“What about the guards?” said Captain Royce.
I lifted my undershirt slightly so I could spit. “Tell them Generalissimo Bierce sent you to interrogate the two women—to confirm frontline intelligence.”
The guards saluted and raised no alarm. Rachel stood away from the tent flap and affixed it behind us. Victoria sat at on a cot and looked at me wide-eyed. I pulled the undershirt from my head; Major Gillette pulled his off as well.
“Oh, Armstrong,” said Rachel, “I knew you’d come back.”
Major Gillette said, “Yes, ma’am we’re back—but, begging your pardon, the hard part will be sneaking out.”
“We shall not sneak,” I said. “We shall have a military escort.” I turned to Billy Jack. “Return to the plateau, get my clothes, and hightail it to Bierce with this message. Tell him we’re in the camp, have the women, and he needs to get here muy pronto, on his own—except for you, Sergeant—to meet with Matteo Rodríguez. Once he’s here, we can spring our trap.”
Billy Jack leapt from the tent faster than a jack rabbit chased by a coyote; he told the gaping guards as he sprinted past, “Must return to Generalissimo Bierce.”
Captain Royce kept watch from the tent flap.
Major Gillette uttered a thought that had not occurred to me. “Begging your ladies’ pardon, but might you lend us blankets? I reckon the Yankee General and I should cover ourselves a bit.”
“Oh, I suppose we should,” I said, and accepted a blanket from Victoria.
Captain Royce whispered: “The Minister of State is talking to the guards—now he’s coming this way!”
I tightened the blanket around me. “Are the guards with him?”
“One is.”
“Then our trap is already sprung. Quick, Major,” I said, “under the cots!” I dove beneath Victoria’s cot—and collided with a bag of luggage. She pushed the bag aside with her foot, sat down on the cot, and I was pinned. She draped a sheet, blocking my view.
The guard announced, “The Minister of State.” I heard Captain Royce fumble with the tent flaps. I heard only one pair of boots enter.
Matteo Rodríguez said, “What are you doing here, Captain?”
“Generalissimo Bierce sent me, your excellency. He wanted me to confirm intelligence we received on the road to Santiago.”
“What intelligence would that be—and why was I not informed?”
My impostor wife, Rachel, bless her heart, was ready with an answer: “Senator, I believe the Captain is trying to be discreet; it involves my husband.”
“That traitor Armstrong?”
“You call him a traitor, Senator. I call him, Autie.”
“Autie?”
“He oughta do this for me; he oughta do that for me.”
“Come now, woman, what is the meaning of this?”
“Well,” she said stifling a sob, “it’s like this, Senator: they found a man—or I should say a body, a corpse—by the road. It was horribly mangled, half eaten, even. Do you have mountain lions here?”
“Mountain lions—do you mean big cats, like panthers? Yes, we have them.”
“Well, it appears… one of their victims—oh, it is too horrible to contemplate—but I must face facts: it might be my husband.”
“Eaten by a panther?”
“They were attempting to identify the corpse. Generalissimo Bierce suspected it was my husband but was looking for some proof—a locket or a distinguishing scar.”
“And, well, was there?”
“We were still discussing it. I confess, Senator, it is hard for me to talk about; it is, as you can imagine, a very private matter, and I am so upset.”
Rodríguez addressed Captain Royce: “They told me you had Indians with you—three of them.”
“I sent them away,” said Rachel. “I didn’t want to discuss my husband in front of anyone but the Captain. He has been so very understanding.”
“Very well, then. Captain, you will report to me immediately after you have confirmation from Mrs. Armstrong.”
“That,” I said pushing aside Victoria’s legs, “will not be necessary: for I am here.” And I squeezed out from under the cot and rolled out of my blanket as surely as Cleopatra did before Julius Caesar.
“What the devil?”
“No, Bierce is still with the column. It is I, Generalissimo Armstrong Armstrong.” To Captain Royce, I said, “Keep your gun on that man.”
“Yes, I know who you are, but what is the meaning of this?” Rodríguez’s head twisted indignantly, looking one moment at Captain Royce’s revolver; the other at the half-naked muscular blond Indian rising before him; and then at Major Gillette clambering from beneath Rachel’s cot.
“The meaning,” I said, “is that the true traitor has now been revealed—and it is you, Matteo Rodríguez.” In the distance, la Montaña que Eructa belched its affirmation.
“How dare you!”
“It is daring, isn’t it—to have penetrated your camp, right beneath your nose.”
“The effrontery, the audacity!”
“Go ahead—say it: the impetuousness.”
“All I need to do is cry out and those guards will be here—and you will be dead.”
“You will be,” I said. “All we need to do is show them the Treasury money you’re stealing.”
“That is a matter of state.”
“It won’t be too hard, I reckon, to convince your men it’s a matter of larceny—especially once Bierce arrives. You’ve lost your man, you know.”
“Bierce would not betray me. I don’t believe that—you’re a liar, a proven liar.”
“We’ll see soon enough. He’s on his way.”
“You do realize that while you sit here, spinning your fantasies, that volcano is endangering us all. Let me make this clear: I will not submit to blackmail, but I am a businessman, and I am willing to cut you a businesslike deal. Join my men on our march, and I will see you safely off this island.”
“You will see us safely nowhere. Our safety, Senator, lies in our undershirts! Major Gillette, undershirt on your head!”
“Yankee General, sir, that is an order I never expected to hear.”
“Nor I to give,” I said, adjusting my own, “but we live in strange times. Now, Captain, you keep that gun on Señor Rodríguez and shout to the guards: ‘We’re coming through; we’ve been exposed to the plague.’ ”
Well, I must say, that announcement set the proverbial cat among the chickens. The Captain opened the tent flap to see the guards backing away to the sides.
“Tell them,” I said, “to clear a way for us to avoid infecting the army; tell them that Senator Rodríguez spat blood and has a burning fever; he is delirious; we need to evacuate him to Santiago; he doesn’t want to leave his men, but there is no alternative, so you are obliged to take him by force—hence, your gun, if we’re challenged.”
It was a tall tale but, given our bizarre circumstances, not entirely incredible. In any event, no one in the camp seemed to want to challenge us, and even Matteo Rodríguez kept silent—perhaps hoping that Bierce was in fact still on his side. We were lucky in that it was still night and most of the army slept; we had to bamboozle relatively few. Still, I give full marks to Captain Royce for seeing the captured Minister of State, two fake Indians with undershirts over their heads, the noble daughter of a Cavalry officer, and my impostor wife safely through the camp of a potentially hostile army.
With my vision partially obscured, I stumbled out of the camp and down El Camino Real.
“Captain, don’t look back, but can the pickets still see us?”
“I doubt it, Generalissimo; it is dark, and we gave them no reason for suspicion.”
“Excellent—then let’s move into the ditch. We’ll still make good time—but I’d rather be somewhat hidden if they come looking for us.”
He directed us down. I confess I slipped and slid—it was a messy passage—and Rachel did not appreciate my tactics for evading the enemy. “Really, Armstr
ong, why must we trudge through all this ridiculous dirt and mud when there’s a perfectly good road?”
I tore the undershirt from my head and hissed: “Keep quiet and keep moving.”
“Such subterfuge will not save you,” said Matteo Rodríguez. “You are but a handful of Americans. I have the people of this island behind me. Your sole ally is that idiotic, bullying court jester on the throne—and soon you won’t have him. Captain,” he said to Royce, “treason remains a capital offense. You are endangering your career—and your life—by serving these foreigners. They don’t care about you or about Neustraguano. They don’t care about healing our island’s divisions. They are mercenaries; they are guns for hire; they work for the United States and Mexico, not for us; they seek to divide us for their own profit.”
“We’re not the ones robbing the treasury,” I said.
“Think about it, Captain,” Rodríguez continued. “Why would any foreigner serve that clown El Caudillo—unless it was for personal profit?”
“Who speaks treason now?” said Victoria, and even in the dark I sensed her eyes spitting peppered flame into Rodríguez. “You call the king—our nation’s protector—a clown!”
“Consuela you do not understand how he abuses your loyalty and patriotism.”
“He did not kidnap me. He did not betray my father—and all that he fights for. El Caudillo defends our traditions and our Church—that is his right and his duty. But you—you are practically a rebel; all of you in government, aren’t you? You’re all on the side of the rebels!”
“We are on the side of peace and progress.”
“You are a revolutionary, just like the rest of them!”
The volcano fired an enormous cannonball of smoke into the sky.
“It may be too late anyway,” said Matteo Rodríguez. “For all of us—too late.”
I said, “We won’t be late if we keep moving.”
I set us a sprightly pace—so sprightly that it left Rodríguez and the women too winded to talk, and that meant I heard, just at the first glimmerings of dawn, the crunch of boots, lots of boots, marching up and down again. They were ahead of us—two horsemen at the forefront: Bierce and Billy Jack, Bad Boy trotting behind them.
We clambered up from the ditch, and I went forward.
I said to Bierce: “I thought I told you to come alone.”
He looked me over, smiled, and said, “Trifle chilly this morning, isn’t it, Marshal, to be dressed like that?”
Billy Jack tossed me my uniform. He held Major Gillette’s clothes as well.
“That, Bierce, will soon be remedied,” I said. “On the other hand, your direct disobedience to my order…”
“Oh, we’re back to that are we? Who has seniority? I reckon I do Marshal. And I have an army. I hate to travel without one. I see you have our friend Matteo Rodríguez. What do you intend to do with him?”
“I expect he’ll come in useful some way or another—but the chief challenge before us, Bierce, is getting off this island, isn’t it?”
“There is only one way to do that,” said Matteo Rodríguez, stepping forward. “Before I left la Ciudad de Serpientes I ordered the Navy to port; every sailor, every Marine is in barracks. There is only one boat that can carry us away—the one commanded by Captain Wakesmith—and it awaits behind Santiago.”
“It awaits to be sunk,” said Bierce.
“You can’t do that; it’s our only hope.”
“Well then, Senator, there is no hope—as I always suspected—and all your hopes are going to a muddy and watery grave.”
I pulled on my Generalissimo pants, and with them my martial ardor soared. “All right, Bierce, we march back to Santiago. Do you want the garrison column? It’ll slow us up a mite.”
“You get dressed, Marshal, and you can take my column. I’ll ride ahead and take command of the garrison troops. We’ll attack the enemy with our full force.” The volcano rumbled. “And we better be damn quick about it.”
CHAPTER TWELVE In Which All Hell Busts Loose
Rarely in military history, I would wager, has a military column been led by a Generalissimo walking in full regalia, along with a Major in civilian dress, a Captain holding a Minister of State at gunpoint, two highly attractive women, a large black dog, and a mounted Indian. Andrew Jackson at New Orleans may have done something similar, but I doubt it.
Sergeant Esteban’s platoon cheered at our approach. I shouted, “Eyes front!” But, of course, Rachel and Victoria had no idea what that meant, so they waved at the cheering soldiers. Nevertheless, I kept our column in good form, saluted El Cid as we marched past, and led our force over the bridge, around the stone wall, and to a meadow outside the smoldering embers of Santiago. Here I halted the men. Lest they be discouraged by the sight of Santiago’s ruins, I turned to them and declared, “It is from here, men, that we have driven the enemy. He now hides over that summit, lurking behind the river, with a volcano to his rear. He thinks that volcano is an ally—that it will scare us away—but it is really his enemy. He has no place to run. We will engage the enemy and destroy him.”
The men huzzahed, and I raised my kepi in acknowledgment, then stepped aside to confer with my officers on our plan of action. Rachel and Victoria joined our councils, because—well, where else were they to go? I treated as them as honorary “filles du régiment.” (Do you remember that delightful operetta, dearest one?)
More important, I spotted Marshal Ney and Edward grazing contentedly in a picket line of horses. I sent Billy Jack to fetch them. I also saw a clump of disgruntled men in arm and leg irons wielding shovels. Apparently, Obregón had found a use for the prisoners: as a burial detail.
When Billy Jack returned with the horses, I outlined my plan.
“Gentlemen, Captain Obregón is on the reverse slope of that summit, keeping an eye on the enemy. The rebels have the river to their front, the volcano to their back, and I presume armies coming from the west. I reckon our foe outnumbers us greatly, but he’s also penned in. We need to disrupt him before he strikes.”
“Begging your pardon, Yankee General, sir, but I seem to recollect that you had some trouble with Indians in a similar situation.”
“Major, we will discuss that later—except to state that you have been misinformed and that I have better commanders this time; you among them.” I handed him Edward’s reins and said, “I’m giving you temporary command of the column. Take it over the summit, reinforce Captain Obregón, assess the enemy’s position and strength, and get back here as fast as you can. You are my eyes and ears. Your report will determine our next move.”
“Yes, sir!” Gillette saluted and I heard him give the order: “Come on boys, follow me up the hill, quick step!” I could trust that man.
To Billy Jack, I said, “Sergeant, I want you to find the jungle trail that leads from the summit to the enemy. There must be a land bridge. Is it guarded? Can we take it? Can we attack from it?”
He gave his horse a moccasin kick and shot past Major Gillette.
To Royce I said, “Captain, I’ll retain you as an aide. Your first task: find the former Minister of State a shovel. He can join those gravediggers.”
“This is an outrage,” said Matteo Rodríguez.
“Consider it an opportunity,” I said. “You might find your buried integrity and conscience.”
Rachel took my arm. “That’s telling him, Armstrong!”
Matteo Rodríguez shook his grey-templed head. “You are a meddling fool. You have no idea of the character of the man you serve. He is a nasty, blustering, belligerent idiot. His ignorance and arrogance have torn this country apart. Don’t you see that?”
Emboldened by Rachel’s grasp, I said, “What I see, Señor Rodríguez, is a man who has betrayed his king; who conspires with the enemy; and who is a pharisee rather than a patriot. You, Señor Rodríguez, are so consumed by your own conceit, your own precious false virtue, that you would sell your country to those who would destroy it.”
Victori
a grabbed my other arm and snarled at Rodríguez like an impassioned chihuahua, “Eres un cerdo y un cobarde!”
“Whatever she said, I second that! My duty is to El Claudio. He hired me to smite his foes, to punish traitors, and to defend this country—and that’s just what I’ll do. Captain Royce, take this traitor away and get him a shovel. If the graves are already dug, have him shovel horse dung. He’s a politician, after all.”
Royce jabbed his revolver into Rodríguez’s back. “Move on, traitor.”
Victoria squeezed my arm and said, “El Caudillo was wise to choose you. You have vindicated his trust. You are a true hero of Neustraguano. You are as brave as you are strong; as wise as you are daring; a patriot for our country.”
“Yes, Victoria, that is undoubtedly true—and I am nothing if not loyal.”
“I’d like you to remember that,” said Rachel tugging on my other arm.
I found a shady tree for us to sit beneath: Rachel, Victoria, and I. Bad Boy stood guard and I draped Marshal Ney’s reins over a branch.
“Well,” said Rachel, “this really is the most perfect place for a picnic—a wonderful view of a burnt-out city, gravediggers, oh, and of course, a volcano providing lovely ashy skies. What could be more delightful?”
“We are here for a council of war, Rachel.”
“Oh—every girl’s dream, to attend a council of war.”
“When Bierce gets here, I’ll have a plan.”
“I’ll bet he has one already—and if I were you, Armstrong, I wouldn’t trust him.”
There was a rattle of musketry in the distance. Bad Boy howled.
Victoria said, “It is a battle—behind us.”
I stood and looked at the ridge. The firing was sporadic, probably inconsequential, but I had to see for myself. I couldn’t sit beneath a bower when there was fighting to be done. I looked at Bad Boy. His barking showed that he too yearned for the fray—but duty demanded something else.
Armstrong Rides Again! Page 20
