Renegade 30

by Lou Cameron

  Most of it landed nowhere near the enemy’s own crude artillery position, of course. Even if Gaston had known exactly where to aim, the clumsy cardboard bombs, unaffected by the rifling of the sunset gun, sailed ass over teakettle in high arcs to poop out due to wind resistance and simply spin down without any great velocity. But, as most detonated as air bursts before landing, the results were frightening as hell. A couple of guerrilla gunners were already running as El Repollo snarled, “Goddamn it, stand like men and help me! They don’t have our range! They’re just firing wild, see?”

  Then a lucky round came down closer, not on El Repollo directly, but into the open ammunition cart a few yards from him and his brass cannon. That wasn’t far enough for safety when the whole mess went off with a thunderous roar—ending El Repollo’s violent career in a manner more merciful, if messy, than he deserved!

  On the far side of the river Gaston heard the roar, blinked and muttered, “Sacre bleu, how did I do that?”

  Then, from a greater distance—but not far enough for his eardrums’ comfort—Gaston heard an even more thunderous explosion and said, “Now I know I didn’t do that!”

  He hadn’t. It was even rougher on Captain Gringo’s eardrums when the locomotive boiler he’d left on the stove with its safety valve wired shut finally built up enough steam pressure to overcome its very solidly riveted seams and explode in a huge ball of scalding steam and flying boiler plate! The shock wave alone flattened everything within blocks, including the schoolhouse with El Chino and Estralita inside it.

  El Chino’s left leg had been amputated at the knee by a hot slab of boiler plate slicing through the tin roof, and he lay screaming like a stuck pig in the wreckage. But the tough Estralita had gotten off with no more than cuts and bruises. So she was able to shove the door that had pinned her to the floor off her, stagger to her feet and start groping her way out of the wreckage as the old man screamed, “Querida! Help me! I am badly hurt! I cannot get out, and this wreckage seems to be on fire!”

  Estralita looked back, saw the blue smoke curling up here and there where the demolition had buried stoves and lamps under shattered planking and said, “Si, the whole place is about to burn, Old Man. So this muchacha shall say adios before she gets her hair singed! The game is up. You were crazy to take on the British Empire in the first place!”

  “Goddamn your cruel heart, come back here and help me!” sobbed El Chino, even as he saw Estralita had no such intentions. She was having enough trouble crawling out of the smashed timbers and kindling wood the building had been reduced to. El Chino snarled in mixed pain and rage, drew his .45 and yelled, “Come back, you puta!”

  Then, as he saw she was still crawling away from him, he fired. The bullet took Estralita right between the cheeks of her voluptuous rump, went up her ass and didn’t stop going until it hit bone above her heart. El Chino grunted with as much satisfaction as a man about to either bleed or burn to death could feel; then he put another round into the big brunette’s dead flesh. And then, as he saw the wood near him burst into rapidly growing flames, El Chino shrugged fatalistically, put the smoking muzzle of the .45 into his own mouth and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened. El Chino pulled the trigger again and again even as he realized, sickly, that the last round he’d wasted in the dead girl was the last in his revolver!

  He had other bullets in his gun belt, if only he could get at them in time. But he was buried chest-deep in debris, weak from the loss of blood as well as from his age, and he knew now how he was about to die.

  Off to the north, where Fionna O’Shay and The Irish Rover waited, the distant detonations had been taken for a thunder squall by the wiry blonde, even though the sky above looked too clear for thunder to her experienced fisherwoman’s eye.

  She shrugged and went on pan-frying the mangrove snapper she’d caught in the lagoon to occupy her time while she waited. A “dacent Irish gorl” had trouble making friends in a world where most of the unattached males she met were either a bit dark for her liking or, worse yet, English. She wondered, as she squatted by her little fire near the beached bow of her boat, whether Darling Dick was at least a Deathbed Catholic. But she’d already decided never to ask him. What a girl didn’t know couldn’t be held against her by the saints, and Jesus Mary and Joseph, he was such a grand handsome devil and what could be after keeping him all this time?

  She’d combed her hair and put her blouse back on again as she cooked the fish, knowing it would be ready for him by sunset and that he’d be back by then if he came back at all. So she felt she had the right to display some disapproval when Captain Gringo suddenly staggered out of the jungle at her covered with grease, soot and splinters.

  She said, “Mary, Mother of God, is that any way to come to the table? It’s a foin mess ye’ve made of your clothes, and the rest of ye looks as if ye’d been shoveling coal in a windstorm! But I’ve a bar of naphtha soap in the boat, and by the toim ye get cleaned up this fish will be ready.”

  He sank to his knees beside her and said, “No time for either. I think I discouraged anyone from trying to follow me further by the time I used up the whole works, but …”

  “Whole works of what, Dick?” she asked, still moving the pan to keep the fish from sticking.

  He shook his head wearily and said, “I swiped a machine gun back there and blew a lot of guys away before it finally warped too badly to fire any more, and I had to just drop it and start running. It feels like I’ve run a hundred miles. But I’m getting my breath back now. So get in the boat and I’ll shove us off, see?”

  “Faith, I see nothing of the kind. For this fish is fair on its way to being done and the auld tide’s out even if I meant to sail by sunset, hungry, with such a dorty man! Go get that soap and make yourself dacent in the lagoon. I won’t look, if that’s what you’re worried about. But get to it, man, for it’s like a fish you smell yourself right now. How in the divvel did ye manage to run into fish in yon town of Gilead? Och, of course, it was dried cod someone had lying about. There’s no mistaking the smell of codfish.”

  He moved quickly away, climbed into The Irish Rover and found the laundry soap under the rear thwart among other such supplies. He knew this was crazy. But if they couldn’t put out through the mangroves until the tide rose again, at least he could go down clean as well as fighting if he hadn’t thrown that last bunch off.

  He put his boots, gun and wallet on a thwart and went over the side, clothes and all, to undress in the shallow water with the hull between him and Fionna. He’d noticed Estralita seemed a little sweaty under the schoolhouse, way back when. But he’d been sweaty and dirty as well, so what was a little codfish among friends?

  He soaped all the parts of him that Estralita had stunk up with extra care and let them soak as he ran lots of soap over his wet clothing. Most of the gun grease was on his pants. Most of the fishy body odor of Estralita was, too, of course. So he spent more time on the pants with the grease-cutting naphtha soap, and had it about whipped by the time Fionna called, “What’s after keeping you, Dick? The fish is ready and it will soon be dark. Put on your damned auld wet pants if you’re bashful, and come taste what I have for ye here!”

  He laughed, even though he wasn’t sure she could have meant that the way it could be taken. He draped most of his clothes over the edge of the boat. Then he picked up the .38 and moved around to join her, wearing nothing but his soggy shorts. As he hunkered down across the fire from her, Fionna shot a thoughtful glance at the white cotton bulge between his muscular thighs and said, “Well, if it’s a chill ye’d be wanting down there, it’s not me that will be feeling it.”

  “You wanna bet?”

  “Och, be off with the blarney, ye fool. It’s not aven dark yet, and we’ve until the tide comes back in around eleven to discuss romance. Eat and get some strength back.”

  He did. He hadn’t known how hungry he’d gotten till he dug into the tasty plump snapper. Fionna’s tea was pretty good too, considering it
was brewed in a tin can and drunk from the same, passed back and forth across the dying fire. He asked her why she didn’t carry more cultured cooking gear aboard her roomy enough vessel. She shrugged and said, “Me sainted mother was from the Tinker Folk, which is why me father named his boat The Irish Rover. She raised me not to rely on vanities some tax collector will only steal from ye if the thieves don’t first. She taught me to jist reach out for such pleasures of this cruel world as I had the chance to, in passing through it from cradle to grave.”

  She stared down at the dying embers for a moment before she looked up thoughtfully to ask, “So how long will we have for our pleasures before ye’ll be laving Zion, Dick?”

  He stared back at her soberly and replied, “We’ll know in a little while if there’ll even be a Zion to sail back to, Fionna. I think I may have sort of discouraged those guerrillas this afternoon. But if I failed, they’ll be sending some noise our way from the river crossing. They’ll attack between sunset and moonrise, if they mean to attack at all.”

  “That wasn’t the question I asked ye, Dick.”

  “I know. You’re a sweet kid, Fionna, and I’m a knockaround guy who never stays in one place long enough to matter. You see, there’s a price on my head. I’m on the run. So I’m just bad news for decent women.”

  “Och, I could see from the start ye was a traveling-on man. I didn’t ask ye if ye’d be staying in Zion forever, Dick. I only asked how long we’d have together before ye moved on. And if ye’re afraid of me begging to be after going on with ye, have no fear. For I’ve me own business to keep me here, I’m a wanderer’s daughter, so I know the rules.”

  He smiled gently at her and said, “Sometimes I wish they were different, too. Let’s hold the thought while we wait for that damned sun to go down. If Zion’s still there by morning, I suppose we’ll be stuck there at least until the next coastal steamer south. Somehow I don’t think my pal Gaston and me ought to go back to England with the others. But what about you and the evacuation, Kid? How can you stay on here if the colony’s abandoned?”

  She shrugged and replied, “Abandoned by who? I get along all right with the Dons; I like thim better than the auld English; and everyone eats fish. Getting back to more important matters, the next coastal schooner that stops here regularly will get here in about two weeks. Do ye think ye could stand me cooking that long, Dick?”

  He grinned at her and said, “I guess I’ll have to. But get back in the boat. I’ll shove you off, and we can at least pole out to the far side. It’ll be dark any minute, and if nobody can see us nobody can interrupt this interesting conversation no matter who just won the war.”

  She picked up her frying pan, swished it in wet sand to sort of clean it and climbed into The Irish Rover with it. He admired the way she did the dishes. He got to his feet and put a bare shoulder to the bluff bow to shove the boat off. He followed it out, still shoving, till he had it moving good and the water was up around his waist. Then he pulled himself aboard too, to see how Fionna was following her sainted mother’s instructions on living with just the bare essentials. Fionna was bare from head to toe as she reclined on the bedroll she’d hauled out to spread on the duckboards. He lay down beside her to take her in his arms as the boat went on gliding across the lagoon in the sunset. By the time it came to a gentle halt two-thirds of the way across the lagoon, he was in her—and her movements under him weren’t gentle at all, but awfully nice.

  Thanks to an earlier sexual adventure that afternoon which he was now thoroughly ashamed of, and thanks to how Fionna had begun this adventure hard up as hell, she came twice before he did and took his continued enthusiasm as a great compliment.

  As the sun and his first passion subsided together, he lay still atop her in the gathering dusk, saying, “Let’s be still a minute, Doll. It’s not easy to listen to distant drumfire with your heels drumming on my behind like that.”

  She crooned, “Och, Dick, Dick, I don’t care if we ever see another dawn again if ye’ll promise me jist this night!”

  “Hush, Honey. It’s dark enough, now. I don’t hear anything, and they’d have that cannon of theirs going by now if they hope to soften our guys up this side of moonrise, see?”

  She did. She wasn’t at all stupid, and now that she’d recovered from her first orgasms, she was interested enough in his other problems to listen with him. They lay there sweetly entwined in the bottom of The Irish Rover, moving just enough to stay friends, as all they heard was the gentle lapping of water against the hull and the chirping of crickets from the trees all around.

  He said, “Hot damn. I don’t know how we did it. But if any of those bastards are still in the bandit business, it sounds as if they’ve taken their business somewhere else!”

  She moved languorously under him as she said, “I’m glad. But I’m not too surprised, for if that wasn’t thunder I heard before, ye sure made enough noise to drive most bandits out of business, Dear. Did ye foind out anything about them hostages ye were worried about while ye was tearing their pub apart?”

  He grimaced and said, “Enough to tell the governor not to worry about them anymore. There’s no sense trying to separate the sheep from the goats now that they’re gone. May as well let their kith and kin think all of them were good guys.”

  He started moving in her again. Fionna sweetly wrapped her strong young limbs around him to lend him a helping pelvis. But the trouble with starting a conversation with a woman at times like these was that, once you got a woman talking and screwing at the same time, they could carry on at both ends and seemed to like to. Fionna moaned, “Och, I like it when ye’d be after hitting bottom like that, darling. But tell me something. Ye said your friends had no great guns, and ye said it was only a machine gun ye were after firing at the dorty sods in town. So what made all them great bangs I heard while I was waiting for ye here?”

  He wanted to bang her more than he wanted to explain military tactics. So he kissed her, laughed and said, “Oh, let’s just say you heard the bombs of Gilead.”

  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

  … And more to come every month!

  RENEGADE 30: MAYHEM AT MISSION BAY

  By Ramsay T
horne

  First Published in 1985 by Warner Books

  Copyright © 1985, 2017 by Lou Cameron

  First Smashwords Edition: December 2017

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.

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