Renegade 19

by Lou Cameron

  Captain Gringo swung inland at the next corner to tear blindly up the narrow dark street, while Gaston made more noise about it than the nearly silent steam engine. Captain Gringo said, “Yeah, yeah, I heard you,” and swung around another corner before braking to a stop to get his bearings. He spotted the moon above the rooftops, nodded, and opened the throttle again, more sedately. As they purred quietly as a cat along the northbound back street, he said, “We could light the headlamps. But that would really attract attention. Doesn’t this thing sound neat, Gaston? Listen. It makes less noise than two giggly girls on bikes!”

  Gaston crossed himself and said, “You just cost me a year’s growth!” Then he laughed and added, “I think we just made some flicks wet their pants, too! Where are we going in this locomotive, my impetuous youth? I know this village lane from old. The pavement, such as it is, ends less than a mile away!”

  “I know. Isn’t it nice to have it all to ourselves with everyone in town flirting over at the main plaza? There must be a few old farts who stayed home tonight. But who’s going to hear us from inside? Boy, this is some buggy. If it were a Duryea or even a Benz, we’d be making enough noise for a modest revolution between these stucco walls on either side. This thing makes no more noise than a kitten pissing under the sofa!”

  “It’s adorably discreet, Dick. Now tell me where the fuck we’re going in it!”

  So Captain Gringo filled him in on Sylvia Porter’s offer as they cruised silently toward the warehouse where she’d said to meet her. Gaston heard him out before he snorted in disgust and said, “Sacre bleu, they sound like amateurs who just escaped from an English boarding school. Have you any idea how many old pirate treasure maps are circulating, Dick?”

  “I told her some drunk had probably whipped it up on hotel stationery aged with coffee, Gaston. But look at the bright side. They have the money to buy toys like this steam car and those machine guns.”

  “Oui, but you said they expect us to join the party just for the pleasure of their company. I told you I passed through Laguna Caratasca when it was still a pirate base, Dick. If anyone in that trés scruffy crew had enough treasure to see fit for burial, he never mentioned it to me!”

  “Hey, what can I tell you? If you were a pirate, would you blab about your buried treasure to everyone just passing through? Besides, it doesn’t matter what they’re looking for up there. Even if her whole story is a crock of shit, Sylvia offered us a way out of here! Everyone else we’ve met went and called the law. And by the way, she’s not bad-looking, either!”

  Sylvia Porter was pretty as ever, but she seemed a bit chagrined when they drove in the back door of the warehouse and slid to a stop with a squeal of rubber, just inches from the side of a big black sedan made by White in the States. As the English girl and her companions stared at him in surprise, Captain Gringo called out, “Sorry. I’m not used to such sudden responses. You’d better get in back, Sylvia. We left the place you parked it with lots of guns going off. Did you get the ammo, and where are the Maxims?”

  Before she could answer, a big husky guy with a toothbrush mustache shouted, “Who in God’s name are these blokes, Sylvia?”

  Captain Gringo let her explain as he looked over the rest of the expedition. There were four steam cars lined up in the warehouse, making it five vehicles for fourteen people. Not bad, even with all the shit they had piled in or strapped on the big heavy horseless carriages.

  There were three other women in addition to Sylvia. They, like the men, wore light tan travel dusters. The eight male members of Sylvia’s crew interested him even less. All but one. He nodded at the stubby guy who’d been reading the paper so much in Madam Fifi’s and said, “So now we know how you guys found us. You’ve all been busy little bees. Now it’s time we all buzzed off. Which of you is the guide Sylvia said we were supposed to have?”

  The stubby guy he’d taken for a possible police informant smiled sheepishly and said, “That’s me, Captain Gringo. I was trying to find a moment alone with you at Madam Fifi’s, but you seemed, ah, otherwise occupied. When the police arrived, I naturally gave up on waiting for you two to come back down. How in the devil did you chaps get out of there? They had the perishing block surrounded!”

  “We flew with the pigeons. Do you have a name?”

  “Oh, sorry, Marlowe, here. Alfred Marlowe, late of Essex and all that.”

  “Okay, Al. You can call me Dick. You know Gaston’s handle. Like I said, it’s time to get out of here. So why don’t you get the lead out and take the damned point?”

  Marlowe looked uncertainly at the one with the toothbrush on his upper lip and asked, “Major Wallace?”

  The husky Wallace frowned at Captain Gringo and asked, “Are you sure you were followed? We hadn’t planned to leave just yet.”

  “They don’t have to follow anyone to figure out, sooner or later, that if you’re looking for a horseless carriage, you go to the only place in town where they are! You guys didn’t unload these steam cars hidden under your dusters, for God’s sake! Sylvia told me the plan to leave at a more discreet hour. It was a swell idea, but I just blew it. If we don’t leave now, forget it!”

  Major Wallace didn’t look like he was used to taking suggestions from other people. But he nodded stiffly and said, “Very well. Everyone mount up as we planned. You take the lead, Marlowe. No headlamps, of course, until we’re well clear of this perishing village!”

  There was a mad scramble as everyone piled aboard the vehicles they’d been practicing with. Sylvia and another girl came to the steam car Captain Gringo and Gaston were in. She said, “You two had best sit in the back. I’m driving.”

  “I know how to drive this thing, Sylvia.”

  “That’s what I mean, Dick. Move out of the way, dammit! Marlowe’s already starting and we have no tail lamps to follow!”

  Captain Gringo and Gaston rolled over the back of the front seat to make room for the two girls. The one now seated by Sylvia was named Pat. It was hard to see what she looked like. The light was dim and Pat wore a big hat with a mosquito veil as well as her shapeless duster.

  Sylvia let the major’s vehicle follow Marlowe’s out the wide rear doors of the warehouse before she fed the Stanley some steam and followed smoothly and silently. Gaston chuckled and said, “Now this, Dick, is how I was just trying to tell you one should drive a horseless carriage!”

  Captain Gringo ignored the jibe and asked Sylvia again about the machine guns. She said, “In the major’s car, just ahead. Those pine crates in the backseat. We can worry about them when we need them.”

  He looked back, saw nothing but the dim outlines of the steam cars behind, and muttered, “When we need them, she says! We’re maybe a hop and two skips ahead of the cops, and the only serious weapons on hand are not on hand. When’s the last time those Maxims were stripped and cleaned, Sylvia?”

  “Cleaned and stripped? Whatever for? They’re still in the packing they came in from the factory. Major Wallace said we should wait till we had someone who knew something about machine guns before we unpacked them.”

  The two soldiers of fortune exchanged glances. Captain Gringo saw no need to explain to anyone that dumb. Gaston snorted in disgust and said, “Eh bien, the humidity is only about ninety down here at this time of the year. Perhaps all the grease did not run off as the adorable weapons sweltered in their soggy wooden crates, non?”

  Captain Gringo didn’t answer. When he had a chance to open the crates, he’d see if they had two weapons that would shoot, enough sound parts to cannibalize into one that might, or a lot of expensive rust that wouldn’t shoot at all. He asked Sylvia again if they had the extra ammo. She hadn’t answered the first time he’d asked. She nodded and said, “It’s in the last automobile. The White you almost demolished coming in.” Gaston said, “Oh, I love it. The Maxims are up ahead, the ammunition is trailing well to the tear, and the only ones who can man a machine gun are driving through the countryside with pretty girls all in a row.”


  He looked off into the darkness and added, “Speaking of countryside, where in the devil are we? There used to be a moon around here somewhere. I can’t see a thing!”

  Sylvia, at the wheel, answered calmly, “I can feel the ruts we’re following. Don’t worry, Gaston. If Marlowe steers into a tree, we’ll hear it in plenty of time.”

  “I think I’d rather get out and walk,” Gaston said with a sigh.

  Captain Gringo had to admit that he had a point. They weren’t going fast. About six miles an hour, as far as he could judge as he spotted an occasional lighter blur they passed in the darkness. But he said, “We’re moving faster than any troops can march. We don’t have to stop for trail breaks, either. Do you know if the law back there has horses, Gaston?”

  Gaston shook his head and said, “Not the town constabulary. The military of course has cavalry. But it should take them a day or so to get over to this coast. Why, did you want to steal a horse, too?”

  “No, just figuring the odds. If Marlowe doesn’t run us into a swamp before morning, we’ll make it to the border by daybreak at the rate we’re moving. The Nicaraguans can figure that out as well as we can, so they probably won’t chase us seriously.”

  “Ah, in that case, may I suggest we all slow down, m’mselle? I believe you about solid rubber tires. My kidneys will never forgive you, even at this modest speed.”

  Sylvia said, “I know the road’s bumpy. I’m the one who’s trying to keep us in the ruts. We have to keep up with the lead automobiles and Marlowe seems to be a speed demon.” They hit a bump that would have flipped them had they been going fifteen miles an hour. Pat gleeped in terror and would have fallen out had not Gaston reached forward to grab her as Captain Gringo cursed and Sylvia called her steering wheel something worse. He said, “Jesus, he must be in a hurry. You say Marlowe’s the guy who knows the old coastal pirate layout. I hope you kiddies didn’t buy the map from him.”

  “Heavens, no. I told you he was a remittance man. Major Wallace found him a couple of weeks ago, down the coast. He speaks like a man from a good family. They obviously sent him over here to keep him from disgracing them. He’s all right when he’s sober and, thanks to the major, he usually is, these days.”

  “I know what a remittance man is. American families have black sheep too. What was Marlowe doing up the coast in the bad old days? He doesn’t look like a pirate.”

  “I doubt he has the backbone to steal fruit off a stand. He wasn’t there with any pirates. I told you the Royal Navy cleaned them out long ago, back in the days when you Yanks weren’t so fussy about your silly Monroe Doctrine and Great Britain almost claimed this whole area. You know of course that the Royal Navy still uses Bluefields, down the other way, even though your tiresome President Cleveland keeps insisting it belongs to Nicaragua?”

  “Never mind about the Monroe Doctrine. Just get us out of Nicaragua. Did Marlowe say what he was doing up in Laguna Caratasca if it was after the pirates had been cleaned out?”

  Pat said, “I heard him tell the major he was with some turtle hunters. Apparently there’s a lot of turtle grass on the tidal flats of the big lagoon.”

  Captain Gringo nudged Gaston and asked, “Pearls?”

  Gaston shook his head and said, “Mais non. He was probably really there with turtle hunters. There are no pearl beds in such shallow stagnant water. As I recall from my previous romp through the swampy place, turtles make more sense than anything else. Piracy is no longer allowed, and there is no great profit in mosquito skins, even though the ones up there are big enough to skin.”

  Pat laughed and said, “Surely you jest? No insects could possibly be that big!”

  Captain Gringo had learned at his mother’s knee never to play cards with strangers on a train or attempt to explain a joke to a Brit. But Gaston had enjoyed hauling Pat back from the brink a few times by now, so he said soberly, “You have not been in the tropics long, I see. When I was an artillery officer in the Mexican army, we found, after wearing out many a mule, that nothing pulled field guns as well as the local cockroaches. They are harder to break to harness than mules, of course. But once one has them properly trained …”

  “Oh, you’re pulling my leg!” Pat giggled, adding, “I’ve seen the great roaches down here. I nearly fainted the first time one ran across my poor foot. But they’re’ not much bigger than mice, or maybe rats.”

  “True. We used to hitch them to our field guns in twenty-roach teams. As to pulling your leg, which one would you prefer I start with, M’mselle?”

  The silly conversation ended when Sylvia responded to a beep up ahead by braking hard. The two men in the back almost fell atop the girls in front as the steam car slid to a stop. Captain Gringo asked what was up. Sylvia said, “I don’t know. We haven’t, driven far enough to need fresh boiler water.”

  Captain Gringo thought about that as the tiny gleam of a bull’s-eye lantern slowly came their way in the darkness all around. In his earlier enthusiasm for the Stanley Steamer he’d forgotten why the electric and internal-combustion jobs were still giving steam cars a run for the money.

  Already heavy to start with, steam cars saved weight by having no condensers. Like railroad locomotives, they used the steam once and had to drink more boiler water from time to time. Unlike railroad locomotives, they only had little boilers that could fit under a horseless carriage hood. So they had to stop for water more often.

  He stood up in the high-riding Stanley and looked back. Nothing. The drivers behind had stopped, thank God. If anyone was following them up the coast road, they were as much in the dark as he was. But they couldn’t be far from Puerto Cabezas yet.

  The guy with the little spotlight turned out to be Major Wallace. He shone the light on Sylvia and said, “We may as well take this opportunity to top our boiler water. That beggar Marlowe seems to have lost his bloody way!”

  Sylvia replied, “For heaven’s sake, we can’t be fifteen miles out of town yet!”

  “That’s what I mean!” sighed Wallace, sweeping his beam off to the side at the banana trees all around as he added, “We’re still in settled country and Marlowe’s balked at the first damned fork in the road we’ve come to!”

  Captain Gringo said, “Hold it, Major. Swing that light a little to your left and, yeah, hold it there. Do you see what I see, Gaston?”

  Gaston was already climbing down as Wallace ran his beam up and down the bare wooden pole, saying, “It’s a telegraph pole. What of it?”

  Captain Gringo said, “Gaston will get the wire. He climbs like a squirrel. It’s a habit we’ve picked up, with all sorts of nasty people chasing us.”

  Gaston moved into the beam, making for the pole, as Wallace said, “We’d better not. It may give our position away, and by now they should have wired ahead, if that was the plan.”

  Captain Gringo said, “If they don’t know we took this road out of town, the whole town’s blind. They may already have wired up the coast. They may not have thought of it yet. First we make sure they can’t. Then we make sure we don’t drive into any village with telegraph poles leading into it!”

  Wallace shrugged and said, “Well, we hired you as security. I have to tell the others to top their boilers.”

  He moved on in the dark. Sylvia had climbed down and, as far as Captain Gringo could tell in the dark, was handling something metallic. He climbed down too, asking, “Where are you and how can I help, doll?”

  She said, “Stay out of my blinking way if you don’t like being scalded. I have the water canister, and I can find my way to the bathroom in the dark, thank you very much.”

  Captain Gringo took a cigar from his breast pocket to kill two birds with one stone when he struck a match. By the flickering little light he could see Sylvia pouring water into a little tank under the now open hood. The feed tank was fastened to the firewall ahead of the steering wheel. Most of the space under the hood was occupied by a modest-sized boiler wrapped in piano wire. No light escaped from the oil-fired firebox u
nder it. He asked, “Don’t you think we might as well feed her some more kerosene while we’re at it? I drove this thing a ways before we found you guys, you know.”

  She said, “You damned near burned the tires off doing it, too. And we are not tending this vehicle. I am tending this blinking vehicle. The fuel’s not the problem. The dial on the dash tells me we’ve more than enough kerosene in the tank under my seat. Before you ask, yes, we do have extra tins of fuel and water in the rear trunk.”

  He didn’t see what she had to bitch about. He shook out the match and walked up to Major Wallace’s car ahead. He hauled one of the crates over the rear, dropped it to the roadway, and used his pocketknife to open the lid. He struck another light. The Maxim machine gun lay in a bed of wood chips, and as he gagged at the vile smell of castor oil he saw it was in pretty good shape, save for rust spots here and there where the oil had been absorbed by the packing. He left the tripod in the case as he pulled the Maxim into an upright position, took a kerchief from his pocket, and wiped it down until it was clean enough to carry. Then he picked it up and took it back to the other vehicle. Sylvia had finished topping her boiler and asked what smelled so awful. He put the machine gun in the back and replied, “I like to keep busy. They packed the machine guns in castor oil, bless their heats. These are second-hand black-market guns, right?”

  “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the major.”

  He shrugged, went back to reload the crate into the major’s vehicle, then moved down the line to get some ammo. He encountered the Englishman with the bull’s-eye, which came as no great surprise. Wallace said, “Oh, it’s you. What are you doing out of your seat? We have to get a move on.”