by Lou Cameron
Captain Gringo glanced up at the pale sun peeking back at them through the gray rain clouds and said, “When you’re right you’re right. I think they’re long gone, but we’d better make sure.”
He turned to Colonel Gage and added, “You and Webster here, get a picture of where everyone was last night on paper. Gaston and I are going to take a tractor out for a drive in the country.”
Colonel Gage frowned and asked, “Since when have you been giving the orders around here, damn it?”
“You want to patrol the jungle while Gaston and I count noses here?”
“Well, since you put it that way.”
Captain Gringo took Gaston, Gordo and Pedro along with two machine guns and plenty of ammo aboard the mammoth steam tractor. They chugged out along the trackside trail, expecting to find the narrow gauge tracks torn up. But the tracks were still there, gleaming wetly in a soft drizzle that had set in for/the morning.
They came to the first sugar field. It was a black carpet of char, steaming wetly. The next one was the same. Gaston said, “Ridiculous. I thought you said this Pappa Blanco was an old hand at guerrilla warfare, Dick.”
“I did. I expected them to tear up the tracks, too.”
“Tres bush league. Why burn crops that grow back like weeds while one ignores expensive installations?”
“Maybe to spare the expense of rebuilding them? The colonel says Pantropic is about to give the island up as a lost cause. I doubt like hell that the Caribs have any need of a rail network across a third of the island. So the scam has to be a takeover.”
“Perhaps. But you cabled Wall Street and no other sugar company has shown interest in Nuevo Verdugo, hein?”
“Yeah. How about that? United Fruit isn’t bidding either. I cabled New Orleans. United Fruit looked into conditions here before Pantropic rented it from the Crown. They say it’s a lousy place to grow bananas.”
“Perhaps. But big businessmen have been known to fib, Dick.”
“So what else is new? But Nuevo Verdugo is a lousy place to grow bananas. The island’s half rock and Pantropic was advised against its sugar operation by old hands who know this part of the world. Some know-it-alls in London rammed the project through without ever looking at the place. As a crown colony the island has never shown a profit, so the rent is cheap. Pantropic’s ninety-nine year lease would be a bargain, if only they could grow something here.”
They smashed through some brush and started chugging across another expanse of ash. Captain Gringo asked Gordo about the buried roots of the burned off cane and Gordo said, “Si, my Captain. The sugar will sprout back in a week or so. One plants cane by ditching in lengths of rootstock saved from the previous crop. These fires will have burned off all the insects and weed seeds, too. I agree Pappa Blanco has most peculiar ideas about destruction. He kills peones and cane, but both are easily replaced.”
“I’ll have to point that out to the colonel when we get back.”
Gaston nudged him and said, “If we get back, Dick! Over there, near the tree line. What the devil is it?”
Captain Gringo stopped the tractor out on the charred field and raised his field glasses. A human figure stood in an odd position between two scorched tree trunks. He lowered the glasses and said, “One of the workmen who didn’t make it to our rescue train. They’ve impaled him on a gumbo limbo stake.”
“He’s dead?”
“Wouldn’t you be dead with a sapling in your ass and out your mouth? I hope they had the decency to kill him first, but I doubt it. They seem to be trying to send us a message.”
Pedro asked, “What is the message, Captain Gringo?”
“They don’t like us. But we can’t leave that guy there like that.”
He opened the throttle and drove toward the tree line at an angle. Gaston said, “That impaled body is the other way, Dick.”
“I know. You’re going to have to switch places with me once we hit cover. I’m dropping off with one of the Maxims. Do I have to draw you a picture?”
Gaston grinned and said, “Merde alors, I was at this game before you were born. One gathers you wish much smoke as well as noise?”
“You’re learning. Pedro, empty your canteen on some of the greener sticks and shove them in the firebox when I drop off.”
Gaston took the throttle and wheel, speeded up, and said, “Gordo, brace that other machine gun in line with our boiler and get ready to commence fire.”
“Señor Gaston. I know how for to shoot a machine gun, but I don’t know how for to hit anything with it.”
“Sacre Goddamn! Who can expect to hit anything in the middle of a tossed salad? Do as you are told.”
The tractor nosed into the brushy tree line and Gaston swung the wheel hard over as Captain Gringo dropped off the far side with the other Maxim cradled in his arms. He hit running and headed for a fallen log in the forest gloom as, behind him, all hell broke loose.
Gaston drove up the tree line, one big spiked wheel out in the open while the other smashed the growth edging the field and Gordo fired blindly ahead at the falling tree tops. Gaston cut a fifty foot gap, swung out in the open, then swung back to chew up some more greenery before whirling around and churning out to the middle of the field, gun silent. The tractor drove in a circle, raising a cloud of ash, then suddenly tore back toward the trees, machine gun flashing as if Gaston had suddenly spotted something. From behind his log, even Captain Gringo had to admit the guys on the tractor looked like they’d gone a little crazy.
The Caribs must have thought so too. They’d been set to ambush a foot patrol coming across the open field to retrieve its dead. A mechanical monster driven by an obvious maniac had not figured in their plans. So, as Gaston hit the tree line on the far side of the impaled body and proceeded to knock down trees and spray lead with abandon, they did what any other sensible cannibals would have done. They started moving away from all the wild excitement, hugging the tree line where the brush was thickest and the cover best.
There were a dozen of them, naked save for strands of sea shells, but packing Remington repeaters. They retreated in good order and with more grudging common sense than panic. They came to the messy gap Gaston had made with his first apparently wild dive into the jungle. Their leader grinned and pointed. Captain Gringo watched while they darted across the gap and stopped to take cover behind the jackstrawed timber the leader had spotted as a likely place to make a stand. The Caribs crouched and got set for the oncoming tractor with their rifles braced across fallen logs. They had no way of knowing they’d presented an open flank to Captain Gringo until he rose with the Maxim braced against his hip and opened fire!
It was like having them in a bowling alley. As the machine gun sprayed them, some rose right into his hosing lead. Others tried hugging the ground, but he simply had to drop the muzzle between bursts to spatter them. The recoil rode the gun up with each short savage burst and Captain Gringo used that to good advantage as he watered his garden of spurting blood until, unlike other gardens, it stopped growing.
His ears still rang when he lowered the smoking muzzle. But he heard the sound of chugging machinery and falling trees. So he ran out in the open to keep from getting run over or shot by mistake. As he passed the line of dead Caribs he recognized a couple from the clearing where they’d tried to feed him to that snake. It made him feel better about the guts and brains spattered all over the logs where they lay.
Gaston spotted him, swung out of the tree line and stopped the tractor. When he climbed aboard, he saw they’d pulled the dead man off the stake and lashed his stiff body to the tender box. He told Gaston, “It worked. We nailed a squad of the bastards, but they were all natives.”
“One expected to encounter Queen Victoria, my old and rare friend?”
“No, but I was hoping to nail the son of a bitch who wants her colony. But I think Pappa Blanco has pulled in his horns for now. The moron leading those guys was a wild type I saw by Prue’s cave. He was jerking off then too. I’d say t
he main bunch has pulled back for now, and we’re pretty far from town. Let’s head back. I want to start that sanitary cordon before noon. We’ll pick up a good crew and use the rails to carry the tractors and gear most of the way. We can bull through to the narrows and use the results as a road later.”
Gordo said, “Forgive me, my captain, but it will soon be time for La Siesta.”
“Let me put it this way, Gordo. Would you rather work in broad daylight or fight off attacks like we had last night?”
Gordo sighed and said, “Screw La Siesta. It is a rather old-fashioned tradition in any case, now that I think about it.”
Chapter Fifteen
The trouble with tropic days is that they are all the same length. North or south of the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn the summer days are longer than the nights. Nearer the equator you get twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of darkness all year long.
So while Captain Gringo’s chain drags worked better then he’d hoped, and his men ignored La Siesta with the enthusiasm of beavers, they’d only cleared a quarter section by the time he blew his whistle and yelled out, “Knock off, muchachos. Mariana is another day.”
Gaston joined him with a puzzled frown and asked, “Why are you quitting so soon, Dick? There is another two hours of daylight left.”
“I know. I want to get our people clear before the elves move in at twilight.”
“Merde alors, we are abandoning all of this to the savages? I thought we’d set up camp and—”
“Are you crazy? What’s the point? Our guys will work better in the morning if they’re rested at home and start out with a good breakfast and maybe a morning quickie from mamma.”
“But who is to guard our work here?”
“What’s to guard? We’re not building. We’re tearing down. Do you really think black magic can grow all those trees back in a night?”
Gaston stared soberly at the huge gash of uprooted timber and sighed, “I must be getting old. You are right, of course.” Gaston laughed and added, “Pappa Blanco is probably planning a night attack on this work site right this very minute. Sacre, he will be tres confused, hein?”
“I hope so. Up to now, everybody’s just been reacting to his moves, and letting him choose the whens and wheres. Two can play at razzle-dazzle. Let him worry about what we’re going to do next.”
As they walked toward one of the tractors to unhitch -the drag chain and use it as a vehicle cum machine gun nest, Gaston said, “I see now why you chose to ignore all the occult goings on.”
Captain Gringo nodded and said, “Sure. They’ve had everyone going crazy trying to figure out how he worked his Voodoo shit and what his plans were.”
“You, of course, have it all figured out?”
“No, I just don’t give a shit. We were hired as soldiers, not detectives. You were around when we had our Civil War, Gaston. Did you follow old U.S. Grant’s career?”
“Mais non, I was having my own civil war in Mexico, on the losing side. What has U. S. Grant to do with Pappa Blanco? I fail to see what they might have in common.”
Captain Gringo laughed and said, “Grant would agree. He was probably the most unimaginative officer in the Union Army. That’s why the Union started winning every battle, once they got rid of the bright boys and put old Rummy-Grant in charge. You see, the Confederates had made all the other Union leaders look like assholes by springing flashy razzle-dazzle surprises. Lee had Stuart and Moseby tear-assing all over hell, and the Union guys went crazy trying to figure out what they’d do next.”
“Ah, I begin to see the analogy. What did your Grant do about the ingenious tactics of M’sieu Lee and all?”
Captain Gringo helped Gaston aboard the tractor and looked around before he answered. He saw the others were moving out, well-guarded by Gordo’s flank guards, and decided to wait and follow up with the tractor-mounted Maxim. So he told Gaston, “Grant ignored the flashy stuff. Scouts would dash in to report a rebel column doing something noisy somewhere else and Grant just puffed his cigar and went on planning his own moves on the map. He wasn’t a brilliant general, but he had common sense and he saw what more imaginative men had missed. He, not Lee, had the bigger army, the supplies and the guns. So he just went by the book and took the positions all the time-tested rules said he ought to take. At Shiloh he marched into a brilliantly set up Confederate ambush. His advance reeled back while Grant was having breakfast at a country tavern. He wasn’t a very excitable guy, and ham and eggs beat running around inspecting things.”
Gaston said, “Wait. Even I know that Grant was not beaten at Shiloh.”
“Most other generals would have been. The rebels shot the shit out of his advancing columns and had him in a pincers with half his army on one side of a river and half on the other. Grant got up, wiped the egg off his face, and wandered over to the battlefield. He saw some units retreating and told them they were going the wrong way. A brigadier galloped up to warn him they were about to be surrounded. Grant said that was bullshit. His army was four times the size of the rebel army, so, no matter what they looked like they were doing, they couldn’t surround anything important. Grant cussed and fussed everybody back into position and the Union advance went on. It was a blood bath for both sides, but the Union had the weight and numbers, so that was that. He crossed the river where he’d meant to cross. He marched up, taking position after position, until, one day, the war was over.”
Gaston said, “I see. We have the men and the guns. Pappa Blanco has a bag of tricks. We pay no attention to his black magic. We come back again and again, in strength, until he is walled off to the south. I agree it should work, Dick. But are you not even curious about how Mab wound up in Lloyd’s grave, or where all those other corpses went?”
“Sure I’m curious. Grant must have wondered about Moseby’s Gray Ghost act too. But first we put the son of a bitch out of business and then we figure out who he was and what he wanted.”
“Who he was, Dick?”
Captain Gringo’s eyes were grim as he nodded and said, “Yeah, past tense. The son of a bitch killed a couple of people I was rather fond of. So he’s already dead. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
The governor general and his wife gave a garden party that’ night. Captain Gringo thought a victory celebration was premature, but he went anyway. Gaston said he’d rather act as O.D., and keep the guards on the ball as darkness fell.
The rain had let up. The trade wind dried everything to the clammy, damp stage people from England seemed to find comfortable. So again the tables were set up under paper lanterns above the terrace. At Captain Gringo’s suggestion, Pedro and a couple of the other guards were set up on the roof with a machine gun and Mrs. Gage was gracious enough to send them up some refreshments.
Captain Gringo’s main reason for coming was Alice, and she wasn’t hard to corner alone near the punch bowl. She asked him why he hadn’t been back to “see” her, which was a rather veddy veddy word for hot and heavy screwing, if he was reading her eyes correctly.
He made certain nobody could overhear them before he said, “I’ve been busy. Listen, you have Charles and Dama Luisa wrong.”
She shrugged and said, “I don’t think adultery is wrong. I rather enjoy it.”
“I noticed. The point is that Luisa is an innocent bystander. Old Chuck hasn’t been able to get near her.”
“How unfortunate for poor Charles. I gather she told you all this when you were making love to her?”
“I’ve been unfortunate too. The dame Chuck was seeing on the side is dead. So you can make up with your husband if you want, or throw the bum out if that’s your pleasure. Just don’t send any more boyfriends to work Luisa over. You’ve been barking up the wrong tree and the local peones would tear you limb from limb if they found out you were after one of their favorite people.”
Alice looked like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth as she sipped punch and said, “Darling, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t assass
inate my rivals. I out-fuck them, as who but you should know? Why don’t we find some place where we can lie down and talk about it?”
“Maybe later. I have a couple of errands to take care of tonight.”
“Oh? I hope they’re both pretty.”
He saw she didn’t want to talk about anything but her twat, so he excused himself to mingle his way toward the colonel on the far side of the garden. Mrs. Gage caught up with him and whispered, “I saw you flirting with my daughter. Why don’t we nip over to your quarters and discuss your naughty ways, Dickie-bird?”
He repeated, “Maybe later. I want a word with your husband.”
“Heavens, you’re not bisexual too, are you, Dickie-bird?”
He blinked and asked, “You know about the colonel and Webster?”
“Heavens, he’s been sodomizing my son-in-law for years too. But don’t tell Alice. She and Charles are already having trouble and …”
“Jesus H. Christ! You people are weird! Burton gets his job and your daughter from his nibs by bending over, and you try to patch things up by–I’ll talk to you later.”
As he moved away, she said, “Talking wasn’t what I had in mind.” He wondered where he was going to sleep tonight. At the rate things were going he could wind up with mother and daughter under him and dear old Dad trying to climb on top!
He found the colonel talking to his male harem, Webster and Burton. They didn’t act like two bisexuals and a fag. They were talking business as usual. Captain Gringo assumed the casual sodomy of exclusive boys’ schools had its own rules of public behavior. West Point hadn’t taught him the form. He was glad. If Americans were unsophisticated by international standards, he was willing to live with that.
Colonel Gage said, “Ah, there you are, Walker. We were just talking about you.”
Captain Gringo felt his asshole tighten, but he kept a straight face and said, “I just made a final check with Gaston. The Caribs must know we’ll soon have them cut off. So they’ve pulled all the way back. We’ve secured the area, but I don’t think they’ll hit us again, now that they’re on the defensive.”