and made him tell it before a gathering of the lancers and the dragoons, as but another example of how the fuedal ranch owners tyrannized the common people. Those were the early days of the Rosas rule, but there was still talk of idealism and heroism, before the common people themselves began to be sickened by the horrors piled upon them in the name of their own "emancipation." Now it was a common saying throughout the provinces ruled by Rosas-though it was whispered only to one's best friend-"If you have burdens, hombre, bring them to Rosas. He will emancipate you from your land, your home, your money, your wife and your daughter, and in return may grant you your life."
Oswaldo Perez rose quickly to favor, and because he was adept with the knife and the lariat and the whip, was often called upon to put criminals to the torture and even to death. He refused higher office than that of sergeant, wishing to be his own man as he put it, so that he might come and go at will in the name of the dictator and avenge those crimes committed against Rosas. He was here now to avenge just such a "crime." For the old boatman, it had been reported to him by spies-and there were spies everywhere in Argentina in this era-had but a week ago ferried a strange young norte americano up the Salado river towards this very port where the Chileans had made a beachhead ten years ago. The gringo dog had not yet been found, but in every village notices had been posted offering a reward for information leading to his capture. The presence of a gringo, unexplained, without passport or visa, was uneasy portent for the dictator now, when his enemies were rising everywhere against him.
But there was another reason Oswaldo Perez had ridden like one possessed of the devil till his horse was lathered with foam and its flanks heaving to reach Cuernaval. For Francisco Molinari had a granddaughter not yet sixteen but of marvelous beauty, and the beady little eyes of Oswaldo Perez had often fixed upon her and lusted for her. He was short and squat, with a thick moustache and unruly, coarse black hair touched here and there with streaks of gray. His face was swarthy, and it was said that he was of Inca descent, which might have accounted for his implacable cruelty. He was never seen to smile except when he was tightening the rawhide thong of the garrote about the neck of a condemned. That, or when he found himself alone in a locked room with a cowering girl, in his hand a silver-handled rawhide whip with three plaited thongs.
He strode to the door of the cabin and, without bothering to knock, shoved upon the door and entered. The white-haired old boatman sat at a crude wooden table, eating a bowl of beans and cucumbers, and beside him stood his granddaughter, Consuela, She drew back with a gasp of fear, the bowl of beans nearly dropping from her slim fingers. Of medium height, with dark brown hair that fell to her waist, a pure sweet oval face and enormous liquid brown eyes, her ripe mouth and, already at her tender age, the budding rounds of her titties, thighs and buttocks made his eyes flicker with the light of lust.
"You know who I am, Molinari?" he demanded in a rough, authoritative tone.
"Si. You are called El Garrote, Senor Perez. "
Oswaldo Perez bared his yellow jagged teeth, stained from many cheroots, in a vulpine grin. "That's true, amigo, and not without reason. My business with you will be brief. I am told that not so long ago a gringo engaged your little boat down the Salado out to the ocean. And, for all I know, beyond that. Who was this man?"
"But you are mistaken, Senor Perez. I have used my boat this past two weeks for fishing. Perhaps my granddaughter will bear me out. Consuela, little one, will you not serve Senor Perez some of the stewed eel which was taken from my catch at the mouth of the Salado?"
With a greed look at Consuela, Oswaldo Perez finally shook his head and said, "No, old man, I have a hunger for something other than eels this day. But my throat is parched, and a strong cool drink at this moment would be most pleasant."
"I regret, Senor Perez, that I have no spirits to offer you. But you are welcome to share my yerba mate."
"That will do, if you've nothing else, Molinari. Let your granddaughter bring it and quickly!" His greedy eyes again rested on the ripe young titties which strained against the coarse cloth blouse and Consuela, seeing that lecherous stare, turned scarlet and hastened to bring the strong tea made of holly berries. As was the custom with almost every Argentinean, rich or poor, yerba mate was served in a finely wrought silver cup with a little silver straw for both stirring and sipping. Consuela brought her grandfather's cup and stirrer and set it down before the unwelcome guest. As she turned to go, Oswaldo Perez swiftly circled her waist with his left arm muttering, "Valgame Dios, querida, do not be so inhospitable!"
"Senor Perez," the old boatman intervened in a trembling voice, "You are my guest, and the laws of hospitality bid me welcome you. But it is wrong to lay a hand upon my granddaughter, who is too young to understand what it is that men desire of her, particularly such men as you."
"Ah, you're a brave old buzzard, Molinari!" Sergeant Perez let his arm slide down, but not until his hand had slyly rubbed the jutting firm round buttocks of the trembling girl. "But you speak of laws, boatman. And in all Argentine, the law is that of El Supremo, by whom I mean his Excellency Don Juan Manuel de Rosas, Gubernador of the Province of Buenos Aires. So I do not recognize your laws, old man." Again his lips curled to show his decaying teeth, a hideous rictus which passed for a smile. Then, stirring the tea, he sipped it and made a face, "It is bitter, old man. Bitter as my thoughts on your treason to El Supremo! It was your duty to report to a federalista officer that you had taken this norte americano as a passenger on your leaking old hulk. You are old enough to have had some wisdom planted in your senile skull by now, Molinari. Did you not believe that it was strange for a gringo to wish to be transported to the ocean, without learning what business he had there?"
"I have said before, Senor Perez, that I took no such passenger. And my boat does not leak. If you wish to try it yourself, Senor Perez-"
Oswaldo Perez rose from the table with an oath, seized the silver cup and straw and flung them against the wall of the cabin. "Do not try your little games with me, Molinari!" he bellowed. "You are not dealing with a stupid Indian or a village idiot, but with me, Sergeant Oswaldo Perez, special aide to El Supremo! Now then, for the last time, the news of this gringo! "
"As heaven is my witness, Senor Perez, I can tell you nothing," the white-haired old boatman said softly as he crossed himself. Then, quickly, he made a gesture to his granddaughter, bidding her flee the cabin. But Oswaldo Perez intercepted that gesture and for the first time truly smiled, the smile of a hyena stalking helpless prey. "No, don't go, muchachita, "he purred, "you must stay to be my witness. I fear I must persuade your silly old grandfather, just a bit, mind you, for it is unlawful to hold back information concerning the accursed unitarios from El Supremo!"
So saying, he moved swiftly before the frightened girl could anticipate his intent, seized her by her wrist, while with the other hand he drew his coiled lariat from a bonehook at his belt and swiftly roped her, winding the lariat round and round her body from chest to knees before he made a tight knot.
"In the name of heaven," Francisco Molinari pleaded, tears running down his face, "Don't harm her, she's an innocent, I swear before Him who knows all things!"
"That is the first truth you have uttered since I have entered your miserable hovel, boatman!" Oswaldo Perez sneered. Then he seized the old man by the throat and flung him down upon the floor while Consuela shrieked in terror.
Ripping the coarse camiso to bare the old man's emaciated chest and belly, and on his knees pinning his helpless victim with a hand at his throat, Oswaldo Perez reached behind him and wrenched off one of his silver spurs. Then, baring his teeth again in a sadistic grin, he prodded the sharp point of the spur against Francisco Molinari's belly. "Talk quickly!" he warned.
"May the gods have mercy on my granddaughter and me-I have nothing to tell you, Senor Perez-Ahrrrraggggh!!!"
His trembling prayer ended in a frenzied scream as he writhed and twisted; the squat sergeant had buried the point of the spike in his belly, and then ripped it downwards. Consuela, her eyes exhorbitantly staring, lying on her side near thise scene of horror, began to babble hysterically: "Oh no! Not my poor abuelo-have mercy on him, Senor! He's done nothing, spare him, don't torture a helpless old man!"
Oswaldo Perez glanced greedily at her, then drew up the bloodied spur and designed a bleeding cross on the chest of his nearly fainting victim. "I will flay you alive, you old dog, if you don't speak!" he snarled.
Francisco Molinari's eyes were glazed with unspeakable agony. His lips moved, but only groans and gasps exuded from them. Enraged, Oswaldo Perez lifted the spur and jabbed down into the scrawyny throat of the old boatman, reaching the jugular. A geyser of blood spurted forth, drenching his uniform as he rose, panting and snarling with frustrated rage. The old boatman's eyes rolled, seeking through the mist of approaching death the contorted horrified face of his beautiful young granddaughter. Then he shuddered convulsively and was still.
Oswaldo Perez strode towards the sobbing girl, stooped and lifted her up in his arms, then bore her into the next room and flung her down on the pile of Indian blankets which had served as bed for the murdered boatman. Greedily, he untied the lariat and unwound it from her body while she whimpered, paralyzed with fear.
"And now your turn, little one," he muttered thickly, "tell me what you know of this gringo, and I won't hurt you. You're much too pretty to be scarred with that spur of mine." Then, his face hardening, "But don't think I'll spare you if you he to me, little bitch!"
"My poor abuelo-why have you killed him-oh, Dios, I don't know anything-I swear I don't-let me go-my poor abuelo! "
Then, as his fingers seized the top of her coarse blouse, Consuela shrieked in mortal terror. Grinning, his lips again bared in the hideous ristus of anticipatory joys to come, Oswaldo Perez stripped her naked, feasting his glittering eyes on the olive-satiny round, proud young titties with their dark coral aurolae and dainty little buds, the wide shallow niche of her navel, the soft thicket of dark-brown tendrils shielding the pink fleshy lips of her tempting young virgin cunt. Mad with shame and terror, the young girl tried to twist towards the wall to hide herself in an access of outraged modesty, but the brutal sergeant struck her a glancing blow in the jaw with his fist, momentarily stunning her. Then, swiftly opening the fly of his uniformed trousers he bared his swollen prick and, gripping her panting titties with his coarse, dirty fingers, lowered himself over her and thrust himself against her maiden orifice.
Moaning feverishly, Consuela weakly tried to push him away with her trembling hands, but with a brutal laugh he struck her again, and she fell back unconscious.
Then with a sinister chuckles of lustful excitement, he dug his fingers into her swelling titties and forced his cock between the soft pouting lips of her virgin cunthole, thrust home to the varrier of her maiden-seal, and with a triumphant bellow, lunged forward to shatter it and burrow himself to the balls in her narrow young love sheath.
His rut did not last long, because of his over-weaning excitement; torture and death alone had the power to render him virile. When he withdrew himself from her unconscious body, he staggered to his feet with an oath of disgust. Then, bending down to the unconscious girl, he rolled her over onto her belly, and straightened, his eyes scanning the upstanding, satiny rondures of her ovalsheened bottom. He bent to the discarded lariat, coiled it again about halfway, looping the gathered coil over his left arm, and then, using the last three or four feet as a whip, he began to flog Consuela's bottom and thighs with vicious sweeping strokes, licking his lips at the sight of the angry red marks which soon sprang up on the warm olive skin of her naked flesh.
Presently she stirred, moaned, and her face slowly turned back over her shoulder. Her glazed eyes cleared and she saw his cruel leering face; then she felt the burning slash of the rawhide lariat over her welted bottom and she screamed aloud and tried to get to her hands and knees.
"That's it exactly, muchachita! " he grunted as he flung aside the lariat and swiftly knelt down beside her. Clutching her titties with his hands, he fitted himself to her and before poor Consuela could escape, his again rigid spear was prodding against the crinkly, furtive orifice of her bottomhole.
"Oh no-don't hurt me anymore-have pity-my poor abuelo-oh no, please-aiiii! Eeyarhhhheeeooouuuu!!! Please, it hurts-it tears me-owwouuu!!!" she shrieked as maintaining her on all fours, his dirty, jagged fingernails scoring the tender flesh of her panting young titties, as Oswaldo Perez viciously forced himself to the depths of her rectal chasm.
This time, to his delight, the act took far longer, and he could feel her convulsive jerkings, the clenching of her sphincter muscles each time his prick thrust deep and then withdrew only to thrust again. Shrieking and pleading, Consuela now tried to struggle and to evade the painful sodomizing, aggravated by the burning, throbbing pangs of the lashing she had sustained. But ruthlessly he forced her to yield, holding her to him till his fingers tore the soft skin of her titties and blood oozed from the lacerations. At last with a bellow of rut, he poured his essence into her bowels, and then drew himself free of her and got to his feet.
From the pocket of his uniform trousers, he now took a short rawhide thong. As Consula sprawled flat on her belly, whimpering and shuddering, he knelt at her side, stealthily looped the thong around her soft throat, and then drew out a silver peg from the back pocket of his trousers. Inserting the peg between the thong and the back of her neck, he twisted it. A gurgling cry rang out, and Consuela's hands rushed to the deadly constriction, clawing at the thong, her legs kicking convulsively. Setting his teeth, he twisted the peg more and more till at last with a final gurgling gasp, the naked young girl slept and was still. He rolled her over onto her back, put his ear to her left tittie, and then rose with a chuckle. "A pity to waste such a soft-skinned little bitch. But traitors don't deserve mercy." he observed to himself.
He went back into the room where the old boatman lay dead in a welter of blood, retrieved the silver cup and straw and thrust them into the pocket of his tunic. Then, searching till he found tinder and flint, Oswaldo Perez squatted down before a basket made of dry rushes, and rubbed them together till the smell of smoke rose and the tiny thread began to curl along the side of the basket. He rose then, contemptuously kicked the boatman's corpse with the toe of his boot and made his way to the door. There he turned back to watch the spreading flame. It did not take long before the cabin was razed. And it would be a good warning for the rest of the villagers in this miserable hamlet which gave sanctuary to a gringo or, for that matter to any enemy of Juan Manuel de Rosas.
CHAPTER FOUR
Little suspecting that the old man who had given him shelter and food and then the use of his little boat down the Salado River out to the coast had paid for that help with his life, Kelly MacDonald made his way towards La Plata. He had purchased a fine horse in a little village near Chascomus and gone on at night, so as to avoid the federalista patrols. His mission was to meet Justo Jose de Urquiza and volunteer his services to the cause of the unitarios. Perhaps history would not record his name on the pages of the incessant revolutions which plagued the countries of South America, but his role as a fiery catalyst in the ultimate struggle to oust the tyrant Rosas was to prove of immeasurable worth.
Kelly MacDonald was thirty, had been born to a Scottish father and a beautiful mestizo mother, part Mexican and part Indian. His birthplace was Laredo, Texas, and in the office of the marshal of that frontier city near the Mexican border, there was even at this moment a poster depicting Kelly MacDonald and offering a reward of a thousand dollars for his capture, dead or alive. He was here in Argentina, with a price on his head back in his native land, as an adventurer who was both cynic and idealist, the ideal combination for a revolutionist.
Six months ago, he had been foreman of his father's cattle ranch about twenty miles west of Laredo, engaged to a comely, rather buxom blonde girl of twenty, the grand-daughter of old Patrick Wilson, who owned the feed and supply store where his father often traded. Bess Wilson and Kelly MacDonald had had an easygoing understanding, for her parents had been killed by Apaches, and old Patrick had brought her up as his own child to accustom her to the rough life of the frontier. His own wife had long since died and he had no other kin in Laredo. Bess Wilson was honest and candid with her suitor, knowing his sudden fits of anger and his restlessness. "I've got to stay and look after Grandfather, Kelly," she had told him. "Sure, I'll marry you and I'll make you a good wife, as good as good as any woman can a fellow like you. But you've got to be patient, Kelly. He's all I've got left in the world, and he's got a touch of consumption, so it won't be long. I owe him that, after what he did for me after my parents died."
So Kelly MacDonald had been content to ride herd on his father's steers, to round them up every spring and take them on to the railway station at San Antonio, and he had been reasonably faithful to Bess Wilson. Oh, there had been a few pretty Mexican girls he'd tumbled in the barn, but these were only momentary amours to ease the building tension in him, till he could find roots enough in this land and this herd he would one day inherit and this blonde young beauty who would stand beside him and bear his brood.
And then, six months ago, he had met in Laredo a mild-mannered middle-aged little man with spectacles, Juan Garcia, who had fled the tyranny of Argentina and the cruelty of its dictator Rosas, after his own wife had been raped and murdered and his two teenaged daughters abducted to become whores in the dictator's palace. Garcia had turned his substantial financial holdings into diamonds when he reached Panama on the arduous and long journey away from Buenos Aires to the United States. It was his hope that he could enlist adventurers like Kelly MacDonald to bear the fight back to the dictator and, in one tremendous rallying wave of courage and determination, topple him from jiis throne.
Kelly MacDonald had spent long evenings in the Laredo saloon listening to Juan Garcia's tales of the pampas, the serene beauty of the country, the clement weather and the unruffled blue skies. He had heard of the great herds of cattle which the gauchos drove over hundreds of miles, of the rich grazing lands, and of the beautiful soft-voiced, olive-skinned, black -haired beauties to be found in the tiniest villages. His pulse had quickened at the stories of this unknown yet still virgin land, as they had in sympathy to the stories of oppression which Garcia related. Kelly MacDonald himself had little concern with politics, yet somehow he felt that his life had passed him by. Six feet tall, brown-haired, lean and muscular, with keen blue eyes, straight nose, and a firm, deeply cleft chin, he was possessed of enormous physical vigor; yet, though virtually self-educated, his mind hungered for stronger food than the placid day-to-day routine of riding the range, marketing cattle and waiting for Bess Wilson to come to the marriage bed with him.
Thus he was already, without knowing it, ripe for the plucking of the unitario cause, even though it was no concern of his and thousands of miles away. And then, perhaps two weeks after his last encounter with Juan Garcia at the saloon, a roving band of Comancheros came out of the Basin on one of their frequent lightning raids upon the unwary and unprotected settlers in the villages and homesteads beyond the larger Texas cities. Kelly himself was in Laredo buying supplies for Patrick Wilson when the Comancheros struck. When he got back to the ranch late that evening, he found the house burned to the ground, his still beautiful mestizo mother (not yet fifty) lying naked before the water trough, ravaged and slashed with knives. The charred body of his father, shot down by one of the lawless horsemen, left him the last of his line.
From some of the frightened Mexican women who had served the MacDonald household for many years, he learned what he wanted to know. The Comancheros had seized three of the younger girls and taken them off to the Basin, there to be whores and slaves until they died of the brutality and the torture that would inevitably accompany their sexual bondage. Two hundred head of cattle had been driven off as well, the barn burned and a dozen cowboys who worked his father's range had fallen in the short and futile battle against overwhelming odds. But the old cook Margerita had described to him the leader of the marauding band, a tall brown-haired man with a long beard, wearing buckskin and white boots, with a hawk-like nose and a drawling Texas voice.
The Comancheros were white renegades who sold guns and whiskey to the ferocious Comanche tribes who had moved from Wyoming down through Oklahoma and northeast Texas to find an almost impregnable fortress in a rocky gorge in the desolate Basin. It was profitable to deal with the Comanches, and many thieves and murderers and outlaws found sanctuary and a new, powerful life of rapine and violence riding side by side with their redskinned allies. But the description which Margerita had given Kelly MacDonald fitted a man known in Laredo as 'Big Bill Mullens, who purported to be a rancher himself and who owned a little spread about fifty miles east of the MacDonald holdings.
Kelly MacDonald strapped on his guns and went back to Laredo and waited in the saloon where he had met Juan Garcia, who had gone on to San Antonio by now to enlist men for the cause against Rosas. At the end of the second week, 'Big Bill' Mullens walked into the saloon and ordered whiskey. Kelly MacDonald challenged him, called him a murderer and Judas, and shot him down. But the saloonkeeper, in league with the Comanchero leader, swore to the marshal that Kelly MacDonald had fired in cold blood and without giving the dead man a chance to draw. The marshal came out to the ranch to arrest him, but Kelly MacDonald mounted a swift horse and rode across the Mexican border before the posse could catch up with him. From there he went on towards Argentina forgetting Bess Wilson and all that he had left behind him, thinking only of erasing from his mind the horror he had seen at the burned ranch by enlisting in a war against tyranny and brutality.
While en route, he sent back a letter to Pedro Alicante, his father's trusted foreman, instructing the old Mexican to sell what was left of the herd and to collect what inheritance had been left to him in the courts, convert it into a draft and send it on in care of the bank at which Juan Garcia had told him he was amassing funds to be used in the battle against Rosas.
And now, towards the end of January, in the year of Our Lord, 1852, Kelly MacDonald found himself twenty miles south of La Plata, at a tiny village called Uzcumane. His horse had foundered, and he had walked the last fifteen miles to the village, exhausted and badly wanting sleep. The Rosas patrols had been everywhere, and he had nearly been apprehended by one of them two days before.
It was nightfall, but a brilliant full moon silvered the sky and let him still see the verdant green of the pampas and, somewhat to the northeast, the fringe of untamed jungle beyond a bend in the narrow river. But he had already learned enough lore about this newly adopted country of his to understand that one did not go for a bath in the river until one made certain that the deadly piranha did not infest that particular locale. Once, lying behind a thick hedge of juniper, he had seen a federalista horseman try to ford the river just beyond-doubtless in search of him-and midway through that fording, the horse had suddenly screamed and topped into the water, pulling down the rider with it. Then he had heard hoarse bellows of indescribable agony, seen the soldier strike out wildly with his arms, only to sink. And the water of the river had been covered with blood.
It was, Kelly MacDonald estimated, another twenty-four hours before he could reach La Plata. He had actually, in coming to Argentina, made several elaborate detours, all of which had cost long weeks of arduous travel. Juan Garcia had told him that the tyrant feared an outbreak of rebellion throughout the land and hence, through bribery, had spies even in Central America whose duty it was to send back word of any suspicious strangers bound for Argentina. He spoke a Mexican-Spanish fluently, and he discovered that, with the exception of villages whose inhabitants were mainly descendants of Indian tribes and the people of Buenos Aires themselves-who spoke in a dialect known as that of "Rio Platenese" where the vowels were thickened and where the letters "y" and "l!" were pronounced like "j"-he could make himself understood reasonably well. Everywhere, he had found, the people were friendly by nature, whether it be in the cities or the tiniest villages. Yet everywhere, too, a thick fear seemed to hang like a pall, so that those whom he encountered were wary of him at first and closemouthed until they learned that he was a norte americano who believed in the freedom of the people.
By now, after nearly two decades of the tyrant's rule, even those citizens in towns and villages known to be sympathetic to the federailsta cause, were weary of the long years of bloodshed and tyranny, oppressive taxes and predatory domination of their lives. For the men of Rosas, and particularly those elite soldiers enlisted in the " Lanceros Negros " did not confine their looting, raping and assassination to the unitarios.
He came towards a little hut at the edge of the village, shifting the heavy leather strap of his knapsack which had begun to bite deeply into his flesh, wanting a bath, a good steak and a cigar. Perhaps even a woman, for he had been unusually continent all during this long pilgrimage from his homeland to the domain of Rosas. His money had nearly run out, all the more reason for wanting to be in La Plata as soon as possible to collect the draft which Pedro Alicante had sent him. At the moment, however, footsore, hungry and thirsty, his body aching, Kelly MacDonald found himself thinking of Bess Wilson and wondering if he would ever see her again.
Outside the hut, a superb chestnut-bay mare snorted, tossed its head and jerked at the reins tied to a wooden stake hammered into the ground. Kelly MacDonald's eyes brightened. It was a magnificent horse, and still more magnificent was the saddle, hand-tooled and decorated with silver, with an elegant bridle which he quickly estimated would probably cost a Texas cowboy at least two months' pay.
Then he heard a scream, instantly muffled, followed by a man's hoarse voice speaking quickly and with so broad a dialect that he could hardly catch a word. And then there was the sound of a scuffle, and once again, recognizably, a woman's voice cried out shrilly before it was stifled as if by force.
Kelly MacDonald pushed open the rickety door of the hut, just in time to see a stocky, short, black-haired man in a red tunic and black military breeches and gleaming boots struggling with a young girl. His fingers dug into the soft dusky-ivory skinned flesh of her shoulders, and his brutish, bearded face was pressed against her sumptuous round young titties. Her blouse had been ripped from her, her skirt torn, and she was naked to the waist as she pounded the back of his head with her fists and twisted frantically against his embrace.
"Let her go, cobarde!" Kelly MacDonald exclaimed.
"Ayudeme!" the young girl gasped, turning huge liquid brown eyes towards the tall Texan. At once, her would-be ravisher released her and swung about with a snarl, his piggish, closely set eyes squinting maliciously at the intruder. "Hola, gringo, who are you, how do you dare to interrupt the duty of a Lancero Negro?"
"Well, cobarde," Kelly MacDonald drawled, "back where I come from, we don't exactly call it duty, what you're trying to do to that young filly. I gather she doesn't want to go along with you, either. Why don't you go ride your nice horse away from here?"
"Stupido!" the stocky horseman snarled, drawing a silver-handled short knife from a black-leather belt fringed with silver. "This is not your affair! Besides, you are under arrest, Senor Gringo."
"For what, cobarde?" Kelly MacDonald chuckled.
His interlocutor's face darkened; and with a cry of anger, he sprang at the Texan, the knife uplifted. Kelly MacDonald stooped, feinted to one side, and sent his left fist into the paunchy belly of his adversary while his right hand reached up to grip the man's wrist and twist it till, with a shrill yell of pain, the federalista soldier dropped the knife.
"I'll kill you for that, gringo!" the Black Lancer horseman swore. Then he aimed a vicious kick with his right booted foot at Kelly MacDonald's crotch. Only a seventh sense of danger made the Texan twist to one side, but the heavy booted toe caught him in the hip and made him groan with pain and stagger for a moment. Swiftly his adversary retrieved the fallen knife, and lunged forward and upward in an eviscerating thrust. But again the Texan's youthful brawling days-many a saloon fight had gone on the winning side of his own personal ledger-saved his life; leaping backwards, he turned sideways and sent his left fist crashing against his adversary's cheekbone. The Black Lancer tottered and went down on hands and knees, shaking his head and gasping for breath. But he still clutched the knife and now he slowly rose, murder in his eyes.
The half-naked girl seized a crude stool and suddenly brought it down on the top of the Black Lancer's skull. This time he fell forward, inert. She went down to her knees, seized the knife and, before Kelly MacDonald could stop her, swiftly raised it and then plunged it into the fallen man's back.
Then she rose, her eyes on Kelly MacDonald and said with fierce joy, "The pig is dead! One less murdering swine in the army of Juan Manuel de Rosas!"
His eyes widened with surprise, for this village girl spoke excellent Spanish. Moreover, she was damnably attractive and quite unconcerned with the fact that she was practically naked from neck to waist. Her face was almost patrician, but with the high cheekbones which suggested Indian blood, a high forehead, thick brows, a short, rather squat nose but with widely flaring thin wings, and a passionate mouth, ripe and generous, the lower hp much fuller than its red mate. But he found himself looking, too, at the fine curve of her full throat and the deep pulse hollow where her life fiercely beat, and most of all at the two splendidly high perched, round cantaloupe-like titties with dusky-pink aureolae narrow and concentrated in whose centers the voluptuous, firm tips of well-developed nipples palpitated.
She made no attempt to hide her naked titties, but stood, a kind of mocking little smile on her full lips, scrutinizing him. "You are indeed a gringo, Senor," she said at last. "And I'm grateful to you. That's why I permit you to stare at me-which also tells me that you must be a gringo. Don't your women where you come from, Senor, have two tetas like mine?"
A slow flush spread over the back of his neck and tinged his leathery, sun-bronzed cheeks, and he was aware that he hadn't shaved in days and that he was growing a disreputably stubbly beard. "Not exactly, Senorita" he self-consciously chuckled, "I'd say very few women in my country, as you put it, have your natural endowments."
"Now that was a very pretty speech. My name is Elena Bodegas. I am cousin to Bruna Montagna of whom doubtless you have heard."
"I confess I haven't, Senorita Bodegas." He eased his knapsack off his shoulder now, with a sigh of relief. "Maybe you'd like to put your blouse back on."
"But who are you, Senor Gringo?"
"My name is Kelly MacDonald. I'm from Texas."
"Verdad!" she suddenly giggled mischievously. "Indeed, I have heard much of your country. Are all the men tall and strong as you?"
"A great many of us, yes, Senorita Bodegas." he found this conversation between a half-naked young girl and himself almost uproariously amusing, considering the dangers and hardships through which he had emerged to reach this final refuge before his meeting in La Plata with the leader of the rebellious forces against the tyrant. "But why do you think I should know the name of Bruna Montagna?"
"Because, Senor MacDonald," her head rose proudly-a gesture which thrust out the magnificent cantaloupes of her naked titties all the more excitingly-" she is the wife of Pablo, who will be one of the heroes of our revolution against the accursed dictator Juan Manual de Rosas. And I am proud to be her cousin, because I too am a unitario!"
"Well, then, in that case, Senorita, I'm even more glad I saved you. I'm on my way to La Plata to meet with a certain gentleman by the name of Urquiza-"
"Our glorious savior!" the young girl enthusiastically interrupted. "You, from Texas, have come to fight for us, Senor MacDonald? It is fate that has made us meet like this. I am on my way to La Plata too."
"But what are you doing in this little village, then?"
"Well," she shrugged with a delicious unconcern for her half-nudity, again making her marvelous titties jiggle as proof of their superlative firmness, "my old nurse was born in this village. I live in La Plata, Senor MacDonald. But because my father is in Montevideo and I was bored with sitting home and doing nothing while brave men are dying to free Argentina from a tyrant, I decided to enlist in the cause. After all, I'm eighteen, time when a woman's married and bearing her man a child in this country, Senor MacDonald. And here in Uzcumane, the headman has sent several of his young Indian warriors to join the army of Justo Jose de Urquiza. I brought a message to him, you see, when I came to visit my old nurse."
"And the man who tried to force you?" Kelly MacDonald asked.
"He is a Black Lancer, Senor. He belongs to a body of ferocious murderers and villains whom Rosas has gathered around himself not only for protection of his own vile carcass but also to plunder and to bring women to him. Old Dugaldo, the headman of this village, warned me that there had been a patrol of Rosas' men searching here but a few days ago. This one, as you see, was not satisfied with the first search of Uzcumane and came back and found me. So you see I am very grateful to make your acquaintance, Senor MacDonald. And now, since it seems to annoy you so much that I am without my blouse, I will try to put it back on, though I fear it is torn beyond repair."
She bent and retrieved the ripped blouse and put her arms through it, then giggled like a very young girl, her lips curling in an exquisite smile utterly without sophistry or guile. The blouse was ripped down the center almost to the hem, and only partly concealed the magnificent rounds of her young firm titties. "But at least it will serve if I don't move about too much. Now I think, Senor MacDonald, we'd better dispose of this pig. Let's bury him behind the hut. The earth here is fertile and it will soon consume him, and perhaps even flowers will grow where once a Rosas pig stalked the earth!"
Wonderingly, grinning at the incredible implausibility of it all, Kelly MacDonald stooped and helped Elena Bodegas lift the lifeless body of the squat dragoon outside the hut, then dug a hole in the humid, rich black earth and buried him.
"I'm the one that should be grateful to you, Senorita Bodegas," he offered when the task was done." Now I've got me a horse. Mine foundered on my twenty miles or so back on the trail, and I came in on foot. You've a horse, too, I imagine?"
"Oh yes, Senor MacDonald. A fine black mare whom I call Nelda. I hid her at the back of the headman's hut, so that the Rosas men wouldn't find me here. My poor old nurse is dead, alas, Senor MacDonald. I didn't know that when I came. She was so good to me, so gentle, an uneducated Indian who never knew anything but poverty and fear and the whip till she came to live in this little village. And even then, with the Black Lancers riding throughout Argentina, she could never know real peace. Now she has it, praise be to God.'."
He found himself taking her hand in his, and she suddenly looked up into his eyes and then gave him so dazzling and warm a smile that he felt himself tremble with an inopportune desire. Not only was she maddeningly beautiful and innocently wanton as a pagan nymph of the forest, but she had a candor and courage which took him, a stranger, at once into her thrust.
"We can ride back to La Plata together, then, Senorita Bodegas," he said in a suddenly husky voice.
"Of course. Senor MacDonald. But there is no need to go right away. The patrol will not be back until tomorrow. We can leave at dawn. Meanwhile, there is food here, and a little yerba mate. I will prepare it for you. And then-" she had moved away to the end of the room, and now turned back to smile at him-" I should like very much to learn whether you think I am like your Texas women and, for myself, to find out whether you are like in any way at all the men who fight against the tyrant!" And then she disappeared into the back of the hut, leaving him first aghast and then thunderstruck with his good fortune in this the promise of her bounteous, uninhibited acceptance not only as cobarde (comrade) but perhaps even as lover.
CHAPTER FIVE
Kelly MacDonald told himself that this was some strange dream, entirely unreal and yet much too exciting to end. An hour ago, he had stumbled into this little village, bent only on finding food and shelter for the night until he could continue his journey to La Plata. Within that short span of time, he had helped prevent one of Rosa's elite soldiers from brutally ravishing one of the most beautiful young women he had ever seen in all his life. She had herself avenged the attempt against her honor by stabbing her assailant to death. And now, after helping her dispose of the body behind the hut, he was seated at the crude little wooden table while this selfsame and quite disconcerting young woman was preparing a meal whose ingredients he could not entirely identify but which he ate ravenously. And all the while, she sat across from him, smiling at him, wrinkling her nose at him, and making him more self-conscious than he had ever been before in the presence of a member of the opposite sex.
For one thing, the tattered blouse, rent down the middle, refused to conceal the dusky-ivory titties from which he could not take his eyes. No matter how she moved, whether to lean forward or to sit back, whether to rise to bring more of the meal to fill his plate, the ripped blouse fell away to bare those swelling, exuberant young globes with their dusky aurolae and their pert nipple buds. And as for the girl herself, she acted as if it were the most natural thing in all the world to go about like this in the presence of a man who but an hours ago had been a complete stranger to her and, what was more, a man from another nation, a gringo.
But, to give him credit for integrity, the tall Texan, discovering that Elena Bodegas had an intellect as vividly impressive as her beauty, conversed at length with her over this improvised meal and learned more about the facets of this national revolution than he had learned from the far more dogmatic and pedantic Juan Garcia. For Elena Bodegas, completely forgetting how much of her luscious body she displayed to this gringo so badly in need of a shave and a bath, spoke with a fervent passion against the ruthless cruelties committed in the name of federalism by Juan Manuel de Rosas, and most particularly of two of his most feared henchmen, Oswaldo Perez, known as "El Garrote," and Porfirio Gonzalez, "The Bloody Butcher." She told him how the latter had led his troop of Black Lancers into the little village of Lujan, dared to violate the holy sanctuary of a church to interrupt a wedding, murdered the father of the young girl who waited to be wed and then abducted her and ten other girls taken at random after an intensive search of the little village. She told him, too, how Teniente Porfirio Gonzalez had called out to the horrified old priest as he stood over the body of the murdered alcalde, "Hola, you in there in your beads and black robe, see to it that a new mayor is elected, and make certain that he is a federalista, or we'll be back to run the election ourselves!"
She edified him also on things that she had learned from her father, and from some of her friends who dwelt in the towns near the Province of Buenos Aires and hence pitifully vulnerable to the tyranny of Rosas. Only last month, she told Kelly MacDonald, Oswaldo Perez had seized a handsome matron of thirty-seven, and her three daughters, fourteen, seventeen, and nineteen, after a raid upon a small village to the northwest of Buenos Aires which had been intended to trap the matron's courageous husband, one of the underground leaders of the Unitario cause. The mother and her three daughters had been brought before Rosas in a special subterranean dungeon of the palace in which he lived like an emperor. The mother was put on the rack, but not stripped; and then her oldest daughter was strung up by the thumbs till her toes scarcely touched the stone floor, her clothes ripped from her, and flogged with a rawhide whip by the sadistic Perez. Rosas, who had had an upholstered armchair brought into the dungeon where he might sprawl in comfort to observe this cruel scene, calmly puffed at a cigar and informed the hysterical mother, "Dona Salusta, when you are ready to tell me where my men can find your traitor of a husband, your girls will go free. Till then, we shall proceed."
Kelly MacDonald ground his teeth as he listened to Elena Bodegas' fervent narrative. "And all of this is done in the name of uniting Argentina, Senorita Bodegas?" he interrupted.
She stared at him a moment, then nodded her head so vigorously that the tumbled mass of burnished honey-gold hair danced about her shoulders-and at the same time made the torn blouse gape again to disclose almost in their entirety the marvelous globes of her satiny titties. "Yes, Senor Gringo, " she said in a vibrant voice, "but after all these years on his throne, the monster Rosas had forgotten the ideals he professed when first he became the Gubernador. Doubtless he has tasted power so long that it has become his very life, for he observes what riches and spoils it brings him. So his men raid peaceful little villages, often inhabited by those who long ago adopted the cause of the federalistas. Where there is gold, wherever there are attractive girls to be enslaved, there the Lanceros Negros will ride."
"And no one has assassinated him in all these years?"
"Attempts have been made, of a certainty, but he is too well protected and he stays in his palace where the treasurers and the women are brought to him. But I haven't told you yet of what he did to that tragic family, Senor Gringo."
"Tell me, then. It will give me another reason to fight against him."
She reached out her hand and grasped his, and her eyes met his in a long appraisal. Then suddenly she blushed, and it was as if he saw her for the first time. He began to feel the stirrings of desire between his legs, and he wanted her fiercely, hungrily. But to try to take her now would be to substitute himself for the dead federalista. He knew in this moment that he wanted to fuck her, but that it must be with her eager consent and joyous sharing of his passion.
"Yes, I'll tell you. But must I call you Senor Gringo forever?"
"I think not. We're friends by now-or at least I hope so, Elena."
"It has a lovely ring when you say my name, for your accent is norte americano. So I will call you Kelly"-her sweet lilting voice made it sound as if it were spelled "Kellee,"-and now it was his turn to flush and lower his eyes self-consciously.
"Well, then," she went on, her face suddenly cold and hard with the remembrance of tyranny, "when this filthy swing Perez had whipped the oldest girl until her body was bleeding from head to toe, he took the two other girls and strung them up facing each other, winding a lariat around their waists while Rosas roared with laughter, beast that he is! And then he flogged those two younger girls, Kelly, until in their agony they rubbed against each other, thus providing amusement for those two perverted brutes. And all the while, the mother was imploring Rosas, 'Take me, put me to the torture instead, but in the name of the Queen of Heaven, spare my innocent girls!' and then-" She bowed her head and her shoulders quivered with suppressed sobs. He leaned to her, touching her wrist, murmuring, "And then, Elena?"
She drew a deep breath: "Then, Kelly, he made a sign and that unspeakable filth of a Perez put the youngest girl to death with the garrote, so that she died slowly by horrible strangulation, not with the swift breaking of the neck as is usual in executions of even the lowliest criminals. Then Rosas himself fell upon the mother, still tied to the rack, ripped off her clothing and had his way with her."
"The lousy bastard!" the Texan hoarsely growled.
"But that wasn't all, Kelly. After Rosas had gone back to his armchair, he set Perez to his hellish work again with the two older daughters. First, Perez tortured the oldest girl again, this time by fire, ordering her to tell the tyrant where her father was hiding. But in spite of her horrible agony and suffering, she was silent, Kelly, until at last merciful death claimed her. Then it was only that the mother broke down and betrayed her husband. And to her horror, Rosas laughed in her face and said 'What a pity that you wasted all this time, Dona Salusta! It seems I forgot to tell you, my Black Lancers took your husband in Ubaldez a week ago, tied him between four horses and executed him. My condolences, Dona Salusta!"
"Holy shit!"
"Ah, Kelly, how many thousands have cried that blessed name in their agony under the tyrant!" Elena Bodegas said in a voice that trembled with tears. "But the story isn't finished yet. Rosas took the mother as his whore, and Perez the other daughter. And when they had finished with them, the mother and the daughter were sent to a favela, there to be putas for the scum of Buenos Aires. And so far as I know, to this day they are still alive, if that can be called life. And now you understand, Kelly, why I cannot sit back and let my Cousin Burna stand beside her brave husband Pablo and myself remain sheltered and pampered and not be ready to give my life, if need be, to bring down this monster from his throne!"
"I get your point, Linda. "He abruptly rose from the table, went outside the hut and looked up at the unruffled sky with its full moon. The lush green of this tropical land, the rolling plains with such bounteous fodder for the cattle, made him feel somewhat less alien; here, just as back in Texas, decent people tilled the earth, fed and raised herds of cattle which in turn would feed a nation. And all they asked of life was the right to take from the soil and to give back and to live in a kind of simple, healthy brotherhood. Back in Texas, it had been the Comancheros and the land grabbers who had been bred out of the Civil War to believe that the right of possession belonged to the strongest. Well, even here for all the fancy terms they used like federalists and unitario, there was the same common denominator of evil. Here it was Juan Manual de Rosas who enslaved the very people whose independence and unity he so hypocritically espoused, all in the name of power and possession.
He felt a touch on his shoulder, and turned like a panther ready to spring, his muscles tightening. Survival against the Apaches and the Comancheros had depended on swift instinct and swifter reflexes re he came from.
Elena Bodegas uttered a little gasp and stepped back, her eyes widening. "Kelly, for a moment there I thought-" she stammered.
"Sorry, Elena." He apologetically grinned. "I guess it's just habit, not wanting to have anybody come up on me from behind. A man can get killed that way."
"And a woman?" she breathed, her lips now curving in a teasing smile.
"A woman too," he gravely agreed. "But I don't think I'd kill you, somehow. You're much too lovely to be wasted. I guess maybe-that's why I wouldn't let that bastard of a federalista touch you."
"Is that the reason?" she stood against him now, and suddenly her arms wound round his neck and her starry eyes fixed his, and the teasing smile deepened on those moist red lips. As she stretched her supple young body, the torn blouse gave up the useless struggle, the ripped hem gave way and now the garment yawned widely to expose the magnificent torso and the swelling titties with their darkened, turgescent buds.
"Well, no, to be honest, that was just one of the reasons," he hoarsely admitted, his hands moving clumsily to touch her hips so as not to encounter the temptation of that warm naked skin.
"Tell me the others, then, Kelly!" she demanded, pressing herself against him, tightening the hold of her arms around him till he felt those marvelous love buds press against his surging chest.
"Because I wanted you for myself, that's why, Elena. And I am a gringo, just like you called me. And I've only known you for an hour or so, and-"
"And a lifetime can take place within that hour, Kelly," she softly finished, her eyes clear and sweet and questioning as they fixed on his. "Here on the pampas, men live and die within an hour, families are torn asunder and destroyed, decency and friendship last little longer when Los Lanceros Negros ride among us. And I will tell you something more, mi amor, I think you are muy hombre. I think a girl could trust you and love you and share her life with you, even if it were to last only a little hour, Kelly MacDonald."
He uttered a groan, for he could no longer be proof against the thrilling temptation she proffered. He drew her to him, his palms against the smooth warm nakedness of her lower back, and his mouth took hers, and he tasted the elixir of her ardent young mouth, its nectared moisture and sweetness, and he felt her quiver against him and tremble as the flux of passion caught them both up in its toils.
"Did I not say that we need not ride for many hours on to La Plata, mi amor?" she breathed when the kiss was done, her voice trembling now and her eyes humid and dilated with the pledge of passion. "I will have this if I have nothing more, mi amor. It is time I became a woman with the proper man, a brave and strong man who does not fear to kill an enemy and yet has compassion for the weak and the helpless. A man who had come from another world to share our fight against the tyrant. You, my dear one. And please, since it is not proper for a gently bred girl such as myself to fling herself at a man, will you not have done with talking and take me so that I shall be helpless and thus not tell myself that I was wicked, knowing that I could deny you if I wished? For if you make me your captive, Kelly MacDonald, I am in your power and I am only a woman who cannot have your strength in such an unequal fight."
Now again her lips curved in that mischievous smile, but there was passion in it too, and her voice shook with the vibrance of desire.
He lifted her in his arms and carried her over to the rude bed in the other room, and laid her down. Almost impatiently she tore the rent blouse from her and cast it aside, and then unfastened the torn skirt. But here he stopped her, taking her at her words, for he must be the initiator. Drawing the skirt off, he trembled now at the sight of those long supple burnished-ivory thighs, the lower belly and loins veiled from his admiring eyes by a pair of gray muslin drawers. And these too he husked from her body as she arched herself to ease the task, and then lay naked, without shame in her proud young virginal beauty, her eyes following him as he rose and hastily undressed.
"I'm like a porcupine," he grumbled, touching his straggly beard and stubbly cheeks as he knelt down beside her.
"But the porcupine is faithful to its mate, Kelly. And she doesn't mind being scratched in the name of love," Elena Bodegas whispered as she held out her arms to him.
Nor did she flinch when she felt his ramrod prod against the resisting membrane of her maiden seal. Her arms tightened round him more than ever, and she hooked her beautiful long bare legs over his thighs to hearten him to the task of conquest. His mouth on hers, his lean hairy chest flattening the shuddering turrets of her bosom, he forced himself through the hymen until he was buried in her to the roots. She moaned, but not in suffering; rather, in the joyous knowledge of being a woman and of sharing bliss with pain. Her tongue foraged between his lips, and she held him to her like a vise as he strove within her tight warm citadel. And once the pain had sped from her, Elena Bodegas joyously welcomed his delight with her supple, warm and pulsating nakedness, laughing softly when, in the delirium of his desire, he bent his head to suck at her darkening and firming nipples, to squeeze the cheeks of her agile, satiny bottom as he thrust himself with all his vigor into her love-temple. And when, after a long and ecstatic hour, they at last lay side by side, murming those endearments which lovers for ages have exchanged after the sharing of amorous satisfaction, Kelly MacDonald had quite forgotten the girl he had left behind him.
CHAPTER SIX
Maria Concepcion Villartes groaned as she tried, uselessly again, to jerk free her bound wrists. For what had seemed like a timless eternity-a long, martyrizing week, to be exact-, she had lain on a straw pallet in the back of a narrow, windowless dungeon in the subterranean corridor beneath the palace of Juan Manuel de Rosas. Teniente Porfirio Gonzalez had brought her before the tyrant, a short man not un-like Napoleon, with cadaverous face and burning eyes and the thin lips of a zealot and sadist. The other ten girls from her village of Lujan had been led in, weeping and pleading for mercy, by the dragoons, and Rosas had consigned them at once to the brothel at the disposition of his noncommissioned officers, for they were not worthy, in his critical judgment, of entertaining his high-ranking aids or himself. But when "the Bloody Butcher" had related to his master how he had taken the daughter of the alcade and with her the tatter's treasure box of hoarded gold, Rosas considered the trembling black-haired girl and then, with a deadly smile, had ordered, "Let her taste the dungeon for a week. After that, I shall decide how she can be of use to us."
In her wedding dress, in that now bedraggled finery in which she had gone so proudly to the little church to be wed to Pedro Rosamonte, the unfortunate young girl had wept herself to sleep through all these hideous nights. Three times a day, the narrow iron door of the dungeon opened and a tray with bread and water was shoved in, barely enough for subsistence, so that she was tortured not only by the thick blackness of her confinement but also by the pangs of hunger. And with these, the spiritual dread of what was to be done with her mounted in her brain till she was almost feverish with anxiety and terror.
By now, she had lost consciousness of time, and whether it was night or day she had no way of knowing. Worst of all were the vivid images crowding in on her in that terrifying stillness and darkness, the anguished look of the face of her handsome fiance, the death-cry of her poor father the alcade, and the merciless and salacious look "the Bloody Butcher" had given her when his men had dragged her out of Fra Sierro's quarters at the back of the church where she had taken refuge.
But, two hours ago, two Lancers in their red tunics, black trousers and gleaming boots with silver spurs had entered the dungeon, blindfolded her, bound her wrists above her head and lifted her arms over a metal hook set into the stone wall, so that she had to strain with her toes to touch the damp stone floor. Waves of aching torment swirled through her lithe young body, adding to the frightful unanswered questions dominating her besieged mind.
And then suddenly she heard the creaking of the door again and the sound of footsteps coming towards her, and she cried out pitifully, "Ohh, Dz'os, please don't hurt me, I haven't done anything, please don't hurt me!"
But that appeal fell on deaf ears as two Lancers lifted her down from the hook and, carrying her in their arms, strode down the corridor to the last dungeon where the instruments of torture and the terrible chair and post of the garrote were placed in readiness for the enemies of Juan Manuel de Rosas.
This was a larger dungeon, and it was lighted by two torches thrust into metal holders fixed into the stone. She was still blindfolded, so she could not see the heavy metal chair fixed into the floor and behind it a round wooden post about five inches thick which rose halfway to the ceiling. There were manacles fixed into the arms of this chair, and into the legs as well, to bind the victim's wrists and ankles. Then the executioner would take a raw hide thong, loop it over the neck of the victim, knot it behind the post, and insert the metal or wooden peg of the garrote, and a hideously prolonged death would begin. There were many stories concerning this terrible chair, how beautiful women groveled on their knees before the executioner-usually Oswaldo Perez-and offered their bodies, their hidden jewels and gold, if only he would break their necks with a swift twist and not prolong the agony by slow and merciless strangulation. It was said that often El Garogge " had accepted such bribes-and with the full knowledge of his satanic master-only to apply the thong and the peg with lingering and diabolical skill so that they died slowly and horribly.
In this dungeon, Juan Manuel de Rosa had accumulated some of the most terrible apparatuses of the Holy Inquisition of Old Spain, with ingeniously sadistic "modern" refinements; the rack, for example, comprised two parallel wooden bars with windlasses at both front and rear, but with the addition of upright metal shafts planted between the bars and ending in murderously razor-sharp spike tips. When the executioner relaxed the cords which stretched the victim's body, the latter had to take pains to maintain his or her body tautly lifted, for the slightest sinking would bring naked flesh into contact with the spikes.
Nearby was a whipping post consisting of a wide, heavy, upright wooden plank topped with a horizontal, shorter, narrower plank; at each end of the crosspiece was a metal gyve for the wrists. But the victim's naked feet stood on a rectangular board studded with nails and bone needles driven through from the underside, which just emerged against the naked feet, accentuating the agony of the lashing with this new torment. Against one side of the dungeon was also the low wooden "bed" of the water torture, applied exactly as it had been done four hundred years ago by the black-robed Inquisitors, with the cloth and the funnel. The victim's wrists and ankles were strapped to the short legs of this uncomfortable wooden bed, and often knotted cords were would round the forearms, thighs and calves to aggrandize the torture; and sometimes even, when Rosas wished to delectate over a particularly attractive female victim's struggles and frenzied contortions, red-hot coals were dropped onto her belly while the torturer poured the earthen jug of water down the funnel into her throat.
Men, too, trembled at the sight of this grim chamber of horrors, for many aunitario had been racked and then brutally castrated, or flogged with whips made of thorny reeds gathered at the mouth of the La Plata River, and then his bleeding wounds urticated with either nettles or the sour brown mud from the bank of the Colombo River which burned like a cauterizing agent and created unspeakable pain.
At the far right, a black curtain had been draped to hide the complete section of the dungeon, but a circular hole had been cut into its middle. Behind this curtain, Juan Manuel de Rosas, naked in his boots, sprawled in a thickly upholstered armchair, with a tabouret beside him on which stood a half-emptied bottle of excellent French champagne and a plate of frijoles and beans with pimentos of which he was inordinately fond.
Before him knelt, stark naked, a charming dark-brown-haired girl who could not have been more than fifteen, but of really stunning beauty. Her young titties were closely spaced hard pears, with adorably pert nipples and narrow aurolae, her belly suave and widely dimpled, her buttocks surprisingly spacious for her age but marvelously proportioned with gracefully shaped, gradually swelling thighs and saucily turned calves. Her skin was dark olive, for she was part Porteno and part Indian, her name was Luisa Romando, and she was the daughter of the murdered alcalde of Besomer, a village much like Lujan but to the north of the latter. A fortnight ago, a troop of the Black Lancers had gone there on a punitive expedition because word had come that one of the younger and more idealistic aides of Luisa's father had urged him to desert the federalista cause and ally himself with Urquiza.
An example had been made to all the village to see. The horsemen, with whips and lances, had forced the villages out into the public square. There the young aide, a man of twenty-seven, had been bound between four horses, and five expert lancers had amused themselves casting their spears at the courageous victim, grazing him or missing him to prolong his agony. Meanwhile, the horses had champed restlessly, whinnying, tossing their heads, and at the slightest movement, the body of the sufferer was agonizingly stretched on this living rack. Finally, tiring of the sport, Teniente Porfirio Gonzalez had put his fingers to his sensual mouth and emitted a shrill whistle. At once the horse spring forward, and the hideous shriek of the dying man shattered the frightful silence of that peaceful village. The alcalde himself was then dragged out, stood against the wall of an adobe hut, and impaled by a dozen hurled lances. Luisa, just as Maria Concepcion Villartes, thus had seen her own father slaughtered before her very eyes.
But the whip and the threat of torture had so terrorized the lovely young girl that she had yielded to the brutal lusts of the dictator. Now she was his plaything, his poppet, and it amused him, as he prepared to "interrogate" Maria Concepcion Villartes, to satiate his ferocious and sadistic rut on the shrinking, deliciously nubile body of this girl who was scarcely out of puberty while watching the virgin bride suffer the shame of being stripped naked and given the whip, with the promise of much worse to come.
The two lancers in charge of the terrified Maria Concepcion led her towards this whipping post, unbinding her hands but only to fix her wrists into the metal gyves at each end of the crosspiece. They left the blindfold on, and then proceeded to rip off the wedding dress and her petticoats and blouse and drawers until she was naked as the day she was born, her superbly lithe young olive-sheened body quivering and squirming as already her bare feet felt the atrocious prodding of the tips of the nails and bone needled which protruded from the underside of the floor plank, not far enough to cause any serious wounds but just emerging from the surface enough to cause excruciating pain when, as they must, the victim's feet would caper under the bite of the lash.
Now there strode into the dungeon the man who had won the sobriquet of "The Bloody Butcher," naked except for a coarse linen calecon and sandals, swarthy and hairy, the very epitome of sadistic evil and rut. In his right hand he held the thick stock handle of a short three-thonged brown leather whip, of rough surface and plaited to narrow into stinging tips. Facing himself just at the left edge of the floorboard, he measured his distance, drew back his arm and waited for a signal.
The whipping post had been placed so that the victim's back would be turned to the cutout in the black curtain, and thus the dictator, from his lolling easy chair, could witness the kisses of the thongs on that smooth, quivering olive-satiny flesh.
"Luisa," Rosas said in a hoarse, trembling voice, "furl your tongue against my organ until I call out for you to stop! That will be the signal." And by this, Porfirio Gonzalez knew that the first lash was to fall on Maria Concepcion's naked body when his master called a halt to the libidinous fellatio to be performed by this exquisite young slave girl.
Marion Conception Villartes offered a gasp and arched upward, standing on tiptoe to ease the cruel little jabs of the needles and nails which her soles and heels had felt when first she had been tethered to the whipping post and stripped bare for her ordeal. But when she heard the dictator's voice, she uttered a horrified sob: "Ohh, Madre mia, piedad. Piedad, por el amor de Dios! "
But all she heard was the soft slushing of Luisa's tongue over Juan Manuel de Rosas' prick, and his stertorous grunts of pleasure as he savored not only the tactual sensation of this enforced obscene caress by so delicious and young a victim but also the exciting anticipation of the suffering of the older girl at the post.
His short, pudgy fingers gripping the arms of the chair, he leaned back, his thighs sprawled and shaking with the spasms of rut-approach as poor Luisa, her revulsion conquered by the greater power of the fear of atrocious punishment, passed her dainty pink tongue along the gnarled shaft with its turgid dark-blue veins and on, at his hoarsely whispered instructions, towards the scrotum and hairy, heavily laden testicles.
His fetid odor nauseated the unfortunate naked girl, but when she hesitated and turned her face away for an instant to regain her breath, his growled warning sent her back at once to the odious ministration; and he chuckled thickly with pleasure at this conquest of her young spirit and flesh. His face flushed and perspiring, his eyes goggling down at her bowed head, the tyrant of Argentina revelled in this many-faceted enjoyment of his ruthless power over the life and death of his helpless subjects.
His eyes rose above Luisa's bowed head now, contemplating the tightening broad ovals of Maria Concepcion's naked bottomcheeks, the warm purity of her olive-tinted skin, the delicate blue veins which could scarcely be seen as they traced their way at the soft knee hollows, now taut and quivering with uncontrollable flexions as the unfortunate naked blindfolded virgin readied herself for an unknown torture and at the same time arched herself up with all the strength of her young muscles to ease the murderous bites of the deadly nails and needles against her trembling feet.
By now, Luisa's tongue had begun to rub against his hairy balls, and the sudden surge of furious pent-up lust assailed him; thrusting his right hand into her tumbling curls and yanking her head back, he cried out," Aguardarme-wait for me!"
Porfirio Gonzalez understood this was the signal; at once, he sent the three-thonged whip whistling across the broadest curves of Maria Concepcion's naked bottom. The unexpected burning kiss of the lash made the naked blindfolded young girl lunge forward against the upright of the post, her head tilting back and sobbing cry of pain emerging from her gaping mouth. But hardly had she begun to taste the gradual intensity of the whip's first vicious kiss than a second blow instantly fell at the very same place, deepening the angry pink welts which had sprung up on the smooth olive-satin of her naked behind. And now a piercing cry assailed the ears of the torturer and the tyrant, as well as those of-poor Luisa, enchanting the first two, terrifying the last-for Luisa had recognized the sinister whistle of the whip and then the imperious, crisp Thwack! as it bit home from her own repeated encounters with the torturers of Rosas.
His fingers still twisted in Luisa's hair, leaning forward, his eyes blazing as he followed the flogging, the dictator drank in Maria Concepcion's suffering with his very soul. His chest heaving, his lips moist and quivering, set in a rictus of gloating delight, he followed Porfirio Gonzalez's handiwork with mounting excitement, sometimes twisting his fingers so convulsively in the paroxysms of his unholy lust that Luisa whimpered and squirmed on her bare knees, tears blinding her eyes from the pain of her tortured scalp.
With the skill of an expert in his sadistic practice, Porfirio Gonzalez made the whip crack wickedly from the tops of Maria Concepcion's writhing young hips to the base of her resilient bottomglobes, sometimes sweeping the thongs vertically as a kind of variant after four or five viciously applied horizontal cuts. After about fifteen lashes, he paused, not only to catch his breath but also to change position and to determine the areas of greatest sensitivity in her vulnerable naked flesh. The unfortunate young virgin was nearly hysterical with her suffering, and she had begun, indeed, to perform the "dance of the whip," twisting this way and that, lunging and writhing, her bare feet restlessly seeking purchase on that infernal plank. Dissolved in tears, her body shuddering violently, she wailed during this reprieve, "Ohh, Senor, why do you beat me? What have I done? Have pity, in the name of the Virgen Sanctissisma! "
"Pay attention, Maria Conception," came Rosas hoarse, sneering voice. "Your father was put to death because he stole from El Supremo-myself! It was his duty to pay not only his taxes but to contribute to the federalista treasury in order that Argentina may be unified and made strong against those enemy nations who would destroy us. Because he hoarded the gold, he was as guilty of treason as if he had been one of those accursed unitarios. Remember that, Maria Conception!"
"Ohh, Senor, I-I know nothing of such things-I am only a poor girl who has lost a father and the man who was to be my husband-I know nothing of politics or treason, I beg mercy for my suffering!"
The voice of Juan Manuel de Rosas became deceptively honeyed, guilefully compassionate: "My poor child, my poor misguided child, I know that you are young and hence subject to error, particularly since you were brought up by so traitorous a father. Thus I am inclined to grant you the mercy you beg, but you must tell me and without hiding a particle of the truth, Maria Conception, what you have heard in your village. By this I mean, what rumors of the plots of the unitarios, Maria Conception, and I will pardon you the lash. Be stubborn, and you shall repent it, my poor child!"
"Ohh, ahh, S-Senor, "the naked brunette virgin pitifully sobbed, "what could I have heard, I who thought only of my Pedro and of the happy day when we were to become one? I have heard naught of strangers in our village, only the prayers that Los Lanceros Negros would not come upon us, since we wish only peace ... oh have pity on me, it hurts me so, Senor! My feet are cut and they hurt dreadfully, have pity, I beg of you, Senor! "
"Then you heard nothing of the gringo who came from the Estados Unidos to aid our enemies?" Rosas persisted.
"No, I swear it on the cross, Senor!" Maria Concepcion whimpered.
Fear and pain had rendered her so helpless that she did not even think of giving the dictator that title which he preferred above all others, "El Supremo. "And it was this pitifully understandable omission which served as pretext for the tyrant to order Porfirio Gonzalez to resume the flogging as he now called in an angry voice: "Ensereselo usted a ella!"
To which Rosas' cruel lieutenant laughingly replied, No tengo usted miedo, El Supremo. I will teach her who you are indeed!" And, lowering the three thongs to the floor plank, he leaped them upwards so that the biting tips bit directly into the sinuous shadowy crease between Maria Concepcion's naked bottomglobes. The blindfolded young girl uttered a wild shriek of despair and pain, almost lifting herself against the upright of the post, and the muscles of her behind tightened violently as her welted buttocks huddled and contracted, then yawned in the reflexive spasm of the burning pain of the lash. Now she turned her head to the left, as if striving to see through her blindfolded the visage of her executioner and the identity of that hoarse, mocking voice which had harangued her. Her dainty bare feet twisted and squirmed, and again she arched herself up on tiptoe to escape the merciless prodding which augmented her already considerable suffering.
Porfirio Gonzalez had crossed over to the girl's right, and now began to apply backhanded swipes of the three-thonged plaited leather whip, attacking her upper thighs and attempting to reach-when the convulsive movements of her legs permitted it-He even more sensitive flesh of her inner thighs and groin. A dozen such swift lashes made the unfortunate naked girl twist about and jerk at her bound wrists her head falling back and her hysterical, babbling words addressed towards a power greater than the tyrant's: "Aii-Dios, ayudeme-obhh, ahh, piedad, it is too much-eeaaahhhrrr-I shall die-oh, the suffering, I cannot bear it any longer-I can tell you nothing-ohhhowwwohhhh!!! Have pity, oh for the love of God, have pity on me, I'm only a poor village girl and I can tell you nothing, I swear it on the memory of my poor dead father!"
"So not swear on a traitor's memory, for it will play you false, stubborn little bitch!" Rosas thundered from the curtained enclosure. "Swear it rather on your honor, for I am told that you were dressed in the white gown of purity when you went to stand before the altar with him who was to have been your husband. Is that true, Maria Conception?"
"Y-yes ... ohh, Dios, piedad, por favor ... I cannot bear it any longer ... ohh, S-Senor, I-I had saved myself for P-Pedro Rosamonte, it is the truth!"
Juan Manuel de Rosas chuckled lecherously. "Very well, Senorita," he called, "I will accept that oath. But now, for your own good, my poor child, that you will not lapse again into error, you must be scourged until you are ready to be the virgin bride of El Supremo. Therefore, my good Porfirio, purge the little puta of her sins, for the more her pretty bottom waggles, the less innocent she will soon be!" And, bursting into a roar of lecherous laughter, the tyrant sank back in his armchair and dragged the weeping and sobbing Luisa atop him, muttering to her to sit astride him and to impale herself upon his ferociously rampant prick.
She faced him now, shutting off from his blazing eyes the sight of Maria Concepcion's infernal torment as the brutal lieutenant resumed the whipping. This time, he sent the thongs whistling diagonally over the young girl's furiously welted bottomcheeks and upper thighs, in sweeping backhanded strokes which made her jerk and twist, trying desperately to find some easier footing. By now her dainty little toes were bleeding from the probings of the nails and needles, and she was reaching the end of her resistance. Her naked titties rose and fell with a turbulent agitation that betrayed her physical exhaustion and the reaching of her ultimate threshold of suffering-but Porfirio Gonzalez well knew that his evil master wished much more.
Now crossing round and back to the girl's left, and watching as her hips lunged and swerved in ceaseless agitation from the fiery waves of pain that attacked her swollen, throbbing flesh, he lowered the plaited whip and flicked it upwards between her shaking naked thighs to attack the black triangle of her love-mount in a proficient and expert flicking blow that made her lift herself by her bound wrists, all her muscles standing out against her sweating, shuddering naked body as, her head falling back with an inhuman and prolonged shriek, she now pitifully tried to clench and rub her thighs together, as if to disperse the infernal burning sensation lodged in the tenderest cranny of her virginal young body.
As she slumped down, her soles and heels felt the innumerable prickings of those deadly little barbs, and again she shrieked and strained upwards on tiptoe, and in that instant her thighs again widely parted and Porfirio Gonzalez swept the three-thonged whip between them to attain her virgin cunt with a ferociously smacking sound as the plaited thongs clung tenaciously to that secret, tender maiden nook. Maria Concepcion Villartes wrenched herself from side to side, lifting up one knee, then the other, lunged against the upright plank of the, post, turned her tear-bathed blindfolded face this way and that, and uttered shriek on lamentable shriek, wordless and heartrending in its frenzied agony.
Now, to vary the unfortunate young girl's suffering, Porfirio Gonzalez applied a few brisk strokes to her naked shoulders and the middle of her back, and even as she twisted, cunningly delivered a backhanded cut which dashed the plaited thongs against the side of her panting left tittie, causing intolerable suffering. Now indeed Maria Concepcion was seen to perform the "dance of the whip," as she lunged this way and that, back from the post and then frantically against it, and from side to side, her bleeding feet always moving restlessly about in search of some easier purchase.
Grinning obscenely, Porfirio Gonzalez now squatted to the girl's left, and delivered a few quick lashes across each of her calves and knee hollows, creating new pain in regions usually untouched by the whip to distract the unfortunate young beauty and for still another purpose: to make her legs jerk and straddle and thus allow the insidious upward-flicking cuts which he deftly applied now to attack her cunt. And once again the dungeon rang with the frenzied clamor of Maria Concepcion Villartes' shrieks and babbled supplications for mercy. When he rose, his calecon sweatily sticking to his loins, and displaying the gigantic thrust of his savage erection which the girl's suffering had roused in his degenerate being, the slim naked olive-skinned girl sagged from her wrist-gyves, head bowed, her body shaken by intermittent tremors, her cunt was dripping and her belly shook with anguish, while her flanks and sides heaved from the extenuating agony which swirled throughout her shapely young nakedness.
Now, lowering the three-thonged whip, Rosas' lieutenant began to flick it upwards to attack with the tapering tips the sensitive base of Maria Concepcion's bottomglobes, a further alteration in the method of this flogging which revived her suffering and made her again arch on tiptoe and lunge against the upright plank of the whipping post as she uttered frantic, gasping and wailing cries, till suddenly drawing back his arm, he applied the lash with all his strength across her slim shoulders.
"Aahhhhrrr!! Ohh-SS-Senor, no more ... please ... I can tell you ... nothing ... I am innocent ... have mercy ... oh what pain, what horrible pain, I would rather die ... than suffer so ... have pity on me ... oh please!"
From within the curtained enclosure came Rosas' lust-thickened voice: "Are you ready then, Maria Concepcion Villartes, to renounce your father's treason, to submit yourself humbly to El Supremo? Speak, or my lieutenant will turn you about so that you face the lash!"
"Oh no! No more, mercy, have pity, yes, yes, anything, if only you'll stop beating me-ohh, Dios, my poor father-forgive me-but I can't stand this dreadful pain any more ... yes ... do what you want ... only have him stop ... mercy...." the hysterically weeping and trembling girl moaned.
"Prepare her, Gonzalez!" the dictator panted, as he swept aside the curtain and strode out, naked in his boots, his penis savagely rigid, the urethral lips twitching from the violent urge to ejaculate.
Porfirio Gonzalez grinned and deferentially inclined his head. Casting aside the whip, he unfastened Maria Concepcion's bonds, lifted her lolling body in his arms, and strode over to the wooden "bed" of the water torture. Laying her down on her back, he squatted and swiftly tied her wrists to the lower legs, drawing her arms down behind her, and then, hugely straddling her legs, corded her ankles to the bottom of the front legs, thus gaping her to the monstrous rut of the dictator.
Juan Manuel de Rosas approached, his eyes narrowed and glittering, his nostrils flaring and shrinking with the furious sadistic paroxysm that dominated him. He contemplated the shudderingly heaving globes of Maria Concepcion's titties, the quivering belly, the dark triangle of pubic curls which framed her virgin orifice. Because of that indecent straddle, the soft fleshy coral-pink lips of her vulva yawned as if in wanton invitation. With a lewd chuckle, he muttered as he bent to cup and knead her panting titties, "Don't weep, little one, you are more honored than you deserve by mating with El Supremo instead of with some village lout!"
Then he flung himself down upon her, his pudgy fingers clutching at her titties while his violently swollen organ thrust into that pink gape. The naked blindfolded victim uttered a cry of revulsion and despair, her body seeking to arch from that ignoble bed of violation, her face twisted to one side, her wrists and ankles vainly jerking at their bonds, posed as she was and thus fettered, the splendid goblets of her bubbies rose up tautly in all their lush young resilience, as Rosas' greedy fingers pinched and squeezed their olive-satiny flesh. Paling with lust, he forced himself to halt just before the consummation, his prickhead pressing menacingly against the tight seal of her virginity. "At least, little bitch," he hoarsely growled, "you didn't lie when you said you were an innocent! At least this tight hole of yours hasn't committed treason, and it's just as well for you. And now, forget that stupid bridegroom of yours, Maria Concepcion Villartes. I, El Supremo, now grant you this mark of favor!"
And with these last words, grinding his teeth, his face dark and twisted with his overweening rut, the dictator of Argentina lunged forward against the maiden obstruction. The naked blindfolded girl raised her head, the cords in her slim throat standing out as with all her might she sought to tear herself free of this ghastly "bridal bed." And then her mouth gaped in a prolonged, raucous cry: "Ooouuuahhhrrreeeyeowwwwarrrrhhhh!!!!"
Brutally he had forced through the sturdily resisting hymen and imbedded himself to the testicles, and he lay panting and groaning with his sadistic joy at feeling his weapon so tightly housed in that sweet scabbard.
"Caramba, Gonzalez, but the bitch is tight!" he gasped to his lewdly grinning aide. "Luisa is yours. And when you've done with her, finish it-you understand me?"
"Si, El Supremo! " the torturer ecstatically exclaimed. He strode back to where the naked Luisa crouched on her knees, her hands clasped in prayer, tears streaming down her face. Bending to her, he seized her by her disheveled, long tresses and dragged her out to the center of the dungeon, near that wooden "bed" on which his evil master had now begun to possess the whimpering, shuddering, helpless Maria Concepcion Villartes. Tearing off his calecon, Porfirio Gonzalez knelt down, his lips curved in a cruel smile of gloating anticipation, as his wiry fingers pinched and squeezed poor Luis-s ripe young titties, drinking in all the poignant anguish on her lovely face, intoxicating himself with the pathetic appeal in those tear-filled, dilated yes. Then ruthlessly kneeing apart her thighs, he fell upon her, probing for her furry cleft, entering her with pitiless haste. Then he began to fuck her with savage and rapid digs that made her groan and cry out in suffering as she passively submitted.
Rosas, turning his face to watch his lieutenant's priapic prowess, could no longer maintain control of his own bursting rut. With a hoarse cry, he dug himself to the balls inside Maria Concepcion Villartes' martyred cunthole and poured forth his essence. Then, his head pillowed on one of her shuddering titties, he greedily watched Luisa's longer ordeal. For, knowing precisely what would please his despotic master, Porfirio Gonzalez complained of his terrified young partner's passiveness, and, to cure her of it, inserted one of his wiry fingers to the hilt inside of her rectal sheath, brutally twisting it about while he quickened his energetic digs into her quaking cunthole and with right thumb and forefinger cruelly pinched a dusky nipple bud. Thus beleaguered the young girl cried out, writhed and jerked as if sharing his bestial passion.
At last he had finished with her, in a final thrust which released all his viscous seed. Then slowly, a smirking grin of satisfaction on his cruel face, he rose from her and glanced at Rosas, who nodded.
Porfirio Gonzalez bent, dragged Luisa up again by the hair, and, with an obscene oath, applied a stinging slap with his open palm to her naked bottom as he forced her towards the terrible chair of the garrote.
At the same moment, the tyrant of Argentina removed the blindfold from Maria Concepcion Villartes' eyes, and the horrified daughter of the murdered alcalde of Lujan stared at a scene assuredly out of the darkest limbo of hell itself.
Porfirio Gonalez had swiftly fettered Luisa's naked ankles to the legs of the chair, then dragged her wrists behind her back and corded them to a heavy metal ring fixed at about the level of the seat, thus forcing her to sit upright and to thrust out the splendid globes of her shuddering young bosom. Aghast at this unexpected finale to her ordeal, the young girl whimpered as she stared at the tyrant: "Oh no-you aren't going to kill me surely? But I've been good, El Supremo! Truly I have, I've done everything you wanted-oh please-not the garrote! Have mercy-oh please, I'll do anything, I'll be a whore to the soldiers, I'll lick their boots, I'll serve their food and do their laundry, just let me live-oh please no!"
"Pobrecita, don't be so frightened," Juan Manuel de Rosas sniggered as he lay on the sweating, naked ravished body of the terrified Maria Concepcion Villartes. "It will not be the garrote. It's true, you've pleased me very much, but then, what would you, I'm tired of you. Yet I am merciful, as even my enemies will tell you. And because you have pleased me, I spare you the garrote."
"Ohh, thank you, El Supremo! Thank you-then he's not going to-to-to kill me? Oh, thank you, I'll be so good, I'll-oh no, what is that? Madre! No please-iiiiiieyeeowwwarrrhhh!!!!!"
Even as the unfortunate naked girl babbled her thanks to the tyrant for being spared the garrote, the grinning naked Porfirio Gonzalez had gone to the wall and taken a long metal pole; lifting it high above his head, he thumped three times upon the ceiling of the dungeon exactly over the frantic naked captive in the chair. And even as poor Luisa raised her tearstained, contorted face, she saw a panel slide back and something dark and hairy slowly dangling down, coming inch by inch downwards upon her.
Her eyes glazed and though her mouth gaped, she was speechless with the hideous fright that gripped her: there, cunningly attached by a silken cord round two of its many legs, a giant tarantula waved the others, its bright eyes peering down at the naked body in the chair below."
"You see, muchachita? " Rosas' torturer declared with hypocritical gentleness, "El Supremo keeps his promises. It isn't the garrote, Luisa. It is a spider captured near the marshy banks of the Saludo, and starved for a week, then drugged so that it might be attached to be lowered to its feast. Its bite is death, but much more swift than the garrote, I promise you."
"Ahrrrrggggggg!!! Eeeouuuuahrrr, ohh nooooo!!!!" Luisa at last found voice, and her shrieks rang out frenziedly in the gloomy dungeon. The monstrous spider, swaying as its free legs flailed the air, descended inch by inch, moving back in a short arc as the motion of its struggles agitated the silken cord. Her eyes goggled, insane with jibbering horror and loathing, as now the tarantula was on a level with her forehead, descending even as she arched herself back against the chair, twisting her face to one side towards the tyrant who still lay atop Maria Concepcion Villartes' shuddering nakedness.
Then the hideous brown arachnid fell upon the edge of the chair with a soft thickening thud, and at once began to crawl towards Luisa's gaping cunt. The girl's thigh muscles stood out like knotted cords along those dusky-satiny columns, her belly shrank, she tried to hold her breath, with every exertion of muscle and nerve and sinew to diminish herself.
And then the tarantula merged its hairy brown grotesque shape with the tendrils of her muff, and Luisa uttered an inhuman, shrill scream as her body jerked convulsively. The tarantula had bitten home at that tenderest part of her girlhood, and now her body began to thrash in the horrid convulsions of the lethal poison speeding through her veins. Her head jerked, froth appeared on her lips, and after a last violent convulsion, her body sagged in the chair.
Porfirio Gonzalez seized a pistol from the holster he had placed upon a little stool nearby, aiming at the loathsome arachnid and fired. Maria Concepcion Villartes uttered a gurgling cry and fainted.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Kelly MacDonald and Elena Bodegas rode side by side to La Plata, the Texas adventurer on the fine horse which belonged to the federalistas, from whose lecherous advances he had saved the beautiful cousin of Bruna Montagna. The journey was without incident, save that at a village a few miles beyond Uzcumane Kelly stopped to purchase a hand-woven rebozo and a calico dress belonging to one of the young daughters of the headman, to whom he gravely explained his companion's need. For, her blouse being utterly useless, lovely Elena Bodegas had made do by wrapping a torn blanket round her torso and bosom, otherwise she would assuredly have drawn the unwelcome attention of a number of gauchos riding herd on their cattle whom they passed far off to their right on their way towards the meeting with Urquiza.
It was evening of that same day when at last they entered this thriving seaport city in Eastern Argentina, the headquarters of the leader of the unitarios. After asking directions from a passerby, they rode their exhausted horses down the Calle de Bienvenido, and the lovely young girl remarked to her handsome escort, "I feel this is a good omen, Kelly. This street is the Avenue of Welcome, and perhaps because the two of us, from sister nations, ride down it side by side to meet the one man who can overthrow the tyrant, we shall best him and know peace in this land at last!"
"Let's hope so, querida, " he said softly, and a look of deep trust and understanding passed between them, these two so disparate in their heritage and yet now united by the bond of passion tempered in the crucible of freedom.
But when they reached the administration building, a uniformed guard wearing the blue and gold of the unitarios informed them that Justo Jose de Urquiza had already gone to his home and would not be back until late afternoon of the next day.
"Let's wait till then, mi dulce" Kelly MacDonald gently urged his beautiful young companion. "Our horses can't take any more and we're pretty well bushed ourselves. Let's find some little inn and get a good meal and then plenty of sleep."
She gave him an arch look and then, pursing her lips very primly, swiftly retorted, "Oh well, if that's the sort of weakling you are that you have to have your sleep after a good day on horseback, maybe I've made a mistake. Maybe I ought to have let that federalista look after me."
"Why, you consarned little vixen, you!" he chuckled. "You'll pay for that and you'll take it back before we see this Urquiza fellow. Anyway, maybe you'll have a little more respect for me manana, once I get that draft from good old Pedro Alicante, the best foreman in all of Texas. I'll be rich, Elena, rich enough to buy you a much prettier dress."
Then she stared at him gravely as she dismounted before a little inn on one of the back streets of the city. "Do you think so little of me that you believe I am to be bought with baubles and silken gowns, Kelly MacDonald?" she asked him. "Do you think that I could wear those things while the people of Argentina daily live in fear or die in agony and terror because of one vicious, depraved man? I may be only eighteen, but I think you've reason to know that I'm a woman already. Well then, you found me in a peasant's hut, not wearing very much, as I recall, and certainly nothing costly except that it was purchased by my own dear father. But I tell you this, I would go naked down the streets and sell myself to the first peon, body and soul, yes, Kelly, the very first man who would help me overthrow the tyrant Rosas!"
* * *
The jovial, fat old innkeeper had sensed a romance between the lean, affable Texan and this stunningly beautiful young girl, the more so as they had asked for separate rooms, though their eyes had never left each other as they stood before his register to sign their names. And he had told his even fatter and more jovial wife, "Inez, we've two lovebirds with us this night. Prepare for them the carbonado, that dish of beef and tripe cooked in fruit which you do so well. And me, I will bring a jug of sangria, and do you bake the best flan you have ever made. There's something about these young people which touches me here-" and he patted his fat left chest.
His wife giggled and nudged him in the ribs. "Eh, viejo, I know where it touches you, much lower down, you old rogue! Your are wishing you were thirty years younger and some fifty pounds lighter, and you'd be up in that senorita's room this moment forgetting your marriage vows to your Inez, wouldn't you? Very well, I'll make the flan and the stew. And when we've served them, we'll go to bed and say a prayer for them. They can't be federalistas."
"Woman, have you lost your mind? The look of that tall one,-that gringo, is not that of a greedy, dirty federalistal And that Linda muchacha, don't you know who she is? She's the cousin of our beloved Bruna Montagna, wife to the young hero Pablo, who is the glorious Don Urquiza's right-hand man. Of a certainty they shall have the very best, and then they shall have privacy all the night. I shall have to content myself with you, suet pudding that you are, so I will save some of the sangria for ourselves so that our eyes will be misty and we will think we are young again, just like those two, no es verdad!"
It was midnight. Kelly MacDonald yawned and stretched himself on the rude bed, listening to the crickets chirp outside the little room. The night was gentle, the air balmy. Elena Bodegas had stayed in her room and eaten her meal alone, as he had. Half a dozen times, he'd been on the verge of tapping on her door, but had angrily restrained himself. He didn't have any rights over her, after all. What had happened between them had been natural and instinctive, they had been united by the communal fear of danger and death, which had been an exhilarating stimulus to their bodies' need for release. That was all it was.
Just the same, he wished he hadn't told her about that draft from Pedro or about buying her pretty things. She wasn't, after all, a peasant girl, but from a fine family. And she had guts, too. She'd handled that knife like a veteran guerrilla fighter, no two ways about it.
He groaned and turned onto his side, wanting to sleep and not being able to. He couldn't help seeing again what he had seen when he entered that hut and found Elena Bodegas struggling in the arms of the federalista soldier. Those dazzling titties, with their pert darts that were soft and crinkly at the sight, but firm like flints at the first touch of fingers or lips. That warm olive skin, the exquisite little dimple near her cheekbone, the even more wicked dimples in the cheeks of her behind when she teasingly ambled back and forth before him. The strength of her young arms and legs around him as they locked him into embrace, and the intoxicating nectar of her sweet generous mouth. Damn it all, just because a girl like that had given herself in a kind of gratitude, a decent man, leastways a Texan, didn't force himself just because he had a hard-on-and he did at this very moment.
He had taken off just his boots, wanting to be ready as early as possible the next morning to get to the bank and to negotiate the draft, have some pocket money and leave the rest in an account where he could draw on it when need be. He'd want to get a good pistol, the best money could buy, and maybe a good knife of tempered steel. And maybe, after he'd talked to Urquiza, found out how he could serve best, he'd want one of those sabers which Rosas' Black Lancers carried. Still, unless there would be pitched battles against the federalistas, he had a notion that Indian-style fighting, the kind that you did against the Apaches and the Comanches and their renegade white allies, would be much more effective than military formations. Heavens only knew what kind of weapons Rosas' arsenal boasted or what, indeed, the unitarios might have.
His train of thought was suddenly interrupted by a faint tapping at his door. With an oath, he swung himself off the bed and unbolted the door, opening it just a crack. He'd already heard enough hair-raising yarns about the federalistas' night raid on villages and unsuspecting citizens in their own homes even in cities to be extra careful on his own.
"Open the door, you great donkey!" Elena Bodegas indignantly whispered. "Do you want me to wake up all the inn? That's better." His mouth agape, he opened the door to let her enter, and then promptly closed it. Demurely, she walked back to the door and shot the bolt home. "Well?" she huskily questioned. "How is it you aren't sleeping, Kelly MacDonald? I thought you were so exhausted. The only reason I came, by the way, was to tell you that my Cousin Bruna is here and her Pablo with her. That nice old innkeeper told me when he served my supper, for it seems he recognized me. My father and I have often been in La Plata, you see."
"There are a lot of things about you I don't know, it's true. Of course I'd like to meet her and Pablo too."
"Very good. Then it's settled. They will be with Don Justo at the end of tomorrow afternoon, so we needn't wake too early for our interview. That should comfort you, about getting your much needed sleep. Well then, buenas noches, Kelly MacDonald."
She turned back to the door and had her hand on the bolt when he spun her around, hand on her shoulder. His mouth was thin, his eyes narrowed, and color had rushed to his cheeks. "So that was your only reason for coming, Linda? Well, you're forgetting a little speech that you made to me out along the Calle de Bienvenido, it seems. Something about preferring that dirty federalista to a man who wanted to sleep. I owe you something for that, and I'm going to give it to you right now.
"Oh? And what might that be?" She turned to face him, hands on hips, her face saucy and provocative.
"Just this," he chuckled. Seizing her by the waist as he seated himself on the edge of the bed, he flung her over his lap and before the startled Elena Bodegas could divine his intent, he had lifted the calico dress and tugged down her drawers, to reveal the enticing hemispheres of her tightening naked bottomcheeks.
"Stop that! I mean it, Kelly MacDonald! I'm not a child-you aren't to treat me like one-Oh, Caramba you wicked villain, to shame a girl like this-ouch! Stop it, I tell you! I shall scream, I warn you, and I have a very loud voice-ooh! It hurts! Stop that, you great brute, you-you-you-Texan!" she spluttered, as she tried to kick her lovely legs and to twist back to pummel him with her fists.
Laughingly, he seized her wrist with his left hand and continued to spank her naked bottom which weaved and jerked and bucked frantically over his lap. The sonorous slaps rang out in the darkness, as did her squeals and, soon, her almost tearful protests: "Aydeme! Oh, that's enough! You bully, you torturer, your're as bad as one of Rosas' men, and that's a fact-owwouu! you're hurting me, you wicked brute! I tell you, to stop it, I tell you, I command you, do you hear me?"
"A Texan never takes commands from a woman, Senorita Bodegas. You'll have to find something else to say to me," he chuckled as his hand rose and fell even more swiftly and sonorously now. Her magnificent dusky-ivory flesh was inflamed, a brilliant red, and she wriggled and struggled like an eel over his lap, but he maintained her.
At last, half-laughing, half-crying, Elena Bodegas gasped out, "Oh please, I beg of you Senor Gringo. Ay! Oh please, it's hurting so! I didn't mean it, you're not asleep, oh no, you certainly aren't. Oh won't you stop now, won't you please, please stop?"
"Now that's better, girl," he said with a roughness to his voice which betrayed the fierce desire burning in him. "And I know of an even better way to show you that I can get along without sleep when the occasion arises," he added.
He rolled her off his lap and onto her belly on the bed, then bent over her and worked up the calico dress off her body while she gigglingly and tearfully protested. Then, doffing his breeches and his own drawers, he joined her. And with a burning kiss, Elena Bodegas showed him that it had all been a delicious ruse.
As they lay panting with appeasement his prick slowly and thrillingly dwindling inside the tight, pulsing confines of her ardent young cunt, she whispered teasingly, "You're still a great bully, Kelly MacDonald! I shan't be able to sit on a horse comfortably for at least a week, and it's all your fault! But just the same, it woke me up too, if you have to know something. And now please kiss me again and say you're sorry."
History does not record that the Texan apologized to the beautiful cousin of Bruna Montagna for having given her a tender posterior that could not bear the saddle. But the fat old innkeeper and his wife, who had heard the characteristic sounds of a hand meeting naked young woman flesh and then the creaking of the mattress above them-for their best room was directly above their own-found their own rejuvenation and renaissance in rolling back the years to those far-off days when they too had been young and passionately in love....
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was a joyous reunion that next afternoon at the headquarters of Justo Jose de Urquiza, when the beautiful Bruna Montagna and her husband greeted lovely young Elena Bodegas while Kelly MacDonald stood by with an amused smile on his weather-beaten handsome face. But he was not left long to be an outsider in this meeting of ardent young patriots whose close ties were also that of blood and marriage, for the irrepressible Elena swiftly narrated his own part in aiding her to come to La Plata. And then he had occasion to feel embarrassed, when Elena proudly moved beside him and, her arm around his waist, stoutly declared, "Its true he's a gringo, dear Bruna. But what's most important of all, he's muy hombre on both battlefields!"
And when Kelly questioningly eyed the enchanting and totally uninhibited beauty who had utterly captured his heart, she winked at Bruna and teasingly answered his unspoken question: "Why, companero, I mean that you are very competent ... si, muy peligroso ... on the field of honor and also on the bed, which as everyone knows is surely a battlefield, all its own!"
By this bold declaration, Elena Bodegas announced to her cousin and the latter's handsome husband that she had accepted the tall Texan as her lover. But if he felt self-conscious and perhaps a little piqued at having their intimacies so baldly announced, that annoyance was quite forgotten when at last the quartet was ushered into the office of the leader of the unitarios.
In his fifty-first year of life, Justo Jose de Urquiza impressed Kelly MacDonald with his fervent sincerity. Gray-bearded, tall, stoop-shouldered and soft-spoken, with keen blue eyes that did not waver or shift-a trait which the Texan adventurer particularly admired-this the mortal enemy of Rosas was erudite, cultured and possessed of a dry and gentle wit. After he had heard the report of Pablo Montagna and congratulated the beautiful Bruna on her intrepid part in the cause, he turned to the Texan and remarked, "Senor MacDonald, I am touched by your devotion to .our goal. We need courageous men to give battle to the tyrant. The worst of it, as you can understand if Senorita Bodegas has told you anything at all of the long history of Argentina, is that the feud between the federalistas and the unitarios has been long and bloody and senseless. In theory, I, who once supported Rosas, must agree that for the future it is vital that all the provinces of Argentina be united towards a common goal of peace and brotherhood, of industry and agriculture and commerce, if we are to grow strong and to be immune from attacks by our sister countries like Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil. Yet Rosas has, during his long unchecked reign, misinterpreted the ideals for which he once was acclaimed. Now, Senor MacDonald, he has total power, that of a dictator, and he uses it for his own personal gains and the satisfaction of his depraved lusts."
"We have men like that back in Texas, Don Justo," Kelly MacDonald drawled. "We buckled on our holsters and we went gunning for them and got rid of them."
"My friend, that is not quite so easy with Rosas. You must assuredly have heard how well he is guarded in his palace, and how he has enlisted the most lawless gauchos who thrive under his regime. There is no abuse they will not commit in his name because he has made them confident and strong, letting them plunder and ravage where they will. He sets these mad dogs of his loose upon the most peaceful of villages, as well as upon his own federalista towns. I can offer you no glory, Senor MacDonald, but only the thanks and the gratitude of a people weary of oppression if you side with us."
"This morning, Don Justo, I received a bank draft in the amount of fifty thousand dollars from the sale of my land and house and cattle," the Texan gravely replied. "My parents were killed by Indians led by a dirty band of white renegades, and I shot down their leader and there's a price on my head back in Texas. I always wanted to see something of the world, and I'd heard a good deal about Argentina cattle. So I'm here. But I've also seen enough of the federalista methods to want to be on your side if I can help. And I'll contribute half of that bank draft, Don Justo, to the purchase of arms for your men against Rosas."
"That is an unexpectedly generous offer, Senor MacDonald. I will accept it in the name of the unitarios. So that you may know that this gift of yours is not to be expended in an uneven battle, I tell you in confidence that only yesterday I received news from the diplomatic ministers of Brazil and Uruguay, agreeing to back our struggle against the tyrant with troops from those sister nations. Though they at times have been our enemies, Senor MacDonald, they have come to realize at last, well after we did, that the evil which this Rosas spawns may spread beyond Argentina and engulf even their own strongholds."
"That's good news indeed, Don Justo."
"I believe that by the middle of April, just before our winter season, we shall have amassed strength enough to give open battle to the tyrant, and I have made my plans to strike at a place known as Monte Caseros."
"Why, Don Justo," Pablo Montagna exclaimed, "that is in Rosas'own province!"
"Yes, Pablo," the graybearded unitario leader nodded, "with the mountains to the west and near the Pehuajo Lake. It is an admirable terrain for attack, since our troops may hide themselves in the forests near the mountains and engage Rosas from the flank and the rear. But we shall wait to draw him out into the plains. To that end, we shall provoke incidents, small revolts, spread rumours that Paraguay and Chile and Peru as well as Bolivia intend to support us and to sail their ships around the Cabo de Hornos to land at the Bahia Sawmborombon. Rosas, I pray, will be tricked enough by those rumours to send his detachments to cover the shores of the Atlantic, while the troops from Uruguay and Brazil cross over at Rosario del Tala and so on by forced march to our destined rendezous."
"It's quite a plan, Don Justo," Kelly MacDonald chuckled. "But aren't there spies everywhere to ruin these plans?"
"There are spies and counterspies, Senor MacDonald," Justo Jose de Urquiza dryly chuckled. "But in the next two months, we shall get word to our loyal forces throughout the provinces. We shall bid them wait for the time when they are to strike, as a fire strikes, here, there, in a thousand different places, till all Argentina is ablaze and Rosas is drawn out of his palace. To be sure, we cannot control the incessant raids which the tyrant sends against the little villages. Yet we must have someone courageous enough to spread these rumors, so that the raids will increase and thus Rosas will weaken his own strength, blind to the thought of caution in his belief that all Argentina lies under his heel."
"I will spread those rumors!" Bruna Motagna proudly declared.
"Oh no, my beautiful wife, it's too dangerous!" her handsome husband exclaimed, turning anxiously to the graybearded unitario leader.
"No it's not dangerous, my Pablo! They don't expect women to have a part in war, except as the spoils. Why, how can you say that after what I've done already, and when you didn't want me to go in the first place? Didn't I manage to see old Fra Univerva in Mendoza and get your message to him, even with a troop of those accursed Black Lancers were guarding his church?"
"Yes, and you don't know how many prayers I was saying that they wouldn't catch you, Bruna," her husband sighed.
"But it is true, Pablo," Justo Jose de Urquiza gently interposed, "that the men of Rosas, like Rosas himself, think that all women must be brainless, and so there is the more chance for Bruna to succeed. Yet, my valiant lieutenant, I would not myself pronounce the word that would separate you from your wife. If you think it is too dangerous for her-"
"But it isn't, Don Justo!" Bruna Montagna defiantly exclaimed. "It's no more dangerous than staying in one's house and waiting for the Black Lancers to break down the door to kill and to rape and plunder. No, I've decided, and Pablo knows in his heart that I can help the cause."
"Well, Pablo?" Urquiza smiled.
"You heard my wife. Unless I want to chain her and beat her into changing her mind, there'll be no peace until she had her way. And besides," Pablo Montagna laughed as he stood beside his beautiful wife and, taking her by the shoulders, kissed her warmly on the mouth, "I'm proud of her. That she would take part in our struggle is a challenge to me to do all the more for our beloved country."
"So it's settled," the leader of the unitarios declared. "And you, Senor MacDonald, I'm offering you a commission as Colonel in one of the regiments that will give battle to the men of Rosas at Monte Caseros."
"That's very generous of you, Don Justo. But how can I earn that commission?"
"You say that you come from Texas, Senor MacDonald. And was this estancia of yours near any of the forts of your soldiers?"
"Indeed it was. We needed the Army to defend us against the Comancheros, but Texas is a big country and there's lots of roaming space, Don Justo."
"Well, teach your men the ways you fought in your country, then Senor MacDonald. Rosas' men are superb horsemen, for they were gauchos before they came into his service. And he has had them trained as superb cavalry, riding in formations, whose effectiveness has not yet really been tested in an outright battle. But what you have learned in fighting the Indians and renegades can be of great help to our men in the ways of ambush and unexpected attacks that will destroy these formations, isn't that so?"
"I think so. We've got a little history of our own, Don Justo," Kelly MacDonald wryly smiled. "The British troops have the best formations in the world, but our frontiersmen under a certain General Washington tore them to pieces."
"Well, Senor MacDonald, then you will earn your commission by teaching us Argentineans how your countrymen fought for their own independence! Vaya con Dios!"
CHAPTER NINE
Throughout the next month, Kelly MacDonald, in the blue and gold uniform of the unitarios, with cockaded hat and saber dangling from the belt about his lean waist, drilled Urquiza's troops, including many mercenaries from Brazil and Uruguay. Meanwhile, Pablo Montagna rode his black stallion through the provinces, conferring with the headmen of the smallest villages, and his wife, equally fearless, dressed herself as a peasant girl riding a burro to the tiniest hamlets to tell the downtrodden people everywhere that there was new hope against the rule of the tyrant. Twice, Bruna Montagna was nearly apprehended by the Black Lancers, but each time the friendly villagers helped her escape, though many of them paid for their aid with their lives, impaled by the deadly spears of the Lancers.
In his palace, Juan Manuel de Rosas grew black with fury as with each new day, his couriers reported growing unrest, from Mendoza to Tres Aroyos, from Villalonga to Tunuyan. And, even as Urquiza had feared, he sent punitive raids against many of the little towns to the southwest of his capital city, with orders to destroy and burn, to rape and murder, to bring back young girls and women who would be prizes given to his faithful Lanceros Negros as reward for their loyalty.
For Kelly MacDonald, this feud which had lasted nearly a score of years had become something personal, as potent a force to motivate him as his own vengeance against the Comancheros. Elena Bodegas had made him quit forget Bess Wilson. After a long day in the fields outside the cities of Cordoba or Santa Fe, training the foreign troops as well as those of the unitarios in the strategic warfare of the Apache and the Comanche, he would go, bone-weary, to the little inn or hut where Elena awaited him. Then he would find solace and release in her arms, his prick sheathed to the hilt in that warm, tight cunt which never denied him and which had its own amorous magic to enthrall him. Once the blue and gold uniform and the cockaded hat were put aside, lean and naked and wiry he mounted her, and they were lovers as if there were no war, no feud, no tyranny in all the world save that sweet tyranny of passion which fits prick to cunt and bids man and maid engage in never-ending duel....
By the third week of March, Bruna Montagna knew that she was pregnant, and the news both enchanted and saddened her. It would be their first child, her and Pablo's and heir to the independence which the two of them were about to win for their delivered country. Yet at the same time she knew that if she told her husband of her condition, he would forbid her dangerous missions, which had become more and more perilous. So she swore the old doctor, Sebastiano Orunez, to utter secrecy, though he sadly shook his head and murmured, "Que lastimal For so fine a couple, the coming birth of the first child is always an event of joy and thanksgiving. But you, Senora, take too many needless risks in your patriotism. Look you, there are enough good men pouring into Argentina from Brazil and Uruguay to give us strength against the dictator. You have done more than your share, and if I were your husband, I would not let you go where the Lanceros Negros ride."
"But you're not my husband, dear old man," Bruna Montagna twitted him as she planted a kiss on his grizzled cheek. "Besides, it's only in the second month, and I can still ride without the slightest discomfort. I'm ravenous as a starved wolf, and my complexion's even better. And I simply shan't stay at home and get big with child till I'm stupid and my Pablo won't even look at me without disgust, comprende listed?"
He shrugged and sighed: "It is always the way of the young to know more than their elders. Very well, Senora Montagna, I've simply done my duty in telling you. As you say, I'm not your husband." And then with a twinkle in his kindly eyes, he added, "If I were, I should certainly beat you till you recognized me as your lord and master."
"Pooh!" Bruna made a face as she moved towards the door of the old doctor's office. "Pablo has tried that too, but it only leads to making babies. Adios, Senor Medico."
She had returned to the lovely little house in which she and Pablo resided in Cordoba, while he at the moment was again in Mendoza giving the final instructions for the expected battle against the full strength of Juan Manuel de Rosas to the Uruguayan major, Francisco Olivera. Kelly MacDonald was there too, teaching the Uruguayan volunteers the tactics of merciless Indian warfare, and his arduous days were lightened by incomparable nights with beautiful young Elena Bodegas.
Now Bruna waited for word to be sent her from Justo Jose de Urquiza by a trusted courier, Jorge Denasiado. He was a man of nearly sixty, a wagon peddler who for over twenty years had been a familiar figure traversing the pampas in his rickety wagon pulled by four sturdy burros. A year ago, his elderly wife and their only daughter, a budding girl of seventeen, had been raped and tortured to death by a drunken band of Black Lancers. Hearing the news, Rosas had expressed his own personal condolences and his horror at the injustice and brutality, and had sent Jorge Denasiado a bag of pesos. He had had the assailants tried before a military tribunal and the lot of them severely flogged and demoted to the rank of private. But the old wagon peddler had not been propitiated by this attempt at restitution; ostensibly accepting the gold and sending back word that he did not hold Rosas responsible for that hideous crime, he had journeyed to La Plata and demanded to see the leader of the unitarios. He had flung down the bag of pesos on the floor and said scornfully, "Senor Don Justo, use this money to buy coffins for the federalista dogs! Let them be of the cheapest wood, so that the money will go farther. And henceforth I am at your service whenever you need me.
And Urquiza had made invaluable use of this cruelly wronged little man who knew nothing of politics or military strategy and who had made his long journeys across the pampas to amass enough dowry so that his lovely young daughter might one day wed a worthy citizen who would contribute to the advancement of his country's good. Jorge Denasiado had become a courier for the secret forces of the unitarios. For an uneducated man, he possessed a phenomenal memory, and so the messages which he was given were never written down lest they incriminate him or those with whom he came in contact.
Several times in the past few weeks, his wagon had been stopped by Black Lancers, thoroughly searched, but nothing had ever been found. He lived in the little village of Oalarte, a dozen miles from Uzcumane where Kelly MacDonald had first met Bruna's beautiful younger cousin. And not even his neighbors who had known him all the years of his life suspected that he was not, as they were, a federalista.
He was on his way now to Cordoba, and the message which he was to bear to Bruna Montagna called for her to ride to Galvez, not far from Parana, which in earlier years had been governed under the Rosas law by Urquiza himself, as part of the Entre Rios province which had been assigned to him by the tyrant. It would be a journey of nearly a hundred and fifty miles and it would take about five days on horseback, allowing detours and halts to avoid the federalista patrols. At Galvez Bruna was to meet the impatient Faustino Roca, the fiery and ambitious alcalde of that town who could not wait to send a fighting force against Rosas. Urquiza's advice to Bruna was that she was to urge the alcalde to await the signal, and that three days before the "intended battle at Monto Caseros, he would then strike in a daring raid on one of the arsenals which Rosas maintained hidden in the fringe of the stretches of jungle which bordered the pampas in this area. An impetuous attack prior to the date agreed upon, Urquiza pointed out, might tip the balance scales in favor of the federalistas.
Pablo Montagna had sent his old childhood nurse, Eva Consuarte, to tend the lovely little house while he was away from Cordoba. The white-haired woman, now in her mid-sixties, adored Bruna as much as she had adored her young master, and on those occasions when Bruna rested at the house after her hazardous journeys through the provinces, Eva Consuarte prepared special foods of which the beautiful young dark-brown-haired woman was particularly fond.
It was late afternoon now, and Bruna had just awakened from her siesta, when she heard a knock at the front door of the house. Yawning, then stretching like a cat, she rose, wearing only a robe and slippers, luxuriating for the few days she could steal from her own self-imposed labors against the hated federalistas, in not having to wear the rough, scratchy garb of a village girl or to ride the uncomfortably hard back of a stubborn burro. To ride a horse had become increasingly dangerous along the pampas; no peasant girl possessed a horse, to begin with, and that at once would be a matter of great suspicion to the roving patrols constantly being sent out by the uneasy dictator.
Eva Consuarte called in to her young mistress, "I shall open it, Senora Montagna, don't disturb yourself!" She half-suspected that her young master's beautiful wife was with child, though Bruna had said nothing to her; and she had, as a result, become so tenderly solicitous that Pablo's beautiful young wife had laughingly protested, "But I'm not sick, dear Eva!"
When the old nurse opened the door, she saw before her a pompous, ornately moustachioed man of about forty in the uniform of a Brazilian major, and so she smilingly welcomed him. For Eva Consuarte was as fiercely unitario in her beliefs as Urquiza himself, and she knew that the great Don Justo had made alliance with the Brazilians and Uruguayans.
"May I see the Senora Montagna?" the major doffed his olive-green cap and smiled unctuously at the old nurse.
"To be sure. I'll tell her that you're here to see her, Senor."
"I am in your debt, vieja," he chuckled with a florid bow.
Major Ramon Borotra was a vain and ambitious man, who had been bitterly frustrated in his own military career back in Brazil. He had led his men against a sporadic rebellion by the Paraguayans, defeated them handsomely and had expected to be promoted to the rank of colonel. Instead, because of political pressures brought to bear by the leaders of the two nations, who both feared Rosas more than they feared each other's machinations, he had been summoned to the court of Pedro II, the Emperor of Brazil, and there, after being given a medal for his courage, heard himself assigned to the disagreeable task of conveying five hundred picked troops to be at the disposal of Justo Jose de Urquiza. Further, his monarch told him that he was to take orders from the unitario officers and in no way to seek personal glory. For this contribution of troops to fight against the tyrant Rosas, Pedro II informed Major Borotra, was quite unofficial and must in no way involve the Brazilian peace treaty with the Argentinians.
So for two months, Major Ramon Borotra had had to stand by and see his troops taught the most ridiculous tactics by a somber and taciturn gringo-who, of course, was none other than Kelly MacDonald. And because the major was fat, boorish and spoke mainly Portuguese, his hopes for amatory conquests among the flashy-dark-eyed senoritas of Cordoba, Mendoza and La Plata had been dashed by repeated mocking rejections.
He dared not return to his monarch to resign this thankless commission. Instead, he brooded, finding consolation in the strong Argentinian wine at the taverns which he frequented. And two weeks ago, in just such a tavern in Mendoza, he had been approached by a sly little man with a patch over one eye and the tattered garments of a beggar. When he had been about to strike the fellow for importuning him for alms, the man had whispered, "Hear me out first, Major. How would you like to become a colonel and earn five thousand pesos?"
Intrigued at this astonishing offer from a beggar, Major Ramon Borotra had beckoned to the tavern-keeper to bring a jug of vino rioja and he had listened. The beggar had been one of Rosas' many spies. A meeting was arranged a few days later with none other than the dreaded Teniente Profirio Gonzalez, who had come to Mendoza disguised as the foreman of an estancia seeking to buy two fine breeding bulls for his master's herd.
And after Major Ramon Borotra had listened to "The Bloody Butcher," he greedily agreed to the latter's terms. Twice five thousand pesos would be his reward, Porfirio Gonzalez told the ambitious Brazilian, in return for asking leave to resign his commission and to turn the command of his troops over to the accursed gringo who was training the unitario forces. Then Major Ramon Borotra was to make his way to Cordoba and to become acquainted with Bruna Montagna.
For Porfirio Gonzalez believed that the mysterious young peasant girl who had been reported travelling over the pampas these past few months and whose visits to the headmen of many little villages had created untoward resistance against the Black Lancers, was none other than the beautiful wife of Don Justo's right hand aide, Pablo Montagna.
The Brazilian major had just come from that meeting with Porfirio Gonzalez, his traitorous mind awhirl with the flowing promises "The Bloody Butcher" had made to him. Not only would he be a colonel, he might even become a general under the glorious El Supremo. There would be such women as he had never dreamed of brought to his quarters in the palace once he had helped deliver Bruna Montagna into the hands of Los Lanceros Negros.
And now, entering the room in which the lovely dark-brown-haired bride of Pablo Montagna awaited him, he bowed low and kissed her hand and murmured ingratiating phrases of his great joy in meeting the valiant wife of the most heroic leader to freedom whom Argentina had ever known.
Bruna Montagna at once distrusted his oily, ingratiating manner, and still more the greedy way he had of glancing at her bosom and then at her hips. He glibly professed having been given military leave after the hard campaign of bringing his men from Brazil to Argentina and of educating them to accept the command of the gringo. Eva Consuarte, suspecting nothing, had gone to market before the shops closed, wanting to find a fine melon or pineapple to please her young mistress.
"It must be lonesome to have so fine a husband playing soldier all the time, Senora," Major Ramon Borotra purred. He rose from the armchair and moved towards the couch on which Bruna Montagna had seated herself, and her cheeks colored at the naked look of lust in his dark eyes. "Of a certainty, had I such a wife as you, I would not leave her by herself with only an old woman to look after her. I would not let her from my sight, not for a moment, night or day," he ardently declared.
"Major Borotra, you are most flattering. But how is it that you wish to spend your leave visiting me?" she calmly inquired. "I am only the wife of Pablo Montagna, and it is he who leads the fight against the tyrant. You would learn much from him, but all you can learn from me is that I am faithful to my husband."
"Ah now, that's well said," Major Borotra chuckingly approved as he seated himself and moved even closer to the embarrassed young beauty. "But in my country, a wife follows her husband on his campaign, cooks his meals, loads his weapons and watches over him. That is true love in my country, Senora."
"Pabio doesn't require that of me. Again, Major Borotra, I thank you for your gracious gesture in this visit, but as you see, I am not properly dressed and there is very little I can say to you, since I know nothing of the military."
"But you know a man when you see one, don't you, Senora?" he insinuated as he put an arm around her waist. Bruna Montagna stiffened, her eyes blazed with anger, as she rose to her feet. "I think you forget yourself, Major," she said coldly. "I've nothing more to say to you."
"But I have a great deal more to say to you, beautiful one," he said huskily as he drew her to him and crushed her mouth with his.
With a smothered cry of revulsion, the beautiful dark-brown-haired young woman drew up her knee sharply, and the major uttered a bellow of agony as he doubled over, clutching at his private parts.
"I'm sorry to have hurt you, Major Borotra," Bruna Montagna sarcastically declared, "for I am afraid you are not familiar with the customs of my country. That I received you in only my robe Was not because I wished an assignation with you, but simply out of the courtesy which is due your country in sending soldiers to help us crush the dictator. As soon as you have recovered your breath, you may leave my house."
And with this, turning her back on him, she walked out of the room.
Slowly, grinding his teeth in agony, Major Ramon Borotra straightened, his face damp with sweat. "You filthy little whore," he hissed, "You'll pay for that! I pray to Dios that you're the one El Carnicero is looking for. And if you are, I shall ask him to give you to me for a little hour before the torturers of Rosas have their way with you, proud, insolent bitch!"
CHAPTER TEN
Major Ramon Borotra crouched behind a giant quebracho tree and watched Jorge Denasiado enter the Montagna house. He recalled what Profirio Gonzalez had told him: "El Supremo is convinced that this clever unitario puta receives her orders from couriers who may be the most ordinary and humble of persons. Perhaps one time it may be a flower vendor, another time a mule driver. Thus far, of course, we have no proof, or Bruna Montagna would be in one of our torture chambers for interrogation. Your task, Major Borotra, will be to make yourself known to this woman, to keep her under surveillance as soon as she is back in her house in Cordoba, and then to apprehend by whatever means you can any -likely and suspicious visitors. You will report to Huberto Gomez, a wineseller in Cordoba, who is our trusted ally. You will tell him whom you suspect and describe that person. Gomez will do the rest."
And so Major Ramon Borotra, who longed to be a general and to be fawned over by desirable young women, trained his field glasses on the veranda of the house, wincing from the throbbing, dull ache in his groin. And thus it was that, almost two hours later, he saw the wagon peddler come down the street, glance quickly about, and then go up to the door of the Montagna house.
At last his vigil was rewarded when he saw the old wagon peddler entering the Montagna house. Cautiously crouching so as not to be seen by anyone in that house, he made his way around the thick hedges of jacaranda and clumps of ceiba trees with their reddish buds along the side of the house; then very carefully on his hands and knees, sheltered by the luxurious growth of trees and and flowers which surrounded this idyllic little hacienda, he made his way towards the balcony, climbed to it by gripping the heavy liana vines which covered the walls, and hid in the darkened corner, from which he could hear the voices of both the old man and Bruna Montagna through the open windows.
"You will tell Don Justo that I shall leave this very night for Galvez," he heard the beautiful dark-haired young woman say. "I shall do my best to persuade the alcalde to do exactly what Don Justo wishes, pointing out to him that his own self-willed acts may well cost us the revolution. Go now Jorge, and be very careful. Even here in Cordoba, Rosas has his traitors and spies who would sell their own mothers to the torturers for a price."
Major Ramon Borotra blessed the saints for having given him such priceless information, information that would snare this aristocratic bitch, give him his own personal revenge and place him in the high esteem of El Supremo. As quietly as he could, he clambered down the liana, scrambled behind the protective covering of the shrubbery and trees, and watched Jorge Denasiado walk briskly down the street. He took pains not to lose him yet not to startle the old man by seeming to follow him, for more than a mile until at last Jorge Denasiado stopped in the shadows of a giant eucalyptus tree to roll himself a handmade cigarette. Here the street was deserted, and there were no lights. Major Ramon Borotra approached the unsuspecting wagon peddler, drew his saber, and clenching it at the hilt, lifted it and brought it down with all his might on the back of the old man's skull. Jorge Denasiado collapsed without a sound. It was but the work of a moment to gag and bind him, roll him behind a thick jacaranda hedge, and then to hurry back to the place where he had tethered his horse. Riding back to the place where he had hidden the old man's body, he flung Jorge Denasiado over the back of the horse, bound the inert body with a riata to his stallion, and then, mounting into the saddle, spurred onwards towards the wineshop of Huberto Gomez....
Jorge Denasiado was naked, bound over a huge wine cask, in the cellar of Gomez's shop. A flickering candle guttered from a bracket on the wall, casting an unearthly light on the barbaric scene beyond. Huberto Gomez, tall and gaunt, with a bristly black beard, was holding another lighted candle towards the old man's emaciated chest. Already one pap was shriveled and blackened from this torture by fire. "Speak, you unitario dog," the wineseller hissed. "Next, I'll start on your cojones!"
"Dios ... the pain ... I can tell you nothing ... I am an old wagon peddler, everyone on the pampas knows me ... enough ... kill me and have done with it ... I can tell you nothing," the old man gasped.
Major Ramon Borotra paced the damp stone floor, kicking an empty clay gourd which had once contained aguardiente. "Make him talk!" he hoarsely demanded.
The wineseller straightened, gave the Brazilian major a contemptuous look, "It's not you who commands here, brasilierio," he said curtly. "This is the work I do for El Supremo. I'll make him talk, never fear! We're not so squeamish as you hack in Brazil." Then, bending over the shuddering body of the old wagon peddler, he jeered, "We already know that Senora Montagna leaves tonight for Galvez. Is it true that she is the one they call the Virgen Negra? Speak, and you'll get a quick death; be obstinate, and you'll wish you'd never been born, viejo!"
Jorge Denasiado's eyes closed, and his lips moved in prayer. Huberto Gomez grinned viciously, and applied the candle towards the old man's straddled thighs, letting the victim feel the heat drawing the tender skin in the groin. "Your last chance!" he snarled. "No? Take it, then!" And with a hideous chuckle, he moved his hand so that the flame from the wick touched the tip of Jorge Denasiado's cock.
The naked wagon peddler lifted his head, his eyes goggling from their sockets, his body jerking frenziedly against his bonds. An inhuman prolonged and raucous bellow, incredible for one of his frailty and years, burst from his throat.
Huberto Gomez drew away the candle. "You see? There's no need to be a hero. We'll catch this little bitch anyway, so why suffer for her? Is she the one we've been seeking all these months along the pampas? Answer!"
Major Ramon Borotra stared, his face ashen, his mouth agape, trembling violently with a fascinated revulsion. For once again the wineseller had lowered the candle till the flame touched, this time, one of the old man's hairy, gnarled testicles. And he closed his eyes and grimaced at the horrid stench of burning hair and human flesh, then shuddered as once again that unearthly shriek burst upon the walls of this fetid cellar.
"Well, now, have you had enough? Or do I start on the other cojone?" Huberto Gomez demanded. He licked his lips with avid sadism at the sight of the victim's straining, sweat-bathed body, at that contorted face, the bloodshot eyes and the chattering mouth and teeth. "Suit yourself. Let's try it a little longer, this time!" And once again he lowered the candle.
But this time Jorge Denasiado's valiant courage was no more. Lifting his head, staring at the flickering flame, he shrieked, "No, oh God, no! I'll tell you, only take it away, I'll tell you!"
"Well then?"
"Yes ... Bruna Montagna is the Black Virgin ... but she is only a courier ... she has never harmed you pigs ... she's a woman ... spare her ... oh, if there is a just God, spare her!"
"Your saber, Major Borotra," Huberto Gomez demanded. And when the Brazilian officer had tendered him the weapon, the fiendishly grinning wineseller probed with the point til he had found the old man's rectum, and then, with a savage lunge, plunged the weapon as far as it would go. He watched the old wagon peddler's body jerk and wrench in hideous death-throes, and he seemed to drink in the babbling screams and pain-crazed prayers until at last, with a final convulsive shudder, the tortured old man was dead.
Then he turned to Major Borotra: "You'd best leave at once, brasiliero. You'll ride ahead of the bitch, but not to Galvez. Go rather to Barrancas, that's twenty miles east and on the Parana River, understand? Teniente Gonzales will be there now. I've just had word. Hell arrange a warm welcome for the Senora, be sure of that." Again he gave the Brazilian major a sadistic grin. "You can be there in three days if you spur your horse, Major Borotra. She'll take at least five on the burro, I'm thinking. That'll give the Teniente time to get word to one of the spies he has in Galvez, telling her to take shelter after she's delivered her message near the Logo del Muerte ... it's well named, that lake, don't you think? The Lake of Death. Now begone, and leave me to dispose of this carrion!"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Her head ached and the bruise in her right shoulder where the swarthy, leering Black Lancer corporal had gripped her throbbed mercilessly. She groaned, feebly sat up, and found herself in the inky blackness of a narrow, windowless cell. She groped with her slim finger and could feel only the hard adobe of the floor and the walls. Then Bruna remembered.
She had made her way to Galvez safely enough, skirting several federalista patrols, and had her interview with Faustino Roca, the alcalde. He had been excitable and defiant at first, till she had, using all her woman's logic and emotional appeal to urge the need to unite as never before in this the final battle for the freedon of Argentina, persuaded him that his would be the greater glory if he acted as Don Justo ordered. And then she had gone to a little hut where they had served her food and drink, and at midnight one of the villagers had come to her to warn her that a patrol of the Lanceros Negros was imminent, and had offered to show her the way to safety.
The two of them had mounted burros and headed out towards the east where, her informant had told her, there was a small village loyal to the Unitario cause. And then when they had reached Barrancas, they had found the village deserted and in ruins, proof of yet another of Rosas raids. They must cross the Lago del Muerte, her informant had urged, and from there they could reach Diamante, where she knew the forces of Urquiza were in command. There had been a little boat moored at the marshy bank by a rope tied to a bent old cypress, and the two of them had taken it and the informant had paddled across the lake. But when they reached the other side, and as she stepped out of the boat, men had come out of the little forest fringing it and seized her. She had struggled, crying out to her companion to go back across the lake and get word somehow to Don Justo. But he had laughed and showed his decaying, blackened teeth, saying to her, "Unitario puta, Don Justo won't be able to save you now!"
And then she had known with a sickening horror that it had all been a trap, so cleverly planned and executed that there would be no way to get word either to her beloved Pablo or to the man who was to save Argentina from the tyrant. And if she had any lingering doubts over what was to be done to her, they vanished when, from out of the darkness, there came two men in federalista uniforms, in the red tunic and the black breeches and boots that marked the brutal Lanceros Negros ... the stocky, black-haired and bemedalled Teniete Porfiro Gonzales and the Brazilian major who had tried to make love to her so clumsily hardly a week ago.
"You traitor!" she had spat at Ramon Borotra, and that was when he had drawn back his fist and struck her so violent a blow on the side of her head that she had slumped, fainting between her guards. And then she knew nothing ... nothing until this moment of wakening to the terrible knowledge that she was a captive of Rosas.
And worst of all, knowing herself pregnant with Pablo's child, their very first, the beautiful dark-brown-haired young woman wept silently now, not for her own forthcoming ordeal-which she knew would have no mercy for her only death at the end of it-but for the unborn child which Pablo could never hold in his arms now. But then, because she had courage and breeding, she straightened, and she closed her eyes and said a prayer that if she had to die, it would be in some small way a blow for the cause of freedom and the ultimate overthrow of Juan Manuel de Rosas.
Now the door was flung open, and two lancers appeared, one holding a lantern, while the other with drawn saber approached. "On your feet, puta!.. he growled. "El Carnicero is eager to meet you. You'll find it wise not to keep him waiting women!"
Bruna Montagna rose, blinking her eyes against the sudden blinding light of the lantern, moving towards the door. The man with the saber seized her by the arm, digging his fingers into the bare flesh until she winced. "I can walk alone, hombre. she said softly.
"Si, verdad, away from here I've so doubt but not this evening, puta!"
"Where am I, then?"
"Not that it matters, unitario bitch, but you're a few miles from Barrancas. The Teniente had this place built just inside the jungle, to hide it from you unitarios. So you see, puta, you'll help innaugurate the interrogation room. Get along there with you, pronto! To taunt her and to humiliate her, he smacked her bottom with the flat of his saber. The other soldier sniggered, "Better not spoil her too much, Carlos. El Carnicero wants her all to himself, along with that strutting peacock of a Brazilian!"
And now, as she was led along the narrow corridor of the squat, rectangular adobe-brick building camouflaged by the thick floral growths of the jungle, Bruna Montagna knew how she had been betrayed. It had been through Major Ramon Borotra. He must have learned some how of her journey to Galvez. But how? Oh, please, how? For that could only mean that there was still another traitor close to Don Justo, perhaps one of his own couriers, one of his own most trusted aides. And this awareness was annihilating to her heroic spirit.
The two soldiers pushed her at last over the threshold of a wider chamber and it too had walls of heavy adobe, and there were four torches set into wooden brackets to give the light needed for interrogation. There were no windows to this room. And what struck her most of all was that in the center was a huge wooden wheel set on a kind of low wooden pedestal, which dominated the chamber of interrogation. There was also a heavy metal chair with gaves at the ends of the arms and the legs, very much like that used for the fatal garrote. And there awaiting her, smirking, his hands on his hips, was Teniente Porfirio Gonzales, "The Bloody Butcher," and beside him, now in the federalista uniform of a colonel, Major Ramon Borotra. There was also a third man, a grinning, moronic brute, more like an ape than a man, with huge arms and shoulders, massive thews, a barrel-like chest, naked except his chest and fell over his low forehead, so that he appeared indeed like some simian out of an prehistoric jungle.
"Good evening, Senora Montagna, " Porfirio Gonzales purred, and he made mocking little bow. "I believe you know Colonel Borotra."
"I see that he has risen in the ranks, " Bruna Montagna said, forcing herself to sound unafraid, praying that she be given the strength to withstand the demonial torments of which she knew these butchers of Rosas capable. "Is that the price for your treachery? It really isn't enough, you know."
The sadistic lieutenant of the Black Lancers strode forward and struck Bruna Montagna across the mouth with the flat of his hand. Tentatively, she put her tongue to her lips and tasted her own blood. But though the blow had made her stagger, she recovered and stood fearlessly confronting him.
"Perhaps that will show you that we mean to have respect as well as the truth here, Senora. Now, you'll make it easy on yourself if you'll tell us what we want to know. Are you the one known as the Black Virgin? Are you the courier between that swine of a Don Justo who has been plaguing our troops by bringing the news of insurrection? How many men have rallied to the unitario cause? Tell us these things, Senora Montagna, and it will be a merciful death by the firing squad in the court-yard of El Supremo," Porfirio demanded.
"I see. I am to be transported back to Buenos Aires so that Rosas can be sure a mere woman is put to death."
"You will talk with more respect before very much longer, that I can promise you, "Porfirio Gonzales said between his teeth. "Yes, you will die there because all your friends will hear the news throughout Argentina wherever the traitors meet by stealth against our beloved Gubernador. Your death thus will have immense value for us, and it will crush the spirit of traitors everywhere," He paused, staring gloatingly at her as she stood between the two lancer guards. If you are obstinate now, I do not think El Supremo will grant you the swift bullets of the firing squad. It may well be the garrote, and Sergente Oswaldo Perez will then preside at your execution. Well now, you know the facts, and I am waiting to hear your answer."
"And my answer to all of you is this," said Bruna Montagna, then she hawked and spat full into face of the Brazilian major.
"Good!" Porfirio Gonzalez's smile might well have been that on the face of Satan at the news that man had been driven from the Garden of Eden. "I was hoping that you would prove heroic, my dear Bruna. You will forgive me the intimate address, but now we shall become better acquainted, all four of us. Oh, I nearly forgot. This third member of our interrogation force is called Sanchez. He is very nearly an idiot, but he has enormous strength, and I have never seen a man use a whip more expertly. Guards, you may go, and see that we are not disturbed."
Bruna Montagna felt the rivulets of her own fear-sweat ooze from the tufted niches of her armpits, felt the soft tender flesh of her inner thighs-where her beloved Pablo's lip and finger had rendered such exquisite homage-twitch and cringe with the horrid loathing of physical pain which was now inexorable and imminent.
Porfirio Gonzales turned to the hulking brute beside him. "Strip her, tie her to the wheel and let her taste the lash, my good Sanchez," he said in a greedy voice that trembled with inordinate lust.
With a wordless growl of joy, the huge Indian seized Bruna Montagna by a wrist, jerked her round to face him, leering and chuckling. Then, releasing her wrist, he ripped away her peasant blouse and skirt, the coarse camisole and drawers, and she was naked. She had closed her eyes, but she could not control the deep red waves of shame that flooded her olive-satiny cheeks.
"Que Linda!" the Brazilian major breathed, "And you will keep your part of the bargain, Porfirio?"
"What I have said, I have said, brasiliero! Hurry with her, Sanchez!"
The Indian torturer had pushed a crude wooden stool before the wheel. It was broad and low, and on this he now forced the naked young wife of Pablo Montagna to step. On the other side of the hub of this wheel, a heavy round post fitted its other end through another kind of hub cut into the thick round wooden post rising from the middle of the rectangular pedestal beyond the wheel. This hub was procketed to give free play to the mobility of the wheel when it was spun, and the horizontal piece held the wheel upright and let it move when spun. Swiftly Sanchez bound rawhide thongs around Bruna Montagna's slim ankles and made them fast to spokes of the huge heavy wheel. She was forced to cling to the spokes above her, and the muscles of her magnificent, voluptuously rounded olive-sheened bottom flexed and shuddered, on which fact Porfirio Gonzales salaciously remarked as he and the Brazilian moved round to watch the spectacle.
Now Sanchez went to the opposite wall and brought back a short ladder, which he placed beside the wheel. Mounting it, he seized Bruna's left wrist and thonged it to one of the spokes, and then descended to place the ladder at her right and again mounted, this time fixing her right wrist as far out as it would go. Thus she was spread-eagled, her magnificent naked body vulnerable to the infernal whipping wheel which Porfirio Gonzales himself had devised.
All was in readiness now. Sanchez again went back to the wall to take down from a wooden peg from which it dangled a cowhide whip about five feet long, with thick stock handle and braided, gradually tapering lash which ended in two three-inch-long pointed strands. The longer part of the lash was three-quarters of an inch wide, and a quarter of an inch thick, a weapon capable of inflicting atrocious suffering either by its coiling caress or the deadly tapered, flicking strands at its very tip.
Pushing away chair and ladder, the huge Indian took hold of one of spokes and dragged down on it till the wheel began to creak and move. Again and again he spun it, till it began to gather momentum.
Bruna Montagna whirled round and round, gasping with the shock of this unnatural mobility, her eyes closed, her lips moving in fervent prayers to the Creator, to her beloved Pablo, begging him to forgive her for having lost their child by being thus stupidly trapped by the men of the tyrant.
Sanchez moved back now, measuring his distance, his beady eyes following the moving body, and when Bruna's head was exactly vertical to the floor of the torture chamber, he swept out the whip with an expert drawing movement that sent the broader part of the lash cracking viciously over the base of her naked bottomglobes.
It was like a scalding douse on her tender flesh, and a stifled cry was torn from her. Round and round she moved, the wheel not yet slackening and a second lash left a bright crimson welt across her naked shoulders as she convulsively forced her panting titties against the hard whipping wheel.
The third lash crossed her upper buttocks and lower back diagonally, while the fourth curled with a sinister crack around her right side and the two fiendishly narrowed tips darted against the under-curve of one magnificent naked tittie. At this, her head fell back and her mouth gasped in a shrill cry of torment: "Aiiii!"
"Very good, Sanchez, " Profirio Gonzales approved, "but not too quickly. And do not draw blood. I want her body to bum as with hellfire, but do not damage it. She is to entertain us when you are finished. Perhaps, if you do very well and surpass yourself, I may even let your enjor yourself for a few moments with her. Colonel Borotra, you must earn your pleasure, now that you are one of us. When the wheel slackens, shove down one of the spokes and continue until it again moves swiftly, comprende?"
The Brazilian traitor nodded, his eyes glistening with lust as they swept Bruna Montagna's whip-welted naked body, rotating in that endless circle round and round in the center of this cheerless and sparsely furnished chamber.
Again Sanchez plied the cowhide whip, and once again it coiled with an angry Thwack! around the naked young woman's waist. Expertly jerking it free, Sanchez swept it out and then, with, a flick of his wrist, made the two tips bite home against Bruna Montagna's chinkbone just above the shadowy groove which separated her upstandingly rounded olive-sheened bottomglobes. Her body convulsively lunged, and twisted this way and that against her bonds, as again her head fell back ... but even now she was borne downwards with her head towards the floor. Now that the wheel was slackening more and more, Sanchez had ample time to choose his target; draw back his arm, he jerked down the whip and the tips of the braided thong disappeared between Bruna Montagna's straddled thighs, attacking both her tender orifices. Her body twisted and squirmed, and again a strident wordless cry of torment was wrested from her.
"Quickly, Colonel, the wheel is slowing!" Porfirio Gonzales angrily gestured, and Ramon Borotra strode towards the wheel, his lips loose and wet, his eyes glazed with rut at the sight of that magnificent female body with all its secrets gaped and bared. He gripped one of the spokes and shove it downwards, and the wheel creaked, and then again and again.
"Hombre," you are weakling!" Porfirio Gonzales sneered. "With your feeble pushes, the wheel will make the Senora think she is being wafted to paradise. You must do better than that if you wish to earn your pleasure with the bitch!"
Gritting his teeth and with all his strength, Ramon Borotra gripped the spoke with both hands and shoved downwards again, and this time the wheel began to quicken its rotary movement.
"That's better," the sadistic Black Lancer officer grudgingly conceded. Then he turned to Sanchez: "Continue, you do well, muy bueno."
The Indian torturer manipulated his cowhide whip with infernal skill. There were times when he let the wheel rotate a full three turns before the brown lash sped out again to deliver its savage kisses on Bruna Montagna's shuddering, welted naked body. Or again, so that she could not steel herself against any regular cadence of the lash, he would apply three or four successive strokes, sometimes diagonally, or again horizontally, and while she was still vibrating with agony from their cumulative effect, watch for the moment when her naked, yawning thighs formed a lascivious upright V. At that moment, his arm rose and descended with a swift jerky motion; the tips of the lash bit home into either cunt or asshole, tearing frenzied sobbing cries from the heroic young victim.
By the time fifty lashes had been applied, Bruna Montagna lolled in her bonds, and the wheel had come to a full stop and she hung head downwards, moaning, her body streaked with darkening welts from ankles to neck. Several times the wicked lash had swept round to send the two tapered tips against one of her convulsively heaving titties, and one of those lashes had drawn blood from the left nipple.
She was taken down now, but it was only a momentary reprieve. This time Sanchez thonged her wrists and ankles as before, but so that she faced the whip and her two gloating interrogators. And once again, with a grunt and exerting all his strength, the Indian made the wheel spin and creak as it whirled round and round with that beautiful naked sacrificial victim bound upon it.
Then stepping back, and again taking careful aim, the hairy, brutish torturer attacked her tender titties her belly and her inner thighs, or again made the whip coil around her chest, jerking forwards and then from side to side as if she were overtaken with ague. Her cries were deafening, particularly when the tips of the whip visited her lower belly and cunt or the soft nooks of her inner thighs near her yawning cleft or on the full peaks of her martyred bosom.
But still she would not speak, And when the whipping wheel slowed and came to its stop after an equal number of lashes had been administered to the front of her body, Porfirio Gonzales strode over to the wheel and, plunging his fingers in her hair, yanked up her face and demanded, "Are you ready to speak now, puta?" Bruna Montagna summoned her almost vanished energy to stare at him and then to purse her bleeding lips and make the gesture of spitting.
He slapped her violently half a dozen times, till her head rocked back and forth and she moaned wanly. Then, stepping onto the stool, Porfirio Gonzales unbuttoned the fly of his breeches, emerged his rutting cock and, gripping the naked young woman by the hips, thrust himself deep into her cunthole and began to fuck her with the brutal vigor he would have displayed with a common whore. Biting her lips to the blood, twisting her face to one side and closing her eyes, she endured even this without a single plaint for mercy.
And then, stepping down from the stool, he turned to Sanchez and gestured. With a growl of delight, the Indian torturer ripped off the calecon, his sweaty hairy body rigid with lust, and mounting the stool, his thick heavy fingers mercilessly squeezing and pinching her bleeding titties, he too fucked her.
When this was done, they revived her by dousing her bleeding palpitating body with a bucket of brine, and now again her cries rang out as a thousand burning pangs assailed her exacerbated flesh, her teeth chattering, her eyes reddened and supremely dilated, her nostrils flaring and shrinking incessantly.
They spun the wheel slowly, till she was placed before them upside down. "Now, hombre" Porfirio Gonzales said to the Brazilian, "Pay this aristocratic puta back for the insult she gave you. Make her use her mouth on your cojones! Sanchez will whip her on the thighs to make her do what you wish."
"Sr, magnifico!" Ramon Borotra panted. He knelt down, fumbled with the buttons of his breeches fly, drew out his swollen organ. Then his clammy hands cupping Bruna Montagna's tearwet cheeks, he gasped, "Open your mouth and suck me, unitario whore!"
At the same moment, Sanchez, who had retrieved his whip, swept it out from where he stood at the victim's right, the two tips crisply smacking as they stung the inner thigh near her ravaged cunthole.
Bruna Montagna uttered a shriek, and opened her mouth.
"You see, amigo?" Porfirio Gonzales chuckled. "It's all the same, whether they're aristocrats or whores, it all comes to the same thing. The whip makes them animals. Have your pleasure with her, while Sanchez touches her up a little!"
And once again the vicious whip cracked its tapered strands against the other inner thigh.
With a supreme effort of will, Bruna Montagna accepted Ramon Borotra's prick. And then suddenly he gave a bellow of inhuman agony, and began to hammer her cheeks with his fist. She had clenched his organ between her tooth and the muscles of her jaws stood out as with all her strength she brought her teeth together through the cartilage and gristle of his manhood.
"Stupid brasilieroV Porfirio Gonzales sneered as, drawing his pistol out of his holster, he put a bullet through Ramon Borotra's skull. "He had his reward, the traitor. A man who would betray his companions cannot be trusted not to betray his enemies as well. Sanchez, carry out that carrion."
Three days later on a dreary morning just after dawn in the palace courtyards of Juan Manuel de Rosas, Bruna Montagna, led out before the wall by two young sergeants of the Black Lancer corps, tottering from her suffering, wearing only a tattered calico dress, was made to stand against the wall. One of the young sergeants whispered to her, "Forgive me, Senora. I hope I didn't hurt you when I took you from your cell."
Her eyes, lusterless and shadowed with her atrocious suffering, slowly moved to contemplate him. Then her swollen lips moved in a faint murmur: "No. Nothing more can hurt me now, Sergente."
"Do you wish a blindfold, Senora Montagna?" he asked, his voice trembling. There were tears in his eyes and he did not try to hide them from his companion.
Bruna Montagna shook her head. She took a deep shuddering breath, looking upwards to the balcony on which Juan Manuel de Rosas stood, arms folded across his bemedalled chest, and then she smiled. A stray butterfly moved through the air towards her as the firing squad knelt down, Porfirio Gonzales lifting his saber to direct it.
His eyes saw the butterfly now and they left the gloating face of the tyrant of Argentina. Her lips formed a warm smile, and she reached out for the butterfly with one hand just as Porfirio Gonzales barked out: "Fuego!"
She fell forward, rolled over onto her back, and lay still. The smile was still on her face, and her sightless eyes seemed to follow the soaring butterfly as, with a final pirouette, it disappeared over the courtyard wall.
CHAPTER TWELVE
But, contrary to what both Juan Manuel de tosas and his depraved lieutenant Porfirio jonzalez had hoped, the news of Bruna vlontagna's death did not destroy the morale of ;he unitario forces now being rallied throughout the provinces. The courageous death of the "Black Virgin of the Pampas" furnished new inspiration even to the humble villagers who had lived in the shadow of terror all these exhausting years, and their rallying cry became, "Avenge the Black Virgin and all other martyrs of the bloody tyrant!"
On the 14th of April, 1852, Don Justo Jose de Urquiza sent two main regiments of well-trained soldiers against the federalistas, one under the command of Kelly MacDonald, who had been ordered to march his troops to Salladillo, to the west of Monte Caseros, in order to draw out into the open the hordes of Rosas and thus lead them, by retreating and delaying action, towards the locale which the unitario leader after long consultation with the military experts assisting him, had determined would furnish the greatest chance for victory against the tyrant.
Meanwhile Pablo Montagna had begged Urquiza to give him the right to fight in battle beside the commander of the other regiment, Colonel Miguel Solovar, a veteran of campaigns against the savage Chucumbuque Indians and a man who had ample reason to fight to the death against the Lanceros Negros-for eight years ago, his brother and the latter's beautiful young Chilean wife had been seized by a cordon of lancers, beaten, tortured, mutilated and then staked out near an anthill to die slowly. The gray bearded man who had once been Rosas' chief supporter and was now his fiercest enemy had nodded, too moved to speak, tears in his gently eyes. He understood Pablo's burning desire for vengeance and perhaps too, the young man's death-wish, to be reunited with his beloved Bruna.
That regiment arrived at Monte Caseros on the 18th of April and Colonel Salovar positioned his men in the forests near the jagged range of small mountains for which this verdant and primitive area was named. Pablo Montagna wore the uniform of a lieutenant; he asked for no higher rank despite his magnificent achievements for the unitario cause, wanting only to be in the thick of the battle against the federalistas.
Meanwhile, Juan Manuel de Rosas had sent out a force of two thousand well armed infantry and a hundred of his elite Lanceros Negros towards Barrancas, intending to cut off the two unitario regiments, and holding back his main force in order to crush the rebels, whom he confidently expected to drive off in a first skirmish. But he had reckoned without the cunning and ferocity with which the unitario soldiers fought, in unorthodox methods that gave his well organized and drilled troops little time to regroup and reform.
Pablo Montagna, with pistol and saber, prayed that his wife's torturer and murderer, Porfirio Gonzalez, might be delivered up to him in the clash of battle, and the suspense-filled ambush in the forest waiting for the federalista troops to be drawn out of their cover in an all-out attack left him restless and sleepless. But the discipline which Urquiza had imposed upon his followers held him back from any rash single-handed action, and he spent the night before the battle praying for his dead wife.
At Kelly MacDonald's order, two hundred villagers from Galvez, more eager than any others to avenge Bruna Montagna's betrayal and murder because it had been one of their own men who had lured her to the fatal crossing of the Lago del Muerte, fell upon the federalistas shortly before dawn in their camp at Barrancas. Armed only with pitchforks, machetes, knives and even Indian bows and arrows, they exacted fearful toll of the enemy before they vanished as swiftly as they had come. Porfirio Gonzalez at once ordered a vengeful pursuit; without waiting to count their dead or even to bandage their wounded whom they left with the corpses, the federalista regiment moved forward towards the interior and towards Rosas' meeting with his destiny at Monte Caseros, his crack Black Lancers angrily urging on the foot soldiers.
By late afternoon on April 19th, 1852, the pursuing federalistas came to Monte Caseros. The villagers of Galvez had turned off to the northeast, waiting to attack them again at the rear. Porfirio Gonzalez, at the head of his lancers, observed through his field glasses the huts of a tiny, nameless village near the forest in which the unitarios under Colonel Salovar lay in ambush. "We'll camp there," he called to his men. "At dawn, well take up the chase and put all of Galvez to the sword and the torch!"
And so he and a dozen of his lancers rode ahead into the tiny village, perhaps a mile away from the forest where Pablo Montagna paced in silent, prayerful vigil, awaiting the long-delayed moment for the supreme attack on the despot's forces.
The swarthy, black-haired Teniente uttered a cry of savage joy when he saw a comly Indian girl, clad only in a breechclout, moccasins and a string of beads bobbing against her brown-sheened pear-like tetas, run out of one of the huts and towards a huge snakeskin drum at the end of the little row of crude abode and liana-vine dwellings to give the alarm. Spurring his black stallion, he followed her, tilting the iron spear at the end of his wooden lance towards her glistening body. As she reached the drum and seized an ox bone to strike upon it, he suddenly reversed the spear and struck her down with the wooden end, then leaped down from his horse and, dragging her to her feet by her long black hair, beckoned to his companions, calling: "Hola, amigos, there's sport this night for us before we annihilate the accursed unitarios. Go to the other huts, Jose, Feliciano, and you too, Santos, and find us more of these wild young muchachas. They've never had a Porteno prick up their cunts, and it'll be a treat for them as for us!"
Three of the lancers dismounted and hurried into the huts, emerging a few minutes later with half a dozen sobbing, struggling young women and girls. "Teniente," Santos Duracha, a young corporal, hesitantly preferred," isn't it strange, don't you think, that only the women and children are here? Thee isn't a man in any of these huts, not even a vie jo."
"Those damned bastards from Galvez must have warned them, Corporal. So they fled from us, rightly fearing our vengeance. And because they're cobardes, cowards, they got away so quickly they didn't care a damn about their bitches. So much the better for us. Now stop worrying, Corporal, choose one of them to bed down with, and get the rest of the men to make camp and have some food and wine ready fast!"
"Si, mi Teniente!" Corporal Duracha saluted, then jerked the wrist of his prize, a sixteen-year-old, terrified and almost naked brownskinned girl with spectacularly large round tetas and bottomcheeks to match: "Come along, you Indian puta!"
But from the forest, Colonel Salovar had watched the entry of the lancers into the all but deserted little village, and had recognized El Carnicero. In a low voice, he murmured to one of his sergeants, "Bring me Teniente Montagna!"
"Se, mi Colonel'." the man smartly saluted, then hurried back into the forest to where Bruna's valorous young husband knelt before a huge cieba tree, hands clasped in prayer.
"Que pasa, hombre?" Pablo Montagna looked up with a start.
"The Colonel wishes you at once, Senor Teniente."
"Bueno, Sergente Jacinto. See that the men are comfortable. If there's any wine in my canteen, drink it in a toast to our mission." The handsome aide of Urquiza made his way towards the fringe of the forest and saluted his commanding officer: "A su servico, mi Colonel'."
"Good, Montagna! I've an assignment for you. Or rather, it calls for volunteers. Here, take these glasses-train them on that last hut to the right-do you see?"
"Diablol It's the Butcher!"
"Precisely. And beyond that village, his foot soldiers are camped. It's only the Black Lancers who give us concern, Teniente. And they've found wenches, as you see. Now if you and perhaps twenty good men could circle that village and attack them in the dead of night, you could disrupt their command."
"I've a score to settle with El Carnicero, mi Colonel."
"Every man under my command knows that, Teniente. Settle it then. And God go with you!"
* * *
It was after midnight. From the huts of the nameless little village near the forest, came the drunken shouts and curses of Porforio Gonzalez's rutting lancers, all thoughts of the battle fled as they forced the helpless Indian girls and women to yield to them.
Gonzalez himself had glutted himself with the young girl he had struck down with the butt of his lance. He had fucked her twice already, and, because she had resisted him the first time, had flogged her with his belt till she had grovelled at his feet and signed to him she would obey. Now, half drunk from aguardiente, he reached for her again, his dwindled prick again renewed by the sight of her vividly welted sleek brown skin, the magnificent ripe pears of her panting titties, the look of terror in her lovely face.
"Venga aqui, puta he snarled.
But the naked girl scrambled from the rude pallet on which he had flung her, and tried to reach the door. With a furious oath, Porfirio Gonzalez lurched after her and caught her just as she emerged. Twisting like an eel, she struck and clawed at him; again he swore and struck her on the cheek with his brutal fist and she sprawled on the ground just outside the hut.
"Now you'll get it, you dirty little savage," he greedily muttered. He flung himself down on her, his hands gripping her titties, kneeding apart her slim long thighs. And at that moment a riata coiled round his throat and lifted him off her as he grabbed for the strangling noose, his eyes goggling, his voice choked off.
From the roof of the hut, Pablo Montagna had lassooed El Carnicero; now he looked down and called, "Cobarbe, it's I, Pablo Montagna!" Then he slackened the riata till Gonzalez's booted feet scrabbled at the ground.
Frenziedly, El Carnicero's fingers fumbled at the noose. "Pie-piedad-" he croaked." Give me a fair chance ... I'd do the same for you-aii-mffgagghhh-"
Once again Pablo had jerked the noose tight and, exerting his strength, lifted the threshing body from the ground. " In the name of my dead wife and all those others you've murdered and tortured, Butcher of Argentina," he said coldly, "I sentence you to death and I .execute you-now!" And, gripping the riata with both hands, he tugged up, up, up ... till the booted feet of the dying Black Lancer kicked sporadically a few last times and then were still forever....
The surprise attack by Pablo Montagna's volunteers created chaos and confusion. As the other lancers sought to flee, they were cut down by machetes in the hands of the Indians who had returned to their village, in keeping with the orders transmitted to them by an Indian corporal under Colonel Salovar. And when the wakened foot-soldiers seized their weapons, Salovar's forces fell upon them from both flanks and with pistol and saber left only a hundred or more survivors to flee back to Buenos Aires with the news of the calamitous defeat....
By sundown of the following day, Kelly MacDonald's troops had circled the main body of the federalista troops, who had marched from Buenos Aires three days earlier, and engaged them near the Lago del Muerte. Murderous crossfire drove many of the soldiers of Rosas into the lake seeking safety there, and one of these who fled the fusillades of the unitarios was El Garotte, the squat Sergente Oswaldo Perez. Kelly MacDonald did not know that this was the man who had murdered the old boatman and his daughter at Uzcumane, but he saw Perez sink, shrieking, "Los piranhas! Los piranhas!" as the deadly carnivorous fish swirled round his threshing, bleeding body....
It was over. Juan Manuel de Rosas had fled to England, and Don Justo Jose de Urquiza was now Gubernador of Argentina. There would be peace-for a time. History records that once again the province of Buenos Aires rebelled against the unitario leader who was checkmated at the battle of Pavon in 1861 and abdicated in favor of Bartolome Mitre, who became president and founder one of Argentina's greatest newspapers. Urquiza himself was assassinated in 1870. And there would be many struggles for power, many tyrants until the advent of Juan Peron in the century to follow....
But the war was over for Elena Bodegas and Kelly MacDonald, who were wed a week after Rosas fled the country. And because the insouciant and heroic young beauty had the temerity to announce to her amused Texan husband-now a brigadier general in the unitario army-that she did not wish to become a mere chattel and live only to beget babies and tend the house and lead a dull, uneventful life, not after the thrilling companionship she had known with this lanky adventurer-their wedding night was not entirely the quiet, blissful event such occasions usually are.
It took place in the same little inn where they had stayed in La Plata the night before the Texan's first meeting with Urquiza. And the fat old innkeeper and his buxom wife again heard sounds above their bedchamber which indicated that love's true course was not always smooth. Thee was the smack of leather on naked flesh this time, much crisper and nosier than Kelly MacDonald's hand that time before.
For Elena MacDonald, gloriously naked, lay across her illustrious husband's knees as he sat on the edge of their bed and applied his black officer's belt resoundingly to her weaving, reddening naked bottomcheeks. "Now, mi dulce," he demanded as he paused, breathless after applying some twenty energetic strokes to her shapely posterior," are you going to change your mind?"
"You beast, you cobarde, just because I was foolish enough to say yes before the priest, now you torture me and think I'm your slave-ah yes, I see it now! Well, Kelly MacDonald, I'll have the marriage annulled-"
"Only if it isn't consummated, Linda, and I think you know it was some months ago in this very room, on this very bed, to be exact," he chuckled. Then again he brought the belt down sharply.
"Aiiii! Aydeme, you wicked, cruel, heartless man-just because you're a general now, I suppose you'll have all sorts of mistresses and-oww! Ohh-eeeeoww! Oh no, I didn't mean that-besides, I won't let you, I'll scratch their eyes out-oh, yes, yes, darling, mi amor, mi general, mi hombre-yes-yes-ahhhh!"
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was a beautiful August day. The sun rose in a clear sky and shot its light across the Andes. The beautiful valley was a blaze of light as the sun was reflected by the fresh white crystalline snow.
Four fresh inches of light powder had fallen during the night. An hour before the sun rose, leaving invisibly despite the pre-dawn glow, the clouds had moved on. They would drop little moisture on the seacoast, having vented their energies on the high peaks.
The morning light, shot across the valley from the snow covered treeless slope, and lightened the of Richard y Aquildo de Bodegas McDonald. His blue eyes were opened as the light crept gently under his lids. With a yawn he stretched his lithe white twenty-three year old body. It had the lean strong muscular structure of the athlete and it was covered by the fine unscarred skin of the leisurely.
Carrying himself lightly the great grandson of Kelly McDonald and Elena Bodegas went to the large window. He looked out at the sweeping grandeur of the peaks and the fine light white of the new snow. He smiled at the thought of the fine skiiing they would have that day.
It had not snowed for two weeks. Though Portillo has snow all through what we up north call the late spring, summer and early fall, and plenty of it, the pleasures of packed powder, snow packed down by machine or by the passing of skier after skier, is quite different from the pleasure of powder. In powder one floats almost as one does in water. It is a world of complete silence. High speeds, instead of being a time for the cutting power of the legs to slice their way urgently into the hard snow grabbing for a desperate hold, are disguised to the sensibilities by the gentleness of touch that the deep softness requires.
It was mid-week. Those who worked for their living and who would only get away on weekends, the petty bourgois, and the new managerial executive class, would not be here to crowd the slopes and mar the character of the apr�s ski affairs. Though sometimes it was fun to steal a pretty little secretary a slightly paunchy executive had brought along on the company payroll Richard -liked it better this way, with his kind of people.
Portillo is thirty miles into the mountains from Santiago Chile. It is one of the very few, and definitely the finest, ski area in South America. The very first place south of the equator to host winter Olympic events, which it did in 1968, is normally the preserve of the very rich. The huge fine hotel owns the entire area with its slopes, lifts, the lake kept clear for ice skating, and it is a complete monopoly. Their lowest rates are thirty dollars a day. There are no other places to stay within a reasonable distance. Santiago itself, with the only airport in the area, is not a mere thirty miles it is mountains away. The only way in is by train, a long ride that arrives only a few times a week, and occasionally by helicopter. Helicopters had to be used during the Olympics to carry injured skiers to the hospital in Santiago since the train is much too slow and the medical facilities at the hotel are only of the first aid type.
This keeps out the ski bums, the weekenders, the students, the not rich vacationers who by staying in hotels, eating simply and saving their money only for the lifts, who normally make up a portion of any ski population. Only the rich and those who live by skiing, the instructors who are a cult of sorts and therefore acceptable, ski at Portillo.
Richard had just arrived two days before. He had skied one week in July and one in June. Before that he had not been on skis since April in St. Moritz. That had been skiing, and carousing too. Two months through Switzerland and Austria. Though Portillo was marvellous, he thought, it was somewhat parochial, catering primarily to the rich of South America and their children, the people he had known all his life. In Europe he would meet with the children and the adults of the real nobility, the ancient European families. He would meet the men and the women of the men who held the fortunes-in the United States, in Europe, in the Mid-East-that when shaken would shake the world.
But he loved the skiing for itself which is why on this second night his bed was empty. Place a little wench there or the spoiled wild child of one of the jet set and he would begin the morning with his cock in a hole. Or perhaps a quarrel or a brawl. It would take the edge off his legs and his energy, even at his age. And the fine skiing, the best skiing, where he needed every ounce of everything he had, would be lost. Time enough for his cock in a day or so when they got a little bored with the mountain. Or a quick piece in the evening after dinner, but not in the morning.
He had had plenty at the ranch, just before he left.
The ranch, originally given to Kelly and Elena for their part in the revolution of 1852, had grown over the years until it was a vast expanse, running in the thousands of acres, farther than the eye could see even on that flat South American prairie. It was like, he thought, the kind of gigantic Texas ranches that the founder to the fortune had left behind. And there was more than the ranch. They owned a small bank. Even small banks mean money on a different order of magnitude than most people are accustomed to thinking of. They had investments all over South America, copper, shipping, manufacturing. And a great deal of cash, carefully funneled into Swiss accounts in good hard currencies, the dollar, the deutchmark, the swiss franc itself.
And many, many families lived on the family land, virtually ruled by the owner of that vast estate, himself and his mother. Riding the great plains he owned he knew that he was at home at any of the little houses where his people lived. No favor, a glass of cool water, a simple meal, a pair of round young hips to ease his burden, would be denied the padron.
He had spent the last night at home with the young granddaughters of old Porfiro Diaz. Their parents had died when they were young in a fire. Porfiro now took care of them as best he could. Seventy-two, half blind and lame, he lived by the sufferance and the generosity of his padron. For his years of working the cattle, on horseback and on foot from his fiftieth birthday on, he now was allowed to live rent free and he was given enough money for food and some tobacco, his one vice. He was too old for any others. He was a good man and had raised his granddaughters to be good girls. They went to the church and they were obedient to the good padre who instructed them in the proper conduct and demeanor of a daughter of the church.
But for the padron, it was something different. Maria, the older daughter, seventeen, already knew him. She had dark flashing eyes that promised a fiery temperament that she did not have. She was really docile and gave her large upthrusting bosoms, firm broad ass, and long hard flanks without resistance. No beatings, no slaps, no strokes with the riding quirt were required to have her do the padron's will. Her plain dress would be removed in a flash at one look from the blue eyes of her slim young master. Subserviently she responded to his needs, giving any part of her body to his desires. She had been doing so for three years, since her thirteenth birthday, and she kept the bloody sheets of that night as a prize, a cherished memory that the padron, with the whole pampas to choose from, plus his foreign hussies and the white skinned girls from Buenos Aires, had chosen her plump little pundendum for his pleasure.
The warm curve of her inner thigh was always ready to wrap around his hips and pull his powerful cock into her.
Her little sister was now fourteen. Richard had watched Luisa growing with great interest. She was now in her first flush of womanhood, a ripe lush fruit ready to be picked. Her high upthrust breast were as firm as young apples, and just as sweet and juicy. They begged for the tender bite of a man's teeth. Her recently broadened hips, swelling from a waist that was so narrow in contrast that even when she wore men's clothes or her mother's old dresses to work in, her ripeness couldn't be hidden. The wonderful ovals of her ass were as well formed as her breasts. They were firm and thrusting, perfectly rounded.
Richard galloped up to the little hut in the early evening. Silhouetted against the brilliant spreading colors of the setting sun, red, gold, orange, and astride his jet black horse wearing the hat, jacket, and pants, all cut in an elegant version of the guacho's work costume he made a striking and romantic figure. Maria thrilled when she looked up at him. He looked like a romantic figure out of a story book. To further impress the two sisters he pulled back on the reins and dug his silver spurs into the silky black flanks of the big horse making him rear and paw the air with his powerful hooves. Surely now that he had been seen, he reared the host the last thirty yards to the house and came to an abrupt halt next to the two girls. He leaned from the saddle and reaching for Maria put his arm around her back and lifting her easily off the ground gave her a brutal kiss.
Her mouth opened in response and eagerly received his thrusting tongue. He took her full pouting lower lip between his hard white teeth and biting down on the tender flesh drew blood. She moaned. But the sounds she made for pleasure and for pain, like most women with hot loins, were the same. Either was perfectly all right with him.
Abruptly he released her and only her youthful agility saved her from a sprawling fall or a twisted ankle. It did not entirely suffice to preserve her balance however and she stumbled having to catch herself on the large black animal. Richard laughed.
"Louise, pretty little muchachita, come here and receive your first kiss from your padron. You will enjoy it as your sister does."
"Senor, your pardon, I am too young and graceless for that honor," she replied, not wanting him. She was in love with Pablo Aquilda, one of the young gauchos, more Indian than Spanish. He was born in the saddle and rode like a centaur, as if he and the horse were one. He was close to the earth he lived on and even though he was not more than eighteen his swarthy face, handsome in a way alien to the West, seemed carved of stone. He was a dangerous man who carried a pistol and a knife in addition to his lariat. He, like his Indian ancestors who had invented it, was expert in the use of a bolo, the three stones tied together with a leather thong; with which he could hunt and even kill. But even he would be afraid of the padron. Here, far from the cities, the padron was a feudal master and the people who worked his lands, though they were proud, bent to his will. No court in the country would fail to hand down the death sentence to any man who touched one of the masters.
"Come, muchachita, you are already a woman. Don't hide it with your hands, I know of your swelling breasts. I can see the curve of your hips. And do not rate yourself so low, your body is equal to any female I could find on the pampas. Come."
"Pardon me padron, but I am promised. I must keep myself pure until my man comes for me and weds me in the mother church."
Richard felt angry. Despite her respectful tone and her soft words he knew-they were aversions. She was refusing his offer. She was refusing to give her sweet nether lips and the prize of her tight little cherry to him. All that she had said was meaningless, except that it said no. He was glad that she was resisting. It would be more fun that way.
He spurred the horse and it leapt forward, its hoofs pounding the ground just inches from the frightened girl when it halted. For a moment the girl was frozen with fright, but then as she saw Richard bend down to take her as he had taken her sister she took flight. She ran swiftly, her young legs pounding like a deer through the short rich grass. But she was slower, far slower than the big black horse. Richard rode the horse easily, barely trotting, as he kept pace three or four feet behind her. Even so, the pounding of the black hoofs at her back sounded like guns of thunder to the young girl.
He let her run until she began to stumble with exhaustion. He did not want her to wear herself out completely. He wanted some strength to remain for spirited resistance. He unhooked the braided lariat from the pommel of his saddle and began to swing it in a lazy but perfect circle over his head. He judged his distance and picked up the rhythms of horse, quarry and the rope itself and then he let it swish through the air, launched forward like a long thin snake. As it settled over the slim shoulders of the dark girl, entrapping her arms, and wrapping around her just below her breasts, he called his horse to halt. His horse, well trained and used to roping steers, creatures much more powerful than this helpless child, came to an abrupt halt, bracing his legs solidly against the soft earth. The fast tightening rope squeezed the young girl as her own forward momentum pulled it cruelly tight around her soft flesh.
The restraining pull yanked her off her feet and she fell hard, her back hitting the ground. What was soft to horses hooves was hard to a girl taking an abrupt fall. With practiced gesture Richard leaped from the saddle. There was no risk of the girl getting lose, the horse trained on cattle would keep the rope taut and the slip knot tight by constantly backing away if the capture came toward him. Richard pulled in the lasso, and the horse, knowledgeable about this too, gave him slack, as with rapid gestures he tied the girl up. He looped the harsh rope around her ankles and knotted it there, then he ran it up and pulling the girls arms behind her tied her wrists also. She resisted but her strength was slight compared to his, and her arms gave way under his pressure.
He left more slack than he would with a cow since it would be necessary for the girl to bend forward from the waist. Picking her up easily he slung her over the horse's back just in front of the saddle. Then he vaulted up to his place, holding the girl down with one hand. It wasn't necessary, she was still stunned from her fall and the rapidity with which her captor had tied her. Besides she would have had to have been completely hysterical to leap from the back of the tall animal. With her hands and feet tied the greatest possibility was that she would break her neck.
He spurred the horse into a cantor. His long strides would bring them back to the hut very quickly. The girl bounced roughly under the jouncing strides of the big stallion. Her rounded pert ass lept up into Richard's eyes invitingly. Lustfully he watched the fresh pair of buttocks as they bent, stretched and spread with the horses motion. It was much too tempting to resist. He raised his riding quirt and gave the girl a sharp stroke on her lush ass. Her yelp was very gratifying and he stroked her again.
He -liked to see the effect the whip, the hand, or the quirt brought to tender cheeks. He bent down, always comfortable in the saddle his ability made him able to do almost anything there, and pulled up her long patched dress. Dropping it down on the other side of the horse it fell over her head, at the same time it bared her ass. A girl of the plains who simply squatted close to the good earth when she had to evacuate, she wore no underwear of any sort.
The mark of his striking quirt was visible on her olive skin, though it showed up better on the white cheeks of the upper class woman of pure European ancestry. He knew that. The marks of the blood brought to the surface were already fading, cushioned as his blows had been by the cloth of her dress. He wanted some bright red marks to look at so he hit her again on her now bared cheeks. The blows flowed immediately to the injured line that ran across the two tender ovals. He picked another angle and crossed it with a new line. And a third and a fourth. He timed his strokes to crack across the firm foam rubber protrusions when they were thrown up by the cantering animal beneath her. She flew up and he swung down, making her aid helplessly in procuring her own injury. Her cheeks grew redder and darker as the sharp blows of his quirt followed one after another covering her roundness entirely so that no individual stroke was defined.
Pulling his black kid leather glove off between his teeth he felt her hot fine flesh with his bare hand. It was burning hot. He rubbed it soothingly and her yelps stopped. She would almost have been sighing with pleasure and relief had not the jouncing of the horse banging into her diaphragm broken up the smooth sounds with the grunts of shoved out air.
At the hut he pulled to an abrupt jarring halt. Only his hand, which suddenly pressed down hard on the young girl's blazing cheeks, kept her from being thrown from the horse.
He dismounted and flipped the girl onto his shoulder. Her long black hair hung down almost trailing the ground. "Marie, come and help me tame this ungrateful muchachita," he called over his shoulder as he kicked open the wooden door of their small home. Giggling with pleasure and anticipation of watching a defloration much like her own had been, she ran in after them.
The old man, Porfiro Diaz, on seeing his young master arrive, had discretely mounted his old mule and rode off to visit friends. The big bed that he had bought for his son when his son had married, with its brass frame and good mattress, was empty. That was where Richard dumped the squalling Louisa. He gave her a last slap on the ass and then threw himself in the rickety old armchair beside the bed.
"Should not your foolish sister welcome with joy, Marie?"
"Si, Senor Ri'cardo, for you have the strongest cajones on all the pampas. Ohhh, Louise," she continued with a high pitched giggle, "Senor Ricardo is muy hombre. He will relieve you the burden of the virginity you still bear. When you are rid of it you will realize how you lucky you are to have lost it and you will thank the padron. "
"Come, Maria, my boots. This is not the kind of riding to be done with boots on even if the mare needs the quirt and spurs," and laughing cruelly he snapped the short cruel piece of leather in the air.
Marie came to him immediately and stepping over his outstretched legs bent down and grasped one by the ankle. "Marie," he warned her. "do you remember nothing? Do I have to take the strap to you too?
"Many pardons, senor, please forgive me. I am stupid and I forget." But saying so she remedied the situation, quickly removing the dress which was fastened by a few buttons until she stood before him stark naked. Her olive flesh shone in the lantern light of the rude cabin that could not diminish the glory of her body. Her skin was taut and firm. The large globes that should have hung heavily from their weight were firm and stood high with large dark brown nipples pointing sharply upwards. There was no extra flesh and the curve downwards was sharp as her waist was very narrow. Her smooth belly, the sheen of soft skin broken only by the dimple of her deep navel, had a warm sensuous curve to it. Her hips were wide and soft, ever ready and always inviting a man's hard weight.
The dark mass of hair that graced the full lips at the bottom of her belly was jet black and curled like the rich dark fleece of a black sheep. It was jet black and shiny just as the hair on her head and in her unshaven armpits was.
"That, my pretty muchachita, is indeed much better. That is the way you should always be, you are a beautiful animal. Now, my boots."
The girl went back to the boot in response to the command. Bending over she grasped the highly polished smooth black surface. In bending she spread the generous ovals and exposed both orifices, the tight wrinkled hole of her ass, and the full pink fleshed vaginal hole that tried to hide behind the thick black rug of her glossy pubic hair.
The boots were tight so that she would need the help of his other foot to remove it. He raised his foot slowly, caressing the soft inside of her thigh with it. He brought the top of his boot sliding against the moist crack of her cunt which made her wiggle and give a small sigh of pleasure. As he raised the boot, just a little bit higher, he kept his toe pointed so that when stopped it pressed lightly against her tight wrinkled sphincter. That was where and how he pushed. The narrow toe of his heavy riding boots thrust against the small hole; the rough pressure stretching it almost as if it could open enough to take in his booted foot. It hurt her and she grunted as it applied enough pressure to push her braced body against his boot and pull it off. She must have -liked it because she made no attempt to evade it, even as the boot came off his other foot she moved only her arms forward so that her body could retain the pressure of the cruel boot on her asshole.
She tool the other boot in her hands. This time he could only push with his bare foot, so he added a sharp snap of the quirt for extra emphasis. She yelped but waited till his boot was off to rub the smarting cheek.
"Now we shall see about your sister, see if she has reconsidered her foolish attitudes." So saying he walked over to the bed. Luisa had watched the operation in frightened fascination. The young padron had not really hurt her sister but all his actions had spoken of brutality. She herself was looking forward to a wedding night with a lusty horny husband, but one who loved her and would take her with gentleness until she learned to accept the violent passion of a man.
"Luisa, are you willing to accept me with gratitude and welcoming open legs now?"
"Please, senor, please my padron, please let me be. I will serve you in any way, wait on your table, wash your clothes, polish your boots, for I respect you and I know your place and how high it is above my poor one, but I have sworn to my intended, Pablo Aguilda, to save myself for him. You do not want me. I am nothing to you. Please. Please."
He pushed her over on her back and with one brutal pull ripped the cloth of her old dress down to her waist. She twisted trying to hide her exposed mounds. He pushed her down with a heavy hand against her shoulder, holding her locked flat on her back. Her beautiful high thrusting tits stood far out even in that position and he looked down at them with greedy lust. They quivered still from the abrupt push he had given to her whole upper body.
He placed his free hand on one of her olive-satiny round, proud young titties, gently as if to still her frightened quivering. She looked at him with fear and anger in her eyes but she stayed still. His cold blue eyes looked directly into her black ones. Her stare was caught by that cold look as if he were a mesmerist. She could hardly feel the hand that held her down and the hand that lightly rested on her breast. She was not even aware that her tender little nippled bud was growing out stiff from her coral aureole.
Thus it was a double shock when he squeezed the tender tit as hard as if he were trying to make the ripe fruit burst. She shrieked.
"All you have to do, my muchachita, is tell me how much you want to empty my cajones for me. Then you will have no more pain, only great pleasure and privilege," he said softly and unemotionally, his voice cutting through her like a slim bladed long knife.
"No, please, let me go," she whimpered.
"You don't know what pleading is, my little fresh flower, but you will learn. Marie, give me the quirts," he said holding out his hand without looking at the beautiful girl to whom he gave the order. He did not have to, the quirt was placed obediently in his hand.
He tapped the girl's pretty olive cheek with it, just below the high cheekbone, and smiled at the thought of what he would do to her. Then he stepped back and looked at her. She was not aware of it but his gaze immediately found her erect nipple, a sign of sexual excitement.
"You do want me, you see," he said touching it as lightly as he had her cheek with the tip of his riding quirt. "You are aroused and your body betrays you." The girl looked at where the leather pointed and saw for herself that what he had said was true. In shame she lowered her eyes and twisted her face away, to hide as much as she could.
He rapped her smartly on the cheek. "Do not turn away, little child, it is your body and you should not be ashamed of it. You must look at it and see what you are. A little bit of a slut perhaps.
Maybe a little bit a whore. Always ready to raise your skirts for any man with sense enough to touch you, just like your sister. Is that not right Maria, you always like a hard cock, you are always ready to spread for it, in the bed, in the field, anywhere? You are a happy slut, are you not? And your sister is one just like you, is she not?"
"Si, senor, I am what you say I am. But I don't know about my little sister. She is a foolish girl, and perhaps she will resist a lot."
"She will learn, Maria, she will learn," and saying so he lashed the nipple that still stood upright. His stroke was precise and struck only that part of her. It swelled larger as the blood rushed to soothe the injured flesh. "See how it grows, Maria, under a beating? Perhaps that is what she waits for. Perhaps she does not think a man is a man unless he takes her by force?"
Then he struck the other tender nipple. He was very practiced in the use of the quirt on both horseflesh and woman flesh and could strike with exquisite precision. Just as the first stroke had hit only the standing nipple and no other part of the breast this stroke also hit only the nipple. He struck again and it began to stiffen, a delicate little cock.
He bent over and keeping his lips soft he bestowed a gentle and soothing kiss on the sore tissue. His warm tongue lapped at it tenderly. Then smiling he stood up. Still smiling sweetly he raised his arm and brought down the leather so that it snapped across her whole chest slashing both breasts.
He was much more refined than they had been in the days of his great great grandfather. Times had changed and he could no longer kill his victims. Rape, a little sadism that left no disfiguring marks and then returned the victim to the world as whole as she had left it, would all be forgiven if in fact anyone paid any attention to it at all. But wanton slaughter was no longer the accepted manner of the country where once men had ruled and fought with the most brutal and destructive passions, killing for the sake of a good come shoot.
Richard y Aquilo de Bodegas MacDonald had heard stories of the old days. His great great grandmother had kept a most indiscrete and entirely graphic diary that catalogued the horrors of the times in great and explicit detail. It was kept locked in a safe deposit box in the largest bank in Buenos Aires. It was kept as a sacred family relic and hidden so that no one would read it. Not only did it record what she had seen and heard but the things she did were also written down. It had in fact necessitated two murders in that it proved one branch of the family illegitimate and rather than bring shame on one of the sacred names of the well respected families by going to court to disinherit, it was decided to use a more discrete means.
Richard had only read it two years previously. When his father had died the family lawyer took him to the safe deposit vaults deep in the bowels of the earth dug into solid rock beneath the bank. There he had been given a locked and private room and the key to the box. Only the oldest male in the family on taking over the position of head of the family ever knew about the diary.
Richard had found it delightful. His mother, always a sensual woman, had grown more and more so as the years past. Being a woman of energy and will, and having a husband who after a first five years of fidelity began to stray, she found means to have her pleasures.
Among those pleasures, he read, were good sound spankings with hand and strap. "Nothing," she wrote, "prepares me better for the act of love, or the act of lust as it may be more precise for me to call it than to have my bared buttocks thrashed until they are red and burning with heat. It does two things to me. The first is physical. It draws the blood to the lower regions. Though the beating is administered not directly to the area that wants the heat, but rather behind, a sort of precautionary evasion, as my pussy, like all pussies, is tender and easily damaged and when sore it diminishes pleasure rather than enhances it, my cunt forms close association and its neighborly proximity is the recipient of the positive effects.
"The second effect is on the mind. I am a good and proper housekeeper, and a good wife. My manners are, if I may say so without sounding vain, perfect and as the society demands it, refined. I am required during my daily tasks and whenever I am in public to appear weak, passionless, and delicate. Thus I must hold down a naturally hot and seething nature. The effort is too successful and I find that I can not drop it as easily as I wish. The habits of the day do not fall away at night.
"The humiliation and the pain of a thrashing on my naked posterior tear away this veil of refined civilization. My passions are then free to flow and wildly as they desire to and as eagerly as they would without my efforts to hold them back.
"After a good sound spanking or whipping I find that I am in my greatest passions. All restraint is thrown out the window. I am eager to be naked before my man and proud to show my naked lust and my warm flesh. My cunt yearns for satisfaction and positively quivers in anticipation, sending down at the same time large quantities of liquid in its eagerness to make the entry of a good big engine of masculine love as easy as possible.
"So eager and so wild am I then that I know no restraints in either words or deeds. Loudly and passionately I yell, with no regard for the prying ears of servants, for what I want. Though it is sometimes hard to remember precisely what it is I say when I am in those states it has happened with great enough frequency for me to have put together a summary from fragments.
"My mouth opening without volition and my vocabulary commanded by my raging heat I yell for my man's cock. I scream at him 'fuck me, fuck me,' and 'hurry, shove your big prick up my cunt, it's ready, shove your prick in, let me feel your balls swing against my ass.' When I get that hot I want a hard hot cock to match my tortured itching pussy and I say so with great clarity so that I can not possibly be misunderstood. (Though my experience is limited, the few men I have known, find this immensely stimulating and even more eager for action than otherwise, and more energetic once they are in action."
Over this parenthetical remark, apparently written in some years later though it was not dated was this correction, "I am not so limited now, I will say all me.."
The diary continued "My language is no more restrained once the object of my desires has entered the portal and begins it's action. I call out 'push on,' 'shove your cock all the way in,' 'my cunt loves it,' and the like. I urge them to greater efforts with cries of 'fuck me hard,' 'I need it harder, more cock,' and challenge them with 'are you no more man than that, my cunt needs it hard and fast,' or 'there must be stronger cocks in the world,' and 'this is a real woman's cunt and needs more cock than that."
"The response is almost always quite satisfactory."
Another selection, some ten years later, gave a somewhat different point of view. Chafing under a social system that left very little active roles for women and kept them in a definitely subservient role that was not natural to the fiery nature of his great great grandmother she made her adjustments in one of the few ways she could;
"Juan was very inadequate last night. I think he is wasting his cock on that slut of a serving girl Maria. She is always waving her hips at him and heaving her gross huge bosom in his face.
"He had the audacity to come to me last night and went to retire after one short course. This was entirely unsatisfactory. When I have a man take me I want him to be quite thorough about it and as I am a hot blooded woman who refuses to hold back her nature and accept the burden of inadequate men with cocks that fire only one cylinder, that means that I must have it at least twice and preferably more. As much more as possible.
"But he said that he could not. As my pussy was on fire and needed that fire quenched with water from a spurting masculine hose, I became quite enraged. Jealousy, as I must be honest at least with myself and these pages, did enter into it. That low grade, grown, fat, ugly, slut, that cheap little whore, was stealing my cock from me. Just to be in the same man's mind at the same time is too great an insult not to rancor.
"His gun and belt were hung on the peg by the door. Not knowing what I was going to do with it, I leaped out of bed and took the gun in my hand. I am a good shot and Juan knows that quite well. He was terrified and began to plead with me. I told him to be quiet that I was not going to kill me just because he was not man enough for a real woman. Though in truth what better reason to get rid of a man, from a woman's point of view.
"My eyes were roving around the room when I spied the plaited leather strap he wears tied round the waist of his pants as a belt. I smiled, I know, on beholding it. I was going to whip him for his insolence and inadequacy. I wanted to humiliate him as much as possible.
"I had him stand bent over with his hands resting on the bed for support. He did not want to do this but I slashed him across the stomach with the belt, so great was my rage, and I threatened him with the pistol. He did obey after that.
"I started to lay into him ferociously, even finally drawing blood from his saddle-hardened ass. But what amazed me, was that after several minutes of the rough slashing, just as my arm was tiring, I saw that his cock was hard again, standing out in all it's stiff splendor, as fat and blood-gorged as I had ever seen it, possibly more so. What works so well for women, also it appears, works well with men. The blood is drawn to where it is needed.
"Throwing my pistol and my improvised whip aside I said, 'You have it back, now you're hard. Take me. Fuck me, take your revenge with your prick.' And that is precisely what he did.
"He knew better than to hurt me, Kelly would kill him by slicing away his miserable cojones. Yet his passions were wildly aroused and lusted for revenge. I was fortunate in that I could offer him a way to achieve that revenge that would bring me pleasure.
"Freed of the restraint which my pistol had brought to bear he brought his gun into action. He positively lifted me in the air and tossed me five feet across the room onto the bed. Then he threw himself on top of me, not waiting to walk, but leaping in his anxiousness, with great savagery. I must repeat that word, savagery. Never have I been fucked so savagely, so ferociously, so wildly. Never has a single fucking left me so sore that it made it difficult for me to walk and even sit down the next morning. This one did.
"It was the best single fuck I have ever had, better even, though it should not be, than the ones with Kelly when he was younger and so passionately in love. Even though my memory of those is colored with the rosiest of glows, steeped in the energetic pleasantries of youth, thus making things even better than they could actually have been, this fucking I received was better.
"I shall see if I can introduce Kelly into this pleasure. Madre de dios, he certainly takes enough enthusiasm to the way he whips my ass. I have my doubts as to whether I can make him accept the reversal, his attitudes as to the respective position of men and women are very severe. If I do wish to be the whipper rather than the whipped, or I should say in addition to, I shall be obliged to convince him at the point of a gun, the way I had to convince poor Juan.
"Kelly, however, will probably not accept the situation. He is still the bravest man I know and I am sure he would not believe that I could shoot him, which I cannot. He would calmly walk up to me, take the gun from my hand, and tossing it casually away, take me over his knee, or even tie me down, and give me the worst thrashing yet. I can see myself quite clearly with crimson liquid to grace my white cheeks. No, I don't think I will try it on Kelly, though I wish I could.
"But poor Juan shall have his ass whipped regularly and suffer for it in the saddle. So shall the lover after Juan, even if he be more than adequate and able to take me a dozen times a night. For that thirteenth time, or to make the twelfth and the first more enthusiastic, I will insist on employing this special goad."
Richard, reading his great-great-grandmother's lusts, felt his prick harden. He was glad, as his hand stroked his standing cock that had been freed by itself from his pants without a second thought, that the room was private and windowless. It was also soundproof so he did not have to repress the groan he made as he shot his sperm into a handkerchief held for that purpose.
On turning the pages he saw that one of his ancestors, though able to hold out longer had not been so neat as he had been. The page was stiff with an ancient come stain.
No killing here, he thought, though he would love to take this tender little morsel to one of the ancient subterranean torture chambers and carry her through a series of tortures and humiliations to her death. He wanted to see her dance on spikes to the song of the whip. He wondered how far she could stretch on the rack. He imagined quite clearly and accurately how she would scream when fire roasted the tender flesh.
And his secret desire shivered through him. One day, he was sure, he would achieve it. He would be plunging in and out of a victim's cunt, knife ready in his hand. Just before his glorious moment of orgasm he would slash her twat and let the death spasms squeeze the come juice out of him.
He had heard that the Turks used to do this to wounded enemies. Rushing onto the battlefield littered with the dead, they would find an enemy soldier, wounded and left behind in the retreat. Pulling the string that held up the baggy trousers they wore they would drop their pants there in the midst of the shattered bodies and the blood. Pulling down the pants of a wounded man, or slashing them away with their razor sharp knives they would bare the soldier's ass. Placing him on his stomach they would sodomize him, plunging their cocks, swollen with blood, lust and battle passions into the fearful asshole. Humping until they neared their moment they would hold those sharp knives ready. The sphincter would spasm when death overcame the body beneath, giving the ultimate thrill.
The Russians, the main victims of this made practice, both hated and feared the Turks for it.
But at least, Richard sighed, he could have his small pleasures.
The fourteen-year old girl was in absolute terror. She was so frightened she was mute. The thoughts passing through Richard's mind were showing clearly in his eyes and his expression. A narrow, thin smile had turned his features ugly and fearful. His eyelids had narrowed with concentration reserved for the torture of hopeless victims. And his long knife was at her throat. He had drawn it, held it there and paused for long moments, silently, as he envisioned her lush young body spasming with death as he lay on top of her thrust to the hilt in her tight slit.
Returning from the nightmare day dream, he saw her as she really was once again. He slid the knife down her torso, between her virginal breasts, down towards her hips. The knife, pressed ever so lightly, sharp as a Turk's, sliced the velvety skin in a long shallow line. So precise was his touch that the cut drew no blood. It was more a matter of pure terror than pain. The girl was frozen, the slightest movement on her part would plunge the knife into her, slashing her and scarring her for the rest of her life; if she lived.
When he reached her waist he turned the knife around with a flick of the wrist. Released from the frozen horror the girl's breast heaved as she drew in tortured breaths. She had not inhaled or exhaled during the ordeal.
The knife slid underneath her dress and with one long stroke slashed it completely. Her legs, her softly rounded thighs, her womanly hips, and her prize, her virgin cunt, covered with rich, untouched black fleece, were all uncovered. She wept with shame. He was the first man who had laid his eyes upon her womanhood since the first sprouting of soft down began to cover it.
He caressed her tight virgin lips with the side of the dangerous blade. Tears of shame and rage flowed down her silent cheeks.
"Now, my muchachita, now are you ready to welcome my cock? Now do you have respect for me?"
She pleaded with her tear-dampened eyes, afraid to speak.
With a harsh grunt he reached down and flipped her over. Her large cheeks trembled, shaking like jelly, as her whole body felt tremors of fear. He lashed her with the quirt. His arm rose and fell like the piston of an engine turning her whole ass a bright red. "Maria, your sister must like pain. Let us see if we can teach her to learn it totally as pleasure. Would you like to help me with that?"
Maria, no longer frightened now that he had put the knife back in its sheath, agreed with a giggle, not knowing or caring what was required of her.
"Have you ever had your cunt eaten Maria?" Giggling she replied no with a shake of her head. "What a pity," he said, "you will have to improvise."
She looked at him questioningly.
"Climb on the bed and put your head under your stupid sister's hips. Go on, go on, I tell you more when you get there." Then lashing out with the leather quirt, he said harshly, "Hump up your ass Luisa, for your sister."
This did not seem threatening, after all it was her sister who would not hurt her. So she obeyed and her sister slithered easily under her raised hips.
Richard, walking over, put his hand on the virgin's cunt. "Marie, with that wet warm tongue of yours, you will lap here, like the dog laps water at the river, right down the middle, you see." The girl's giggle was smothered by the hips resting on her but her agreement with the project was clear even though she was a little unsure of what she was going to do.
Tentatively she stuck her tongue out and licked. The fresh lips had a slightly sweet and salty taste and she willingly licked a second time, particularly since Richard nodded his approval. He stood by watching Maria eating her younger sister. The young girl began to respond as she had to. Her hips began moving with this hateful pleasure and soft sighs mingled with her tears.
That was what Richard was waiting for, the moment when she was receiving pleasure, and his heavy leather belt flew through the air, and, two inches wide, it slapped down on the buttocks that were now quivering with sex. The girl screamed. Maria, underneath, had her instructions and she did not stop licking. Two sensations flowed up the virgin's spine to her brain, intense pleasure and intense pain.
Both sensations were so strong and so new that they took over her thoughts and emotions so that her brain was ruled by the warring sensations, one from her ass and one from her unfledged cunt.
Richard kept stroking as the pleasure kept building. Trembling, the young girl came to a painful climax, screaming as her first come juice poured down on her sister's face, some being drunk by the eating mouth, some pouring down her chin and over her nose.
Richard pulled out his lust-hardened cock and dropped his pants to his ankles. Without waiting for Maria to get out of the way he leaped on top of the prone girl. His stiff cock pushed between the tight virgin lips eased by the lubrication of saliva and woman come, as his weight crushed the young girl's still-twitching hips down on Maria's face. He didn't push all the way in the first time but pressed gently to find out if the girl had her hymen intact. His blood-engorged cock felt the tender barrier and he smiled with cruel pleasure.
He pulled back his hips and slammed forward with all his might. The tight cunt stretched painfully as his powerful engine pushed its way in and the obstruction gave way like paper under a pair of scissors to his monstrous thrust. The girl's piteous wails did not prevent his throbbing instrument of destruction from plunging in all the way to the balls.
He continued his furious pounding. It did not last long because the incestuous sight of sister eating sister and the infliction of pain by his own arm on the helpless girl had wrought him to a high pitch of erotic excitement.
The sperm exploded from his surging cock and shot into her in a flood. The girl wept but felt wildly excited as the thick hot liquid soothed her torn love canal.
With a grunt the young patron pulled himself off the crying, squirming girl. He flung himself in the armchair again and called for Maria. He pointed to his slimy dripping cock, now limp and flaccid between his legs. Obediently she knelt between his feet and took him in her mouth to clean him. He stroked her back gently with the threatening quirt, just so she would know it was there and who the master was.
His rutting heat disappeared for the moment in the wonderfully tight hole of the now bloody cunt. He thought calmly of what he would do to the girl next. Abruptly he lashed Maria, just for the pleasure of it. Her mouth, stuffed as it was, she could make no sound but her body jerked.
He sat for a few moments, to catch his breath. While he rested his eye caught the piece of rope that had been the connection link between the knot around the girl's ankles and the knot around the girl's wrists. It was something to work with anyway, a different form of whip, it would bring the girl a new sensation.
He wondered briefly, how much difference it made to the victim the kind of instrument that was applying the pain. Perhaps only to a connoisseur of pain would it matter.
He rolled the prostrated and helpless lovely body over. His eyes gazed once more on her great charms, the deliriously nubile body, barely out of puberty. He enjoyed her shame at being exposed and her complete inability to hide herself.
As the lariat slashed across her soft and defenseless body her superbly lithe young olive-sheened body quivered and squirmed as she writhed to remove herself. The twisting threw her deliriously firm titties around, setting them quivering and shimmering. Richard grinned with cruel pleasure and raised the harsh rope again. This time it came down on the shaking young breasts raising an angry red welt across them that ran in a straight line from her soft curving side where the rope had wrapped around across one tit, and skipping the valley of pleasure between, continued as if it had not been interrupted, across the other one. The line lay just below the pain-stiffened nipples.
With a sinister chuckle of lustful excitement he dropped the rope for a moment and grasped the swelling titties with his fingers digging into them and twisting them cruelly. A frightened groan pressed forth from her lips.
Grinning he picked up the rope again. He had an extra pleasure in mind. "Maria," his voice snapped like the rope cracking across the recently deflowered younger sister, "get on your knees behind me and do for my asshole what you did for your sister's cunt." Maria obeyed instantaneously as she obeyed all his commands. Her lush body folded into a crouch as she knelt with her mouth to his ass and her lascivious tongue wormed its way between the young padron's hard buttocks and searched out the tight wrinkled hole that marked the entrance to, and exit from, his rectum.
Completely confident in his power over Maria he gave his cruelty no pause as he awaited the snake-like tongue but kept whipping the girl. He admired the way the tip of the rope could curl and began to do tricks with it.
He snapped it down on her closest leg and let it curl around and take a bite of the satin-smooth inner thigh. It made the girl's whole body jump with shock. He slashed at the girl's feet but they were hardened and calloused from years of running barefoot on the pampas and she felt virtually nothing of it. This angered him and he decided to make up for it. He changed the angle of his stroke and the rope came flying through the air slashing a vertical line down her stomach.
The tail end of the flaying rope curled and snapped on the already beaten and tender coral lips of her sweet young cunt.
She screamed. A high-pitched piercing wail that disappeared into the dark of the uninhabited plain, swallowed up with no one but the three of them to hear.
His prick was stiff and throbbing, heated to a burning flame of lust by the agonized screams, the sight of the criss-crossed angry red welts and the slimy obedient tongue of Maria in his clutching anus. He was rutting again. The cruelty of it all brought him back to his excitement.
Her whole magnificent, voluptuously rounded body shuddered as he rolled her over on her tender front-even the sheets which normally felt so soft were now abrasive on her raw nipples and tenderized flesh, they too, normally her friends, conspired against her-and she wondered what new torture her fiendish master would apply. Her own panting breaths increased her torture as they pressed and scraped her martyred mounds against the bed.
She cried out when she felt his strong thin finger wrap around her olive-round hard mounds and dig in viciously, and she wept when she felt his weight being lowered slowly on her. She braced herself, biting into her Up and bringing blood, for a fresh assault on her burning cunt.
But the lustful angry cock did not go that low. It slid between the firm and reddened ass cheeks slowly, swollen with raging lust, to let her know that it was going to take a new and even more painful channel. It pressed lightly, testing and talking, letting her know what her pain would be as he took this new virginity and tore through the tight sphincter without any lubrication or anything to ease the pain.
He stayed that way, enjoying the fact that she trembled, with fear and tension sending the soft flesh of her back quivering against him.
"Feel it, bitch," he yelled and plunged.
The tight virgin sphincter tore beneath him and opened to allow his swollen instrument of destruction to fill her entrails. His hand tore at the soft flesh of her tits while his lean hard hips pounded the sore red oval cheeks of her ass.
She wept and moaned and it only excited him more. Her writhings and twisting as she tried to escape the pain searing her asshole only brought him great pleasure and made him want to hurt her more because her reaction was so wonderfully exciting. His fingernails cut into her so-abused titties and brought tiny streams of crimson dripping down on the pure white, so carefully laundered sheets.
He stayed for two days until he left for Portillo. He took her again and again, bringing her to submission with the quirt, or his belt, or the rope, or his fists. Each time she yielded she cried and pleaded. The only result of her weeping entreaties was to bring to his cock an extra stiffness and an extra little bit of size that just tore up her abused orifices a little more.
In between, he took the docile Maria.
Once, during the night, Luisa tried to escape. He awoke as she slipped out the door, a sixth sense letting him know because she was as silent as one of her Indian ancestors.
He watched her go through the tiny window and dressed calmly as she ran through the grass, then, when she had a sporting start he mounted his black stallion and pounded off in pursuit of her.
The lariat that she had known once before, just a day, but it seemed like years, earlier, snaked its vicious way around her again and pulled her naked body harshly to the ground dragging the welts against the pebbles and sharp blades of the pampas' grasses.
Riding back, with her nude form lying over the horse just in front of the pommel, he took his quirt and thrusting it in her ass let her carry it there, standing straight up as his phallic battle standard.
Which was why he was content, even anxious just to ski.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
That night he spotted a girl in the bar.
He approached her, not for that night, but for the next. He owed himself one more day of solid skiing before he began debauching.
She was his favorite aristocratic type. She was very pale, the sheet whiteness of her features and flesh accentuated by a simple informal black dress that must have cost more than three hundred dollars.
She moved languidly, with a flexibility that belied the fact that she was made with muscle and bone like normal people, her flowing reddish blond hair was elaborately casual and her skin showed no sign that it had ever been called upon to work at anything whatsoever.
Her eyes and the way she held her head were haughty.
She was the daughter of a Venezuelan oil millionaire, Ramona de Grandis, and named after him she was called Ramona. She was the only heir to his fortune and she held herself like the prize package she knew she was.
Helped by the fact that he was entirely indifferent to a fast conquest he easily made her acquaintance. She was surprised to find that his tongue did not hang out panting to get in her panties, she was pleased to see that he had enough money not to give a shit for hers, and she was bowled over that he did not make a pass. In fact he conducted himself as if he were there to ski and entirely indifferent to her female flesh.
He wasn't indifferent. He just wasn't in any hurry. He had taken notice of her pale delicacy and the supreme whiteness of her flesh. Despite her leanness and languid poise her tits were firm and large under the thin material and her hips swelled lushly promising a soft clinging 'bed to any man who pillowed his passions there.
The next night they ate dinner together.
After dinner he complained of the noise of the rock band, and saying he was tired from a real day of skiing, complained of the pressure of the crowd.
He invited her to his room to smoke some grass, claiming that he didn't drink because his body and its health meant too much to him. His exterior calmness was entirely forced and his disinterested manner was completely a pretense.
Her white languid indifference to everything, the tenderness of her delicate flesh, excited him more than any of the thousands of women he had met and the hundreds of women he had had. Raising red blood to that pure palor would fulfill his most jaded cravings.
She lay back on the bed and sucked the smoke into her laxily.
He sat opposite on a chair watching her movements, studying them and examining his flesh as he got stoned and the desire mounted in his heavy loins. His blood flowed down to his most basic part and his cock began to grow, to make a clearly discernible bulge in the crotch of his tight pants.
Finishing her second joint, and floating even more than usual, she let her eyes drift downward from his face, the first time she had really looked at him that evening, and her soft brown eyes fastened lazily on the hot angry swelling.
"You want me, how sweet," she said in a bored voice.
Standing up languidly she reached for the zipper on the dress that was as white as the one before had been black. It was white on white satin and it said that her skin was the whitest and fairest in the world, you could compare it to the whitest of man-made dyes and sheerest and smoothest of fabrics and it would come out ahead.
"I sometimes don't know why I bother," she said in the same infuriatingly bored voice.
"I know why you bother," he hissed as his throat tightened with the strain of holding himself back from throwing himself with helpless passion on this indifferent white statue of pallid flesh.
He too was standing. Like her he was beginning to undress as his burning eyes devoured the flesh that was as pure and white as the snow outside the window. He slipped his belt off.
"You bother because you're a spoiled slut. You're looking for a new kick. You're nothing but a whore dressed up in money. And this time you found your kick, bitch."
His hands were all over her then.
Then he pushed her down and fucked her, after he had beaten her with his belt.
As usual he didn't last long, the pre-fuck stimulation bringing him to the verge of orgasm even before he entered. It took no more than ten vicious strokes in the tight snug soft anus to bring his come swelling from his heavy balls up the narrow tunnel to the opening slit at the tip of his cock and flooding into her entrails.
With a disinterested grunt he pulled out of her.
He flopped down on the bed, ignoring her until he felt the urge come over him again.
It was the next time he took her that it happened. After slapping, pinching and scratching the body of the fallen snow goddess he had become aroused enough to thrust into her front entrance. Despite the many cocks that had been in there, it was still tight. Perhaps the reason was that she had rarely had any cock in her more than once.
She gave with languid grace, and withdrew her favors, when as invariably happened, she got bored.
As he pounded into her, his cruel hands squeezing the discolored white breasts, already turning black and blue so easily bruised was her tender flesh, the door opened silently behind them.
A swarthy form crept stealthily into the room. It was swathed in heavy clothing, warm enough to come many miles through the mountains on horseback or on foot. With a silent chuckle the swarthy man with the heavy Indian features watched and listened to the forms striving at each other on the floor. The white girl was moaning with a combination of exquisite pain and the lustful passion that pain had aroused in her. The man he had come for gasped with the effort of his violent sex.
Finished, Richard rolled off in the same lazy indifferent way he had before. Only the girl's seemingly unmotivated shrill scream brought him to notice that anything was wrong.
He looked up and saw a dark expressionless face staring down at him like a stone statue carved in the granite of the Andes. Only the black eyes showed any expression, and whatever that expression could be called it aroused fear in Richard.
He had only seen that face once before, even though it belonged to one of the many souls he owned, but he recognized it. It was Pablo Agufldo. The intended of Louisa.
A gun was in his hand. A big pistol and the long black barrel stared right in Richard's eyes like the tunnel to hell.
Gesturing them both to roll over on their backs he tied their hands behind them. Then with strips of cloth that he had brought with him, he gagged them both. His incredibly powerful arms hoisted Richard easily into the chair. He set him to watch what he was going to do with the girl.
As her body became criss-crossed with fine thin red lines of blood from the razor-bladed knife that had hung in his belt, Richard's cock rose stiffly in the chair.
It throbbed, swollen with lust as he watched the violent savage rape the swarthy man, with his pants and boots still on, only his big cock released from the fly of his coarse pants, inflicted on the white girl.
Pablo grinned when he saw the violent erection of his enemy.
Grabbing Richard by his lank hair he hauled him to his feet. Tears ran down Richard's eyes as lines, similar to the ones on Ramona's body, were drawn on his stiff cock. But these lines were bloodier because his body kept pumping blood to the stiff cock, keeping it up.
Finally, with one swift stroke of the fine steel blade, with a look of stony hatred on his face, the Indian slashed through the stiff erection and one half of Richard's cock fell to the floor as blood spurted from the stump.
It was over so quickly. It seemed almost like a dream except for the wild, savage scream that filled the air and the look of despair on Richard's face.
The blood ran hotly and profusely now, soaking Richard's entire crotch and running down onto the floor and away from him in little rivers of red.
Aguildo said nothing.
There was no expression on his face. Nothing. Neither hate, nor passion, nor even interest now.
Richard couldn't even tell now whether his beautiful, aristocratic love were alive or dead. In the height of his own great pain and frenzy, not just at the thought of death but also the knowledge of losing his manhood, he didn't much care.
The room seemed to spin.
Then, the Indian disappeared into the snow covered white mountains, making his way back to the woman he loved, who waited patiently in the knowledge that she would be revenged, on the Argentine Pampas.
