by Lou Cameron
He stood in the shadows of a rosewood with the machine gun as the train ground to a shuddering stop.
There was a forever pause, and then a man climbed cursing down from the cab with a bull’s-eye lantern. He walked along the side of the stalled engine to shine his light on the foliage blocking the track. Then he called back, “It’s not so bad. Looks like lightning put a treetop across. We can clear it off.”
Captain Gringo watched as the engineer climbed down. The cars behind the locomotive were flats, loaded with crossties. He couldn’t have asked for a better train-load.
He stepped out into view and said, “Reach for some stars, muchachos!” Then, as the crewmen started to run for the cab, Captain Gringo put a short burst into the ballast between them and the locomotive to gain their undivided attention. One dropped to his knees in an attitude of prayer as the other froze and stretched his arms as high as they would go. The one on his knees begged, “Por favor, don’t kill us! We are poor people like yourselves! You have the wrong train!”
The other crewman called out, “¡Es verdad! We are only maintenance men. We carry nothing but repair ties. The mail train you are after won’t come through for two hours!”
The American called out officiously, “Hold your fire, Major Garcia! Captain Robles, take your company up the track and wipe out the brake crew! You two locomotive men, walk this way and keep your hands where I can see them!”
The man on his knees rose gingerly but pleaded, “There is no brake crew, Señor El Generale! I swear on my mother’s head, this is only a work train!”
The American snapped, “Lieutenant Chino! Front and center!”
Chino came out of the brush, looking puzzled, and Captain Gringo handed him the Maxim as he drew his pistol and said, “Cover these men. Don’t kill them unless they move.”
Then he trotted over to the stalled locomotive and swung himself up into the cab. He took a quick look at the steam gauge and threw the engine into reverse gear before opening the throttle full steam. As the locomotive spun its wheels, he swung out of the cab and dropped to the trackside. The drivers caught and the train started backing up the track. As it gathered speed he rejoined Chino and the two crewmen and pointed his pistol at the receding headlight to growl, “All right, you two, start chasing that light if you want to live.”
One of the men stammered, “What are you talking about? We can’t catch a runaway locomotive on foot!” But his companion nudged him and said, “Pobrecito, the man said to chase it! Let’s go!”
As the two crewmen started running in the general direction of Panama City, outlined by the receding headlamp, Gaston came out, holstering his own revolver as he said, “That was very amusing. But what in the devil did we just do?”
Captain Gringo said, “They’ll keep to the track ’til they flag another train, probably miles from here. We’ll clear this brush and they’ll be hazy as to the exact location.”
“I’m not worried about the crew members. They’ll probably be running until sunrise. Where did you just send that train with nobody at the controls?”
“I have no idea. I tied the deadman’s grip and sent her back at full throttle. She’s backing with a heavy load of timber and she’s got plenty of pressure in her boiler. I’d say she’ll make the first few curves, going maybe forty miles an hour. By the time she’s doing sixty any curve she hits should do the job.”
Gaston suddenly brightened and said, “Ah, you are a tricky bastard! They’ll find the train derailed and blocking the tracks, but they’ll find it miles from here!”
“Yeah, they’ll have fun looking for our footprints as they clear the tracks, too. We probably bought a full half a day before any troop train moves to cut us off.”
“Perhaps. We’d have had more time to work with if you’d killed those crewmen, non?”
“I know you think I’m softhearted. The next train from Panama City will either plow into those flatcars loaded with heavy ties or find the track blocked, miles from here. The two men we just turned loose will show up somewhere, with at least three versions of what happened, and where.”
“I understand what you Yankees call the razzle-dazzle. But won’t they sort it all out in the end.”
“Sure, but it’ll take them a while. I gave them some false names to chew on. They’ll have to figure out if the train was wrecked by us or by bandits, and they won’t be sure where any of us are. Let’s clear the tracks and tidy up. I want to gather up the others and get our tails as far as possible while the Army picks up the pieces.”
“That sounds good to me, but what if the Indians won’t let us go?”
“We’ll have to fight them, too. But let’s take it a step at a time.”
They had a little trouble retracing their steps to the fire. Gaston was muttering about this, but Captain Gringo saw the bright side. If they had trouble finding the place, people who didn’t know what they were looking for in the first place would have an even tougher time.
A full moon spangled the jungle floor with silver, they knew where they were going, and they were looking for a fire. But they got turned around and had to circle for the place they’d last seen the others. In the end they found it by scent. They smelled the smoke before they moved upwind to spot the faint orange glow through the gumbo limbo saplings. As they moved into the clearing they found it nearly deserted. The boy called Little Turtle squatted by the fire, staring into the coals, alone.
He perked up when he saw them and got to his feet. He waved his bow and started talking to them in his own dialect. His words made no sense to them at all, but he’d obviously been left behind to guide them.
As he saw they understood, the Indian trotted off into the brush and completely vanished. Captain Gringo and his companions stopped just outside the clearing, and the American called after Little Turtle.
The boy came back with a puzzled expression, said something they didn’t understand, and did it again. Captain Gringo went back to the fire and picked up a burning stick. Then he scuffed the coals out with his foot.
Gaston said, “You don’t have to worry about the fire spreading in this jungle muck. It’s wet as a dishrag and even if it should burn, who cares?”
“I do. We just went to a lot of trouble not to pinpoint our position.”
Little Turtle came back out of the darkness, yelling at them to follow. Captain Gringo handed him the improvised torch and gestured. The Indian looked disgusted, but when he started a third time they could see which way he was going.
Keeping up with him was a bitch.
Captain Gringo saw Chino was having trouble running through the jungle with the Maxim gun, so he relieved the boy of it as he shouted for the Indian to slow down. Little Turtle was almost out of sight again, or, rather, the firefly glow of his light was.
They were in the low, swampy lands between the coastal ranges, and they could see that the ground was dropping even lower as they followed the Indian. They were in the bottom of what would be the Panama Canal, if anyone ever finished it. The central area of the isthmus lay between the Culebras they’d just crossed and the lower San Bias ranges to the north. The railroad and proposed canal route followed notches in the coastal hills. Little Turtle didn’t seem to be headed for either, but was leading them into what seemed to be a swamp.
He led them over a maze of game trails among froggy mud and bigger ponds where ghostly gray trunks rose from water the color of ink and smelling like alligator. As they kept going it got worse. The youth with the torch jumped across open channels and led them over islands that quivered under foot like rain-soaked floating mattresses. He was finally getting the idea that they couldn’t follow him at a dead run. They were getting optimistic about anyone trying to trail them. It was hard enough to get through when you knew where you were trying to go.
Captain Gringo knew they’d be hopelessly lost if they let their guide get out of sight. So he kept cursing the others on as he bulled after Little Turtle with his heavy load. The Indian was fifty pounds f
ighter without a machine gun on his shoulder, so he ran dry of foot where Captain Gringo sank in up to the ankle and, a few times, to the knee.
The bugs started working on any exposed flesh they’d washed clean of that insecticidal smoke. He remembered reading about the poisonous tree frogs and bitter butterflies of the jungle and began to think Bates and Darwin had missed a point. The little critters down here hadn’t evolved that way to keep the bigger ones from eating them. The mosquitos would suck you dry in a night unless you had a lot of blood to spare or tasted bitter as hell. It was nice to think the frogs the Indians used for arrow poison were probably killing bugs this very minute. But they sure were leaving enough to go around!
Most of his hide stayed reasonably dry, of course, and the frustrated mosquitos hovered in a cloud around him and the Maxim on his shoulder, humming high-pitched famine songs and occasionally landing on the weapon’s cool metal to hitch a ride. But they never quite landed on his smoked hands or face. They just hovered close enough to drive him crazy and make it a chore to breathe. If you panted too hard you sucked in bugs and had to spit them out. The taste was disgusting.
The trail Little Turtle was following, if he knew where he was going at all, wound in big zigzags through the swamps and onto slightly higher ground. Captain Gringo noticed that the Indian still trotted in wide curves, as if a straight line were taboo, even on level ground. He saw that the Indian never broke through any vegetation, but would move yards out of the way for a clump of fragile fern. Whites or mestizos probably made better time hacking their way in straighter lines, but the Indian method made for less effort in the long run and, of course, left no trail.
They seemed to have followed the Indian for hours, and Captain Gringo noticed Little Turtle had started relighting fresh torches from better-burning sticks, once he caught on. Then, about a minute and a half before Captain Gringo really decided he wouldn’t be able to carry the effing gun another ten yards, they burst through a wall of hanging vines into a clearing around a jungle pool. There were small, smudgy fires all around the water, and the strangers could see that the San Bias had been here long enough to have built thatched huts. An Indian dog trotted over to sniff at Captain Gringo and Gaston, growling low in its throat. But it didn’t bite and it didn’t bark. The San Bias seemed to be a quiet crowd.
They hadn’t seemed to have guards posted, either. Yet Blanca and some other San Bias stepped out of the huts as the newcomers rounded the pond. Captain Gringo could understand why they thought the albino had magic powers, seeing her in this dimmer light. The other Indians were dark outlines. Blanca seemed to shine in the dark like a ghost. Her nude skin was even lighter than Gaston’s at Captain Gringo’s side. He wondered how she protected herself from sunburn.
Blanca said, “So you came back. Did you kill the train?”
“We sent it back up the tracks to crash. How far are we from the railroad, as the crow flies?”
“I do not know. I am not a crow. We have only been in these parts for a few moons. Our old highland homes were stolen from us by the Christians in the days of the Iron Shirts. Since then we’ve lived on the islands where the San Bias Mountains wet their toes in the northern waters.”
“I know. Where are the others I left with you, Blanca?”
“They are tired. I have sent them to various hammocks among my own people. Do you want me to wake anyone in particular?”
“No. Let them rest up for tomorrow. I’ve no real news for them and we have another long day ahead of us.”
“Come. You will sleep in my cabana. Little Turtle will show your friends to comfortable hammocks for the night.”
He murmured to Gaston and Chino, warning them to keep it friendly ‘til he told them different, and followed the albino toward her hut. From the rear in the moonlight she looked like a naked white girl out for a stroll in the garden. He wondered if the San Bias had a virginity clause in their religion when it came to witches. He decided he’d better drop the idea and leave it that way. They hadn’t really planned on moving in with the Indians, and their adoption was already awkward enough. Escaping the camp would be no problem. But it was awesome to contemplate trying to lose these natural-born trackers in a jungle they knew so well.
Blanca ducked under the low-thatched door jamb and Captain Gringo followed with the gun to keep it dry if it should rain. He knew enough woodcraft to understand the reason they’d camped by open water. The fish in the pool would tend to keep down mosquitos, and there’d be plenty of water at hand if one of these grass huts caught fire. The Indians thought ahead and, despite their apparently primitive lifestyle, were better adapted to Panama than the Creoles who’d been here for generations. It was small wonder they’d resisted the missionaries’ attempts to “teach” them the advantages of civilization. Panama was unhealthy for whites even near the coasts. The canal builders had died like flies in these central lowlands. The San Bias doubtless thought people who lived like Europeans were crazy.
As he leaned the machine gun against an upright post, he saw that the hut was open a few inches from the ground, all around the thatched walls, so that moonlight, and fresh air, spilled across, the packed-earth floor. The interior was furnished with two big hanging hammocks of meshed twine, and he remembered they were an Indian invention the navies of the world had learned from Columbus. A dark form occupied one of the hammocks, and for a moment he thought Blanca had a man in here with her. Then a voice he recognized as that of Sor Pantera asked, “Did you wreck the train?”
He said, “Yeah. What happened to your clothes? I took you for native, just now.”
Sor Pantera said, “You told us to be friendly and do as they told us. Blanca says it’s unhealthy to sleep in a blouse and skirt.”
He noticed she seemed to be getting used to nudity, now, and it wasn’t as if there was much to see in such dim light. Blanca pointed to the empty hammock and said, “You will sleep there, Captain Gringo. You must take your clothes off, too. It is bad for the hammock strings when people wear stained cloth and boots in bed.” He said, “I’ve washed off a lot of smoke and the bugs will eat me up if I strip down, now.”
She said, “Get in the hammock naked. I will place a smudge pot under it and you will see. We don’t like to be bitten, either. That is how my people came to consider that you and your friends might be humans, after all. We used to watch the men working on that big ditch to the west, and they acted like stupid animals. They drank bad water and-ate the wrong fruits. They slept on the ground in damp sacks. Before we got around to killing them, they started to die, so we just watched. It was all so strange, but a bit amusing.”
She ducked outside. So Captain Gringo sat on the hammock and peeled off his boots and shirt. He asked Sor Pantera, “Am I in her bed?” and the Spanish widow replied, “No, she and I have been sharing this one. She said something about you being bigger than that hammock was designed around. I don’t think she expected you to return, but I’ve managed to make friends with her, I hope.”
“Good thinking. We’ll worry about the next step when I come up with it. We could all use a good night’s sleep.”
Blanca came back with a clay pot filled with smoldering punk and leaves. She shoved it under his hammock, and when he commented that the smoke smelled different, she said, “It is stronger than the herbs the ones with you had gathered. I’m putting it under your legs so you can breathe. Try to get a little in your hair before you go to sleep, though. It will even free your hair of lice, if you have any. Sor Pantera had crab lice between her legs, but we got rid of them.”
He didn’t ask how she knew this. As the albino climbed into the other hammock with the naked Sor Pantera, he shucked off his pants and swung himself gingerly into the swaying hammock. He’d slept like this before, of course, so he knew how to position himself to keep from falling out in his sleep. A hammock was comfortable enough if you liked sleeping on your back with your butt hanging down. Men who preferred sleeping on their stomachs or sides were just out of luck.
Blanca had been right about the size of the guest hammock. It was a foot too short. But the sides came up to envelop him, and he could manage with his knees up and wedged together. That took care of a certain shyness he might have felt about waking up naked in the cold gray light he knew was coming. He relaxed as the smoke rose around him, and his tired legs were grateful. In no time at all he fell into an exhausted sleep.
He must have slept the sleep of the just, because he didn’t remember having dreamed as he opened his eyes a few hours later, wide awake and wondering why. It took him perhaps a few seconds to remember where he was and consider what he might have been awakened by. It was a little lighter now, and some birds were cussing in the jungle canopy as the sky pearled to the east. He felt chilled, and the smudge under his hammock had gone out after smoking him like a ham some more. He closed his eyes again and willed himself to catch another forty winks. It was too early to get up, and they might have a hard day ahead of them.
He heard a giggle and a wet kiss from the other side of the hut and turned his head to peek over the rope rim of his own hammock with one eye. Then he softly murmured, “What the hell?”
For a moment he thought Blanca was going at it hot and heavy with some Indian boy. Then, even as he wondered where Sor Pantera was, he saw that the darker of the two figures over there in the dim light was the swarthy widow. Blanca lay crosswise on her hammock with her phosphorescent thighs apart and her white hair dangling over the far side. Sor Pantera stood on the dirt floor, bare legs apart and bent double, with her hairy round rump staring Captain Gringo in the eye. She was orally making friends indeed with the Indian girl. Sor Pantera had her hands on the hammock rope and was swinging Blanca gently to meet her darting tongue. Her own unserved organs were pointed right at the big American as she stood there, bent over most invitingly.
