Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  It was Slim who usually went after him. Jean-Paul came docilely enough, and even looked shame-faced for his behavior, but he would never explain his actions. More than once Eleanora tried to talk to him, but when he attended to her he would only look at her as if she had lost her senses.

  Gonzalez, the rumbling of his belly overcoming an inherent laziness, took over the cooking. It was better than waiting for the few times when Luis was awake and Eleanora could prepare something to eat, for she refused to wake him and she could not, of course, manage such tasks on a two-foot chain from the inside of the hut while he rested.

  Luis did not improve. His fever continued, though not as high as before. He would not allow her to look at the wound, a megrim he developed as his convalescence proved slow, but she thought the wound was healing satisfactorily on the outside. Still, his lack of vitality, his gray color, the fever, worried her. Carrying his pallet out upon the porch in the fresh air and sunshine seemed to help, though he did not progress, and as the first week ended and another began, she stood often on the porch, shading her eyes with her hand, praying for good news that would allow Luis to obtain the care of the military surgeon, Dr. Jones.

  Kurt was another worry. When she was out of the adobe hut he followed her with his eyes, and when she was not he often took up a position at an angle opposite the open door where he could see inside to where she lay with Luis. As the days slipped by she grew more resigned to her chain and inclined to look upon it as the protection Luis intended. Though sometimes, when the Prussian’s gaze fell on Luis, she felt a throat-tightening tremor of fear that would not let her rest.

  The days of the second week stretched longer, eons of time echoing with nothing but her thoughts. Her mind followed Sanchez and Pablo to Granada, dwelling on the benefits of civilization, baths, fine food, changes of clothing, hair ribbons and combs, scented soap and hairbrushes, all of which the two Nicaraguans were most unlikely to understand as advantages. She thought of them being ushered into Grant’s presence, of seeing him, speaking to him, of giving him information of her if he should ask. At times like these jealousy gripped her, coupled with a vast impatience that made her want to saddle a horse and ride alone, if need be, through the countryside to Granada. Danger seemed to matter little against the desperation of her need to know what was happening.

  In the effort to shake off such disturbing thoughts, she let her thoughts roam further afield, across the lake and down the river to San Juan del Norte and beyond the gulf to New Orleans. It would be basking now in the warm sun and marvelous fecundity of the semi-tropics, yet with a delicious wine-coolness in the air. Mardi Gras would be over. The flowers, the briar roses, winter jasmine, and Chinese camellias thrown down upon the marching, masked young gallants would have been long swept into the gutters. The austerity of Lent would be upon the city, perhaps, with much fasting and wearing of somber colors and visiting of the cemeteries. The ladies of the large houses along Royal Street, and in the Garden District where the Americans were building their mansions, would be thinking of shutting up their houses for the summer and moving to their plantations in the country, to the resort at White Sulphur Springs, or even as far north as Saratoga. That life seemed so uncomplicated, so free of worry, that she wondered that she had ever been a part of it. It seemed impossible at the moment that she could ever be a part of it again.

  Sometimes, as she felt the pressure of acting confident and certain of the outcome of Pablo’s and Sanchez’s mission, she would think of Mazie and the troupe of actors. What were they doing? Were they carrying on in their makeshift theater despite the almost certain advent of war, or had they gone, taking the steamer for New Orleans?

  What had Mazie thought when she heard of her arrest? She could not have believed in her guilt. And hearing of her escape, did the actress ever wonder how she was and what had become of her?

  How did the hospital fare? This thought also exercised her mind. Had the young, tow-headed Southerner been released? Was the standard of cleanliness she had established being maintained, or if it were possible for her to return, would what she had accomplished have to be done over again? Conceit, to think that they could not go on as well without her. She was not irreplaceable. She had, doubtless, contributed a certain amount of good, but Dr. Jones could and would go on healing the sick and maimed without her, sending them back as tools of greater or lesser strength for Walker’s purpose.

  Ambition, war, conquest. The importance of these things eluded her. At this time peace, safety, and solitude were much more ardently to be desired.

  As the second week drew to a close without the reappearance of the two men, the situation began to look grave. It was decided that someone must go to Granada to discover, if he could, what had happened to Sanchez and Pablo. It was possible the bureaucratic workings of the Nicaraguan government had delayed their return, but if there was some other explanation it would be better if they knew.

  The obvious choice for the journey was Molina. His passage would be more swift and certain, and with his dark Indian face, he would be less apt to catch the eye of an officer on the lookout for deserters.

  He made ready that same evening, using a saddle and horse stripped down for hard and fast riding. He saluted them with a raised hand, swung his horse around, and galloped from the valley. But despite such bravado there lurked at the back of his eyes the same uneasy fear which threatened them all.

  Four days and three nights he was gone. He returned at a clattering run in the twilight of the fourth day. Dismounting before his horse had come to a full stop, he strode into the adobe hut while Eleanora was still getting to her feet.

  Sweeping off his sombrero, he knelt beside Luis. A layer of dust caked his face and shoulders, sifting in a fine powder from the brim of his hat to the floor. It was caught on the tips of his lashes, and it turned to mud on his lips as he moistened them to speak.

  “Lieutenant Colonel, we must ride. The woman, Juanita, is dead. Before they reached Granada she tried to take the gun of Sanchez while he slept. They struggled and she was shot. Walker and the main body of the Falangistas have marched once more on Rivas where a great battle rages at this moment. The puta of the little general now commands in his place in the city. This was what Pablo and Sanchez found when they presented themselves, Conde. The confession of Juanita was thrown into the fire unread, or so they say in the streets, and the men who brought it were put to the torture so that they might reveal the hiding place of the others who rode with them. I do not know if they did so, but few can withhold the knowledge they possess when presented to the pincers, the whip, the red-hot coal. Death would be allowed to release these men from their pain only after they had given up the information sought. Pablo and Sanchez were shot in the plaza three days ago.”

  In the sudden breathless silence, Eleanora stared at Molina. Stern-faced Sanchez and lucky Pablo. Tortured. Shot.

  Luis put out his hand so that Molina could help him sit up, and then a sound jarred upon their ears, cutting across the tense air with the jagged persistence of a dull knife. It was Jean-Paul, standing in-the doorway, holding to the frame for support as he was racked by a harsh and hurtful laughter.

  16

  A month is a long time. Hours, days, weeks, it passes with exquisite slowness when spent in constant movement coupled with the effort of concealment. Tiredness and irritability do not make the time go faster, nor do the strain of worry and the monotony of eating the same things prepared in the same manner. It was not a pleasant group which Molina led from the valley. It was even less so when a month of days had come and gone.

  The smell of woodsmoke had ceased to be appetizing, and the inevitable bits of trash, the feel of grit between the teeth, had long ago lost their novelty, becoming subjects of endless grumbling. The loss of one of the horses to bloat before they left the valley proved a major inconvenience, especially to the lightest in weight of their number, Eleanora, who had to ride double with Luis on the strongest mount. Uncertainty as to whether or not t
hey were being pursued preyed on their nerves. Small accidents loomed as major disasters, reasons for blame and recriminations, while disaster was accepted with a hopeless calm. Minor indispositions were used as an excuse for a halt by some, in contrast to Luis who, though seriously ill, would permit nothing less than death to slow them. Both attitudes, carping or stoic, could not fail to irritate the sensibilities of some among them.

  They continued north and east, winding among the hills and valleys, crossing countless small streams, sometimes following Indian and animal trails, at other times striking out to make their own. The terrain became less rugged, flowing into series of rolling plateaus. They left the pine-scented coolness of the mountains behind them, descending once more into heat and rain. The hardwoods gave way to more tropical vegetation, to rubber trees and palms flaunting their greenness against the blue sky, and the fragile-looking toughness of tree ferns standing knee-deep in a lush carpet of some small, pink trailer without a name.

  It was in the rain forest that a mysterious disease struck the rest of the horses. It caused their hooves to rot, falling away layer by layer until they could not walk for the pain. There was no remedy. Not even Molina with his animal lore and his faith in the curative powers of roots and Indian medicines could find an alternative to shooting them. The Indian, however, could see no valid reason for not benefiting by their misfortune to the extent of adding horsemeat to their larder. But like the iguana, he was left to eat his supper of horse’s haunch alone. Not even Gonzalez could be persuaded to join him.

  “So what do we do?” Slim asked, voicing the question that hovered unspoken in the warm, humid air. They sat around a fire lit to take the dampness from their clothes and hold at bay the swarms of gnats and mosquitoes that blackened the air. The sun had not yet gone down but it was already twilight beneath the canopy of tree limbs overhead. Shadows of giant moths moved ghostlike in the dimness, and among the leaves now and then there gleamed twin spots of light, the eyes of small, shy monkeys catching the light of the fire.

  Luis, lying on the ground on a blanket-stretcher they had improvised with poles during the afternoon to carry him, looked up. “We go on, of course,” he said sharply.

  “Even I am smart enough to figure that out,” the plainsman said in a mild tone. “We’re not going to be able to go wandering in this kind of a jungle forever, though. Sooner or later we’re all going to come down with some kind of swamp fever, and that will be the end of it. It looks to me like the sooner we get out of this, the sooner we get to some kind of town, the better off we’ll be.”

  “A town is too risky,” Kurt said, turning his broad face toward Slim from where he leaned against a tree.

  “And this isn’t?” Slim queried with gesture toward the dark forest around them. “Tomorrow we will be tramping through snakes and scorpions and spiders. And if you think you have ticks and chigger bites now, just wait until you have waded through some of this greenery on foot. On top of that, most of these creeks we’ve been wading across are just swimming with blood-sucking leeches. Besides, if Walker is in as much trouble as I think he is with the Hondurans and the Costa Ricans, the phalanx is going to have its hands full without worrying about us, eh, Molina?”

  “This may be true, señor,” the Indian agreed, nodding. Kurt threw up his hand. “Wait a minute. I’ve been giving this some thought too, and it looks to me like the best plan would be for some of us to go on ahead, get through as fast as possible, and send help back for the others.”

  “You mean leave Luis — and Eleanora — behind?”

  Flicking a glance at Eleanora, the Prussian licked his lips. “Not precisely.”

  “The idea has merit,” Luis intervened, his gaze focused somewhere beyond Slim’s left shoulder.

  “For one man, it does,” Slim said, “that one man being Kurt. Forget it. You know splitting up is the worst thing we could do. It would weaken both parties.”

  Seated on the corner of Luis’s blanket, Eleanora was, perhaps, more aware of the tension in his slender frame than any of the others. It was communicated through the chain that bound them like some metallic lifeline, a slight vibration perceptible through the nerves of the skin but not to the naked eye.

  “I may prove something more of an impediment than you envision,” the gaunt man, bearded now like the rest and who had once been their leader, pointed out.

  “We will manage.”

  “But yes,” Molina added, his eyes respectfully averted. Gonzalez, standing to one side, nodded. Kurt’s face remained stiff with impassive disapproval. Looking to her brother, Eleanora saw he was not attending. With studious attention he was cleaning his fingernails with a knife point, removing the dirt from under them and around the cuticles with all the care he had once used as a New Orleans dandy.

  When no more arguments were presented, Slim looked at Molina. “Well, this is your country. How do you say we go?”

  The Indian dropped to one knee on the ground, and with the flat of his hand, cleared a space, pushing aside the leaf mold and loose dirt. A few quick lines, and he had drawn a map that showed the funnel shape of Nicaragua with the double ovals of the two big lakes, Managua and Nicaragua, in place low on the left, and the snaking saw-teeth of the mountains they had crossed on a diagonal above them. Another crooked line represented the San Juan River, and then in the wide, open space of the unexplored territory between the mountains and the gulf, the Nicaraguan drew another line, tapping it with his fingernail. “The Rio Escondido,” he said. “She flows from far in the north, two hundred, maybe three hundred miles, to the lagoon called Bluefields on the gulf. If we follow it, sometimes on foot, sometimes on the raft we will build, we too must come to the gulf. It is not the Mosquito Coast, but the British ships patrol here also.”

  “And if we didn’t spot a ship right off, we could always move up the coast toward Mosquito country,” Slim said.

  “That is true, señor.”

  “Luis?” the plainsman asked, deferring to the other man.

  “It sounds well,” he replied.

  It did indeed sound well, but it was not that easy. They had first to reach the river, a march of several days attended by all the evils Slim had so carefully pointed out. Arriving, they had no tools other than knives with which to build a raft, and felling the trees by burning them about the bases proved a laborious process. Vines as a means of lashing the logs together were much less satisfactory than the cheapest rope. And the green wood, heavy with sap, floated low and sluggish in the water.

  Eleanora, though she spelled Gonzalez as cook so that he might lend his strength to the project, could do little else. Luis would not hear of her foraging in the forest around them, much less release her to do so. She was forced to sit idle, watching the men work, though Luis would, on occasion, allow her to search for grubs to use for fish bait, hobbling to the river to watch her fish. He was able to do no more as yet, and watching his brooding discontent with his continuing weakness was worse for Eleanora than idleness. Or perhaps not. In idleness she had too much time to think of the phalanx engaging the Costa Ricans. That battle must be over now at Rivas. How had it gone? More importantly, how had it gone for Colonel Grant Farrell? It seemed that she must know, must feel instinctively, if he had been killed or injured, but she placed no confidence in such intuition.

  Rapids, shallows, rocks, sand bars, broken and lost poles; everything seemed to have united to slow the progress of the raft. At one point it appeared best to abandon the idea in favor of walking along the riverbank, but the sighting of a raft of alligators and a black, yellow-speckled snake longer than a man scotched that idea in a hurry.

  Still, they did not stay in one place for long. In fits and starts, they descended the long, treacherous, muddy Escondido. Day by day it grew ever more lush with vines and flowers, more alive with the raucous calls of parrots and the tiny trillings of small birds with the appearance of chickadees. And then in the middle of an afternoon when everyone dozed in exhaustion on the slimy, water-soaked
logs, with the exception of the two whose turn it was to pole, the banks of the river receded and they floated gently into the salt-flavored waters of Bluefields Lagoon. They had clams for supper, small, succulent mollusks, steamed in the yellow-brown sand of the beach. Lulled by the unceasing caress of the turquoise gulf upon the sand, they slept and did not wake until the sun was high, and the sea gulls, looking for carrion along the beach, found them.

  The gulls could not be blamed for their mistake; they were not a prepossessing sight. Their hair was matted with dirt and perspiration. One by one Eleanora had lost her pins, and in an effort to control her long mane, had dragged it back to plait it into one long braid. That braid, not renewed in weeks, had taken on the packed and fuzzy appearance of wool. Dirt was ingrained in their hands and faces, a smudged, gray film that did not quite cover the red welts of mosquito bites or the myriad cuts and scratches they all carried in various stages of infection. Beneath the dinginess, their skin was burned by the sun to the color of tanned leather, and with much the same texture. Upon their bodies they had other peculiar patches of reddened skin where the sun had reached through the tears and rents in their clothing. Shirts, blouses, skirts, and breeches, the colors were practically unrecognizable from the fading effects of the sun, the soiling, and the pervasive stenciling of gray mildew. The weakening effects of the latter had also caused the materials to tear more easily so that the hems of the men’s breeches and Eleanora’s skirt hung in tatters. Her slippers had long fallen apart as the stitching rotted, and she had constructed new footwear using layers of blanket tied about her feet and ankles with pieces of vine. These makeshift boots protected the bottom of her feet, but they had left her toes comically bare. The boots of the men, made for rough usage, had fared somewhat better, but these, like every other piece of leather they had with them, cartridge belts, suspender ends, and even Luis’s leather breeches, had grown a thick, fuzzy layer of gray-green mildew.