by Lou Cameron
The Detroit Harp started to do so as Gaston said, “This sign must have been what stopped those other searchers, non?” and Captain Gringo nodded and said, “Probably. They didn’t know their littoral law.”
“Literal what?”
“Not literal – littoral. Pertaining to the seashore, Costa Rica follows the same Latin code most countries do. It was established as far back as the Romans that you can’t put a no trespassing sign where it bars folks from following the seashore.”
One of the other men pointed past them and said, “You may have to explain that to those guys, Cap!” and the tall American turned to see a skirmish line of thirty-odd men moving toward them from the buildings in the distance. They were dressed in cotton khaki and carried rifles at port arms as they crunched across the lava. Captain Gringo stepped through the fence to The Detroit Harp’s side, but when Harp murmured, “Do you want the Maxim?” he said, “No. We’ll be good if they will.”
“Cap, there’s ten of us and thirty of them. This machine gun is the only ace we’ve got up our sleeve!”
“Put it down. They’ve seen it. There’s no cover out here for either side and I’m betting on them seeing that, too.”
As the skirmish line of riflemen stopped at pistol range, a leader in officer’s gear came closer and stopped with one hand on his holstered pistol to say, “You people must not know how to read, eh?”
Captain Gringo smiled and replied, “We’re on our way to the village out on the point, friend.”
“That is your problem, señor. My orders are to keep people off company property, and, as you see, you are many dangerous paces inside the fence. But I am a reasonable man. I shall count to ten before I kill you. Surely you are agile enough to make it back over the wire before I get to ten?”
Captain Gringo put a thoughtful hand of his own on a gun butt and said, “Let’s not be hasty. You and your men aren’t Costa Rican regulars. We are working for the government.”
The uniformed leader frowned and said, “Bah, you are not Costa Rican soldados! You are gringos, like those others!”
“Now we’re getting somewhere! Did you chase a gang of gringos a few days ago?”
“Chase them? No. I told them to go away or I would kill them. So they went. They were very sensible, for gringos. Are you going to do the same, or do you wish for to die here?”
“Just simmer down and we may work something out. Is this the only trail out to the village?”
The guardsman shrugged and said, “It used to be. Now that the company has occupied this part of the point, there is no public trail.”
“That’s illegal. How can the villagers out there get to the mainland when they want to?”
“Bah! For why do they wish for to walk when they have boats? The people of the village make no trouble for us. I don’t think they want strangers out there, anyway. What gives you the right to wander uninvited in these parts?”
“I think it was the Roman Senate, a while back. The shoreline is public property, sign or no. This trail is the only path that follows the coast west. So...”
“You defy me? You dare? ¡Madre de Dios! You are crazy! Don’t you know who I am working for?”
Captain Gringo swept a critical eye up and down the bare slopes beyond the guard unit before he said, “It sure can’t be a big ranchero. A goat would starve out here on this windswept rock. What the hell does this company of yours do, beside scaring people?”
“You are trespassing on the holdings of Azufre Internacional!”
He sounded impressed with the idea. Captain Gringo frowned and said, “You’re working for a sulfur mine? What’s the problem, then? We don’t want to steal your sulfur. We just want to get out to the goddamned fishing village!”
“My orders are not to let you cross the property, señor. If you take another step, we shall have to kill you.”
The Detroit Harp spat and said, “Sure, and I’d say he was bluffing.”
Captain Gringo was of the same mind, but it seemed a poor way to make an entrance. As the two parties faced each other, each waiting for the other to give in or make their play, Captain Gringo saw a pair of riders coming from the stone buildings beyond and said for his men to hear, “Everyone stay cool but look sharp. Some bigger boos seem to be coming over to join the party.”
The riders were a heavyset man with a potbelly and beard, trailed by a Junoesque blonde woman who rode sidesaddle under a veiled picture hat. They reined in and the man demanded, “What is going on here? Who the devil are you men and what do you mean by pestering my help?”
Captain Gringo touched the brim of his battered panama hat to the woman but told the man, “Your help was about to have a war with us, if you’re International Sulfur, Mister, ah—?”
“Hoover. Jan Ten Eck Hoover, if it’s any business of yours.”
“That’d make you a Hollander, right?”
“I am a Rotterdammer and the manager, here, of a company headquartered in Curacao, Dutch West Indies. Not that this is any of your business and I am still waiting for an explanation!”
Captain Gringo said, “My name’s Walker. We’re headed for the village out on the point. This boundary fence you’ve built across a public right-of-way is illegal, but I can’t seem to make your guards see that.”
Jan Hoover glared and said, “Don’t be ridiculous! Our mining claim runs from the sea to the peak of that mountain!”
The woman leaned forward and said something in Dutch, in a rather weary voice. The fat Dutchman nodded and said, “You must understand it is dangerous here. That is why I fenced the property off. My company does not wish to be responsible for needless injury to passersby.”
Captain Gringo nodded and said, “I know sulfur mining is dangerous. We just want to cross your property. We don’t want to explore your mines.”
Hoover shook his head and started to say something, but the woman at his side smiled and said, “Jan is right about it being very dangerous around here. But if you will promise to stay on the path and follow us exactly, we will lead you across. In return, you will promise to tell us ahead of time when you intend to return this way so that we can guide you. Agreed?”
Captain Gringo grinned up at her and said, “Lady, you have a deal.” The buxom Dutch girl didn’t return his smile as she told the guards, in Spanish, to go on about their duties. Then, as the band with Captain Gringo finished crawling through the fence to join her, she said something else to the fat man on the other horse. He grumbled a bit, then shrugged and said, “You are right. These natives can’t be trusted down there without a white man to see they don’t act foolish. But take Tomas with you. We don’t know these men, after all.”
Captain Gringo saw Tomas was the leader of the guards, who didn’t seem to mind being a “native” even though his features were pure Spanish. As the soldiers of fortune lined up, the girl on the horse led out at a slow walk, with Tomas and two other guards bringing up the rear.
Captain Gringo stepped up alongside her as they started, saying, “I didn’t get your name, ma’am.”
“I am Ernestine Hoover and be careful where you put your feet. Do you see that trickle across the path ahead?”
“Sure, it looks like condensation water, running down off the peak up there.”
“It’s not. It’s concentrated sulfuric acid. Mist from the sea mixes with the smoke up there to form vitriol. We had some ghastly accidents before our unskilled workers learned to test all running or standing water with a wisp of wool instead of their skin or tongue!”
He whistled silently and called back, “Don’t go near the water, kiddies. It’s acid.” Then, after following Ernestine and her well-trained mount across the innocent looking trickle, dry shod, he asked, “Are you Herr Hoover’s daughter, ma’am?”
She said, “It’s Mynheer Hoover. We’re Dutch, not German. I don’t think I’ll tell poor Jan you took him for my father. He’s rather vain.”
“He’s your husband, then?”
“Yes, and I think
we’d better change the subject. I offered to lead you and your men, not to flirt with you.”
He started to mutter, “Up yours.” but decided she had a point and what the hell, she was sort of hefty, anyway.
The ground suddenly tingled under his boots and he asked, “What’s that? It sounded like a mine blast.”
She shook her head and said, “Hardly. I can see you don’t know much about mining sulfur. Didn’t anyone ever tell you it burns?”
“Right. Dynamiting match heads could make the results sort of unpredictable. But how do you get it out of the mountain and what was that jar under us, just now?”
She sniffed and said, “The sulfide ore is soft and the underground workings are done with bronze picks and shovels. Those occasional thuds are the volcano, I hope.”
“You hope? What’s more worrisome than a volcano clearing its throat next to a mine?”
“Part of the mine caving in, of course. As our workers haul ore there’s a tendency for slabs of roofing to fall in. The whole point is a layer cake of hard and soft lava flows, with beds of sulfur ore between, in places. Jan says the beds result when long cooled lava tubes fill with molten sulfides and slowly harden. I’ve only been down in the shafts a few times. It’s hellishly hot and smells like rotten eggs.”
He grimaced and said, “I can see why the early settlers named these parts purgatory. But aren’t you folks in a risky business, considering the current price of sulfur? You’re a long ways from the market, too.”
Ernestine looked disgusted and said, “You must not know much about Curacao, either.”
He said, “Sure, I do. It’s a Dutch sugar island, just over on the other side of Central America.”
“Then you know sulfur is used in refining sugar.
“Well, sure, but your sugar islands are still on the wrong side of the whole damned isthmus.”
“We won’t be, as soon as the Panama Canal is finished! Right now, most of the world gets its sulfur from Sicily, on the far side of the Atlantic. Honestly, Mr. Walker, you must not read the papers!”
Captain Gringo frowned as he mulled her words over and pictured a mental map of the world in his head. Then he nodded. When and if they got that canal dug, it was certainly going to change the trade routes a lot. Before he could ask her, Ernestine Hoover added, “Our company is thinking well ahead, of course. We don’t expect the canal to be built tomorrow, but, when it is, well have a nearby supply of sulfur for our sugar industry and, meanwhile, we ship a little up the coast to San Francisco, or out to Batavia, in our East Indies. As acid, of course.”
“What do you mean of course? Doesn’t anybody want the stuff as just plain sulfur?”
“Not in great quantities. You were right about it being cheap in bulk. The only way we can undercut the established Sicilian market is by shipping it as concentrated pure vitriol, ready to use from the bottle in various industrial processes.”
She then proceeded to give him a lecture on the uses of sulfuric acid. Information he had very little use for, he’d decided, until he frowned and said, “Back up. What was that about sulfuric acid and electric batteries?”
Ernestine shrugged and said, “Everyone knows Edisons’s new heavy duty batteries are filled with vitriol between the lead plates. Why?”
“You don’t know if there are sulfur mines in the Kaiser’s Marshall Islands to the west, do you?”
She laughed and said, “How could there be? The Marshalls are low coral islands. I don’t think they have any mines at all out there. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious. Would you folks sell battery acid to passing steamers putting in here?”
She shrugged and said, “We are wholesale, not retail. But Jan did give some acid to an American gunboat days ago. It was only as a courtesy. I don’t think he charged them anything.”
“Hmm, the U.S. Navy’s using batteries to run its gunboats, these day?”
“Of course not. It was steam driven. The acid was for its balloon.”
He tried to look innocent as he said, “Oh, that boat! We did see a gunboat towing a balloon a few days ago. I didn’t know you filled an observation balloon with sulfuric acid, though.”
Ernestine sniffed and said, “You failed high school chemistry, too, I see. What happens when you pour vitriol over scrap iron?”
He frowned and then nodded as he said, “Of course. Hydrogen gas! You generate hydrogen gas for a balloon in a tank filled with scrap iron and acid.”
She nodded and said, “They had this big lead-lined tank on the stern of their craft. When Jan delivered the demijohns of acid he asked why they had a balloon and they said something about an experiment. You Americans are always experimenting with something. Forgive me, but Jan says your people sometimes seem a bit slow at growing up.”
Captain Gringo was about to retort that some people kept playing with toys and others just got broad across the beam before they were thirty, but she didn’t look like she had a great sense of humor. As he walked beside her horse, he noticed her split riding skirt had fallen open to expose one calf above her high buttoned shoe. She was nicely legged up, for such a big dame. He decided to try and stay on friendly terms.
There was another tingle in the earth beneath his boots and, behind him, Gaston yelled, “Regardez, to your left!”
Captain Gringo glanced up the slope to see a boulder, not much smaller than the one they’d rolled through that other gangs hideout, rolling down at them with the speed of an express train off the tracks!
Captain Gringo leaped forward and caught the reins of Ernestine’s horse as the animal, spooked by the rumble, started to rear in terror. The girl worked at cross purposes, trying to steady her mount, and her own powerful pull on the bit confused things further while the rock roared down at them. Captain Gringo let go of the bridle and reached up to wrap his arms around the woman’s waist as the horse danced sideways on its rear legs. And then he was on his back with the big blonde atop him and the horse danced and circled to meet the boulder in a big wet splash! The rock bounded across the trail with the smashed horse wrapped around it like a soggy wrapping as it kept rolling and skipping all the way to the cliffs above the sea and over the edge!
There was a long moment of silence as Captain Gringo and Ernestine lay in one another’s arms, her heart pounding against his, and then Gaston and Tomas, the guard, were hauling them both to their feet and asking them if they were all right. Captain Gringo noticed she was blushing and not meeting his eye as he said, “I’m sorry about the horse. I see what you mean about this being dangerous country, ma’am.”
Gaston was swearing and saying something about an eruption. Ernestine said, “Oh, Monte Purgatorio is always spitting bits and pieces out, but there hasn’t been a real eruption in recorded history.
Then she met Captain Gringo’s eyes and said, gravely, “You saved my life, though. How did you know my horse was going to run to meet the boulder?”
He shrugged and said, “I’m an old cavalry man. I don’t know why some horses run back into a burning stable, but I’ve learned to recognize that look in a horse’s eye.”
The guard leader, Tomas, pointed at another line of wire beyond the red scars left by the rolling boulder and said, “We are almost across company property, now. You and your followers go on into the village and we will escort la señora back to her residence.”
But Ernestine shook her head and said, “I’m not going back across that lava on foot. You go back if you wish, Tomas. I shall continue on to the village and hire a donkey cart or something.”
Tomas looked unhappy and said, “In that case we shall accompany la señora. El patron Hoover said we were to stay at her side.”
The big blonde didn’t argue as, between Captain Gringo and Tomas, she walked on, wincing at the way the lava crunched under her good shoes but graceful enough on her feet, considering. Captain Gringo could see, now that she’d dismounted, that she was almost as tall as he was, which meant she topped six feet in those heels.
A dirty post card popped unbidden into his mind as he pictured her and her immense husband in bed together. It reminded him of two pink elephant seals he’d once watched rutting in the shallows up the coast. He wondered which one got on top, and why in the hell he should give a damn. She had a pretty face and nice trim ankles, but, for God’s sake, she had to weigh damned near two hundred pounds, judging from the way she’d landed on him back there.
They reached the fence and he helped her through as Tomas held the wires open. She stumbled getting through in her long skirts and once again, as he steadied her with a firm wrist, she nodded and said, “You really are quite powerful, aren’t you?”
He didn’t know how to answer that, so he didn’t try. They followed the trail around a bend and saw the fishing village ahead. It was laid out in a semicircle around a bowl-shaped harbor. One pier ran out from the stone quay, but most of the little fishing vessels were hauled half ashore for the evening. The boats were every color of the rainbow and some had eyes painted on their bows. When he commented on this, Ernestine said, “The original settlers seem to have been Portuguese fishermen who intermarried with local Spanish girls. They speak a strange dialect and tend to keep to themselves out here.”
Captain Gringo studied the pastel stucco houses as they approached and said, “Cosmopolitan, eh? You don’t know if there are any Germans living out here, do you, ma’am?”
“Germans? No, I don’t think so. Most German settlers in Costa Rica seem to prefer the cooler highlands. I think there is a Chinese shopkeeper and the man who runs the cantina is a Greek. Isn’t that right, Tomas?”
