by Lou Cameron
Captain Gringo hauled Gaston back around the corner and sighed, “Shit. Have you any other great ideas?”
Gaston shrugged and said, “A trés impressive military cordon around the depot. Perhaps a bit obvious?”
“Look, it doesn’t matter if those troopers are after us or somebody else. We sure as hell can’t walk through them now that a couple of government agents have been shot here in town.”
“How do you know the men you and Max killed were working for the military here?”
“Hah, this time I’ve got you. They had to be government agents. The government wouldn’t have covered up their killings if they’d been anyone else. El Arano may or may not know about Max. But he has to know about his own people. I’m hoping he’ll think some unreconstructed rebels left over from the recent riots did his boys in. That cordon around the depot smells like counter-guerrilla stuff. Don’t nobody leave town until we ask some questions and all that shit.”
Gaston nodded and said, “In that case, one can only suggest we don’t leave town. At least, not via that obvious exit. I don’t know how we contact the rebel mule skinners I used the last time I wanted to vacate quietly with those refugees. Everyone we worked with before has crawled under the rug to wait for better days. But at least I know the way to the north coast via the overland route through the mountain passes. I suggest we hole up somewhere, and in the morning …”
But Captain Gringo had him by the arm again and was heading back to a side street he knew that circled the depot. He said, “Nuts to that. I all but turned myself inside out looking for Vanessa’s place and the sons of bitches still caught up with me. There’s no place here in Bogotá that we can be sure of.”
“Agreed, but in that case where do you suggest we hide?”
“Nowhere. It’s a nice night. Let’s just start walking.”
“But, Dick, we can’t just wander around Bogotá all night. In a few hours people will start wondering about two strangers on their street and if we meet a police patrol—”
“Knock it off. Who said anything about walking around town all night? Bogotá’s not that big. I know the way through the favelas to the north and you know the north trail to Barranquilla. We can be out on the open road long before it’s late enough to matter.”
Gaston fell in step with him but protested, “Dick, the north road is not exactly a road. More like a goat path over hill and dale. Make that a lot of hills, with rocks and snow and banditos full of coca. We have not “had time to chat, but the last time I headed that way I had to shoot a few truculent Inca types. I was riding a fast mule, too. All in all, I feel a certain hesitancy in strolling into certain villages on foot with nothing but a lousy pistol and you, lovely as you are.”
The tall American smiled thinly and said, “Okay, so it’s the devil we know against a very spooky devil here that we don’t. Let’s just put some space between us and whatever. We’ll play it by ear after that.”
Gaston sighed and said, “I see no other choice, but, Dick, you play so noisy by ear.”
“That reminds me. We’ve got to pick up some heavier weapons along the way. Maybe some shotguns, or better yet, a machine gun.”
“Merde alors. That’s what I meant.”
Chapter Eight
It took them less than two hours to clear the outskirts of the capital. They settled into the easy mile-eating pace of the seasoned soldier, although Gaston, as usual, kept bitching.
The barely visible countryside of the alto piano was farmland where it was flat and looked like rolling prairie where it wasn’t. The thin night air was downright cold now, and the stars looked close enough to reach up and gather. From time to time a nightbird neither of them knew sounded off with a whimpering lonely cry. The irrigation water in the roadside ditches smelled like stale human shit. That was probably what was in it. A line of telegraph or telephone poles followed the road, its overhead wires humming in the night wind off the mountains, invisible to the east. From time to time they noticed a distant light, off across the fields. But there were few farmsteads. Like most Latins, the Colombian peons tended to cluster in huddled villages rather than live spread out like Americans and northern European farmers.
Gaston was saying, “The last time I passed through here I cut those thrice-accursed wires.”
Captain Gringo said, “You were lucky. That was dumb. They probably had too many other things to worry about in the middle of a revolution.”
“What are you talking about, Dick? One cannot afford to have the enemy talking back and forth about one, hein? There are at least a dozen military outposts between here and the north coast. They are all connected with Bogotá by wire.”
“That’s why it was dumb of you to cut the wires. Look around you. Do you see anybody staring at us? Cut a fucking wire and within minutes some C.Q. back at the Bogotá presidio will be waking up the brass and sticking pins in the map. How far apart are these outposts, the usual day’s ride?”
“Oui, one may safely assume their patrol areas overlap. Why?”
“Why? We’re on foot, you asshole! Ten minutes after the line goes dead in any outpost some son of a bitch will be blowing boots-and-saddles. You want to outrun cavalry patrols in open country, be my guest, but do it far away from yours truly! How far are we from those salt flats you were telling me about earlier?”
Gaston thought and said, “I am not certain. I have passed no landmarks I remember in this distressing darkness. But the Great Salt Desert starts a good thirty miles north of the capital. So we don’t have to worry about hitting it tonight.”
Captain Gringo frowned and said, “The hell we don’t. It should be staring us right in the face about dawn.”
“Merde alors, you expect me to walk thirty miles in less than one night?”
“Shit, a good soldier can cover fifty from dusk to dawn if he keeps his feet moving and his mouth shut. I thought they soldiered in your old outfit, the French Foreign Legion.”
“Perhaps they did. It was so long ago I don’t remember. Listen, Dick, we have to get out of these street clothes and aboard some horses. Even with mounts and canteens the Great Salt Desert is not a thing to be taken lightly. It is not your ordinary desert. It is pure table salt, covering hundreds of square miles. Our party was well mounted and we had plenty of water when I crossed it last. It was not a pleasant journey.”
Captain Gringo thought before he said, “Hey, it’s cool up here in the Andes and as I recall it rained a day or so after we split up.”
Gaston said, “True. It drizzled one morning as we were crossing the salt flats. By noon the air was so dry we felt like mummies. The problem of this desert is not aridity. It is the salt. Salt absorbs moisture. It never stops absorbing moisture. There is not a bush or a blade of grass. There is not so much as a puddle of standing water between rains. When it is raining hard, you may see water in the low places. Pure pickle brine. Our native mule skinners kept us wisely to the ridgeways. Dry salt is trés joligant to walk on. Damp salt is fatal to the foot of man or beast.”
“I get the picture. I chased some Apache across a desert once or twice. Are there any mining installations around the salt flats?”
“Our guides mentioned some we had to avoid. Why?”
“Somebody has to be digging that rock salt somewhere. Rock salt is a major export of this country. I was thinking of the Borax operations in my own deserts. They’ve got to have water tanks and mules around any salt diggings. Let’s figure out where your guides told you not to go, and then head that way.”
“Ah, when in doubt, march on the sound of the guns, hein? But would not they have military outposts guarding the salt mines, Dick?”
“I don’t see why. Bandits raid gold and silver mines. I never heard of anyone robbing a salt mine. With any luck, we ought to find a peon work crew sitting on mules and water in some out-of-the-way nowheres-much. Do we bear to the left or the right when this road peters out? I can see it’s already shrinking to little more than a wagon trace.”
/> Gaston shrugged and said, “I am not certain. Our guides left the telegraph lines near a split we should come to in a few hours. I think they said the right fork was the main line to the coast.”
“Then the wires to the left must lead somewhere else. If the country is dry to the north, that has to mean mining country. You notice something about that roadside ditch to your east, Gaston?”
“There is no roadside ditch now.”
“That’s what I mean. From the little I can see of it, we’re in open range now. They probably graze cattle between the irrigated farmland and the desert ahead. Keep an eye peeled for El Toro. Some of these half-wild Spanish cattle get fresh as hell when they spot a human on foot.”
Before Gaston could answer they both heard an odd sound coming up the road from behind them. Captain Gringo stopped and turned around, muttering, “What the hell?” as he listened to what sounded like a woodpecker trying to open a tin can.
Gaston cocked his head and decided, “Too little to be a railroad engine. Too big to be a clock. What does that leave us?”
Captain Gringo spotted the distant glow of two little cat’s eyes and marveled, “Holy Toledo. It’s a horseless carriage!”
“An automobile?” blinked Gaston. “What the devil is an automobile doing up here, of all places?”
Captain Gringo said, “I don’t know. But we’d better get the hell out of its path. The bugger has headlamps.”
The two soldiers of fortune moved off the road at right angles, looking for cover. There wasn’t any. The short dry grass just rolled on into the dark forever. Captain Gringo stopped and said, “Okay, let’s just stand still here and act like fence posts or something. I can’t see the road from here. So the road can’t see us.”
“Do you mind if I smoke?” teased Gaston.
Captain Gringo didn’t answer. Gaston never shut up, but he knew how to freeze as well as any other old soldier when it was important.
They watched with interest as the horseless carriage putted closer. The tall American had been right about the range. The contraption was noisy enough and its two carbide lamps could be seen for miles in the open. But the rest was just a dark blur. They couldn’t see how many passengers were aboard as it passed. Captain Gringo made a mental note of the headlamps’ range as he watched the way they illuminated the roadway ahead of the vehicle. He wasn’t totally unfamiliar with the critters since they’d been showing up here and there for the last few years. But a professional soldier had to keep abreast of new-fangled notions and the art was new-fangled like hell lately.
The noisy contraption moved on at a pretty good clip, considering, and as it faded into the darkness again he said, “That was interesting. Let’s go. They didn’t spot us.”
As they moved back to the road and slogged on, Gaston said, “I rode in one of those things in Mexico City one time. My derrière still tingles, and the stench, merde alors! Why do you suppose they ever invented such a complicated way of getting from here to there, Dick?”
“They have some advantages if you can keep them running. You don’t have to feed them when you’re not using them, for one thing, and they don’t get tired like a horse. That thing was moving faster than your average buckboard and this is a lousy road. They must have those new rubber tires. Did you gauge the range of those headlamps?”
“Of course. They can see about a pistol shot ahead of them at night. What of it?”
“Just thinking. It’ll never make a tactical weapon. You can hear it long before they can see you. I was reading something about the German Army ordering some of those things. Can’t figure out how they’d use them.”
“Bah, les Boches are always testing new things. They are as bad as you Americans. Take it from an old soldier, my rosy-cheeked boy. War is a business of elephantine simplicity. It never really changes. The Great God Mars will always favor the bigger battalion and there will never be a real substitute for an infantry charge, pressed with elan.”
“Against machine guns?”
“But of course. I know you are an enthusiast for automatic fire, Dick. But there are limits to what the machine gun can do. You shall see when the new young Kaiser gets the war he’s been asking for of late. This time, France will be prepared. We shall show him what we think of his machine gun and other new toys. The flag of France will be flying over the Űnter den Linden within six weeks.”
Captain Gringo didn’t answer. They’d had this argument before. Gaston was old enough to be his father and the skills he learned as a young man had served him well into middle age. But the last few years had been pissers. Captain Gringo was still a junior officer, or would have been if the U.S. Army hadn’t stripped him of his first lieutenant’s bars and sentenced him to hang. The military skills they’d taught him at The Point had been obsolescent when they sent him out to fight the last wild Indians. Now they were hopelessly out of date. The last ten years or so had seen more new inventions than the previous few hundred. Men still serving in his old army, who’d charged with muzzle loader in the Civil War, now had to bone up on the new Maxim and Browning machine guns by the light of the electric bulb in their quarters. Senior navy men now walking the bridges of a dreadnought that could lob sixteen inchers at an enemy over the horizon could remember first engagements aboard sailing ships with wooden walls firing broadsides into one another at point-blank range. Every army now had field telephones and observation balloons. And he’d read in Scientific American that some silly son of a bitch was talking about some kind of horseless carriage that might someday fly, for Chrissake!
It was small wonder that older guys like Gaston clung to the past. The future looked sort of scary! But Captain Gringo was alive that night because he hadn’t stopped growing when he got out of West Point. A guy had to keep up with the times or they’d get him.
Gaston said, “Regardez, there seems to be a light ahead.”
Captain Gringo said, “I see it. Looks like a window just off the roadway. Probably a roadside stop. Coaching inn or something.”
“Do we stop for a drink or ease around it?”
“Neither. We move in closer and find out what the fuck it is before we decide anything.”
The tall American didn’t have to tell Gaston why they were walking on the grass beside the roadway instead of on the crunching gravel as they walked closer to the light ahead. As they approached within rifle range they could see it was indeed a roadside posada. The glow was from an open doorway spilling lamplight out on the dusty packed earth between the walls and the rutted roadway. As they got closer they could see two dimmer squares of illumination where red curtains hung across the bottle-glass windows on either side of the doorway.
There was more than that to see. Gaston blinked and said, “The automobile we saw before. It is parked just beyond the doorway!”
Captain Gringo led them in at a slant, putting the road and plenty of grass between them and the open doorway as they lined up on it for a look-see inside.
He stopped and hunkered down. Gaston joined him and together they stared morosely into the little posada. There was a bar against the far adobe wall. Two men stood at the bar with their backs to them. Both wore the blue of the Colombian Military Police. Gaston muttered, “Merde, I was dying for a drink, too.”
“The night is young. Let’s take a look at that horseless carriage.”
They moved north of the posada and crossed over to the parked vehicle.
Gaston said, “I have met this beast before. It is a French Lenoir.”
Captain Gringo muttered, “It looks like a sawed-off buckboard with the horses missing and, Jesus, look what’s in the back!”
The Lenoir runabout was in fact little more than a flatbed wagon with the front half of an oversized baby buggy perched up front. But in the center of the flat deck behind stood a steel post, and on a swivel atop the post sat a .30-30 Maxim machine gun!
A long ammo belt hung down to the wooden decking where the rest of it coiled like a rattlesnake. There were spare ammo box
es and drums of extra fuel in a rack behind the twin bucket seats. Captain Gringo grinned at Gaston and asked, “Do you know how to start this thing?”
Gaston said, “Oui, but are we not putting the cart before the horse, even though we need no horse? What about those soldiers in there?”
“Fuck ’em, let ’em get their own horseless carriage. This one’s ours!”
“True. But they may not see it our way and you were the one who said we should not cut the wire, hein?”
“Yeah, when you’re right you’re right,” growled Captain Gringo, drawing his .38 as he stepped into the shadow of the posada’s corner near the Lenoir.
Gaston joined him, drawing his own revolver, and complained, “It would be quicker to nail them from the doorway, non?”
But the tall American shook his head and said, “Noisier, too. If this is a regular coach stop they could have a telephone inside.”
“Modern science has its limitations, Dick. We could wipe out everybody, and then who would telephone whom?”
“Hey, there’s no need to stage the last act of Hamlet. The innkeeper and his family are just innocent bystanders. Shooting women and children’s not my style even when I’m mad at them. Relax, we’ve got plenty of time. It’s not like we were going anywhere important tonight on our fucking feet!”
So they waited and it only took a million years until one of the uniformed men came out, either to take a leak or to get something from the vehicle. Captain Gringo stepped out of the shadows, gun leveled at the soldier’s belt buckle, and softly said, “Buenas noches. If you’re smart and want to go on breathing, amigo, you’ll grab some stars and turn to stone!”
The soldier raised his hands wearily and murmured, “I have always been considered most intelligent, señor. My wallet is in my hip pocket.”
“To hell with your wallet. We want your motorcar. I want you to listen carefully before you answer. They call me Captain Gringo and if you’ve heard of me you know I’m a man of my word.”