by Lou Cameron
“It can’t be traversed at all?” asked Captain Gringo.
Gaston slammed the breechblock back in place and replied, “Mais non, it can’t even be elevated or depressed. One suspects that in the interest of avoiding accidents, some doer of too much good made certain it was only good for firing salutes due east at the open sea at a thirty-degree angle, forever!”
“What if we cut the gun out of its mounting?”
“Avec what, Dick? That is solid steel, trés hardened by welding that, for all we know, took the temper out of the breech as well! It is one thing to fire blank rounds from a species of scrap iron like this. Nobody with the brains of a gnat would risk his adorable ass by bringing a real H.E. round anywhere near that breech, hein?”
As they stood there morosely regarding the useless piece of ordnance, a rather officious constabulary sergeant they hadn’t met yet marched up to them and said, “Hey, you blokes, what do you mean by mucking about with Her Majesty’s property?”
Gaston snorted in disgust and replied, “You mean someone owns this trés ridiculous gun? We thought some child had dropped it.”
“You’re not to touch it again, unless you want to answer to the governor for it, eh?”
Captain Gringo put a possessive hand on the four-pounder to help make his point as he said, “We’ve already talked to the governor about it, Sergeant. Now I want you to gather a work detail for me. Better scout up a couple of hacksaws and plenty of spare blades, too. Dismounting this gun’s going to be a bitch, but it has to be done. So carry on.”
The burly noncom blinked in astonishment and said, “Coo, not bloody likely! You must be off your chump if you expect me to damage government property!”
Captain Gringo insisted, “It’s already damaged. Some asshole welded it in a fixed position, pointing out to sea; and those guerrillas are up that way, see? I want you to saw it loose. It’s going to take some time, so I’ll get back to you in, let’s see, about two hours. That ought to give you time to saw through the welds, don’t you agree?”
“I bloody do not, whoever you think you are! Who in the blinking hell do you think you are? You’re no ruddy officer! Why, damn it, I don’t even think you’re British!”
Captain Gringo nodded pleasantly and said, “I’m not. But if you don’t have this gun dismounted for me when I get back here in two hours, you can commend your soul to Jesus, Sergeant, because your ass will belong to me! Let’s go, Gaston. I have some other guys to chew out at Government House if they haven’t whipped up those machine gun belts I ordered yet!”
He marched grandly away with Gaston tagging along, trying not to laugh until they were out of earshot. When they were, the Frenchman said, “Eh bien, I doubt they can saw through in two hours, but I do admire your way with noncoms, Dick. Was there any point to all that back there, or were you just handing back the shit of chickens to the species of martinet?”
Captain Gringo said, “If we can mount the tube on some sort of improvised gun carriage, it ought to at least look like a serious fieldpiece, right?”
“Perhaps, but I forbid you as a kindly old artilleryman to even consider firing the damned thing! I am trés serious, Dick. Trust a man who knows something of bursting breeches! We killed more of our own gunners than the Boche we were aiming at, at Sedan, thanks to French war profiteers I hope the Boche robbed trés thoroughly when he marched into Paris in seventy!”
Captain Gringo nodded and said, “I’ve seen cannon fire sideways instead of the way they were aimed. Messy. But what the hell, we don’t have any real ammo to fire from that four-pounder, so quit your bitching. Half the battle’s bluff in these sieges, and how in the hell is the other side to know an empty cannon from a loaded one, pointed point blank across a ford at them?”
“Ah, I see the method in your madness. But what if they call your bluff, Dick?”
“We’ll still have that Maxim and other guys on our side with their own bolt actions. I thought you were going to quit your bitching.”
“Mais non, I’ve barely started! El Chino is not after you and me, personally. If he comes across, it will be to get at the money on this side of the river. What if we were to simply go for a stroll in the forest, say, down at the far end of this town of one horse, and when it was all over—”
“A lot of horses could be dead, along with a lot of women and children,” Captain Gringo cut in. So Gaston contented himself with another Merde Alors and went into a silent sulk as they moved up the waterfront together.
They hadn’t gone far when a familiar voice called out, “Hey, you guys, I’ve been looking all over town for you since they cut me loose this morning?”
It was the fake minister and fulltime con man, Dodd, of course. He ran up and tried to shake both their hands at once as he told them how grateful he was for their getting him out of jail. He said, “I thought, I say I thought, I was a goner for a time there, gents! Those rascals from the steamer railroaded me just awful, and don’t anybody, I say anybody, try to tell you these lime-juicers give a man a fair day in court! Sweet Jesus, gents, I’ve stood many a trial on many a charge and I have never seen a hearing go that fast! It seemed they’d no sooner frog-marched me over here from that other place than some rascal in a goat hair wig was telling me I was about to hang by the neck until dead … dead, I say, dead! How did you sweet talk me out of that fix, son?”
“Easy. I just told them you didn’t do it. Are you any good with a gun, Dodd?”
“Me, a man of the cloth, I say the I, with a gun? Surely you must be joshing me, son.”
“No I’m not, Rev. If I call you ‘Rev’, will you cut the other bullshit? You probably missed out on a lot that was going on across the bay and I haven’t time to tell you the whole tale. Suffice it to say the guys who tried to get you hung for one of the few things you weren’t guilty of were running guns over that way to worse guys than any of us. They may be heading this way, any time, with said guns. So are you in or out, Rev?”
“The bastards who tried to frame me, I say frame me, are looking for a rematch, Son? I’m in, of course. I wouldn’t want this to get around, you understand, but before I saw the light and took up the spreading of the light, I, ah, used to be pretty handy with the, ah, devil’s tools.”
Captain Gringo nodded and said, “I figured you for an old gunslick when I couldn’t help noticing the way you dealt cards aboard the schooner. Nobody who cheats that brazenly could have made it to middle age unless he was able to take care of himself in sudden saloon emergencies. Stick with us. We’re on our way to the governor now, and they’ve got plenty of rifles there. They just don’t have enough good shots to issue them all to.”
But as it turned out, they didn’t get to the government house right away, after all. It was in sight, ahead, when one of the khaki-clad officers they’d met the night before ran up to them, out of breath, to gasp, “I’ve been looking all over for you lot!”
“There seems to be a lot of that going on this morning. What’s up, Lieutenant?”
“A parley at the river crossing. Chap in a big green hat says he’s a friend of yours and that he has a personal message for you to give that redhead of yours, Crawford.”
Captain Gringo grunted. “Shit, I was hoping I’d hit El Repollo. And Olivia Perkins is not anyone’s redhead but her husband’s. But, okay, let’s go see what our little green cabbage wants.”
*
They found El Repollo and another guerrilla holding a dirty white flag talking to Governor Forbes and some other colonial officials on the Zion side of the river crossing. On the far side, other guerrillas stood casually about with their carbines cradled. That was fair. Forbes had plenty of constabulary covering him too, as he stood by the water’s edge with El Repollo.
As Captain Gringo joined them, the green-hatted mestizo smiled at him pleasantly enough, considering, and said, “El Chino thought that was you who smoked us up last night, Captain Gringo. Was that any way for to treat friends who were willing to cut you in on the loot?”
>
Captain Gringo said, “Never mind the bullshit. You say you have a message for Olivia Perkins?”
El Repollo took a wadded-up sheet of stationery from the pocket of his green shirt and handed it over, saying, “Si, her husband, the late Hiram Perkins, wrote it to her before we shot him this morning. El Chino said for to bring it with us, for to discover if it really was you and this little Frenchman who helped her escape. He had other plans for the sweet young thing, and now he will have plans for you as well. But I do not think El Chino means to fuck you, you gringo bastard!”
Governor Forbes gasped. “I say, did you really execute poor Reverend Perkins? Whatever for, you brute?”
“Hey, don’t call a nice kid like me names under a flag of truce, eh?” El Repollo grinned, and went on to explain, “It was not my idea for to shoot the old bastard, even if he was a Protestant. But as our great leader says, one has to start with someone to prove a point; and what else was Perkins good for?”
Captain Gringo told him to shut up as he unfolded the note and read;
Dear Heart: By the time this reaches you, I fear I shall be with my maker. But try to be a brave girl and do not grieve for me. I go to my Eternal Salvation secure in the knowledge I have done my best as a Soldier Of The Lord and, Dear Olivia, these last few years with you have been more reward than most men ever dream of. But you know how I feel about you, My Beloved. So now, in hopes of them delivering this last good-bye for me, I must digress a bit and tell you what this distressing El Chino person has directed me to tell the royal governor.
Captain Gringo swallowed and handed the note to Forbes, saying, “I think this part’s meant for you, sir. I’m not sure we ought to show this note to the widow Perkins. They just let him write it to get some kind of other message across!”
Forbes quickly scanned the crumpled sheet and gasped, “Oh, I say, you’re all too right! They’ve rounded up all the colonists who chose to stay behind when we evacuated Gilead, and now the blighters mean to shoot them one by one, beginning with poor old Perkins, unless I give in to their demands!”
He handed the note back to Captain Gringo to do with as he may and turned back to El Repollo to demand, “Very well, my good fellow, just what are these demands of your rebel leader?”
“Hey, watch that rebel shit, Gringo! Do I look like an Englishman? I am Nicaraguan, damn your eyes, so for how could I rebel against your puta of a queen even if I wished to, eh?”
“Never mind all that! You say you mean to shoot your captives who are British subjects unless certain demands are met. One can hardly meet demands before one hears them, dash it all!”
El Repollo grinned like a mean little kid and said, “I think you know what we want, Señor Gobernador. You can keep your ugly women. We do not even want your pigs and chickens. We just want the money you have locked in your vault for safekeeping. Is that too much for to ask?”
“You’re bloody-ass right it is!” gasped Forbes, adding: “That money was placed under the protection of the Crown, and that’s where I mean to keep it if you don’t mind!”
El Repollo laughed and said, “Hey, I don’t mind if you shove it up your ass, Señor Gobernador. But El Chino says if you do not wish for to hand it over gracefully, he may just have to kill some pigs and chickens after all, eh? Did you read that part Perkins wrote about the guns we have for to do it with?”
Captain Gringo hadn’t. So as Forbes went on trying to reason with the unreasonable El Repollo, he scanned over the part about other hostages and read, near the bottom of the page:
I fear these bandits have managed to obtain some field artillery pieces from somewhere, Dear Heart. I know little of such matters, but they just took me over to the rail yards; and while I can’t say what sort of guns they are, they have four of them and, oh yes, El Chino says to tell the governor they are French 75’s, whatever that means. The people holding me refuse to listen when I tell them I know the governor will never give in to their demands whether they shoot me or not. So I imagine they’ll be coming for me any minute now. In closing, let me only add that you and my English friends may wish to give a mass for my soul; and as you know, my favorite psalm has always been Jeremiah 8:22, and that the refrain, of course, is still Nay, Nay; Never!
Perkins had started to write something else. But apparently they’d stopped him at that point, satisfied he’d gotten their intended message across and not giving a damn what a man who was about to die intended to say to his wife. They hadn’t even let the poor old guy sign it.
Captain Gringo put the note away and tried to pick up on what Forbes was saying to El Repollo. The green-hatted bandit didn’t like it much. So he said, “We waste time, here. I must go back and tell the others you are not a reasonable person. Think the matter over while you still have time, eh? We are not bad guys. We do not wish for to shell a village crowded with women and children. But unless you hand over the money, you give us no other choice.”
He nodded to his standard bearer and turned away. Then he had an afterthought and turned back again to tell Forbes, “By the way, do not think you can trick El Chino by turning over just some of the money. We know to the centavo how much you have in your vault. An English banker over in Gilead was kind enough to tell us when we asked most politely, with a gun to his head.”
El Repollo turned away again to splash back across to the other side. Forbes murmured, “You were right, Crawford. They have created a monster they no longer control! But the men they’ve seized are still British subjects, dash it all. So what are we to do?”
Gaston suggested, dryly, “Let the bandits shoot them, of course. Children who play with matches deserve to get burned, and it saves you the expenses of all those trials, hein?”
Forbes shook his head and insisted, “Her Majesty’s Government doesn’t work that way, Fontleroy. Nobody is allowed to execute British criminals but a British hangman, after a fair trial and all that.”
Then he shot an odd look at Captain Gringo and asked, “By the way, ah, Crawford, why did that chap just call you Captain Gringo instead of Crawford?”
Captain Gringo was afraid the bastard had been listening sharp. He shrugged and replied, “Beat me. He called you a gringo too, remember?”
“Yes, but not Captain Gringo. There’s only one bloke I’ve ever heard of who answers to that name in this part of the world, and … by Jove, you fit the description on those Wanted fliers the U.S. Justice Department was kind enough to send us, too. You’re not …?”
“Do you really want to know?” sighed Captain Gringo as Gaston added with a sardonic wink, “Merde alors, don’t you have enough to worry about at the moment, M’sieu?”
So Forbes proved they’d been correct in assuming he was a pretty bright guy by nodding and saying, “Right. Let’s worry about our outlaws one at a time. That Yank soldier of fortune and, come to think of it, French comrade in arms, have committed no crimes in this particular colony, and as you say, M’sieu Fontleroy; we have more important things to worry about. What do you know about French seventy-fives, Fontleroy?”
“Me?” asked Gaston innocently. “A banana broker such as myself would know little of such matters, of course. But I have heard France has a new gun we did not, alas, have back in the Franco-Prussian War. It is said to lob a seventy-five-caliber shell a good three kilometers, with some accuracy.”
Forbes nodded, and said soberly, “I’m sure an old banana broker like you would know. And the main parts of Zion are nothing like three kilometers south of this bloody river! Do either of you think it’s possible they simply showed any old sort of gun to poor Perkins and told him they were seventy-fives? I can’t see where on earth they’d have gotten their hands on the real thing, damn it.”
Gaston shrugged and replied, “For all a man of the cloth would know, they could have been muzzle-loaders left over from the old Spanish colonial days. But any species of field gun is a thing to consider soberly at this range, hein?”
Forbes agreed, and suggested they get out of their
exposed position before someone simply potted off the lot of them with rifle fire. As they all moved along the trail back to town, Forbes asked Captain Gringo what he meant about not showing the note to Olivia Perkins. The American said, “She’ll take it bad enough when we have to tell her her husband’s dead. Trust me. I know her better than you do, and she has sort of delicate feelings.”
“No doubt. But he left specific instructions for her in that last message. Something about a mass and all that rot. I fear I’m not up on Low Church services.”
Captain Gringo frowned thoughtfully and took the note out to go over again as he mused aloud, “I don’t know whether a Congregationalist is high or low. But I do know Perkins was a Protestant minister, and have any of you guys ever heard of a Protestant mass?”
Gaston said not to look at him. Dodd didn’t say anything. Forbes said he thought they said some sort of mass in the High Anglican Church. But Captain Gringo dug deeper in his Sunday School memories and decided, “Congregationalists are an offshoot of the Calvinist Reformation, and old Calvin was deadset against the Catholic Mass. So, damn, I may have to check this out with Olivia after all. As the widow of a Congregationalist minister, she’d know if Perkins really expected her and her friends—that’s us—to go through some sort of rite for him, or if the poor guy was trying to sneak some kind of a message to us!” He handed the note to Dodd and said, “Here, Rev. Read that part about Jeremiah over and tell me what it could mean.”
Dodd took the note, but muttered sheepishly, “I used to know the Good Book by heart, of course. But I fear the exact psalm he mentions here is beyond me.”
“Swell. You run around conning people about being a man of the cloth, and you don’t even have a Bible on you, damn it?”
“I’m afraid, afraid I say, I left my pocket Bible aboard the ship when they took me off so unexpectedly, son.”
Captain Gringo took the message back and put it away, growling, “There has to be at least one King James edition somewhere in a mission colony established by goddamn lime-juicers. Let’s hurry. I have to find one fast.”
