Over the Andes to Hell (A Captain Gringo Western Book 8)

by Lou Cameron

She hadn’t been making obscene gestures, so, despite her costume, that hadn’t been it. She’d looked more scared than lusty. This fat slob probably got all the sex action around here anyway.

  They made small talk for a time and then, as the sun went down and the fireflies came out, Dom Luis excused himself with something about seeing the captain of the riverboat. He clapped his hands again and another servant girl, this one a naked Oriental, came out to lead the American to his quarters. As she switched on the lights he saw the Edison bulb was mounted in a revolving electric ceiling fan above a big brass bed. This was grand luxe indeed and he said so, in Spanish. The Oriental girl understood well enough to shrug and say something about Dom Luis being muy simpatico but he didn’t think her heart was in it.

  It was too early to turn in. But he knew Dom Luis expected a guy who’d been lost for weeks in the selva to act pretty bushed. So, while he had no intention of staying the night, he decided he’d better go through the motions.

  He undressed and hung his clothes and gun belt over the head rails of the bed, enjoying the cool breeze from the fan as he sat on the clean linen sheets. He saw they had indeed left a big pitcher of coconut water on the nearby dresser. He cursed Brigham Young as he thought back to the rum he’d missed on the veranda. But at least the stuff would be wet.

  His bare heel felt something cold under the bed. It was a chamber pot. That reminded him that he had to pee, so he did. He could see he was a bit dehydrated as he put an inch of very yellow urine in the bottom of the pot before stepping over to the dresser for a drink. He poured some of the pitcher’s contents into the thick glass tumbler beside it. He raised the glass to his lips. A bell rang inside his head. He normally didn’t sniff his drinks too carefully, but he normally didn’t stay as a house-guest with a known murderer, either.

  It wasn’t coconut water. He had no idea what it was, but he’d drunk a lot of coconut water in his time and this wasn’t it. It didn’t smell like any poison he knew. It hardly had any smell at all. Just a sort of juicy vegetable odor with a vaguely familiar whiff to it around the edges. He knew it would look funny if he didn’t drink anything at all after coming in from the selva with his tale of woe. So he poured the contents of the glass in the chamber pot, hoping his piss would disguise the skimmed milk appearance for now.

  He put the glass down and started to shove the pot under the bed with his bare foot. Then he saw what was happening down there and marveled, “What the hell …?”

  The stuff he’d poured in the pot was turning to thick goo. As he watched, it seemed to get even tougher-looking. He grimaced and reached in his pants for his jack knife before he hunkered down, bare ass, to watch the interesting chemistry. He probed the rubbery scum with the blade of the knife. Then he nodded and said, “Of course. Alcohol is alkaline, so you can mix it with latex. Piss is acid, so it coagulates latex to crude rubber. But what the hell would possess anyone to drink latex and … son of a bitch!”

  He rose, grim-faced, remembering where he was as he fought to control his temper. Dom Luis didn’t just kill people. He killed them dirty! Human gastric juices were almost pure hydrochloric acid. The sappy latex, having no particular taste and lacking the “rubber” smell of vulcanization, would go down smooth enough. Then, when it hit one’s stomach acids, lots of luck. An instant rubber ball you could neither digest nor throw up until you died, horribly, from what would look like some sort of jungle stomach upset to anyone curious enough to ask!

  As he put the knife away, there was a soft knock on the door and when he called, “Entrada,” the black girl came in, looking like she’d have been blushing if she’d been able to.

  He was stark naked, too. But what the hell, there was a lot of that going around. He nodded at her and asked, “Well?”

  The girl licked her lips and said, “I am called Varginha. Dom Luis says I am to make you happy.”

  She passed him to get on the bed, roll over, and spread her chocolate thighs with a resigned sigh. But not before he’d spotted the fresh lash mark across her back.

  It wasn’t easy, but he stayed on his feet and kept from rising to the occasion as he said gently, “He did, huh? He must have odd views on your average missionary. What were you trying to tell me before, Varginha?”

  The girl started to cry, but moved her hips teasingly and cupped her brown melon breasts up to him with her hands as she pleaded, “Don’t you like me, senhor? Dom Luis will be most cross if I fail to please you.”

  “I’ll bet. Where is he right now, Varginha?”

  “In his room, with La China. He told me to keep you company and, ah, keep you busy.”

  “Get me thirsty, too, I’ll bet. Did he tell you what was in that pitcher, honey?”

  The pretty Negress turned her face away with a shudder. He nodded and said, “Right. You did try to warn me, before they reminded you who you worked for with that whip. You’re kind of in a spot, for a nice girl, aren’t you?”

  The girl sat up, buried her face in her hands, and sobbed, “Oh, Senhor, I was a nice girl, once. They told me I was coming up the river for to be a cook. But that was months ago, and if I told you half the horrors I have seen, you would never believe me.”

  “I believe you. Do you want out?”

  “How in God’s name? Nobody leaves here alive. Just yesterday another white man came down the river, and I watched as Dom Luis entertained him out there on the veranda, as he was just entertaining you. They gave him latex and rum, too. He died horribly not two paces from where you were sitting when I tried to warn you.”

  “I told you I got your message and that we’re friends, Varginha. Cut the blubbering and tell me what else you know about the man they killed. Did you get his name?”

  “Si, it was Jose Coronado, I think.”

  “Son of a bitch!”

  “What is wrong? Do you know this Jose, senhor?”

  “I did. That oily slave master of yours knew all along who I was, if that deserter Jose got here ahead of me! Boy, Dom Luis is some cookie! He even kills people who come ratting to him on their friends!”

  He stepped over to the head of the bed and started to dress. Varginha said, “Are you not going to make love to me, senhor?”

  “Maybe later. If we get out of here alive. Don’t you have any clothes anywhere?”

  “No, senhor. Why? Is it possible you really mean to take me with you?”

  “I can’t leave you here. I guess basic black will have to do for now. If they don’t find me dead in bed by midnight they’ll swat you like a fly for failing.”

  He hitched on his gun belt, held out his left hand to her, and said, “Come on. Stick tight to me and keep your mouth shut.”

  Varginha raised his hand to her lips and kissed it as she rose from the bed, murmuring, “Oh, Mother of God, I thought I was meant to die in this terrible place!”

  He said, “I told you to keep your mouth shut, so do it!” Then he switched out the light and opened the door a crack. The coast was clear. He drew his .38 and led the naked girl out into the dimly lit hallway.

  They started down it toward the rear. She whispered, “There is a night guard walking the veranda, senhor,” and he hissed, “Gotcha. Shut up.”

  They were passing a door that stood a little ajar and funny sounds were coming from the room on the far side. Captain Gringo risked a peek. Then he blinked and took a closer look. What he saw looked impossible.

  Dom Luis was fucking himself in a mirror.

  The rubber baron stood, naked and pinkly obscene, facing a big standing mirror in the center of his room under another fan. As the baffled American watched, the Brazilian was thrusting his pelvis against that of his own image, gripping the edges of the mirror and grinning at himself like a shit-eating dog.

  Then Captain Gringo spotted the tawny curves of the Oriental girl on the far side of the mirror. She stood bent over, with her buttocks against the back of the mirror and her hands braced on her knees. Dom Luis was putting it to her through a hole in the mirror! He liked
pussy as much as the next man, but he obviously loved himself more than he had any right to. So he was trying for the best of both worlds. Screwing his own unlovely image while using the pretty girl’s snatch as a surrogate for what he lacked himself.

  Captain Gringo muttered, “Well, some guys collect stamps. Some guys have more unusual hobbies.” Then he led Varginha on.

  He stopped by the rear door and told her to be quiet. She was frozen with fear as he listened for the sound of footsteps on the planks outside. A million years later the night guard passed the dark doorway and a second later he was laid low with a fractured skull. He’d been watching for€ an attack from the brooding darkness around the house, not from within it.

  Captain Gringo led the Negress into the night, forcing her to run, not walk, for the nearest exit. They tore up the tracks until he was sure they weren’t being followed. Then he slowed to a walk and said, “Okay, doll, I think we made it. Just take it easy and get your breath back. We’ve still got some walking to do.”

  Varginha stood beside him in the dark, panting for breath as he looked around in the dim light for someplace to sit down. He led her over to a mossy fallen log. They sat down together. Then she was wrapped around him, sobbing silly grateful things about his saving her and making it hard to remember he already had a girl back with the guerrilla band they were trying to reach.

  That wasn’t all she made hard as she suddenly slid off the log to kneel between his knees and fumble for his fly. He said, “Hey, take it easy, Varginha. I like you, too, but I have an adelita who’s not going to like this very much.”

  Varginha had his erection in her hand, so it seemed silly to lie to her when she asked softly, “Don’t you feel anything for me, senhor?”

  He said, “Yeah, but you have to understand—”

  “Don’t worry,” she sighed in a hurt voice, “I was raised a servant. So I know my place.” Then she proceeded to swallow him whole.

  He said, “Hey, let’s not waste it!” as he peeled off his shirt and pants, threw them, on the ground behind her, and pushed Varginha on top of them to mount her properly.

  As she wrapped her smooth dark arms and legs around him and felt his paler shaft enter her, she sobbed, “Oh, God, it has been so long since I have been like this with a friend.”

  He said, “I wish you hadn’t brought that up, Varginha. Normally I’m a live-and-let-live guy, but that creepy Dom Luis is icky to think about when a guy has to take sloppy seconds.”

  She crooned, “I never gave myself like this to him. He is a nasty pervert with a tiny little thing.”

  “Oh, shit, you’re getting me soft.”

  She arched her back and said, “I won’t allow that. You don’t understand. Why do you think I am so excited? He has all of his harem frustrated half to death. Right now, poor China is taking it in the rear from that disgusting little monster and—”

  “Wait a minute. Are you saying he’s only been in you via the back door?”

  “Of course. He’s not man enough to fill a woman this way.”

  So Captain Gringo filled her as best he knew how, and Varginha seemed to love every inch of it.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Dom Luis sat fully dressed on his veranda the next morning, smoking a cigar and scowling at the honcho of his flagelado army as the mestizo reluctantly reported, “Not a sign of the American and that damned Negress, mi patron. We have scoured the selva in every direction, but—”

  “Idioto!” Dom Luis cut in, pointing at the river as he added, “We sent the steamboat away with an excuse. But that Jose said the big Anglo has a gang with him and they know too much. If only one of them rafts down the river to report our, uh, enterprise to the authorities, I will have you all boiled in oil!”

  Then he rose grandly as he heard the distant chuffing of a steam locomotive. He said, “The work train is coming in. I want you to make another sweep, farther out. As soon as they unload the rubber, take the train as far west as possible and have your men spread out from there, both north and south, understand?”

  Then, without waiting for an answer, he walked around the veranda to await the work train. It sounded like it was coming fast. Could something be the matter? That deserter had said the guerrillas had a machine gun and they may have been raiding farther up the line. But if the train was under attack he’d have heard the rattle of its Gatling guns.

  Dom Luis stood watching, puffing his smoke, as the gold-painted shay locomotive appeared between the trees on the far side of his big clearing. What in the hell did they think they were doing? It was moving too fast!

  The main tracks ended just a few yards away, and if they ever intended to stop in time …

  And then Dom Luis screamed in rage and terror as he saw the people leaping off the flatcars and fanning out as the locomotive kept coming and coming!

  The shout brought other guards out as the rubber baron started running along the planks on his stubby legs. He yelled, “Guerrillas have our train!”

  And then things got even more confusing as the forward Gatling gun on the gilded tender opened up, throwing hot lead down the track ahead of the ominously onrushing cowcatcher!

  At the Gatling, Captain Gringo shouted down to Gaston in the cab at the controls, “That’s enough, leave the throttle wide open and jump, for Pete’s sake!”

  Gaston said, “I do not jump for Pete. I jump for Gaston!” as he dove out to land in the grass and roll ass over-tea-kettle, but pistol in hand as he rose.

  Captain Gringo hosed the Gatling back and forth, raking the house as he cranked the handle of the old-fashioned but fast-firing weapon. He saw the portly Dom Luis go down as the stream of bullets chopped his legs out from under him. Then Captain Gringo, too, took a headlong dive from the tender as the cowcatcher slammed into the wooden bumper at the end of the tracks.

  The bumper of heavy timbers had been designed to stop a slowly moving freight, car at most. It didn’t even slow the gilded shay locomotive down. As the heavy engine ploughed on through and across the back lawn of Dom Luis’s mansion, the big American lay flat in the grass and kept his head down. It was well he did so. The shay crashed into the house and was somewhere in the middle of it when its momentum pooped out, it fell on its side, and the boiler blew.

  They’d filled the firebox to overflowing with hardwood soaked in the inflammable stinky-smoking latex so there’d been a lot of pressure in that boiler. Sheet tin roofing was still fluttering down as Captain Gringo bounded to his feet and cut back to the tree line to flop down next to Pancho, Diablilla, and his Maxim machine gun.

  It was timed close, but right. He’d just primed the weapon when a mob of bewildered flagelados appeared in the smoke around the ruins of the house. He didn’t know what the hell they expected to find there, but most of them were waving guns and yelling a lot, so he adjusted his windage and opened up with the Maxim.

  When he finished his first belt, there weren’t as many of them on their feet and those who were seemed to be running in the general direction of the great Atlantic Ocean.

  Captain Gringo put in another belt before he rose, bracing the gun on his hip, and called out, “Okay, advance in line of skirmish!”

  The long, ragged line of guerrillas moved across to take and dominate the crest of the hill that had once held the mansion of Dom Luis and still overlooked the village down by the water.

  Gaston fell in beside him and muttered, “Take the high ground, hein? I just counted Dom Luis among the parboiled. That Negress, Varginha, says her Chinese friend seems to have made it out the front door, doubtless running quite fast. She would be down there among the others we have yet to convince of the error of their ways. What do you suggest, plunging fire?”

  Captain Gringo yelled, “Hold and cover down, gang! If that guy down the slope isn’t waving his laundry at us, he wants a parley.”

  Captain Gringo and his comrades waited as a wary flagelado approached to within hailing distance, holding an undershirt on a stick. When the tall American
asked what he wanted, the flagelado leader called back, “We would like for to know your terms, senhor.”

  “I could ask, and get, unconditional fucking surrender, but I’m an easy going guy. I’ll give you flagelados one hour, repeat one. If you’re all on your way down the Putumayo when I take over the landing, then fine. If I see one man who’s ever owned a pop gun, he dies. Agreed?”

  “Senhor, we need time to think about this. There are Jivaro along the riverbanks. They may be annoyed at us for any number of reasons.”

  “That’s your problem. I’m annoyed at you, too. So are the peons you’ve been abusing for the late Dom Luis. I’d say your best chance of staying alive was out on the water. It’s not a hell of a good chance, but what do you expect, a lollypop?”

  “But, senhor, be merciful. Aside from headhunting Indians, many of my companions are wanted, farther east for, ah, past misunderstandings with the Brazilian police. The bargain you drive is a hard one. One could deny it was a bargain at all.”

  “You think so? Okay, just stick around for an hour. My people think I’m acting like a sissy. So I may have to execute any survivors with trimmings. Have you ever swallowed a latex cocktail, motherfucker?”

  “No, thank you, senhor. I was just leaving.”

  And so, less than an hour later, the surviving desperados were on their way down the Putumayo. None of them was going anywhere important, since Diablilla had spotted Jivaro scouts that morning. The Indians had signaled friendly intent toward Captain Gringo’s group. But some interesting shrunken heads figured to appear on the local selva scene soon.

  The slaves and peons they’d liberated of course went nuts and started a noisy fiesta. It went on all day and into the night and Gaston was trying to decide whether he wanted to get drunk, get laid, or both, when he found Captain Gringo seated alone on the dock.

  He said, “Well, my old and rare, we seem to have done it. You look a bit down in the mouth for a victory celebration, though.”

  Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “I think we’ve created a monster. You look pretty weird, too. Where’d you get that fancy ruffled shirt?”