by Lou Cameron
Gaston did but protested. “Merde alors, why are you in such a black mood this evening, my surly child? We were planning to leave this très fatigue country to begin with, and thanks to our kindly old English gentleman, we are not even traveling on our own money.”
Captain Gringo kept his own voice deliberately casual as well as low when he replied, “Jesus H. Christ, you make as much noise talking as you do singing. I’m trying to listen. Not to you. I know who you are and why you’re on this trail tonight.”
Gaston blinked and fell silent. They both rode on that way for a time. Then the little Frenchman nodded and murmured, “Oui, you were right. I make it two sets of hooves, perhaps half a kilometer back, pacing us très suspicious for innocent fellow travelers, non?”
Captain Gringo didn’t answer. He heeled his mount into a not too comfortable trot. Gaston, of course, did the same. But after they’d bounced along that way for a quarter mile or so, the Frenchman gasped, “Merde alors, this is too fast a trot and too slow a lope to suffer, Dick. Would not our balls be in less danger if we made up our minds?”
Captain Gringo reined to a walk and told him to shut up some more. Gaston did, listened, and said, “How curious. Our fellow travelers would seem to be the same distance behind us, hein?”
Captain Gringo nodded and said, “Yeah, and it’s getting curiouser and curiouser. I didn’t pick a pace most riders would find uncomfortable by accident. So it’s no accident that they’re maintaining the same distance through thick and thin. The question before the house, now, is why?”
Gaston drew his saddle gun half out of its boot as he asked, “Don’t you mean who, as well as why? Perhaps if we asked them in a firm but courteous manner—”
“Not yet,” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “We’re still too close to town, and these public highways tend to be patrolled a lot. That could be the answer. The ruling junta must still be on the prod after that recent revolution got nipped in the bud. Some Salvadoran soldados could be just keeping an eye on us.”
Gaston shook his head and said, “Mais non, that is not the way the military works in this part of the world. Suspicious Hispanics are more apt to shoot first and ask questions later than to pussy a foot about the bush. If they are in uniform, they are still up to something sneaky. Trust me on such matters, Dick. When I was riding with the Mexican army, we often went into business for ourselves, and two men alone avec horses and guns make a tempting target for anyone who feels underpaid, hein?”
They were passing a moonlit orange grove now. Oranges stayed green after they were ripe enough to eat in the tropics. So the only way to be sure was to try. Captain Gringo peeled an orange enough to taste and spat in disgust. But as he tossed the too-sour spoils away he noticed that they seemed to be alone on the road now. He nodded and heeled his barb forward. As soon as they were moving at a brisk walk, he started picking up the crunch of steel on gravel behind them. He muttered, “I have a little shadow. It follows me all day. Who wrote that, anyway?”
“Merde alors, who cares? We are being shadowed indeed. How do you feel about Hakim’s cutthroat crew, Dick?”
“It won’t work. We offered to take some of his guys along. He’d still have to pay them to keep an eye on us the hard way. So why do it the hard way?”
Gaston shrugged and replied, “How should I know? I have trouble relating to the mind of a man who would pay a pretty girl to stick her fingers up his derriere instead of—”
“What pretty girl are we talking about?” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “I don’t remember any kind of she-male back there at Hakim’s.”
Gaston explained, “That is because you arrived later than I. Our Sir Basil has a Nurse Page on tap to play with his shittery for some reason or another. He calls it medical treatment. For all I know, it is. As I said, I have never understood men like Hakim. He leads a most disgusting life.”
Captain Gringo chuckled and said, “That sounds funny, coming from you … no offense.”
Gaston replied innocently, “None taken. I make no excuses for being a dirty old man. It was très difficult to live long enough to become one. I am not ashamed of my natural appetites. They are the comforts of my old age. Mais, unlike Hakim, I know enough to stop eating when I am full, stop drinking when I fall down, and stop fucking when I can’t get it up anymore. Hakim is not content to enjoy life naturally. He uses artificial stimulants and Romanesque sexual disgustingness to eat more, drink more, and be more disgusting than a normal man half his age should. Mais, thanks to clean vice and plenty of outdoor sports, I can eat, drink, and fuck the rings around him without needing medical attention, hein?”
“You could be right or at least lucky. Tell me more about the nurse he has on tap. I thought I knew his habits better than that. The last time we met he’d switched to rosy-cheeked boys.”
Gaston shrugged and said, “I just told you that he was a. species of senile sex maniac. I don’t regard Hakim as bisexual or even pansexual. His glee is in the sexual power he has over his underlings, non?”
“That makes sense. There’s no argument who’s boss when one guy’s bending over for the soap and the other ain’t. You say this nurse was a nurse, or did he just have some puta dressed that way?”
Gaston snorted, “Sacré bleu, I did not even ask to see her tits, let alone a medical degree. Why all this sudden interest in a woman you’ve never met and never may, Dick? She wasn’t bad, but on the other hand, I fail to see her as a femme fatale worthy of historical concern. She is simply a big blonde paid to stick her fingers up a dirty old man’s derriere, non?”
“Maybe. I can’t help wondering what else she could be up to. I know this sounds swell-headed, but dames usually want to have a look at the famous Captain Gringo when he’s around, and that hired house of Hakim’s wasn’t big enough to get lost in easy.”
“You are right, Dick. Your head has swollen amazingly since we went into business together. Sacré God damn, I told you the slut was Hakim’s private stock. I am sorry she did not see fit to ask you for your autograph. Perhaps Hakim told her to stand in some corner. May we forget the très tedious asshole masseuse for now and concentrate on dangers closer to hand?”
Captain Gringo could. He saw that they were coming to a crossroads up ahead. Gaston spotted the dusty moonlit X about the same time and said, “The right fork would take us to the border, non?”
Captain Gringo said, “I’ve got a better idea. Follow me and keep quiet.”
Gaston did. So a few minutes later the two gunslicks who’d been trailing them reined in at the crossroads to listen hard. Hearing nothing, one turned to the other and muttered, “God damn it, I said we were letting them have too good a lead. They’ve ridden out of earshot on us. So now what are we supposed to do?”
His comrade shrugged and pointed, saying, “That’s the way to the border. So that’s the way they went. Quit your bitching and let’s go. They can’t have ridden far. We’d have heard them had they loped their mounts.”
The two of them rode on, up the dusty trail Gaston had suggested as well. But neither Gaston or Captain Gringo were on it. They were watching, bemused, from the off-trail clump of live oaks Captain Gringo had spotted from the trail as an unusually shadowy spot, and, of course, their ponies had made no noise strolling over to the oaks through shin-deep grass. Both barbs had lowered their heads to graze on the same as the soldiers of fortune sat quietly watching the others vanish in the moonlight. When they were long gone, Gaston said, “Eh bien, do we hit them from behind avec the drop we now have on them or ride back and tell Hakim of this fishy business?”
Captain Gringo answered, “Neither. I get in enough fights down here without going out of my way to look for ’em. They could be in the pay of someone who dislikes Hakim even more than we do. Or they could just be highway robbers, waiting for us to bed down before they move in. Either way, we’ve thrown them off our trail. So fuck ’em. Whatever they were up to didn’t work.”
Gaston shrugged and said, “Their charr
o habits were too fancy for casual bandits. I made them out as bravo types paid to treat people more rudely. At least they were not soldado types. What do we do now?”
Captain Gringo said, “I’m thinking. I wish I’d thought to bring along more maps. The chart we have of the Sierra Neblina area doesn’t show the road-net this close to San Salvador. I didn’t think we’d need one, damn it.”
Gaston said, “Mais, we don’t. As I told you, Dick, this route takes us directly to the border and well beyond, where the maps we have can take over, assuming they are at all accurate, of course. What could you be searching for so close to town? One is free to piss against any tree and—”
“Would you just shut up and let me hear myself think?” Captain Gringo cut in. So Gaston did. The younger soldier of fortune let his mount crop grass as he chewed for a time on an unlit claro. Then he nodded and said, “We passed a farmhouse about a mile back and it’s still early. Let’s go.”
Gaston waited until they were back on the road and retracing their route before he asked, “Is it safe to ask, now, what one may hope to find at a très modest farm, my suddenly rustic youth?”
Captain Gringo said, “Directions. There has to be more than one narrow dirt road leading in the general direction of the border, and guys who live here regularly are more likely to know about such things.”
“True, mais what is the matter with the road we were on and... ah, oui, never mind. I, too, would set up an ambush if it occurred to me that I might have been played for a species of sucker. Lead on, my Mac of Duff. I agree that it makes more sense to find another path than it does to chase mysterious gunmen up an alley of blindness.”
An ugly yellow dog didn’t seem to like them at all, but it was chained to a tree, and the human inhabitants of the hard-scrabble farm seemed friendly enough as the soldiers of fortune dismounted by their sagging shack. The old Indian who seemed to be head of the house got even friendlier when Captain Gringo slipped him a coin as he asked permission to water their mounts. He protested that they were too kind, that Cristianos could not charge for water but put the coin away just the same. He told a skinny-looking girl with big tits to water the horses and asked if there was anything else he, or at least his mob of kids, could do for such fine caballeros.
Captain Gringo explained that they were looking for an easy route to Santa Rosa de Copan. He didn’t add that it was in Honduras. Everyone knew it was, and people who talked about borders tended to make others wonder about crossing them. The old farmer told them the road out front led more or less the way they said they wanted to go. Captain Gringo saw there was no delicate way to put it. So he produced yet another silver coin before he explained, “We understand there might be a shorter way, and we’re in a hurry, viejo.”
The old man nodded wisely and replied, “Ah, in that case you may wish for to follow a cattle trail my muchachos can lead you to, eh? I feel it only fair to warn you the trail is most narrow, hard for to follow in places, and, ah, does not pass near any regular border stations. Pero anyone can see you are not smugglers, eh?”
Captain Gringo laughed easily and said, “As a matter of fact our papers are in order and we’re not running anything but ourselves. We simply happen to be in a hurry.”
The old man grinned toothlessly and said, “Sure, sure, anyone can see that. But the hour grows late and the moon will not stay up forever. Why do you not bed down here for the night and let my muchachos guide you in the morning, eh?”
Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “Your offer is tempting. But we have to be on our way. Your people don’t have to guide us all the way. How far is this other trail they can show us to?”
The old man sighed fatalistically and said, “Perhaps a few kilometers cross-country. Pero there are hills to ride over and coffee plantings to ride through before you meet the trail we speak of. Ah, los muchachos may expect a present for showing you the way, eh?”
He’d already given the old goat enough to hire a housemaid for a month with blow jobs optional. But Captain Gringo nodded and said that he never asked for anything he didn’t mean to pay for.
The old man cackled off. By the time their ponies were well watered, he was back with a quartet of younger editions. The shabby Indian youths didn’t cackle, but neither soldier of fortune liked the way they shot sidelong glances at one another and muttered in a lingo that couldn’t be Spanish. As they got their own mounts out of a barn built more solidly than the house, Gaston muttered in English, “How curious. One would think a single guide would be enough, non?”
The thought had already occurred to Captain Gringo. But he said, “We know for a fact that those guys up the road ahead are not very nice. Maybe they just enjoy each other’s company. I doubt they have a gramophone to kill time with, and all the girls here are ugly.”
They waited until their newfound whatevers were ready. Then they mounted up to follow them as everyone else waved and the old man told them to go with God.
The Indian in the lead seemed to be heading into a solid wall of second-growth gumbo-limbo. But as they followed him through the springy saplings they saw that he knew what he was doing after all. An open, fallow field lay beyond. The Indian pointed upslope with his machete and called out for one and all to follow him. So they did.
Once out in the open the other three peones fell behind the two whites and began to chat in that same dialect. The game worked both ways. So Captain Gringo asked Gaston, in English, if he had any idea what they were talking about. Gaston answered, “Oui, us. The dialect is Pipil. A poor relation to Aztec. They seem to find our boots and linen admirable indeed, although the one with the gold tooth is sure that we are sissies. Would you like me to ask him how his mother sucks? That usually tends to put them in their proper place.”
Captain Gringo answered, “Don’t you dare. Pretend you don’t know a word of Pipil and let’s see what develops.”
What developed was only to be expected in a land where dirt-poor people were trained from birth to hate those richer and lighter-skinned than themselves. As they were wending through a coffee grove Gaston murmured, “Gold tooth is trying to talk the others into it. The others are not sure, since Pappa gave them no direct instructions to machete us for our admirable boots and horses. How much longer do we wait to disabuse them of the notion?”
“As long as possible. While they’re working up to it they’re still leading us to that other trail. Now that I know it’s Uto-Aztec, I’m starting to pick up a word here and there. I learned some Comanche riding with the old Tenth Cav. That’s bastard Aztec too. I can’t quite follow this dialect, but I ought to get the drift when someone gives the final word.”
So the two soldiers of fortune played dumb as Gold Tooth kept exhorting his kinsmen to cut the comedy and machete the rich sons of bitches. To his credit the one the old farmer had told to guide them kept protesting, feebly, that it might not be a good idea. But as Gaston warned and as Captain Gringo could surmise by the growing tension around them, Gold Tooth had pretty well made his point by the time they crested a rise and their guide pointed down into the next vale to tell them, in Spanish, that the cattle trail they wanted had to be down there somewhere. He added that that was as far as he meant to go and made as if to swing his own mount around as he went for his machete.
He didn’t get it out of its sheath. Hoping such rustic types might not know about shoulder rigs, and having noticed how intently the four of them eyed saddle guns, both soldiers of fortune had been palming their pistols long before Gold Tooth gave the order to hit. As agreed on in English in advance, Captain Gringo aimed at the four riders while Gaston concentrated on their mounts. So it was all over in a rapid-fire blaze of nine shots. Gaston had to shoot one of their mounts twice to keep it from carrying the grim tidings home too early. As they steadied their own spooked ponies in the moonlight, Captain Gringo stared soberly down through the drifting gunsmoke to observe, “Too bad about those ponies. But that’s what comes from keeping bad company.”
Gaston reloaded as he replied, “That was shaving it close, Dick. I would have shot them much earlier.”
“If you had, we’d still be lost. Let’s go. He said the trail was down there in the dark somewhere.”
They rode down the slope into the inky shadows cast by the now slanting moonlight. At the bottom of the draw they reined in to stare soberly at a babbling brook running under tangled saddle-high bushes armed with wicked thorns. Captain Gringo muttered, “I don’t see any trail down here, do you?”
Gaston said, “Mais non, and we are still lost. That’s what we get for trusting the word of such treacherous types. What do we do now?”
Captain Gringo said, “We ride on. We sure as hell can’t go back without fighting a whole tribe of Pipil.” He glanced up at the sky before he added, “Okay, if this creek is running north and south, the border has to be somewhere on the other side. Let’s go.”
“Are you mad? How do you know that is not quicksand ahead?”
“What can I tell you? We’ll probably never make it through all these fucking thorns, anyway.”
They did. It was rougher on the ponies than either rider, but both soldiers of fortune tore their pants a lot before they were moving up the far slope. They had to punch through lower but just as wicked chaparral along the crest. Then Captain Gringo spotted a narrow ribbon of moonlit dust winding up the vale ahead and said, “I get it now. They were leading us more or less the right way but didn’t want to tear their own pants.”