by Lou Cameron
His men were still confused, but moved to obey him as he led the real Pilar outside and called in Morales and his squad. He said, “I’ll explain later. I want you, you, and you to go back to the work sheds and find some picks and shovels. Move it!”
Then, as they started running, he turned back to Morales and the still-confused young widow and explained, “Nobody rounds up horses grazing in the dark, then puts them neatly in a corral, when one’s worried about rurales stealing stock. The real vaqueros have all been arrested, along with the household servants, right, Pilar?”
“Of course. They kept me here in case anyone who knew me came by. Since you were strangers, she took my place to do the talking and …”
“Hey, let’s not waste time on things I know, honey! That goat path she drew for us is a blind alley, right?”
“Yes, it only goes to a charcoal burner’s camp, in a box canyon. I know it well, since I ride my own range when ladrónes do not have me tied up!”
“Gotcha. She was a sweet kid. Just in case she couldn’t hold us till machine-gun-toting rurales got here, she meant to send us into a corner for them!”
The men with the shovels got back. At the same time, Robles and his squad came out of the house. Robles said, “The women are all securely bound. J am sorry, one of the boys did something bad to the one you left on the bed. I thought I’d better tell you before I shot him.”
“Did she wake up while he was raping her? No? Okay, forget it, for now. But tell him if he disobeys another order, I’ll shoot him myself.”
He raised his voice and called out, “All right, muchachos! Follow me! We’ve got some ground to cover and some ground to dig. So pick ’em up and lay ’em down!”
He was glad to see that Pilar was able to keep up with no trouble. The young widow had horsewoman’s hips and seemed used to hard, healthy living. As she trotted at his side, she giggled and said, “I am glad they raped her. But is this not bad for discipline, Ricardo?”
“Yeah, but what can I tell you? Some guys don’t have as much character as me, and she sure looked tempting in that position.”
*
Captain Gringo and Pilar sat together on a boulder as his men worked. The red laterite soil was almost as hard as brick, so they had time to tell each other condensed life stories. Her tale was shorter than his. Both of them had been in trouble for a long time. Pilar had been born and raised on the high, dry central mesas of Mexico. She’d married a nice young vaquero who’d heard rangeland was cheaper down on the rugged west coast. He’d been right about that. He’d learned why not many people tried to raise beef in the tropic lowlands when his longhorns died of rinderpest and he died of vomito negro.
Pilar, and a very few cows and horses and a lot of goats, was made of sterner stuff and had acclimatized to the hotter and wetter range after being sick a lot at first. She said the fake Pilar had told him the truth when she’d explained how small-holders managed to hold los rurales at bay by paying their land tax directly to them in cash. It had been the older and meaner woman who had the boyfriend riding for los rurales, and she hadn’t been sending him away at all. The real Pilar frowned in the moonlight and said, “Yet, she told the truth at least half the time. I do not understand this, Ricardo. She did not have to tell you los rurales had been by with an armored motorcar just before you arrived, did she?”
He said, “Sure she did. The tire tracks were in the dust out front. Like all good liars, she larded her lies with truth to confuse the issue.”
“I was so furious when she said it was I, not she, who admired los rurales. What will happen to her and those other women now, Ricardo?”
He shrugged and said, “They’ll work loose or they won’t work loose. They may be found before they die of thirst or they may not. Never mind about them. What about you? Do you have people you can go back to, up in the high country, Pilar?”
“Of course. My parents love me. But my father’s rancho is far away. How am I to get there? I owned nothing but this range, a few animals, a casa with a roof that leaked in the rainy season. Now I have nothing but the clothes I wear, and … my body.”
“Don’t knock ’em. It’s a pretty dress and you have a nice figure. I’d say you need a railroad ticket and enough eating money to get home to your people. We’ll work it out later. Right now, no offense, I’ve got other things on my mind.”
He stood up and called out to Morales, “That’s enough, Cover the hole as I told you and then take cover.” He turned and yelled to Robles, “I can see patches of white cotton in the moonlight, dammit! Get your damn squad farther back in the bushes! Haven’t you guys ever ambushed anyone before?”
There were curses and the sound of dry chaparral scraping on men and metal until he called out, “That’s better. Hold those positions, and remember, nobody fires till I give the command!”
Morales and his work crew finished on the moonlit wagon trace and faded back into the brush as well. Captain Gringo led Pilar behind the boulder they’d been seated on and said, “Sit down here and stay put. Don’t peek over the top when the egg hits the fan. It can ruin a girl’s complexion to take lead and granite dust at high velocity.”
She did as she was told, but asked, “How long do you think we have to wait, Ricardo?”
He said, “God knows. A soldier spends most of his time either hurrying up or waiting. Sit tight. I have some inspecting to do.”
He moved away from her through the waist-high chaparral, checking each man’s position and having to move only a few to better positions. The guerrillas were no soldados, but at least they were experienced banditos and the plan was simple. He’d just finished and gotten back to Pilar and the rock overlooking the trap when, in the distance, he heard the tinny popping of an internal combustion engine. He drew his gun and told the girl, “Here she comes. Keep your pretty head down.”
The improvised armored motorcar was a German Benz horseless carriage with a two-lung rear-mounted engine that hadn’t been designed to push a mess of boiler plate, and so complained loudly about it. The armored car was much smaller than armored cars would become once people began to build them that way from scratch. It was top-heavy on its leaf springs even without the little pillbox on the roof of the box. It would have looked funny if the muzzle of a Maxim machine gun hadn’t been stickling out of the turret.
The crew was too slick to drive with their carbide headlights lit but they were dumb to be driving that fast by moonlight. The driver could no doubt make out the twin ruts of the wagon trace and was depending on them to act like railroad tracks in the shady places.
Since Roman chariots had started out with a four-foot- eight gauge, every wagon, railroad train, and now horseless carriage built by western Europeans or their colonists had the same wheel gauge. Thus, the wagon trace was deeply rutted to fit the tires as the armored vehicle followed them, or thought it was.
Captain Gringo had of course told his men to dig where a wild fig tree spread its inky shadows across the trace. The driver didn’t slow down for one lousy island of shade. He should have. The right-hand wheels broke through the dust-covered twigs covering the knee-deep slit trench dug along one rut. Since the other rut was still solid, the armored motorcar flopped over on its side with a tinny crash, slid in a cloud of dust, screams, and curses, and came to rest with two wheels spinning up at the moon as the dust began to settle.
Captain Gringo waited as the echoes faded. The driver opened the door facing the sky and stuck his head out to see if he could climb out. He could have, but then somebody blew his brains out with a carbine and all hell broke loose!
“Hold your fucking fire!” shouted Captain Gringo as bullets spanged uselessly off the boiler plate. Morales and Robles were yelling the same thing up and down the line. So as the fusillade faded, sheepishly, Captain Gringo jumped over the rock and advanced on the careened vehicle. Before he could get to it, the trapdoor of the turret, now facing him, opened. He fired into the black opening as a hand grenade came out to bound like a bunn
y across the red clay at him. He caught it with the toe of his boot, really just trying to get it the hell away from him before it went off. But, as luck would have it, he kicked it right back into the turret. So it exploded inside!
He grinned and said, “I’ll be damned!” as he moved closer, out of the line of fire from the hatch, as blue smoke rose from it to drift lazily away in the moonlight. He got to the vehicle, stood to one side of the open hatch, and called, “I’ve got a grenade of my own. Throw out your guns and follow them before I count three!”
He counted to three. Nothing happened. Robles ran up to him and asked what happened next. Captain Gringo said, “One of your men fired too soon. So you get to look inside, you trigger-happy sonofabitch!”
Robles sighed, “That is not just. I shot him for doing that. He was the man who raped that puta back there. I told him what you said, but some people just don’t listen.”
Then Robles struck a match and looked inside. He whistled and said, “Ay caramba! There were three of them. They are all in the condition I like to see rurales – bloody and dead. Shall I see about salvaging their weapons and the contents of their pockets before we burn this creation?”
Captain Gringo said, “We’re not going to destroy it if it still runs. Haul the bodies out and hide them in the brush. Then see if you and the guys can lever it back upright. Use some of Morales’s squad if you have to, but do it pronto!”
He returned to Pilar. The girl was chewing on her kerchief like a locked-up pup chews a slipper. He said, “It’s over. You can get up now. But be ready to duck, just in case I’m wrong.”
He sat on the rock and lit a smoke as he added, “I’ve been thinking about how we’re to get you home. The railroad’s a long way to walk, but if we can get that horseless carriage to run, we can have you in San Blas in no time.”
“But, Ricardo, Carmencita said los rurales are patrolling the coast road!”
“Yeah. Maybe she lied. Maybe she told the truth. I hate inconsistent dames.”
With the gang of guerrillas putting their backs into it, they had the armored motorcar on its wheels and backed out of the trap in no time. Captain Gringo rose, helped Pilar to her feet, and said, “Let’s see if we can crank her up again”. Do you know how to drive a horseless carriage?”
“Are you serious? I never saw one of the things before that one drove up to my casa the other day. That was when they arrested my servants. They had two motor vehicles. One was an open truck to carry rurales and another to carry my people away.”
Captain Gringo led her to the armored motorcar. His men were standing around, grinning. He didn’t have to count noses to see that even after Robles had shot one idiot, he had too many people to stuff in the vehicle. He climbed up the side and dropped into the turret. By moonlight through the open hatch he saw the grenade had only chipped a little paint and splattered a lot of blood on the inner steel walls. He could see the whole construction formed one hollow shell. He saw the driver’s seat and steering tiller, forward. He could see how one could get at the engine to the rear from inside. The machine gun was mounted in the slit with a full belt dangling. A crank to the left of the Maxim’s breech block turned the turret either way on its circular track. There were extra cases of ammo and a box of grenades racked on either side. A couple of five-liter fuel cans had been securely racked, too, and by some miracle hadn’t been punctured by the grenade that had finished off the crew. Things were looking up, if he could start the engine. He stuck his head out and asked, “Do any of you guys know how to drive a motorcar?”
He’d known it was a dumb question when he asked, it. But there was always a chance, and he couldn’t man the Maxim and drive at the same time.
As they all stared blankly up at him, Captain Gringo said, “That’s what I thought. Let’s see, we have room for maybe four in here, crowded. Six or seven might be able to ride outside, hanging on a lot. This isn’t going to work, gang. Not unless I send one squad home.”
Then he cocked his head arid hissed, “Everybody take cover! I hear another engine coming from the west!”
He dropped down inside and started cranking like hell as his people ran for cover. He had the gun slit pointed back down the wagon trace and was peering through it along the sights of the machine gun as the brazenly lit headlights of another motor vehicle approached. He muttered, “What the hell? Oh, right, the mop-up crew in the truck. This one was supposed to hit hard with its lights out, and to hell with their own police informers. Then, gunmen following in a thin-skinned truck could fan out through the brush around the ranch house and make sure. I guess it would have worked.”
The oncoming truck slowed down as its headlights picked up the stalled armored motorcar on the trace ahead. He said, “Come on. A little closer, dammit! Don’t you guys have any curiosity?”
They did. The truck stopped just a few yards away and a voice called out, “What happened? Did you get a flat?”
Captain Gringo aimed just above the headlights and replied by traversing a burst of Maxim lead across the black bulk outlined by the sky. His guerrillas opened up with their own guns, pumping lead into the truck from their flanking .positions. Captain Gringo traversed back, for luck, then called out, “Hold your fire!” He didn’t want to put the truck out of action.
Robles was starting to think like him about motor vehicles. So he charged out of the bush, zigzagging, and flattened out against the side of the truck to have a look inside. He called out, “All down, dead or dying, Captain Gringo!”
The tall American put the Maxim on safe and climbed out of his turret, calling back, “Bueno. Haul them out before they ooze all over the floorboards. Morales, to me on the double!”
Morales ran up to him, grinning like a mean little kid in the moonlight. Captain Gringo led him around to the rear of the armored motorcar, lit up by the carbide lamps of the shot-up truck. He said, “See this? It’s the starting crank. I kicked the lever inside to neutral. That’s important. I’ll show you that part in a minute. First, let’s see if she still runs.”
He cranked the engine. It was warm, so it started on the second try. He grinned and said, “Bueno. Now we’d better give you some driving lessons. We’ve got a few minutes.”
“Por favor, Captain Gringo! Can it be possible to learn how to drive a horseless carriage in a few minutes?”
“No. But it’s all the time we have, and I’m depending on you to drive that other truck down the coast road after me.”
*
Actually, it took over an hour before he had Morales steering well enough to keep the wheels more or less in the ruts as they tooled up and down the wagon trace a few times. By then, the others had the truck bed rubbed fairly clean with dry grass. Robles acted a little hurt that he’d not been offered driving lessons. So Captain Gringo explained, “The girl, you, and a couple of your best men will be riding with me in the lead. I’ll let you man the tiller on the straighter stretches as we go, if there’s a chance. Morales and most of the guys will follow us in the truck, if it still runs.”
It did. As he’d noticed, both vehicles had the same Benz chassis and rear-mounted engines. So, though the truck’s dash had some bullet holes in it and the seat was a little sticky, nothing important had been damaged. After putting out the headlights, Morales was able to start it and turn it around without help. Captain Gringo said, “I’ll drive slow, at first. Don’t follow me too close, but for God’s sake keep me in sight.” Then he yelled, “Everybody mount up!” and went back to his own stolen vehicle.
As he sat at the tiller beside Pilar, with Robles and a couple of others hunkered behind them on the flat floor under the turret, Robles asked him how he could shoot and drive at the same time. Captain Gringo said, “I can’t. So make sure you don’t block me if I hit the brakes and come over the back of this seat poco tiempo!”
He threw the armored motorcar in gear and lurched it out across the grass in a circle back to the wagon trace. He told one of his men to stand up and see if Morales was follo
wing. The guerrilla said he was. Captain Gringo resisted an impulse to give her the throttle. They were moving only a little faster than a man could trot. On the other hand, he didn’t want Morales hitting a tree any faster than that.
By the time they reached the mouth of the valley and saw the moonlight on the sea ahead, Captain Gringo was used to the feel of the tiller and, assuming Morales might be, too, speeded up to about ten miles an hour. At his side, Pilar said, “Oh, we are going so fast!” and he said, “Relax. They drive even faster than this in Paris these days. These gas buggies can do fifteen, even twenty miles an hour.”
“Heavens! What is the world coming to? How shall people ever cross the street once these things become popular?”
“Very, very carefully, I suppose. But look on the bright side. Even though they come down the street like horse-drawn buggies whipped to full stride, they take up half the length of a buggy and team. So there’ll be fewer traffic jams, most likely, and the cities should smell a lot nicer, without all those horse droppings on the cobbles.”
He coasted out onto the main highway, saw it was clear both ways at this hour, and swung south with the moonlit Pacific to their right and the black hills rising to their left. He chuckled and asked, “Isn’t this neat? This would be like a romantic carriage ride in the country if we were going a little slower and knew no rurales were around the next bend in the road.”
She said, “Nobody will ever take girls for romantic rides in these things, silly! What girl could feel romantic with her hair being blown and her, ah, nether parts being bounced so?”
“I guess you’re right. Would you like to take the tiller, Pilar?”
