by Lou Cameron
That was easier said than done. Captain Gringo had one hand down against the rear mugger’s crotch, so, feeling his cock and balls through the thin cotton, he grabbed and squeezed hard, as he lashed out with his booted right foot to break the knee cap of the one facing him!
After that, it got easier. When he had them both moaning at his feet he drew one Colt to cover them in the unlikely event they had any fight left in them. He said, “That was fun. Now who are you two working for?”
The one called Jacques hugged his shattered knee against his chest as he lay on the ground, moaning, “Sacré! You have crippled me!”
“You’re still alive, aren’t you? I asked you a question with a gun pointed at you, ami.”
The one he’d ruined more painfully, albeit not as permanently, gasped for air and groaned, “We work for ourselves, you big moose! Damn you, Jacques, I told you he looked too big for the two of us, and now we’ll have to go back to hard on the rock!”
Captain Gringo holstered his gun and looked around as he said, “We can keep this a private matter between us girls, if you’re leveling with me. Are you saying you’re just a couple of foot pads out to make an easy score?”
Jacques groaned, “Oui. Drinking money is hard to come by here. We did not know you were a fellow Apache, M’sieur. Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I need a doctor!”
Captain Gringo could see he had a point. His chum could probably get him to some police dispensary. Then the police would ask all sorts of dumb questions about how he’d broken his knee, too. Captain Gringo looked around, saw they were screened from all sides by the weeds along the gently bending road, and sighed, “Sorry, Guys, but when it’s me or you, it’s going to have to be you.”
He kicked Jacques flat and stomped on his wind pipe, crushing it like a beetle. As he turned the other pleaded, “Mais non! Have mercy!”
Captain Gringo knew what kind of mercy they’d intended to show him and it seemed no time for long conversations, so as the ball-busted man tried to roll out of his way he kicked him in the head and leaped high to come down with both boot heels in the small of his back, snapping the spine like a twig. He bounced off and landed and walked away not looking back. He knew he didn’t have to. He could have hidden the bodies in the weeds, but there was nothing connecting him to either of the would-be muggers and they were going to stink like hell in no time anyway. It was more to the point to establish his presence in other parts, pronto. So he headed back the way he’d come, resisting the impulse to look behind him. He was surprised at how much open ground he had to cover before he’d reach the corner where the tobacco shop stood. Distances always seemed greater when a guy was in a hurry instead of just strolling. There were windows above, too. Could anyone have been looking out just now? If his short savage fight had been spotted and reported, he could be walking into a police patrol!
Easy does it, he warned himself, as he moved on at a desperately casual pace. This was no time to start running back and forth like a chicken with its head cut off. He had to get out of this open space and unless he went somewhere he wasn’t about to do so!
As he approached the corner, he saw a man coming out of the tobacco shop. The guy didn’t look his way and he turned the corner toward the main part of town. But the guy had been wearing a white hat!
Captain Gringo stopped, feeling naked with no cover in any direction. He knew he was probably wrong. Lots of guys wore white hats. On the other hand the stranger was anywhere around the corner, set up to do anything he had in mind as Captain Gringo came around it blind. Could he cut through the weeds and approach the main drag from another angle? Sure he could, and anybody looking out a window up there would wonder, and remember. He turned around and headed back the way he’d just come, toward the bodies. He’d been headed that way in the first place, right? He’d find a cantina or something over in that other neighborhood and be sitting there surprised as hell when somebody came in to report the stiffs outside.
The convicts he’d had to kill hadn’t gone anywhere but he had a hell of a time not looking down at them as he strode on, shoulder blades tingling as he also resisted another impulse to look back. The other buildings in the shade of the trees across the open lots looked farther than they should have, too; but in about a million years he reached them and saw the satellite suburb was simply an uninteresting cluster of nondescript buildings save for an old stucco church off the road and half-buried in greenery. He didn’t see a store or cantina in the area and a man in convict whites was leading a mule loaded with firewood toward him. The guy was going to be the one who spotted the bodies out there in the open lots and Captain Gringo didn’t want him to remember any faces when he reported to the police, so he cut across the churchyard and entered the open doorway as if he were on his way to confession or whatever.
He was braced for an awkward confrontation with a sexton or priest, but when he got inside he stopped in wonder and muttered, “What the hell?”
The old church was just a shell: the pews and altar had been ripped out, long ago, judging from the stains and dust on the coral rock walls, and the stained glass windows were missing, too. He nodded, remembering this had once been a Dutch colony. He’d thought the church looked a little spartan for Catholic tastes. It was an abandoned Dutch reform edifice. The stone floor was covered with pigeon droppings, broken glass, and used contraceptives. It was nice to see the local youths had found a use for the old shell. Fortunately none of them seemed to be screwing in here at the moment.
Captain Gringo wondered if he could put the old church to his own uses. He found a stairway leading up into the bell tower and followed it to the belfry. He eased over the slatted opening and saw he had a bird’s eye view of the lots he’d crossed, and that he’d crossed them just in time for the convict with the mule was on the far side of the bodies, making good time for town and the police, now. Captain Gringo fished out a claro and lit up as he pondered his next move. Nobody but the convict had seen him. But he might remember seeing a stranger entering a church he had to know was empty. So it was time to leave.
But as he started to, he spotted a flash of white on the far side and hesitated, eyes narrowed. It was the guy in the white hat but he wasn’t alone. There were six others with him, dressed in civilian clothes and hence neither cops nor convicts. He knew the French had detectives, but it was early for detectives and the half dozen men were headed his way while white hat stayed put, like a general.
Captain Gringo moved across the belfry to the other side and looked out. Beyond the few rooftops of this semi-isolated hamlet, other open fields stretched farther than he really felt like running with six guys on his ass. His damned horse was tethered at the hotel and God only knew where old Gaston was. He moved back to his first vantage point. The six hadn’t stopped the convict with the mule and the latter was rounding the corner. The six were moving abreast with a certain O.K. Corral flavor to their in-step strides, although none had drawn a weapon—yet.
He watched as they approached “the bodies”. The obvious leader stopped a moment, shrugged, and continued the advance. It now was definitely an advance, he could see. They didn’t seem to feel a couple of dead guys were worth bothering about. That meant white hat was either local law or had made some arrangements with the local law giving him a free hand in whatever he had in mind. Captain Gringo swallowed the green taste in his mouth as he considered the odds on him not being what white hat had in mind. The odds were lousy. The last time he’d seen white hat in the neighborhood had been just before he and Gaston had been set up for a machine-gun ambush!
He drew his .38 and headed for the stairs. This belfry was a natural trap if they searched the church for him. He moved down to the main floor and looked around for a place to hide. The foundation stones of the altar didn’t look high enough. He ran over there anyway, leaped up on the slab and grinned as he stared down the far side. There was a crypt behind where the altar had been. A flight of stone steps led down to a bronze door. He moved down and tried the d
oor. It was locked. The son-of-a-bitch local Catholics had had too much respect for Protestant dead to strip the crypt of its bronze, damn their hides!
The yard outside might be weedy enough to hunker down in. But as he gave up on the crypt he heard the sound of a boot heel crunching glass and knew he was no longer alone in here!
He crouched behind the altar foundation, tucking his .38 away and drawing the more serious six guns as he sincerely hoped they’d dismiss the slab as lousy cover, too. A voice with an American accent said, “There’s nobody here, Smitty.” Then some other bastard answered, “Where else could he be? The boss says he don’t know nobody in these parts, so he can’t be in any of them houses across the way. Murph, you check the belfry. What’s that big slab or rock over there?”
Captain Gringo gauged the odds. They’d be even worse if he let them spread out. So he took a deep breath, popped up with a six gun in each hand, and said, “Peek-a-boo!” as he opened up at point blank range with both of them!
The results were almost as confusing to Captain Gringo as they were to the startled gun slicks. They naturally had their own guns out and were on the prod, but he had the advantage of surprise and a better aim as the old church reverberated to the roar of guns as the air grew hazy with blue gunsmoke. He dropped two in their tracks and then nailed another who made the mistake of staying in the same place after firing and missing. He drilled a man running in panic for the door through the spine as a slug spanged off the stone beside him and he shifted his aim to the two on the stairs. He dropped the one who’d fired and saw him rolling down the steps after his clattering gun like a wet rag doll while the other went up the stairs like a scalded cat. He drew a bead, pulled the trigger, and swore when his hammer clicked on an empty chamber. He swore and holstered the empty six guns to draw his .38 as the survivor vanished into the belfry and slammed the trap door shut to seal himself off up there.
Captain Gringo knew the sounds of gunplay carried and the bastard in the belfry could signal across to the main town, too. So he stepped over a corpse and started up the stairs. He heard the trapdoor creak. The guy up there was either sitting on or piling things on it to keep him from opening it. The tall American nodded grimly, raised the muzzle of his .38, and pumped four rounds up through the wood. He stopped when he heard a thud on the top of the trapdoor. He thumbed in more ammo and moved up a step. Then he saw the blood dripping through the bullet holes he’d put in the planks of the trap. He nodded, fired once more between two oozing bullet holes to make sure, and moved back to the main floor level. He didn’t have time to go through pockets, but the one he’d spine shot was trying to rise, like a sea lion on its flippers but moaning more like a gut-shot pig. Captain Gringo walked over to him, hunkered down to place the muzzle of his .38 against the side of his skull and asked in a pleasant tone, “Okay, pal, who are you working for?”
“I’m hurt bad, Walker. I need a doc!”
“I already noticed that. Noticed you know my name, too. You want to chat about it or do you want me to blow your fucking brains out?”
“Look, Walker, it’s nothing personal. We’re just hired guns, like you.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, damn it! Who’s the guy in the white hat?”
“He’s, called Klondike. I don’t know his last name.”
“Screw his last name. What’s his game? Who’s he working for?”
The wounded man coughed, gave a defeated little sigh, and fell forward on his face. He was still breathing, so Captain Gringo shook him and said, “Talk, Goddamn it!”
The spine-shot man didn’t answer. He wasn’t breathing, either, now. Maybe shaking him hadn’t been such a swell idea. Captain Gringo heard voices outside and he moved closer to the doorway where he saw some peons on the roadway out front, staring his way as they talked over the gunshots and tried to get up nerve to come closer. He swore, ran across the church, and dove out a glassless window to do some serious crawling through the weeds he’d landed in.
He crawled a million miles, or so it seemed, keeping his ass down like he’d learned in Apache country; and when he came to a clump of gumbo limbo and risked a peek over the top of the weeds, he saw he was well clear of the old church and that nobody seemed to be following him.
He got his bearings and started crawling some more, back toward the main part of town. The weeds were dry and he didn’t meet as many snakes as he was worried about; but if walking that open space had seemed a chore, crawling across it on his belly was a real bitch. He was sure it would take all day. But when he finally reached a, fence line and gingerly rose to see nobody in sight, he checked his watch and saw he’d only spent a couple of hours out there playing lizard. It would be hours more before it got dark. He moved along the fence line, found a break that put him in an alley, and followed it to the main street. People were moving quietly, nobody seemed excited, so he stepped out innocently, got his bearings, and returned to where he’d left his horse tethered in front of the main hotel. Gaston was nowhere to be seen. But his mount was still there. Hoping he knew what he was doing, Captain Gringo found a wrought iron bench on the hotel veranda and sat down to light a smoke and read his papers. He unfolded the official news first, knowing he could get in trouble reading dirty stories by Zola in broad daylight. The paper was six weeks old and hardly seemed worth the effort of struggling with the French it was printed in. Nothing important seemed to be going on in Paris these days except that, what the hell? Emile Zola had fled the country for England!
The paper hinted that the government was displeased with him for writing something called J’Accuse! It was small wonder the shopkeeper had been nervous about selling copies openly. It had to be filthy, indeed, if it shocked Paris. They regularly published magazines you could get arrested for reading in England or the States.
A woman was coming along the veranda from the beauty shop down the way. Captain Gringo pulled his boots in to let her pass to the front entrance. Then they both recognized each other at the same time.
She gasped, “Dick! What on earth are you doing in French Guiana?” as he stood up, leaving the paper on the bench, and touched the brim of his hat to say, “I was about to ask you the same question, Liza. Still working for British Intelligence?”
Liza Smathers On Her Majesty’s Service took his arm, registered a worried glance, and whispered, “For God’s sake, keep it down! Let’s go somewhere private where we can talk!”
He thought that sounded reasonable, so he let Liza lead him inside and through the shady potted-palm jungle of the lobby. He noticed she was still skinny and flat chested since the last time he’d undressed her. But her cameo features under the piled black hair beneath her picture hat were still as beautiful as ever. She still looked like an innocent English schoolgirl, despite the many people he knew she’d killed in her day.
Liza led him up to her second story room and bolted the door behind them before she turned and said, breathlessly, “About that time I had to run out on you in Bogota, Darling, I know you must be a teeny-weeny bit annoyed with itsy-bitsy me, but I had to do it. I see you got out after all.”
“Yeah,” he said, “it was a lot of laughs when the revolution started. I’m not sore, Kiddo. I knew you were ordered not to tip off the rest of us. I found the note you started to write me before you remembered your duty to the Queen and country and all that rot.”
She smiled in relief and reached up to unpin her hat. The chest under the lace bodice stayed pretty flat, but what the hell. She said, “I knew you’d get away. Who are you working for here in French Guiana, Dear?”
He laughed, “I said I forgave you for running out on me in Bogota. I didn’t say I’d gone nuts. This time I know more than you do, Honey. You’re working for Greystoke’s section of British Intelligence and it would be silly for me to ask what you Lime Juicers are doing in a French colony, so let’s just take our clothes off and skip the usual lies.”
She turned away and snapped, “You seem to be taking a lot for granted, Dick,�
� even as she threw her hat on a chair and let her hair cascade down the buttons over her spine. He stepped in close and began to nuzzle her neck from behind as he started unbuttoning her blouse. She said, “You bastard. You’ve always been able to read my mind. But we don’t have much time. I have to be somewhere at sunset.”
“Oh, is he good looking?”
“I’m on a mission, you idiot.”
“So am I,” he said, as he unpeeled her bodice and let her Dolly Varden skirts fall to the floor around her feet. He turned her around, naked save for her stockings and high button shoes. He didn’t wear underwear in a hot country, either. So as he held her against his front, kissing her, she started unbuckling and undressing, him and as his pants fell around his booted ankles-she stood on tiptoe to mount his shaft like a witch on a broom. It wasn’t in, yet, but she was lubricating it nicely with her parted genital lips as she came up for air and gasped, “Oh, my, I see you missed me! But let’s do it right, for God’s sake!”
So he stepped out of his pants, picked her up, and carried her to the bed. As she sprawled across it the sunlight through the jalousied blinds painted tiger stripes of light and shade across her cool-looking boyish body. But there was nothing cool about Liza as he got between her pale skinny thighs and parted the small apron of thatch with his shaft. She rose to meet him, shoe heels hooked in the edge of the mattress, and the nice thing about coming home to an old sex partner was that they didn’t have to waste time in exploratory moves. She sighed, “Oh, better than I remembered it, and I’ve thought about you a lot, you mean thing!”
He could tell she hadn’t been getting as much as him, lately. That was another nice thing about Liza. The sweet screwing British spy wasn’t an easy lay. He’d had a hell of a time getting into her the last time they’d worked together. But once the loaf was cut, Liza was generous as hell with extra slices! She came ahead of him, partly because he’d been well taken care of the night before and partly because he couldn’t let himself go as completely as usual with a lady who could kill like a cobra at the damndest times. She gasped, “Don’t stop!” so, knowing how she liked acrobatics, he rolled her over and finished in her rectum as she giggled and protested, “Oh, you’re just awful! I’ll bet you do that to Gaston, too! Is he still alive, by the way?”