Renegade 17

by Lou Cameron

  The richer side hadn’t started out all that rich. Born a peon in Oaxaca back in 1830, Diaz had discovered at an early age that he was too refined to hoe corn and too nervous to be a bandit, so he had joined the army just in time to fight los Tejanos and other hated Yanquis under officers he soon came to loathe almost as much as he loathed gringos. It being safer by far to shoot a superior officer than a Texas Ranger in those days, Diaz had come out of the lost war of ’48 a regimental commander. Apparently a pretty good one since los Americanos had never managed to wipe out his particular outfit. So when Juarez rose in the sixties and needed good soldiers, Diaz had joined Juarez, helped Juarez, and won Juarez.

  After that, of course, he double-crossed Juarez in ’67, lost the first round, then came back to win big after Juarez died. He’d been el Presidente ever since. He liked being el Presidente. He meant to stay el Presidente and lead his dear children, the people of Mexico, if he had to kill every one of the stupid pobrecitos.

  He wanted Washington and London to admire him, because rich friends are always handy when one has lots of poor enemies. So he kept his keen dislike of Anglo-Americans a state secret as he assured the outside world that he stood for peace, law, and order. His arguments were convincing. Few welcome guests were robbed or murdered in Mexico these days. Los rurales saw to that. They patrolled the highways and byways of Mexico, shooting anybody who looked the least bit suspicious. Hence, admiring American businessmen could travel from Nuevo Laredo to Ciudad Mexico without seeing one bandito, or much of anyone else. No Mexican with a lick of sense got anywhere near a paved road when los rurales were riding, and they always rode ahead of people approved of by their government. Executions, of course, were conducted out of sight of the main roads or the windows of the better-class hotels nice people stayed in.

  That evening, as el Presidente was about to leave for the Austrian Embassy to attend a ball given in his honor, a uniformed aide came into the presidential office to hand a telegram to the nice-looking old man behind the acre of presidential desk.

  Diaz glanced at the ornate clock on the marble mantel across the room and said, “Just give me the gist of it, major. I forgot my glasses and I have little time.”

  The aide knew the old man couldn’t read without moving his lips, so he said, “It is from Mazatlán, my Presidente”

  “Ah? How is Project Sinaloa going these days?”

  “Strangely, sir. A Yanqui gunboat has been sunk by a torpedo or something in Mazatlán harbor. Our people there say a U.S. Navy unit has requested permission to pursue outlaws deeper into Mexican territory.”

  Diaz frowned and said, “This is strange indeed! I gave orders not to blow up any Yanqui gunboats while I am trying to borrow money from those puffed-up swine in Washington! Tell me more about these people their navy is after. Are they Mexican? Nobody is allowed to chase Mexicans in Mexico but us, God damn the milk of Cleveland’s mother!”

  “I know that, my Presidente. But it seems the outlaws they are after are Americanos. One of them is, at any rate. The other seems to be a French national.”

  “Oh, in that case wire them permission to chase all they like. With luck, the U.S. Navy will tangle with that silly boy El Aquilar Negro and perhaps save some bullets for us. Speaking of those annoying guerrillas, is there anything new from Sinaloa in that wire?”

  “No, my Presidente. But if it was not going according to plan, no doubt Mazatlán or San Blas would have wired, no?”

  Diaz shrugged and said, “You are right, of course. El Aquilar Negro is boxed in Sinaloa and a deadly trap awaits him if he accepts the bait in Nayarit. San Blas would have informed us if any of his advance scouts had been spotted slipping across the state line.”

  He glanced at the clock again, got to his feet, and said, “I must go home and dress properly for the ball. I shall leave the matter out on the coast to you and the U.S. Navy for now. By the way, did they give us the names of the two outlaws Tio Sam is after?”

  The aide consulted the opened telegram and said, “Si, my Presidente. One is a Gaston Verrier. The other is named Richard Walker, alias Captain Gringo.”

  Diaz muttered, “Madre de Dios!” and moved back to sit down at his desk again as he reached for one of the phones on the green blotter. The aide stared down in confusion as the sly old dictator barked into the phone, “Connect me with army headquarters. Then stay on the line. I want to be connected with rurale headquarters, too!”

  He looked up, saw his aide still standing there, and snapped, “Go wire the U.S. Navy. Tell them they have my blessings and they can send in the U.S. Marines if they want to, too! Don’t you know who Captain Gringo is?”

  “I have heard the name somewhere, my Presidente. Didn’t he cause some trouble for us a while ago?”

  “Trouble? You call that one-man tidal wave of destruction trouble? Go wire the policia in Mazatlán to put themselves at the complete disposal of the U.S.. Navy and, oh yes, contact the Austrian embassy and give them my regrets. I shall not be attending their stupid ball tonight. With that maniac Captain Gringo loose in my country again, I have to stay right here until he’s caught! He won’t get away with it this time! This time I, Porfirio Diaz, am taking personal charge of the manhunt!”

  *

  The moon was high and the scrub was too low for comfort as Felicidad led Captain Gringo and Gaston out of Mazatlán that night. The girl had changed to more practical peon dress and wore crossed ammo bandoleers and a carbine across her shapely chest. She’d brought carbines for the two escapees, too. They didn’t start to get heavy until the trail got steeper and the chaparral started getting higher and thicker. As they got farther from town, beyond the usual haunts of ranging herds of goats, the natural vegetation of the tropics began to replace the chaparral that custom decreed for any part of the world Hispanics settled. The slopes were getting too rugged even for charcoal burners, now. How Felicidad found her way once tree branches started blotting out the sky eluded them.

  As they topped a rise with a view of the lights of Mazatlán below them to the west, Captain Gringo called a trail break. He wasn’t tired yet. That was the point. He knew he and Gaston weren’t legged up to par after their long confinement, and the way you kept recruits from cramping on the trail was to fall out for ten and a smoke before anyone started hurting.

  They didn’t light up. But as Gaston sat down beside Captain Gringo and the girl, he said, “God bless you, my son. Great minds run in the same channels, non?”

  Felicidad bitched about stopping so close to town. Captain Gringo said, “I know we can still see the lights of Mazatlán, honey. That’s the general idea. You see lights whizzing back and forth when a posse is being formed. Let’s just get our second wind while we study whether we walk or run to the next ridge.”

  “But, Roberto, at this rate it shall take us all night to reach the stronghold of El Aquilar Negro!”

  “So what? I like to scout strongholds by the dawn’s early light before I walk in like a big-ass bird.”

  “Don’t you trust my friends?”

  “We have no choice. But they may not trust mysterious footsteps popping out of the bush at them in the wee small hours. Sentries on duty after three o’clock tend to be trigger-happy if they’re awake at all. You’re with a couple of old soldiers, kiddo. The way you get to be an old soldier is to avoid needless complications in an already complicated world. Old soldiers never run when they can walk. You cover a surprising amount of ground if you just take it easy and keep going. Guys who dash madly hither and yon are usually pooped out long before steady plodders are even tired.”

  Gaston nudged him and murmured, “Hold it down. I hear something!”

  Captain Gringo answered, “I think I do, too. I make it someone on foot, running. Alone?”

  “Oui, but bursting through the brush with no regard for the slope, as if the devil was in hot pursuit! Don’t you think we’ve rested long enough?”

  “Hold it. Let’s see what he has to say for himself.”

&n
bsp; To lever the Winchester action would be noisy. The guy puffing up the trail would probably fall down just as well with pistol balls in him. So by unspoken agreement the soldiers of fortune drew their revolvers and waited, covering the trail. As a light below was blocked out by someone’s bulk in front of it, Captain Gringo called out, “¿Quien es?”

  Tia Monica replied, with a wheeze, “Is that really you? Thank God, I thought I would never be able to catch up with you!”

  They put their sidearms away as the fat woman staggered up to them, gasping, and weakly flopped down. Felicidad asked her aunt what on earth had made her rim up the trail so fast. It took Tia Monica a while to answer. Then she got her breath, enough to talk anyway, and said, “I got out the rear window. I don’t know how either, but I did. They were breaking down the front door. We have been betrayed!”

  Captain Gringo asked, “Who was it, a shore patrol of Yanqui sailors?”

  “No. La policia! They knew right where to come! They did not knock on any other doors. That was how I knew they were on serious business.”

  Felicidad gasped and asked, “Who could have told them? Nobody but a few of our trusted friends knew!”

  Captain Gringo grimaced and said, “Next time, be careful who you trust. That’s one of the problems when you start any revolution. The government always pays better, and some sonofabitch is always greedy. Did they see you sneaking out the back, Tia Monica?”

  “Would I have made it this far if they had, Roberto?”

  “Right. It was a dumb question. Okay, how far are we from the rebel stronghold, Felicidad?”

  “It is hard to count kilometers when the land rises and falls so. In hours, it is six or more, depending on how fast we move.”

  He thought, then said, “Yeah, it’s too far to carry Tia Monica, and she’s too bushed to go much farther. Okay, Tia Monica, here’s what you do. Go back to Mazatlán and turn us in.”

  Even Gaston blinked at that one. Tia Monica gasped and asked, “Are you mad, Roberto? I am a woman of la revolución! I could never tell la policia anything!”

  “Sure you could. Just go to the station and tell them you heard they were looking for you. That ought to get you off the hook. They’ll sit you down and either offer you a cigarette or shine some lights in your face. Either way, they won’t torture or even arrest you if you cooperate like hell.”

  “Now I know you are mad! I have never been a good liar, and I know too much! What if they forced me to tell them about you and where you are going?”

  “That’s the whole point, Tia Monica. They already know you girls hid us out last night, that we’ve left, and that we’re heading for the hills to join the other rebels. If you say we forced you to hide us, and that you’re mad as hell about it, they ought to believe you. The rat who turned you in has already told them pretty much the same story, see?”

  Tia Monica started to cry. As Gaston comforted her, Felicidad said, “If what you say is true, Roberto, why are we just sitting here instead of running like the wind?”

  “Hills are too steep. Don’t worry, doll. If they had any intention of chasing us tonight, they’d have been here by now. You get to be an old policeman the same way you get to be an old soldier—by not making dumb moves.

  They know we’re armed and dangerous. They know we’re too far ahead to chase on foot and that we’ll hear horses far enough off to set up all sorts of neat ambushes in the dark. They went to Tia Monica’s hoping to nail us before we left. Now that they know we have, they’ll wait until dawn to come after us, if they come at all. I don’t think they will.”

  Tia Monica asked, “What if they ask me where the stronghold of El Aquilar Negro is, Roberto?”

  He said, “Tell ’em. If they have paid informants working for ’em, they already know. That’s why I don’t think they’ll ride after us, now that they know what a lead we have. If they had the manpower and manhood to ride into El Aquilar Negro’s guns, they’d have done so by now, see?”

  She did. Her voice was filled with wonder as she said, “Oh, Roberto, you are so wise! Even I can see, now, that the best way to fool la policia can be to cooperate with them at times. How did you learn so much about fooling the authorities?”

  “By not fooling them a lot of times. We’re going to have to shove on now, Tia Monica. Get your breath. Then walk, not run, back to town. Try to make it to the police station without getting arrested on the street. Ask them if it’s true there’s a reward on Gaston and me. That ought to keep anyone from hitting you before they figure you’re on their side. Tell ’em Gaston and me held guns on you girls and that the last you saw of us we’d kidnapped Felicidad. She may want to go back to Mazatlán someday.” Felicidad asked, “Why should I wish to go back before we win la revolución, Roberto?”

  He sighed and said, “Trust me. I know more than you do about revolutions, kiddo.”

  *

  As they approached the rebel stronghold by the dawn’s early light, Captain Gringo felt even smarter. He knew Tia Monica never would have made it this far, and he was pretty sure nobody else was going to try without more men, more guts, and more mountain artillery than the Mazatlán police had handy.

  On the map, the foothills of the Sierra Madre ran more or less in line with the coast to the west. In real life, the jagged ridges and deep canyons ran just about any way they damn well pleased. Something awful had happened to this part of Mexico a while back. Mile-thick slabs of stratified bedrock had been heaved up at crazy angles. Then volcanic crud of every description from natural cement dust to ropy black lava that still looked fresh had bubbled out of the planet’s bowels to mess up the landscape further. Time and water searching for a way to the sea had eroded the already steep slopes to add a maze of jungle-choked, hairpin canyons to the confusion.

  The trail Felicidad knew zigzagged and roller-coastered through endless natural ambushes formed by hogbacks, buttes, castellated rim rock, and weird formations a geologist would have gone nuts trying to classify. They crossed a white-water stream, a quarter-mile below them, via a sickeningly swaying rope bridge that some optimist had built long enough ago that the yucca cables looked dangerously rotten. On the far side, Captain Gringo looked around for the guys he’d have posted here to cut the ropes when and if gray rurale sombreros appeared on the Mazatlán side. He didn’t see any.

  When he asked Felicidad how come, she just shrugged and said she was an adelita, not a soldado. Gaston nodded and said, “Merde alors, it is as I feared. The rebel soldados are not soldados, either. Mexican revolutions are trés fatigué, Dick. As I keep trying to tell you, Diaz hired all the real professionals, or shot them, as soon as he took over.”

  Captain Gringo didn’t answer. Gaston wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know. He and the dapper little Frenchman had met during another rising against Diaz, not all that long ago or far away, and had as much trouble with the guys who were supposed to be on their side as they’d had with the rurales and federales on the enemy side. Meanwhile, since nobody but Felicidad had any idea where they were at present or where they were going, they had little choice but to follow. Gazing to the south across the endless sea of jagged peaks, he figured he could possibly bull through to San Blas on his own, in a year or so, given a year’s supply of rations and the mules to pack them. There had to be an easier way.

  Felicidad stopped on a steep slope to catch her breath as she pointed up at what looked like a thousand-foot-tall potato, stood on end and split to the ground with God’s ax. She said, “Beyond that portal lies the camp of El Aquilar Negro.”

  Gaston said, “Eh bien, he is well named. Eagles usually live in high nests.”

  Captain Gringo didn’t answer. He was looking for the lookouts he’d have posted up there where the trail followed the hog back between the natural gateway of granite. One man with a little hair on his chest and a lot of ammo for his rifle could probably stand off an army from up there. But he didn’t see man, boy, or anything else living except a big turkey buzzard perched atop one f
ang of the natural gateway as if it were trying to tell him something. He muttered, “If there was anyone posted within rifle range of that buzzard, it wouldn’t be sitting there. Rebel armies always use buzzards for target practice.”

  This time Gaston didn’t answer. Felicidad started walking again, so they followed her. When they passed through the cleft in the rock, the buzzard was wheeling aloft at a safe distance. There wasn’t even a cigarette butt to indicate anyone had ever noticed they could cover the trail to the west pretty good from up here.

  When they came out the far side, they saw the camp of El Aquilar Negro spread across the valley floor beyond. It was a nice place to camp. The valley floor was flat and covered with grass. A stream of cool mountain water meandered across the natural meadow. The tents and brush shelters of the rebel “army” were strung along the banks of the winding stream. Horses and other livestock grazed about the camp freely and untended. Their owners were doubtless right in assuming the stock wouldn’t stray far from good grass and water. It was still a hell of a way to run a railroad, As if he’d said so aloud, Gaston nodded and said, “Oui, Saint Cyr and West Point both agree that one occupies the high ground and sets up some sort of perimeter. At least they have a flag,”

  Captain Gringo didn’t think much of that, either. As a vagrant puff of breeze lifted the red flag over a bigger tent, he saw that it was a red flannel bedspread on which someone had crudely painted a black Aztec eagle. He didn’t ask, but Felicidad said that was where they’d find the great El Aquilar Negro. So they followed her down the slope.

  Some women, children, and one guy with a rifle slung over his shoulder showed some interest as they approached the headquarters tent. Another guy in peon white cotton and a stolen army cap stood in the open entrance and, as they got within earshot, called out to ask if they had any quinine, They said they didn’t. He waved them closer anyway, saying, “The general is in a bad way. It is the ague, we think.”