by Lou Cameron
He knew he’d feel ashamed of himself in the cold gray light of dawn. But it wasn’t dawn yet, and she really took it great in the brown. She must have been telling the truth about liking it that way, for she came just ahead of him, groaning in pleasure as she rubbed her firm buttocks hard against his pelvis until he ejaculated in her and they both fell weakly on their sides, with her spooned in his lap until she slowly defecated him in a series of throbbing mock bowel movements. He kissed the nape of her neck. She said, “That’s enough. I have to take a shit and get back to my tent.”
So as long as she’d put it so delicately, he let her go. She left still nude, scooping up her clothes on the way as she told him not to make any overt moves in public, adding that she’d let him know when the time was right again.
He sat up, groped for a kerchief and canteen in the dark, and cleaned himself before hauling on his pants and boots. There was no sense trying to sleep now. The night was shot and he was wide awake, if bone weary. At least the coming day should be a lazy one. They couldn’t move from here just yet, and when they did, he’d get to ride. Driving through the jungle in steam cars sounded crazy, until one considered the alternatives. Meanwhile, he’d get up and relieve Gaston. He’d been treated mighty generously for one night, so he felt in a generous mood.
He finished dressing, strapped on his .38, but left his hat and jacket behind as he stepped out to scout up Gaston. It was still pretty dark, but you could see movement now. Gaston did and challenged him. He said, “It’s me. How’s it going? See anything?”
“Merde alors, I can barely make you out. One of the women just went out past the cars to take la crap. I was about to challenge her when I heard her squat and drop it, so I didn’t. Before you ask, only a woman squats when she makes la pee-pee, so …”
“Never mind. I know who it was. I was talking about our Indian chums.”
“I would have called you had anyone shot an arrow at me. They are probably moving deeper into the jungle. We make them trés nervous, too.”
Then, as they stood close together, Gaston said, “Listen! I hear something making le crunch-crunch in the dead leaves out to the east!”
Captain Gringo heard it too. He frowned and said, “Someone’s started one of the steam cars! What the hell …?”
“What the hell indeed! No Indian would know how, and this is a most unusual time to be going for a drive, non?”
They both started moving toward the sound, guns drawn and ready for anything, they thought. But the last thing they’d expected was for a steam car to roll into camp, flattening Captain Gringo’s tent as it rolled on majestically with nobody behind the wheel!
The tall American ran over to it as Gaston moved the other way to see who’d started it out in the surrounding darkness. Captain Gringo leaped aboard the slow-moving car and shut the throttle before grabbing the emergency brake to stop it. Then he saw that that hadn’t been such a good move as he smelled burning rubber. He’d stopped with the front wheels on the banked campfire! He swung behind the steering wheel, threw the steamer in reverse, and backed off the hot coals before stopping again more easily on the rolling stock. The tires were still smoking and stank like hell, but they were solid rubber, so no great damage had been done, he hoped.
The noise of crunching tent poles and snapping ropes had aroused some of the others. As Gaston rejoined him, muttering, “Nothing,” Bertie and the surly Wilson came over, asking what had happened.
He saw they were both half-undressed and supposed it took longer for the women and more modest men to rise and shine. He said, “Some silly son of a bitch started this car up just now. It’s the one you’ve been driving since Wallace bought it, Bertie.”
“By Jove, so it is! But this makes no sense, Captain. Steam cars don’t start by accident, you know!”
“I know. Ergo, it was no accident. I know you never left the flame on under the boiler. I passed your parked car a million times in the dark, earlier tonight. It wasn’t parked facing my tent, either. Some son of a bitch aimed it at me, then jumped off after leaving the hand throttle set slow but sure. Lucky for me I’m an early riser!”
Bertie gasped. “Good God, are you saying someone tried to murder you? I’d best say right off I was in the tent I share with Jerome and, ah, here comes Jerome now!”
As the little Welshman approached, tucking in his shirt tail and gulping his Adam’s apple as usual, Bertie said, “Some blighter just tried to run over our Yank. Tell him where we were, like a good Taffy lad, Jerome!”
Jerome gulped and said, “I was in the tent with you when the noise woke me, look you. But what’s this about someone being run over? I don’t see anyone run over, do you?”
Captain Gringo left them to sort it out as he went to survey the damages. Gaston followed, murmuring, “I agree a man would have to be a bigger fool even than they to use his own vehicle. That leaves us with enough suspects to go around, non?”
Captain Gringo didn’t answer as he hauled aside the flattened tent and whistled. The heavy wheels had left tracks in the canvas ground cloth by pressing it into the soft soil below. One wheel had gone right across his sleeping bag. The other had flattened his sombrero. He picked it up, punched it back into shape, and put it on, observing, “I’m glad my head wasn’t in it at the time!”
Others were coming on in the slowly dawning light as Gaston murmured, “Let me see, there are Baxter, Gordon, and Fenton, in addition to the four women, and hell hath no fury like … have you been scorning any women lately, Dick?”
“Scorning isn’t the word I’d have chosen. Knock it off. The others are coming and we’ve known all along that at least two of them figure to be sneaks.”
*
Considering how exciting the night had been, the day that followed was dull as hell. Captain Gringo told the others it was too soon to move on the old pirate camp blindly. Before they dared even to scout it, they had to give the other side time to assume the English expedition had given up.
He didn’t give his other reason for delay. Why alert the guilty party or parties to the fact that he was watching for someone to make a slip?
As they helped him put his tent back together, using fresh-cut poles from the jungle and splicing some of the lines, one of the men suggested that an Indian prankster might have been fooling with Bertie’s steam car, so Captain Gringo pretended to accept the explanation, even knowing that not one white kid in a hundred knew how to start a horseless carriage.
As the women made breakfast, or stood around helpfully as, in fact, Sylvia and Pat did most of the work, both Phoebe and Matilda seemed content to keep the little secret each thought she shared alone with Captain Gringo, although both wore funny little Mona Lisa smiles from time to time as they puttered about.
Breakfast came and went. Then they had lunch, and as the day grew even warmer Captain Gringo decreed a siesta, explaining, “I know none of you lime juicers are used to the custom, but get used to it. There’s nothing to do out here but soak up rays from the canopy above us that won’t do you a bit of good. Try to get some sleep, despite the hour. You never know when you’ll be called upon to stay awake in this game. Bertie, I’m putting you on guard duty until two. Get Jerome here to take your place until four, then wake everybody up. I’ll be in my tent if you need me, but don’t, unless it’s important as hell. For some reason I feel beat.”
Matilda laughed and turned away and almost ran to her own tent. But nobody commented. They were used to the big gal’s odd ways. Phoebe was examining her nails as if they needed a lot of work when he passed her on his way to his tent. He hoped she wouldn’t follow. He really needed a couple of hours’ sleep.
He took off his shirt and gun, tossed his hat in a corner, and lay atop the bed-roll covers with his pants and boots still on, in case.
He closed his eyes and was half-asleep when the tent flap opened and a feminine voice whispered, “Are you awake?”
He groaned and said, “I am now. No shit, doll, I’m too tired to fuck.”
“What a beastly suggestion!” She gasped.
So he opened his eyes to see Sylvia kneeling there at his side. He propped himself up on one elbow and said, “Forget what I just said.”
“I don’t see how I can! I’m not accustomed to being spoken to that way, sir!”
He sighed again and said, “Yeah, yeah, us Yanks have no couth. If you didn’t like my first offer, what the hell do you want? I’m really tired, Sylvia.”
She said, “Well, so am I, dammit, and I can’t sleep in my own bloody tent. Do you know what Pat and that nasty little French friend of yours are doing over there this very minute?”
“I can guess. I know Gaston of old, and you told me the redhead’s warm-natured too.”
He eyed her thoughtfully in the shady light. Sylvia’s knees were sedately folded under her, covered by her skirt. But she’d either left her tent in a hurry or she was trying to tell him something. The front of her blouse wasn’t buttoned and that V of exposed flesh between her nicely formed breasts sure looked nice. He still liked her face, despite the dumb things that came out of it. From the beginning she’d been the best-looking dish in the stack, and he couldn’t complain about Phoebe’s or Matilda’s looks. But, Jesus, was he man enough, on such short notice?
He patted the bedding at his side and said, “You’re welcome to stay here during la siesta, if that was what you had in mind.”
“Not bloody likely! Gaston already suggested making it a beastly orgy. That’s what I came to see you about. You have to have a talk with Gaston.”
“Why? Cat’s got Pat’s tongue? I doubt like hell they want to be disturbed right now, Sylvia. I don’t think Gaston meant two guys and a gal when he suggested three in a boat. It’s more fun the other way, at least for guys.”
“Oh, God, you’re just impossible!”
“Nobody’s impossible, honey. Maybe I’m a little improbable. You’re cute as hell, and someday I’ll kick myself, but if all you want is a place to spend your siesta, lie down and shut up, for God’s sake. I had a hard night. I’m going to sleep no matter what you do.”
He lay back down and closed his eyes. Sylvia hesitated, then asked, “Can I trust you, Dick?”
“To do what? I told you it was your show, dammit. Lie down for a nap or go out and chin yourself on a tree, for all I care.”
“You won’t … take advantage of me?”
“Oh, shit, why do the pretty ones always have to come with no brains? If you thought I’d rape you, why the hell did you creep into my tent like a love-sick Arab? Don’t tell me. I’m too tired for dumb conversations. I’m going to sleep. You do whatever you want to.”
There was a long silence. Then she said, “I think you might be a true gentleman, despite your rough talk, and I certainly have no place else to spend the siesta. Ah, is it all right if I slip off my outer garments? It’s so perishing hot and stuffy in here. I’m wearing my unmentionables, of course.”
“Don’t mention them, then, and for chrissake shut up! Every time I start to fall asleep you ask another dumb question!”
It took even longer for her to slip out of her heavy whipcord skirt, if that was the rustle he heard. He didn’t open his eyes. She whispered, “Dick?” and he didn’t answer. If he played possum just a little longer, she’d be on the roll with him and … then what? He was too tired to wrestle, and he’d met dames like this one before. He knew she halfway wanted it, whether she admitted it to herself or not. The trouble with halfway dames was that they always sobbed that you were raping them while they seduced you.
She slid gingerly in place beside him on the padding. He didn’t move. Two could play at teasing, and he was really too tired to be teased. The hell with it. She’d asked him not to, right?
When he woke up a couple of hours later, Sylvia was snuggled like a kitten against him, asleep herself, unless she was one hell of an actress with mighty calm nerves. She’d come to bed in her blouse and loose silk pantaloons, as she’d promised, but one long silk-sheathed leg lay across his thighs and she had her pubic mound pressed against his hip for comfort.
Her blouse had fallen open and he’d been right about her having great boobs. One, at least. He couldn’t see them both, as the bottom one was pressed against his rib cage. Somehow they’d wound up with her head on his shoulder with his right arm cradling her against him, so some of it wasn’t her fault, and she was going to be surprised one way or another if and when she woke up in that position. He decided not to. He didn’t like to hear screaming dames even when he had laid them. He lay quietly, trying to decide why he had awakened. Thanks to good old Phoebe and crazy Matilda, he didn’t have a hard-on. He must have heard something. But he didn’t hear anything now, did he? Yeah, someone was scuffing the damp leaves outside.
The tent flap opened and Gaston said, “Eh bien, Pat said she liked you!” Sylvia woke with a start, gasped, and, as she realized what she’d been rubbing her snatch against in that dream, started to say something dumb. But Gaston said, “Later, M’mselle. This is not time for a lover’s spat. Those Indians have returned. I think they prefer to speak to you, Dick!”
Captain Gringo sat up as Sylvia rolled out of the way, crossing her legs and covering her chest with both hands. As he strapped on his .38 over his virile bare chest, she asked him, “Did you? Did we?” and he said, “For God’s sake, you’ve still got your pants on. Better put some other stuff on before you come out, though. It’s still broad day outside.”
He followed Gaston over to the fire, where the same two Indian men and the girl hunkered alone. They looked even nuder in the daylight, and he could see, now, that Decepciona’s snatch was shaved, not immature. The other whites had been smart enough to stay out of sight as told the last time. Doubtless they were watching from their tents, of course, as Captain Gringo sat on his haunches and silently handed the cigar he’d brought out to the old man.
The brujo ignored it as he gonged and whimpered in his mysterious lingo. Captain Gringo thought they might be in trouble, until the Spanish-speaking squaw explained, “There is no time for ceremony. We came to tell you the evil men who chased us from the great salt water and our turtle grounds are coming this way, with guns, many guns. The brujo says to tell you our scouts counted thirty of them.”
“Are you sure they’re not after your people, Decepciona? There’s no way they could know we’re here!”
“‘They are not making for our camp. They are coming here in the line of the honey bee. One of them has a little box he keeps looking at. It seems to be a medicine fetish with a spirit in it to point the way.”
Gaston, who’d just decided it was all right to squat down beside Captain Gringo, murmured, “Compass. The species of triple-titted toads are running a compass azimuth through jungle we could not have left tracks in! Ergo, they have us on their own map! But that is not possible!”
He’d spoken in Spanish to be polite, so Decepciona had followed enough to chime in, “Hear me, they will be here before dark whether it is possible or not. The brujo, here, has been speaking with our other elders. He says you seem to be good people. He says you should come to our camp, where our own spirits are strong. The spirits in the bad blancos’ medicine box will not be able to find you there.”
In a way, she was probably right. If the other side had an azimuth reading on this area, some damned how, they’d miss a camp well to the north or south.
He asked the girl exactly how far the armed men were. Decepciona said, “Less than two hours, as you people tell time. The brujo here says if you do not hurry, we must leave without you. His medicine is not good here. He is afraid of those other blancos. ”
Captain Gringo nodded, turned to Gaston, and said, “Okay, get everybody saddled up and move ’em out, segundo. You heard the lady say less than two hours, and you’ll want at least an hour’s lead on them. That gives you fifteen minutes to strike the tents and load the cars up. Oh, tell Bertie to start all the boiler fires right away, so you’ll have steam up when you’re set to go
!”
“Dick, those four heavy cars will leave tracks.”
“You just figured that out? Let’s get cracking. I have to set up a machine-gun ambush while you pack!”
“You’re staying behind alone?”
“Move your ass, you old windbag!” snapped Captain Gringo. So Gaston did, as the American explained to the Indians about the steam cars being good medicine that their spirits should get along with just fine.
An hour or so later he was feeling mighty lonely. It was still daylight, praise God, from whom all blessings flow, but he was pretty sure nobody would spot his spider hole in time to do them any good. He’d used a spade from the supplies to dig an oversized trapdoor spider nest in the red clay under the forest duff. He’d chosen the spot with care, so he could toss the red spoil over a fallen log, out of sight, and the log at his back would make it harder to spot his head when he had to pop up. At the moment he was down in the hole on his butt, with the Maxim on his thighs and the ammo canister between his boot heels. It made for a snug fit, but he hadn’t had time to excavate a cellar. He’d pulled dead branches over his hole, but arched them enough that he could peek over the rim without moving them. His field of fire was of course the recently vacated camp. There was nothing there now but the artistically burning fire. He didn’t want the other side to get lost. The rising smoke would be visible quite a distance in the cathedrallike gloom between the massive gray tree trunks, if they were looking hard enough to worry about.
He saw movement beyond the fire. Had an advance scout made it past him to-circle in from that direction? Pretty slick. But now the jerk-off would call the others and …. Shit, it was Gaston.
The little Frenchman came closer to the fire with his Winchester held at port across his chest as he looked around, sincerely bewildered, until Captain Gringo yelled, “Over here, on the double, you snail-eating asshole!”
