by Lou Cameron
Gaston said, “I hope so. I was trying to. If they get mad enough, they may throw caution to the winds and charge us before the sun goes down. If they attack under cover of darkness, I fail to see how we are going to stop them, M’sieu!”
*
As Fionna O’Shay stood in the stem, poling The Irish Rover between the close-set mangroves enclosing the narrow tidal stream that wasn’t on any map, Captain Gringo felt completely lost as well. He could see, despite the shady gloom, that the blonde was sweating. But every time he offered to help her pole, she told him to shut his gob. For The Irish Rover didn’t respond kindly to strange hands trying to direct her bright bluff bows, and there’d be the divvel to pay if she hung her bowsprit up in the mangroves at all at all. He consulted his watch as he asked her just where they might be now, in relation to Gilead. She said, “We’re about three miles south of the rail line. Lave it to me, and I’ll have ye closer by far by the toim this auld passage ends in an inland lagoon I’ve been after lifting fish from many a time.”
“Do you know where that rail line ends, Fionna?”
“I do. It was built by the lumbering paple to avoid a rocky stretch of shallows, about twenty moils up the Mission River. It swings south near the end to a logging camp on the Upper Mission itself. But there’ll be nobody there now at all at all.”
He gasped and moaned, “Oh, Jesus! You mean that train can carry you twenty miles into the jungle in one quick jump, Fionna?”
“It can’t carry us that far, for it’s in The Irish Rover we’d be sitting at this moment. But, yes, if ye had the auld railway working, it would get you out to the auld camp in less than an hour. But what of it? The lumber camp’s been abandoned, Dick.”
He said, “Maybe. The bandits had the locomotive running on the tracks yesterday, and I doubt they were just practicing. Have you ever been to this lumber camp?”
“Faith, I’ve been everywhere in this colony, for it was here I was born. Me paple came here from the auld country in the wake of the great potato famine. The Queen had just taken Mission Bay from the Dons, and it was me auld man who thought he’d find more future here, ye see.”
She poled on wearily as she added, grim-lipped: “Some future it was, too. Living among the damned auld dagos because all Catholics are despised by the damned auld English! But at laste we never starved, and me auld man doid as the master of his own fishing boat.”
She stopped poling a moment to mutter, “Jesus Mary and Joseph, it’s hot, even in the shade, at this toim of the dayo.” Then she slipped her sweaty blouse off over her head, dropped it and picked up the pole again to go on, naked from the waist up.
He was too polite to stare. But he couldn’t help noticing she wasn’t as flat chested as he’d assumed. Her small, firm breasts looked like cupcakes glazed with sweat as she poled on with her strong young torso swaying gracefully and teasingly in the dappled shade. He took out his .38 and fieldstripped it on the thwart between them. It didn’t need cleaning, but a guy had to keep his eyes somewhere without being obvious. Fionna asked, “Why did ye bring only one wee pistol along if we’re on serious business, Dick?”
He said, “It’s serious enough. But I sneak better with my weapon tucked under one shoulder. One rifle, or even a machine gun, wouldn’t be much use to me in a head-on gunfight with a whole guerrilla band.”
“Anyone could have told ye that. So why would you be after sneaking in behind them at all at all?”
“I’m not sure yet. It depends on what I find when I get there. Let’s get back to that lumber camp. What do you remember about it?”
She shrugged as she poled, moving her sweet little tits in a most provocative way, and said, “Och, it was just a great clearing in the woods, with a few shacks for the workers, a stame-powered sawmill and a winch to haul timber from the river because they couldn’t raft it all the way to the coast with them shallows in the wayo. They’d had some Indian thrubbles in the early days, or at least they’d seen Indians lurking about and thought they meant thrubble. Ye know how the English are. But the great gun they brought in was never used; and the last toim I saw it, it had gone all green with the rains.”
“Oh my God! Are you saying there’s a cannon or, worse yet, was a cannon at that lumber camp?”
“Och, it was auld and rusty and not a great gun besides. It was only one of thim muzzle-loaders lift over from the auld days. They couldn’t have paid much for the wee thing. Ye know how cheap the English are, Dick. What’s the matter? Ye look like ye’ve just heard the banshee, and there’s not even an Indian in this darling swamp!”
He said, “I may have heard the banshee just now, at that, if we’re talking about premonitions of death and disaster! I may owe another ghost an apology if the mastermind behind all this is even more Machiavellian than even my pal Gaston thought!”
He’d naturally filled Fionna in on the whole story as they sailed up the coast together, so she nodded and said, “Och, no Frenchman or even an Irishman can come close to being as treacherous as the English, for don’t they beat us every time, no matter how cleverly we plot? You’d be thinking ye were meant to read that coded message so they’d be after taking ye by surprise when they fired on yez with a big gun. Then, since ye’d been led to expect no big gun at all at all, ye’d think, when yez saw ye’d been tricked, that what was coming at yez was thim real modem weapons instead of just one auld brass muzzle-loader, right?”
He grinned up at her and said, “I thought you Irish weren’t as good at plotting treachery. That’s pretty complicated, but it sure figures to work if my pals at the ford buy it. On the other hand, old Perkins may have simply been told to write that they had those seventy-fives, and since he hadn’t seen any, he tried to tell us it was a bluff. How the hell would a prisoner know about a gun they never showed him? I’ll know better, later, if we never see the minister alive again, we’ll know he was a hero. If he’s still alive, he has to be a rat. How far are we from that lagoon now?”
“We’re there,” grunted Fionna, poling them between close-set mangrove roots with a last mighty effort to pop The Irish Rover out into a sunlit patch of open water. She looked even more naked now. But that wasn’t why he’d recruited her. So he looked the other way as she poled them across the little lagoon and grounded the bows against a muddy patch between two big buttress-rooted trees. As he spotted the path leading off through the jungle from there, Fionna said, “That gum-cruiser’s trail will be after lading you to the outskirts of Gilead, Dick. How long will I be after waiting for you here?”
He leapt ashore before he turned with a smile and said, “You’ve done more than enough; and if I make it I’m going to ask the governor to hang a medal on you, English or not. But you’d better not stick around. You’d better pole back to sea and sail south to safety, Doll.”
She leapt ashore after him, and might have fallen had not he grabbed her to steady her when one foot slipped in the mud. He grabbed her the best way he could without taking time to think, and that one little tit felt better than it looked before he hastily let go. Fionna took his hand and put it back where it had been as she said, “Before ye go, would ye take lave of a lady like a gintleman?”
He gulped and said, “I’d love to if there was time, Fionna.”
“Och, how much toim does it take to kiss a gorl, ye great fool?”
He laughed and said, “Oh well, since you put it that way,” and reeled her in for a friendly wet smack. It might not have been so wet had Fionna kept her tongue in her mouth. When they came up for air, she was blushing and he was stiff as a poker inside his pants. But she said, “There, now I’m satisfied. Or at least I’ll be letting ye go for now. When ye get done doing whatever it is ye’ll be after doing, it’s here I’ll be waiting for ye, Dick.”
“Fionna, it’s not safe. I may be able to work back to our lines another way, and that’s where I want to find you when I do, see?”
“I do not. Ye said on the way there was only one crossing and that that was where the seriou
s foiting would be taking place, ye great fool!”
“Yeah, but—”
“Och, but me no buts and be off with ye. For the sooner ye get going, the sooner ye’ll be after getting back; and it’s another grand kiss ye’ll owe me when ye foind me here to welcome ye back aboard!”
He didn’t have time to argue, so he didn’t take it. He kissed her again and took off through the trees. As the shade grew darker, he got out his .38. Fionna had assured him nobody was gathering gum these days. But a path was always a great place for an ambush, even though he had to follow it in country he didn’t know.
He was glad he had, after the trail had snaked him past a couple of swamps and a broad patch of what might have looked like open mossy ground if a saltwater crocodile’s eyes and nostrils hadn’t been showing above the green surface scum. A quarter-mile on, the path widened to become a wagon trace leading into what had to be the outskirts of town—unless someone had built scattered shacks among the second growth sapling all around just for the hell of it. He slowed down, gun in hand, all too aware as he moved on that although it was siesta time in a ghost town, he could still be making a big mistake!
It got easier as he worked into the more built up parts of the barrio because now he could sneak along lanes and alleyways with solid and, he hoped, empty housing to either side. Somewhere in the distance a guitar was strumming a lazy tune. So he moved faster. People hardly ever played guitars on patrol, or even on guard, if they were serious. He knew nobody would be expecting an attack from the north, if an attack was what he was up to, exactly. So far, he was simply playing it by ear until he could figure some way to create a diversion on this side of the river.
He peered around an alley corner to spot the rail yards he and Gaston had found earlier. The same locomotive stood in the same spot, its boiler cold. He grimaced and said to himself, “Right. It was the old brass cannon they were after! If they planned a flank attack, there’d be smoke out that Shay’s funnel right now. It takes hours to get up steam from scratch with green firewood. So they can’t be planning an end run by rail. Let’s not worry whether they’re too stupid to think of that or too smart to march the twenty miles back on the far side of the river the hard way!”
It would have been risky to cross the open yards. So he worked his way around them through the close-packed little native shacks. He heard no signs of life from any of them. Why should a brave soldado and his adelita take over a squalid shack when there were nicer empty houses to the south across the tracks?
It took him more time than he had to waste, but at last he was south of the tracks in yet another alley. He climbed up on a fence to see if he could get his bearings again. It was easy. The bell tower of the schoolhouse he remembered rose well above the lower roofing between. That bigger tin roof a little closer had to be the warehouse Estralita had led him and Gaston to. He considered making for that first. He decided it wasn’t worth it. He had plenty of waterproof matches; but even if he burned their supplies, it would take them too long to get hungry, now that their adelitas had had time to lug at least enough food for the next few meals to their own scattered shack-ups. The guns and ammo he and Gaston had seen there as well was no doubt even more well distributed, so what the hell.
He worked his way to the vicinity of the schoolhouse and then had to circle wide to avoid the open schoolyard, taking up even more precious time. As he hunkered in the last cover between him and the blank back wall of the schoolhouse, he consulted his watch and swore under his breath. Where in the hell was all the time going today? Why was it that an hour felt so much longer to a man in a dentist’s chair than it did to a man on a porch swing with a pretty girl? He cursed himself now for having taken time to kiss Fionna twice. He had to do something while the siesta kept the surrounding streets reasonably clear, and so far hadn’t even thought of anything!
He eased out of the alley entrance, glanced up and down the cinder-covered lane between him and the back of the school and dashed across to dive into the weeds at the base of the blank wall and roll under the building. The crawl space was about four feet between the bare dirt under the school and the overhead wooden flooring. It was less where the big timber joists held the flooring up. The main timbers all around him were solid mahogany. It figured, mahogany was one of the few woods that didn’t rot fast in this climate, and it cost a lot less where it grew.
He heard voices, and crawled that way until he was right under the room they were coming from. Someone topside was having a hell of an argument, and a couple of the voices were speaking with English accents as well as in that language. So there went a fib that El Repollo had been trying to sell!
Someone was insisting in English, “Goddamn it, El Chino. You know we never meant it to go this far! There was nothing in the original plan about actually harming anyone! If we let you shell Zion, English women and children could be killed!”
El Chino answered, “Si, but not too many, Señor Webber. I feel sure your stubborn Gobernador will give us the money before too many of his people land about him in bits and pieces, eh?”
Another English voice said, “You don’t know Governor Forbes as well as we do, then! He simple can’t turn over funds left under the protection of the Crown! He and all his men will go down fighting first!”
A voice Captain Gringo recognized as that of El Repollo said, “Bueno. After we kill all the bastards, we shall simply open the vaults ourselves, eh?”
Webber protested, “My God, that could mean the deaths of hundreds of innocent people, including some of your own race! Can’t you see that, El Repollo?”
“Shit, hombre, nobody who runs away from me is a brother or sister of me and mine! We ain’t bad guys. We asked them polite. But if they wish for to fight us for the money, it is not our fault if a few baby bottles get broken, is it?”
“Be reasonable, gentlemen! This isn’t the deal we made at all! Didn’t we pay you enough already, El Chino? Didn’t we get you all those supplies and all those nice new guns?”
El Repollo said, “Hey, don’t talk to him, Talk to me! You think you own us because you give us a few presents and a little dinero, you cheap bastards? They got millions over there in Zion. You expect us to let them keep it when we got all the guns we need for to take it away from them? Santa Maria, do we look like men or chickens?”
Another English voice moaned, “Damn you, Webber! I was against this mad scheme from the beginning! I warned you we might not be able to control these perishing vagabonds!”
Webber, whoever he was, said, “Shut up. I haven’t lost control. One simply has to know how to deal with natives.” Then he said, “We’ve argued about it enough, you lot. We forbid you to fire into Zion, and that’s that. In case you’ve forgotten, I’d best remind you just who’s in command here!”
He probably should have worded it another way, although the results might have been the same. El Repollo didn’t even answer. He, or somebody, simply started throwing lead, lots of lead!
As guns roared above him, Captain Gringo was rolling away before the first body thudded to the floor. But a couple of wild shots sent slugs and slivers down into the dirt where he’d just been, anyway. By the time he was clear enough to pause and listen again, it had gotten quiet, save for the drip-dropping of blood through the bullet holes in the flooring. He heard El Chino ask mildly, “For why did you shoot all those people, my boy?”
El Repollo replied, “For because I was tired of listening to them, Grandfather. What is the difference? I told the other English we were going to shoot them, anyway. So now I do not have any fibs on my conscience, see?”
“But my Grandson, they promised for to give us more money before we left, no?”
“Si, but I spit on the pennies they meant to give us, and now that they are out of the way, we can get down to business and make some real money! I go now for to see about moving that cannon into place for tonight. Are you coming with me?”
“You go ahead. I shall get someone to clean up this mess you just
made in my nice office. But did you not say they have a cannon, too?”
“Si, but our own shoots cannonballs and grape. Theirs is just a toy for shooting blanks. Stay here if you wish. Do not go out in the hot sun. I will send someone to tidy up from one of the occupied buildings all around.”
Captain Gringo listened soberly as El Repollo clumped off just above him. Now was a hell of a time to find out those buildings he’d slipped between across the street were filled with guerrillas! He knew he’d never luck past them again, after all that gunplay, even if it was siesta time!
He couldn’t do anything about the situation above his head right now, either, without at least a few sticks of dynamite. Firing blind up through the floor would just give his position away; and how many thugs could he hope to even wing with six lousy shots and one hell of a lot of luck? He started crawling the other way. If he had more dry splinters to work with, he could maybe set the place on fire, he supposed, but so what? They’d just step outside, and it wasn’t such a hot idea to set a house he was hiding under on fire, in any case.
He crawled to the far side and peered out to mutter, “Nuts.” There was a weedy patch of abandoned garden, offering crawling cover to a picket fence he could probably punch through. But not if the house beyond was full of guerrillas. He had to just lay low until things calmed down again, even though time was running out and he didn’t even dare smoke!
He put his .38 away. It wasn’t doing anything out, but getting dirty in any case. Outside he could see legs moving up and down around the school. Above, feet were thumping on the floorboards and things were being dragged across them. He looked at his watch: it was pushing three, goddamn its nervous hands, and they might not settle down outside again at all for the rest of the afternoon. He was probably safe where he was, and it would be easy enough to sneak out after sundown. But he goddamn-it didn’t have that much time! He knew as well as if El Repollo had just told him personally that they’d be opening up with that muzzle-loader just after sundown—and the others weren’t expecting artillery fire at all!