by Lou Cameron
‘Easy. Old Pedro could have told them before they blew him away. Would you want an enraged grandfather to think you were holding his only heir prisoner if you knew damned well that she’d gotten away from your pals? El Jefe sent someone into town to check our own stories out. So they knew where his camp was, and the last time I looked, it had been shot up good, and Teresa, here, wasn’t there anymore. The poor jerk-off tried to collect the ransom, anyway. He got caught. He talked. Don Alberto’s men had no further use for him. Who likes kidnappers all that much? It says here that he was shot sort of low. You don’t get shot in the guts and balls in your average gunfight. But why argue, as long as la policia bought it?’
Gaston thought and said, ‘Eh bien; If Don Alberto is in full control of his household, it should be safe to simply walk this young lady home from the dance. If he is not, what then?’
‘Good question. We don’t know who’s in charge of her closer horse spread, either. I think we’d better put that question on the back burner for now. The old man’s smart. He knows by now that we’re not around, the original kidnappers are not around, so it adds up the way it is. He probably has his own people out looking for us. Our best bet would be to let them catch up and see what they have to say before we turn Teresa over to them.’
Teresa protested, ‘How can you be sure of anyone now? If that blond slut managed to seduce my trusted capataz, how can we be sure she has not done so to others?’
Captain Gringo said, ‘That’s what I just said. Meanwhile, nobody around here knows you’re worth kidnapping. So for now you’re safe. Safe against kidnapping, I mean. Getting us all up to the border looks a little complicated.’
Teresa looked astounded and said, ‘Surely you do not wish for to travel farther north now, Dick?’
He said, ‘I don’t wish to. I have to. They’re depending on me to get them home too. They’re already overstayed their welcome in your country. Those rancheros we left a dead lady to bury are sure to report what happened to the Costa Rican authorities. They won’t be able to tell them the whole story. But I imagine the Costa Rican Cav will want to ask questions, anyway. So we’d better not be here when they arrive.’
Teresa asked, ‘Why can I not stay behind so the troops of my own country can rescue me, then? Surely they will not harm me?’
‘No, but they’ll just as surely try to arrest everyone else, and in case you didn’t notice, these guerrillas all have guns, and I don’t think even I could get them to lay them down without a fight.’
He looked across at Gaston and asked, ‘Do you think we could leave her with those friendly rancheros for now?’
Gaston shrugged and replied, ‘It would depend on how friendly they may feel now. If you sold horses to mysterious strangers and then saw them shoot one another up within sight of your veranda, how would you react to a second visit, Dick?’
‘Hmm, I guess I’d be forted up and yelling a lot for people to stay the hell away until the troops arrived. Even if we could get her to them unharmed, they might get sort of fresh, assuming she was what she looked like, an abandoned camp follower. I don’t think we’d better risk that. You’ll have to stay with us for now, Teresa.’
‘But, Dick, I do not wish for to go to Nicaragua! I have no friends in Nicaragua!’
He smiled crookedly and asked, ‘Who does, these days? I’m not about to take you across the border. The currently winning side is mad at me, and I’m not too sure how the losing side feels, present company aside, I hope. If I can herd this bunch within running distance of a crossing, they’ll be on their own and we can cut back to the first Costa Rican settlement with a telephono, see?’
‘Are there any civilized towns along the San Juan, Dick?’ He was afraid she was going to ask a smart question like that. He knew for a fact there weren’t. He said, ‘There ought to be a border patrol post somewhere up-or downstream. We’ll worry about it when we have to. Meanwhile, you’d better get some sleep, querida. I intend to move the outfit out at sunrise, and we still don’t have enough mounts.’
She nodded and asked if he was coming with her. He was too polite to point out that that was a dumb question. He told her he might join her later and sent her on her way with a friendly pat on the ass.
Gaston said, in English, ‘I, ah, have one to spare if you are mad at that one, Dick.’
Captain Gringo chuckled and said, ‘I’m not mad at hen I’d better see how my other adelita’s making out. Wonder how come she didn’t join us around the fire this evening.’
Gaston said, ‘The trouble with having more than one is that one of them is always pouting. Come back if the little mestiza is in a grim mood. I have a problem of my own I’d like to discuss with you.’
Captain Gringo got up, grinning, since he suspected he knew what it was and, now that he’d seen her face, Rosita was pretty as well as well built.
He entered the hut he’d been sharing with Emesta and saw that she lay quietly on her side with her bare spine to him. He put a gentle hand on her bare shoulder, saying, ‘What’s wrong? Weren’t you feeling well enough to eat, querida?’
She didn’t answer. He hoped he was wrong as he gripped her cold shoulder harder, to roll her on her back. She didn’t roll easy. She was already getting stiff. He gagged in horror as he stared down at her blank, open eyes and gasped, ‘For God’s sake, no! It was only a graze, you dumb little broad!’
He felt the side of her clammy throat. Nothing. Emesta was stone-cold dead. He tried to close her eyes. They popped open again, and the soft smile on her face promised to turn into a ghastly grin as rigor mortis set in some more. He covered her with a ragged sheet and staggered outside, calling weakly for Gaston. As the Frenchman joined him he was puking against a tree. Gaston asked why, and he said, ‘Emesta’s dead. We both thought the cramps she was feeling at the wrong time of the month were natural, damn it!’
Gaston ducked silently inside as Captain Gringo heaved his guts dry. Gaston came back out to say, ‘Oui, it can happen that way, with internal bleeding. The round she caught did not even break the skin. Mais it obviously broke something inside her pelvis. I have seen such things happen before. It can take as long as three days, if the internal bleeding is slow. I am très sorry, Dick. She was a very pretty girl.’
‘You can say that again, and, Jesus, she wanted me to make love to her, even as she was dying!’
‘That might have been an experience one would never forget. But since you did not, you had nothing to do with her death, hein?’
‘God damn it, I should have known! I should have done something!’
Gaston sighed and said, ‘There was nothing you could have done. I have seen such internally injured people die in a hospital ward, Dick. I doubt even a doctor could have saved her, and, in any case, we have no doctor or even a first-aid kit here. Do you want me to take care of the burial detail? You do not look well, yourself, at the moment.’
Captain Gringo nodded but then said, ‘Hold it. We’ll bury her inside the hut and say no more about it. We’ve had enough dramatics tonight, and I want to move everyone out early.’
‘Won’t she be missed, Dick?’
‘Sure she will, by me, among others. We’ll let the word get around as we keep this outfit moving. I mean to move ’em poco tiempo. So let’s not get everyone up again right now.’
He moved to his packs by the tethered mules and broke out a short-handled entrenching spade. Gaston ducked back inside the hut with him to help. They rolled Emesta’s corpse up in one sheet and moved it out of the way as they dug a grave for it in the center of a hut nobody had any other use for now. Captain Gringo gently lowered the curled-up little corpse into the small, pathetic hole and made sure she was well covered with cotton, as if it mattered, before he shoved some black forest muck in on her, muttering, ‘I guess we ought to say something. But right now I don’t believe in God. Do you?’
‘Mais non, my only hope is that nobody could be responsible for this universal mess.’ But then he made the sign of the cr
oss and muttered a few words of Church Latin, adding in a sheepish tone, ‘She might not have been as wise as us about this très fatigue universe. She was very young.’
Captain Gringo told him to shut up and help cover her corpse. When they’d finished and patted her grave firm, he rolled up the bedroll and gathered the rest of their gear to move outside. Gaston followed and said, ‘Eh bien, what is done is done. Fallen comrades in arms are best forgotten. Speaking of arms, I told you I had my own problems, remember?’
‘For God’s sake, Gaston, don’t you ever think of anything else?’
‘Not unless I am hungry for food as well. I know what just took place may have left you in a Hamlet mood, Dick. Mais I am stuck with two adorable adelitas, and alas, I don’t seem to be the man I used to be. I know you wouldn’t dream of taking Tobasca off my hands, although she is full of surprises. Mais could I dump Rosita on you, now that there is an opening?’
Captain Gringo swung, but Gaston was never there when you swung at him. As he danced out of range the Frenchman called back, ‘Eh bien. I see you need time to think it over. Perhaps later, when you no longer wish to kick my shit, my emotional idealist?’
Actually Rosita wasn’t half bad, after a day on the trail and a night spent with the sobbing Teresa and her damned old rag. He, of course, assigned her to the position of loader, and if she could move ammo as good as she moved her slim young hips, they had nothing to worry about the next time they saw more serious action.
Both Teresa and Tobasca seemed a little pensive about the new duties of Rosita. Gaston was able to calm Tobasca down soon enough. Teresa called him a brute, a sex maniac, and nobody she intended to go all the way to the Rio San Juan with, so there.
He told her he could not deny the first two charges but that she had to go on to the San Juan with them, anyway. He pointed out that his sex life was none of her business in any case, unless she wanted to take part in it. That was how he found out that Teresa screwed as good while she was having her period than any other time, although the results, as predicted, were sort of messy. Teresa just laughed and said he was welcome to visit his other adelita now. Then she rolled over and as usual fell asleep, secure in the knowledge that he was through for the night.
A lot she knew. They were camped near a stream, and it took him only a few minutes to get squeaky clean. Rosita was so pleased he’d bathed before crawling into her own hut that she insisted on going down on him. She wasn’t as tidy, so once she had him up again, he told her he was an old-fashioned boy, and sure enough, she made old-fashioned love just fine. He wondered why Gaston had let her go as she proceeded to screw him silly. After he’d come in her a few times and she suggested that she get on top, he knew.
Rosita was one hot little number indeed, and he doubted if even he could service her and the passionate Tobasca in one night. Thinking about trying helped. Rosita was built nothing like the fat cook, of course, and while her own dark skin made an interesting contrast with the paler, taller Teresa, she wasn’t built like poor Emesta, either. He didn’t want to think about Emesta. Gaston had been right about the fallen. So, as he lay there comparing this lover’s charms with others, he found himself comparing Rosita with that naughty Melina back in Limón. That was inspirational. Rosita had black hair at both ends, and it was amazing how differently tits could bounce. But Melina’s had bounced nicely indeed, and he felt sort of hurt to think that she’d just been trying to set him up with all that sluttery. He’d felt so sure, at the time, that the bleached blonde really liked him. He couldn’t help wondering what the little mestiza he was in right now was thinking as she merrily played stoop tag on his stalk. It was so easy for a dame to fake it.
But if Rosita had some reason for just pretending this was fun, it sure felt good to him. He shoved her off and placed her on her hands and knees to finish doggie-style. As he entered her that way, Rosita blushed all over and coyly said, ‘Oh, I feel so ashamed this way, querido. You saw me doing it this way with another man, and I was hoping not to remind you of the way we first met!’
He decided it looked a lot hotter from this angle as he started pounding her from behind. Rosita arched her spine and crooned, ‘Oh, this feels not at all the same. I did not enjoy it as much with your friend, I assure you!’
He said, ‘Don’t talk about my friends behind their backs when I’m giving it to you behind your back. You know you loved it, then and now, thank God.’
She giggled and said, ‘Si, I have always liked for to fuck. Do you think I could be a bad girl, Ricardo?’
‘Hell, no, you screw too good to be called bad. Come on, baby, take it hard and let yourself go!’
She did. They came together that way, and he was seriously thinking of some shut-eye now. But he didn’t want to be a spoilsport when she got on top again. He just gritted his teeth and silently promised, ‘I’ll get you for this, Gaston!’
By the time he’d finished breakfast the next morning he’d forgiven Gaston. By the time he’d marched the outfit all day, some of them were sure they’d never forgive him.
They’d thought El Generale was a fiend for marching. They now referred fondly to when he was alive as the good old days. Captain Gringo had everything that couldn’t walk loaded on the mounts they had now and then walked the hell out of everything else. Gaston was the only one who didn’t bitch, even though he liked to bitch. As a professional, Gaston knew that by now the Costa Rican Cav would be trying to cut their trail. When he told this to a malcontent and was asked how they knew that the Cav was after them, Gaston spat and said, ‘Merde alors, when one on foot knows that the cavalry is after him, it’s too late!’
After a few more days of jungle running, Captain Gringo moved his ragged column up to higher, drier, more open savannah country where the risk was greater but the marching much easier. There were few military posts, he hoped, this far north of the main east-west Costa Rican lines of communication or this far south of the border. He put mounted scouts out to spot isolated spreads or settlements before they could spot his mysterious main column. With luck nobody was likely to get excited if a lone horseman appeared on the horizon and then chose to ride somewhere else. When some of the others asked why they didn’t try to pick up more horses, he explained that there was simply no way, by fair means or foul, to pick up that many mounts without attracting attention. To mount everyone would call for at least a hundred or more head, and unless they could mount everyone, there was no point in mounting less. Some of the younger guerrillas muttered that he was acting chicken. The older and wiser ones told them to shut up. It was good to be marching under someone who seemed to know what he was doing for a change.
Captain Gringo rewarded their faith in him on the third day on the savannah when, at about noon, a scout rode in to announce armed men, a lot of armed men, coming their way from the north.
Captain Gringo asked if they looked like soldados or banditos and was told, ‘Banditos, Captain Gringo. Like us, they are dressed in white cotton with crossed ammo belts and too many guns for honest men to carry in this heat.’
‘Mounted or afoot, Morales?’
‘Both, Captain Gringo. Like us, they have horses but not enough. I think, from the way they shouted at me just now, they desire horses greatly.’
Captain Gringo had just led his people across an arroyo. He ordered everyone back there to dig in, with the women and other livestock below the rim of the wash. Once he’d formed a fire line across the path they’d been following north, he put Gaston in charge, took the Maxim from its tripod, and picked up an ammo canister as well. When Rosita picked up two others, he told her, ‘No, stay here with the others, querida. I’ll have enough to worry about, and you dames have delicate asses.’
She insisted. He didn’t have time to argue, and one never knew how much ammo one might need until one needed it bad. He led her and his extra machine gun belts up the arroyo and across open ground to a handy clump of chaparral. He put his load down and stared hard at the shimmering horizon to the north. He
was about to tell Rosita to scoot when he saw that it was too late. He said, ‘Lie flat on the ground and don’t look up till I tell you to. We have company coming.’
He hunkered down in the brush and armed the Maxim as they waited. The oncoming band was advancing in good order, with scouts on foot out to the flanks, God damn them. But he could tell from the way they were following the trail that they didn’t know the country as well as he did. The riders arrogantly leading the advance didn’t see the arroyo winding across the otherwise flat grassland ahead of them, God bless it. He’d chosen the position with that hope in mind.
Captain Gringo manhandled the heavy Maxim into position with its water jacket braced in the lower fork of whatever kind of semitropical shrub this particular clump was made up of. He cleared the belt and lay it flat-out to his left. Rosita patted him on the ass to warn, ‘An hombre approaches from your right, Dick!’
He said, ‘I see him. Let go my ass and keep your head down!’ The dismounted scout was in a good flanking position but scouting lousy with his hat brim down to protect his eyes from the overhead sun. From time to time he looked up. Most of the time he moved across the grass as if he were hoping to flush a rabbit. He got quite close to their clump of chaparral before he looked up again and locked eyes with a machine gun muzzle.
He froze in place. Captain Gringo softly called, ‘You’re doing fine. Walk this way, very casually. You were going to take a leak in these bushes, anyway, right?’
The scout started to look back at this comrades. Captain Gringo snapped, ‘Don’t! I can blow you in two before you can finish yelling mamasita! Drift this way like a good little scout and we may be able to keep things friendly.’
The scout shrugged fatalistically and walked slowly over. At closer range he turned out to be a not too bright-looking peon of say forty. He said, ‘Listen, we are not banditos, amigo. We are refugees from Nicaragua, see?’
‘No shit? Which side were you fighting for with all those pretty brass bullets?’