Renegade 21

by Lou Cameron

  Vallejo shrugged and said, “I suppose I would gather a work detail, go out in the forest for to find a proper tree, and—”

  “Send in the next applicant,” Captain Gringo cut in, explaining, “That’s what the first shavetail told Grant he’d do. The second one said he’d fill out the proper work orders and vouchers for the engineer corps. So Grant sent him away, too. The third guy got the job. His answer was that if the general wanted a fucking flagstaff he’d step out of the tent, grab the first passing noncom, and tell him the general wanted a fucking flagstaff, in one fucking hour, period!”

  Vallejo had to think about that awhile before he got it. He shook his head and asked, “Is that how you got things done in the U.S. Army?”

  “It’s the way I did. We had some assholes, too. That’s the main reason I’m down here soldiering the hard way. I led a troop of the Tenth Cav against Apache for a while. It was a black outfit. White officers, of course. Most of us learned pretty quick that life’s too short to stand over a man and give him detailed instructions to brush his teeth and wipe his ass. Tell the average soldier to move around to the left and you don’t really have to tell him to keep his head down and shoot the Apache first, see?”

  “Ah, but those pobrecitos following us are not trained soldados.”

  “So what? It takes a military genius to pick up a pack and carry it?”

  He stopped and turned around, adding, “Speaking of military geniuses, where’s that fucking Bruno with my Maxim and ammo?”

  The ragged column in their wake staggered to a confused halt as they saw him stop. That gave the short bandy-legged girl packing the Maxim, ammo, and backpack of rations time to gain on the head of the column. She was breathing sort of funny as she staggered up to them and gasped, “Forgive me, Captain Gringo, but you walk so fast!”

  “Give me that machine gun and sit on the ammo a minute, muchacha. Who the hell are you, and where the hell is Bruno?”

  She sank down gratefully and gasped, “I am called Florita, señor. Bruno told me to carry for him because of his bad back.”

  “Nogales!” Captain Gringo roared.

  The old man dropped the pack he’d been carrying on his head and ran forward, removing said hat as Captain Gringo demanded, “Where’s that good-for-nothing Bruno?”

  Nogales answered, “Por favor, I do not know, Captain Gringo. He said something about a bad back as I passed him last.”

  Captain Gringo whistled between his teeth. Gaston whistled back and dog-trotted up to the head of the column. Gaston took in the scene at a glance and said, “Eh bien, we are discussing young men who complain of fatigued spines, no doubt?”

  “Yeah, the prick loaded his mujer, here, with both their loads. He didn’t fall back past you, did he?”

  Gaston smiled thinly and said, “He tried to.”

  Captain Gringo said, “Oh. All right, everybody, let’s move it out as before. Florita, stay close with that ammo. I’ll pack the Maxim for now.”

  He started walking west, allowing them to think for themselves, but not too much, as they fell into place behind him once more.

  Lieutenant Vallejo also thought for himself as they made the first hundred yards or so in silence. Then he asked softly, “Did Verrier do what I think he might have done, captain?”

  Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “There’s no might about it. When Gaston’s bringing up the rear, it’s not a good idea to straggle.”

  “I did not hear a shot.”

  Captain Gringo wasn’t sure he wanted the snooty lieutenant to know about the knife Gaston wore under his collar at the nape of his neck, so he just said, “What can I tell you? You know what they say about Frenchmen fucking with their mouth and fighting with their feet.”

  “Is he that good? With his feet, I mean? He’s not very big, and he’s rather elderly, no?”

  “Bruno might have been counting on that. Forget it. We’re still close enough to camp for someone to smell him in a few hours. Let them worry about it.”

  Vallejo shrugged and said, “Nobody but the ants will worry about him now. El Generale is marching up the coast this morning to deal with other problems to the north.”

  “Yeah? Let’s not tell your cook, then. I don’t want to lose any more help until we eat these supplies a little lighter.”

  Vallejo said, “He already knows. Why did you think he was acting so crazy? His mujer is most attractive and a bit of a flirt. But he knows as long as he behaves, he may someday hope to see her again.”

  They walked on a way before Vallejo mused, “I hope she behaves. Buckets of blood will flow if our burly sergeant ever hears of her having anything to do with another hombre. He only married his Dulcenita a short while ago and—”

  “Kee-rist!” Captain Gringo cut in. “Is Morales the husband of that little Dulcenita?”

  Vallejo shot him a puzzled look, then brightened and said, “Oh, that’s right, you do know Dulcenita. She was one of the girls I sent to your tent with refreshments last night. Did they take care of you all right?”

  Less than five miles from the army camp they ran out of palmetto scrub and into a swamp. A big one, studded with cypress knees and covered with a green scum that smelled like frog shit. Captain Gringo turned to Lieutenant Vallejo and asked, “Which way, north or south?”

  The young officer answered, “Don’t ask me. I’m only an observer for El Generale.”

  The tall American turned and saw that his people were bunching up, and while he didn’t approve of that, this wasn’t the time and place for basic training. So he called out, “All right, which one of you knows the best way around this swamp?”

  No answer.

  Gaston came over to join him and the lieutenant, musing softly, “Me and my big knife. I was just discussing the late Bruno with the peones at my end of the column. Aside from being a shirker, he was a local nimrod who hunted in the backwaters for frog legs, Spanish moss, and other things he could carry without straining his poor aching back. I fear he was supposed to be the guide El Generale mentioned, non?”

  Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “Forget it. He didn’t figure to guide us worth a shit once he deserted.” He took out his ordnance map and spread it on the sand as the three squatted for a look at it. The swamp that blocked further easy passage west wasn’t on the map. The cartographers had just put lots of marsh-grass symbols all up and down the Mosquito Coast and you were supposed to work out the details for yourself.

  Captain Gringo said, “If we follow the sandy cuesta north, we hit the British trade route and maybe the British. It’s out of our way, anyway. Okay, we trend south-southwest and see what happens. If there’s any old way across to the higher ground on the far side, some Indian will have noticed and blazed a trail. Let’s go.”

  Vallejo rose, along with the two soldiers of fortune, but protested, “It is getting hot. When are we going to stop for la siesta?”

  Captain Gringo glanced up at the sky and said, “When it’s even hotter. It’s nowhere’s near noon yet, lieutenant. With luck it ought to be raining fire and salt in a little while, anyhow.”

  He called out to his lower-ranking followers and pointed southwest with his machete, announcing, “¡Vamanos, muchachas y muchachos!” and started to turn away. Then he saw that little Florita was having trouble getting to her feet with the heavy pack and ammo. So he hauled her up, saying, “I’m sorry I can’t carry the ammo, too. But I need one hand free with this machete.”

  “I shall do my best, señor,” she replied, trying not to cry. He looked at Vallejo, who wasn’t packing anything but his six-guns and silly hat, and said, “Lieutenant, you’d better carry the ammo. This girl’s pack must weigh sixty pounds or more.”

  Vallejo took out a skinny cheroot and lit it, saying, “I came along as an observer, not as a porter. Do I look like a peon to you?”

  “I’d tell you what you look like to me, but there’s a lady present. Good grief, what in the hell are you smoking, lieutenant? It smells like fucking vio
lets!”

  Vallejo blew a perfumed cloud his way and replied, “As a matter of fact, there are violet petals mixed with the tobacco. They’re made in Cuba for discriminating customers.”

  “Okay, so you buy your smokes from a whorehouse and we’ve still gotta carry that ammo. Be a sport, lieutenant. You’ll still have one hand free to jerk off under your poncho, and whatever this little dame is, she ain’t a burro.”

  He’d deliberately phrased it so it looked like Vallejo had a choice. The prissy officer shrugged and said, “Oh, very well,” and relieved the peon girl of the ammo as Captain Gringo turned away and started trudging through the scrub with the Maxim on one shoulder and the machete handy to take care of anything else slowing him down.

  Vallejo had been right about it getting hotter. Despite the overcast, or perhaps because of it, by late morning they were staggering through a steam room a lot of sweaty frogs and alligators had obviously used first. They were making lousy time. But Captain Gringo knew that if he pushed his people any harder on the first day out they’d start falling apart by the second. El Generale Portola had recruited too few locals for the heavy loads he’d issued, and, despite all that bullshit about them being swamp-running Indians, they were simply agricultural peones, used to the pace of life visitors to the tropics discounted as lazy. Captain Gringo had been down here long enough to know that Latin Americans worked as hard as anyone could in this climate, if they expected to make it to forty. The perpetual heat offered three crops a year if a campesino rolled with the punches and didn’t try to reap more than a Pennsylvania Dutchman’s one good harvest from his three tropic plantings. While ever warm, the local weather tended to give too much or too little water from month to month, and the weeds were maniacal. So the “lazy” campesino actually put in more work with his hoe and spade in a year than the average Anglo farmer, if you added it all up. The secret lay in spreading out the work. The twelve-hour workday a Yankee boss expected would kill anyone who tried it down here. The Ladino peon worked an hour or so at a time, then took a break. That “lazy” guy leaning against a wall with his sombrero pulled down over his face figured to get up again in a while and go back to work. In the sticky heat, sleep was taken in small doses, too. Unlike people to the north, Ladinos broke the day into two-or three-hour fragments of work, rest, play, or whatever. Hence, the reason visitors were bemused to find a Ladino asleep at noon or plowing a field at midnight.

  Captain Gringo moved between two clumps of sea grape and found himself atop a sandy rise surrounded by sea grape, palmetto, and Spanish bayonet. He laid the tarp-wrapped Maxim on the warm sand, stuck the machete in the ground beside it, and called out, “Trail break. Nogales, front and center!”

  The old man staggered up to him, under his own load, and Captain Gringo said, “We’ll be here a while. It’s about to start raining again. Hard, judging by the way the wind’s picking up and blowing against the trades. I don’t want anyone chilled. Have your people build lean-tos and start a small Indian fire in front of each. I know it sounds silly right now. But you’ll never get a bed of rain-resistant coals started unless you start with dry fuel.”

  The old man dropped his load and got to it. Captain Gringo saw that the girl, Florita, had dropped herself as well as her load to the warm sand and was staring down at it like she was about to puke. He said, “Take off that pack and move over to that palmetto, Florita. Don’t drink any water just yet.”

  As she moved to obey, Lieutenant Vallejo shot them a curious look. The tall American said, “Heat stroke, I think. Told you she wasn’t a burro. Where’s your cook? I want him to break out some rations and grub the troops.”

  “Sergeant Morales is my personal cook, if you don’t mind, Captain.”

  “I do mind. He can cook for you. He can bend over for you. But he’s going to put some strong hot coffee in the rest of the outfit if we’re going to get any fucking where this year. I’m making you mess officer. Before you say anything dumb, lieutenant, I’m not asking you. I’m telling you! You can still catch up with El Generale if you want to pick up your marbles and run home.”

  Vallejo’s eyes narrowed. Then he shrugged and said, “I do not have to take orders from you, Yanqui. But since you asked if I wished for to act as mess officer, I shall give the required orders.”

  He removed his poncho, dropped it on the sand, and stomped off to do as he’d been told. Gaston joined Captain Gringo, saying, “I heard the last of that exchange, Dick. I don’t think that schoolboy likes his teacher.”

  “Fuck what he likes. I don’t care if anyone leaves an apple on my desk or not.”

  “Eh, bien, just make sure he doesn’t present you with a stick of dynamite or a bullet in the derriere. We’ve both met officers like Vallejo before, and stupid men make me trés nervous. One can work out deals with devils, but idiots are liable to do anything, even when it is not in their own best interests. Perhaps our perfumed wonder should have an, ah, accident?”

  “Not until we cash that certified check. Hold the thought. I seem to have a sick girl on my hands.”

  He moved over to where Florita reclined in the dappled palmetto shade and hunkered down beside her. He took out a kerchief, wet it from his belt canteen, and removed her straw sombrero, saying, “Hold still. This ought to help.”

  As he wiped her beaded brow he saw, now that she didn’t have her little heart-shaped face shaded, that Florita wasn’t bad-looking. She was far from being a Gibson Girl. Despite the fact she couldn’t have been twenty, hard work and lousy nutrition had put lines on her brown face that few Yankee women expected to see in their mirrors before thirty or so. She’d look even older by the time she had a few kids. He could see by the fullness of her thin cotton blouse that she hadn’t nursed any yet. Her breasts were big, but firm, with perky little nipples showing through the perspiration-soaked cotton. He said, “You’re sweating too much for heat stroke. You’ve already survived vomito negro, of course?”

  “Si; what the Anglos in Greytown call yellow jack swept through our village when I was very little. My brothers and sisters died, but I did not, and since then I have never had el vomito negro again.”

  “Hmm, it could be malaria. I have some quinine here. I buy it as regular as cigars and …”

  “Por favor, I know what is wrong with me, Señor Deek,” she cut in, blushing slightly as she said, “I ate too many palmetto berries. I have been picking them as we walked down the cuesta and …”

  “Hold it, Florita,” he said with a puzzled frown, adding, “Nobody eats palmetto berries. They’re poisonous, right?”

  “They make one sick to one’s stomach if one eats too many,” she nodded.

  So he asked, “Why in the hell did you eat them, then? Do you want to go back to your village that badly?”

  She shook her head and said, “No, some brute like Bruno would only rape me again. Is it true Bruno is no more? Forgive me, I did not wish for to listen, but I could not help overhearing some of what you and the old Frenchman said.”

  He said, “You don’t have to worry about Bruno anymore, Florita. But how come he mistreated you in the first place? Don’t you have an alcalde in your village to protect pretty young muchachas?”

  She shook her head and said, “No. Our village is no more than a cluster of huts, since los Anglos came to colonize this part of the world. They sent our padre and officials away. They said we were all subjects of their Queen Victoria now, but none of us speak English and …”

  He stopped her by saying, “I know about Anglo-Saxon colonial policy. I used to be an Anglo-Saxon. Let’s get back to poisoning ourselves with palmetto berries. Why did you do it, Florita?”

  She lowered her lashes and blushed beet red as she murmured, “I wished for to be a passionate woman. The brujas say that if one eats a few fruits of the saw palmetto, it acts like Spanish fly Now. I am not sure they know what they are talking about. I have eaten at least a handful, and all I feel is very very seasick!”

  “You look better now than
you did before. If you can’t throw up, just sit tight and I’ll get some black coffee down you as soon as it’s ready. That should set you free one way or another. Meanwhile, why in the hell were you trying to dose yourself with the local witchcraft aphrodisiac? Who are you so hot for, Florita?”

  She sighed and said, “In God’s truth, no one, Señor Deek. I do not know what is wrong with me, but I am a frigid bitch. That is what my husband called me when he left me for another, and what Bruno used to call me before he beat me. I thought perhaps if I ate palmetto berries, like the brujas said—”

  “Querida, you’re talking loco en la cabeza,” he cut in gently, before adding, “Bruno’s not with us anymore. So who in hell’s about to call you a frigid anything? You’ve been walking right behind me since we left El Generale and I don’t remember any of the others getting forward with you,”

  She said, “Si. They all know you have chosen me for to be your adelita on the trail.”

  He blinked and muttered, “Oh boy!” before switching back to Spanish to assure her, “Don’t worry, Florita. I hardly ever rape little girls, and when I do, I never call them names.”

  “Don’t you think I am pretty?”

  “I think you’re very pretty, and sort of confusing, too. You just said you didn’t enjoy sex with any man, Florita.”

  “I don’t. I have tried to, God knows. But nothing happens, and after a time it gets most uncomfortable as you all shove those silly things in and out of me. The brujas say it is just my nature to be as I am. They say some women were just never meant to enjoy it.”

  He nodded understandingly and said, “I don’t know much about witchcraft, Florita, but our doctors say much the same, and since I’m neither a doctor nor a witch, let’s not worry about it.”