Renegade 30

by Lou Cameron

  They did, but as they jogged along Dodd asked why it had to be the King James Version. So Captain Gringo snapped, “You sure must be a great preacher, Dodd. No native Catholic would be familiar with the Protestant King James Version, even if he read English. The Catholic translation of the scriptures into English is worded differently, you chump; and since Perkins was a real Protestant minister, he’d have known that. He probably knew his King James by heart and tried to slip a coded message past El Chino. The only trouble is, he did too good a job. How was he to know the rest of us skipped Sunday School all those times?”

  Forbes said he had a King James Bible at Government House. So Captain Gringo told Gaston to run ahead and see if they had that sunset gun to work with yet. They split up out front, and he followed Forbes upstairs with Dodd and a couple of constabulary men tagging along. In the governor’s office, Forbes began to rummage about in drawers as he kept muttering, “Damn, I know it has to be here somewhere, unless my servants packed it.”

  “You’ve already, sent some of your stuff home, sir?”

  “Of course, along with my wife and children. She wanted to stay, but our oldest girl’s not well and … Blast and bloody damn! Why on earth would Matilda have wanted to take my Bible along with her?”

  Captain Gringo sighed and told him to keep looking. The Reverend D. C. Dodd stood in the way, muttering to himself, and then, just as Captain Gringo was about to tell him to go out in the hall and stay out of the way for God’s sake, Dodd snapped his fingers and said, “Jeremiah Eight twenty-two? Of course! Jeremiah, chapter eight, verse twenty-two; and I quote, I say I quote, ‘Is there no balm in Gilead?’ ”

  The others stared blankly at him. Forbes asked, “I say, that’s supposed to be a secret message? It makes no sense!”

  But Captain Gringo said, “Not unless you add the refrain, ‘Nay, Nay, Never!’ Perkins was forced to write that crap about them having artillery. But he managed to sneak in a question: Was there balm, or bombs, or artillery shells in Gilead!”

  Forbes gasped, “And the answer is nay, nay, never! Or, in other words, to pay no attention to what he’d just written above his closing lines! He did go to his maker like a proper Englishman, eh what?”

  Captain Gringo tried not to think about the old guy’s wife as he nodded soberly and said, “He was more of a man than a lot of people might have thought. He knew the bluff they intended to pull and he managed to let us know it was a bluff. The cocksuckers got tired of playing stooge for some naughty colonialists and decided to go into business for themselves. But they don’t have the weaponry to take us out the easy way!”

  Forbes grinned and said, “Then we have nothing to worry about.”

  But Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “That’s not what I said. El Chino, El Repollo—or whoever’s running that gang on the other side of the river—knows he can’t hold his gang together if he leads them away empty-handed. So, since he stands to lose most of them in any case if he can’t get at that money downstairs, he may just decide that since it’s use ’em or lose ’em, he may as well go for broke, the hard way!”

  “My God, you’re such a cheerful bloke, Captain ….ah, Crawford. But surely we can stand them off if they simply come at us bare-handed, bandito style!”

  “They won’t be hitting us bare-handed, sir. They still have more guns than we do, and we just don’t know how many people they have to throw at us in one bunch by the not-so-silvery light of a waning moon.”

  He took out his watch to add, morosely, “The moon comes up twenty minutes later every night. That means it ought to be dark as hell right after sundown tonight, and we don’t have much time to get set for them.”

  “Oh, come now, it’s barely noon, and we already have the machine gun you salvaged set up to guard the ford!”

  “I know. El Repollo knows it too, thanks to the swell way you kept it under cover while he was over here on this side. The trouble with these Alamo situations, Governor, is that the attacking side has the initiative. That’s why Alamos go under so often. With your permission, sir, I’d like to take that initiative away from the sons of bitches!”

  “Permission granted,” said Governor Forbes soberly. “But just what do you have in mind?”

  “I thought I just told you, sir. As things now stand, they can hit us or not hit us, any time they choose, from any direction. So I guess we’ll just have to hit them ourselves!”

  “Hmm, but you say they have at least three machine guns to work with, against our one; and that you’ve no idea how many of them there are or how they’re set up?”

  Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “I never said it was going to be easy, Governor. I just said it had to be done.”

  *

  When he and Dodd got back to the waterfront, Captain Gringo found Gaston and four constabularies hard at work in the hot sun. The sergeant who’d scouted up the work detail was nowhere to be seen. Lots of sergeants were like that. Captain Gringo told Dodd to help the constabularies, took Gaston aside and brought him up to date. Then he said, “I’m counting on you and the others to hold the river till I get back. If I don’t get back, try and hold it anyway.”

  “Eh bien, and where will you be while you let me do all the work, as usual, my adventurous youth?”

  “Having adventures behind the enemy lines if I can make it by broad-ass daylight. That might not be easy.”

  Gaston frowned and said, “Why go to so much trouble if you are tired of living, Dick? Why not simply take out your shooter of peas and blow your own befuddled brains out? Now that things are coming to a head, the guerrillas will be trés alert; and it was hard enough to cross the lines last night in the dark with them half asleep!”

  Captain Gringo nodded and said, “I just said that. Waiting till dark would be waiting too long. If they mean to hit at all, they’ll attack early this evening before moonrise. If I can get behind them during this afternoon’s siesta and give them something else to worry about, you and the others might have less to worry about when the sun goes down.”

  He glanced down at his watch and said, “I don’t have all that much time between now and La Siesta. So enough of this bullshit.”

  As he turned away, Gaston said, “Wait, just a little more shit of the bull, Dick! Have you considered that the sad message from Perkins could be shit of the bull as well?”

  Captain Gringo frowned and said, “If it’s a ruse, it’s a pretty complicated one, don’t you think?”

  “Oui, but the plan of the trés sneaky English colonists has been trés Byzantine from the beginning. The simple code enclosed with the doleful farewell to a cheating wife would have been even easier to decode if you spent more time in church, and—”

  “How did you know Olivia fooled around on the side?” Captain Gringo cut in. So Gaston winked and said, “She comes trés noisy. And if I discovered this on such short notice, Perkins may have caught her more than once in the past. But never mind how he felt about his wife. Consider the way they insisted on sending the note to her through you, knowing you would of course read it and—at the risk of swelling your adorable head—knowing you were slick as the whistle?”

  “Jesus, you mean there could be bombs in Gilead after all? I’d better get over there and find out, poco tiempo!”

  He legged off down the quay, not bothering to consult the map he’d asked Forbes for as it became obvious Zion was almost a mirror image of the settlement he knew better, north of the river. Zion was larger. There were three church steeples rising above the tin and tile roofing. But here, too, the native barrio began beyond civic improvements, in this case south of the main drag. The paved quay gave way to a muddy path along the water’s edge, with here and there a rustic landing improvised by the locals. As he’d hoped, he spotted some natives on a wooden dock ahead, repairing nets. A gaily painted little fishing boat was tied up to the landing on the far side. As he joined them, he saw that while the net-menders were of course mestizo, a fair-skinned girl of about twenty with ash-blonde hair
was supervising them, seated on a nail keg with her not too long skirts hiked even higher. Assuming she had to be pure Spanish, he addressed her in that language. She answered with a brogue thick enough to cut with a knife, ‘Ah, lave off the dago blarney and be saying what ye want, me bucko!”

  He grinned, took out the survey map he’d picked up and unfolded it as he introduced himself. He handed the map to her, saying, “This chart of the harbor and surrounding area was surveyed years ago when they first made this colony official. I was hoping local fisherfolk would know if all the hurricanes since then have shifted any of the channels enough to matter, Miss …?”

  “Fionna O’Shay,” she said, adding as she studied the map, “I’d be skipper of The Irish Rover ye see there, now that me auld man’s under the peat, may he rest in peace, amen. Ye say this is supposed to be a chart of these waters? Faith, ye could never prove it by meself and that’s a fact! Few of the inlets and tidal creeks are marked right. The great bay and the Mission River are drawn in right. But it’s true the tides, the winds and the mangroves have minds of their own. So the coastlines to the north and south have changed a lot since some sissy Saxon drew this map!”

  He started to explain the situation. Halfway through, she told her net-menders they’d done enough and to go seek shade while white people discussed more important matters. As they left, not at all reluctantly, Fionna explained, “Ye can’t trust half the black-hearted gazoons, for though I’ve told them a thousand times, they still take me for English; and they hate the English as much as I was raised to!”

  She handed the map back to him as she rose from her seat. Her skirts still didn’t fall half as far down her bare shins as Queen Victoria might have liked, and Fionna seemed a bit taller and more flat chested than the current fashions, standing up. He told her, “I want to get well behind the guerrilla lines. Crossing the river in broad daylight would be suicidal, and circling around through the swampy jungle would take longer than I’ve got. So I was hoping I could recruit native fishermen to run me north, well out to sea of course, and—”

  “Say no more,” she cut in. “For in God’s truth, the fishing business is and will be shot to hell in a hack until this nonsense is ended; and I’ve nothing better to do this day with me nets all tattered by a fairy shark!”

  He shook his head and said, “No offense, Miss Fionna, but I had a more masculine crew in mind. I can’t expose a woman to such a risk.”

  “Jasus, Mary and Joseph, did ye think I led an asey life catching fish for pennies off a lee shore in hurricane waters, ye great fool?”

  “No, but—”

  “But me no buts, you insulting Yankee, for it’s meself or nobody at all at all ye’ll go sailing with this morning. I’ll vow! Do ye see any other fishing boats in sight? Ye do not. Ye know why? Because any dago with a boat and relations anywhere else along the Mosquito Coast will have loaded his paple and possessions aboard and set sail days ago! Me and The Irish Rover are still here because the only paple we have on this side of the water lie dead and buried in the shade of Fourteen Holy Martyrs, R.C. That’s the staple with the Celtic cross to the left of the great Mormon Temple’s staple with no cross at all at all and—”

  “Never mind all that,” he cut in as he tried to come up with a better idea and couldn’t. He said, “I have to get north by sea. But it’s only fair to warn you neither you nor your boat might make it back, Fionna.”

  She shrugged and said, “Aw, Jasus, get in and let’s get going, then. De ye always repeat yourself over and over, me bucko?”

  *

  By noon Gaston had not only mounted the sunset gun on a limber improvised from a torn apart ox cart but manhandled it to the outpost guarding the river crossing with the help of Dodd and his reluctant gun crew. Governor Forbes and a detachment of constabulary were already dug in there, looking worried. When Forbes asked if “that other banana broker” had made it, Gaston shrugged and said, “One can only hope so. If anyone can, it shall be Dick. Whether he makes it or not, we shall be up the creek of shit avec no paddle if that droll message from the dying minister was a ruse. There are limits to what even our young friend can do, and if those savages have even one big gun—”

  “But Perkins said they were bluffing,” Forbes cut in as Gaston just looked disgusted. He turned to Dodd and said, “Speaking of the shitting of bulls, my mysterious man of the cloth, could you tell me avec no bullshit if you know as much about guns as Dick thinks you do?”

  Dodd shrugged modestly and said, “Well, even a man of the cloth who leads an, ah, active life has to know a little about such matters.”

  “I told you to stop shitting the bull. Do you know how to man a machine gun or don’t you?”

  “I’ve fired a Gatling gun in my time. Machine guns are a little new to us old-timers.”

  “That may be true, but it will have to do. It is not the firing mechanism that is difficult. If you have fired a Gatling, you will know how easy it is to waste ammunition, hosing rapid fire at air, hein? Come, I shall show you how to work the action. It is easier in some ways than manning a Gatling. For one thing, one does not have to crank. The important thing with any rapid-fire weapon is to aim it low and at the enemy, not high or between them in a mad display of passion.”

  Forbes followed them across the trail to where the Maxim had been braced across a log behind a screen of dirt and brush. He asked Gaston, “What about that cannon you just cobbled together?”

  Gaston replied, “Merde alors, what about it? I can make a lot of noise with it. We brought all the blank rounds we could find along. But they are simply glorified shotgun shells, mostly pasteboard avec brass bases. I can, when push comes to shove, roar trés glorious bursts of harmless smoke and flame at anyone wading at us across that shallow water. It may even give them pause, until they observe nothing seems to be landing in their vicinity. Mais then that?”

  Forbes said, “I’ve been thinking about that. Those saluting charges do remind me a lot of shotgun shells. What if we tore open the tops and replaced some of the wadding with, say, rusty nails or even gravel?”

  Gaston shrugged and said, “Aside from ruining what is left of the tube, not much. I considered that as soon as I regarded the species of ammunition I had to work with. It seems a lot of bother for little result. It is true small bore debris fired in one’s face by a cannon might smart a bit. But the rifles and machine gun we have here will be throwing serious slugs; and if we cannot stop them with a platoon of rifles and a machine gun, I fail to see how a handful of pebbles can make much difference. The four-pounder is not a rapid-fire weapon, even firing real ammunition, hein?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.”

  “I wish I didn’t have to. May I ask why you only have thirty constabularies here at the moment, Governor? Surely this can’t be your whole police force?”

  Forbes explained he’d left most of his constabularies in the settlement itself, both to herd the civilians into the swamps to the south if there was no other way to keep them alive at least a few hours more, and to guard the landward approaches should the guerrillas take Captain Gringo’s suggestion about a wider circle through the inland jungles. He asked Gaston’s views on how much time that would give them, and the Frenchman said, “Perhaps all night. I have been forced to forge my way through lowland jungle, this close to the sea, and found it trés tedious. One hopes they may not be that ambitious, or disciplined. The main reason Nicaragua has never seriously disputed these land grabs of yours along the Mosquito Coast is that even disciplined troops are trés difficult to march through such a hell of greenishness. It seems more likely our adorable guerrillas will prefer a more direct approach if they mean to come at all.”

  Dodd said softly, “They’re coming right now, Gents,” even as one of the constabularies shouted a challenge. When Forbes saw it was another parley party under a white flag, he shouted to let them come across. So they did.

  It was the same El Repollo wearing the same green outfit, and his mes
sage hadn’t changed much, either. He told Forbes, “El Chino would like for you to know we just shot another Englishman called Webber. We are going to shoot the banker, Riggs, right after La Siesta, if you do not wish for to be reasonable, Señor El Gobernador!”

  Forbes gasped and told him that was monstrous as well as out of the question. The guerrilla spokesman shrugged and said, “Hey, is no skin off my nariz, one way or the other. I don’t care if we shoot them all, the stuck-up Anglo pigs.”

  He winked at Gaston to add, “Hey, I admire your cannon, Frog Face. Didn’t it used to stand on a post near the waterfront for to fire blank salutes? You should have repainted it, you poor dumb puller of bluffs!”

  Gaston smiled sweetly and said, “There was not time. Thank you for telling us you have spies behind our lines, my little cabbage, and kindly inform your English masters that it fires trés explosive shells as well, hein?”

  El Repollo frowned and said, “Masters? We don’t got no masters, Frog Face. Who told you we got masters, eh?”

  “Merde alors, we did not even need the usual little bird. You forget I have met your El Chino, peon! If he is your chosen leader, the rest of you may be fit for loading bananas without direct supervision by someone more intelligent. But to rob a blind man without getting caught? Surely you jest! If that unwashed old ruffian is a serious military leader, or even a good pickpocket, I am Queen of the May!”

  El Repollo glared and thundered, “Bastards! We shall show you who and what we are! You have my word on that! And you shall swallow your words soon, Frog Face! For because when I come back the next time, I shall shove them down your throat, along with your teeth!”

  He turned to splash back across the ford with his standard bearer. He was so pissed that halfway across, he slipped on the mud and fell on his face in the water. As he rose, dripping wet, to put his soggy green sombrero back on, the constabularies laughed like hell. Forbes had to laugh, too. Then he sobered and told Gaston, “I say, you may have goaded him a bit too far, don’t you think?”