Chapter 9
Jack Mordaunt made his beautiful young brunette wife get into the car and lighting one of his perennial cigars, got in behind her and drove off. Eunice didn't notice that he took a shortcut to the left, while Luis had gone off to the right.
This section of the Mexican countryside, just past the border, was primitive indeed, with hardly any inhabitants except scattered little farms with a few scrawny cattle grazing nearby and Eunice shivered, perhaps from some presentment of the unknown. Never before had felt so desperately alone, in another country and far from her home and the devotion of her father and she realized the terrible brooding reality of her marriage. The black-haired man who sat beside her, his eyes on the road, his hands tightly griping the wheel, had plunged her into nightmarish new life, the consequences of which she could only conjecture and the first contacts of which had been destructively repugnant to her fastidious and selfish nature. Viewed in the light of day, it seemed almost impossible that only a few hours before she had been stretched out naked across his lap, her panties tugged down to bare her naked posterior before the eyes of a Negro porter and spanked like a child, with the added humiliation or having a fly swatter applied to her naked flesh. And then the domineering and brutal manner of his possession of her; even when she had considered sex - and there had been moments earlier in her girlhood - she had thought of it as a kind of hymeneal rapture, full of happiness and tenderness and woo, which would follow an exquisite ceremony of union. But the marriage at the city hall, then the brisk boarding of the train, then the shocking slaps and the spanking made atrociously public before a Negro menial and finally the actual shattering loss of her virginity. All these things had been accomplished and she had to succumb to them because he was the stronger and his will was imposed upon her. As she thought of it, her cheeks flamed, remembering how he had stood against her, his hands brutally gripping her trembling body, while his sexual organ had forged between her thighs, pierced her maidenhead and inflicted its sullying taint of his inconsiderate lust upon her person.
Jack Mordaunt, well aware of his young wife's emotions and recriminations, drove on, puffing at his cigar, much to Eunice's disgust. She would glance at him from time to time, her lips curling and her dainty nostrils flaring at the strong aroma of the Havana tobacco. He did not say word to her but drove straight on. Finally, feeling the pies-sure of nature's needs, she hesitantly asked, "Could-could we stop somewhere, maybe at a filling station? I-I'd like to get a drink of water."
He gave her an ironic glance. "You still haven't learned to be frank and honest, have you, baby? What you really mean is that you want to take a piss, or maybe do Number Two for yourself. Come right out and say things, so I know what you mean Eunice. That's the only way you and I are ever going to get along harmoniously. However, for your information, there isn't a filling station for another fifteen miles. But don't worry - you can always go into the bushes. Only I'll have to pick the place, because when you squat down, you might land that lovely white ass of yours on some cactus thoras."
"Ohhh!!! You - you purposely go out of your way to be vulgar and disgusting. I could die!"
"You won't die, you'll just do it in your panties. And if you do, I'll have to treat you the way a mother or father treats a naughty baby that's had toilet training and forgotten, which would mean a good sound spanking on the bare ass," he blithely announced.
Eunice closed her eyes and ground her teeth, in baffled rage at hearing this commentary. But nonetheless, the pressures in her bladder began to mount and after another five miles, she began to squirm uneasily in her seat, nervously biting her lovely lips. Jack Mordaunt, quite aware of what was taking place, grinned and lit his second cigar. Finally it was too much; Eunice burst out.
"For God's sake, you know how I detest those filthy cigars! They stink so! Won't you please have the courtesy to stop smoking in my presence?"
"No. Any other questions?"
"You-you are just what you were from the very first, a nasty, hateful boor!"
She did not read the danger signals in the narrowing of his eyes and the tightening of his lips, but, furiously eloquent at all the remembered shame and martyrdom piled up, she went on,
"Not once have you been decent to me or given a single thought of my own needs and feelings. I don't see how you expect me ever to love you, if there is such a word in your vocabulary. You browbeat, humiliate and shame me constantly. You make me feel like a cheap woman who puts up with the worst possible treatment just because she gets what she needs - money. I'll never forgive you for this, Jack Mordaunt - never!"
"If all this is leading up to your telling me you can't hold it back any more, baby," he looked at her and gave her a sarcastic smile, "you just as well might tell me what's on that pretty mind of yours. Shall I stop here? There's plenty of mesquite which would hide you if you squat down real low. I can give you some Kleenex to wipe yourself. Well?"
Eunice groaned, but did not answer. Again she bit her lips and turned her face away. Jack Mordaunt shrugged and went back to his cigar. But after another two miles, the tension was unbearable. She had kept her thighs so they touched together, but just the same the burning pressure mounted, making her calves and thighs strain and her whole backside ache with the repressed urge, until finally, in despair, hoping he wouldn't see, she put a hand over her crotch and ground her teeth together.
Jack saw it at once and turned to her. "You'd better not wet the car seat, baby, or I'll really lay it on that sweet ass of yours. Now, like a good girl, tell me what you want to do."
"D-damn you! You contemptible, filthy, vulgar brute! Of course I have to go to the bathroom. You know perfectly well I do! And you take a sadistic delight in torturing me."
"I torturing you?" he feigned thunderstruck innocence. "I told you I'd be happy to stop anywhere you wanted if you had to piss. Do you?"
"Let me out."
"I stopped for that purpose. Do you want some Kleenex?"
"You - you go to hell!" Eunice almost burst into tears as she got out of the car. But her cheeks were burning and her eyes stung with tears as she heard him call out, "That's cactus over to your right, so don't go over there, or you'll come back with a bare tail full of stingers. Over there - that's mesquite."
At that moment Eunice Mordaunt would gladly have fallen dead and not cared whether the buzzards flying above fed on her lifeless body. The thought of spending years of wifehood with this boor was absolute anathema to her. Nevertheless, by how the need was torturing, so she moved towards the huge clump of mesquite, only to hear his mocking laughter from the car. Hitching up her dress and pulling down her panties, she sought to alleviate the distress, but even though he couldn't see her, the knowledge that he knew where she was and what she was doing made her weep with rage. At least she came back to the car, her face very pale and her eyes swollen with tears and got in beside him.
"I wonder what you used to wipe yourself, baby," he ventured. Eunice closed her eyes and clenched her hands so tightly in her lap that her knuckles turned white. "Oh, now you're going to give me the silent treatment, eh? Very well - suit yourself."
"How - how much farther from here is your ranch?" she dully asked.
"I'd say a couple of hours. The road I'm taking skirts Mexico City to the east and saves us a little time. We might actually beat Luis, except of course he's going at a faster clip. Why? Getting hungry?"
"No, thank you."
He started up the car, a mocking little smile hovering about his lips. His cigar went out half a dozen times and he had to slow down and relight it, much to Eunice's disgust. The country now became rugged, low hills, rocks and huge boulders decorated the sides of the road and a pass between two towering hills loomed up ahead of them. The sky had darkened; a sudden thunder storm was coming and Eunice shuddered, her earlier presentment becoming a stronger fear.
He drove on. The two hills approached like vigilant sentries and he slowed his speed to take the winding curves between them. Then, just as they were about to emerge onto open terrain again, there was a sound of a revolver shot.
"My God, what was that?" Eunice blurted, her eyes very wide as she leaned to look out of the window.
"Sounded like a gunshot to me, baby. Maybe somebody shot at a buzzard."
"Oh - Oh my God, look!" She pointed to their right. Three men stood across the road, each leveling a pistol at the oncoming car. The man in the middle, beared, bulky, held up his other hand and gestured to them to stop. Jack slowed the car, then halted. The three men moved up to take their places, the beared man who was evidently the leader, standing in front of the car and covering Jack and Eunice with his revolver, while his companions moved to stand on either side of the automobile.
"What do you want?" Jack Mordaunt demanded.
"Dinero, amigo," the man beside his window chuckled. He was short, wiry, with furtive little eyes that shifted constantly back and forth from Jack to Eunice, his face swarthy, with a scar on his left cheek, probably that of a knife wound.
"All I have are traveler's checks, which aren't any good to you, amigo," Jack Mordaunt pleasantly responded. "And maybe thirty dollars in my wallet, American money. You won't be able to cash the checks, though."
"Both of you step out of the car, pronto!" the man with the scar commanded in heavily accented English and he waved his gun to enforce obedience.
Eunice's eyes were wide with terror. The man on her side of the car was grinning at her. He was about her own height, quite fat, with a thick drooping moustache, obscenely full sensual mouth and a broad nose from which a veritable forest of hairs seemed to sprout. He gestured with his gun.
"Come out, Senorita. Pedro wants to see how are put together. I speak pretty good English, no?"
"Better do as he says, Eunice," Jack Mordaunt whispered. "These are probably bandits. They'd just as soon kill you as look at you."
Trembling with fear, Eunice slowly opened the door of the car and got out. The man calling himself Pedro grasped her by the wrist and chuckled.
"Carramba. Here is a real nice gringo compadres. Maybe we keep her if the senor has no dinero!"
The man with the beard shoved his sombrero back and squinted at Eunice. Then he turned to Jack. "Maybe you have friends, senor, who pay ransom so you go free?"
"We're on our honeymoon, going to Mexico City," Jack Mordaunt responded. "I told your friend all I have is traveler's checks and you can't cash them. I gave you my watch and the thirty dollars American I have."
"Honeymoon? Carramba." the bearded man chuckled nastily, then bowed low to Eunice with a wide sweep of the dirty sombrero. "Senora, this is indeed a happy occasion for us bandidos, to meet so beautiful a gringa who travels to Mexico. It is, how you say it, romantic, si, si."
"Gonzales, we better take them to the little hut of old Diego, there we can talk what we are going to do with them," the man with the scar said.
The beared man, responding to the name of Gonzales, nodded. "A good idea, Hernando. We all get in the car and we drive off the road to this little place. No tricks. We know how to use these pistoles." He waved his menacingly at Jack Mordaunt.
"Better do what they say, baby," Jack whispered to the trembling brunette. "Get into the car and don't say anything to attract attention to yourself. I shouldn't have said we were on our honeymoon; it might give them ideas."
"Ideas?" Eunice quavered as she climbed in beside him. "Will they hold us for ransom? Oh my God, what are we going to do?"
"I'll try to talk them out of it, honey. Just your mouth shut."
The three Mexican bandits had climbed onto the rear of the car and the one called Gonzales prodded Jack's neck with his revolver. "All right, Senor Gringo. When you go past he hills, you turn this car of yours to the right and you will see in the distance a little hut and an old barn. They belonged to a peon named Diego Escontada, but he was bitten by a tarantula and died last year. So I Pedro and Hernando, use this as our hiding place and we wait for gringos like you, senor."
Jack Mordaunt steered the car off the road and over the stretch of land which appeared once to have been farm land. There was more grass and off to the right a stagnant little creek. At last they approached the hut and Gonzales again prodded Jack's neck with his gun and ordered, "Now both of you pronto out!"
Eunice got out of the car and fat Pedro, playing with his moustache, chuckled amicably. "Hola, Senora, it is first time I see such a lovely gringa! You have very white skin. Pedro, he likes that a lot!"
He prodded her back with the muzzle of his revolver, adding, "I do not wish to shoot you, Senora, it would grieve me if had to. So walk very slowly straight ahead and do not make any sudden moves, because Pedro is very excitable and this one, she go off with a loud noise when she shoots!"
Eunice cast a pleading, piteous look at her husband, but Jack Mordaunt and Gonzales' orders, was walking with both hands up in the air and the wiry little man with the scar was also at his side, holding his gun.