by Lou Cameron
*
Actually the uniformed men camped just off the main wagon trace between Progreso and the more important parts of Mexico were Federales, or Mexican Army, rather than Rurales, or Police Troopers. It didn’t make much difference to Captain Gringo. The important thing was that Turk and Tex, out on point, spotted them first.
The Federales were enjoying La Siesta around a cook’s fire, it being that late in the day by the time Captain Gringo’s patrol moved in on them from the direction they weren’t worried about. The troop of about a hundred and ten had been told to watch the main road and not let anyone go in or out of Progreso pending further orders from El Presidente. So though they had a road block posted on the wagon trace nearby, they made one “big lovely target as they lounged about the fire enjoying their tortillas and coffee. It took Captain Gringo less than five minutes to explain his plan of attack and get his own men moving into position. He waited another five to make sure the guys he couldn’t see were set up. Then he took a deep breath behind the mossy log he’d braced his Maxim across, aimed just to the right of the main clump of lounging Federales, and opened fire, traversing left.
The results were spectacular. Two thirds of the Federate troop were hashed before they could guess they were under fire. The riflemen to either side of Captain Gringo gleefully picked off the few he managed to miss as he hosed the whole camp with hot lead. And of course Jacques, ’Bama, and Bully Baker had meanwhile nailed the guards on the road block as soon as they’d heard the Maxim opening up.
One getaway man made it out the far side. There was always a man posted as getaway, with orders to run not walk as soon as contact with the enemy was made. But as Corporal Vallejo dashed through the trees, not sure what the hell had happened, but on his way to report it, Ace Cavendish stepped out from behind a tree to try out his new bayonet and his bayonet worked just swell. Ace braced his boot on the Federate to haul it out with a sickening suck as he told Rimfire, “Walker knows his stuff. The shit ran right into us just as Walker said he would.”
“Yeah, but, Jesus, did you have to take that chance, Ace? I’d have just shot the guy.”
“Have you no poetry in your soul, Rimfire? This is my third war and, so far, I’d never seen a guy bayonetted by anybody. I just wanted to try it, at least once.”
Then the mortally wounded but still alive Federale fired up from the ground with his pistol and Ace learned, the hard way, who so few people wanted to get close enough to an armed and well-trained soldier to bayonet him.
As Rimfire finished the dying but now grinning Federale off with his own rifle fire, Ace staggered over to a tree, tried to hold on to it, and muttered, “Aw, shit” before falling dead at its base.
But, thanks to Captain Gringo’s planning, Ace Cavendish was the only casualty on his side. Los Federales had been wiped out to a man. Turk asked where next and Captain Gringo said, “Back to Progreso. We’re running low on ammo, it’s getting late, and sometimes it pays to get up from the table white you’re ahead.”
“What about Ace?” someone asked. So Turk said, “What about him? He shouldn’t have let hisself get killed and how long does anything last in this acid muck?”
But Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “We take him with us. I never leave my wounded and I carry my dead home when I can. This time we can. So that’s what we’ll do. Any objections?”
There were none and, in fact, some of the men were pleased to know that when and if they bought the farm under Captain Gringo he’d see they were buried instead of left to the flies.
They improvised a litter for their dead comrade by running gumbo limbo poles up inside his clothes and were soon on their way. As he strode beside Captain Gringo, carrying a lot less ammo now, Gaston said, “Dick, I have been thinking. I am, as you know, not unversed in the methods of the Mexican Army, since I fought on both sides during the Austrian Incident.”
“So?”
“So something trés curious is going on here. Those Federales, who no doubt deserved what they just got, were not behaving in the normal manner. The figures refuse to add up. Ramos has over a hundred of us holding Progreso, with more to come. But I doubt more than sixty or seventy of the so-called officers the Cubans have recruited so far are real fighters, and we have no troopers or privates at all!”
“I pointed that out to Ramos. I’m not sure he understood my point. If Los Federales were controlling that road back there they probably have other troops keeping an eye on the other ways in and out. So, yeah, we’re surrounded by a superior force. So what?”
“Merde alors, what are they doing there, Dick? Why have they moved neither in or further back, if they are afraid of a handful of us?”
“That’s easy. They have orders. They don’t want either Spain or Spain’s enemies sore at them. So officially nothing’s going on in Progreso. At the same time, Mexico doesn’t want a mess of professional gun-slicks getting practique ideas, like you, and going into business on their own. So Diaz is keeping us boxed in for Ramos, whether Ramos knows it or not. Probably not, since he’s have hardly sent us out on a combat patrol if he was in friendly contact with Mexico City.”
They trudged on in silence for a time. Then Gaston said, “Eh bien. Forget my practique suggestions regarding a romp in the woods to the border. We seem to be stuck with the invasion of Cuba after all. Mais let us reconsider what we just did back there, Dick. As I said, I was once an officer in the Mexican Army. If some cochons had just shot the liver and lights out of a whole troop of mine, I would not like it at all and I assure you I have a sweeter disposition than your average Mexican officer, hein?”
“Yeah, we’re going to have to get our guys dug in a little better, once we get back. We don’t have to dig trenches around the whole town. Most of it’s mad at us. I’ll tell Ramos we’d better move to where we can watch the seaport and our backs at the same time.”
“Sacre bleu, what do you mean you’ll tell him, Dick? Ramos is a general, non?”
“Sure, on paper. But you know or I know he wouldn’t make a pimple on a real lance corporal’s ass. I think I can handle him. Ramos is an asshole, but even an asshole must want to live.”
*
Apparently Ramos didn’t. When they reported in he not only told them it was naughty to shoot up Mexican troops, but that he’d never ordered them out on patrol in the first damned place!
Colonel Scroggs and Major Royce were there on the dumber general’s veranda to back him. So it had to be true. Captain Gringo started to ask, “Then why in the hell did that guy calling himself Smith say… Never mind. Stupid question. But the guy sure had balls. Was he even one of us at all?”
Colonel Scroggs said, “He arrived yesterday afternoon aboard a smuggler we’ve been working with regularly. He had papers from the Cuba Libre leadership in New York that seemed in order. That’s all I really know about him. You say he’s dead?”
“Him, another SS man calling himself Nogales and, sorry guys, I think we sank your so-called smugglers, too. Obviously the Secret Service infiltrated the Cuba Libre Movement and they were playing a double game. Uncle Sam wants Cuba liberated. So they were running guns to you in an effort to make it easier. But Smith, at least, was more interested in picking up soldiers of fortune wanted by the U.S. Justice Department. So he acted cute and wound up dead. The hell with him. Do we have a secret agreement with Mexico, too, or is El Presidente just playing his own game by ear?”
General Ramos looked worried and said, “I am not in direct touch with any Mexican authorities, although, of course, the central committee has assured me Mexico would not interfere as long as we caused them no trouble here.”
Major Royce said, “You shouldn’t have shot up that Federale troop, look you!” But Captain Gringo just shrugged and said, “Okay, we did. That was my fault. You guys have the entire native Mexican population pissed off at us. That’s not my fault. Whether the Federales decide they’ve had enough of this shit when they find the remains of the troop my men and I just wiped ou
t or whether some locals sneak out begging to be rescued along with their chickens, we have to face the fact there’s a good chance the Mexican Army may take the gloves off and attack. I think we’ve got time to move the outfit to safer surroundings and dig in. If nobody misses that shot-up troop before sundown, and that’s not far off, they won’t know about it before morning. That gives us say fourteen or fifteen hours to make plans and we sure could use some good ones!”
The General looked like he was fixing to break down and cry. Scroggs said, “See here, Yankee, you were the one who caused all the trouble in the first danged place. I’ve a good mind to turn you over to the Mexicans and have done with the problem!”
Captain Gringo didn’t turn his head to look back at his men, still lounging around in the shade out front. He just asked softly, “Do you think that’s the most peaceful solution, Colonel?”
The Welshman, Royce, had been a real officer in a real army one time. So he stepped between them and said, “We’re all in the same pot together, look you! This is hardly the time to fight among ourselves.”
Scroggs said, “Maybe not. But this infernal Yankee’s the one who put us in the pot and, dang it, there just ain’t time to dig in the whole outfit! Besides, we got more recruits and supplies coming in tonight and we just got to hang on to the port, dug in or no!”
Royce said, “I may have the solution, you see. Suppose Walker, here, were to dig in, away from the center of things?”
General Ramos bleated, “What about me and my—Estralita?” So Royce said soothingly, “Neither you nor anyone on your general staff has done anything to make the Mexicans unhappy, sir. If they come at all they’ll have orders to arrest the men who shot up their comrades, not staff officers of a friendly government, and the Cuban Government in exile is a friendly government, to both Diaz and his American backers, look you!”
The General still looked undecided. He probably had trouble deciding when to take a crap. But Colonel Scroggs nodded and said, “By gum, that ought to work. We got our commissions to show and we can back each other that Walker, here, never shot anybody at our command! How ’bout that, Walker? You reckon you and the boys who done the deed could hole up somewheres till the rest of us can calm them greasers down?”
Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “It looks like we’ll have to, given so much backing by our superior officers.”
*
Yucatan was pretty fiat. But there was a gentle rise overlooking the unpopulated end of the harbor and, better yet, the one farm on the rise had a fresh water well. So Captain Gringo got his people around to it, carrying plenty of supplies and ammo, and told them to start digging in.
The subsoil was harder than marl and softer than granite, so the digging was tough, but then so would the walls of their trenches and spider traps be, so it evened out.
By sundown the men who’d been out on patrol were sweating like pigs and pretty well dug in. They were not alone. The general staff had made no effort to help, of course, but as word got around, other soldiers of fortune were joining them, armed with their weapons, packing their own supplies, and carrying any entrenching tools they could find. Some wanted to dig in with their adelitas as well, but Captain Gringo said it was to be a stag party. So though a few returned to town with their girls, most sent their adelitas packing. It was getting ominously obvious that something big was up and most of the knockaround guys recruited from all Latin America knew a lot more about Captain Gringo than the fat asshole who called himself a Cuban general. So by nightfall the rebel camp had split into two groups, the men with Captain Gringo and the boys with Ramos and his staff officers. That gave Captain Gringo almost a full company strength to work with and left the general staff with hardly enough flunkies to serve the drinks and shine the boots. They didn’t like it much.
Captain Gringo had just set up his one machine gun, tripod and all, to cover the landward slope, when Colonel Scroggs and Royce came out from town to bitch about it. As they joined him on the hill Scroggs glanced around at the others in the gathering darkness and said, “See here, Walker. Your orders were to hole up with the men the greasers may want to hang, not the whole infernal outfit!”
Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “Mexico executes by firing squad, not hanging. I didn’t ask these others to join us. They volunteered. If you don’t want ’em up here with me, tell ’em.”
Scroggs stuck out his chest, took a deep breath, and yelled, “All you men who weren’t involved in that skirmish this afternoon, come back to town with me!”
Most of them didn’t answer. A few chuckled dryly and a wiry tattooed deserter from the Royal Navy called back, “Not bloody likely! When the Dons take to shooting lads with blue eyes, they don’t aim careful enough for me, Colonel!”
There was a chorus of approval. Scroggs said, “Damn it, Walker, this is mutiny as well as misbehavior before the enemy!”
“What enemy? You said you could probably save your own asses by kissing theirs, Colonel. These guys, like me, don’t like to trust themselves to the mercy of a piss-pot dictatorship. That’s probably why we’re all still alive. We mean to stay that way. So call it what you like, we’re staying put until we see what Los Federales have to say about it!”
Scroggs might have huffed and puffed more. But Royce took his elbow and muttered something in his ear, and they moved back down the slope while they still could.
Someone on the hill struck a match to light a cook-fire in a trench. Captain Gringo called out, “No fires! We’ll eat cold rations and make them guess where we are up here for now” He saw he had everyone’s attention and added, “I don’t know how long we may have to hold out here, or if we can. The Federales may not even come. If they do, they’re only really after a few of us, remember. So if anyone has second thoughts, now’s the time to think ’em! Once we’re committed to battle up here, I have to tell you frankly I don’t know how in the hell I can get you out of here alive!”
The husky black, ’Bama, chuckled deep in his throat and said, “You can’t scare me, Cap’n. This chile’ means to stay right here ’til them sassy Mexicans either whups his black ass or decides to leave it alone!”
Turk Malone said, “You’re wasting your wind, kid. We all had the odds figured before we followed you up here. They’re lousy. So what? There’s no better place to run to and no better place to stand and fight. So get down off your fucking soap box and let’s dig in some more!”
That was as good a suggestion as Captain Gringo could come up with. So he found a spade and started digging deeper behind his mounted Maxim. At his side, Gaston supervised, seated on the edge of the pit, and lit a claro casually before he said, “Dick, I have been thinking.”
“You want to knock off the thinking and do some digging, damn it?”
“Mais non, I am a philosopher, not a gopher, and someone has to do some thinking around here right now. Has it crossed your adorable mind that we have been crossed double again, Dick?”
“Sure, Ramos and the other high-level Cuban officers have thrown us to the wolves. You just figured that out?”
“I don’t think Ramos is a Cuban. I think he is Spanish. If Scroggs and Royce were not Spanish agents as well, they would be helping us dig in, non?”
Captain Gringo started to tell him he was nuts. Then he rested on his spade and said, “Hmm, real soldiers of fortune would be sort of dumb to take their chances with pissed-off Mexican Federales, and it was Royce who came up with this grand suggestion. But, Jesus, talk about wheels within wheels!”
Gaston took a drag on his cigar and said, “Butcher Weyler is said to be a devious person, non? Consider what he has just accomplished here, by infiltrating the Cuba Libre Movement with a mere handful of big fibbers. The kingpin must be Ramos, of course. The central committee in New York would not have put him in charge had he spoken as stupidly to them. Ergo the stupid act is just an act. He is really working for the Spanish forces in Cuba. He probably commissioned Scroggs and Royce, along with other key officers, himself
. The Bedouin say that once a camel has its nose in one’s tent, the rest comes easily enough, hein?”
“Okay, so Ramos could be a Spanish spy. That would explain a lot. But what would be the point of all this bullshit if … Oh boy, never mind, I see it all now!”
But Gaston explained it anyway, saying, “Oui, as a double agent Ramos has been taking money raised by the Cuba Libre cause to gather all the professional soldiers who might manage a successful invasion of Cuba here in Mexico, where they can’t. By deliberately allowing his forces to run wild and annoy the local Mexican population, he has also assured Spain the men they fear may not be long for this world. One must admire a devil like Butcher Weyler. Those new things he calls concentration camps, whatever they may be, are the least of his inventions. He has how you say suckered Mexico into wiping out the best fighters Cuba can possibly recruit, non?”
“No. He hasn’t wiped us out yet.”
“True, but then, the night is still young.”
*
Though a full tropic moon was rising too big and bright to look real the western slopes of the hill were black as a tax collector’s soul. So Paco Robles was able to work his way too close for comfort before he was challenged and identified himself as a pal of Captain Gringo’s. The tall American had no use for unarmed kid recruits. But he and Gaston crossed over anyway to hear what the gossip in town was at the moment.
As Captain Gringo waved him in and offered him a smoke, the young tough asked him instead what the hell was going on. Paco said, “We heard the Cubans had split into two camps. If you are with this bunch, amigo mio, these must be the good guys. If me and my gang had guns we would join you. Hey, you got guns for us, amigo?”