by Lou Cameron
The Panard did. They were going close to forty, firing their pistols from either side, as they ploughed into the roadblock. Most of the screaming Segovians got out of the way, just, as they hit the wagon parked broadside across the road and tore it to flying kindling wood as they kept going. They blew a tire in the process and Captain Gringo had to fight like hell to keep them more or less on the wagon trace as they rode the rim. But the resultant cloud of dust and crazy zigzags helped a lot as bullets going even faster chased them out of sight.
“Slow down!” Gaston pleaded, trying to reload as the Panard tried to shake itself to pieces under them. But Captain Gringo said, “We cut the line to the river too late, dammit. Our only hope is to get there before they’ll be expecting us, see?”
“Merde alors, is this your idea of sneaking up on a position? We are making more noise than a steel mill munching cold scrap iron backwards!”
Captain Gringo spotted a familiar lighting-struck tree they’d passed coming the other way a lot slower, and said, “When you’re right, you’re right. The boat landing’s less than a quarter mile away now.”
Then he drove into the tree.
He’d hit the brakes as he aimed for it, of course, so the bump wasn’t all that bad. But Gaston snorted in disgust and said, “I told you that you did not know how to drive these things. Now look what you’ve done.”
Captain Gringo knew what he’d done. So he set the choke rich in hopes of periodic backfires as he shifted the gearing to idle, but revved up the engine with the hand throttle. Then he said, “Let’s go. They ought to be able to hear us coming for miles.”
They did. At the normally unguarded river landing the machine gun squads and their two noncoms listened in silence for a time before someone muttered, “What could be taking them so long? I hear the moaning of their engine, but it seems to just hang there in the night, as if it was neither coming nor going.”
It was just as well he was a buck private. The sergeant in command of the special unit growled, “Let me do the thinking here. That last message before they cut the wire said the traitors were probably coming this way in a stolen horseless carriage. How often have you heard a cricket chirp so loudly, eh?”
Then, since he had some brains as well as ears, he added half to himself, “They may have stopped for to fix a flat. It is true they don’t seem to be moving.”
His assistant squad leader asked, “Could they be stuck? It is said horseless carriages tend for to bog down where an ox cart may still get through. That is for why sensible people have no use for the noisy things in the first place, no?”
The sergeant stepped out into the roadway for a better view. There was nothing to see, of course. But as he stood there listening to the distant whine of a laboring engine he could reflect that at least if they were not yet in sight, they could not see him and the nice trap he’d set up yet.
He had a machine gun in the brush at either side of the wagon trace, with their muzzles trained to draw an elongated X of crossfire for the famous Captain Gringo to drive into. It would look good on his record, in the end, for to be the machine gunner who machine gunned the most notorious machine gunner in all Central America. The burly sergeant had no idea why he was supposed to do such a thing. Until most recently he’d thought the soldiers of fortune who’d trained him had been on the same side. But a man of ambition never argued with the junta. Some of their other orders had been rather strange in the past. But he was a sergeant instead of a mere private because he’d shown them he knew for how to follow orders and not ask foolish questions.
His assistant across the road stood up from behind his own dug-in gun to observe, “That distant motor car can’t be moving, Sergeant. Do you think it could be a trick? Those bastards must be most sneaky if it was only tonight our beloved leader discovered they were really traitors, no?”
The sergeant frowned and replied, “Perhaps we’d better send out a couple of scouts for to see what could be delaying the bastards.”
The soldiers of fortune, who’d circled in silently, didn’t want the group scattered, of course. So as the burly noncom turned to designate two scouts Captain Gringo and Gaston leaped out of the tall grass east of the road, pistols blazing.
The sergeant went down bawling like a stuck pig, gut-shot by Gaston as Captain Gringo blew away the crew of the nearest machine gun and dropped behind it. The crew chief across the moonlit road of course swung his own Maxim around to open up on the suddenly captured position. It was a good idea and he knew what he was doing. But he made two basic mistakes. He assumed Captain Gringo would be dumb enough to remain in a known position and he failed to shift his own as he chopped a lot of brush to splinters with a withering stream of hot lead.
Then Captain Gringo rose from the shrubbery a good fifty feet away, the other Maxim armed and braced on one hip, to show them all how the art was practiced. It only took him one belt to chop all eight screaming survivors to hash. So he dropped the now empty Maxim to follow Gaston out onto the boat landing.
They never did find out what had happened to Phyl Blanchard’s steam launch. But the bigger and faster river cruiser some local big shot had left handy was more luxurious in every way, including a well-stocked bar, so they had no complaints as they steamed off down the Segovia, counting their money.
There were no telegraph or telephone wires between Ciudad Segovia and the sleepy coastal port of Gracias a Dios. Better yet, Gaston was able to scout up a steamer purser he knew before they had to spend even one night in the flea-bag posada. So the dapper little Frenchman was bemused to find his young friend nursing a gin and tonic in the ship’s lounge with such a world-weary expression on his face.
Gaston sat down at the corner table with him, saying, “Eh bien, we are under way. The adorable purser assures us we may make Limón within the week and have you noticed the two lonely-looking muchachas trying to ignore us from their own table across the lounge?”
Captain Gringo shot a morose glance at the two not bad Hispanic females Gaston was talking about and muttered, “I’ll take the one in the middle. Don’t you ever think about anything but getting laid, Gaston?”
“When I just had a fine dinner and there is nothing else to worry about? Surely you jest. I would say the older one is more my type. The younger one is more attractive. Mais one must be practique as well as sex-mad. Shall we send them a drink now or let them lust for us a while? I checked with the purser. They are traveling alone, and we are the only single male passengers. It should be soup of the duck, non?”
Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “Non. I feel too shitty.” He pointed his chin at a folded newspaper on the table as he added, “I was hoping there’d be something in the papers I picked up before coming aboard. But there isn’t a word about a civil war up in the high country yet.”
“Eh bien, that species of purser would have charged us much more had he suspected we were on the run in a serious manner. By the time we reach Limón the Costa Rican papers will no doubt have all the details of the mess we left behind for the junta to explain. Ah, regard how hard the older one is trying to avoid my eye! That is a sure sign she admires me, non?”
“I know how flirting works down here. That’s one of the things I’m blue about tonight. I guess Angelita will make out okay. Her side figures to win, once they figure out why they were paying such high taxes. But I sure seem to be hell on women and, I dunno, that younger one across the way looks sort of dumb and innocent.”
Gaston told him to speak for himself as he picked up the paper and spread it open to use as his own version of Spanish fan. Then, as he lowered his lashes just in time to keep from letting the lady who wasn’t looking at him see he wasn’t looking at her, he spotted an interesting news item and, having plenty of time, decided he might as well read it. When he had, he asked Captain Gringo, “Did you read this tale of a white goddess living in the jungle with wild Indians, Dick?”
Captain Gringo snorted in disgust and said, “Not past the heading. People are
always finding a white goddess ruling a savage jungle tribe. The one I met in Panama that time was an albino San Blas, remember?”
“Probably not as fondly as you. This particular white goddess some gum runners just reported seems to be ruling over the Lenca, in the spinach we just passed through, both ways.”
“So what? We already knew there were Lenca in those woods. Poor Phyl found out the hard way.”
Gaston handed him the paper as he shook his head and said, “I do not think so. Regard how this white savage who for some reason seems to be conducting wild fertility rites to the beat of savage drums is said to wear fresh scars as well as war paint on her blond nothing else. And the gum runners who spied on the Lenca rites say she wore a little silver pistol on her otherwise naked hip! Do you suppose—?”
But Captain Gringo shushed him to finish the article eagerly. When he had he grinned and said, “It works. We heard the Lenca we helped yelling at the others to stop, and they have to know antidotes to their own arrow poison. But how are we supposed to rescue old Phyl now?”
Gaston chuckled and replied. “We can’t. Mais how do you know she is in distress? If the Indians allowed her to keep the gun you gave her, she could hardly be their prisoner, hein?”
Captain Gringo laughed like hell and said, “If I know Phyl and her, ah, scientific interest, it could be the other way around. It sounds like fun for all concerned.”
Gaston sighed and said, “Oui, and we, alas, are in no position to aide her in her scientifique research!”
Captain Gringo smiled thoughtfully at the girls across the lounge as he replied, “That’s true. But what the hell, we may get to start our own research project between here and Limón, right?”
“Oui, anatomy has always been my favorite subject, and regard how the older one is flashing her ankle now!”
About the Author
Lou Cameron (June 20, 1924 - November 25, 2010)
Was an American novelist and a comic book creator. The film to book adaptations he wrote include None But the Brave starring Frank Sinatra, California Split, Sky Riders starring James Coburn, Hannibal Brooks starring Oliver Reed and an epic volume based on a number of scripts for the award winning CBS miniseries How the West Was Won (not to be confused with the novelization by Louis L’Amour).
Between 1979 and 1986, using the pseudonym “Ramsay Thorne”, Lou Cameron wrote 36 Renegade adult western novels featuring as protagonist Richard Walker, better known as “Captain Gringo”.
He has received awards such as the Golden Spur for his Western writings. He wrote an estimated 300 novels.
More on Lou Cameron
The Renegade Series by Lou Cameron, Writing as Ramsay Thorne
Renegade
Blood Runner
The Fear Merchant
Death Hunter
Macumba Killer
Panama Gunner
Death in High Places
Over the Andes to Hell
Hell Raider
The Great Game
Citadel of Death
The Badlands Brigade
The Mahogany Pirates
Harvest of Death
Terror Trail
Mexican Marauder
Slaughter in Sinaloa
Cavern of Doom
Hellfire in Honduras
Shots at Sunrise
River of Revenge
Payoff in Panama
Volcano of Violence
Guatemala Gunman
High Seas Showdown
Blood on the Border
Savage Safari
The Slave Raiders
Peril in Progreso
Mayhem at Mission Bay
Shootout in Segovia
… And more to come every month!
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