by Lou Cameron
Liza smiled sweetly and replied, “Tell the mutt to take his nose away from my lap then. I take it the other one must be Hengist?”
“Of course. I didn’t realize you were English.”
“I am. What are you?”
“What am I?” gasped the Divine Rowena. “Why, I am English too, of course. Don’t tell me you have never heard of me and my Shakespearean Company, the Divine Rowena and Company?”
Liza laughed in her face and said, “That’s divine, all right. Your County Clare accent comes through even when you’re speaking Spanish. We used to vacation at my uncle’s Irish estate and I was quite friendly, as a child, with the servants. But well say no more about it, if you’ll drop your jumped-up act and make this cur behave. He’s slobbering on my skirt.”
The Divine Rowena kicked Horsa’s rump savagely and the hound lowered its muzzle to the floor with a whimper. Captain Gringo caught the knowing look from Gaston and had to glance away. Liza turned to him and said sweetly, “I think I’d like a smoke, too, dear.”
As he gave her one, the Divine Rowena gasped, “Are you being impertinent, my girl?”
“Oh, I hope so. But if you call me your girl again, you ridiculous country wench, I’ll snatch your blond hair out by its black roots!”
Captain Gringo said, “That’s enough, ladies. I think we all understand each other now, and it’s a long trip to Bogotá. Let’s all simmer down and enjoy the scenery. Why is that dog growling at me, ma’am?”
The Divine Rowena sniffed and said, “He senses that I’m upset. He can be quite savage with people who upset me.”
“Yeah? Well I can be quite savage, too. So keep them under control or all three of you may wind up walking.”
“I’ll have you know I’m a friend of Senator Vargas, sir!”
“That’s your problem. I never heard of him.” The dog called Hengist bared its teeth at the tone of his voice and Captain Gringo said, “I’m not impressed with this friend of yours, either. So what’s it going to be?”
The Divine Rowena leaned forward to pat her dog, soothing, “Down, boy. Mommy Wommy only wants to be fwends with these Peepy Weepy.”
Liza took a drag on her own cheroot and said, “I fink I’m going to fwow up!”
But nobody wanted to press it further, and as the train tunneled under some jungle growth and picked up speed, they all settled back.
After a time, the fat man they’d seen with her aboard the steamer stuck his head in to ask if the Divine Rowena was comfortable. She sniffed and started to make a crack, but apparently reconsidered and merely shrugged.
The manager said, “I wish you’d ride back with the rest of us, madam. There were soldiers in our car and the brakeman was just saying something about bandits up the line.”
The Divine Rowena said, “Don’t be ridiculous. Our booking agent assured us things were very peaceful in Colombia and Senator Vargas would have warned us if there was trouble brewing.”
The manager looked at Captain Gringo as if for confirmation. The tall American smiled up at him and said, “Don’t look at me. We just got here. We’re Canadian newspapermen, on our way up to cover the new constitutional assembly.”
Gaston nodded and said, “We heard nothing about a revolution, m’sieu.”
The manager replied, “Oh, the soldiers aren’t expecting to tangle with rebels. The peones are supposed to be happy under the conservatives.”
“Really? Then why do they need soldiers on the train? One would expect policemen to deal with ordinary bandits, hein?”
The fat man shrugged and said, “I don’t know any more about it than you folks. Bandits or rebels, I just want to see that madam is safe. Uh, are you folks armed?”
Captain Gringo hesitated, but Gaston patted his jacket and said, “Oui, we have traveled in Latin America before. How about yourself, m’sieu?”
The manager took a single action Colt .44 out from under his linen coattails and said, “Been carrying this since Laredo. Knock wood, I haven’t had to use it, yet.”
The Divine Rowena curled her painted lips and said, “Fortunately for all concerned, Jason. I’ve told you not to wave that silly thing around. Everybody knows you don’t know how to use it.”
As the fat man sheepishly put the big gun away, she added for all to hear, “You know what they say about men with big guns. Jason has been trying to impress us with his machine-made virility for some time, now.”
She shot Captain Gringo an arch look and added, “You’ll have to show me your gun sometime.”
He knew she was doing it to bitch Liza. He met her lewd eyes with a knowing smile of his own and said, “It’s only medium-sized, ma’am. But it does the job.”
Liza snuggled closer and said, “I’ll say it does. And he’s being modest. He’s got one of the biggest guns I’ve ever seen.”
The speculation in the blowsy blond’s eyes was making him uncomfortable, so he nodded at Gaston and gave a chip away by saying, “My friend, here, has a magnificent gun. May I introduce M’sieu Pierre Lebel, of the Ottawa Observer?”
The Divine Rowena turned to look at Gaston thoughtfully as she trilled, “Oh! You’re both newspapermen? I’ve always found it useful to be in good with people who publish. Tell me, m’sieu, does your paper have a theatrical section?”
Gaston grinned and replied, “If they don’t, I shall demand they start one. I have yet to regard Madam’s performance, but I am looking forward to it. I am trés willing to get in good with you, too!”
Liza choked, perhaps on her cheroot, but the laughter in her eyes was lost on the blond. The Divine Rowena took herself very seriously indeed.
The manager of her troupe got tired of standing, and since nobody offered him a seat he went away. Captain Gringo unfolded a tabloid he’d bought in Buenaventura and tried to catch up on the latest developments in Colombia. As he read, one part of his mind was dimly aware that having established their pecking order, the two women were making up with small talk, the way two schoolboys do after an even steven fistfight neither wants to go through again.
Liza’s unpredictable temper had him a little worried. She seemed to spend most of her time as an almost too-sweet proper Victorian lady. But her occasional flare-ups were lulus. Listening to her now, one would never believe that a few short minutes ago she’d called the Divine Rowena a wench. The Divine Rowena would doubtless be jolted to learn her new semi-chum had killed at least two people – in less than a fortnight, too!
He thought about that and decided it didn’t count as ungovernable temper. Both jewel thieves had been asking for trouble and if Liza had acted with blinding speed and considerable skill, it only meant Gaston was probably correct in assuming the girl had been well trained by the Brits.
But a well-trained secret agent didn’t fly off the handle at petty annoyances like a tiresome traveling companion. Liza’s sexual habits were unpredictable, too. That morning on the steamer he’d tried for a morning resumption of their orgy in the dark and she’d jumped like a frightened virgin when he tried to steal a feel. They’d had plenty of time before the boat docked, in his opinion, but she’d insisted that once she started dressing she never stopped. She’d actually started to cry when he tried a little gentle wrestling and if he hadn’t explored her very thoroughly the night before, he’d have started wondering again if she was a sissy boy in women’s dress. She’d been frigid and shy until they joined Gaston at the breakfast table. But then she’d warmed up to him in public, and now was acting like a rather possessive spouse. He decided her unstable emotions might be caused by her chronic condition. Consumptives were living under a slow death sentence and a lot of them acted weird. Who was that crazy gun fighter he’d met when he first went west after graduation – Doc Holliday? Yeah, that had been the guy’s name. A charmer one minute and a killer the next. The poor old guy had acted like he was trying to get himself killed, but, ironically, he’d last been heard of checking into a Denver TB sanitarium and was probably dead by now.
Captai
n Gringo shot a sideways glance at his brunette companion. Liza was flushed and animated as she chatted with Gaston and the blond across the compartment. That morning she’d been pale and drawn, as if the lovemaking the night before had taken a lot out of her. He wondered if she’d be hot or cold when they got someplace he could find out. He wondered if he should take it easy in any case. The capital city of Bogotá lay at over eight thousand feet and … What in the hell was wrong with Greystoke?
Even allowing that Liza may have been a good secret agent in the past, couldn’t her superiors see she was starting to fray at the ends? He still didn’t know what they’d sent her to do, but anything took a cool head and – at high altitude – a healthy pair of lungs. If Liza fell apart, it would not only endanger Greystoke’s plans, whatever they were. It could mess up the mission he and Gaston were on, and that was already too untidy for comfort.
The Americans in Limón had only given them an outline on what they wanted done about the nationalized American mine. They’d said he’d be filled in once he got to Bogotá.
They’d told him the guy in charge of Colombian counter-espionage was a short colonel called Maldonado. The name rang a bell. Hadn’t they matched wits with Maldonado that time in Panama? Fortunately, he and the short colonel had never met face-to-face as they swapped long distance shots. So, hopefully, he’d have the slight advantage of knowing who the opposition was before Maldonado knew where he and Gaston were. On the other hand, there was little two adventurers could do to a short colonel surrounded by an army, while if Maldonado spotted anything at all suspicious about two supposed Canadian journalists, lots of luck!
Maybe he could ditch Liza? It made sense, even if it seemed a little dirty. Neither she nor her British employers had leveled with him, even yet, and an unstable female could slow a man down even when he wasn’t on the dodge. On the other hand, if he did anything to screw her mission up, Greystoke would owe him nothing but a hard time, and there was a British consulate in Bogotá, wired to the outside world with Mr. Bell’s world-shrinking invention. He turned the page as he decided to go along with her game, whatever it was, for now.
He started reading the financial column, not very interesting in a country where the government grabbed everything good. He saw they’d taken over a Swedish phosphate plant and that Sweden was mad as hell. But Stockholm was a long way off, so all the Swedes could do about it was to call Colombia a Communist dictatorship.
It was funny how both ends of the political spectrum seemed to meet on the far side of the block. The autocratic clique running things down here was so far to the right of the late Karl Marx that they’d bumped into some of his ideas from the opposite direction. The leftists wanted to take over private property because their pobrecitos didn’t own it. The rightists took over private property because their ricos wanted it all. The results were the same. Only the speeches were different.
He started to skim over an editorial about imperialistic exploitation, since both sides borrowed one another’s sophisms. But a line caught his eye and he frowned thoughtfully. He couldn’t talk openly to Gaston in front of one British spy and a daffy dame who could be anything. He took out a pencil stub and underlined “Consolidated Chromium Corporation,” before he handed the paper across to Gaston without comment.
The little Frenchman read for a moment, then handed it back with a raised eyebrow and a slight nod. Captain Gringo knew he’d gotten it, too. They’d been told the mine they were to sabotage was the CCC, outside of Bogotá. There could be two CCC mines. One was bad enough!
But they’d told him in Limón that the nationalized American holdings was an emerald mine. The article in the local paper said it was a chromium vein. Apparently they weren’t too happy with the Colombian manager they’d sent in to replace the Americans and according to the paper, they’d just fired him for poor production.
Production of chromium? He half-closed his eyes as he thought about the mining book he’d been reading on the ship. He’d left it behind for obvious reasons, but he remembered now that emeralds got their green color from chromic oxide. The chemistry was tricky. Chromic oxide colored rubies red, too. It depended on what you mixed the stuff with deep in a long-dead volcano. Okay, emeralds were an aluminium beryllium silicate cooked with a dash of chromic oxide. The Northern Andes were infested with extruded silicates and you’d obviously find chromic oxide in a chromium lode. So it figured. The big American-owned trust had dug for chrome to make their stainless steel and when they’d lucked into emeralds the locals had gotten greedy and had second thoughts about dirty gringo exploitation. They’d probably fired their new manager because he wasn’t driving the workers hard enough. Any semi-skilled peon could load chromite ore. Sifting it for gemstones took more time as well as skill. Profits weren’t as high as they’d expected. Things were looking up.
If the locals working the mine were being driven harder by the new owners than the original American developers had driven them, they might well feel used and abused. Gaston was a professional starter of revolutions and he was a professional fighter of the same. They might not have to wreck the mine the hard way, all by themselves. They might have help. He knew the former owners didn’t have any specific ideas on putting the mine out of business. They simply wanted to show the local government and, more important, other governments, that it wasn’t such a hot idea to nationalize American outfits after all.
They hadn’t given him and Gaston a map. He knew where it was and that he was expected to wing it when he got there. They’d offered him credentials and a cover story, period. He’d be contacted in Bogotá or he wouldn’t. He’d gotten the distinct impression that he and Gaston were expendable. He’d learned to live with that. People hired soldiers of fortune only to avoid risking more important necks.
He was about to turn the page again when Gaston snapped, “Down!” and Captain Gringo dove for the floor without waiting to be told why. He landed atop Hengist, who tried to bite his elbow off as he went for his gun. The linen jacket kept the mutt from drawing blood and when Gaston piled on top of them both the dog moaned and let go. So Captain Gringo drew his gun as a bullet shattered the window above them and showered them with broken glass!
He glanced sideways to see how the girls were doing. Liza was on top of Horsa at the feet of the Divine Rowena. But the big blond was still seated bolt upright, screaming like a banshee as another bullet shot past.
Captain Gringo raised his gun muzzle as well as his head above the lower edge of the shattered center window, almost having his hair parted by another bullet. But he saw who was shooting at them, so he shot back. His first round missed the straw-hatted figure galloping beside the train on a surprisingly fast mule. His second shot took the pistolero through both lungs and blew him off the far side of his mount.
Gaston slid back up into his seat, shoved the screaming blond on top of the crowd on the floor, and smashed out the glass on his side with his own gun barrel as he asked, “What’s up, Dick?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you’d tell me. Watch it, here come a couple more!”
Both soldiers of fortune held their fire as a pair of mounted gunmen in peon dress slowly gained on the chuffing locomotive, peppering the coaches as they rode, apparently on general principles. Gaston said, “The one to our right is mine.” Captain Gringo nodded and they both fired together. They had the range now, and both riders cartwheeled off in unison to lie writhing in the trackside dust as the train sped on. Gaston said. “I thought there were supposed to be soldados aboard this train.”
“I heard that, too. Maybe they just don’t want to get involved. Watch it. We’re coming to some trackside cover.”
Both men fired into the tangle of gumbo limbo and sea grape growing near the track as they passed by, then ducked without comment as a hail of bullets whipcracked over them, splintering the woodwork and taking out the last of the glass. As the shots faded away, Captain Gringo rose again and potted another rider who’d broken cover and was closing in to grab an
d hoist himself from his saddle to the rolling stock. He looked sort of surprised as Captain Gringo potted him just over the heart and slid backwards off his galloping horse. There was a moment’s respite and Gaston asked, “Do you think that’s it, mon vieux?”
“Should be. They’ve already shown more determination than sense.”
“I agree. Bandits are seldom so heroic. They must be guerrillas, but the paper says the country is at peace under its benevolent despotism, hein?”
Captain Gringo shot a warning glance at the blond on the floor between them and growled, “Watch it.” There was no way to point out she’d said she was buddy-buddy with a local politico, since the dame was bilingual, but Gaston nodded and moved closer to the window. He leaned his head out and Captain Gringo said, “Careful. That’s a good way to draw fire.”
“I know. I am more concerned with what’s ahead of us. These boys don’t know how it is done. One does not chase the train making le boom boom unless one is an amateur. Anyone who’s had his first lesson from an old hand knows one should block the rail first, non?”
“That’s the way Jesse used to do it. See any logs across the tracks up forward?”
“Mais non, we are in the clear and moving too fast for anyone to catch us on a horse, now. Perhaps they were hired by the railroad to encourage the engineer to make better time? I am sure they are sitting on the safety valve up front. We are coming to open farmland again, too. I would say it was over. Those guerrillas obviously need a few lessons, hein?”
Again the tall American pointed at the big blond’s ripe rump with a warning glance. Gaston merely shrugged. He obviously took the Divine Rowena for a mental lightweight, but chatting about trade secrets just wasn’t smart in any league.
Captain Gringo said, “Show’s over, ladies and doggies. You can get up now, if you don’t mind ventilation. Watch where you put your derrières. There’s a mess of glass to be cleaned up.”
Liza again moved faster than the heavier Divine Rowena and Captain Gringo noticed she had her gun out as she slid back up on the seat. The Divine Rowena needed a little help from Gaston. Partly because she was still shaken and partly because Hengist was trying to mount her. Gaston hauled her out from under the panting wolfhound as she slapped its muzzle and said, “Behave yourself, damn it!” .
