Renegade 21

by Lou Cameron

  Gaston laughed and said, “Merde alors, it was not the modest efforts of that English girl I found such a drain on my strength. I sent her back to bed with her drunken husband after merely showing her how a few positions she said would not work, really worked. I swear I tried to behave myself. But then that damn sex-starved daughter crept into my room after Ruth Palmer left and—”

  “Jesus, you made it with old Susana, too?”

  “Susana? Mais non, she said to call her Alicia. She said she’d had to wait, with her poor dear clit engorged, until her proper little sister went to sleep and then …”

  Captain Gringo laughed wildly and said, “Never mind. We can talk dirty after we get this fucking raft under way again.”

  They didn’t. They poled around a bend and stopped, letting the current carry them slowly and thoughtfully toward an unexpected cluster of black stone buildings. Some ragged-ass Indian kids were staring at them from the shore. Then Captain Gringo spotted two whiter-looking men in white robes, and when one of them waved, he waved back and told Gaston, “This looks like the Dominican mission we were told about.”

  It was. The missionaries were friendly and curious. They insisted on the two adventurers having something to eat and drink with them, even though it was early.

  The sun was getting high and hot by then, but the thick stone walls of the mission refectory still held the coolness of night as they sat at the table with the padres, monks, or whatever. The Dominican missionaries were old, gentle-spoken, and obviously out of touch with the world. They’d heard about the dam downstream from worried Indians. They hadn’t gotten around to serious worry about it yet. One said, “Here we are in the good graces of the government as well as God, my sons. Neither would allow the strangers from across the sea to flood us out. We have a mission here.”

  Captain Gringo nodded and said he could see that, adding, “The people in charge of building the dam know there are people living all up and down this valley. They know the dam will present a danger to the people living down the San Juan on the far side if it should ever burst. They don’t seem to care.”

  “Then they are evil men, or perhaps only insane, my son. Do you intend to tell them they must not finish their strange structure?”

  “Sort of. You’re right about it being strange. Can you think of any reason anyone might want to move a steamboat up the river, ah, padre?”

  He must have been a priest. He shrugged and said, “There are not enough people dwelling in this watershed to make a steamboat line pay. There used to be quite a bit of mahogany. But most of that has long since been cut and floated down to the boat landings along the wider San Juan, no?”

  “If you say so, padre. The river is named for gold. Is there any gold along the Dorado?”

  The old man pursed his lips and said, “Si, a little. From time to time los Indios pan a little in the shallows far upstream. In conquest times, there was some excitement about this. Prospectors searched for the mother lode in the hills to the north. They never found it. They panned such rich placers as there were in the river shallows. All of this, you must understand, was long ago. Now there cannot be enough gold in the entire riverbed to make it worthwhile for a white man to pan. Los Indios have more time, and more modest needs. Even they do not bother much with the fabled gold dust of the Rio Dorado’s sandy bed, these days.”

  Captain Gringo and Gaston exchanged glances. They both said, “Power dredging!” at the same time.

  The old men entertaining them just looked bewildered. So Captain Gringo said, ‘They are installing locks in the dam downstream. Big locks. Too wide for anyone with just a river steamer to need. But in other parts of the world, like the panned-out streams of California, big barges covered with machinery can still show a tidy profit, dredging deep and moving more placer sand in a few minutes than a team of Chinese coolies could pan by hand in a month!”

  Gaston nodded and said, “Eh bien, it works, to a point. If the locals can still show any color at all, working long hours with primitive methods, there must be enough left in the way of deep placer to make machine dredging profitable indeed. It’s possible some sneaky prospector may have even found the mother lode, higher on the slopes than the pioneers searched. But, as I said, it only works to a point. Palmer says the dam will never hold, once the valley is completely flooded.”

  Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “It still works, if we assume C.C., Limited, is run by dedicated bastards, and all the evidence so far would show that to be an educated guess.”

  “Qui, oui, I know about the dam foundations being insecure and all that. But would even a dedicated bastard want to ride a gold dredge down a flash flood?”

  “No, of course not. But don’t you get it? C.C., Limited, is a construction company, not a mining company!”

  Gaston gasped and said, “Mon Dieu, that is dedicated bastardry indeed! This species of engineer called Chumford doesn’t care how long the dam holds, once he is paid for building it! It’s no wonder he sent those hired guns after the Palmers. He doesn’t care what anyone says to the Nicaraguan government, whomever that may be at the moment. He doesn’t want the mining interests he and C.C., Limited, are suckering to hear about their trés short-term investment, hein?”

  They’d switched to English, so Captain Gringo didn’t have to watch his language in front of the nice old guys when he said, “They’re a bunch of cocksuckers, too. They might not know they’re buying a leaky dam, but by now they must have figured they’ll be drowning a whole watershed to muck for low-grade gold. Gold does shitty things to some guys’ brains. If someone had told ’em the river sand was full of tin, the razzle-dazzle wouldn’t have worked.”

  Gaston said, “True. But not even a swinish gold grubber would wish to pay for a navigational system that could wash them all out to sea at any moment. If we got word to them about the unethical methods of their contractors—”

  “It wouldn’t stop them,” Captain Gringo cut in, explaining, “Palmer said the dam and locks figure to hold a few months or maybe even a few years. A steam dredge can scoop a lot of placer in even a few weeks.”

  “Oui, but when the dam goes, what happens to the gentlemen manning said dredges, Dick?”

  “They die, along with everybody else the bursting dam manages to kill. Do you really think the board of directors in London gives a fuck?”

  “Ah, true, one hires mere peasants to do the dirty dangerous work. And of course the company will have had the foresight to take out insurance with Lloyds of London or some other trusting souls. Perhaps a discreet cable to Lloyds of London is in order?”

  Captain Gringo shot him a disgusted look and said, “If you’d been paying any attention at all to Palmer instead of his wife, you’d know it’s too late to stop the project any polite way. Even if we could get some big shot in London to listen to a couple of knock-around guys with rewards posted on them, Palmer says the coffer dam’s already in place and the water’s already backing up.”

  “Eh bien, but if they can’t get insurance or further funding …”

  “They go away. Swell. We don’t get paid by Portola, because that’s not the way he told us to do it. The valley doesn’t get saved, either. Abandoned or not, that coffer dam just keeps backing the Dorado until there’s a lake at least fifty feet deep behind it. Then, next week, next month, you name it, the temporary coffer dam gives and … kablooey!”

  Gaston grimaced and said, “You paint a droll, damp picture indeed. Eh bien, I see the only way to get you to shut up about your triple-titled dam will be to help you dispose of it. But have you considered there are only the two of us and a few sticks of dynamite now?”

  Captain Gringo nodded, turned back to the old priest, who’d been trying to follow them, with a polite puzzled smile, and said, “Forgive the English, padre. It’s better you and your people don’t know everything my friend and me might be up to.”

  Their elderly host smiled softly and said meekly, “I understand your concern for our political well-
being, my son. Unlike our more wordly Jesuit brothers, we have always tried to avoid upsetting our somewhat anticlerical local governments by seeming not to concern ourselves in local politics. Our mission here is only to the poor Indians. In God’s Truth, that is enough to keep our order more than busy. Los Mosquitoes tend to backslide most alarmingly when things are not going well.”

  Another old man across the table fingered his rosary as he chimed in softly, “Mosquitoes at best give nominal lip service to the true faith when one can keep them well fed and free of serious illness. Let the corn crop fail or the infant mortality rise a bit and, alas, they turn at once to their old tribal spirits for guidance.”

  Captain Gringo nodded sagely, as if what they were telling him was fresh news. He wondered if there was any point to this conversation.

  There was. The old priest hesitated, then, in perfect English, said, “You boys are never going to take out those Anglo engineers and their army of hired thugs alone. Give us a few hours and we can round you up at least a platoon of really rotten apples!”

  The thirty-seven Mosquito volunteers didn’t look like rotten apples. Maybe sprouting mushrooms. It was raining again by the time the Dominicans had called them all in from the surrounding jungle. So each man wore a poncho and low-crowned straw sombrero of mushroom tan. At this late date, most Indian hunters knew how to handle a shotgun. But they’d gotten the message that this was to be a sneaky mission, so they’d brought along hardwood longbows, taller than they were, and packed quivers of reed arrows that rose above their shoulders and almost trailed on the ground behind them. From the little one could see of their shaded faces, they were all grown men. They didn’t look savage. They looked like the meek and mild mission Indians they were supposed to be and probably were, when they weren’t pissed off.

  A few of them had noticed the way the river was backing up down the valley and scouted near the dam site to see why. They’d been shot at. So they were pissed off indeed, and delighted to have a chance to do something about it, with the apparent approval of the missionaries and the more open help of the two soldiers of fortune.

  For political reasons, nobody connected with the mission introduced anyone formally to anyone else. The Indians just wandered in from the countryside and lined up along the riverbank with their backs to the mission until Captain Gringo and Gaston moved out to join them. The tall American introduced himself and his shorter sidekick, told them he intended to do something about the threat to their valley, and asked who was in charge and if anyone had any suggestions.

  A Mosquito who looked bright and about forty stepped out of line and said he was called Ignacio. He said he was straw boss unless somebody wanted to dispute the matter with machetes. Nobody did. They’d apparently settled a few matters among themselves already, but Ignacio liked to set the record straight. He pointed with his chin at the balsa raft the two adventurers had poled this far down the Dorado and added, “If you wish to carry your supplies closer to the dam site, señores, it will be safer if we pack it by land for you. Those strangers trying for to flood us out have lookouts atop Pocopoco. They have two steam launches cruising the wide waters of the already growing lake upstream. Each launch is armed with a gun that goes cluck-cluck-cluck like a chicken. If they caught us aboard rafts on open water—”

  “My Mosquito brother’s words are wise,” Captain Gringo cut in, but added, “How long will it take us, doing it the hard way?”

  Ignacio said, “The rest of this day and most of the night, if we only stop for to eat now and then and do not sleep like sissies.”

  “If it keeps on raining there will be no moonlight in the jungle after dark. Does my Mosquito brother see in the dark like a cat?”

  “No, señor. He sees like an Indio who was hunting the slopes of this valley since before most men here were born. I know the best way to flank the dam site. Of course, I am only an ignorant Indio and no doubt they have warned you I am not a good Cristiano, so …”

  Captain Gringo laughed and said, “You will take the point, viejo mio. You speak of flanking like an old soldado. How many hitches did you do in one army or another, Ignacio?”

  “Por favor, it is not wise for a deserter to discuss his military career, Captain Gringo.”

  “You know who I am?”

  “Would we be following you had not the padres told us there was an outside chance of pulling it off? These muchachos are the cream of our fighting men. The rest, alas, have been wearing pants and praying too long to call Mosquitoes. The strangers down the valley have us outnumbered ten to one. They are in position and primed for an attack. But you are you and I am me. So let’s go kill the cabrónes!”

  Captain Gringo nodded but said, “First things first, Ignacio. I want an organized combat patrol, not a mob. Could you select at least three good squad leaders and figure out who should be holding a strung bow or packing supplies when and if we stumble into anybody important?”

  Ignacio smiled broadly and saluted like the old soldier he was before he pivoted on one bare heel and bellowed, “Ramon, Arturo, Fernando! Front and center! Eduardo y Pablo, you two just made supply sergeants. See about getting that stuff off the raft and properly distributed on the backs of the adventurous youths who tagged along despite my warnings of military life!”

  As the three he’d selected as squad leaders lined up, Ignacio introduced them to Captain Gringo and Gaston and made them salute, as well as they could manage. Captain Gringo and Gaston returned the salutes gravely. Ignacio said, “Let us be on our way then, my blanco friends. The others can sort themselves out as they follow. We have a long march ahead of us if you wish for to hit those Anglo bastards at dawn’s early light, no?”

  Gaston shot Captain Gringo a thoughtful look. The tall American nodded slightly and followed the officious Ignacio without comment. He knew what Gaston was thinking, and he too thought Ignacio was acting a little chesty.

  Captain Gringo had dealt with pushy noncoms before. Some had turned out to be good soldiers at heart. Others had been simply natural bullies who couldn’t handle authority without suffering sudden swelling of the head. Meanwhile, they had a long way to go, Ignacio knew the way, and, most important, the other Indians hopped when Ignacio hollered, “froggie.”

  Whatever Ignacio was, he had good legs. Both soldiers of fortune were of course legged up pretty good, and even Gaston had longer legs than the squat Mosquito. But Ignacio set a killing pace right off as he started marching south-southwest, trending away from the riverbank. Captain Gringo resisted an impulse to tell Ignacio to slow down. The Indian knew his own people best. If this was a macho display, Ignacio would slow down as soon as he saw that neither white man keeping pace with him was going to whimper about it.

  He didn’t. But as they reached the tree line, Captain Gringo looked back and saw the others following in good order. Even the men packing the supplies from the raft seemed as well legged up as Ignacio, and the tall American noted with approval that the just appointed squad leaders were in position, with flank marchers out to both sides of the column, arrows knocked in those long wicked bows.

  They followed Ignacio into what looked like a solid wall of spinach. But the point man didn’t need his machete. He’d hit a game trail he obviously knew. Once upslope in taller timber, the going was open and easy in any direction between the mossy buttressed pillars of the gloomy overhead canopy. The rain was broken by the leaves and branches above into steady streams that looked like monkey piss and felt about as warm when one couldn’t avoid it. Ignacio led them upslope at least a mile, then swung south without comment as he spotted some invisible landmark in the seemingly monotonous cathedral like gloom. Captain Gringo glanced back again and saw that the flank scouts had fanned well out to ghost through the trees on either side at rifle range. He nodded in silent approval. Maybe the old soldier acted self-important because he was important,, after all.

  The tarp-wrapped machine gun and its ammo were being packed a little farther back than Captain Gringo would have
chosen, if he’d given the orders. Gaston noticed too, and as he lit a smoke he commented on it in very casual English. Captain Gringo murmured, “Easy hand on the reins, for now. We’re not going to meet the real enemy this side of sunset. So let’s keep our enemies down to reasonable numbers.”

  Gaston saw that the swaggering Indian ahead of them was out of easy earshot. So he felt free to say, more insistently, “You have to establish command, Dick. These men are more like the scum we recruited for the old legion than any troops you’ve dealt with in the past.”

  Captain Gringo snorted in disgust and said, “You forget how far in the past we’re talking about. Since the U.S. Army took my old command away, I’ve led many a guerrilla down here, old buddy.”

  “Oui, and as I keep telling you, you are too soft on them. Give a peon one stripe and he thinks he is a general. Take one suggestion and he thinks he is ten times smarter than you are, as well.”

  “Stuff a sock in it, you old worry wart. Right now these guys do know more than we do.”

  “Eh bien, and how long do you think it will be before our bandy-legged cock of the walk begins to wonder why he even brought us along?”

  Captain Gringo didn’t answer. Gaston made a habit of crossing bridges so far ahead that sometimes they weren’t even there. If the Mosquitoes had been up to attacking the dam site on their own, they’d have done it by now.

  On the other hand, El Generale Portola had been worried they might. So, okay, he’d have to keep an eye on Ignacio.

  It wasn’t easy. The runty Indian’s legs pumped like steam pistons, mile after mile. The rain let up again before Ignacio did, and it started to get hot, even in the shade, by late afternoon. The soldiers of fortune were dripping enough sweat to stay as wet as ever when Gaston moved closer and asked, “When are you going to call a trail break, Dick? If I am about to drop, carrying only my side arms and adorable ass, the porters to our rear must really be suffering, non?”