by Lou Cameron
“But, señor, what if he is lost or down with snakebite?”
“He should have hollered. Look, I know this seems hard, guys, but you ran away to be soldados and those are the breaks. Nobody ever told you this would be an easy life. If you can help a companero without endangering the greater number, swell. If you can’t—tough titty. Jose was pretty drunk at the Jivaro camp and last night he was doing pretty good with a gourd of chichi, now that I think of it. Do you guys think he might have stumbled off drunk?”
Pancho said, “Anything is possible. But Jose means well.”
“Well isn’t good enough. Finish your meal and smoke if you’ve got ’em. We’re pushing on in ten, and if he doesn’t make it he doesn’t make it.”
They went to join their own adelitas. Gaston ambled over, hunkered down, and asked, “Is it wise to push them so, Dick? They’re starting to bitch more than soldiers usually do.”
“I noticed. That’s what makes it so nice leading an army down here. Give a Latin cornhusker a big hat and a gun and he starts thinking he’s a general. They’ll be okay in a firelight. They have no choice.”
“Have you considered that Jose may have deserted, Dick?”
“First thing I thought of. He knows at least one Jivaro girl back there that likes him a lot. I didn’t think I’d better remind our guys of that option. Captain Bligh had the same problem getting his crew away from Tahiti, remember?”
“A little before my time, but I know the story. Do you think Jose will get away with going native?”
“No. Diablilla has been explaining Jivaro to me. He’ll be okay until some Jivaro gets a boil on his neck or a kid drowns in a creek. But once the elders start trying to decide who bewitched them, guess who they’ll probably pick as first choice? I doubt if we’ll ever see that poor asshole again. But, if we do, we’ll be able to recognize him by his mustache. Some of those shrunken heads had neat mustaches.”
Then he glanced up at the tree canopy high above and added, “Let’s move it out. If we time it right, we should make it to Dom Luis do Putumayo’s steamboat landing before sundown.”
Chapter Twenty
They timed it right. There was still perhaps an hour of daylight left when Captain Gringo’s launch hit a two-log balsa in a sluggish backwater of the tea-colored Rio Putumayo, upstream from the headquarters of Dom Luis, albeit well within the territory he claimed as his own. They knew this because Nunez, out on point, had spotted one of the rubber baron’s patrolling guards before the guard had spotted Nunez, and as he’d died, they’d gotten some information out of him.
Unfortunately, not enough, and hence the experiment with the balsa. Gaston wasn’t enthusiastic about the experiment as he stood in the shallows with his taller friend. Gaston was naked to the waist and Captain Gringo had taken his shirt back from Susan, which seemed fair when you thought about it, but not the main reason for the American to want to make himself more presentable. Gaston said, “Listen to me, Dick. I have backed you in many a mad venture, but this time you have most definitely cracked under the strain. Going in alone is madness. Going in with only a pistol and one rifle is even crazier. If you won’t take me with you, won’t you at least take the machine gun?”
Captain Gringo shook his head and replied. “That would really be whacky. I’m on an espionage mission, not a one-man war. Who the hell’s going to believe my story if I come wandering out of the bushes with a fucking Maxim? I’m supposed to be the only survivor of a party jumped by Jivaro in the first place and the pricks down the river saw those Mormon missionaries in the second. They might buy me as one of the guys from Salt Lake. It was a couple of weeks’ back that the Mormons passed through, and we all look alike to them, too. But Susan’s friends most definitely did not come up the river with a machine gun.”
“True. The Mormons were not attacked by Jivaro, either. They were flagelados.”
“You know that, I know that, Dom Luis knows that. I’m about to prove to him that his two-faced act worked just the way he expected it to. No survivor of Susan’s party would walk right into his lair like a big-ass bird unless he was too stupid to wonder what primitive Indians were doing with rapid-fire pump guns, right? When we first found Susan she still thought Indians had attacked her party. So it’ll seem natural that I, or rather the poor Bible thumper I’m supposed to be, saw things the same way.”
He climbed on the balsa with his long pole, laid the Colombian army rifle across the logs, and added, “Come on, push me off, damnit. Then go back and keep the rest of our gang quiet and out of sight till you hear from me.”
“What if we don’t hear from you, my old and rare?”
“Give me twenty-four, then run like hell and do what you can to get them to Manaus. It’ll mean Dom Luis is too smart for us, as well as too big.”
Gaston was still cursing as he helped Captain Gringo move the clumsy balsa into the current. The standing American started poling without looking back. The Putumayo was shallow this far upstream, but too deep to touch bottom as he got out on open water. So the balsa started drifting sideways. But what the hell, he was going that way anyway.
The current took him around the bend between thick green walls of rank growth and he soon spotted the gray tin roofing of a fair-sized river settlement ahead. He was feeling for the bottom with the pole, aware he was coming down the wrong bank, when he saw a dugout coming to meet him. The paddlers were Indians. The guy scowling at him from the bow of the dugout was a flagelado. The shotgun in his hands was American.
Captain Gringo called, “Help! Don’t let me drift back into that terrible jungle!” as the canoe approached. The gunman in the bow grinned crookedly and called back, “Have no fear, muchacho. Nobody passes the landing of Dom Luis without giving us an accounting!”
The dugout pulled alongside and Captain Gringo caught the line they tossed him. As the canoe towed him across, the man in the bow was too far forward for much conversation; soothe wary American studied the approaching landing. He was supposed to have been here before. Susan had coached him (and reproached him), but with an advance idea of the layout, it was going to take some acting to convince them he was a simple good old Utah boy too dumb to be running through the selva without a leash.
A little teapot Amazon steamboat was tied up at the dock jutting out from shore. The banks were blood-red and lined with quite a crowd of curious onlookers. He saw most of them seemed simple peons. But there was a sprinkling of swaggering armed flagelados. So the next few minutes would be dicey indeed. Nobody seemed to be pointing a gun his way. He figured they figured they didn’t have to. He was in no position to scare them as much as they scared him.
A more civilized-looking fat man in a white Panama suit stood on the dock as they towed him up to it. Captain Gringo hoped Susan’s description had been a good one as he waved and called out, “Dom Luis, thank God I made it back here!”
The Brazilian rubber baron’s fat sly face wore an expression of polite wariness as the balsa bumped against the pilings and Captain Gringo leaped over to join him on the dock. As the American held out his free hand, the fat man took it, but said, with a puzzled smile, “Do I know you, senhor?”
“I’m Reynolds, Mission of the Latter Day Saints. Don’t you remember me? We passed through here just a few weeks ago, although I must say it feels like a million years. Good Lord, if you knew what I’d been through out there!”
“My casa is your casa, senhor. Come, we shall talk about it over food and other refreshments, eh?”
The gunman from the canoe nudged him and growled, “You will leave your guns with me, senhor.”
Captain Gringo handed him the rifle with a hurt look and started to unbuckle his gun belt. But Dom Luis snapped, “Do not be rude, Pessoa. I have just made Senhor Reynolds welcome.”
Pessoa nodded and stepped back a pace. But he didn’t offer the rifle back. Captain Gringo shrugged and followed the fat man up the path to the imposing albeit jerry-built mansion on a rise dominating the landing.
&nbs
p; As they walked, Dom Luis said casually, “Reynolds, Reynolds, there was a blond girl named Reynolds in your party, no?”
Captain Gringo put a slight sob in his voice as he answered, “My sister, Susan. I don’t know if she’s dead or worse off.”
“There is something worse off than dead, senhor?”
“Of course. The Indians may have her. You see, we were jumped by wild Indians a few days after we left you. I got away. I don’t think any of the others did. God, if you knew what I’ve been through, alone in the jungle all this time, living on monkey and parrot and …”
“Easy, senhor. First we eat and drink and then we talk, eh?”
Captain Gringo knew why he displayed so little interest, but it meant Dom Luis was overconfident as well as a lousy actor. The oily prick was so used to this game he’d forgotten the subtle lines. No really innocent white man would have dismissed the excited babblings of a survivor popping out of the selva. Human beings would have wanted to hear all about it back there on the dock. Things were looking up. The cocky sons of bitches seemed to be buying his story simply because it didn’t seem possible to them that anyone else could be half so smart.
He knew Dom Luis had no intention of letting him leave this place alive. He’d ordered the missionaries killed to keep the Brazilian authorities downstream in the dark about just where he was and what he was doing up here along the border. This polite bullshit was intended merely to extract such information from him as they might find useful. Okay, he’d better make them think he knew lots of interesting fairy tales, like the dame in the Arabian Nights, right?
As Dom Luis led him up on the veranda and clapped his pudgy hands for the servants, Captain Gringo said, “I saw some other people those Indians must have attacked. There were bodies all over the place. At least fifty of them. It was awful. They were bloated and—”
Dom Luis whirled and cut in, “You saw some of my men dead out there in the selva, senhor?”
“I don’t know who they were, Dom Luis, but they certainly had been killed. I didn’t get too close. The smell was awful and I was afraid of the Indians.”
Dom Luis ushered him to a seat at the table on the wraparound veranda before he answered, “Yes, the Jivaro and Colorados in the area are said to be most savage. These dead men you say you saw in the selva … could you guide a party of my men back to the place, Senhor Reynolds?”
Captain Gringo looked around as if trying to get his bearings and then he said, “I’m not sure. I remember you took us for a train ride around your holdings when we were here before, but I’m afraid I may be turned around.”
He pointed due east, away from the setting sun, and said, “That way is north, right?”
Dom Luis repressed a smirk and answered, “You are turned around indeed. How on earth did you ever find your way back here?”
“I didn’t know I was anywhere near your place. I guess I wandered in big circles until I came to a river. I found a raft on the bank and pushed off. I figured the current had to take me somewhere, and anywhere was an improvement! The rest you know. I might be able to find those dead men again, starting from here. I think I could find our camp, and the other party was hit fairly near it. Do you have any idea who they might have been, Dom Luis?”
“Yes, they worked for me. Tell me, did you notice if their heads were missing?”
“Gee, I didn’t look that close, but, no, I don’t think so. I remember one man’s face. It looked awful. But if I saw his face …”
“Quite so, they were hit by Colorado Indians. That explains them being caught unawares. They were scouting Jivaro. We didn’t know any others were that close.”
A pretty Negress came out with a tray of refreshments. Dom Luis seemed unaware that she was also stark naked. But as the girl put down her tray, nipples swaying in time with her graceful movements, the rubber baron rose and said, “Forgive me, Senhor Reynolds, but we do not have much light left. Let us walk around the veranda together, eh?”
Captain Gringo had hoped he’d say that. He got up to follow as the pudgy Brazilian led him around the big frame house, saying, “Try to think back to the last time you were here. It is too late, of course, to mount a patrol into the selva, but if you could offer some suggestions about the directions, my boys and I could plan tonight more intelligently.”
So Captain Gringo cased the layout as the Brazilian made small talk. The American now had a mental map of the steamboat landing and everything between it and the house. He spotted a tin shack with a tall tin funnel like a riverboat and casually said, “Oh, that’s where you refine the rubber or something, right?”
Dom Luis shot him a curious look and replied, “One does not refine rubber, senhor. One makes it into bales by holding a stick dipped in latex over a fire. Don’t you remember? I thought I showed you through that powerhouse over there. I remember your poor sister commenting on my having electricity with some surprise.”
Captain Gringo was surprised, too. He’d asked Susan not to leave anything out and the silly cow had forgotten to tell him they had a generating plant. He shrugged and said, “I’m afraid I wasn’t paying much attention. As you may recall, I was fighting a bout of malaria the last time I came through here.”
“Ah, I was wondering how I’d forgotten a man your size. You must have been one of those who stayed behind when I took most of your companions on a tour of my holdings.”
“Yes, my sister said she enjoyed the train ride. How far into the jungle do your tracks run, Dom Luis?”
“About fifteen of your American miles. That is the siding, over there, where your unfortunate friends boarded my train.”
Captain Gringo stared due west at the little switch-yard behind the main7 house. A single spur line ran past to the generating plant and beyond to the river. He’d missed the track in the tall grass, coming up from the landing. The layout was falling into place in his mind now. He nodded and said, “I don’t see any railroad cars or that gold engine, Dom Luis.”
The rubber baron chuckled and said, “Ah, you remember that, eh? Everyone remembers my pretty little locomotive. Some find my tastes a bit gaudy. But I ask you, what is money for, if not to enjoy it, eh?”
“It’s your money, Dom Luis. I guess this rubber boom has made a lot of people rich, right?”
Dom Luis shrugged and said, “One has to be in the right place at the right time. Unfortunately, the wild rubber trees grow far apart. It takes organization to show a profit, even with cheap help. But we manage.”
Captain Gringo repressed a sarcastic answer. He knew how cheap indeed Dom Luis was about his labor force. But he was supposed to be a dumb missionary.
They completely circled the house on the veranda and as Dom Luis led him back to the table Captain Gringo said, “I know where I am now. I’m pretty sure I can lead your recovery party, Dom Luis.”
The rubber baron frowned and answered, “Recovery party? Oh, yes, of course we must see to a decent burial for my poor employees. But then we shall dispose of any nearby Indians with far less formality. The savages must be taught a lesson. I do not permit trespassers on my land, even when they don’t murder my help.”
The Negress had gone back inside, but Captain Gringo spotted her peeking out at them through the window, over Dom Luis’s shoulder. The girl caught his eye and gestured urgently, but he had no idea what the hell she wanted.
Dom Luis pointed at the sandwiches and the pitcher on the table and said, “Help yourself, my young friend. If you will forgive me for not joining you, I have already eaten and, as you see, I have a weight problem.”
Captain Gringo nodded thanks and picked up a sandwich. The pitcher looked like it was full of watered milk and smelled like rum. He asked what it was and Dom Luis said, “Rum and coconut water, of course. Unfortunately, even if you boil it, the local water leaves much to be desired.”
Captain Gringo was hot and thirsty. So the drink looked as good to him as it sounded. But he remembered, just in time, and said, “I’m sorry, Dom Luis, but as a Mor
mon I can’t drink alcohol.”
“That’s revolting.” The rubber baron frowned. “Everybody drinks a little here in the selva!” Then he remembered his manners and said, “I’m sorry, I forgot you were a missionary. I will have them prepare you a pitcher of pure coconut water before we tuck you in for the night. You will of course be staying in the master bedroom.”
Captain Gringo said, “I wouldn’t want to put anyone to so much trouble,” but the oily Dom Luis insisted. “I shall hear no more about it. I have so few guests up here on the Putumayo. It is my pleasure to make them feel most welcome.”
There was an odd glitter in the Brazilian’s eyes as he purred on about how much he liked to be nice to people. Captain Gringo knew how nice he’d been to Susan’s party. But he doubted they’d gun him down here in the house. Apparently Dom Luis had at least a few decent people down by the landing, and of course the crew aboard the steamer didn’t work for him at all.
He asked about the steamer, explaining he was anxious to book passage down the river. Dom Luis soothed, “You have plenty of time for that. The boat will not leave until we finish loading her. That will take two days. At the moment my train is out at the far end of the line and won’t be back until about this time tomorrow evening with half a cargo. It will take at least another day on another spur to gather all we need. One must learn to bide one’s time down here, my North American friend. The heat can kill you if you move too fast. In any case, I find it difficult to recruit good help these days.”
Again Captain Gringo bit his tongue. He knew that while the fat tub of lard rested his big ass in the shade of this veranda a lot of poor slaves were working hard indeed for him. And, speaking of slaves, where had that pretty black girl gone, and what the hell had she been waving at him about?