by Lou Cameron
Forbes objected, “Nonsense! It would be suicide for them to attempt a crossing if all they have is small arms!”
Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “We made it across without too much trouble tonight, and one of us was a sissy girl.”
“Yes, but my men had the drop on you lot as you waded ashore, if you’ll remember.”
“I do. Like I said, there was only three of us, and you had no more than a squad or more of constabulary to stop us. What if there’d been a hundred or more of us firing from the hip as we came?”
“Well, there wasn’t; and thanks to you, we have a machine gun to set up there as well, eh what?”
“If it’s chambered for your ammunition, sir. I used up most of the belt on my way out. I’d better have a closer look at that Maxim. If it’s chambered for thirty-thirty—and that’s what most guns fire in this neck of the woods—lots of luck! I couldn’t help noticing your constabulary was armed with Enfields, and they don’t take Yankee ammo rounds worth shit!”
*
That part turned out okay. Governor Forbes got them down to the guardroom fast as hell, and to everyone’s relief, the British-made Maxim was chambered to fire British ammo after all. It figured British gunrunners would run British guns to Nicaraguan gunslicks, as soon as you studied on it some. As Captain Gringo checked the machine gun out, Gaston asked Forbes if he had any heavier weapons on hand at all. Forbes said, “Well, we do have one four-pounder to fire salutes with. But I fear all our ammunition is blank. It’s just not considered cricket to fire on vessels entering the harbor with anything more serious.”
Gaston sighed and said, “Eh bien, that is what I feared you would tell me, M’sieu. I am trés formidable with a field gun, but I have never been able to hit anything important with a blank round; and naturally your adorable little sunset gun will have been mounted as usual on a stationary post?”
Forbes said, “Naturally,” and Gaston muttered, “Merde!”
Captain Gringo snapped the action of the Maxim shut and opined, “Well, if I can get somebody to help me stuff this one belt with fresh ammo, that would mean one belt at least to work with.”
Forbes asked if he thought that would be enough, and he said, “No. This soggy belt holds no more than two hundred rounds, and a machine gun fires six hundred rounds a minute. Add it up, sir.”
Forbes did, grimaced and said, “I’ll see if our ordnance men can improvise more belts out of canvas. It doesn’t look too complicated. How many machine gun belts are we talking about, Mr. Crawford?”
“At least a dozen. By the time they’re used up, we’ll have stopped them or it won’t matter. It all depends on how dumb and brave they are, see?”
“No, I fear I don’t see! Surely no mere guerrilla band could stand up to so much automatic fire as you’re suggesting, sir!”
Captain Gringo growled, “Suggesting it, hell, I’m telling you one machine gun could probably hold one section of the line long enough to matter. If they begin their attack with an artillery barrage or cross upstream to hit us from another direction, it’s been nice knowing you!”
“I say, how could they get across anywhere but the ford? The water’s over ten feet deep, a good twenty miles inland!”
“Is there a law saying a guy wouldn’t rather walk twenty miles upstream than charge a machine gun emplacement head-on, Governor? They might not do it that way. They have a whole empty town to work with, mostly made out of wood; and the last time I looked, wood still floated the same as always!”
Forbes grimaced and said, “You do paint a pretty picture, don’t you?” Then he took out his pocket watch, looked down at it and said, “Well, I doubt from what you’ve told me they intend to attack tonight, and it’s perishing late. Perhaps we’d all better sleep on it and see if things don’t look brighter in the morning. You two will want to stay here at Government House for now. The only decent hotel in Zion’s been boarded up, even if it wasn’t too far for me to get my hands on you in a hurry, eh what?”
Neither of them asked just how he meant that. They didn’t want to know. So the governor led them outside, found an aide who didn’t seem to be doing anything more important and told him to show the soldiers of fortune up to the guest rooms on the top floor.
The aide did, and things began to look brighter already. Captain Gringo and Gaston each got his own cozy room under the mansard roof of corrugated iron. The somewhat Spartan quarters were clean, and both the walls and bed linens were white. As soon as they were alone in the room assigned to Gaston, Gaston murmured, “Eh bien, you got Dodd’s neck out of the noose without putting ours in it. But from that point on you lost me! You were shitting the bull about us helping them hold out here, non?”
Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “We have to. We have no other choice. The only way we could get out of here without a boat is on foot through soggy country infested with civil war as well as snakes.”
“True, but we have managed to wade through snakes and civil wars before, non? We could step on a snake if we just started running now. We could stumble into other noisy people in a country where noise seems to be the national sport. Mais if we stay here we are certain to trade shots with El Chino’s pirate crew!”
“We just did, and we came out all right, didn’t we?”
“Oui, another reason I never wish to meet El Chino again, Dick! One tends to doubt he likes us as much, now, and he still has at least three more machine guns to play with than you do, as good as you are!”
“Screw the automatic weaponry. Is there any chance you could improvise some sort of warheads for that sunset gun? I’ve never forgotten the time you fired tomato cans out of an old cannon.”
Gaston chuckled, but said, “Oui, that was trés amusé. But that time I had a smoothbore Spanish cannon and black powder to work with. To fire anything worth lobbing up the rifled bore of a four-pounder, with cordite, requires considerable forethought as well as caution; and if we had that much time, we would not need a big gun in the first place, Dick!”
Captain Gringo said, “Forbes was right. We’re too tired and talked-out to think clearly. Hit that sack and think on it. I’ll be right next door if you need me.”
“Merde alors, do I look like that kind of a boy?”
Captain Gringo laughed and went next door. He sat down and hauled off his boots. He was mildly surprised to find his socks were still wet. It felt like longer than that since they’d forded the Mission River with Olivia. He wondered where the redhead was right now. Probably staying with friends here in Zion. He wondered why he wondered about redheads when he felt so bushed. He wondered why he had a semi-erection when he stripped all the way and gave himself a quick whore bath with a washrag and the water basin on a sideboard. Then he flipped off the Edison bulb and climbed into bed. The mattress on the iron bedstead was a little Old School-firm, but the clean sheets felt delicious against his naked skin and, Jesus, it would be good to get a good night’s sleep after the rough day he’d just had.
So he’d have been mighty pissed off to have anyone come in to ask if he was still awake, if it had been anyone but a luscious redhead wearing nothing but the chemise she’d left home with under her more sedate Gibson girl outfit.
There was just enough light coming in from the street lamp out front to show him she had let her red hair down to frame her beautiful face like a church window as she calmly proceeded to climb in bed with him, explaining, “I’ve been waiting up here for hours, it seems.”
He made room for her with his hips, but took her in his arms as he grinned and answered, “Me too. I was afraid you’d gone to stay with friends, and Governor Forbes sure is turning out to be one hell of a friend of mine!”
He started to kiss her. Olivia turned her face away and said, “Wait, Dick. A few ground rules, first. I have no friends to stay with here in Zion. Its mission was started by bloody Mormons, and we Congregationalists don’t talk to them.”
“Who cares? You have a friend to stay with, here and now!”
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She didn’t object to his hand on her breast, which felt even better than expected, but she said, “I’d better tell you I’m a faithful married woman before we go any further, Dick.”
He frowned at her and said, “Oh, sure you are. Anyone can see that. Can we get this chemise off, Doll? Jesus, you’re built!”
She said, “Stop that. We have all night for sex, dear. I just want to explain my position, first.”
“What’s the matter with the missionary position, at least to start? You’re a missionary, aren’t you?”
“I’m a missionary’s wife, and I don’t intend to leave Hiram, ever! We were married in church and he’s been a good husband to me, in his fashion. So I’ll let you have me, but I want no nonsense about me running away with you afterwards, see?”
He was beginning to. He smiled at her incredulously and asked, “Are you afraid I’ll wind up proposing to you, for God’s sake?”
And she sniffed. “Coo, it happens all the time. Some of you men just can’t seem to understand how a woman with, well, her own needs, can still feel true to her husband in her own way.”
He nodded and said, “Yeah, he did seem a little old for you, come to think of it.” And she said, “Don’t be beastly. I’ll not have you talking behind my husband’s back, Dear. It’s not Hiram’s fault that he simply, ah.. .can’t get it up anymore.”
He was up pretty good, himself, right now. So he said, “Right. I get the picture. We’re not cheating on your husband. We’re just going to fuck.”
Olivia sniffed indignantly and said, “Oi, watch your bloody language! I’ll have you know you’re talking to a fucking lady!”
He sure was, once he’d kissed her to shut her up and mounted her to get in her as best he could with that damned shift in the way. Olivia moaned, “Oh, that feels lovely, Dick! I had no idea you were so tall! And you may be right about this bloody chemise!”
So he worked it off up over her head as she bumped and ground under him, and as he settled back down against her lush, naked torso, she wrapped both her arms and legs around him to sob, “Coo, it does feel ever so much nicer, stark bloody bare. But please don’t get carried away and tell me you love me while we’re coming, dear!”
He laughed and said, “Hey, who’s excited?” as he proceeded to screw her silly. Thanks to his earlier adventure on the kitchen floor with little Rosalita that same day, he was able to keep going longer than she was probably expecting, since even a grown man would tend to come quick as a schoolboy in anything as nice as this. But thanks to how nice it was, he had no intention of even slowing down in the foreseeable future. Olivia was a fantastic lay as well as a real looker, in or out of her clothes. So the results were most pleasing to both of them. She purred, “Oh, I love your stamina, Dick! Not you, mind; it would be wicked for a girl to love any man but her husband, but … Jesus, if only Hiram could do me like this even once a bloody month …”
He didn’t want to hear about her in bed with other men, whether they could do her right or not, and it would have been rude as hell to comment that any man who could sleep with such great company and do it less than once a month to her had to be sick as well as old. He was pretty sure he could come in her skilled, pulsating snapper with a bullet in his head. But it felt even greater to ejaculate in her, hard, while he was wide awake and she—from the way she was moving her trim hips—was even more so.
She sighed and said, “Oh, rats, I feel your love juice running down the crack of me arse, and I was almost there!”
He didn’t answer. He kept moving it in and out of her. It was easy. She felt even better inside, now, tight with pending orgasm and slicked with both their juices. She must have liked it too, because she suddenly sobbed, “Oh Lord, strike a bloody light, I’m really … cominggggggg!” She sure was, and he wanted to, so he started pounding harder as Olivia gasped, “Coo, give a girl a chance to catch her bleeding breath, you animal! I’m too sensitized and you’ve got me so excited I’m … oh, oh, yessssssss!”
He seemed to have created a monster, once he’d brought her to full climax the first bashful time. For she beat him to his own climax with yet another of her own, and when he finally came in her the second time, she had her nails dug into his buttocks and was begging him not to stop, not to ever stop, and even moaned some words of love her husband might have been upset to hear.
But when he rolled her on her hands and knees to see if a change of position would inspire him to new greatness, or at least keep him going in the insatiable redhead, Olivia murmured conversationally, “I didn’t really mean that—about not ever having such a loverly dong up me before, I mean. There’s nothing I love better than my own true lover’s dong, if only he could put it in me more often.”
He didn’t answer. He was getting tired of her silly game, even if her pale derriere wasn’t boring him at all as he watched himself going in and out between its soft cheeks in the soft light, dog style.
She giggled and murmured, “Oh, this feels so wicked, even if it does feel loverly. I’m not sure the church would approve of this position, do you, Dick?”
He said, “Let’s not tell anyone, then. Ah, could you arch your spine a bit more, Doll?”
She could and did, saying she was so glad he understood that nobody was ever to know about what they were doing, since some might not understand. He assured her as he screwed her that he understood her position perfectly. So she suggested they try some other positions; and for a man who’d intended to get a good night’s sleep, Captain Gringo got hardly any that night. But in truth he had no complaints. A guy could always catch up on his sleep alone, and she said sleeping alone was a perishing bore, too.
From the way she was keeping him awake, Olivia had been doing a lot of that lately.
*
She slipped out before dawn, of course, warning him she’d just never forgive him if he breathed a word about her odd views on marital fidelity to a living soul. So he promised, and having promised, saw no point in even telling Gaston when they had breakfast together downstairs in the constabulary mess. The governor wasn’t there. They didn’t ask where he ate breakfast. They didn’t care. They washed down their awful rations with pretty good tea and went out to explore the situation on this side of the river.
They found a waterfront bar open, asked a few questions as they inhaled some gin and tonic, then strolled around the slightly larger settlement of Zion without learning much they could use to keep the guerrillas out of it.
Like Gilead across the river, Zion had begun as a missionary outpost, in this case one established by English Mormons. Neither the Latter-day Saints nor the Congregationalist missionaries who’d set up shop across the river—albeit on the same handy natural harbor—had asked either Nicaragua’s or Great Britain’s permission in the beginning. The few local Indians had been happy enough about the food and medicine their mysterious paleface friends from who-knew-where were willing to provide. But it was up for grabs how many of them took the religious messages that went with the good stuff seriously. Those few Indians who knew anything at all about Christian teachings tended to be lukewarm Roman Catholics while, naturally, the more assimilated Nicaraguan mestizos or Spanish-speaking breeds along the Mosquito Coast considered themselves pure Spanish Catholics, no matter how much their Indian bloodlines showed. For some reason, Moravian missionaries farther up the coast seemed to have more luck turning Mosquitos into nominal Protestants; and neither Zion nor Gilead had ever amounted to much until, during the coastal gunfights of the 1840s, the Royal Navy had claimed the bay in the Queen’s High Name as a handy coaling station. Before setting up the coal tipples, of course, they’d gone through the pro forma bullshit about having to protect English missionaries and poor downtrodden Indians even though, up until now, nobody else had seemed too interested—and probably still wouldn’t have been too interested—had not the official government setup caused the place to just grow like Topsy. Now that the Royal Navy had no further use for the place, of course, everyone from hon
est businessmen to the whores and gamblers who always followed the fleet had a lot to lose if El Chino took over.
The housing on this side of the river was occupied and then some. Only a few civilians from either settlement had been evacuated in the early confusion, and so many families who’d fled Gilead were bedded down with friends, relations or sudden landlords on the south side of the river. At least two-thirds of the natives who’d fled the Gilead barrio were camped on this side as well—less comfortably than the English, of course, but they were used to that; and at least the disciplined constabulary was less likely to mistreat them than their fellow countrymen swaggering around Gilead under El Chino or whomever he worked for. Native Nicaraguans probably knew the local guerrilla customs better than anyone else, and it was a sobering thought to see so many of them had voted with their feet to stay with the English as long as they could. Sobering, too, was the sight of so damned many kids playing on the dirt streets of Zion no matter what their mothers said about their getting dirty. It was impossible to keep kids inside on a sunny tropic morning, and as Gaston observed, they were just as safe out-of-doors as inside a frame house if El Chino wasn’t bluffing about the big guns he was expecting.
They found the only cannon Zion had mounted, as expected, on a post overlooking the harbor near the customs house. Gaston opened the breech and peered up the tube, muttering, “Eh bien, spick-and-span as one would expect English gunners to keep it. Mais regard how some triple-titted dimwit has welded it in place!”
