"Señorita! Señorita!"
I heard Manuel's voice like I was at the bottom of a dark well and he was at the top. Slowly the voice got closer, and finally I opened my eyes.
"Manuel! What happened?" I asked. The Spaniard shook his head.
"There was a car on the highway. Someone fires from the back of it. You are lucky not to be killed!"
"Like Samantha, I've got nine lives," I cracked. "Okay, Manuel, I'd better get to work. Is the hacienda badly damaged?"
"No, Señorita. And I know the local workmen. They will repair it."
"Good. I'm going to put on my work clothes, and my riding kit over the top. Get my horse, I'm riding into town. That rocket had to be fired by the Akenbola brothers, and that means they're nearby. Town would be the best place to find information."
"But, Señorita, the places they go, they are not the places for a Señorita..."
"Phooey to that. Have you forgotten I'm me? I can take on anything those two can dish out."
I recalled that J. Bucky had actually cried like a little girl when I told him I was going to make him into a real Spanish Prisoner. As for the local town, I knew it well, a rabbit warren of old streets and alleyways built on a rock in the middle of the local river - a river that was dry most of the year round. The locals call it the Rio Aguas - the river of water. In Almeria they have about a dozen different names for watercourses, a sure sign that water's kind of important there. That's why my hacienda's built where it is - right on top of a well that was first dug by Carthaginian settlers way back in antiquity and then used by the Romans. Yup, my hacienda's built on the site of a Roman villa. There's class for you.
There was a grey horse in the stables waiting for me when I arrived. I had on my riding kit, my bolero jacket trimmed with silver lace, my broad-brimmed hat and my riding boots, all worn over my grey costume. And of course, at my belt, my bullwhip, ready to teach the Akenbola brothers that crime doesn't pay, especially not when I'm around.
I was ready for anything. Even automatic weapons, if the Akenbolas had rockets.
I'd really annoyed them. And I wanted to annoy them some more.
I rode off, towards the town, across the barren desert dotted with esparto grass and the odd clump of prickly pear indicating where a peasant dwelling had once stood - prickly pear makes a wonderful natural barbed wire fence.
The Akenbolas were in for a surprise.
1 comment:
He had to cry like a girl for the act on Lawrence Welk. O. Bucky, dancing around his hat, would always stomp on J. Bucky's foot.
Post a Comment