by Lou Cameron
By four a.m. the tide was out and La Nombre Nada was grinding her keel clean in sand every third or fourth wave. Everyone in the crew had been issued a rifle, a hundred rounds, and been shown how to work the actions as well as anyone could be shown in the dark at short notice. A couple of Maxim .30-30 machine guns with a lot more ammo stood on their tripods in the stern. Cleaning them of their packing grease had been a bitch as well. Neither would have passed a general inspection. But what the hell.
Since it wouldn’t be light for another two hours, and since the masthead lookout had yet to spot any signs of life on the inky black shore, Esperanza insisted on a last inspection of Captain Gringo’s more personal repeater, as she liked to call it. He was willing. He had no idea when or if he’d ever get laid again, and if this did turn out to be the last time, there were worse places to empty one’s repeater than into a target like Esperanza.
She was more frightened than passionate, he could tell, as she made frantic love to him on the narrow bunk. He knew he’d have enjoyed it more if they’d been able to pound so nice without death peering over his shoulder at her tits as he came in her by romantic candlelight. She’d insisted on leaving the candle lit, she said, because she wanted to remember this night forever, no matter how soon she wound up dead. He could tell as he fell limp atop her heroic proportions that the big, beautiful Basque hadn’t climaxed with him. He kissed her throat and murmured, “Hey, relax and enjoy it, kitten.”
She hugged him closer and sighed, “I enjoy it very much with you. Is not necessary for a woman to come every time. I like you. I am as much in love with you as people like us are allowed to feel, Dick. I feel safer in your arms like this than anywhere else on earth. Is it not strange how a woman can bullshit herself with a lover like you?”
He frowned and said, “I’ve never bullshit you, Esperanza. One of the things I like about you best is that you’re my kind of dame. The first night we wound up in bed, by accident, we agreed from the start that people on the dodge like us had no time for mush, and that the usual bullshit about forever was for kids who didn’t know how short forever could get, remember?”
She sighed and said, “Sí, I have never been able to talk in bed so honestly with any other man, and like you, I have learned for to take life’s fleeting pleasures as I find them. I did not say you were trying for to lie to me, Dick. I said I found it easier to lie to myself when I was in your arms and you were in me. I am frightened, querido. I am getting too old for this kind of life. When I began, I did not expect to last this long, if I thought about it at all. Now I am almost thirty, and I have been almost killed so many times I feel a hundred. Each time things get tight, like this, I promise myself that should I somehow survive I shall sell the old schooner and buy a cantina or take up pottery, perhaps. Pero each time I make it, I find myself signing up for yet another operation, and we both know what happens to the pitcher who keeps going back to the well.”
He didn’t answer. He had no answers, for her or himself. He knew all too well what she meant. It was hard to believe he’d been on the run so long and been killed so many times without dying. She, at least, had a choice. He knew she wouldn’t, but he knew she could pack it in and settle down somewhere. He knew that when he settled down, it would be in a grave, if he was lucky, and in a buzzard’s gut if he wasn’t. There was no place on earth, there would never be a place on earth where guys like him and Gaston could stay very long alive.
He started moving in her again as he grimaced and muttered, “Boy, talk about feeling sorry for ourselves. Gimme some bumps and grinds, old pal. We’ve got nothing to worry about for at least an hour, and sobbing about the sunrise ain’t about to make the fucking sun rise any later!”
She laughed and braced her bare heels against the mattress to work with him as she agreed, “Sí, fuck me and allow the sun to fuck himself! Have you been eating oysters behind my back, querido? I could swear you were bigger and harder than ever if I did not know I could not take anything bigger than you were the first night we did this!”
Her skilled hip movements brought him to climax sooner than expected. She bit her lower lips and moaned, “Me too!” as he pounded her harder. This time they climaxed together and she gasped, “How did that happen?”
He kissed her again and said, “Beats me. Maybe you were more relaxed after admitting you didn’t care if you came or not. Hold the thought. I want to check the time.” As he remained atop her, groping for the pocket watch in his pants on the bedside chair, Esperanza glanced at the open porthole above them and protested, “Is still pitch dark out, Dick. We shall see the false dawn long before sunrise, no?” He fumbled out the watch anyway, as he told her, “I don’t want to have anyone else more on their toes than I am, come any kind of dawn. It’s, oh shit, after five, and you’re right about the sky pearling some before the sun comes up on a clear day down here. We’d better make it dog style this time. I don’t want to, but I have to get my ass on deck poco tiempo.”
He started to withdraw. Esperanza gripped him tighter with her powerful thighs and said, “Pero no, querido. If we live through the coming day, I shall give it to you hot and dirty indeed. Pero just in case this is the last time, let us make it romántico.”
The change of seasons to the north and south had little effect on the length of days and nights in the tropics. But it had some. So it was a little after six a.m. when the sky flashed green and the sun popped up bright and white as a big hot Edison bulb in the cloudless sky to reveal the hell of a mess La Nombre Nada was in.
The schooner was anchored in a bay with high ground to her east and gently rolling rangeland sloping down to the sandy beaches north and west. The one slope was covered with scrub oak and tropical pitch pine, offering cover to anyone scouting them from that direction. The tide was falling again. The water was calm. There wasn’t a breath of wind from any direction, and the last time anyone had looked, the auxiliary engine was a god-awful mess it would take at least a full day to clean up and rewire. Ergo La Nombre Nada was in no position to do anything but stay put a hundred yards offshore when her lookout spotted what was coming their way, called it down, and decided he’d be a hell of a lot safer on deck. He was wrong, of course. But nobody fussed at him when he slid down the ratlines, picked up a Krag, and hunkered behind the taffrail, adding, “I make it a full squad or more. A heavy patrol, I think.”
He was all too right. There were a dozen mounted Spanish dragoons, rather than the usual eight, as the sergeant in command reined in atop a grassy rise to stare thoughtfully to his southeast and mutter, “What could that schooner be doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”
His guidon suggested, “Perhaps they simply put in for shelter? The captain told us to look for those guerrillas, not a boat, no?”
The sergeant shook his head and growled, “The captain sent us out for to round up enemies of His Most Catholic Majesty. He did not say it was important how they moved around. There have been no recent storms. There is no good reason for an honest skipper to put in along this desert coast. I think we should have a word with them.”
He raised his hand and swept it toward the distant schooner as he spurred his chestnut down the slope toward the strand. There was no sign of movement aboard the mysterious black vessel as the patrol reined in along the water’s edge, facing it. One of the dragoons pointed at the nearby sand and said, “Look, Sergeant! That seems to be the track of a ship’s gig in the wet sand, no?’’
The sergeant said, “I see it. I do not see the boat they sent ashore for to look for water. The map says there is no water around here. So naturally they went back without it. I wonder for why they are still here.’’
He rose in his stirrups to shout, as loud as he could, “Hey, you on that black schooner, for why are you here?’’
A female voice called back, “We had engine trouble, señor. We shall be on our way for Santiago as soon as we fix it!”
The sergeant grinned and called back, “Not before I have a closer look at you, mu
chacha! Come ashore and show us what you got, eh? I like pretty girls even when they are not so pretty.”
Esperanza realized her tactical error in full when the other dragoons joined in the jeering laughter. It was too late to change voices now. She called back, “Por favor, we have lost our only longboat. If you wish for to come out, we shall do all we can to make your visit a pleasant one. Pero I cannot come ashore, and in any case, I am over fifty.”
The sergeant shook his head and yelled, “You are full of it, old or young, señorita. We know you have a longboat. It has left its tracks here on the beach. You want to do things the nice way, or would you rather chew some flying bullets with your lying teeth?”
Esperanza tried. “I don’t know who might have grounded a smaller boat over there, señor. Perhaps a fisherman? ¿Quien sabe?”
“That does it,” the sergeant announced to his men, adding, “I may be army, but even I can see the tide is out. So it had to be in just a few hours ago, when that lying bitch says the elves were planting mushrooms in this wet sand!”
He drew his saddle carbine from its boot and said, “Bueno, if that is the way they wish for to play, that is the way we shall play with them. Patrol dismount and spread out in line of skirmish. Robles, you will move the horses back out of range and hold them steady, eh?”
The others began to do as he’d commanded. But even as he drove the butt of their pennant into the sand, the guidon asked who was their getaway man. By this time the sergeant was on his boot heels in the firm, moist sand. He said, “Get off that fucking horse and do as you are told for a change! Who are you to argue with me, goddamn you for an ambitious lance corporal! If I thought we needed help I would send for help. If I thought we needed a getaway man, I would have posted a getaway man! What’s the matter with you, muchacho, are you afraid of mere smugglers?’’
The guidon dropped to the sand, to stand by his flagstaff, as he answered simply, “Sí, they have cover. We do not. We have no idea who they are, how many of them there are, and what they have for to shoot back at us with. If I were in command here—’’
“You are not!” the burly noncom cut in, adding, “I know how it is done by the book, you garrison guerrilla fighter. When fighting real guerrillas, one must toss the book aside. We are not at war as you were taught war back in Spain, muchacho. This is a police action against ragged-ass ladrones who could not read the book if they were issued a copy. When one contacts suspicious people on this side of the great sea, one does not waste time on parade-ground rules and regulations. One shoots first and looks up the rules later, eh?’’
By now the others, most veterans of the Cuban campaign, had spread out and dropped to one knee with their carbines loaded and locked. The sergeant turned and saw their mounts were halfway up the rise. He waved to the dragoon tending them to move back to the ridge. Then he turned to face the stern of the schooner again and called out, “If you have eyes, señorita, you will have already noticed I am most weary of this charade. Do you wish to come ashore and show us your papers, if not your thighs? I was only joking about your looks. I am, by the beard of God, an honest Spanish soldado. You will show me you are honest too, or I shall make you wish to God you had!”
Esperanza, not knowing what to say, said nothing. The sergeant shrugged and called out, “Unlock your weapons. Be ready for to fire at will on my command.”
It was the last thing he would ever say. Captain Gringo had given them every chance to avoid a noisy showdown, but as the whole ragged line began to train their muzzles on the naphtha-filled stern of La Nombre Nada, he had no choice but to rise from the hillside brush on their left flank with a Maxim braced on one hip and give them a long, withering blast of full automatic .30-30.
He didn’t have to traverse right or left. When he’d come ashore in the gig just before dawn, he’d chosen his stakeout with just such a field of fire in mind. He hadn’t dared to hope anyone would be dumb enough to line up so neatly for him. But since they had, he took full advantage of it and, in no time, had everything but their forlorn banner flat on the sand or bleeding in the shallows.
The bozo up in the ridge with the horses was out of range and, damn it, was mounting up to make a run for it, letting go of the other mounts. But even as Captain Gringo watched, he heard a rifle squib in the distance and the would-be getaway man threw both arms high and fell off his running mount to land like a sack of wet mush. Captain Gringo muttered, “What the hell?” and hunkered down again to thread another belt into the hot action of his smoking Maxim. Then he heard a stick crunch behind him and froze to consider his options. They weren’t so hot. It took at least some time to swing a heavy machine gun around through half a full circle. So unless that hadn’t been an awfully heavy lizard, it had the drop on him. He sighed and tried, “Feliz navidad?”
A soft female voice replied, “Posada por El Nino. That was very fine shooting, señor.”
He left the gun to cool in the brush as he rose and turned to see a petite blonde dressed too campesino for her complexion and obvious Castilian ancestry. The four guys with her looked more like Cuban peasants. They were dressed like typical tropic vaqueros, save for the ammo bandoliers across their cotton shirts. The blonde wore a big straw sombrero too. But it was hanging down her back and it would have been a shame to hang brass across such a nice little chest.
Captain Gringo said, “If you people are with Garcia, have I got a present for you!”
The girl said, “We were riding for Cuba Libre a few days ago. Only God knows whether our General Garcia still lives. The butcher’s troops jumped us over in Oriente Province a few nights ago. We think we must have been betrayed. They hit us hard, and all who did not scatter to the four winds died then and there. They had machine guns as well as howitzers. I have fifty fighting men and their women with me, señor. Who are you and how many guns do you command?”
He said, “I am called Ricardo Walker. Some call me Captain Gringo. I have more guns than you can carry. I only have one comrade aboard that schooner that knows much about using them. We came in with gunrunners, running guns to Garcia. You say the Dons have taken him?”
She shrugged and replied, “¿Quien sabe? The Spanish have had our Garcia before. One time for fifteen years in chains. He may have made it back into the Sierra Maestra. The enemy now holds the ground between here and there with at least a division. I am called Nopalita, because even though I am little, I have thorns. I now lead what is left of the battalion led by my late husband, Major Heman Llamos. He told me, as he lay dying in my arms, for to get the others out as best I could for to fight another day. No matter how many times they beat us, there shall always be another day for Cuba Libre, Captain Gringo.”
He nodded and said, “That sounds fair. Are you willing to take delivery so the other lady who brought the guns this far can get out of here for her own other days?”
The blonde said she didn’t understand. He said, “Look, she contracted to deliver to Garcia’s forces. That’s you. The cargo’s already been paid for. All you have to do is sign for it so she can go back and pick up her final payment, see?”
Nopalita frowned thoughtfully and said, “God knows we can use all the guns and ammunition you have for us. I suppose I can sign for vital supplies as a guerrilla leader. How many guns and how much ammo are we talking about, Captain Gringo?”
‘‘Call me Dick. We have about ten tons aboard, and the sooner we get it ashore the better.”
Nopalita blinked, tried to translate tons into metric weight in her head, and decided, ‘‘It is not possible. As I said, I only lead a party of less than a hundred, counting the women.”
‘‘So women can at least help us unload,” he insisted, adding, ‘‘You have horses too, don’t you?”
‘‘Sí, pero not nearly enough horses for to carry even a good part of such a load, Dick! At most my people can take a hundred of your yanqui pounds each. We are on the run. That patrol you just ambushed was scouting for us. Other patrols could be along any momento!”
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br /> He grinned and said, ‘‘Hey, one of your guys got their getaway man. Let’s eat this apple a bite at a time. First we get the cargo ashore, and then we figure out what we can do with it, right?”
They did. It took a while. Esperanza had been fibbing about how many boats she had aboard La Nombre Nada. So they had two longboats and a captain’s gig to work with. Nopalita posted some of her punier men and braver women on the grassy ridge and up the hillside to keep an eye out for other patrols as the rest of the band, and Esperanza’s crew, manhandled the cargo ashore, a boatload at a time. Meanwhile, Captain Gringo worked on her sandy, scorched engine. It made a lot more sense with daylight streaming in the one open port. The ignition wires weren’t as shot as he’d feared, thanks to his speed in dousing engine fires. He was able to cover the few bare spots with friction tape, and a lot of the sand just brushed off. What was left sort of polished things as he wiped it down with an oily wad of cotton waste. The air filter had saved the intake. The exhaust outlet was underwater. That was, as it turned out, what had fucked up the engine the night before. When they couldn’t start the four-banger, even cleaned up, Captain Gringo had an idea and sent a crewman over the side for a look-see. When the hand came up with a fistful of seaweed, Captain Gringo told Esperanza, “You must have scraped the screening off, poking up some swamp. A potato in the exhaust pipe of a horseless carriage is already getting to be a stale prank. It’s an easy fix. A kitchen strainer ought to do her. If it doesn’t, have one of your guys check the next time it stalls for no reason, running hot.’’
She said she’d have her ship’s carpenter deal with the matter and suggested they go below for some siesta sex. He sighed and said, “I’d like that. I can’t. We’ve got everybody else sweating like pigs, and there’s still a ton or so to unlade.’’
