A Southern Californian would have felt at home on the west coast of Costa Rica, but a prudent sailor would have stayed well off shore. The Pacific swells swept in as long curling breakers on the shallow pocket beaches or horrendous explosions of soaring Whitewater against the rocky points. The narrow trail along the shoreline teetered on the lips of crumbling sea cliffs or dropped down through swampy canyon mouths choked with tule reeds and salt marsh mosquitoes who’d obviously been waiting for a good meal.
The few sails they spotted from time to time stood well toward the distant horizon. There were no lighthouses or other navigational aids and Captain Gringo knew the gunboat towing the observation balloon was skippered by a dedicated and daring man, if not a fool. Patches of what looked like blood-stained seawater just beyond the breaker line bespoke kelp-covered reefs offshore. Things were looking up. The commander of a submarine or any other kind of war vessel would need two things going for him if he intended to put in along this treacherous coast. Aside from at least a narrow channel of deep water, there would have to be a landmark clearly visible from far out to sea. As he led his patrol up another rise, the tall American stopped and stared inland at the tawny hillsides.
Gaston joined him as the other men sank down without being told to. Gaston asked what was up and the American said, “I’m trying to picture what these hills look like from six or eight miles out.”
Gaston said, “The scenery is not unlike Corsica. Good bandit country. That brush is greener than the maquis we have around the Mediterranean, but it would serve the same purpose. These little isolated beaches were obviously designed with smugglers and coastal pirates in mind, non?”
“We’re not looking for guys in shallow draft day-sailers. So far, I haven’t seen a cove a seagoing vessel could put in. And look how those hilltops to the east all flatten out at the same level.”
“But of course. We know this country is the eroded edge of the main mesa we came down from. What of it?”
“At night or even on an overcast day, this coast would just be a solid mass from the sea. I’m looking for something sticking up, like a butte or a substantial peak.”
“Aha! I see. One does not thread the needle blind. But perhaps someone on shore could shine a light at night, non?”
“Clumsy. The U.S. Navy patrols this coast and a dozen merchant marines follow that north-south sea lane just offshore. There are tuna boats out there, too. Fishermen don’t sail by time and tide. They move at random, with a lookout scanning the horizon day and night.”
Gaston shrugged and said, “I still say one can buy a poor fisherman at modest rates.”
But Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “There’s too many of them. Hell, Yank schooners sail down here from San Diego after tuna. There are bound to be tramp steamers running between North and South America out there, and they don’t post sailing times, either. Shore signals are just too big a risk.”
Gaston stared morosely down toward the sea and as a town-sized patch of white water ebbed back from the shore to expose a shingled bottom, he said, “We are not going to find anything here.”
Captain Gringo nodded and said, “I know. Everybody up. We’ll take a chow break in an hour.”
He led them on, cursing and scuffing the red dust as they legged it up another rise. The sea to their right looked cool and inviting, but because the wind was offshore, they were breathing the hot medicine smell of hillside chaparral and the sun was hot as hell.
Captain Gringo paced himself, aware that the packs and Maxim gun his followers packed were heavy, but some of the men still found it a killing pace. More than one secretly envied the deserter, Collins, even though common sense told them he’d probably made a dumb move. The men were legged up and in better shape than when they’d started out. But their leader knew it and kept calling for more from them.
Captain Gringo topped the rise and stopped again, smiling thinly. Gaston grabbed a trailside branch to steady himself. Then he, too, looked pleased. He said, “That has to be Punta Purgatorio. A more reasonable man would have taken another day reaching it!”
Captain Gringo ignored the thrust as he examined the distant land mass ahead. The shoreline swung out to sea in a line of scalloped black cliffs and dark rusty-looking pocket beaches, dominated by a brooding volcanic cone, Monte Purgatorio itself. The mountain’s base formed most of the point. The trail ran out along its dark flanks like a red chalk mark on dark slate. Far to the west, almost at the end of the point, a blurred whitewashed jumble and lighthouse was visible evidence of the one fishing village his map said was there. As his men clustered around him on the rise, Captain Gringo said, “We can make that town before dark if we forget the chow break. What do you guys say?”
The Detroit Harp shifted the Maxim on his shoulder and said “I’ll race yez there, this gun and all!”
T.B. Jones grinned and added, “I’ve never seen a seaport where they don’t have booze and bimbos, Cap. Screw the chow break. I’ll buy the first round in the cantina!”
Captain Gringo smiled, but warned, “Easy does it, guys. That little town out there isn’t Panama City or Tampico. We’re more likely to find simple and somewhat backward fisherfolk.”
Bomber grinned and said, “Hell, Cap, all we want is some simple fucking. They can fish backwards all they like.” Then he caught the look in his leader’s eyes and quickly added, “We’ll feel our way, Cap. We ain’t a bunch of green kids just over the border.”
Captain Gringo nodded and said, “Right. Nobody leaves the party or puts his gun down until we’ve secured the area. Let’s pick ’em up and lay ’em down. Route step four-forty.”
He led off at a brisk march, knowing they’d have no trouble keeping up, with a visible goal to perk up their morale. The trail led them down through a brush-choked canyon and over another rise of squishy ice plant, then repeated itself. But each time they dropped low they could see the peak of the volcano now. And though it seemed to recede before them, they were old campaigners who knew they were closing the distance with each weary step. Gaston, as ever, had to find something to bitch about. So, as they were struggling up another slope, he pointed at the crest of Monte Purgatorio and complained, “There is smoke rising from that volcano, Dick.”
Captain Gringo said, “I noticed. So what? Volcanoes are supposed to smoke.”
“Perhaps a whiff of steam now and then. This is only natural for a tame and dozing monster. That son of a bitch is alive!”
Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “The map says it’s a dormant cone. That fishing village wouldn’t be out there sitting in its lap if Monte Purgatorio erupted very often, Gaston.”
“Merde alors! One eruption is enough! You have heard, of course, of Krakatoa?”
“Sure. It was in all the papers a few years ago. That was another volcano in another part of the world.”
“I know. I passed Krakatoa on a troop ship, once, when I was still with the legion in Indochina.”
“Jesus, were you out there the night Krakatoa blew its top, Gaston?”
“Of course not. I am still, as you see, alive. The point I am trying to make is that Krakatoa was a dormant volcano, too. As our ship passed the island, they told us this. The fumes from the crater were not as dramatic as those we are approaching at the moment.”
Captain Gringo slapped at a fly on the back of his neck and shot a glance at the ugly black cloud above Monte Purgatorio. Then he snorted in disgust and said, “So someday it might start acting up. So what? What are the odds of a volcanic eruption on the very day we show up?”
“I would have said the odds on our arriving in Nicaragua just as the revolution blew up in our faces would have been most slim too, hein? I do not like volcanoes. Especially out on a narrow point of land where one has no room to move away from one should one wish to sidestep lava!”
Captain Gringo didn’t want the other men to stew about it, so he told Gaston to knock it off. The idea was ridiculous, anyway.
They came to a stretch of soil that looked like coal clinkers and afforded little in the way of vegetation. He saw the trail branched. The main path continued south, bypassing the peninsula. The other ran out along the north shoreline of Punta Purgatorio. So he followed it. The lava rock was funny stuff. It lay about in spongy masses of almost metallic cocoa-black where it hadn’t been broken. But the crushed dust and gravel of the trail had turned brick red in the sea air. The trail was easier to follow by eye than it was by foot. It gritted like broken glass under their heels and a man in bare feet couldn’t have traveled a mile on it.
The bright red path made Captain Gringo miss the thin strands of a barbed-wire fence until they were quite close to it. The fence ran across the trail with no provisions for a gate. A small wooden sign was nailed to a fence post. It read, in Spanish, “Private Property. Keep Out.”
Captain Gringo paused and swept his eyes both ways along the fence. To his right it ended above a sheer drop to the breakers below. To the left it ran up the slope of Monte Purgatorio as far as he could make it out. Beyond the fence, a swale of chaparral followed a drainage line down the mountain to the sea and a low rambling cluster of stone buildings dominated the heights above a pocket beach. The rancho or whatever was a quarter-mile away and out of earshot. He didn’t see a sign of life. So he shrugged and put a foot on the lower wire to wedge it open as he said, “See if you can duck through with the machine gun, Harp.”
The Detroit Harp started to do so as Gaston said, “This sign must have been what stopped those other searchers, non?” and Captain Gringo nodded and said, “Probably. They didn’t know their littoral law.”
“Literal what?”
“Not literal – littoral. Pertaining to the seashore, Costa Rica follows the same Latin code most countries do. It was established as far back as the Romans that you can’t put a no trespassing sign where it bars folks from following the seashore.”
One of the other men pointed past them and said, “You may have to explain that to those guys, Cap!” and the tall American turned to see a skirmish line of thirty-odd men moving toward them from the buildings in the distance. They were dressed in cotton khaki and carried rifles at port arms as they crunched across the lava. Captain Gringo stepped through the fence to The Detroit Harp’s side, but when Harp murmured, “Do you want the Maxim?” he said, “No. We’ll be good if they will.”
“Cap, there’s ten of us and thirty of them. This machine gun is the only ace we’ve got up our sleeve!”
“Put it down. They’ve seen it. There’s no cover out here for either side and I’m betting on them seeing that, too.”
As the skirmish line of riflemen stopped at pistol range, a leader in officer’s gear came closer and stopped with one hand on his holstered pistol to say, “You people must not know how to read, eh?”
Captain Gringo smiled and replied, “We’re on our way to the village out on the point, friend.”
“That is your problem, señor. My orders are to keep people off company property, and, as you see, you are many dangerous paces inside the fence. But I am a reasonable man. I shall count to ten before I kill you. Surely you are agile enough to make it back over the wire before I get to ten?”
Captain Gringo put a thoughtful hand of his own on a gun butt and said, “Let’s not be hasty. You and your men aren’t Costa Rican regulars. We are working for the government.”
The uniformed leader frowned and said, “Bah, you are not Costa Rican soldados! You are gringos, like those others!”
“Now we’re getting somewhere! Did you chase a gang of gringos a few days ago?”
“Chase them? No. I told them to go away or I would kill them. So they went. They were very sensible, for gringos. Are you going to do the same, or do you wish for to die here?”
“Just simmer down and we may work something out. Is this the only trail out to the village?”
The guardsman shrugged and said, “It used to be. Now that the company has occupied this part of the point, there is no public trail.”
“That’s illegal. How can the villagers out there get to the mainland when they want to?”
“Bah! For why do they wish for to walk when they have boats? The people of the village make no trouble for us. I don’t think they want strangers out there, anyway. What gives you the right to wander uninvited in these parts?”
“I think it was the Roman Senate, a while back. The shoreline is public property, sign or no. This trail is the only path that follows the coast west. So...”
“You defy me? You dare? ¡Madre de Dios! You are crazy! Don’t you know who I am working for?”
Captain Gringo swept a critical eye up and down the bare slopes beyond the guard unit before he said, “It sure can’t be a big ranchero. A goat would starve out here on this windswept rock. What the hell does this company of yours do, beside scaring people?”
“You are trespassing on the holdings of Azufre Internacional!”
He sounded impressed with the idea. Captain Gringo frowned and said, “You’re working for a sulfur mine? What’s the problem, then? We don’t want to steal your sulfur. We just want to get out to the goddamned fishing village!”
“My orders are not to let you cross the property, señor. If you take another step, we shall have to kill you.”
The Detroit Harp spat and said, “Sure, and I’d say he was bluffing.”
Captain Gringo was of the same mind, but it seemed a poor way to make an entrance. As the two parties faced each other, each waiting for the other to give in or make their play, Captain Gringo saw a pair of riders coming from the stone buildings beyond and said for his men to hear, “Everyone stay cool but look sharp. Some bigger boos seem to be coming over to join the party.”
The riders were a heavyset man with a potbelly and beard, trailed by a Junoesque blonde woman who rode sidesaddle under a veiled picture hat. They reined in and the man demanded, “What is going on here? Who the devil are you men and what do you mean by pestering my help?”
Captain Gringo touched the brim of his battered panama hat to the woman but told the man, “Your help was about to have a war with us, if you’re International Sulfur, Mister, ah—?”
“Hoover. Jan Ten Eck Hoover, if it’s any business of yours.”
“That’d make you a Hollander, right?”
“I am a Rotterdammer and the manager, here, of a company headquartered in Curacao, Dutch West Indies. Not that this is any of your business and I am still waiting for an explanation!”
Captain Gringo said, “My name’s Walker. We’re headed for the village out on the point. This boundary fence you’ve built across a public right-of-way is illegal, but I can’t seem to make your guards see that.”
Jan Hoover glared and said, “Don’t be ridiculous! Our mining claim runs from the sea to the peak of that mountain!”
The woman leaned forward and said something in Dutch, in a rather weary voice. The fat Dutchman nodded and said, “You must understand it is dangerous here. That is why I fenced the property off. My company does not wish to be responsible for needless injury to passersby.”
Captain Gringo nodded and said, “I know sulfur mining is dangerous. We just want to cross your property. We don’t want to explore your mines.”
Hoover shook his head and started to say something, but the woman at his side smiled and said, “Jan is right about it being very dangerous around here. But if you will promise to stay on the path and follow us exactly, we will lead you across. In return, you will promise to tell us ahead of time when you intend to return this way so that we can guide you. Agreed?”
Captain Gringo grinned up at her and said, “Lady, you have a deal.” The buxom Dutch girl didn’t return his smile as she told the guards, in Spanish, to go on about their duties. Then, as the band with Captain Gringo finished crawling through the fence to join her, she said something else to the fat man on the other horse. He grumbled a bit, then shrugged and said, “You are right. These natives can’t be trusted down there without a white man to see they don’t act foolish. But take Tomas with you. We don’t know these men, after all.”
Captain Gringo saw Tomas was the leader of the guards, who didn’t seem to mind being a “native” even though his features were pure Spanish. As the soldiers of fortune lined up, the girl on the horse led out at a slow walk, with Tomas and two other guards bringing up the rear.
Captain Gringo stepped up alongside her as they started, saying, “I didn’t get your name, ma’am.”
“I am Ernestine Hoover and be careful where you put your feet. Do you see that trickle across the path ahead?”
“Sure, it looks like condensation water, running down off the peak up there.”
“It’s not. It’s concentrated sulfuric acid. Mist from the sea mixes with the smoke up there to form vitriol. We had some ghastly accidents before our unskilled workers learned to test all running or standing water with a wisp of wool instead of their skin or tongue!”
He whistled silently and called back, “Don’t go near the water, kiddies. It’s acid.” Then, after following Ernestine and her well-trained mount across the innocent looking trickle, dry shod, he asked, “Are you Herr Hoover’s daughter, ma’am?”
She said, “It’s Mynheer Hoover. We’re Dutch, not German. I don’t think I’ll tell poor Jan you took him for my father. He’s rather vain.”
“He’s your husband, then?”
“Yes, and I think we’d better change the subject. I offered to lead you and your men, not to flirt with you.”
He started to mutter, “Up yours.” but decided she had a point and what the hell, she was sort of hefty, anyway.
The ground suddenly tingled under his boots and he asked, “What’s that? It sounded like a mine blast.”
She shook her head and said, “Hardly. I can see you don’t know much about mining sulfur. Didn’t anyone ever tell you it burns?”
“Right. Dynamiting match heads could make the results sort of unpredictable. But how do you get it out of the mountain and what was that jar under us, just now?”
She sniffed and said, “The sulfide ore is soft and the underground workings are done with bronze picks and shovels. Those occasional thuds are the volcano, I hope.”
“You hope? What’s more worrisome than a volcano clearing its throat next to a mine?”
“Part of the mine caving in, of course. As our workers haul ore there’s a tendency for slabs of roofing to fall in. The whole point is a layer cake of hard and soft lava flows, with beds of sulfur ore between, in places. Jan says the beds result when long cooled lava tubes fill with molten sulfides and slowly harden. I’ve only been down in the shafts a few times. It’s hellishly hot and smells like rotten eggs.”
He grimaced and said, “I can see why the early settlers named these parts purgatory. But aren’t you folks in a risky business, considering the current price of sulfur? You’re a long ways from the market, too.”
Ernestine looked disgusted and said, “You must not know much about Curacao, either.”
He said, “Sure, I do. It’s a Dutch sugar island, just over on the other side of Central America.”
“Then you know sulfur is used in refining sugar.
“Well, sure, but your sugar islands are still on the wrong side of the whole damned isthmus.”
“We won’t be, as soon as the Panama Canal is finished! Right now, most of the world gets its sulfur from Sicily, on the far side of the Atlantic. Honestly, Mr. Walker, you must not read the papers!”
Captain Gringo frowned as he mulled her words over and pictured a mental map of the world in his head. Then he nodded. When and if they got that canal dug, it was certainly going to change the trade routes a lot. Before he could ask her, Ernestine Hoover added, “Our company is thinking well ahead, of course. We don’t expect the canal to be built tomorrow, but, when it is, well have a nearby supply of sulfur for our sugar industry and, meanwhile, we ship a little up the coast to San Francisco, or out to Batavia, in our East Indies. As acid, of course.”
“What do you mean of course? Doesn’t anybody want the stuff as just plain sulfur?”
“Not in great quantities. You were right about it being cheap in bulk. The only way we can undercut the established Sicilian market is by shipping it as concentrated pure vitriol, ready to use from the bottle in various industrial processes.”
She then proceeded to give him a lecture on the uses of sulfuric acid. Information he had very little use for, he’d decided, until he frowned and said, “Back up. What was that about sulfuric acid and electric batteries?”
Ernestine shrugged and said, “Everyone knows Edisons’s new heavy duty batteries are filled with vitriol between the lead plates. Why?”
“You don’t know if there are sulfur mines in the Kaiser’s Marshall Islands to the west, do you?”
She laughed and said, “How could there be? The Marshalls are low coral islands. I don’t think they have any mines at all out there. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious. Would you folks sell battery acid to passing steamers putting in here?”
She shrugged and said, “We are wholesale, not retail. But Jan did give some acid to an American gunboat days ago. It was only as a courtesy. I don’t think he charged them anything.”
“Hmm, the U.S. Navy’s using batteries to run its gunboats, these day?”
“Of course not. It was steam driven. The acid was for its balloon.”
He tried to look innocent as he said, “Oh, that boat! We did see a gunboat towing a balloon a few days ago. I didn’t know you filled an observation balloon with sulfuric acid, though.”
Ernestine sniffed and said, “You failed high school chemistry, too, I see. What happens when you pour vitriol over scrap iron?”
He frowned and then nodded as he said, “Of course. Hydrogen gas! You generate hydrogen gas for a balloon in a tank filled with scrap iron and acid.”
She nodded and said, “They had this big lead-lined tank on the stern of their craft. When Jan delivered the demijohns of acid he asked why they had a balloon and they said something about an experiment. You Americans are always experimenting with something. Forgive me, but Jan says your people sometimes seem a bit slow at growing up.”
Captain Gringo was about to retort that some people kept playing with toys and others just got broad across the beam before they were thirty, but she didn’t look like she had a great sense of humor. As he walked beside her horse, he noticed her split riding skirt had fallen open to expose one calf above her high buttoned shoe. She was nicely legged up, for such a big dame. He decided to try and stay on friendly terms.
There was another tingle in the earth beneath his boots and, behind him, Gaston yelled, “Regardez, to your left!”
Captain Gringo glanced up the slope to see a boulder, not much smaller than the one they’d rolled through that other gangs hideout, rolling down at them with the speed of an express train off the tracks!
Captain Gringo leaped forward and caught the reins of Ernestine’s horse as the animal, spooked by the rumble, started to rear in terror. The girl worked at cross purposes, trying to steady her mount, and her own powerful pull on the bit confused things further while the rock roared down at them. Captain Gringo let go of the bridle and reached up to wrap his arms around the woman’s waist as the horse danced sideways on its rear legs. And then he was on his back with the big blonde atop him and the horse danced and circled to meet the boulder in a big wet splash! The rock bounded across the trail with the smashed horse wrapped around it like a soggy wrapping as it kept rolling and skipping all the way to the cliffs above the sea and over the edge!
There was a long moment of silence as Captain Gringo and Ernestine lay in one another’s arms, her heart pounding against his, and then Gaston and Tomas, the guard, were hauling them both to their feet and asking them if they were all right. Captain Gringo noticed she was blushing and not meeting his eye as he said, “I’m sorry about the horse. I see what you mean about this being dangerous country, ma’am.”
Gaston was swearing and saying something about an eruption. Ernestine said, “Oh, Monte Purgatorio is always spitting bits and pieces out, but there hasn’t been a real eruption in recorded history.
Then she met Captain Gringo’s eyes and said, gravely, “You saved my life, though. How did you know my horse was going to run to meet the boulder?”
He shrugged and said, “I’m an old cavalry man. I don’t know why some horses run back into a burning stable, but I’ve learned to recognize that look in a horse’s eye.”
The guard leader, Tomas, pointed at another line of wire beyond the red scars left by the rolling boulder and said, “We are almost across company property, now. You and your followers go on into the village and we will escort la señora back to her residence.”
But Ernestine shook her head and said, “I’m not going back across that lava on foot. You go back if you wish, Tomas. I shall continue on to the village and hire a donkey cart or something.”
Tomas looked unhappy and said, “In that case we shall accompany la señora. El patron Hoover said we were to stay at her side.”
The big blonde didn’t argue as, between Captain Gringo and Tomas, she walked on, wincing at the way the lava crunched under her good shoes but graceful enough on her feet, considering. Captain Gringo could see, now that she’d dismounted, that she was almost as tall as he was, which meant she topped six feet in those heels.
A dirty post card popped unbidden into his mind as he pictured her and her immense husband in bed together. It reminded him of two pink elephant seals he’d once watched rutting in the shallows up the coast. He wondered which one got on top, and why in the hell he should give a damn. She had a pretty face and nice trim ankles, but, for God’s sake, she had to weigh damned near two hundred pounds, judging from the way she’d landed on him back there.
They reached the fence and he helped her through as Tomas held the wires open. She stumbled getting through in her long skirts and once again, as he steadied her with a firm wrist, she nodded and said, “You really are quite powerful, aren’t you?”
He didn’t know how to answer that, so he didn’t try. They followed the trail around a bend and saw the fishing village ahead. It was laid out in a semicircle around a bowl-shaped harbor. One pier ran out from the stone quay, but most of the little fishing vessels were hauled half ashore for the evening. The boats were every color of the rainbow and some had eyes painted on their bows. When he commented on this, Ernestine said, “The original settlers seem to have been Portuguese fishermen who intermarried with local Spanish girls. They speak a strange dialect and tend to keep to themselves out here.”
Captain Gringo studied the pastel stucco houses as they approached and said, “Cosmopolitan, eh? You don’t know if there are any Germans living out here, do you, ma’am?”
“Germans? No, I don’t think so. Most German settlers in Costa Rica seem to prefer the cooler highlands. I think there is a Chinese shopkeeper and the man who runs the cantina is a Greek. Isn’t that right, Tomas?”
Tomas shrugged and said, “He is a Greek or perhaps an Italian. His Spanish is grotesque, whatever he may be. El Chino, the shopkeeper, speaks better Spanish.”
Gaston had been listening. He pointed to the lighthouse on a rise beyond the village and asked, “Would there not be a Costa Rican agent on duty out at that lighthouse?”
Ernestine looked blank. Tomas said, “I don’t know who is on duty out there. These people are not friendly and we seldom come into town.”
As if to prove the guard’s words, a quartet of men in white duck pants and seaman’s sweaters stood across the path at the edge of the village. One of them was holding a gaff hook, thoughtfully. Captain Gringo waved and they ignored him. As he and those with him came closer, the man with the gaff hook said, “We are not looking for to buy any sulfur. You people are far from your mine, no?”
Captain Gringo said, “We’re on your side, friend. We just had the usual argument about the right of way and I think it’s settled. La señora, here, needs a mount to get home.”
The fishermen exchanged glances. Then one of them said, “We fish for tuna, not sea horses.”
The others with him seemed to think that was funny as hell.
Captain Gringo waited until the laughter died down and then he said, “I’m looking for your alcalde, señors.”
The one with the gaff hook said, “We have no alcalde, but I am the bully of this town.”
“I figured you might be. My men and I have money to pay for food and shelter for the night and we’ve come in peace. How does that sound to you, so far?”
“Why don’t you stay with your friends at the great sulfur mine we are not allowed to approach, eh?”
Captain Gringo muttered, “Oh boy.” Then he told Ernestine, “I may be able to wrangle you a ride home, but you’d better get rid of these guards. I’m getting the distinct impression they’ve been pushing these folks around and it’s not our fight.”
Ernestine nodded and said, “Return to your quarters, Tomas. That’s an order.”
“But señora, el patron said—”
“I know what my husband said, damn it! Get out of here before they start throwing things! I’ll be all right. Tell my husband I’ll be home in just a little bit-Reluctantly, Tomas and the other two uniformed men started backing off, muttering among themselves. Captain Gringo smiled at the fishermen and asked, “Is that better?”
The boss fisherman frowned and said, “You will pay us, in silver? We do not accept that paper stuff they print up on the mesa.”
The tall American reached in his pocket for some change and held it out, saying, “I was just about to suggest we all have a drink together. Where’s this Greek who runs a cantina?”
The bully lowered his gaff hook and said, “He’s Armenian, but as long as you know how to act like a gentleman we will drink with you. What about the Dutch woman? Aren’t you afraid she’ll be molested?”
“Why should I be? Aren’t you hombres gentlemen, too?”
The man with the gaff hook laughed and said,
“Hey, they call me El Tiberon, Gringo. How are you called?”
“Gringo is just fine. They call me Captain Gringo. I’ll introduce my men over some cerveza, no?”
“Hey, we’re fishermen, not farm girls, Captain Gringo. If you’re not buying ton fuerte it’s no deal!”
It was going to be all right. As the fishermen led them into the village people appeared in doors and windows with relieved expressions and Captain Gringo murmured to Ernestine, “You folks had better ease up on your neighbors. Your high-handed views on property have turned these simple fisher-folk to sullen types.”
She said, “I had no idea they could be this friendly. Jan says one has to keep natives in their place.
“Yeah, well, let’s not forget this whole point of land was their place, until your company filed a mining claim on it.”
“Can’t you explain it’s for their own good?”
“Later. You’re still getting dirty looks from ladies up in those windows. It’s bad enough you’re blonde and wearing shoes. I’ll mention the danger to their kids and goats after we see if we can loosen them up a bit.”
They followed the fishermen into a dark cavernous cantina, where El Tiberon pounded on the bar and said, “Hey, how about some service? We just met a gringo who thinks he can drink me under the table.”
Captain Gringo motioned the men packing the machine gun and ammo boxes over to a corner as he digested this news. He didn’t remember anything about a contest, but apparently El Tiberon still wanted the boys to remember how tough he was. None of them had mentioned the odds or the guns his party was packing. Since they had eyes, it seemed obvious they’d opted for more civilized contests to prove their virility. Captain Gringo put some money on the bar and asked the dark morose man behind it if he spoke English. The Armenian said, “A little. Why?”
“I don’t want my men too drunk. I’ll pay as well for water as I will for rum. Do you read me?”
“Like a book,” smiled the Armenian, adding, “We get an occasional tramp or navy vessel in here from time to time. It’s not such an unusual request.”
El Tiberon elbowed his way closer to Captain Gringo and the blonde and asked, “Hey, what’s all this talk about? Are we going to get drunk or talk all night?”
The Armenian nodded and started filling glasses. Captain Gringo admired the way he moved his hands. He was expecting it, and he still thought he was getting straight rum until he tasted the tame mixture in his glass. He glanced at Ernestine and she nodded. He wouldn’t have to carry her home after all.
As others bellied up to the bar the Armenian slid glass after glass to the boisterous and growing crowd. Some of Captain Gringo’s men were looking oddly at their drinks, but they were old hands and there was a little rum in each man’s glass, so nobody bitched.
Captain Gringo waited for a lull in the uproar before he called the Armenian over and explained he needed quarters and a ride home for the blonde. The Armenian nodded but moved off down the bar without saying just what he had in mind. Within minutes El Tiberon was singing, loudly, to some admiring girls who’d wandered in and the tall American felt a tug at his sleeve. He turned to see a small timid-looking girl there. She murmured, “You and la señora follow me, señor.”
He nodded and took Ernestine’s elbow to steer her through a curtain of hanging glass beads. Ernestine was flushed and panting and she said, “Heavens, I’m so glad that wasn’t straight rum! As it is, I feel it. How long have we been drinking, anyway?”
He answered, “Just twenty minutes or so.” She wasn’t one of those gals who passed out at the whiff of a cork, was she? She hadn’t downed as much as he had and he didn’t feel a thing.
The young girl led them along a dark corridor and up a flight of stairs. She opened a door and led them into a small clean room, furnished with a spartan looking iron framed bed. The girl said, “No one will disturb you here, señora y señor.”
Captain Gringo noted the thunderstruck look on the married blonde’s face and quickly said, “Wait a minute. The room was for me, alone. The man downstairs said he’d see about a ride out across the lava for this lady. She wants to go home.”
The young girl looked puzzled. Then she shrugged and said, “I will tell my patron, señor. I only work here. He said nothing about a ride,”
She stepped out, closing the door behind her. Captain Gringo smiled reassuringly at Ernestine and said, “It’s early yet. It won’t be dark for hours. We’ll let them simmer down, downstairs, and if somebody doesn’t show up with a donkey cart I’ll go down and scout one up.”
Ernestine giggled as she looked out the window. Then she closed the shutters and said, “If anyone sees me up here, they’ll think something terrible is going on!”
He took out a smoke and sat on the bed to light it as he said, “I don’t know if it would be so terrible, but I can see how we could get in Dutch.”
Then he realized what he’d said and laughed. He said, “I didn’t mean that the way it might have sounded.”
She sighed and said, “I know. I’m used to being treated like a perfect lady.”
“Aren’t you a perfect lady, Ernestine?”
“I don’t know. When your parents arrange a marriage for you at fifteen, you get few opportunities to find out. Would you believe me if I told you this was the first time I’ve been alone with another man since I left the convent?”
He didn’t know if he believed her, but he was getting her message. Could she be serious? The old goat she was married to would be looking for her any minute.
On the other hand, Jan Hoover didn’t know where to find her. She knew that, too. He decided to blow some smoke rings. He wasn’t about to bite at the hook until he’d had a better look at it.
Ernestine came over and sat down beside him. The bed sagged and their thighs touched. He blew some smoke and she asked, “Where will you be going after you leave here, Mr. Walker?”
He said, “Back up to San Jose, and you’d better call me Dick or move over a bit.”
She stayed where she was and said, “My, I must have had too much to drink and it’s making me very bold. I was about to ask you a very silly question, Dick.”
“Ask away. What’s that perfume you’re wearing?”
“Sandalwood. I was about to ask if you’d take me with you when you leave. Isn’t that ridiculous?”
He glanced at her and was surprised at the pain in her eyes. He frowned and said, “Cut the femme fatale crap and tell me what this is all about, Ernestine.”
She put a large but shapely hand on his wrist and said, “Dick, I have to get away. I can’t stand it here.
He nodded, but said, “So you throw yourself at the first passing ship in the night? You must really want out, bad. But how do you know you might not be jumping from the frying pan into the fire? You’ve never seen me before. I could be a maniac.”
She shuddered and said, “I’m married to a maniac. Nothing you could be could be worse. I haven’t dared to write home about the way Jan treats me. You saw how he absolutely runs things, here.”
He nodded and said, “Well, he looked a little filled with himself, but fair is fair. I didn’t have him down as a lunatic. What’s he been doing to you, kitten?”
Ernestine shuddered and said, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
He said, “Try me.” and Ernestine stood up. As he stared in wonder, the big blonde unbuttoned her bodice and began to strip. As her big pink breasts popped out of the tight dress he saw she wore nothing under it. He said, “Hey, that kid may come back any second!”
Ernestine turned her back to him and he saw the purple marks across her soft pink flesh. He gasped, “Kee-rist! You’ve been whipped” and she said, “I know,” and let her skirt fall to the floor around her high button shoes. Wearing nothing else, she stepped out of the folds, with her broad but well-formed derriere to him. The whip marks crisscrossed her buttocks and she’d been given a few licks across the thighs, too. She turned to face him, without a trace of shyness, standing like a fertility goddess carved of rosy marble as she said, “It’s not what you think. He’s not a sexual sadist. I can face him as you see me now and Jan shows no more interest in my body than if I were a flower growing in his garden.”
“He must be crazy,” said the tall American, rising from his seat. He stepped closer and took her in his arms, as much because it felt silly as hell to just stare as she stood there, and said, “I’ve heard about guys who like to rough women up. How long has this been going on?”
She leaned against him and it felt odd to hold a woman whose eyes met his almost level. She said, “Almost from the beginning, and we have been married nearly six years. You must have noticed Jan is rather obese and I am hardly … petite.”
He felt her mons against his drawing erection, their hips at the same level, and said, “You mean he’s too fat to … Come on, nobody’s that fat!”
She pressed closer as she said, “His obesity is a symptom of his twisted passions, not a cause. We did make love, normally, at first, and I confess I enjoyed it very much. I suppose you could call me a warm-natured woman.”
He saw they were about to crash on the bed together and braced his weight against her warm pink mass as he said, “Yeah, that sounds reasonable. But get to the good stuff, with the whips!”
She said, “I told you. He’s a sadist. He hits me because, well, he can’t do anything else.”
“The poor lard’s impotent?”
She was breathing harder as she pleaded, “Isn’t it obvious? For God’s sake, Dick, don’t you want’ me, .either?”
He kissed her and ran his hands down her bruised flesh gently as he said, “It’s funny you should mention that. I was just about to bring it up.”
She did a naughty little bump and grind in his arms and purred, “I notice that’s not all I’m bringing up.”
So he shoved her across the bed, tore off his clothes, and leaped aboard to ravage her thoroughly. Albeit who was ravaging whom was a good question. Ernestine was stronger than most men and met his passion with bone-jarring enthusiasm. Captain Gringo was usually a gentle lover, aware that he could hurt most women if he let himself go too freely. But the big Dutch girl afforded him an opportunity to go all out as he pounded himself into her like a logger splitting a stump with wedge and maul. She almost broke his ribs as she hugged him tight and sobbed happily about how strong he was. He didn’t know how innocent she’d been on her honeymoon, but he was sure, in all modesty, she’d never given herself to many men like this. Damned few men could have survived it!
He came and tried to keep going as the big Dutch girl helped him with her massive thighs and almost masculine hip movements. And then she half screamed, “Kiss me!” and clamped down with frightening strength as wave after wave of orgasm drove her into delirium. Then she suddenly went limp and began to croon at him in her own gutteral language. Not the most romantic sounds he’d ever heard, but certainly sincere.
He glanced at the window shutters and saw it was still daylight out. So he kissed the side of her throat and said, “We’ve got to think about getting you dressed, Honey. Tomas and his guys have been at your mine a long time, now.”
She held him against her big breasts and said, “You can’t send me back to that brute. Not now, darling.”
He said, “Hell, you can’t stay here tonight. Your fucking husband has a private army!”
She grimaced and said, “I wouldn’t be leaving a fucking husband, damn it! I want to stay with fucking you!”
“Look, Ernestine, I’ll smuggle you out and see about getting you home after we’re finished, here. But make sense. He doesn’t beat you every night, does he?”
“No, but one never knows with Jan. How long do you intend to stay here in this village? What on earth are you doing here, anyway?”
“We’re, uh, making a coastal survey. I don’t think it will take us long to check this area out. Don’t you think you can last a few more days?”
“The days are no problem. It’s the nights I can’t stand. Even if Jan behaves himself, how am I to sleep, tonight, knowing you are here and that I can’t have any more of your marvelous body?”
He kissed her and said, “We’ve time for some more marvelous body. But then I’m sending you home like a good little girl.”
He started moving again and she sighed and said, “I do feel like a little girl in your arms, Dick. You’ve no idea how it hurts to look down at the top of a man’s head when he’s inside of you.”
He said, “That’s silly. You’re not that tall.”
“You don’t find me repulsive? Jan once said I made him feel like a homosexual because I was bigger and stronger than he was.”
“Look, we’ve agreed your husband’s crazy. Let’s not bring him to bed with us, okay? I like your size just the way it is. In fact, where it counts, you’re pretty small.”
She started moving, teasingly, and said, “We do fit nicely, don’t we? Do it, Dick. Make me feel little and helpless again!”
He let himself go. She was about as helpless as a Dodge City bouncer in any man’s arms, but she sure screwed good.