He took whoever she was in his arms, since he couldn’t think of any better way to greet her. She snuggled closer to whisper, “I’m so frightened! What was that dreadful noise just now?”

He said, “Jaguar. Big pussy cat. And speaking of pussies…”.

“Sir! What on earth are you doing to my privates?” she demanded. Which was a pretty silly question coming from a naked lady in a bed roll with a naked gentleman. So he didn’t answer. He just rolled atop her, wedged her naked thighs open with his knees, and got into her with no further bullshit. She gasped, stiffened, then wrapped her legs around his waist as she protested, “This wasn’t why I came in here, damn it! Do you always rape helpless women who thought they could trust you?”

“Every chance I get,” he replied, thrusting deeper into her warm wet interior. She was tight as hell, and must have noticed.

She moaned, “Oh, you’re too big. I can’t stand it. This is so humiliating and, ah, could you move a little faster, you brute?”

He did, and she said, “That’s better. As long as a poor girl has to get raped she may as well enjoy it.”

Whoever the hell she was, she seemed to enjoy it very much indeed, and now that they were such good friends she commenced to run her nails up and down his spine while she tongued him deeply and drummed on his naked butt with her naked heels. He enjoyed it, too. It had been some time since he’d had anything half as good, and the fact that he had no idea which of the four girls in camp she might be added to the adventure. He took turns picturing her as Sylvia, Pat, Phoebe, and Matilda. No, not old Matilda. Matilda was too big and rangy. But what the hell, even a three-woman fantasy harem was a lot of fun.

He was mentally laying the redhead when she stretched her legs out to both sides and gasped, “Deeper, deeper… I’m coming!” So he changed her to the brooding dark Sylvia and came in her at the same time. They went weakly limp in each other’s arms and she said, “Oh, you’re just dreadful. I never intended a thing like this to happen, Dick.”

“Is that why you came in here naked and attacked me?”

“Don’t be beastly, dearest. I was half-asleep and scared out of my wits by that terrible tiger scream.” She giggled coyly and added, “I suppose I’ll have to forgive you. Now that I’m awake I can see how you must have mistaken my visit for an improper advance. Uh, now that the damage has been done, do you suppose we could do it some more?”

He rolled partly off her and groped for his shirt in the dark as he replied, “In a minute. I didn’t hold back at all so I need to catch my second wind. Let’s just share a smoke and some cuddles and …”

 

“Don’t strike a light!” she pleaded. But the damage had been done. As he lit his cigar she looked away, shame-faced. He shook out the light, held the cigar aside to kiss her reassuringly, and said, “Why, Miss Phoebe, I hardly recognized you without your glasses.”

“Oh, how will I ever face you and the others in the light of day?”

“Well, I don’t know about me, but I won’t tell if you won’t tell.”

“You promise, Dick? I’d just die if the other girls knew I was so evil!”

“Hey, you’re not evil. You’re just warm-natured. Come to think of it, I smoke too much.”

He snuffed out the smoke and held her closer as she protested, “I feel so low, Dick!”

“That’s because you’re on the bottom. Want to get on top?”

“That’s not what I meant. I meant … Oh, God, I don’t know what I meant, that perishing great cock feels so good in me. But you must promise never to tell a soul!”

He shut her up by kissing her again. She sure talked silly for a gal who screwed so sensibly. He knew, now, that Bertie had been right about the rumors he’d heard about her and her bohemian friends. She probably made some of them promise not to talk when she went slumming. But naturally Bloomsbury blokes didn’t get a crack at many high-born ladies, so someone had bragged, the dumb prick. He knew that if he had something like this all to himself, he’d keep it all to himself.

They shared another orgasm, and now that she’d dropped the act she took him up on his suggestion that she get on top. He’d meant for her to screw him in that position. The secret little bawd had naughtier views on love. But what the hell, they’d both had a chance to clean off since they’d last been with anyone else, and eating a lady who was eating you seemed only common courtesy. So they were going sixty-nine hot and heavy when the flap opened—in the dark, thank God—and Gaston said, “Dick?”

Phoebe turned to stone atop him, his organ grinder still between her pursed lips as he growled, “Gaston, don’t you ever knock? Go find your own girl, dammit!”

Gaston said, “I didn’t find a girl. I found a boy. An Indian. You’d better come out here and talk to him. His friends are all around us in the dark!”

~*~

It hardly seemed fair to call the Mosquito Indians Mosquitoes, or Moskitoes as some purists spelled it. For one thing, while they were little guys, they weren’t that little. And they didn’t sting as often, though some said they stung anyone who bothered them, with the long reed arrows they shot from bows taller than they were.

The Indian standing outside with Gaston had politely left his weapons in the jungle before coming in for a pow wow. Since Mosquitoes didn’t have much else but their weapons, he was stark naked, unless the red paint on his dangling penis counted as formal attire in these parts.

Captain Gringo of course had hurriedly dressed before coming out to see what was up. He hoped Phoebe had sense enough to get up and out pf his tent on her own before any of the others noticed. The other members of the expedition were coming in from all sides to join them and it seemed to be making the young Indian edgy, so Captain Gringo called out, “Okay, everyone back to their tents. This is a private conversation. I hope.”

The Indian didn’t understand the English words, but smiled at the results. Captain Gringo smiled at him, held out a cigar, and asked, “Habla usted Espaniol?”

Gaston murmured, “He doesn’t speak Spanish, I tried some on him.”

The young Indian gravely accepted the tobacco and sniffed it before he spoke in a lingo that consisted mostly of mournful groans and high-pitched birdcall imitations.

Captain Gringo got a word here and there, or thought he might have. He’d shacked up with more than one Maya and been very good friends with a San Blas sorceress one time, and, after all, how many kinds of noises could any Indian make?

When he’d finished his oration, the young Indian put the cigar in his mouth. So Captain Gringo lit it for him. He didn’t seem surprised at the match flare. So he’d dealt with whites before. He blew smoke in Captain Gringo’s face, did the same favor for Gaston, and turned to walk away without another word. Gaston started to object, but Captain Gringo said, “Don’t grab him. We’re being watched. Why is that fucking fire going? I told you I didn’t want to advertise our whereabouts, dammit!”

Gaston said, “I didn’t do that. He did. I was walking the perimeter and never suspected his presence until the species of savage was kicking the leaves off the coals as if he lived here! Merde alors, such manners!”

Captain Gringo nodded and said, “He has good manners, when you consider how he might have gotten us to notice him! I don’t know what the hell the message was, just now. But I don’t think they’re mad at us.”

“Sacre bleu. He sounded like he was giving birth to a broken bottle. What happens now, Dick?”

“Good question. It seems to be up to them. I’ll stay here in sight. You stroll casually to each tent and tell everyone to keep their guns handy but to stay out of sight. I remember a similar occasion in Apache country one night. It turned out they wanted to have a man-to-man fight between me and a war chief, but this could turn out a nicer way.”

Gaston shrugged and stepped away from the faint glow of the fire. Captain Gringo kicked a couple of pieces of fresh kindling on to make it burn brighter as he sat down by it, took out another cigar, and lit up.

It felt like only a couple of hours as he sat there wondering what a reed arrow in the back felt like. They said the poison on the tip killed quickly and painlessly. Actually it was only about ten minutes before the same Indian kid came back with an old wrinkled guy and a young girl about eleven years old, judging by her bare pubis. Her breasts were those of a full-grown woman, though. The three naked Indians squatted across the fire from him as he pretended to ignore them. It wasn’t easy, looking at a naked lady’s slit as she squatted with her knees apart like that. The old man had a parrot feather in his iron-gray hair and his pecker was painted green. That probably made him important. He was smoking the kid’s cigar, too. It was odd how almost all Indians shared the same tobacco culture. He supposed that as tobacco had been passed from tribe to tribe in the old days, the rituals that went with it had been passed along as well. So far he’d never been scalped by an Indian who’d accepted a smoke from him, but there was always a first time.

The old man said something to the girl that sounded dreadfully insulting. She nodded and said in Spanish, “The brujo wishes to know if you and your friends are wicked people. He says to tell you we are not savage people. But if you are wicked, he warns you he has many curses to sing over your images.”

Captain Gringo blew a thoughtful smoke cloud and said, “That sounds fair and reasonable. Tell your brujo I respect and fear his powers, but that I don’t think he should curse me before he knows me better. ”

The girl repeated his words in Mosquito and the old man favored him with a sinister smile. Medicine men did that a lot. Most of them were afraid that whites would tell them they were full of shit, and it never hurt to flatter one’s elders.

The old man gargled razor blades at the girl awhile before she smiled across the fire at the tall blond American and explained, “The brujo says the spirits told him you had not come to harm us, since how could you have known we were here? Now he wishes to know if you are friends of the strangers over by the big salt water.”

He was only half-faking when he pretended to choose his words carefully, as Indians preferred. His visitors hadn’t said what their current relationship to the other side was. Unfortunately, most Indians were smart enough to tell when you were beating around the bush, and didn’t like it. He took the bull by the horns and said, “Hear me; I know little about those other blancos camped near Laguna Caratasca. My friends and I were going there when they started shooting at us for some reason. As you see, we have run deep into the forest to decide in peace what we should do about them.”

She translated. The old man made another speech, with the younger one chiming in, apparently in agreement. When they’d gotten it out of their systems, the girl said. “In that case, we are well met. We too were shot at by the strange blancos over that way. We have no idea why. Even when the pirates were there it was our custom to go over to the great salt water to hunt turtle eggs, and nobody ever bothered us. We are not evil people. It was wrong for them to chase us with their guns. Since they treated you the same way, the brujo says the spirits think you must not be evil people, either.”

The old man started to rise. Captain Gringo said, “Wait! Where are you people going?”

She said, simply, “Back to our own camp, of course. We have found out you are not evil people and so we don’t have to fight you. What else is there to say? I have heard of your strange god who is nailed to a cross of wood. That is how I learned your tongue. But I have never believed the story. It is not possible a god would allow himself to be treated in such an undignified manner. Even when the missionaries beat me, I refused to listen and, as you see, in time I got away.”

“Wait, we’re not missionaries. We respect whatever spirits you and your people would rather pray to. Tell the old one we have guns, many guns, and we would like to help you fight the men who frightened you!”

The old man was already walking off into the darkness. The younger one exchanged more gibberish with the girl as he stood above her, as if undecided about something. She rose, too. Lightly and gracefully. Those stocky but shapely legs had to be powerful, since she was no lightweight, despite her short stature. She said, “My brother, here, says he would like to fight the bad blancos. But he is an untested youth. The old ones know all too well what happens to Indios who fight blancos. I will tell them your words. I do not think they will wish to do anything. You are the only blancos near our home camp, and since you are not evil, what is the point in taking the warpath?”

He rose, too, saying, “I am called Dick. May I ask how you may be called, señorita?”

“I am not a señorita, I am not a silly Cristiana. My real name is my own secret, known only to close relations. If you wish, you may call me Decepciona, for that is what the missionaries called me before I ran away.”

Then she turned and walked off into the night without another word, with her brother following as silently.

Captain Gringo chuckled. A lot the missionaries knew when they nicknamed her Deception. She seemed to be one little gal who just plain spoke her mind. Like most Indians uncorrupted by so-called civilization, she probably never lied unless it was important. Indians weren’t complete fools when it came to fibbing. Most would lie to save their asses. But they’d never picked up the charming habit of lying to be polite. It was too bad Queen Victoria never made that rule to go with all the other bullshit required in polite society these days!

Gaston had seen the Indians go. So he rejoined Captain Gringo to help smother the glowing coals with more damp stuff. By the time Gaston was filled in, the others had come out, so Captain Gringo had to feed them a condensed version of the current situation, adding, “I don’t think we’ll have trouble with the Indians, and if anyone else we had to worry about was near enough to matter, the Indians would be long gone. The Mosquitoes have a rep as hit-and-run fighters.”

“But they do fight?” asked Phoebe, fully dressed and looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. He could play innocent too, so he nodded pleasantly and said, “Anyone fights if they have to, Miss Phoebe. The Mosquitoes don’t make a habit of doing it for practice. Like I said, they’re not bad guys if you leave ’em alone.”

The grumpy Wilson growled, “We were never told there’d be wild red Indians! We’ve lost our proper leader without ever getting near the treasure trove, and I don’t know about the rest of you, but I vote we pack it in while we still have our bonny scalps!”

Captain Gringo said, “Mosquito Indians don’t scalp. They just put a poison arrow in you and run like hell. But you may have a point. Let’s see a show of hands for turning back.” Nobody raised their hands except Wilson and Gaston. Captain Gringo said, “It’s nice to see you two have made up. But you seem to be outvoted. Okay, gang, let’s all head back to the sacks. There’s still five or six hours of darkness left, and I warn you in advance you won’t be able to kip out in those tents once it warms up again. Gaston, you may as well get some beauty rest too. I’ll stand the next guard mount.”

A few minutes later he was alone by the fire again. The fire no longer cast any visible light, so if anyone was planning on putting an arrow in him they’d have to wait until morning. He started walking, swinging out in a wide circle of the camp through the trees. It wasn’t easy. He had to move slowly to keep from bumping his nose on a mahogany in the almost pitch darkness. But as his eyes got used to it, he could see maybe a few yards. Little spots of surprisingly bright sky glow filtered down through the overhead tree canopy. The moon had to be high as well as full. He couldn’t see it. He hoped the compass on Sylvia’s dash was accurate. He had this neck of the woods, he hoped, pinpointed on the map. But they were going to have to make a few more dog legs across the map through the unmapped jungle in the next day or so, and he really could have used an Indian guide, damn their uncaring shy souls.

He wondered what it would be like to lay chubby little Decepciona. He wondered why he wondered. Phoebe had a nicer figure. Well, a different figure, anyway. Variety was the spice of life and Decepciona was built as different from Phoebe as two dames could be built without one of ’em being a mess. He couldn’t think of anything else he had to offer the Indian girl, and, aside from needing a guide, they might need a translator if they ran into another band less peacefully inclined, damn those other whites over to the east.

He wondered why the gang at the old pirate camp had chased the Indians off. If they had guns, big guns, they shouldn't have been worried about the fairly peaceful Mosquitoes attacking them. The cute little squaw had said her band used to get along with pirates, and that would have taken peaceful manners indeed.

The gang couldn’t have been worried about the Indians beating them to the treasure. In the first place, jungle primitives had different values. If they wanted money badly enough to work at getting it, the banana plantations up and down the coast were hiring. In the second place, the Indians had had the area all to themselves for years after the Royal Navy cleaned out the pirate camp. Had they known or cared about whatever was there, they’d have taken it long ago.

He made it to Sylvia’s Stanley and said to it, “They were afraid the Indians would gossip about something they’re doing over by the big lagoon. Decepciona said missionaries pestered them from time to time.”

He picked up the machine gun, adding, “I think we’d better move you inside the tent circle after all, pal. If some young buck decides to go joy riding in a steam car, we’re out of luck. But they won’t swipe you just for the hell of it.” He hefted the Maxim over one shoulder, wrapped it in its tarp, and took an ammo case in the other hand before trudging back inside the tent ring. He shoved it inside his tent. As he did so, a sleepy female voice murmured, “Who’s there?”

He whispered, “Go back to sleep, doll,” so she murmured, “All right,” as he heard her turn over with a luxurious sigh of contentment. He smiled as he went back to walking the perimeter. For a gal who wanted to keep their affair so secret, Phoebe hadn’t been thinking ahead. He’d have to make sure he woke Gaston while it was still dark. He knew they’d both want to tear off at least one more before he snuck her back to her own tent unseen by the others.

It didn’t make his tour of guard duty go any faster, knowing there was a ready and willing little dame keeping his bed roll warm for him. But he forced himself to behave as he stayed alert, walking his post in a military manner, like the old general orders said, and sneaking a peek at his watch by match light until his supply of matches was in peril. Four hours by his watch and at least four months by his glands went by before he went to Gaston’s tent, shook the flap, hard, and called out, “Rise and shine, old buddy. It’s your turn to listen to the fucking crickets.”

Gaston said a dreadful thing about his mother.

Captain Gringo said he had to stand guard anyway and moved on to his own tent, unbuckling his gun rig on the way. He ducked inside and knelt on the canvas flooring, listening to the soft breathing of the girl asleep in his bed roll as he quickly shucked his duds in the dark. He crawled in with her and gently rolled her over to press his nude flesh to hers. She protested mildly in her sleep, then started purring as he ran his hands over her to warm her up. He was warmed up pretty good, too. Thinking about the chunky short Indian girl had been a great notion, for Phoebe’s body seemed bigger and leaner now. He wondered if he could get in without waking her. More than one playmate had told him in the past that she enjoyed waking up like that.

He rolled into her saddle, parted her genital lips with the head of his now raging erection, and slowly slid it into her relaxed warm opening. It contracted deliciously as he thrust all the way in and settled his weight gently on her cool breasts and belly. She spread her legs wider and thrust up to meet him with her hips as she murmured sleepily, “Oh, that feels so lovely.” Then she woke up, gasped, and asked, “Who the fuck are you, and what are you doing in my fucking tent, and, my God, you seem to be fucking me!”

He gasped in surprise, too, as he recognized her voice. He asked, “Matilda?” and she snapped, “Who the flaming hell did you expect to find in my tent, Victoria Regina?”

“I’m not in your tent, dammit. You’re in mine and, oops, I seem to be in you. Sorry.”

He started to withdraw . She held him closer with her arms as she thrust her hips again and said, “For God’s sake, don’t stop now! Whoever you are, you have a lovely great dong! By the way, who are you?”

He grinned and said, “I don’t think I’ll tell you,” as he proceeded to treat her right.

She laughed and said, “Oh, it has to be Captain Gringo. Nobody else in camp is this big, in every way, I see.”

“Call me Dick, honey.”

“I will if you’ll dick me harder. Dear God, I’d almost forgotten how good it felt with a real man!”

She proved her point by doing more than half the work when she raised her knees to grip his ribs under the armpits as he dug his toes in and started long-donging her. He hadn’t seen fit to comment on her remark about real men, but he saw now why she spent so much time away from home. She was built looser than Phoebe or, indeed, most women. It was good when she contracted, but her dilations were a little sloppy, even for him, and a man who wasn’t hung right would have had to tie a board across his ass to keep from falling in. Her body, as he’d suspected from looking at her dressed more sedately, was lean and muscular. She was saved from being flat-chested, just, by a pair of small hard boobs that felt sort of like a boxer’s biceps, save for the perky nipples rubbing against his chest as she rippled under him. She screwed like a man might have had he suddenly awakened with a vagina. Matilda was as earthy in bed with her body as she was the rest of the time with her mouth, God bless her. She minced no words as she said, “More, I want more! Fill me up and smooth out all the wrinkles of my cunt!”

He laughed and said, “I’m giving you my all, doll. Try biting down a little harder. ”

She did, and grasped his pumping shaft so hard it almost hurt as he ejaculated in her. She felt it and pleaded, “Don’t stop! I’m almost there!” So he kept moving to be polite, but almost fell out when she gaped wide, contracted tightly, and shuddered in a long moaning climax before yawning again with her awesome love maw. He did drop out, then. He said, “Sorry,” as he fumbled it back in her. There was more than room to spare, now. But if he kept his hips close to hers he could at least be courteous.

She said, “That was lovely. Do you think I have a big cunt?”

“Not when it matters. You’d know better than I if it’s right for other guys. I know you may think it’s none of my business, but have you been doing this with any of the others?”

“You mean the others on this boring expedition? Not bloody likely. I’m a married woman and they all belong to the same club as my twit of a husband. Besides, they’re all a lot shorter than you. I’ve been terribly disappointed by more than one tall bloke, but at least, on the average, a man who’s big one way can be expected to be big all over.”

She tightened on him experimentally and added, “Hmm, I see I haven’t fatally injured you, but it does seem smaller now. Must be the added lubrication, what?”

He was too polite to agree as he started moving faster in her again. The novelty of her boyish body and the sheer perversity of the situation helped. He knew Phoebe wouldn’t talk, but if she came in about now for a return match, the conversation promised to be grotesque. Matilda may have been thinking along the same lines. She said, “I say, we mustn’t let the others know our little secret, Dick. As I said, same club, and they'd probably want some too.”

“Mum’s the word.” He grinned, trying to come again but not having much luck with her so dilated. He said, “Uh, could you sort of bite down, honey?”

She did for a few strokes, and he was getting harder as she felt more reasonable between her long slim thighs. But she couldn’t hold it all the way to heaven. As she heated up, her love box seemed to gasp for air every other stroke. It sounded vulgar, too, as trapped air farted against his nuts on the downstroke. It seemed to amuse her. She laughed and said,' “I’ve never been able to control the damned thing once I’ve really warmed to the occasion. I know it’s horrid. Fucking me must feel like fucking a great cow, but I can’t help it. I say, are you game for something a bit unusual, Dick?”

He didn’t think they ought to go sixty-nine. He hadn’t bathed since he’d been in another woman earlier that night, and it didn’t seem decent to have Matilda inhale him, even though her big mouth had to be tighter. He knew she hadn’t been with anyone recently, so what the hell. He said, “I’m game for anything that doesn’t hurt. What did you have in mind?”

She said, “Let me up. I have to get on top to do it.” So he rolled out of the saddle and lay on his back, still semi erect but not half as hot as he’d started. Once the novelty wore off, he had to admit that Phoebe had been a better lay, damn her discreet little snatch. He realized, now, that Phoebe had packed it in and was sleeping in her own tent. Matilda had crawled into the wrong one in the dark. Swell. So how was he to get rid of her without hurting her feelings?

He expected her to go down on him and was braced to return the favor in kind, as a good host should. But to his mild surprise she forked a leg across him to squat on her heels, facing him, as she reached down and gathered his privates in both hands, balls and all. As she lowered her widespread groin against the love bundle she was holding in her hands, she explained, “I can’t do this unless I almost do a split. But, with a little bit of luck ...”

He laughed as he caught on and said, “It won’t work, doll. There’s not a man who hasn’t tried it. But it still won’t work. Balls-and-all is just a pool-hall brag.”

Then he gasped as he felt her inhaling with her internal muscles, and as she settled her full weight against his pelvis he marveled, “Jesus, you’re amazing. For God’s sake, don’t clamp down now!”

She started moving up and down with his scrotum and suddenly inspired shaft enveloped in her pulsating warm wetness as she cooed, “Oh, that does feel tight. Do you like it, Dick?”

“I think so. It feels sort of weird. Could you move a little faster?”

She gingerly lowered her knees to the sheet on either side of his hips as she pressed down firmly and said, “Not without ruining you for life or, even worse, losing your lovely balls.”

She braced herself with one hand on his chest as she leaned forward, crotch gaping and well filled as she began to play with her own clit with her other hand. It wasn’t doing a hell of a lot for him. It just teased the hell out of him to have everything he owned in a sack of warm jelly as she gripped tighter with the opening around the roots of everything and jerked her crazy self off. He tried to join the fun by thrusting up and down with his own hips. But she was heavy and rode with it, so he just added to the frustration as he learned, the hard way, that balls and all was more confusion than fun.

But Matilda sure liked it. She moaned in animal pleasure as she strummed her clit like a banjo and enjoyed a long lingering orgasm with her unfortunately proportioned snatch fully packed for a change. The results were more painful for him.

He hissed, “Jeeeezusss!” as she tightened internally, gripping his genitals in a vise of warm wet velvet. It made him hard as a high-school boy in a whorehouse, but he couldn’t move enough to come with her.

She relaxed her hold on him and slid off him with a loud wet pop. He didn’t care if she was satisfied or not. He was stiff as a poker and wanted to come again, even if he had to wag it like a dog’s tail to touch both sides.

He propped himself up on one elbow, meaning to remount her as soon as she lay back down. But Matilda was still full of frisky tricks. She slid down him to take his raging erection between her pursed lips, and as she swallowed his shaft beyond her tonsils he exploded in her mouth almost at once. She didn’t spit anything out. She gulped and kept sucking as she moved her own lap into position above his face. He took a deep breath and prepared to be a good sport. She smelled clean, at least, and nobody but himself had come in her in recent memory. But as he started to tease her clit with the tip of his tongue, she came up for air long enough to say, “I’m too sensitive there! Fuck me with your fist!”

That sure beat shoving a tongue up her snatch, if it would work. He knew she was built big, but this was ridiculous. Captain Gringo had big hands.

It was her idea, though. So as she drove him nuts with her skilled lips and remarkable gag control, he slid four fingers in, saw he could get the thumb in with a little effort, and then he was in her to the wrist with his fingers clenched in a fist, the knuckles against her cervix. She must have liked it. She started wagging her ass from side to side, rubbing the mouth of her womb over his knuckles as she clamped down on the head of his excited organ with her throat muscles and began literally to screw him with her head, lips tightly pursed around the base of his shaft as she alternately swallowed and half-retched until they came together.

It damned near cracked his knuckles, and he thought his balls were going to get sucked up inside her mouth.

He lay limp as a dish rag as she crawled around to lay her head on his shoulder, murmuring, “God, to think I might have wound up finding my own bloody tent. We’re going to have to be careful, darling, but I’m glad we found each other at last.”

He didn’t answer. Freak shows were all right for a change of pace. But now that the bloom was off the lily, what the hell was he supposed to do about the other sneaky arrangement he had with Phoebe? Matilda would probably go for three in a boat. But he’d promised them both he wouldn’t tell anyone else, and Phoebe seemed a little old-fashioned, as well as a better lay.

Matilda said, “I suppose I should be thinking of getting back to my own chaste bed before it gets too light out. But I’m still hot. How about you?”

“I’d like to do it again,” he lied, “but we’d better not take chances. It must be close to five, and the sun comes up like thunder at six in the tropics. Dawns are boring as hell down here. You can set your watch by ’em.”

He held her closer and kissed her, meaning it as a gentle dismissal. She didn’t take it that way. She said, “We’ve time for one last quicky, Dick,” and rolled up on her hands and knees, adding, “Doggy-style is a good way to do it fast, don’t you agree?”

He had his reservations about that. Mounting from behind was a good if unromantic way to break a virgin in, since it opened a woman well. But if there was one thing Matilda didn’t need, it was to be opened wider.

But what the hell, he could get it in half-soft in that position and he didn’t want to send her home unhappy. So he got behind her on his own knees, grabbed a hip bone, and fumbled it in. She said, “Either I’m getting looser or you’re getting smaller. We seem to have started an exercise in futility, dear.”

“I noticed. Why don’t we call it a night?”

“I’m about satisfied for now, but I don’t want to leave you frustrated, now that you’ve started, darling.”

“Oh, I can always jerk off,”’

“Why waste it? I know, shove it up my bum.”

That sounded like a good idea. He was coming to life down there again and he didn’t have to worry about hurting a woman built so slackly between the hips. Most girls found him a bit much for Greek loving, so that offered another novelty, too. He got the slippery tip in place above her grand canyon and thrust against the involuntary resistance of her anal muscles until it suddenly popped in. Matilda hissed, “Oooooh, Jesus, you do have a big one!”

He was pleasantly surprised, too. Matilda’s back door was tighter than expected. Tighter than most he’d been in, as a matter of fact. He guessed nature had to take up the slack somewhere. He asked, “Am I hurting you?” and she said, “A little, but don’t stop. I love the feeling of fullness in me.” So he held a hip bone in each hand and started moving faster as she arched her spine to take it deep while she strummed her clit some more.

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!”

Gaston trotted his way but didn’t t spot him until Captain Gringo said, “Oh, hell,” and moved the branches above him.

Gaston stiffened, dropped into a gunfighter’s crouch with the Winchester trained his way, and called out, “Is that you, Dick?”

“If I was anyone else you’d be dead. What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I was lonely. I got all the others to the Indian camp a long time ago and ran back to see if you needed help.”

“I don’t. There’s not room in this hole for the two of us.”

“Ah, I see the plan. Trés practique. Eh bein. I shall hide my adorable ass behind the log in back of you, non?”

“No, dammit! I dug in here because I wanted to keep some son of a bitch from walking up behind me and stepping on my head by accident. Nobody should climb over that log behind me when there are so many easier ways to go, but if anyone approaches from the other side, your adorable ass will make an adorable target. Start back to the Indian camp on the double. I don’t need a guide. I’ll follow the tracks,”

Gaston nodded but said, “Too late!” and dived over the big log out of sight. Captain Gringo had heard them too. They were coming down their compass heading like big-ass birds with the self-confident swagger of the armed and dangerous bully boy.

He grimaced in distaste and checked his Maxim’s action again. There was nothing to do but pull the trigger of the loaded and primed machine gun, but a guy wanted to be sure. He knew Gaston was as tense or tenser right now, but, unlike the gang coming their way, neither soldier of fortune made a habit of loud conversation while moving in on an objective.

Jesus Christ, they were a noisy bunch. Could that be a ruse? Any scouts they had out ahead would be walking tippy-toe, and the shouted military commands off to the east could be a ploy to distract. But he didn’t see said scouts, and, as the loud voices got nearer, he could tell that some officer or noncom was trying to keep his men in a neat skirmish line as they moved through the trees. He’d noticed that that first bunch had been lined up like soldiers on parade, too. He grinned wolfishly as he crouched in his hole. Please, God, let them pass in file on parade so he could mow ’em down like chumps!

They almost did. As he spotted the long line of riflemen coming through the trees from the east, a burly figure was running up and down the line like a platoon sergeant trying to keep them properly dressed down to pass in review.

They weren’t dressed like soldiers. Like the first bunch, they wore ragged peon disguises, but that wasn’t Spanish their leader was shouting. It wasn’t English, either. What the fuck was going on? Nobody but native troops or the U.S. Marines were allowed down here in Honduras. It said so, right in the Monroe Doctrine.

One of them spotted the rising smoke and brought it to their leader’s attention. He called a halt and sent two men forward to investigate. Captain Gringo let them pass. He knew what they’d find. He’d wanted them to.

They circled the campfire, one of them kicked at it for some dumb reason, then they waved the others in to the deserted camp.

They didn’t get there. As the skirmish line swept past Captain Gringo’s position, a little ragged, damn them, he stood up with the Maxim braced against his hip and opened up on them full automatic!

He cut half of them down with his first long burst, then hosed left and right to polish off the ones who hadn’t been lined up as their leader wanted them. Behind him, Gaston was banging away with his Winchester, for some reason. What was Gaston up to? Oh, yeah, the two guys by the fire. Nice going, Gaston.

He still had a quarter of the first belt left when he ceased fire for lack of moving targets. He rested the Maxim on the edge of the hole to climb out as Gaston’s rifle spanged again. He called out, “Dammit, Gaston, don’t finish off any wounded until I have a chat with them!”

Gaston rose from behind the log to reply, “I was not shooting at anyone on your side of the log, my hasty child. An odd little man in a straw hat was moving in behind you with one of those adorable new Krag rifles.”

“I stand corrected. Cover me while I have a look at what we just bagged.”

He drew his .38 to approach the first downed enemy he came to. The guy wasn’t ever going to be a threat to anyone, ever again. The bastard didn’t have a bit of I.D. on him, either. Just pocket change and an ammo bandoleer. The others all seemed to be playing dead Mexican bandits, too. But they were a little too far south, and that was not Mexican they’d been yelling as he’d mowed them down.

He saw he was wasting time on the enlisted scum. He moved over to the husky leader, sprawled face down in the dirt with his face in his hat like a horse eating oats. He rolled the slob over, saw that the hat was stuck to his face with blood and brains, and said, “Well, since you’re not in a mood to talk, let’s see what you have in your pockets.” There was no I.D. By now he’d learned not to expect it. Whoever had sent these guys out into the jungle didn’t want them identified when they lost. That sounded reasonable.

He found a pocket compass. That was no surprise. Then he found something that was. The Indians had been right about it being a black box. The leader had a set of earphones and a little crystal Marconi receiver under his shirt!

Captain Gringo holstered his .38, put one earphone to his head, and fiddled with the cat’s whisker on the rough germanium crystal without picking up anything except what sounded like someone frying bacon somewhere. He went back to join Gaston. As he stepped over the log he spotted another white-clad corpse face down in the distance. He nodded and said, “Thanks. Look what I found, mother.” Gaston took the crystal set and said, “Trés interesting toy to find on a mere guerrilla, non?”

“Hell, we’ve known all along they were some kind of military outfit. If I’m up on the state of the art, you can send those radio waves twenty or thirty miles, tops. Marconi keeps bragging that someday he’ll be able to send them across the ocean, but so far he can’t seem to do it.”

“Oui, we should be within sending range of their base camp over by the lagoon. Could they talk back with this thing?”

“No way; a Marconi sending set is too heavy for two men to carry.”

“Eh bien, in that case, base has no way of knowing this patrol was not such a grand idea after all. If we buried this garbage—”

“Forget it. Aside from it being too much work in this heat, they were following an azimuth this far, so any pals sent to look for ’em would find ’em in time no matter how deep we planted ’em. What I’m trying to figure is how they lined up on us, here, from back there!”

“Perhaps with that amusing electrical device?”

“I don’t see how. They could take a bearing on the transmitter with this crystal set. But it wouldn’t shoot a beam our way unless someone knew which way to aim it. Just following the compass works as well, and it’s a lot less complicated.” Gaston started to toss the crystal set away. Captain Gringo grabbed it and snapped, “Are you nuts?”

“Mais non, just tired of carrying, useless baggage. What good is that toy to us, Dick?”

“Jesus, you’re dumb! We just agreed it’ll take hours, probably all night, before they find their lost patrol. Meanwhile, they may send further instructions to them, see?”

“Perhaps, but do you speak German?”

“No. Is that what that was?”

“Of course. No Frenchman would ever mistake a Boche for a Dutchman or a Swede. Obviously, dear little Kaiser Willy is up to something trés dramatique in this part of the world again. He never seems to learn. But, as I just asked, do you speak German? I know a few words, but not enough to listen in on their radio conversations.”

Captain Gringo pocketed the set, nodded, and stepped over the log to get his machine gun as he growled, “Don’t worry about it. I’m beginning to think someone in our party might. Let’s get back to them pronto. Don’t mention this crystal set, and we’d better leave the details of what just happened here sort of fuzzy, too.”

“I understand, to a point. But why are we going back to them, now that we know?”

“Know what? Who the spy or spies among us might be? I haven’t a clue.”

“Dick, now it is you who are not thinking. We have been had by that damned British Intelligence again! Can’t you see it? The last time we worked for Greystoke you told him we’d never work for him again, non?”

“Right; the cheap bastard tends to use people as disposable pawns, and when they live through one of his deals, he tends to welsh on paying the agreed price.”

“I was there. On the other hand, Greystoke knows you and I are the best in the business. He sent that girl to seduce you into joining this so-called treasure hunt because his agents, the so-called silly English people we’ve been guarding with our lives, needed a machine gunner who thinks fast on his feet. Why are you still following the car tracks? Did you not hear a word I just said?”

“Sure I did. Some of it makes sense. Major Wallace works as a British agent. Marlowe works as a German plant who blew up when he thought we knew more than we really did. Some of the others could be dupes, even as you and I. Meanwhile, we’re miles from anywhere, without provisions for a lonely cross-country romp, and night’s coming on.”

“Eh bien, we go on to the Indian camp. We load up one of the steam cars with goodies—perhaps Pat and Sylvia, if they don’t speak German—and then it’s off to Patuca and a beautiful pea-green boat before either the British spies or the German spies mop our poor bewildered asses, non?”

Captain Gringo trudged on in silence as he considered all their options. Then he said, “When you’re right you’re right, Gaston. I don’t like Kaiser Willy but I don’t like being used and abused, repeat abused. I don’t think we’ll bother taking the dames along, though. A guy with a spiffy Stanley Steamer can always pick up a dame, and even if we can trust ’em, they’ll slow us down, and what will we do with ’em after?”

“Don’t you trust Sylvia? I don’t think Pat could be a German or a British spy. Either job would call for more brains than she has. And I thought you and Sylvia were getting along quite nicely when I walked in on you.”

“Oh, well, maybe we can take them along if they’re awfully good.”

~*~

The sun went down like it came up in the tropics, with no screwing around, and it was pretty gloomy under a rain-forest Canopy even at high noon. So it was pitch black when they made it to the Indian village. Captain Gringo would have had trouble finding it after he couldn’t see the tire tracks, had not Gaston already known the general direction.

Naturally they were spotted by an Indian scout long before they saw the glow of night fires ahead. So as they walked into the village there was a multiracial welcoming committee waiting for them by the main fire between the thatched huts.

The village was fairly substantial, for, despite their sensible costume in a hot climate, the Mosquito Indians were slash-and-burn agriculturists. They had no defensive stockade around the village, but the Indians’ best defense was building villages that were not easy to find. There were no com milpas near the village. They cleared and cultivated patches at least two miles away from their women and children as a simple but effective military strategy. So the village was surrounded by virgin jungle.

The old brujo and a younger man with lots of feathers made welcoming speeches that the cute squaw, Decepciona, had to translate. They were so long and pointless they even bored her.

Captain Gringo half-listened as he exchanged nods with the whites in his party, watching over the heads of the short squat Indians.

Gaston had already told him that the steam cars were parked well out in the trees to the northwest of the village in order to avoid crowding the small spaces between the huts and to ensure a logical escape route if they had to leave in a hurry. Since Indian kids swiped things as quickly as any others, the supplies had been stored in one of the huts the Indians had provided for the expedition’s use. No tents had been pitched. That would have been rude, whether the whites liked sleeping in the hammocks the young chief had offered or not.

The head men finally ran out of things to say and Decepciona told them it was okay if they joined the other whites for supper. So they did.

The expedition had been issued its own neighborhood at the north end of the village of perhaps thirty families. As soon as the Indians backed off politely to let the whites sip tea and talk around their own night fire, Captain Gringo looked around and asked Bertie, “Where is everybody? We seem to be missing some faces.”

Bertie said, “Not only that, we’re missing a perishing steam car! I don’t know when it happened. But apparently Fenton, Gordon, and Matilda have had enough. They took off in the White that Gordon’s been driving!”

Captain Gringo started to rise, then settled back as he realized it was pointless to chase steam cars with a good lead in the dark. As Phoebe handed him a plate of beans and a secretive wink, he stared morosely across the fire, counting noses. They still had three steam cars. So, let’s see, he had seats for Gaston and himself, Sylvia, Pat, Phoebe, Bertie, the sullen Wilson, and the gulping Jerome. Who was driving what? They’d been reshuffling the steering wheels since starting out and, okay, he had enough drivers and maybe enough fuel oil.

Wilson apparently had been thinking along the same lines. He scowled into the flames as he said, “I don’t see what could have possessed them. When we saw they’d driven off, I ran to check our reserve kerosene tins and they didn’t steal any.”

Jerome gulped and said, “They’ll never make it back to Puerto Cabezas on what they had in Gordon’s steamer, look you! I never thought much of Gordon’s brains, and Fenton is no genius. But I thought Lady Matilda had more sense.”

Phoebe, sitting by Captain Gringo rather possessively, said, “They’re sure to wind up stuck in the jungle somewhere and I must say it serves them bloody right!”

Captain Gringo ate his beans and thought before he spoke. He had a pretty good idea why Matilda had cut out, poor cow. It hadn’t been Gordon’s or Fenton’s idea to take her along. She’d probably seen them firing up the boiler and insisted on going along.

By now she knew that he was wise to why she’d aimed that steam car right at the tent she’d just laid him in. A married lady with a reputation that meant more to her than her husband had had second thoughts after recovering her mind. It hadn’t mattered that he’d promised not to kiss and tell. Ever so veddy-veddy English ladies simply did not take it in the arse from uncouth knock-around guys who’d never been to the right schools.

He finished his plate as the others speculated on the fate of their missing members. Some of the speculation was pretty dumb. He washed down the beans with a cup of pretty good tea, whoever’d brewed it, and turned to Gaston to say, “I think it’s cards-on-the-table time. Now that we seem to have separated the wheat from the chaff, what say we take ’em all with us?”

Gaston shrugged and said, “Oui, if they’ll go. I have never been able to decide whether English or German species of idiots are more stubborn.”

Bertie frowned and growled, “Oh, I say, you bloody little Frog!”

Captain Gringo said, “Relax. He meant it as a compliment. He compliments my mother regularly.”

Then, as they all stared at him in the flickering light, Captain Gringo raised his voice slightly to be heard by all present as he said, “Okay, gang, the party’s over. Matilda just left because she’s, ah, impulsive. I think Gordon and Fenton just showed their hand, and it’s a good thing for you they decided to do it the easy way. The original plan was probably to kill you poor innocent dupes. Wallace was working for Der Kaiser. We just found out that the guys so interested in holding Laguna Caratasca against all comers are square heads. Probably German marines. Fenton and Gordon were with Wallace. You kiddies, and Gaston and I, were camouflage. Both Nicaraguan and Honduran authorities tend to accept the fact that adventurous Brits do all sorts of things too nutty to worry much about, so …”

“That’s crazy!” cut in Pat, of all people. The redhead dimpled at Gaston as she added, “Gaston said that remittance man, Marlowe, was the secret agent who killed poor Major Wallace!”

“Gaston was wrong. So was I. Marlowe was either a British agent or a patriotic bum who’d caught on. He tried to keep Wallace from reaching the German base and, as a last resort, went down fighting for the Union Jack.”

Bertie gasped. “My God! I was the one who shot Marlowe!”

“Don’t feel bad about it. Marlowe wasn’t waving the Union Jack at you at the time. He couldn’t take anyone else into his confidence, because he couldn’t know who was a German agent and who was just a jerk-off, no offense.”

Wilson grumbled, “You certainly seem to know a lot, of a sudden, Yank. Who told you all this muck about German bases and Wallace being a German spy? Dammit, we belonged to the same club, and I'm no bloody German spy!”

“Lots of people belong to the same clubs. Your Prince of Wales owns stock in Krupp of Essen and Der Kaiser is his cousin. Wallace may not have considered himself a traitor to Great Britain. Only a few people in the British Intelligence community are worried about the way Kaiser Willy seems to be preparing for one hell of a war with someone. A lot of perfectly decent Brits are betting on it being Russia, so they don’t care.”

Wilson shrugged and said, “Get to the point, man! It looks to me as if Wallace must have been working for British Intelligence if he was working for anyone!”

Bertie said, “He’s right, you know. Mayhaps Wallace used us with that tale of buried pirate treasure. But have you forgotten those German chaps waiting to ambush us back at the river?”

Captain Gringo said, “They weren’t waiting to ambush Wallace or his confederates. They were a welcoming committee! That’s why they hadn’t taken basic precautions despite obviously being trained marines. Marlowe was the only one who made any move to screw up the expedition, when you think back on it. If things had gone the way Wallace planned, they’d have arrested the rest of us, or worse, when we came busting out of the gumbo limbo. When Marlowe gunned Wallace while Gaston and I were wiping out his German pals, the other two had to lie low till they saw a chance to make a run for the base. Tonight they did. Next question.”

Sylvia said, “I have one, Dick. You’ve about convinced me there was more to this treasure hunt than I could possibly have guessed. But what’s the bloody point of it all? What on earth are Germans doing in Central America and why did Wallace go to so much trouble to do what?”

Captain Gringo took out a claro and lit it before he said, “Starting at the beginning: Once upon a time there was a Monroe Doctrine. It didn’t and doesn’t apply to the colonies that Great Britain, France, Spain, Holland, Denmark, and so forth already established over here before old Monroe got elected and protective. But Germany never managed to colonize much of anything, before Bismarck, and Bismarck comes after Monroe. So Germany can’t openly build any bases on this side of the pond. But they say Kaiser Willy cheats at cards, too. A while back, Gaston and I were hired to find and mess up a German navy base on the Pacific coast. The one at Laguna Caratasca must be one that British Intelligence hasn’t spotted yet. I thought at first they had, and that this was one of our old pal, Greystoke’s, wild and wooly missions. But not even British Intelligence would be wild enough to saddle a mission with four women and a mess of rank greenhorns, no offense, so there’s only one other way to read it. Wallace was making a delivery. He couldn’t just sail in by sea. The Royal and U.S. navies patrol the Mosquito Coast regularly, in addition to the Honduran gunboats that one could bump noses with off the entrance of a supposedly deserted lagoon. Nobody would stop a yacht or schooner with proper papers and the Union Jack flapping long enough to matter. But there would be a record in the log of some allied vessel, and when and if that Panama Canal gets finished and somebody puts a torpedo into anybody anywhere near it, old records will get dug out a lot.”

Bertie said, “Anyone can see the advantages to Germany of a secret navy base near the narrow waistline of the Americas, Dick. But you say Wallace was delivering something?”

“Yeah. Don’t ask me what. Probably some new technical equipment. If it was simply information, a schooner passing by one night could just send it by wireless, since the Germans on shore have Marconi stuff handy. This arms race they’re having since Kaiser Willy started scaring grown-ups with his temper tantrums has the invention business busy as hell. The diesel engine’s only a couple of years old and the square heads are already stuffing ’em in their torpedo boats and experimental submersibles. Whatever Wallace was bringing them to modernize that base some more had to be small enough to hide in a steam car, but too heavy to carry on foot. That was the whole point of this otherwise crazy steam car jungle expedition. Wallace was too slick to have it in his own car. If it had been in the White I left Marlowe in, Marlowe could have swiped or sabotaged it. Ergo, it was in Gordon’s steamer, and, since Gordon doesn’t live here anymore, we’ll probably never know what it was.”

Bertie gasped. “My God! By now they’ve delivered. No wonder they didn’t need to steal extra fuel! The buggers drove straight for the lagoon to the east! But what will happen to Matilda, if she wasn’t in on it?”

Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “Her husband will probably wind up with a flora-dora girl from the Windmill Theater. Some of her other friends might miss her.”

Pat said, “Surely those Germans wouldn’t do poor Matilda in, would they?”

He didn’t answer. It was a stupid question, even coming from Pat, and there were more important matters to settle. He said, “Okay, let’s forget about the German base and our former playmates. Now that we know it’s there, if any of you feel patriotic you can write a letter to the Times or even ring up Whitehall when you get back to England. That’s the problem we have to worry about. We’re not going to be able to stay here long. By now the Germans know that we may be onto them, so they’re not going to want any of us to get away, and, thanks to Gordon and Fenton, they’ll find out where we are any minute!”

Gaston said, “I think we have a night’s grace on them, Dick. Their two agents left before we returned with the news of that patrol we just wiped out. Even if they send out another, they won’t find the bodies before dawn, hein?”

“Maybe. The patrol leader had a radio receiver. If they order him back and he doesn’t come back, they could put two and two together without finding body one. Gordon and Fenton will tell them how good I am with that machine gun, if they haven’t gotten the message by now. How far are we from the lagoon’s big guns?”

Gaston was an old artillery officer so he gulped and said, “Merde, not far enough!”

Bertie didn’t seem to know much about long-range shellfire. He asked, “Why did Wallace hire you two experts and issue you machine guns if the whole expedition was a ruse to deliver some thingamajig to his German friends, Dick?”

Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “Artistic touch, most likely. He had Marlowe down as a bum. Probably thought our reputation was overblown, too. Someone was sure to wonder why he’d take a mess of greenhorns out in the jungle with no security men at all. One of the guns was packed so it would have rusted to junk before we ever opened it. The other was screwed up more cleverly. The head spacing was set wrong and a couple of screws were loose when I field stripped it, cleaned it, and put it back together. He must have assumed I was a slam-bang hired tough who didn’t do things like that. Besides, he was leading us into an ambush where it wouldn’t have mattered if the Maxim worked or not. I screwed him up by taking my job more seriously than he’d expected. Let’s not pick at scabs, Bertie. What’s done is done. We have to get out of here pronto. You kiddies start loading the steam cars while I have a chat with the Indians. I take it nobody’s still being silly about wanting to look for buried treasure?”

Not even Pat was that dumb, even if it meant having to explain to her rich relatives. Captain Gringo got up and went looking for Decepciona. He couldn’t ask any of the Indians where she was. So she found him by coming out of a hut to see why the kids and squaws were pointing at him and laughing so much. Decepciona said, “You should not be at this end of the village without an interpreter. But I am at your service. The chief, my uncle, says I am to serve you in any way you wish.”

He wasn’t sure she meant that the way it sounded, even if she was standing there stark naked with mighty friendly eyes. He said, “Decepciona, I’ve got some really tough translating for you indeed. Do you know what cannon are?”

“Of course. I am not an ignorant person.”

“Good. You and your people have to move, pronto. The bad blancos have big cannon that can lob a shell many kilometers. Some other evil people may have told them we are here. If they did, I’m sorry, but this village is in danger of being blown to straw and splinters,¡poco tiempo!”

“We must tell the chief and elders. Come.”

She took his hand and led him to a slightly larger hut. He still had to duck his head to enter, though the short Indian girl found the doorway high enough.

The young chief and old medicine man were seated around a little fire with some other important Mosquitoes. Decepciona didn’t seem to be mincing words as she opened up on them with machine-gun grunts and groans. Apparently she was a bright little gal who didn’t have to chew the rag much when you told her about white men with big guns. The old brujo closed his eyes and began to recite a poem or something, but Decepciona stamped her tiny bare foot and even Captain Gringo got her message when she flapped her hands and yelled, “Boom! Boom! Kawa-poof!”

The young chief was a natural survivor too. That probably was why they followed him. He shut the old man up and started giving orders in a no-bullshit tone as Decepciona turned to Captain Gringo and said, “My uncle and great warrior says we can move at once to another camp where we used to live until the spirits of the soil refused us good crops. By now the thatch will have rotted away, but the campsite is already cleared and we know where the nearest water is. Do you think we will be safe there?”

“How far is it, Decepciona?”

“Far. It will take us most of the night to walk there. Your big-wheeled things can roll faster than we can walk, but if you wish to come with us you must follow slowly.”

Captain Gringo blinked in surprise and asked, “Are your people still willing to accept us? I was afraid they’d be sore about us bringing all tins trouble on them, Decepciona!”

“Why should they be cross with you? You are our guests. The other ones are the evil persons who wish to make boom-boom, no?”

He smiled down at her gently and said, “I guess some people would look at it that way. A lot wouldn’t. I think we should be safe a night’s march away. There’s no way even a hot-shot German gunnery officer could range on a target he has no way of picking out. Tell your chief I thank him, Decepciona.”

The pretty little naked girl shrugged and replied, “Why do you owe thanks to anyone? You have warned us. We shall heed your warning. We have treated you as friends. Now you have treated us as friends. Friends do not thank one another for doing what is only right. They help each other when they have a common enemy. Your people and my people are in this fight together, no?”

~*~

So the problem of whether he slept discreetly with Phoebe or had another shot at Sylvia just never came up that night. Instead of sleeping with anybody, they all got to tool along in the steam cars behind the marching Indians.

The Indians carried torches, so Sylvia in the lead with the Stanley didn’t need her headlights to avoid things an Indian could step over but a Stanley had to steer around. The runty but strong Mosquitoes made good time afoot, although it was maddening slow driving. Not having the advantages of civilization, the Indians only had to carry small packs, consisting mostly of their few belongings wrapped in the hammocks each tribal member slept in. The young chief had seemed surprised and delighted when the whites offered to carry some of the heavy stuff in the steam cars.

Captain Gringo, Gaston, and the two girls got to talk more than they really needed to as they passed the night at less than five miles an hour. It was generally agreed that their best bet would be to hole up at the new Indian village long enough to let the Germans get tired of looking for them, then pile everyone and all the reserve kerosene in one steam car and make a beeline for Patuca, the first seaport up the coast. When Sylvia worried aloud about German agents intercepting them there before they could board a ship out, he explained, “They won’t. They know that if we make it to any civilization and a telegraph office, their game is up. They never tried to rebuild that other secret base Gaston and I found for British Intelligence one time. The idea of a secret base is that it’s a secret, see?”

Pat said, “Oh, I see, Dick. If we make it alive to Patuca, those horrid Germans will have to assume we’ve tattled on them whether we have or not. What will the Royal Navy do when we tell them about it, stand offshore and blow them to bits?”

“Hardly. That would call for a declaration of war, and I don’t think either side will be ready to play out their family quarrel for at least twenty years. Queen Victoria will probably drop a note to her grandson, Kaiser Willy, chiding him for being so naughty. He’ll probably tell her she has him all wrong and order his navy to build some other secret base within cruising range of Panama. There are oodles of places to choose from on both coasts of Central America.”

Sylvia sighed and said, “It’s all so infantile. This endless bickering between the great powers would read like a comic opera if only people didn’t have to get killed over it all.”

“Pawns are throwaway pieces in any chess game, doll. If the old Widow of Windsor and her half-crippled grandson thought they personally would have to lead the first pawns into battle, we could forget about the big war brewing over on your side of the pond. But the chess masters don’t get put in the box, even when they lose the game, so we pawns have to look out for ourselves!”

Sylvia shuddered and said, “I always thought Matilda was a natural survivor. Why do you suppose she did such a stupid thing, Dick?”

He knew, but it wouldn’t have been gallant, or sensible, to say so. So he said, “She probably thought she was surviving pretty good. When she caught those guys loading up, they’d naturally have told her they were just punking out and driving back to Nicaragua because the fun and games were getting rough.”

Pat said, “I’m glad she left with them. She was terribly stuck up. At least now we know we can all trust one another, right, Dick?”

It was a good question. Gaston, too, had obviously been thinking about it. He said, “Eh bien. We agree British Intelligence can’t know about the place or it would not be there, whatever the late Marlowe was about to find out if he was working for anyone. Any other confederates of Wallace would have left with Gordon and Fenton. Ergo, all that is left are eight great fools, since I must in all justice include myself among the used and trés abused. Eight people can ride in one steam car, if pretty girls do not mind sitting in the laps of gallant gentlemen. Who gets Phoebe, Dick?”

“That’s up to her,” said Captain Gringo, kicking him to shut him up. The damned old lecher obviously thought he’d found Sylvia sleeping off a swell time with him. This was hardly the time and place to explain.

Long before sunrise they had run out of things to say, so they hadn’t said much for hours when the light started getting better. A little while later they rolled out into a clearing, or what would have been a clearing if the weeds hadn’t already grown shoulder high. The Indians went right to work with their machetes as the three remaining steam cars parked in line under the trees and everyone got out wearily to watch the Indians make camp.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but the Mosquitoes weren’t Romans, so they didn’t mess around. For people supposed to be lazy ignorant savages, they were organized better than some military outfits Captain Gringo could remember. New-huts sprouted like mushrooms as the womenfolk got fires going and put on the pots to boil mush. Before Captain Gringo could suggest it, the young chief sent his scouts out to secure the perimeter and, hopefully, bag some game for said pots.

Decepciona came over to the whites to tell them their new quarters were ready. Sylvia sniffed thoughtfully as the naked Indian girl took Captain Gringo’s hand and led him the length of the village. She took him to a small but well-thatched hut with one big hammock slung between its two main poles. She turned to face him in the shade of the windowless hut. Her proud firm breasts still looked great in the dim light as she said, calmly , “The chief says you must all be tired and there is nothing for you to do here anyway. Would you like to sleep now, Dick? Or do you wish to make love to me first?”

He laughed and asked, “Do I have a choice?”

“Of course. You are a guest. Everything we have to offer is yours. I have nothing to offer but myself. If you do not think I am pretty, I can find another girl for you. But none of them speak Spanish.”

“That’s very generous indeed. Do you want to sleep with me, Decepciona?”

She lowered her lashes modestly and said, “I don’t know. I have never made love to any whiteman, let alone a giant. I think l am afraid, a little. But if you want me, I have no choice. The chief says we are to make you feel at home while you are with us.”

He said, “I think you are very pretty. I think you’re scared to death, too. Why don’t we just be friends awhile until we’ve both had time to get used to the idea?”

She smiled up at him radiantly and said, “Oh, you are so understanding. I think you are pretty, too. But a woman needs a little time to make up her mind. I was so afraid you would treat me roughly. I had decided to be brave, but—”

“I understand, honey. Why don’t you go out and play with the other children?”

She didn’t seem to like that much. But she ducked out, muttering something about seeing who was a child, maybe later.

He hung up his things and consulted his watch. He’d just spent a long full night and they faced a long dull day. He’d nibbled field rations in the Stanley driving from the other camp, so who wanted Indian mush or any breakfast at all? That hammock looked inviting and he didn’t know when he’d have to do some serious traveling without sleep again, so he peeled off his duds and climbed in naked. The Indians hadn’t provided a top Sheet. People who wandered naked in broad daylight had small need of modesty in bed, and he knew that most Indians wouldn’t dream of entering a sleeping hut without singing about it outside a lot, waiting for an invitation to enter.

He stretched lazily and settled into the womblike cotton webbing to close his eyes and, he hoped, catch up on his sleep. He’d almost made it when Sylvia’s voice said, “Oh, here you are. Alone, I see. What’s the matter, didn’t you like that little squaw?”

He opened one eye and growled, “Decepciona is a lady, which is more than I can say for some dames I know. What the hell do you want now, another game of prick-tease? It’s only fair to warn you I’m not wearing my pants today. If you want to sleep with me again, all previous contracts are null and void.”

“Do you have to speak to me in that tone, Dick?”

“I didn’t want to speak to you at all. This is the second time you’ve come in to pester me while I was trying to get some shut-eye. What the hell’s wrong with you, Sylvia? Can’t you find someone else to tease?”

“I don’t understand you, Dick. Why do you keep calling me a tease?”

He sat up, his nudity still partially hidden by the sagging webbing, and growled, “Oh, for God’s sake, let’s get it over with!” as he reached out an arm, grabbed her around her slim waist, and hauled her in.

The unexpected move threw her off kilter, or she wanted him to think it had. At any rate, he pulled her half-atop him, put his other arm around her neck, and kissed her good. Her mouth had popped open in a surprised gasp as their lips met, so he tongued her deeply while he was at it. She couldn’t say anything but put up a struggle, a mild one at any rate, as he hauled her half-aboard the hammock.

Fighting for balance, if that was what she was doing, Sylvia spread her legs wide as she was bent over him. He shifted his weight, sliding both their heads and shoulders up higher on the half-moon of the hammock. Then he groped with his left hand down across his own lap, grabbing Sylvia behind her right thigh, and lifted her right foot from the ground as she protested mutely with his lips on hers and struggled for balance with the one foot she was left standing on.

He pulled her right knee across the hammock and hooked it over the far side with her high button shoe flailing wildly a long way from the dirt floor. Naturally her skirt had been forced up above her hips by the forced split across the hammock. She caught on to his full intent and whimpered as well as she was able, while sucking his tongue. But he ignored her protest, if it was a protest, and since his shaft was already at full attention by now, all he had to do was thrust up with his hips once he’d pulled the elastic leg opening of her loose silk pantaloons aside, and. . .

“No!” She gasped, twisting her lips from his as he entered her. But he soothed, “Yes indeed!” as he put both hands around to cup her buttocks in his palms and pull her on like a glove. A nice tight glove filled with whipped cream.

She sobbed that he was a brute even as she hopped on her left foot to get into a more comfortable position with one knee hooked over each side rope of the hammock and spitted herself on him to the roots. He started bouncing his hips and the hammock bounced too as she fell weakly against his chest, sobbing, “You’re touching me, damn you!”

“I noticed. It’d feel even better if we got you out of all those damned clothes.”

He stopped, but noticed she was still bouncing the hammock as she protested, “That’s not what I came in here for, you bastard. I only wanted to ask you … Oh, my God, I’m coming!”

That made two of them. As he held her close, kissing her as he ejaculated in her widespread groin, he was too polite to say that he knew damn well she’d come in here to come. Why the hell did a widow who knew how to move so swell with a man inside her have to carry on like a virgin?

Apparently Sylvia had come to the same conclusion, now that she’d come. When they came up for air, she said, “It feels so silly doing it with my knickers on.”

“Let’s get you out of all that stuff, then.”

“Oh, Dick, I couldn’t. It’s broad daylight. What if someone comes?”

“You’d look just as silly with your clothes on, and who needs to come in here but us? Be reasonable, honey, we’ve sparred around long enough.”

She sighed and sat up to start undressing, with his help, with her thighs still spread and him still in her. As they got her skirt and blouse off over her head, he saw he’d been wrong about her wearing a corset. The tiny waist above the hem of her pantaloons measured less than twenty inches, which was surprising when you considered her chest measurement had to be close to forty. She leaned her big firm breasts against his chest as she asked, “How are we to get my knickers off without taking it out? I don’t want to let you go soft at a time like this! I suppose you know I’ve been gushing for you since first we met?”

“The feeling was mutual. Ain’t it a bitch how much time grown people waste being shy? Get off on my left, between the hammock and the wall. I promise I won’t let you down.” He didn’t. As Sylvia finished peeling, with her back to the thatch, she saw his erection for the first time and gasped, “Oh, my God, was all that just in me? No wonder I came so unexpectedly!”

“Hey, Sylvia, we agreed to cut the maidenly bullshit, okay? Hold it. I’ll get out and let you be on the bottom this time.”

As he stood up to join her, Sylvia looked dubiously at the deep cup of the empty hammock and asked, “Would it work that way?”

He followed her meaning. He took her in his arms again, held her now nude curves against his own naked flesh, and said, “You’re probably right. I’d break my spine trying to go old-fashioned in a saggy hammock. But where there’s a will there’s a way.”

He reached down and fumbled it into place as he bent his knees. Sylvia stood on tiptoe to help, but asked, “Can anyone really do it standing up? Oh, I see they can!”

It worked even better when she raised her legs to wrap them around his waist as he held her by the big soft buttocks that matched her hourglass upper story so well. But it was tiring as well as inspiring and they wound up on the dirt floor, pounding hard, and she didn’t object until she’d come again. Then, she naturally made a dumb remark about feeling beastly to be rutting in the dirt like an animal.

He rolled her on her hands and knees politely to brush the red grains of jungle laterite from her naked back and fanny as he finished dog-style. She protested that this was most undignified, too, but she didn’t ask him to stop, and arched her spine for it all when he came in her again.

As she crouched there like a ruddy piggy, as she put it, she pulsed warmly on his shaft as she murmured, “Well, I signed up for adventure, and I must say this is perishing unusual! Do you have any other obscene lovemaking left for me to endure, you brute?”

He said, “Sure. Let me show you how you really do it in a hammock.”

He helped her to her feet, sat her crossways in the hammock with the nearest rope under her tail bone and the other supporting the nape of her neck. She said, “This is silly. Where do you fit in, darling?”

He spread her pale thighs wide, then stepped closer, and, still standing on his bare feet, put it in her again, saying, “We call this playing swing.”

“Good God, you’re still hard and …what are you doing?” It was a dumb question. As he started to swing her a few inches each way, not moving his own hips but sliding her the full length of his inspiration each way, she closed her eyes, bit her lips, and forgot about asking dumb questions as he sort of jerked himself off with her, further inspired by the full view of her beautiful face and nude hourglass torso bobbing faster than he’d have ever managed to move his own hips.

She spread her thighs wider, cupped a breast in each hand, and moaned, “Oh, God, I just died and went to heaven!” And he could tell by her internal contractions that she was climaxing yet again. He closed his eyes and grabbed for the hammock rope on either side of her head to lay half-atop her as he came in her again, kissing her as her long black hair came unpinned and fell down almost to sweep the dirt floor.

He’d just satisfied them both for the moment and was coming up for air when another female voice gasped, “Oh!” and he looked up, feeling like a shit-eating dog, to see Phoebe standing in the doorway.

Before he could say anything, his other girl had turned and flounced out of sight. Sylvia murmured dreamily, “Did you say something, darling?”

“No, Phoebe just walked in on us. She must shock easy. She’s gone.”

Sylvia stiffened and gasped, “Oh, my God! How will I ever explain to her? The poor little spinster knows nothing about a real woman’s needs!”

He said, “Uh, I’d better explain to her. Hold the fort. I’ll be right back.”

“You can’t talk to that poor little sparrow after she’s just seen you rutting like a stallion with me! My God, I don’t know how I’ll ever face her again myself!”

He slowly withdrew from her as he soothed, “You’re not thinking, doll box. She saw me. She didn’t see you. You were on the bottom, so all she could see was the top of your head. We were smart enough to pile your things behind this hammock, see?”

“Don’t be an ass! Who else is she going to think it could have been? It certainly wasn’t she, and Pat had flaming red hair! I’m the only dark brunette left.”

“No, you’re not. We’re in an Indian village. Hear me, pretty squaw, I go now to make peace with white lady peeping Tom. You stay here. Keep-um wig-wam warm.”

As she got it, Sylvia laughed hysterically and said, “By George, it just might work! I’m not about to stay here, though! Let me up so I can dress and think up a very ingenious excuse for not being otherwise in sight when that silly little thing popped in at us!”

He didn’t argue. He wanted to head Phoebe off at the pass before she said something dumb to one of the others. He quickly dressed and went out looking for her. He found her talking to Bertie. He moved closer, nodded pleasantly to Bertie, and said, “Would you excuse us a moment, Bertie? I think Phoebe wants to cuss me out in private.”

Phoebe stamped her foot, stared angrily at him through her slightly fogged glasses, and said, “We’ve nothing more to say to each other, ever again, you perishing squaw man!”

Bertie, ever the peace maker, said, “Come now, Phoebe, boys will be boys and all that. Our captain’s no doubt been cultivating the natives, eh what?”

“I saw what he was doing to that damned Indian bitch. Which hut are you in, Bertie?”

“Uh, that one over there. Why?”

“Never mind. I want a word with you in private. Do you follow me, Dick?”

“I’m not about to follow you kiddies. Never let it be said I’m not a good loser. Sorry, Phoebe. Lost my head.”

“I’ve noticed you do that a lot, you bastard!” Phoebe snapped, taking the bewildered Bertie by the arm to lead him away to his doom.

Captain Gringo grinned as he watched them duck inside Bertie’s hut. Bertie had said he kind of liked her, so all was well that ended well, and, while old Phoebe was a great little lay, so was Sylvia, and Sylvia was the best-looking thing in miles, hot damn!

He ran into Sylvia near the hut the Indians had built for her. They’d been very generous in giving all eight members of the party individual quarters, but he supposed the saplings and thatch didn’t cost much. As he joined Sylvia he murmured, “She bought it. Let’s go back and see if we left anything out.”

“God, no! With my luck, the next time she popped in I’d be on top!”

“She won’t. I think she just shacked up with Bertie for the day.”

“Phoebe? Shacked up? That’s silly, darling. I doubt that poor old dried-up Phoebe’s ever even kissed a man in her life!” He had no way of telling her how wrong she was without having two girls mad at him. So he just shrugged and said, “Well, they’re sure up to something in Bertie’s hut. Let’s go back to mine.”

“Not until after dark at least, dear. They’re probably just gossiping and I don’t want to take that chance with my reputation. We both live in the same West End, after all. Haven’t I satisfied you enough to last you until dark at least?”

He laughed, said he’d see her around the campus, and moved on to his own hut as she ducked into hers. He didn’t see Pat or Gaston anywhere. That seemed logical. Wilson and Jerome had either found squaws, each other, or just wanted to be out of the sun. It was getting pretty high.

Decepciona was reclining in his hammock when he ducked under the low entrance. He laughed and said, “Now I have an Indian to show Phoebe. I don’t imagine she’ll be back, though. What can I do for you, Decepciona?”

“I am here to do for you. Now that I see you are gentle, I am no longer afraid of your great size and funny-colored hair. Do you have yellow hair all over, Dick person?”

“Uh, I’d love to show you, arid I hope I’m still man enough. But is there any way to lock these doors, ¿querida mia? It feels silly to have people popping in unexpectedly.”

The Indian girl rolled out of the hammock, and as she took his hand he stared down at her compact brown nudity and decided he wasn’t as worn out as he’d thought. She said, “We can go for a walk in the trees if you like. Our chief has ordered that none of our people are to go near your horseless carriages. But you can go. And I can go as your guest, no? If you would rather make love in the fallen leaves, I am willing, but it is not comfortable and people make jokes when a girl comes back with black stains on her behind.”

He said the parked cars sounded like a meat idea. So they went out to them and it was. They climbed into the backseat of Bertie’s steamer, since it was parked between the others and offered more privacy. The little Indian girl marveled at the luxurious feel of the padded leather seats as she rubbed her bare bottom on the backseat, experimentally, and lay back to spread her brown thighs and say, “I think I want you very much. You are very pretty.”

He said she was pretty, too, as he quickly undressed, hung his duds over the back of the passenger seat, and got to his knees on the floorboards between Decepciona’s welcomingly spread knees. She moved her childish-looking hairless groin to meet him as she said, “Oh, you are yellow-haired all over, but I’m not sure we will fit.”

They did. She stared at him wide-eyed in wonder as he slid into what only looked inexperienced on the outside. Inside, Decepciona was all woman, and he didn’t have to feel shitty about taking advantage of a trusting child of nature.

Like most sensible so-called primitives, the Mosquitoes saw no point in depriving themselves of one of the few real pleasures life offered people who didn’t collect stamps or grow orchids in a green house. As she started moving skillfully, complimenting him on having the biggest dong she’d ever had in her up to now, it was obvious why the naked Indians felt no shame wandering around like that. By the time they grew up they’d probably laid every one of the opposite sex in the tribe. So it was no more embarrassing to walk around in front of old lovers than it would be for a married white couple to see each other naked in private, although some white women he’d met complained that their husbands had been a little silly about night shirts, come to think of it.

He wondered why he was thinking at all as the sprightly little squaw slid her tight box skillfully up and down his shaft, doing most of the work. She was breathing faster but was still under control as she said, conversationally, “You do it well, querido. I enjoy it when a man takes his time in me. Is it all right if I let myself go now? Forgive me, I am trying to make it last for you, but your unusual penis makes me most hot and I am excited as a girl doing it for the first time!”

He realized he’d been neglecting her, so he started pounding as he bent over to take her upper body in his arms and kissed her as she came in a series of hard bumps and grinds that inspired him to return the compliment. As they lay limply together, Decepciona opened her eyes to croon dreamily, “Oh, that is what you people call kissing, no? It felt very strange. Even a little dirty. But would you do it again?”

He did, letting her start the action again because in truth he was a little soft from overwork. But he didn’t stay that way for long. For a girl who didn’t know much about kissing, she sure was learning to tongue nicely, suddenly, and you didn’t have to work to keep it up in Decepciona. You just had to hang on and let her screw like a mink.

She came even faster the second time. He faked an orgasm to be polite. It still felt great in there, but, like these steam cars, he had only so much reserve fuel, and Sylvia had been great too.

By the time Decepciona went limp in post climactic contentment, he was inspired enough again at least to keep moving gently. She purred, “Oh, you wish more? I am so happy you liked me so much. I like you very much, too. But could we not rest a few moments, querido? We have all day, you know.”

She gave him one last promising grind as she added coyly, “The night, too. I can’t wait until you swing me in your hammock.”

He laughed and sat up to hold her head against his shoulder. He hadn’t thought he’d invented that hammock position. But he hadn’t considered the coming night. Sylvia had promised to come back to his hammock too, and if she caught him playing swing with a real Indian squaw, oh boy!

He was about to ask Decepciona how seriously she took going steady when all hell started breaking loose. The little squaw stiffened in his arms and gasped in fear as a heavy shell whistled down to explode in the not-too-distant distance!

He rolled out of the steamer with Decepciona under one arm like a football as he ran for the nearest big tree, swung around to the far side, and flopped down atop her to shield her with his body as another shell shook the earth under them. The girl gasped, “What is happening? It sounds like the end of the world!”

It did. The once-solid earth heaved in rippling shock waves under them as he lay naked atop her. Somehow, as the barrage went on a year or more, his penis found its way back inside her trembling vagina between her open trembling thighs. Neither of them noticed. They were too worried about staying alive to notice that they were screwing. He counted at least fifty shell bursts, big eight-inchers, from the sound of them. Then it got very quiet, save for the distant keening of a wailing woman.

Decepciona said, “Let me up! I have to go see what happened to my village!”

But he said, “Stay put. I know what happened to your village. The motherfuckers may play the old second-salvo trick.”

“Second what?”

“They stop the barrage to let the survivors get up and wander around looking for dead and wounded. Then, with everyone on their feet, another salvo slams down and . . . hey, have you noticed we seem to be making love again?”

“Yes, it feels very nice, even on the ground. But I am worried about my people. ”

“I am too. We can’t help ’em if we get killed, and we’ve got good cover here. Hmm, could you raise your knees a little?”

She did, locking her ankles around his waist as she took him deeper. That seemed to make her lose interest in getting up for a while, so they were going at it hot and heavy when the second barrage started. It lasted even longer. At least a hundred eight-inchers screamed down through the forest canopy to deafen their ears and quiver the ground like jelly under them as they went on making love. It was no dumber a thing to be doing at a time like this than anything else they could think of, and he was as willing to die coming in the arms of a beautiful girl as he was anywhere else.

When the shelling stopped, Decepciona giggled and said, “I don’t know if it was the fear or the fucking, but I have never come that well before!”

He said, “Yeah, but we’d better get some clothes on. I have to, I mean. It should be safe to take a peek now.”

He led her back to the steamer and put her back in the seat as he dressed quickly, saying, “You stay here. If I’m wrong and they lob a third salvo, I may never speak to you again.”

“I want to come too.”

“You just did. Stay here, damn it. Like your chief must say, I have spoken!”

He left her there and legged it into the village, or, rather, what was left of it. The clearing was mostly holes in the ground, but the frames of a few huts were still standing, their thatch blown away. He gagged as he saw half an Indian baby sprawled on the lip of a crater. A mangled squaw lay beyond. He responded to a low groan to find the old brujo sitting in the bottom of yet another shell crater, trying to hold his guts in with both hands. He wasn’t able to. As the old man looked up at him in mute agony, Captain Gringo knelt at his side, smiled, and pulled out his gun with a silent question in his eyes. The old man stared soberly at the .38 and nodded. So Captain Gringo put the muzzle against his temple and pulled the trigger to put him out of his misery.

The sound of the shot brought a shout he recognized as Gaston’s, thank God. As he climbed out of the shell crater, Gaston came over the broken ground to him, muttering, “Sacre, I told you they were Boche! Who but a child-molesting licker of pig shit would shell an innocent native village without even a declaration of annoyance, let alone war?”

“When you’re right, you’re right. What happened to our people?”

“Phoebe and Jerome did not make it. When the first shell hit, Pat was most fortunately on top, so I just picked her up and ran through the side of the hut with her. I just found her clothes, and she’ll join us when she puts them on in the bushes.”

“Great minds think alike. What about Bertie, Wilson, and Sylvia?”

“Out in the trees to the northwest, I told them to stay there while I came back to look for your body. By the way, why didn’t I find your body, Dick? You certainly were not here when that second salvo landed!”

“Long story. How did our Indian friends make out?”

“Not well, I fear. Like the rest of us, most made it out from under the first short salvo, Everyone tends to run like the hell at such times. But then, though I tried to warn them, the poor fools came back into the target area in response to the cries of the wounded. I shouted myself to a face of blue, but naturally none of them understood me. The chief is over that way, what is left of him. I think the triple-titted Boche killed over half the band. If they got that girl who speaks Spanish, we may be in trouble.”

“They didn’t. Decepciona made it out with me. She’s over by the cars. I think we’d better get everybody, red and white, over by the cars. We’ve got to get the hell out of here, poco tiempo!”

“Oui. I too was astounded to be shelled in such a tranquil Garden of Eden! How on earth could the murderous eaters of pig shit have ranged on us so tightly, Dick? That was no harassing fire. Every one of those shells was aimed. Most landed at the end of the village where we were staying! I do not believe it could have been luck, but how could they have pinpointed us after we drove through the jungle all night?”

“Easy. Tell you about it after we get everyone together by the cars.”

~*~

Captain Gringo went back to where he’d left Decepciona in the backseat of Bertie’s steam car while Gaston went to round up the survivors. The Indian girl said she was ready to make love again. But he told her to put her mental pantaloons back on and explained what he wanted her to tell the Indians as she gathered them together and brought them out there in the trees.

He had a few moments alone as he looked the cars over, trying to decide which was the best to keep. Overloaded, they’d need the most powerful engine and the best set of tires to make it out of this mess. Wheels, like kerosene tins, could easily be switched around. A lot of camping gear would have to be left behind and it would still be a tight fit.

Gaston hailed him. He looked over to see the little Frenchman leading Bertie, Wilson, and the two surviving girls toward the last three cars. The whites seemed subdued and shaken by recent happenings. Save for Pat, who’d been carried, they’d all made it the same way, simply by crashing through the nearest thatch wall and running like hell when the first big shell had slammed down. Wilson grumbled that he’d been beating Jerome at rummy at the time and that Jerome still owed him. Sylvia and Pat were too ashen-faced to say anything.

Bertie asked if the cars had been damaged. Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “No, of course not. They were parked well clear of the target area, you son of a bitch!”

Bertie blinked in astonishment, then replied, “I say, there’s no need to be nasty, Captain! I feel terrible about what happened to poor Phoebe, too!”

Captain Gringo said, “I’ll bet you do. She was a good kid, you two-faced prick!”

Then, since Bertie was going for his gun, Captain Gringo beat him to the draw and blew his face off! He was so pissed that he emptied the rest of the chambers into Bertie’s twitching corpse as it sprawled in the muck at his feet.

Gaston whipped out his own gun and snapped, “The rest of you should stand ever so still, hein? I don’t know why he did that, either, but I’m still on his side!”

Wilson stared wide-eyed at Bertie’s dead body and gasped. “Have you gone mad, Walker?” he asked.

Captain Gringo shook his head as he calmly proceeded to reload his smoking .38. He said, “The prick was working for the other side. We have him to thank for that double salvo just now. He left Phoebe to the messy, too, unless he killed her instead of just knocking her out before he got an early lead on the rest of you. He knew when and where the shells would land, so naturally he was out in the trees long before the first one came in. He’d have had a time explaining that to Phoebe. She was on our side!”

Sylvia licked her lips and asked, “Dick, how could you possibly know all this?”

Captain Gringo holstered his gun and said, “Process of elimination. You can put your gun away now, Gaston. There’s nobody here but us dupes, now.”

Gaston lowered his revolver politely, but kept it in his hand as he growled, “Sacre God damn, I wish you’d explain, Dick.”

Wilson nodded and added, “Bloody right! I’ve known Bertie for years. He was British to the bone, or at least he was until just now!”

Captain Gringo sighed and said, “Jesus, do I have to do all the thinking around here? Yeah, I guess I do. Wallace didn’t pick any of you for your knowledge of power politics. Okay, as you all know, once upon a time the German high command wanted to deliver something to a secret base. It was probably something like a new wireless set. Since Marconi patented his wireless telegraph a couple of years ago, hardly a month goes by without someone coming up with another patented improvement, and the Germans lead in the new technology. They got a head start because radio waves were discovered by a German named Hertz back in ’87.”

He reached for a smoke and lit up before he continued, “Okay, Der Kaiser likes to keep his navy up to date, secret or not. It wouldn’t stay secret with the Royal Navy patrolling the Caribbean if they sent new radio tubes by parcel post or tried to smuggle them in by sea. So first they hired a cashiered British officer named Wallace. It takes money to belong to the best London clubs. Wallace and his confederates recruited the bunch of you with his mammy-jamming treasure-hunt story, knowing that anyone from Whitehall who got wind of the expedition would dismiss it as a pathetic waste of time and money by a bunch of well-to-do eccentrics. Then things started to go wrong. Marlowe, hired both as a guide and as more cover, caught on, somehow, before we’d even left Puerto Cabezas. He may have been a worthless remittance man, but, unlike Wallace, he was a patriot who read the papers and wasn’t happy about Kaiser Willy’s obvious future plans. After Gaston and I messed up the welcoming committee, Marlowe beat Wallace to the draw, and Wallace was an old soldier who should have been good. Bertie was even better. He drew on Marlowe and killed him with Marlowe already having the drop on him! It takes a real gun slick to do that, so Bertie was no mere West End playboy. ”

Gaston cut in, “Merde alors, this is all ancient history, Dick. One can see how you might have suspected there was more to Bertie than met the eye. But you just shot him trés seriously, and if that was all you had to go by—”

“It wasn’t,” said Captain Gringo. “I didn’t know for sure until today. Those shells just now didn’t drop out of the sky by accident. They were lobbed at least twenty-five miles, with pinpoint accuracy!”

The redhead, Pat, asked. “Couldn’t those other sneaks have told the nasty Germans where we were, Dick?”

He shook his head and asked, “How? The whole point of moving under cover of darkness was that Baxter and Fenton knew where we were when they left with Matilda. I knew before the last shells landed that we were under pinpoint fire. Like I said, the rest was elimination. I knew you girls were unable to send wireless messages from your car. Gaston and I were in it with you every time you were. Wilson had been riding with his fellow Scot, Gordon, and Jerome was sitting in the back of the White we abandoned in the river until we had to reshuffle some. Bertie had been driving the same steamer from start to finish. Look at those headlights, Gaston. It’s time you won a gold star from the teacher.”

Gaston stared morosely at the brass headlights of the late Bertie’s steamer and said, “Eh bien, they are mundane electric lights. So what?”

“So what? Most steamers come with carbide lamps. There’s no point in having an electric battery in a goddamn steamer! I just looked under the chassis. There’s a magneto geared to the steam engine that turns the wheels. As it rolls it charges a lead-cell battery. A big one. Bigger than anyone would need to light those tiny Edison bulbs.”

“Sacre bleu! But you saying Bertie betrayed our position with a secret radio transmitter?”

“He didn’t send smoke signals. The setup’s pretty slick. The steel chassis itself is the antenna. The only indication of the transmitting tubes hidden by the dash is one little wire spliced to the ones from the battery to said headlights. It’s part of the same circuit. So all he had to do to send dots and dashes with others sitting right next to him would be to fiddle with his headlight switch. Who pays attention?”

“But, Dick, my beloved electrician, would not we have noticed if he’d been blinking his headlights so madly?”

“Sure we would have, if they’d been blinking. How did you think I found the transmitter? I just tried to turn the headlights on as I was inspecting all three cars. His bulbs had been unscrewed and both sockets were empty when I looked closer through the thick dusty glass. I wondered why anyone would go to so much trouble to have electric headlights and then not have them. The rest is history.”

Gaston nodded and said, “Eh bien, it does seem to add up. When the ones working with him deserted to make the delivery, he stayed behind to make certain none of us would ever wander out of the jungle all bedraggled to gossip about mysterious armed men we’d encountered in an area where poor Honduras doesn’t even try to collect taxes, non?”

Captain Gringo didn’t answer. Decepciona was leading in a mess of leftover Indians. Most of them were women and children, thank God. The men had been the suckers who’d run back to help their injured and been hit by the second salvo. Those men left, about a dozen, seemed mad as hell about it. Some of them had smeared themselves with black grease and all of them were waving their longbows around in angry gestures.

Decepciona said, “I told my people what you said about having to move again. They do not wish to move. They want to stand and fight. Those evil Wancos killed our brujo, our chief, and many others. They say that if you will lead them, you can be our new chief. They know little about fighting men with such big guns!”

Captain Gringo smiled gently at her and said, “That seems obvious. Tell them I’m sure they are brave men and good archers, but that bows and arrows aren’t much use against heavy weapons.”

“Pooh, you also have a heavy weapon, Dick person! Your big gun that goes tom-tom-tom! Our bowmen know this country. They say they can scout and pick off the outposts of the bad blancos. You and your tom-tom-tom can deal with larger numbers, no?”

“Tell them we’ll talk about it after we make camp somewhere else. This place is bad medicine. More shells could land any minute.”

~*~

Captain Gringo and the other whites had plenty of time to think as they followed the Indians in Sylvia’s and Bertie’s steamers after abandoning the other, minus its tires. Sylvia’s Stanley was a more powerful vehicle, but that half-assed attempt on his life had scorched her tires, and as long as they were low on kerosene anyway, it paid to make sure of good rubber. They had a lot of rolling to do. He’d been tempted to pile them all into Bertie’s car alone, since he wanted to hang on to that wireless set. But the Indians said the hollow they knew of wasn’t far, so why ride cramped before they had to? He and Gaston switched to the sneaky Bertie’s vehicle to let Wilson and Jerome ride with the two girls for a change. The heavy gear they really might need rode in the empty seat behind him and Gaston. He naturally resisted any temptation to fiddle with switches as they drove.

It took their Indian comrades longer to set up camp again. They were sort of short-handed. Captain Gringo never would have chosen the site, had not those heavy shells made hash out of the last one. But Decepciona and her tribes folk caught on fast, for primitives. The new camp was set in a depression between two heavily wooded rises that were islands in the rainy season. The results were soggy dirt floors for the new huts erected with skilled machete carpentry. He saw why they slept in those hammocks and knew that the bugs would be a bitch after dark. But a mosquito bite didn’t hurt half as much as an eight-inch shell coming through the thatch.

Some of the Indian women started building smudge fires, with the bugs in mind. He told Decepciona to tell them not to send up any smoke before dark, and once again they surprised him by catching on quickly. His remaining white allies had been chosen for being slow learners. The Mosquito Indians were the product of selective evolution in an environment where the dull-of-wit didn’t grow up to have children. As he sat on the running board of Bertie’s steamer with Gaston, watching their smooth but quick movements, he said, “Dammit Gaston, I like these people!”

Gaston said, “I am not displeased with them, and I know what you are thinking, Dick. Forget it. Once the chase cools off, our only chance is a run for Patuca and a boat out. The Germans will be in enough trouble if our white friends make it out alive. Having found out about their thrice-accursed secret navy base, we owe it to Kaiser Willy to see that Whitehall hears all about it, non?”

“Yeah. I like that part. But it’ll take weeks for the Royal Navy to make up its mind to do anything about it. Those square heads will want to tidy up before they leave. They know, now, that these Indians know too much, and the poor little bastards only have bows and arrows!”

“Poison arrows, Dick. Besides, those Boche can’t catch many Indians in their own jungle, hein?”

“If they catch one, it’ll be too many. Besides, these little guys are really pissed off. If we leave them on their own, some young braves are sure to try something to avenge all the relatives they just lost. The Germans will be expecting them to, too, dammit!”

Gaston said, “C'est la fucking vie, Dick. I agree they could use some strategic planning if they wish to make war on the German Reich. But I happen to be a military genius, so I know how hopeless attacking that base would be, even with our help.”

“They probably have diesel fuel over there, you know.”

“That is trés ridicule, even coming from you! We have enough kerosene left for one car to steam as far as Patuca, or at least within walking distance of the port. The girls can sit on the laps of Wilson and Jerome in the back, with enough room left over for such few supplies as we need. If you insist on taking along the Maxim, I volunteer to hold her in my lap! It’s over, Dick. We have managed to survive. When one considers how Wallace planned it all, I would say that all in all we have done better than expected. Now it is time to think of our remaining asses, hein?”

Decepciona was coming over to them, smiling wearily and looking shiny as hell. She had smeared herself from head to toe with some sort of bug oil. It looked sort of sexy. Captain Gringo wondered what it would feel like to make love to such a slippery little brown body.

On the other hand, Sylvia might want to try covering her own naked hourglass with that stuff. If he could talk either girl into a slippery game of three in a hammock ... Never mind, it would probably kill him.

Decepciona told them their hammocks were ready when they were. She ran a small brown hand over her shiny naked tummy and added, “This place will be very bad after dark, Deek. The missionaries explained how you blancos feel about letting people see your bodies, but unless you can get your friends to follow sensible customs, the little flying fiends who dwell here will eat you all alive after dark.”

Captain Gringo nodded. Then he frowned and said, “Wait a minute. How much of that goo have you people got on hand and what in hell is it?”

Decepciona said, “It is just oil with juice the mosquitoes do not like mixed in with it, Dick person. We make it from the oil of nuts and the juice of a grass your people call citronella. The Spanish introduced the foreign grass long ago. It is one of the few favors they ever did us. We have many jars prepared. More than enough for everyone.”

He grinned and said, “I thought I recognized the smell. We didn’t smear it on quite as thick in the summer back in Connecticut. That’s probably why it didn’t work so hot. Could you spare us enough to fill at least two kerosene tins, Decepciona?”

“Of course. Anything we have is yours, Dick person. But I must say your people must want to spread it very thickly on themselves if you need that much!’

Gaston caught on. He nodded and said, “Eh bien, it ought to burn as well as kerosene, and the exhaust will do wonders for the insects, as we drive both cars, after all!”

Captain Gringo sent the Indian girl for the oil before he told Gaston, “Two cars makes the difference. We’ll keep this one, with the radio gear. Sylvia can drive on to Patuca with Pat and the two useless men.”

“Merde alors, Pat is not useless, Dick! She gives a trés fantastique blow job!”

“I’ll ask Decepciona if she can find a friend for you. Most of them don’t even know how to kiss, but they seem to be willing pupils. I’m sort of fond of Sylvia, too. It can’t be helped. Someone has to get word to the outside world about that secret base. It may as well be four poor dupes who’d be of little use to us in a firelight.”

Gaston gasped, “Mon Dieu, what is this nonsense about a firefight? If you are seeking volunteers to charge madly at people armed with eight-inch field guns, do not look at me, you maniac!”

Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “Okay, the others would probably be safer if you went along with them in Sylvia’s steamer.”

“That is the simple truth, for a change. But that leaves you, this steam car, a dozen naked savages, and a rusty machine gun low on ammunition to do … what, for God’s sake?”

“Pay those Germans back, of course. I said I liked these Indians. Phoebe was a good kid, too.”

Gaston sighed and said, “I never got any of that, but I’ll take your word that she looked better without her glasses. You are still out of your mind, Dick. You only know the general direction of the base. You have no idea of the numbers, the weapons, or the dispositions of their defense perimeter!”

“That’s where Indian scouts come in. I don’t intend to drive in beeping Bertie’s horn, for chrissake. Why don’t you go tell the others? I hate long goodbyes, and there’s no reason for any of you to hang around here getting bitten, once we get the extra oil.”

Gaston said, “I hate long goodbyes too. I make it an overnight drive to Patuca, by compass. I’ll tell Pat after I spend one last pleasant interlude with her. We don’t have to send them on their way until just before dark.”

“We? I thought you just said only a maniac would stay here to take on all those square-headed sons of bitches, Gaston.”

Gaston shrugged and said, “I too think they are sons of bitches with square heads. We French owe them for 1870, as well as their more recent trés disgusting butchery of women and children. I agree we are both behaving like maniacs. We shall probably both get killed. But what would I do for amusement in my declining years if I left you here alone to get killed? You are a trés crazy bull-headed pain in the derriere, Dick Walker, but I never had such fun before I was mad enough to team up with you!”

~*~

Sylvia didn’t want to go without him, but she sure enjoyed coming with him as they made love in his new hut, covered experimentally with slippery citronella oil. She asked how on earth she’d ever get it off, and he pointed out that she’d be able to enjoy a nice hot bath in Patuca after she contacted the British consulate there.

He said, “Just tell them there’s a secret German base at Laguna Caratasca and they’ll take over from there, honey. You and the others will be safe to leave for Blighty on the first steamer out. Not even Der Kaiser’s spies in the field would be dumb enough to bother any of you once they knew you’d spilled the beans. They only murder people to keep them from singing. No point, after, and even a pro can only get away with so many murders, so—”

“I’m not worried about that, darling,” she cut in, running her oily palms over his greasy buttocks as she thrust her pelvis up to take all his oiled shaft to the hilt. Her oily nipples sure felt neat against his chest. But though she went on screwing nicely she didn’t seem to be as hot as expected. She asked, “Will we ever see each other again, Dick?”

He said, “Sure, you can write down your address in London for me before it’s time to cut out.”

She sobbed. “I know all too well how often you’ll be getting to London! Can’t you give up this perishing life, Dick? I’ve a good income and—”

“Don’t talk dirty, just screw dirty,” he cut in, adding, “There’s a nasty word for a man who lets a woman support him. Besides, I’d need a British passport to be your kept lap dog, and those are kind of hard to apply for when a guy’s wanted for everything but the common cold. Hey, I wonder what it would be like dog-style with all this slop on us.”

“I don’t feel acrobatic this afternoon, darling. I feel very left out of your life. Can’t you just hold me tightly, like you never intend to let me go?”

He slid his hands down her oily buttocks to cup them as he got even deeper in her between her slippery, welcoming thighs. He didn’t answer her question with words. It would have sounded dramatic to point out that he didn’t know how much life he had left to leave her out of. Dames like her and guys like him had no business falling in love. So he tried not to as he made love to her.

It wasn’t easy. Sylvia was beautiful as hell and a great lay, even without the added spice of the sensuous oil on her rippling curves. They came again. She begged for more. But he said, “I’d like to. I can’t. By now the others are ready and must be sort of wondering, honey. We’d better get you dressed and on your way.”

He climbed out of the hammock. She lay there, desirable as ever, with her eyes closed and a tear running down her oily cheek. She asked if he’d do her one last favor. He agreed, of course. She said, “I want you to get dressed first and just leave, Dick. I want you to go for a walk in the woods or something while I gather myself together. I’ll be all right. I know what to do. But I’m afraid I’d act silly in front of the others if you were standing there as we drove off.”

He bent, kissed her tear-filled eyelids, and ducked out of the hut without another word. Outside, he saw that Pat and the two Englishmen were waiting in the Stanley, with the fire already lit under the boiler. He waved to them and kept going until he was well out in the jungle. He sat down on a log in a copse of gumbo limbo and lit a smoke. The clothes he wore felt awful with all that grease on his body. He’d be able to dress as sensibly as the Indians, once the others left.

Come to think of it, now was as good a time as any to start. He stood up, peeled off his messed-up clothes, and sat down again, naked save for his boots and shoulder rig. It felt a lot better. It felt even better when little Decepciona joined him on the log.

Decepciona sat astride the smooth fallen timber, her freshly greased body facing him. Her legs of course were spread wide and her bare little box would get splinters in it if she wasn’t careful. She said, “I followed you. Is it permitted?”

He said, “Of course,” handing her the claro. She took a deep drag and handed it back, saying, “That is very good tobacco. I came to your hut to see if you wished anything. I went away when I saw you were making love to that blanca. ”

“Sorry about that, querida. I was, ah, saying goodbye to her.”

“I understand. I could see why she was so upset to leave you behind. It upset me, too, a little. I am trying to understand why. The old ones say it is silly for a woman to want a man all to herself. Jealousy is a wicked vice. I am trying not to be jealous. It is not easy.”

He twisted and sat facing her astride the log as he pulled her upper body closer. Their knees got in each other’s way until the pragmatic Decepciona solved the problem by slipping her greased thighs over his and sliding her little brown rump closer. He kissed her and said, “You don’t have to be jealous anymore, if they’ve left.”

She said, “They have. They drove off in the rolling choo-choo thing as I was leaving camp. Oh, my heart soars to feel what you still feel for me below the waist, Dick person. I did not think you would be able to do it again for some time, after the way I saw you bouncing on that blanca in the hammock. You are a very surprising man.”

He too was pleasantly surprised to feel the head of his renewed enthusiasm throbbing teasingly between the oiled bare lips of her little brown box as she wriggled closer. The position was a bit awkward until he tossed the cigar away and wrapped both arms around her and pulled her in until her oiled torso and firm slippery breasts were against him. He knew they’d get messy as hell rolling in the soggy forest duff with all this oil on them. It was a novel position, too. So he stayed astride the log as he worked it in deeper. As a natural sex enthusiast who’d probably been at it since she could walk, Decepciona caught on and pressed down with the backs of her thighs over his to raise her groin from the wood and slide all the way onto his shaft. She hissed in pleasure and started moving her widespread lap in his, saying, “Oh, this is nice! I’ve never done it this way before, have you?”

He assured her they were almost virgins, as he held her close and played pony boy with her. For a gal who said she was jealous, Decepciona sure had a forgiving nature.

He realized why he was still up to it, as he mentally contrasted her with the more complicated white girl he’d just had. Decepciona’s face wasn’t as pretty. Her body, while great, was too different to compare, so he couldn’t judge who had the better shape. What he liked about his new love was that she didn’t bullshit about love as they enjoyed good clean fun.

Sylvia had left him feeling guilty and gulpy-throated even as she’d screwed him silly. The mixed emotions had put him off his feed enough to keep him from really enjoying her to the full. This simple child of nature was making up for it in spades. She was literally screwing him with corkscrew motions of her shaved oily snatch, and, wonder of wonders, he was starting to come again!

She felt it as he ejaculated in her. She laughed and kept moving until he could tell by her contractions that she was coming, too. But, unlike most white women, she neither accused him of hurting her nor stopped what she was doing so nicely down there. She slipped out of his oiled arms to lean back with her back arched, her locked elbows holding her atop the log as she threw her head back and just enjoyed it with her eyes closed serenely and a pleased little smile on her face.

By the time she finished climaxing she had him hot as hell again. So he moved his legs back, leaned forward, and pressed her full length on the log to do it old-fashioned, sort of. As she locked her slippery legs around his waist, Decepciona said calmly, “Don’t let me fall off,” so he said he wouldn’t.

He held on to the log with his hands on either side of her trim waist as he leaned his upper body against her slithery brown breasts and braced a stiff leg out to either side for balance. As he started moving, entering her at an astounding angle, he wondered why he’d ever thought it was novel in a hammock. His well-braced hips were free to swivel in any direction, and did, as he long-donged her to mutual glory, kissing her sweet little mouth as his butt went crazy at a higher level. She’d caught on to kissing well by now, and tried to swallow his tongue alive as she did the same favor at the other end while he was coming in her.

When they had to stop, being only human, Decepciona sighed contentedly and said, “I am glad that blanca is gone. Now I shall have you all to myself forever and you will be our new chief, no?”

He didn’t answer. He’d just turned down an invitation to live the rest of his life in London. Apparently all women were sisters under the skin, no matter what color skin they wore.

It was a lousy shame. Men and women both deserved somebody who thought more like they did, but the Creator had fucked up both sexes when He’d created fucking, by giving them brains as different as the good parts. The only way a man or a woman could ever find a sex partner who thought the same way they did seemed sort of disgusting to a born heterosexual. It’d be fun to make it with an old pard who looked on life the same way, but he’d never met a man with she-male sex organs, so what the hell. He just had to grin and bear it.

He sat up, still astride the log and in her, to say, “We have to start thinking about this chief business. Will your warriors follow my orders to the letter, Decepciona?”

“None of them can read letters, but they will do as you say, if I am there to translate, of course.”

He hadn’t thought of that. He said, “I don’t want your pretty little ass any closer to those German field guns than they are right now, nina mia!”

She wriggled on his shaft teasingly and said, “I must come with you, if you wish the others to do as you say. And speaking of coming, Dick person …”

He started to say no. Then he wondered why any man would want to say a silly thing like that. He had some heavy planning to do. But he didn’t have any office to do it in right now, and she sure could hold on well down there. He knew what she was deliberately doing with her skilled internal muscles to be able to hold an oil-slicked and half-soft erection in her at such an angle. It didn’t stay half-soft long. He stayed upright astride the log, playing with her oily nipples as he started sliding his crotch back and forth on the now oil-polished-smooth mahogany. It sure beat doodling with a pad and pencil as he started to do some serious thinking about that German base.

Gaston must have been thinking along the same lines. He called out in English as he approached, “Eh bien, they’ve left for Patuca and Pat said she’d never forget or forgive me. So we have all these jolly Indians to ourselves and … . Oops, I did not know you made friends so quickly, Dick!”

Decepciona didn’t seem at all embarrassed to be found in such a position, and it wasn’t as if Captain Gringo and Gaston were strangers, but at least he stopped moving in her as he sat up to explain, “I’ve been working on a plan to do something about that base.”

“Oui, I admire your grasp of strategy. Does she have a friend?”

Captain Gringo translated in Spanish for the Indian girl, adding that Gaston jerked off in public if he went more than a few hours without a woman. Gaston had just had a redhead young enough to be his granddaughter, but Decepciona didn’t know that. She said, “Oh, the poor thing. I can find him a woman as soon as we rejoin the others. If he’s really suffering, I suppose I can take care of him right here. I am still most hot.”

Captain Gringo grimaced as Gaston, who spoke better Spanish than either of them, laughed and said, “Move over and let a man show you how it is done, Dick!”

Captain Gringo looked down dubiously at the girl who was still holding his shaft in her and said, “I thought you were jealous, Decepciona.”

She said, “I am. I hate to see a pretty man making love to another woman. It makes me feel left out. I will not service your friend if you are jealous. It was just a suggestion.”

Captain Gringo grimaced and said, “Go take a leak or something while I finish, and then she’s all yours, pard. I see some practical advantages to not getting involved with more of these gals than we have to, even if it’s a little disgusting.”

“I don’t like sloppy seconds any more than you do, dammit!” snapped Gaston in English. Captain Gringo translated, explaining that they’d better get another girl in deference to Gaston’s sudden delicacy.

Decepciona giggled and said, “I have an idea. It’s something I have always wanted to try, and for some reason I can’t seem to get enough today. Tell him not to go away. You lay flat on the log and let me get on top, Dick person.”

He couldn’t feel more silly, now. So he let her up to change places with him as Gaston watched, knowingly.

Decepciona straddled the big Yank and the log to lower herself onto him again. It wouldn’t have worked if she hadn’t been so skilled, since now he was really beginning to lose interest and she had to work it in almost soft. She started milking it with her internal muscles as she lay down against him, her legs out to either side and her little brown butt raised high and wide. She started grinding her pubic bone in his oily pubic hair, teasing it up again as she explained, “If Gaston person gets behind me, he won’t have to put it in the same place, no?”

Captain Gringo said, “Oh, for God’s sake, this is getting weird!” as Gaston caught on, dropped his pants, and straddled the log behind her. Captain Gringo said, “It won’t work, you crazy bastard! Haven’t you any feelings? I’m about to come again, dammit. Go jerk off someplace!”

Gaston took Decepciona’s hips in his hands and shoved his own considerable tool up her rear as she gasped in pleased surprise. It felt wild as hell to all three of them. Captain Gringo’s buttocks were pinned to the log by their combined weight and he couldn’t thrust up and down, even though he was on the razor’s edge of another orgasm.

He didn’t have to. Between the amazing contractions of Decepciona’s vagina and Gaston’s big tool sliding in and out on the other side of her thin internal partition, Captain Gringo was literally jerked off. He groaned as he came in her and said, “Let me out of here, dammit! This is getting close to a crime against nature! Stop it, Gaston! If I wanted to screw you I’d have done it a long time ago, you degenerate old fart!”

Neither of them listened. He’d beaten them to the punch and they were both too hot to stop if he’d put a gun to their heads. He slid out from between them and the greasy log to land on the damp duff on his bare butt. If they noticed, they didn’t stop. He stood up to find his shirt and a smoke as Gaston pounded her to glory face down on the log. It took Gaston a while because he’d just been blown by Pat. It took Decepciona a while because he was, after all, in the wrong hole. But by sliding her deserted love box on the oily mahogany she managed to come just before Gaston, who in turn rolled off to lay flat on his back in the muck, sighing, “Thank you, my children. It warms my heart to see how you respect your elders.”

Captain Gringo said, “Put your fucking pants back on if you don’t want to wear grease. Enough of this bullshit. We’ve got a German base to take out and this isn’t the way to do it!”

~*~

It turned out that Decepciona did have a girl for Gaston back at the village. So, since the horny old fart had only spilled his seed in a part Captain Gringo hadn’t figured on using anyway, he decided to forgive them.

Her free and easy ways eliminated any future guilt he might feel when they left the Indians, as he knew they must. Meanwhile, as she was the only dame in the band he could talk to, he decided to keep going steady with her, if that was the right term. After she’d cooled off, even Decepciona realized she’d been a little bit naughty and said she wouldn’t lay anyone else without his permission, even if he was asleep.

So they slept. Most of them. Captain Gringo sent a couple of eager young warriors out to do some scouting in the dark. He knew they could case the base and get back to him before noon the next day. He knew where the damned base was. He just had no idea of the layout. He told his scouts not to go into business for themselves with their six-foot hardwood bows, explaining that he wanted his own visit to be a surprise.

After sundown and a shared supper of tinned bully beef and beans with Decepciona, Gaston, and Gaston’s new girl, a skinny little thing with a lot of xs in her unpronounceable Indian name, Captain Gringo ordered a good night’s sleep all around. He added, “I mean it, Gaston. I know you like to explore new territory. So do I. But don’t wear yourself out on Miss X. She doesn’t have to run like a deer mañana. You and I may have to.”

Gaston said he understood, that he’d decided to call her Mimi in honor of another brunette he knew, and that he’d only go around the world with her once.

Decepciona had hung her own hammock in Captain Gringo’s new hut. The Indians knew all too well that while two people could screw in one hammock, sleeping double in them was out of the question. That was fine with him. He’d thought after that orgy in the jungle that he’d had enough of her for now. But they did a little commuting anyhow when the mosquitoes woke them up despite the citronella oil in the wee small hours and he saw that, while he had a morning hard-on, it was too late to bother going back to sleep. Decepciona said she was glad she was forgiven, when they played swing in her hammock.

But he husbanded his strength by ejaculating in her only once and insisting on an early breakfast. She accepted this as she accepted all life’s pleasures. She wasn’t used to English rations, and since on the other hand she knew all there was to know about sex, the bully beef and canned peas this time offered her new sensual pleasures to explore.

Later, Gaston found him sitting bare-assed in Bertie’s remaining car, listening to the headset he’d taken from the patrol leader. Gaston joined him, oiled, naked, and looking a little bushed. As Gaston literally slid into the leather seat beside him, he asked what he was listening to.

Captain Gringo said, “Dots and dashes. Sounds like International Morse. But they must be transmitting in German. I haven’t any idea what. Here, see if you can make it out.”

Gaston pressed an earphone to his head, listened awhile, and said, “It’s German. But in code. ‘My mother’s hound says the cabbage is lavender’ can’t mean anything but a code. It’s not a cypher. The triple-thumbed species of ham-handed pig-shit eater is using senseless but whole words. To decode it, one would need the code book. I don’t suppose you looked for any?”

“I did. I didn’t find it. Besides, I don’t think Bertie was a German. Just a hungry Englishman. They’re probably sending to a patrol they put out to survey the damage back where they shelled us. We ought to be okay here for a while. By the way, it’s not pig shit they eat. Germans eat pigs’ feet, Gaston.”

“That, too. Don’t tell me they don’t eat shit. You were not there in 1870. The German who is not eating your shit is shitting in your face. They have very predictable habits.”

“I didn’t know you fought in the Franco-Prussian war, Gaston. I thought after you deserted the Legion in Mexico, back in the late sixties—”

“Haven’t you ever heard of a boat? I don’t boast of my service at Sedan. The idiot we had for a leader surrendered. I found it trés fatigue in that Prussian prison camp, so of course I went back to Mexico, where one has some chance of predicting the outcome when one signs up to fight. Merde alors, the government France had, then, got a lot of poor peasant boys killed while the officers drank and fornicated miles from the front. The next war France has with the Boche will be different.”

“I hope you’re right. Wars keep getting messier as this century winds down. Nobody had machine guns or long-range artillery in our Civil War, yet it was bloody enough. Hate to think what an officer like Burnside or even Grant would do with green troops ordered into a bayonet charge against modern weapons.”

“Oui, this radio business seems a disturbing complication, too. In the good old days one had to consider only the species of enemy out in front of one’s positions. Now, even if you seem to be winning, you must worry about the sons of the bitch calling for assistance by wireless! Listen, Dick, do you think we could send amusing messages to the Boche with the transmitter in this vehicle? It might be trés amuse, non?”

“Yeah, and it would tell them we’re still alive and still within transmitting range, too! I think there’s a way to pin down the location of a transmitter, too. I don’t think we’d better wire that the Kaiser is a shit-for-brains just yet. Let them figure it out for themselves.”

Later, near noon, the Indian youths he’d sent out to scout returned. Decepciona brought them to Captain Gringo and Gaston and translated as they drew a map in the red clay for them.

It was a pretty good map, considering that they were supposed to be stupid savages. Their outline of the huge lagoon matched the one on paper pretty well, and he knew they couldn’t just have completed a circuit of the fifty-mile body of water. He knew they had a lot of it in their heads, since it was their country, after all.

The Indians verified that there was a gun emplacement out on the south point forming an almost shut entrance to the lagoon. The main camp was nowhere near the old pirate camp. Wallace had been bullshitting.

The scouts put it at the base of the south peninsula hemming in the lagoon. Captain Gringo nodded and told Gaston, “Makes sense. From that position they have an inland anchorage to their west and a view of the open sea to their east. They probably like to watch the boats go by. Decepciona, ask if they saw any vessels at anchor in the lagoon. Big boats. Gray. Maybe little cigar-shaped boats with a tower in the middle of a long deck?”

Decepciona did. They said the harbor was empty. He nodded and told Gaston, “It’s a supply dump, then. They must not plan a war this season. The idea is to set up a supply-and-communications base near the Panama Canal, for later.”

“Eh bien, that means later indeed, Dick. The canal is not half-completed yet. It may never be, thanks to the confused politics down that way.”

“It will be. If Colombia won’t be sensible about it, sooner or later Uncle Sam or Queen Vickie figures to just grab the canal zone. That canal’s too vital to anyone with a two-ocean navy to let the pig-headed Colombian junta hold things up much longer.”

Gaston shrugged as he stared down morosely at the scratched out diagram and said, “To hell with the coming century. Let’s live through the rest of this one! Our Boche friends have done a nice job, for eaters of pig shit. Regard how they are dug in with the sea protecting them on three sides. To winkle them out would take a trés desperate charge by a lot of trés suicidal troops against that one narrow front they have to worry about.”

Captain Gringo got Decepciona to ask the scouts about the landward approaches up the narrow peninsula. She did, and told them, “They were afraid to go very close. Mangroves and other trees grow on that spit of land, all the way out to the tip, except where the bad blancos have cleared in places. They have piled bags filled with something in a waist-high wall across the peninsula from water’s edge to water’s edge. But the ends are hidden by piled brush. Between the wall of bags and the land, they have dug a ditch and they have some of that nasty wire the Spanish use to fence in banana plantations lately. Our boys of course slip through the sharp wire easily. But these warriors say the bad blancos have strung it very thickly, in more than one line.”

Captain Gringo grunted and said, “That’s a neat one I’ve heard before. Firing line of sandbags, guarded by a dry moat and barbed wire. Did you ever get the feeling you weren’t welcome somewhere, Gaston?”

“Bah, given a brigade of my old Legion and an hour or so’s barrage to soften them up, I could get through. The two of us and a dozen unwashed archers is another matter, however!”

“Yeah, when you’re right you’re right. There has to be a better way.”

He checked the Indian’s outline against his more accurate navigational chart and said, “Okay, that battery of eight-inchers is out on the point, a good ten miles or more from the main base across the south end of the peninsula. They might have a wire strung to talk to mother. But how fast can anyone run ten miles?”

Gaston said, “Too fast, if you mean to spend much time out on the tip of that adorable spit. But are we not forgetting that to get out to the end of the peninsula, one must first go through the defenses at the base?”

“I wish you wouldn’t be such a party pooper. Wallace said there was a gun emplacement on both sides of the lagoon entrance. On the other hand, Wallace screwed his friends’ wives, then screwed his friends. Decepciona, ask them if there could be more big guns on the north point.”

Decepciona did. They said they didn’t know. Gaston said the question about the north point was academic, adding, “To get there, one would have to circle the great lagoon. It would take days.”

Captain Gringo said, “No, it wouldn’t. That’s what the wheel was invented for. It may call for some heavy machete work. But the terrain is flat and if we started now we’d get there just before dawn.”

Gaston rolled his eyes heavenward and said, “Then what, you maniac? Even if one assumes the north point is not guarded, the south point lies across at least two miles of water, and we know they have big guns dug in!”

Captain Gringo didn’t answer. He was thinking. He had watched the Indians long enough to know who was good with a machete. They’d have to leave most of the men to look after the women and children here. But the tribe could probably spare four guys and Decepciona, if he promised not to lose them. The two scouts here would insist on going. That meant he needed two really husky machete swingers and, yeah, there might be room for one good tom-tom man. When he asked the girl who their best drummer was, Gaston snorted, “Now I know he’s crazy! It’s not enough he wishes to attack a military base the hard way. Now he wants to announce our approach with some species of idiot beating on a goddamn drum!”

~*~

They stopped just before sunset and Captain Gringo ordered everyone out of the steam car to stretch their legs. Gaston said it was about time. He’d insisted on bringing his “Mimi” along, which only seemed fair. So they’d been a little crowded, with the two naked Indian girls having to take turns riding in Gaston’s lap. Gaston hadn’t minded that part.

As the two female and five male Indians automatically started to build another small town, he told Decepciona to forget it as he opened the car’s repair kit. He found a coil of bailing wire and sent an Indian up a tree with it to tie one end to a branch and drop the rest of the long thin wire down to him. Then as Gaston watched, bemused, Captain Gringo started taking the car apart. Gaston said, “The steamer was running well enough, if one ignores a broken spine. What on earth are you doing?”

Captain Gringo crawled under the chassis with his tools as he explained in a somewhat muffled voice, “Taking out the radio gear. Get a screw driver and start working on the battery mounts up front. Don’t bust any wires, though.” Gaston shrugged and said he had nothing better to do. So in less than a quarter of an hour they had the battery and the transmitter that had been hidden by the dash laid out neatly on the grass, still connected by a confusion of wires. Captain Gringo had left the generator in place under the chassis after merely disconnecting it.

He told Decepciona to bring the tribal drummer over, and as she did so he explained to Gaston, “We’re out of artillery range now. Hopefully we’re still close enough to the base for them to pick up an S.O.S.”

“We wish to call on Germany for help, Dick?”

“Not exactly. They’ll assume we’ve discovered the Marconi stuff and that we’re yelling for help to the world in general. If they range on the direction of the signals, they’ll assume we’re stuck here. The guys who deserted us will have told them we were low on kerosene. We’ve made hash out of two of their patrols. So they won’t order them to head for this spot after dark. But our tom-tom guy had better move his ass before the sun comes up again.”

Decepciona brought the drummer over and translated as Captain Gringo told the frowning Indian what he wanted him to do. The Indian said he could surely keep tapping the funny little key in the same rhythm of three dots and three dashes from time to time through the night, with time off to pee or jerk off. But he didn’t see why.

Captain Gringo told his pretty translatress, “Tell him it’s big medicine to fool the spirits of the bad blancos. We’ll leave him here with plenty of food and water. At first light he must stop and head back to the others at your new camp. Tell him to swing wide. Bad men may be coming this way.”

She did, and the drummer agreed to the plan, even if he didn’t understand it. A few minutes later they were steaming on through the jungle.

Gaston nodded and said, “Oui, it ought to work. If they pinpoint us on the map back there, they will not expect us to turn up anywhere else. Naturally, they will assume the others are still with us and that both cars have run out of fuel, non?”

“Right. If one car was still rolling, the bunch of us could have driven on in the survivor, crowded or not. The ruse gives Sylvia and the others an added margin of safety, too. There’s no sense radioing possible pals in Patuca to watch for ’em if they don’t think any of us made it halfway there!”

“I don’t mind riding crowded,” said Gaston, grinning as he leaned back to close his eyes while Mimi bounced on his lap more than the slow rolling really called for. Captain Gringo chuckled and asked, “Have you got your dong in that dame, you old goat?”

“Where else would I have it? You asked me not to do it to your girl anymore.”

“Okay, but try not to overdo it. We need to save our strength.”

He braked to a stop and consulted his map by the rapidly fading light. Then he nodded and said, “Okay, we’re making good time. If we don’t drive down an alligator’s mouth in the dark, we should make it well before the next time we see daylight.”

They didn’t see any ’gators or much of anything else that night, but it was really rough going. Thanks to steam power, they made it through patches of hub-deep muck that an internal-combustion or electric car would have been stuck in for keeps. The muscular machete men had their work cut out for them as from time to time they had to hack a quarter mile or more through tangled vegetation.

By 4:00 a.m. Captain Gringo had emptied the last reserves of citronella oil into the main fuel tank and couldn’t come up with an answer when Gaston asked how in hell they were going to drive back the other way. Gaston bitched, “Merde, I foresee a long weary walk to Patuca, if we live that long.”

They had to be near the tip of the peninsula they’d driven out on by now. So Captain Gringo sent his two scouts ahead as he turned down the oil fire to conserve fuel. Decepciona suggested a walk in the woods while they waited. He told her not to talk dirty as he got to work mounting the machine gun on the hood with the action hanging back over the dash so that he could man both the steering wheel and the trigger from his seat. He put the last extra ammo canisters on the floorboards between the two front seats and wedged them good with whittled wooden stakes.

Then there was nothing to do but wait. A million years later the two scouts came back, grinning like naughty boys. Decepciona said, “They say there was a small how you say outpost out on the tip of this point. Two bad blancos were there with a spy glass and a tom-tom-tom gun like this one.”

“Bueno. Did the Germans see them?”

“No. They saw the German persons first. They put arrows in them and cut off their heads.”

One of the archers held up something dark and dripping in the dim light. Captain Gringo whistled softly and said, “Remind me never to shell a Mosquito village. Okay, that doesn’t give us much time. They’ll probably be rowing across to change the guard at the outpost as soon as it’s light. Get everybody back in, Decepciona. We have to get out of there poco tiempo.”

As he turned up the fire and opened the throttle, Gaston asked, “Is there any point to driving farther, Dick? She just told you they took out the outpost.”

“I heard her. We have to get across the straits of the lagoon before it’s too light.”

“In a steam car? You can’t ford two or more miles of salt water on wheels, dammit! The passage is deep enough for oceangoing vessels to enter!”

“Yeah, small ones, anyway. They’re probably figuring on submersibles when the big one starts in a decade or so.”

He saw a break in the trees ahead. He stopped a moment to tell his girl to put the machete men to work, adding that he wanted balsa logs if possible.

Gaston bitched, but couldn’t help grinning wolfishly as he said, “I don’t know why I listen to this foolish child, mon Dieu. Who ever heard of attacking a dug-in gun battery with a balsa raft!”

Captain Gringo said, “Nobody. That’s why they shouldn’t be expecting it. They think they have an outpost on this side. Will you take your dong out of Mimi and help, Goddamn it?”

A little over an hour later, as the sky began to pearl pinkly above the eastern sea horizon, a German marine sentry noticed a dark smudge out on the closer waters of the lagoon entrance. He couldn’t make out what it was. It was probably another drifting mat of vegetation drifting out to sea with the tide. But a good German wasn’t paid to think for himself. His standing orders were to report all unusual occurrences on or near his post to the corporal of the guard. So he walked south beyond the two big eight-inch Howitzers and ducked into the noncom’s sandbagged tent to wake his superior. The corporal of the guard had been enjoying a wet dream and sat up with a groan and a curse, growling, “Was zum Teufel – what is it, Dorfler?”

“There is something out on the water, Herr Korporal. I thought you’d want to know.”

“Herr Gott! It’s still dark out and I was about to come in that big blonde! Has the outpost across the strait phoned anything in?”

“Nein. But it could be a native raft putting out to sea from somewhere else, Herr Korporal.”

“Heading for the open sea? Gross Gott let me go back to sleep, you idiot.”

The sentry shrugged and ducked back outside. Then the noncom rubbed a hand across his sleep-drugged face and said, “Wait. You’d better show it to me. The old man will have my ass for breakfast if we let anything fuck up this mission even worse. The officers are giving birth to cows over that crazy American with the machine gun.”

As he pulled on his pants and boots he added, “Americans have no sense of proportion. He was not supposed to shoot us up. We were supposed to shoot him and his Britisher friends up. Fortunately, they now seem stuck in the jungles across the lagoon. The signalman phoned a little while ago that they are sending distress calls with the radio equipment they were not supposed to know about.”

The two Germans left the tent and headed for the north shore. Others had been awakened by the commotion and were stepping out of the other tents, yawning and asking what was up. The corporal told a gunnery sergeant to go back to sleep. It was probably nothing.

Then, as he neared the water’s edge and saw Captain Gringo’s raft grounding on the coral sand with a steam car filled with naked people already rolling forward, he managed one good scream before a burst of machine-gun fire blew his lungs out his back and sent the sentry at his side sprawling dead without ever knowing what had hit him!

Gaston had the German machine-gun from the outpost braced in front of him, as well, as the two soldiers of fortune drove up the sloping beach into the gun emplacement, both firing full automatic. The Indians, as planned, rolled out and hit the deck.

The nice thing about the two big guns being dug in behind sandbag walls to seaward and landward was that there was only one direction anyone could run. So Gaston swiveled in his passenger seat to hose the bottleneck as Captain Gringo drove in tight circles, mowing down anything dead ahead and rolling over the wounded with his hard rubber tires until the belt was used up. As he stopped to reach down for a fresh belt, Gaston put a good burst into the knot of moaning Germans piled up on the road south and ceased fire. The Indians leaped to their feet and joined the fun and games, using their machetes and poison arrows on a lot of people who probably would have died anyway.

Captain Gringo finished reloading the Maxim and said, “Come on, Gaston. It’s time you earned all the ass I’ve been getting you. You know where the base camp is, and I just got you a couple of eight-inch guns. Can do?”

“I can aim and fire. But those big shells and eighty-pound powder charges are a bit much for a man of my advanced senility, Dick!”

“Get Decepciona and the Indians to help you load. They’re quick pupils. Pile out, dammit. I’ll cover you with these two machine guns!”

Gaston drew his revolver and rolled out to run toward the guns, stark naked save for grease as he bellowed for Decepciona to get her adorable bare ass over to him. The sight must have been very distressing to a badly wounded German just sitting up. He screamed. Gaston blew his face off and kept going, muttering, “Silly Boche!”

Captain Gringo drove the steamer over other Germans to where the sandbags formed wings on either side of the service road to the main base. He braked to a stop and made sure there was a fresh belt for the Spandau, too. It was getting lighter by the minute and he could see almost a quarter of a mile down the road. It formed a sort of tunnel between the trees the Germans had left on either side for camouflage.

He winced as Gaston fired one of the big eight-inchers behind him to send a shell screaming south. A second ear-splitting detonation whipped his bare back with its shock wave sooner than he’d expected. How the hell could even Gaston reload and fire so fast? Oh, right, the old artillery ace was using both guns, letting the Indians manhandle the heavy ammo on one as he fired the other. Pretty slick. Ouch! There he went again, and the first shells were already landing with duller roars a dozen miles or so to the south. If Gaston was aiming as good as he was firing, the base camp was in big trouble!

Farther out to sea, the commanding officer of the U.S.S. Maine was out on the bridge wing, staring shoreward as he listened to the distant thunder of big guns. A junior officer joined him to say, “Sparks says he’s still picking up that S.O.S., sir. It seems to be coming from the mainland. It can’t be another vessel in distress as we thought.”

The skipper said, “Somebody’s in trouble. Listen to those big guns on the horizon. Order Captain Gates to get his marines ready. We’d best send in a landing party.”

The junior officer frowned and said, “Ay ay, sir. But, ah, Honduras is supposed to be a friendly country.”

“So I hear. I hear big guns, too. the U.S.S. Maine is cruising these waters to keep the peace, mister. And I mean to keep the Mosquito Coast peaceful if I have to kill every one of the damned greasers. The Honduran military isn’t allowed to have bigger guns than the U.S. Marines. If some sons of bitches have armed the rebel faction with eight-inchers, Uncle Sam is going to be mad as hell about it. Get those marines ready to go ashore and restore order with their Krags, dammit! You have your orders. Any questions about ’em?”

“Just one, sir. What if they train those big guns on us as we steam in?”

“What? Fire on the U.S.S. Maine! Unthinkable, mister. Nobody nicks the paint of the Maine if they don’t want a war they’ll remember!”

On shore, Captain Gringo was blissfully unaware of the hornets’ nest he’d stirred up with his radio signals meant to confuse the Germans. But he had other troubles. It was almost broad daylight now, and a mess of white-clad German marines were boiling up the road from the south on the double, rifles at port as they jogged in perfect step.

They spotted him at about the same time, slid to a stop, and spread out to take cover in the trees on either side. He growled, “Nice going, you poor dumb assholes. Didn’t your mothers ever tell you that mangroves don’t grow thick enough to stop a bullet?” He crouched down, held the grips of one machine gun in each hand, and opened up with plunging fire, moving the two streams of hot lead like a giant pair of garden shears as he traversed blindly but effectively at maximum range.

He ceased fire when he saw some gays way down the road, running like hell the other way. There weren’t too many of them. He grinned and reloaded both machine guns, just in case some wise-ass was still brave enough to try to move in on his belly through the brush.

Nothing happened for a while. Gaston had stopped firing. A few minutes later the Frenchman joined him, followed by the sweated-up but grinning Indians. Gaston said, “Eh bien. I expended every shell on hand, and if I did not flatten that German base, I most certainly worried the merde out of them! Let us return to the raft and get our adorable asses out of here. We can drop our friends off at the north base of the peninsula, put our pants back on, and be in Patuca in no time.”

They all piled in. Captain Gringo opened the throttle and drove south down the service road, saying, “Watch the trees on either side. You never know when some wounded snake in the grass will be a poor loser.”

“Dick, you are going the wrong way, dammit!”

“No, I’m not. Even if we had the fuel to make Patuca, which we don’t, it’d still be a piss-poor place for two wanted men to turn up. By now Sylvia and the others have made it to the British consulate in Patuca. Said consulate will have told the Honduran authorities there’s a mess of trespassers on Honduran soil. I don’t want to shoot it out with the Honduran army if I don’t have to, do you?”

“Mais non, we trained some of them a while back, as I recall! But where can we go?”

“Depends on what we find at the main German base. Decepciona, tell your friends to bail out and run into the trees when I slow down. It won’t be long now. I see a break in the cover up ahead.”

So the Indians rolled over the sides a few minutes later and Captain Gringo opened the throttle wide to drive into the German camp lickety split, both machine guns firing wildly as they bounced over shell craters Gaston’s barrage had left all over the place. Flattened wreckage and bodies lay all around, and a screaming German ran out from behind some stacked cases waving a white pillowcase in a gesture of surrender. Gaston snarled, “Surely you jest!” and chopped him down with a burst of Spandau fire.

Captain Gringo slid to a stop by a pile of fuel drums. He said, “Cover me while I refill our empty cans. Don’t shoot any more poor bastards who want to give up, Gaston.”

“You get the diesel oil and let me deal with Boche! You were not there when they fired on our white flag in ’70, Dick.”

Nobody else showed his or her face as Captain Gringo got the diesel oil. When they had enough, he put his fingers between his lips and whistled for Decepciona and the other Indians. They came running. As they leaped a shell crater and were passing a downed German marine, he made the mistake of raising his head. One of the machete men lopped it off without breaking stride.

They piled into the steamer. Captain Gringo opened the throttle again and spun a cloud of sand behind them as he revved the wheels with the throttle wide open. So they were doing about forty miles an hour when he hit the sandbag parapet south of the base, plowed through it to bounce over the dry moat, and tore through the barbed wire as if it hadn’t been there. As he slowed down to steer between the trees of uncut jungle to the south, he mused aloud, “That’s the answer to barbed wire. Remind me to write a letter to my congressman if we ever have a war with Germany.”

“I don’t think they will listen, Dick. Your loving Uncle Sam still wants to hang you. Will you tell me, now, where we are going?”

“Back to Puerto Cabezas. We can drop our redskin pals off at the next westbound trail.”

They were speaking English, so Decepciona still didn’t know the honeymoon was over. Gaston said, “Eh bien, I’ve exhausted my imagination trying to think up some way to make zigzig with Mimi. Do I have time to screw Decepciona right, if you’re through with her?”

“No. We couldn’t have killed everybody back there, even though you did one hell of a swell job. I want to get a good start on any pissed-off survivors. I don’t want to be around when anyone else comes along to mop up, either. They could have heard your cannonade up in Patuca if the wind was right.”

“Eh bien, I agree Patuca might not have a healthy climate for two wanted men at the moment. But have you forgotten they are hunting us in Puerto Cabezas as well?”

“No, they’re not. The last time the cops there saw us, we were tearing ass out of town in a horseless carriage. We’ll ditch this in a swamp before we get there, then walk in under cover of darkness, looking innocent as hell. We know better than to head for Fifi’s again. But the posada Sylvia picked me up in should be safe until we can find a boat headed for Costa Rica. The barkeep who called the cops is dead. Nobody else there could have sicced the cops on me. The cops don’t make a habit of sweeping that part of town.”

They drove on until they came to a place in what looked like virgin jungle that the scouts recognized. Neither white man could see how, but it was their jungle, and if they said the invisible path led back to their people, they had to be right.

With Decepciona’s help, he got them all out and headed for home. The men started west without comment. But the two girls said they wanted to say goodbye properly. Gaston grinned, took Decepciona’s arm, and asked, “Dick?”

Captain Gringo sighed and said, “How soon they forget. Okay, I have to refill the main tank, anyway. But make it a quicky.”

Gaston started leading Decepciona into the trees as she asked him, innocently, “Is not Dick person coming too?”

“Mais non, mon petite. This time I mean to discover for myself if you are as tight up front as you are behind. Come say goodbye to your Uncle Gaston like a good little girl.”

Captain Gringo grunted in annoyance as he refilled the steamer’s tank. He knew he was dumb to feel annoyed. Decepciona had been the kind of dame every man said he was looking for, until he found one. It was a shame you couldn’t meet a dedicated sex maniac who was devoted to you alone.

He tossed away the empty tin and moved around to the seats, wondering if he should start thinking of getting dressed again. The oil on his naked skin was almost all rubbed off by now, and people might talk if he went into town bare-assed.

He saw that Mimi had climbed into the backseat and was reclining against the cushions with her thighs spread invitingly as she smiled mutely at him. He said, “You’re a pretty little thing, too. I’ve always admired skinny dames with big tits, but, Jesus, haven’t you had enough yet?”

The Indian girl of course had no idea what he was saying and couldn’t talk to him. But she put her fingers to the slit of her oiled, shaved pubis in a gesture that needed no words. So Captain Gringo grinned and said, “Oh, hell, since you put it that way …” as he climbed in the backseat with her, already rising to the occasion.

Mimi took his dawning erection in hand to guide it into her as he added, “We’ve probably got time for a quicky. Gaston will take forever with a new partner and …” Then, as he felt what he was getting into, he thrust hard and groaned, “Oh, yeah, let’s hope Gaston takes at least a couple of hours getting back!”