The first rail line ended against a steep escarpment. They arrived just at sundown and of course nobody in his or her right mind would attempt going on by mule or shank’s mare in the dark, bandits along the steep mountain trail or not. But as Sergeant Vallejo had said, they found a walled inn waiting for them when they disembarked from the train. There was a telegraph station, too. So as Gaston arranged quarters and saddle mules for the next leg of their journey at dawn, Captain Gringo filed a report for the Ottawa Observer, detailing the attack on the train, but putting it down as an attempted robbery and crediting the soldiers with a magnificent display of courage.
He had no idea whether anyone in Canada would ever read the foolish tale, but he knew people who were worried about them would intercept it and know they’d made it thus far. Anyone suspicious of strangers would hopefully think, if they intercepted his message, that he was indeed a harmless reporter, friendly to the Colombian Armed Forces.
When he returned to the courtyard of the posada he found Gaston had engaged rooms for them on the top floor: one for Gaston and a corner honeymoon-suite for the English girl and himself. It was a good thing they’d gotten sexually acquainted on the steamer. There was only one four-poster bed, and the mattress sagged alarmingly.
Liza was waiting for him in their room, wearing all her clothes and a wary expression. She said, “Dick, I just checked the lock on that door.”
He closed it experimentally and twisted the big Spanish key in the massive lock. He said, “Looks pretty stout to me, doll.”
“Look at the key, damn it!”
He took the key out and held it up to the light. He nodded and said, “Yeah, it’s pretty primitive. Looks like those Crusader keys on the Pope’s coat of arms.”
“Pooh, it’s even simpler. I’ll bet anyone could open that lock with a pen knife or a hair pin. What are we going to do?”
He shrugged. “Well, when in Rome. I’ll hang my gun belt on the headboard and we’ll pile some furniture against it. Who were you expecting?”
“God only knows! Anybody could burst in on us and rob or kill us in our sleep!”
“Not without making a lot of noise, doll. I think you’re getting worked up over nothing. We haven’t got all that much to steal and if anybody wants to kill us, they’d do better by waiting until we were out in the open. Gaston’s next door, and those actors and some other first-class passengers are all around the balcony.”
“How do you know we can trust them? We only know the Divine Rowena and her troupe. The other side could have plants among the Hispanic passengers. Those actors might not really be actors. What if they’re secret agents, too?”
“Jesus, who’d hire such lousy spies? They have to be real actors. Any up-to-date intelligence outfit would have gotten somebody that looks more like my idea of a Shakespearean.”
He saw she was trembling. He put the clumsy key back in the crude lock and moved over to the bed to comfort her. He said, “The door’s locked and we’ll hear if anybody tries to pick it. Do you want to eat before we make love, or should we have them serve our supper in bed?”
She turned away from his attempt to kiss her, saying, “Please. Is that all you ever think of, Dick?”
“No. I just think of it whenever I get a few minutes of privacy. What’s eating you? I thought we’d busted the ice.”
“Do you have to be so crude? Just because a girl loses her head for a moment with a man doesn’t give him the right to take her for granted, you know!”
He raised an eyebrow and whistled silently. He’d played this dumb scene before. Since he was a man, and all men knew the scene by heart. But they usually didn’t pull this shit so early in the game. He thought of pointing out that she, not he, had announced they’d be splitting up after he got her to Bogotá. But when they were in this mood, there wasn’t a thing any man could say except, maybe, “Let’s go eat?”
Liza sniffed and said, “I’m not hungry.”
“You’d better let me bring you something, then. We’ll be on the trail all day tomorrow and you may need your strength.”
“I’ll be fine, thank you. You just run along and take care of all your appetites, all right?”
He knew better, but he found himself saying, “All right, Liza, what’s this all about?”
She said, “Nothing. Nothing you’d understand. I’m just an object to you. You just want to use me as a receptacle for your lust.”
He got to his feet as he said, “Baby, you don’t know what you just did to my lust. But I’ll see if I can get them to make me some sandwiches for you, anyway.”
He left her alone to work out whatever the hell was eating her and went looking for the cantina, dining room, or whatever. As he made his way to the stairs leading down to the pateo, Sergeant Vallejo was coming up them, followed by two privates lugging a water-cooled machine gun. It was a Maxim, all right. He knew Belgium and even one German company had bought the rights to old Hiram Maxim’s basic 1884 patent. The Spandau, the complicated Parabellum, the unreliable French Chauchat, and the not much better Hotchkiss were all attempts to copy the basic Maxim action, and Maxim had gotten it right in the beginning.
Old Hiram was an American who’d moved to England and gone into partnership with the international Vickers firm, which had German connections they didn’t like to talk about.
Another American named John Browning, a mechanical wizard from Utah, was said to be catching up with Maxim without having to steal his design. But Captain Gringo had reservations on the new Colt-Browning machine gun the U.S. Army was starting to buy these days. He’d never fired one before he’d been forced to desert the Tenth Cavalry and leave the States on the run. The familiar weapon they were lugging up the stairs was an old reliable buddy he’d grown quite fond of.
As he stood aside to let them pass, Sergeant Vallejo had them put the Maxim down. He pointed at the sinister mass of gunmetal squatting on its tripod at their feet and said, “This is the creature I was telling you about, Señor Canada. Have you ever seen such a piece of junk?”
Captain Gringo knew he shouldn’t. On the other hand, it could cost him and his friends if the soldiers messed up during a night attack, and he knew that few soldiers in any army reported their own stupidity to higher authority. He asked, “Where are you boys taking it?”
“Up on the roof. Our commandant suggested this, I can’t tell you why. I understand the advantages of rooftop fire, but as I said, the triple-titted thing refuses for to shoot!”
Captain Gringo stared thoughtfully at the steep rickety stairway to the roof, down at the end of the balcony. He said, “I’ll give you boys a hand and show you how to arm it.”
“Señor Canada knows about such things?”
“Only a little. I covered Riel’s Rebellion in Western Canada a few years ago. You’ve heard about it, of course?”
“No, señor. I did not know you had revolutions in Canada, too.”
That was a break. Captain Gringo didn’t really know a hell of a lot about the troubles along the Red River either, but he distracted the three of them with a long fictitious account of the Mounties’ campaign against the Red River Breeds while they manhandled the Maxim up to the roof.
The flat roof of the posada formed a natural parapet and the tall American pointed to a corner facing some woods, saying, “That’s where I’d put the gun, if I were in charge.”
Vallejo said, “I was just about to say the same thing. Put the gun in that corner, muchachos!”
As the two privates carried the gun just out of earshot, Captain Gringo leaned closer to the sergeant and said, “I know this is none of my business, but you’ve got it mounted backwards on its tripod.”
Vallejo flushed slightly and said, “I was only carrying it that way, Señor Canada. Do you take me for an idiosa?”
He moved to join his men in the corner of the roof, saying, “Wait, I will lift the gun off and you will position the tripod firmly on the corner bricks, eh? Tico, turn that leg toward those woods, estupido. You have the tripod the wrong way.”
Private Tico shrugged and swung the tripod around, asking, “For why are we covering this side, my sergeant? Couldn’t they come as well from three other directions?”
Vallejo looked at Captain Gringo. The American said, “Sergeant Vallejo obviously feels that anyone attacking a walled stronghold would move as close as possible under cover before they made their final charge. Your machine gun covered the gate of the posada, too.”
“Exactly,” Vallejo said with a relieved look. Then, as the two privates stepped aside, he lowered the Maxim back on its mount and shot Captain Gringo a sly look as he said, “I’ll bet you don’t know how to fire this thing, eh, Señor Canada?”
Captain Gringo said, “I’ll bet you a cerveza.” Then he hunkered down behind the gun, turned the traverse wheel and explained, “This is how you adjust your aim from side to side. You can twist this key, here, and swing it freely for hosing fire, but it’s best to use the traverse. The way it’s aimed now, it should fire a steady stream at an angle that cuts those woods off from the gate. Anybody busting out with a battering ram has to run right through your bullets, see?”
“I knew that, Señor Canada. I know all about machine guns. But there is something wrong with this one. I think it must be jammed. It refused for to fire when those banditos attacked the train.”
Captain Gringo threw the arming level slowly, so that Vallejo could follow it. A perfectly good round of ammo clinked out onto the gravel roofing. He picked it up and pocketed it, saying, “There’s part of the trouble. A defective round. If the firing pin comes down on a dud, the action fails to recock itself. If you get a jam while you’re firing, work this lever a couple of times and it should start up again. You have water in the cooling jacket, right?”
“Water? We need for to pour water in a gun?”
Captain Gringo reached forward and unscrewed the cap chained to the water jacket as he said, “Well, you probably know it will fire short bursts without coolant. But it wouldn’t be a bad idea to pour a couple of ollas full in here.” He flipped the safety on, pointed to it, and added, “It’s ready to fire. But naturally you want it on safe. You’d better show your gunner how to work the safety. Sometimes a soldier in a hurry forgets a gun won’t fire when it’s on safe.”
Vallejo nodded and told his men, “I hope you estupidos are taking this all in, eh? I have tried to tell you how these new weapons work, but my words fall on deaf ears, it would seem.”
Then he grinned at Captain Gringo and said, “I will buy you that drink, Señor Canada. I did not think you knew as much as me about machine guns, but a wager is a wager.”
Leaving the privates on guard, topside, the two of them made their way down the stairs to the cantina beside the coach gate. They found Gaston at a table, morosely consuming a stein of suds and a plate of refritos.
Captain Gringo introduced the two men and Vallejo joined them for one drink. Then, mercifully, he left to show his troops how to work the safeties on their bolt-action rifles. Gaston said, “He seems very busy. Do you really think anyone is going to attack this place tonight?”
The American shook his head and said, “Not unless they’re even dumber than the ones who hit the train. Why make a play for people walled up behind three feet of adobe when you know they’ll all come out in the cold gray light? If we meet any more guerrillas it should be on the trail tomorrow. It’s a winding wagon trace with any number of natural ambushes.”
“Oui, I just heard that from one of the locals. This trainload of sheep and Vallejo’s useless soldiers offer us nothing but a slow trip up the slope to the next rail connection, Dick. Have you given any thought to the three of us dashing on alone? We could rent saddle horses and pack mules for little more than this stay will cost us.”
Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “I thought about it before we got here. You and I are pretty good, and Liza has a gun she seems to know how to handle. But there’s safety in numbers, even if we’d find a train waiting up ahead for us alone, ahead of time. We wouldn’t just stand out to guys in wait beside the trail if we played Three Musketeers, either. Somebody working for the other side might wonder why we were so brave, or in so much of a hurry. Traveling in a crowd doesn’t just give a bullet a lot of extra choices. It’s good camouflage.”
He saw Gaston looked too crestfallen for it to be the beans he was eating, so he asked, “What’s your big hurry, anyway? I thought you were working on that big blond.”
Gaston made a wry face and said, “She says she wants to be alone. She and her menagerie are dining in her quarters. I have – how you say? – struck out with the only other civilized-looking woman in her troupe, too. The second feminine lead seems to be traveling with no lover, human or otherwise, but she is a bit young for me. She persists in treating me like a kindly uncle. Trés fatigue”
Captain Gringo thought back to his hurried introductions during the emergency aboard the train. He said, “I remember a little blue-eyed brunette in a veil. I couldn’t tell how old she was, but she wasn’t bad.”
“Oui, that was Theresa Marvin. The Divine Rowena makes her play the older woman in the play, but she can’t be more than twenty-five and if the Divine Rowena is under forty, I am going blind. Petite Theresa is about right for you. If she likes married men, that is.”
Captain Gringo laughed and said, “I’ll pass. Face it, Gaston, some dames just have to get away. The Divine Rowena surprises me, though. She was batting her eyelashes hot and heavy at you all afternoon.”
“Practice,” sighed Gaston, adding, “Once I had helped her with her baggage from the railway siding she reverted to the imperial ‘we’ and slammed her door in my face. God save us all from moody women, hein?”
“I know what you mean.” The American frowned, signaling the waiter. He didn’t see any reason to fill Gaston in on Liza’s latest switch. They’d gone over all the games she and the Brits could be up to and the whole thing was getting to be a bore. He didn’t care what Liza was trying to prove. He just had to get her up to Bogotá and deliver her and he’d have kept their bargain with British Intelligence. He was more worried about the job Uncle Sam expected them to pull. He knew the Brits knew more about it than either he or Gaston, since agents in the field were given as little as possible to spill in public. But he didn’t see how Liza’s mission, whatever it was, could be connected with his own.
He ordered steak, despite Gaston’s warning, and while the beef was as tough as the Frenchman had said it would be, he got it down, and he knew meat put more strength in a guy’s legs than beans.
He called the waiter back when he was done and ordered a steak sandwich, some pastry and a pot of coffee to take up to the room. He left Gaston to hold the cantina against all comers and carried the repast up to Liza.
For a moment he thought she’d locked him out. But after he’d kicked the door a few more times she let him in. He noticed she was still fully dressed as he set the tray on an end table near the bed. She sat down on the mattress and patted a place beside her as she poured, saying, “I hope I’m forgiven, darling. I don’t know what came over me before. I’m afraid I’m simply a bitch at this time of the month.”
He said, “S’okay,” as he took a cookie and his cup of joe. The pastry had been fashioned for some obscure reason into a grinning death’s head. He ate it anyway. He’d noticed as early as Mexico that people down this way had peculiar views on death. Little kids ate lollipops of white sugar skulls and half the churches seemed to have some local saint’s mummified hand or pickled heart on display. Anglo-Saxons pretended they were never going to die. Latins seemed to enjoy flirting with the idea. He’d gotten used to it, but he’d still have preferred less grisly sweets.
Liza was making him morbid, too, as she prattled on about her female complaints. She called her period, “my friend” and if she was trying to discourage him from leaping on her bones, she was on the right track. He’d explained to more than one vaporous female that the way nature had loused women up hadn’t been his idea, and that he absolutely refused to feel guilty about it. He remembered thinking it was pretty shitty of God when he’d first had the birds and bees explained to him as a boy. He was glad men didn’t have to go through such messy problems with their plumbing, but he sincerely liked women, and if he’d been asked to vote on it, he’d have worked out a better arrangement. He doubted if any man on Earth had ever told God, “Hey, I’ve got a neat idea. Let’s put every woman out of action at least once a month so we won’t have to screw ’em!”
He reached for a pastry that looked like a shrunken heart. He took a bite and washed it down with more coffee. Then he grimaced and put it back on the tray, saying, “Yuck, the real thing couldn’t taste much worse.”
Liza asked, “What’s the matter, dear? You don’t look well.”
He shrugged and said, “I’m okay. The food I just had doesn’t seem to be sitting right. It was tough and overcooked. Those goodies are too sweet and leave a funny aftertaste.”
“Have some more coffee, then. It’s not bad. You’re not coming down with a fever, are you?”
“I hope not.” He frowned, opening his shirtfront as he tried to focus on a print across the room. “I guess I let myself get keyed up today, and now that it’s over I’m having a delayed reaction. I suddenly feel like I’ve been digging ditches.”
“You do look tired, dear. Why don’t you lie down?”
He said, “Good idea,” and began to undress. He noticed Liza wasn’t taking her clothes off and asked, “Chrissake, are you going to sleep in all your clothes?”
“I’ll undress when I’ve finished this tray. But you will be good, won’t you?”
“Sure, sure, let’s not argue about it,” he muttered, tossing his shirt at a chair, missing, and deciding it didn’t matter. He got his boots and one sock off. But it seemed like a pain in the ass to stand up, so he fell backwards across the bed, still wearing his pants. Liza rose and took his ankles to swing his legs around on the bed as she laughed and said, “My you are tired.”
He didn’t answer. He was still awake, but just barely, and some corner of his brain wondered dimly what the hell was going on. He felt sick to his stomach as well as bone-weary. He rolled across the bed to make room for Liza – if she ever made up her mind – and to position himself strategically if he woke up having to upchuck. Tough steak, beer and coffee was a mixture he intended never to try again. He buried his head in a pillow and closed his eyes. It was just as well Liza was acting frigid for some dumb reason. He wouldn’t have wanted her right now, even if she hadn’t been flat-chested. He didn’t even think little Theresa what’s her name could get it up for him with a brand new act. He wondered if Theresa was having her period and why he was wondering. He could hardly remember what she looked like. He decided he was thinking about other women for revenge. Old Liza was shitting him. He’d had a look at the sheets when they’d gotten out of bed in the morning on the steamer. He’d been that route often enough to tell if a lady was showing pink on the linens. Who did she think she was kidding, and who the hell cared?
Liza finished her coffee before she gently shook him and asked, “Dick?” He didn’t answer. She sighed and blew out the lamp before she undressed to her slip in the dark. She started to remove her pantaloons, and then thought better of it. She couldn’t take chances with such poor security as the antique lock afforded. She lay atop the covers beside him, aware of his deep breathing. The man had such a lovely body and she remembered the other night with longing. But duty came before desire.
Liza lay beside her lover in the dark, willing herself to fall asleep. But sleep wouldn’t come, despite her travel weariness and the long hard day they faced at dawn. She murmured, “Are you awake, dear?” and his breathing answered that he wasn’t. Liza sighed and said, “Oh, hell, why not?”
She rolled on her own hand and began to masturbate through the thin cloth. It felt very strange and oddly exciting to be doing it with a man sleeping right next to her. As she wriggled her hips in time with her own stroking fingers she fantasized a truly shocking perversity and it was all she could do to keep from trying to awaken him with a very wild suggestion. But she didn’t. For one thing, she couldn’t take the chance and for another, she knew he’d be no good to her. She’d spiked his coffee with enough sleeping power to knock a horse out!