THE OTHER MEN weren’t as quick to learn as Tolliver, but two of them came close. Gatling was patient with the third pair of gunners, who weren’t so good; just the same, they would have to do. Tolliver, brimming with confidence, said he would shape them up in no time. After a little more firing practice, the gunners were told to quit for the day. Gatling cleaned and reloaded the starboard gun and went to sit in the shade of the upper deck. There were three rough cabins up there and Kilby was sleeping in one of them.
Tolliver came to join Gatling; he eased himself down in a bamboo chair, which creaked under his weight, and busied himself with his new Winchester. He cleaned it twice and then he thumbed in a full load of cartridges.
“I think we did all right today, Mr. Gatling,” he said. “Course you may think different.”
“Everybody did fine, Mr. Tolliver. You got any sacks on board?”
“We got plenty old coffee sacks. You fixing to make sandbags?”
Gatling pointed to the brass rail that ran around the lower deck. “That’s no protection. We need sandbags. You know a sandy beach where we can fill up?”
“There’s a good beach way upriver. We’ll get to it by noon tomorrow. The boat can get in pretty close, not all the way though. Got to watch we don’t get grounded on a bar. Be a hell of a thing if they attacked with us grounded.”
“You think Suarez would come this far downriver?”
“No telling what he’d do if he took the notion. This isn’t Parimba Province, if that’s what you mean. But that wouldn’t stop old Jorge. He’d buy his way across two provinces or just plain invade.”
Gatling looked at the vultures wheeling in the sky. Jacares, the Amazon crocodiles, slid into the water at the approach of the Ruffin. It was brutally hot, well over a hundred degrees. The men were cleaning their new rifles in the shade of the top deck.
“Does Suarez have any kind of riverboat?” Gatling asked.
Tolliver drank water from a canteen. “The old governor had one. I mean the old governor before Suarez’s brother took over. Old Jorge killed his own twin brother, as you probably know. The boat’s about fifty years old, if it’s still in one piece, and not in good shape. A leaky old tub with engines that should have been retired long since. Francesco Suarez—that’s the dead governor—hardly ever used it. It stayed tied up at the landing.”
“What happened to it?”
“The captain took it upriver when the rebels—Jorge’s bandits—attacked the town of Parimba. Anyway, it’s gone and hasn’t been seen since. Must have sailed clear to Peru.”
The sky turned dark red and it got dark on the river. Mosquitoes were out in swarms, big bastards biting deep, sucking blood. There was nothing to be done about them, and Gatling noticed that most of the men didn’t even slap when they were bitten. The shrieks of howler monkeys and the screeching of jungle falcons came from both banks of the great river. A million fireflies winked on and off like signal lights as night came down.
Gatling was no seasoned backlander and he slapped at the mosquitoes that were attacking his hands, face and neck. The worst of it was that the bastards carried malaria and there was a Cuban doctor named Carlos Juan Finlay who believed they were the source of yellow fever. He asked Tolliver if Finlay’s theory was true.
“Could be,” Tolliver said. “I’ve had yellow jack and survived. You die or get over it. Mostly you die.”
“That’s a cheerful thought, Mr. Tolliver.”
“As a real goddamned nuisance, the puins, the gnats, are worse than mosquitoes.” Tolliver was trying to change the subject in his ponderous way. “You’ll have the pleasure of meeting them when we get another hundred miles upriver. They’re the scourge of the upper Amazon, Mr. Gatling. But they don’t carry fevers as far as we know.”
There was no moon at first and the riverboat plowed upstream at a steady but reduced speed. Gatling and Tolliver sat on the coffee sacks they were going to fill with sand. Supper was completa, a backlands stew made of beef, rice and beans with farina mixed in to thicken it. The stew looked like the jungle Rebs had come a long way from fried chicken and speckled gravy. Gatling hadn’t eaten completa before, hadn’t even heard of it, but it was good. For dessert there was manioc pudding with cloves. He would have given ten dollars for a bottle of cold beer, but there was no beer, hot or cold, aboard the Ruffin.
The men sat on boxes or were hunkered down eating their supper. There was little talk. The machine gun crews ate close to their weapons; one gunner ate his stew sitting in the gunner’s seat. Kilby sat apart from everyone, picking at his food.
The moon broke through the clouds, flooding the wide river with light. The sound of the engines changed as the boat increased its speed. Tolliver said a riverboat could go nearly as fast at night as by day, provided there was a good moon.
After supper, Tolliver allowed as how every man who wanted it could have a drink of sugarcane rum. One drink was the limit, and any man caught trying to promote a second would be fed to the piranhas. Everyone laughed but Kilby. The men knew Tolliver wouldn’t feed them to the killer fish, but they got the point.
The old Reb who cooked poured the harsh-tasting rum from a big can with a spout. He had a string of tin cups on a long stick. Tolliver asked Gatling if he wanted a drink of good sugarcane and he said no thanks.
“You got any beer at New Columbia?” Gatling asked.
“All you can drink. Rich and dark. The Brazilians know how to make good beer. We learned from them, then went them one better.”
Tolliver took a cup off the stick holder and the old man filled it for him. He drank it down in one long swallow and slapped his belly. “Raw, fiery stuff but damn good.”
Looking at the jungle, its trees dark green in the moonlight, Gatling said, “This sure is wild country.”
“But it’s fine country too,” Tolliver said. “I hated it when I first came here. Now I wouldn’t want to live anyplace else. It is wild though. Out there in that rain forest are jaguars and wild boars that’ll slash you to pieces they get the chance. Buggers can run as fast as a horse. It’s got boa constrictors and anacondas, biggest snakes in the world, and bushmasters, maybe the most poisonous. The rain forest’s got everything that walks and crawls, climbs and flies. Brazil’s got every blessing and every curse. The leprosy is what scares the shit out of me.”
“What kind of watch are you posting?”
“Half the men will sleep on deck as they always do. Then the other half will sleep. Ten hours will take us to first light. I’m taking no chances, Mr. Gatling. Anything happens during the night we’ll be ready for it.”
Some of the men were already stretched out with mosquito netting spread over them. Tolliver got some for Gatling and himself. “Here’s a pillow for you,” Tolliver said, handing Gatling a few rolled up coffee sacks.
Gatling stretched out and was asleep in minutes.
Before noon the next day the Ruffin anchored by the river beach where the sandbags were to be filled. The crew couldn’t get the ship any closer because of the danger of running aground. The ship’s boat was used to take the sacks ashore. Tolliver posted riflemen back from the beach and a watch was kept on the river, fore, aft and portside. Tolliver went ashore, but Gatling stayed aboard holding the light gun.
Getting the sandbags on board was slow work because the ship’s boat was small. But finally it was done and the sandbags were in place. Gatling told Tolliver to wet them down, soak them right through. No need to tell him that wet sandbags would stop a bullet better than dry.
Everybody wanted to fight if trouble came, even the elderly cook. Tolliver told the cook, the two boilermen and the engineer to do their jobs and leave the fighting to the rest of them. The wheelhouse had been sandbagged too because it was high up and would be a target. Tolliver told Gatling he could take over if the helmsman got killed or badly wounded.
“Let’s hope you don’t have to take over for the cook,” Gatling said. “I don’t figure you as a kitchen mechanic.”
Trouble came two days later at a great mile-wide bend in the river. The channel there was narrow and the crew had to run fairly close to the shore. A whole fleet of canoes pushed out from the swamp that bordered the river and heavy rifle fire opened up from the jungle. Gatling figured there were thirty or forty big canoes filled with paddlers and riflemen, all moving fast. Tolliver opened fire with the starboard Maxim and the canoes closest to the riverboat were blown to bits. There was no attack from the portside—the river was too wide—and Gatling ordered everybody starboard. They moved the portside gun and the gunner opened fire. The gunner wasn’t so good, but it was hard to miss, the way the canoes were bunched up. Lined up behind the sandbags, the riflemen fired steadily. But the canoes kept coming and more were putting out from shore; the firing from the shoreline trees remained heavy. Gatling raked the lead canoes with the light gun. Wounded men screamed as they tumbled into the water. Gatling shouted at the riflemen to stop shooting at the wounded men in the river. The water boiled up as the deadly piranhas attacked the dead and wounded. Nothing could scare off the killer fish when there was blood in the water.
The Ruffin was moving at full speed, leaving the canoes behind. Two of Tolliver’s men were killed by shoreline fire. Another man was wounded, but he kept firing until he collapsed. Not too bad, Gatling thought; Suarez had lost at least fifty or sixty men. The men firing from the shore had moved down to the edge of the water, trying to follow the run of the boat, but the swamp blocked them and gradually they fell behind. Gatling was beginning to think they had beaten off the attack when the lookout behind sandbags on the second deck yelled, “Steamboat coming! Steamboat bearing down!”
Gatling and Tolliver ran forward. A big old steamboat was coming from behind a wooded island about a thousand yards upstream. It rode high in the water, a three-deck gingerbread floating palace dating back to the 1840s. Gatling knew it was the old governor’s boat before Tolliver told him. For so old a boat it was moving pretty fast, with the downstream current helping to push it along. It was about ten times bigger than the Ruffin; tall as a five-story hotel, it looked like one too. Gatling looked at it through his binoculars; it was called the Pedro II and it bristled with men and guns. The name of the huge boat, once white but faded to a dirty gray, was lettered in red on a gold background. A small cannon boomed as it got closer, but the ball fell short. A second cannon threw another ball; it fell short like the first one. They were no kind of gunners, Gatling knew, but one or two lucky shots could kill a lot of men and do a lot of damage.
When the Ruffin drew close enough, Gatling ordered the Maxim gunners to open fire. All three machine guns had been moved forward. Two Maxims concentrated on the foredeck, where the cannons were, while the third fired at the upper decks. Gatling put down the light gun and slid the heavy armor-piercing rifle out of its case and loaded a huge shell. Suddenly a cannonball hissed over their heads and splintered the deck. There was a box of dynamite on deck, but it was placed well forward and protected by a double layer of sandbags. Some of the sticks were capped and ready to go; they had short fuses. Gatling hadn’t used them against the canoes because of possible shock damage to the Ruffin. And the Maxims had done the job just as well.
Another cannonball struck the water close to the portside of the boat. Gatling steadied the huge rifle on a pile of sandbags and fired at the Pedro II and hit it just below the waterline. He bolted and fired four more shells, trying to put them in the same place. The fire from the Pedro II was thinning before the storm of lead laid down by the three Maxims. Tolliver’s men were getting the feel of the Maxims and were doing all right. Another cannonball struck the sandbags protecting Tolliver’s machine gun. The top bags were knocked back on the deck and split open, but the gun was unharmed. Two riflemen ran to replace the sandbags; one of them was killed by a bullet through the head.
“Keep your goddamned head down!” Tolliver roared at the other man as bullets whanged off the shield on both sides of his gun. Gatling steadied the big rifle and bolted and fired four more shells at the Pedro II. But even as he fired the Pedro II was beginning to tilt to one side. Gatling fired two more shells. The kick of the big rifle was terrific, but the hand grip and the rubber pad at the end of the stock helped to soften it a little. No doubt about it; the Pedro II was starting to sink. But it kept coming.
“They’re trying to ram us up or drive us on a bank!” Tolliver yelled. He cursed as a bullet tore away his right earlobe and he began to bleed like a stuck pig. He cursed even harder when the last of the six hundred bullets in the feed box ran through the gun. Grits, the loader, was fumbling with fresh belts. Gatling ducked down and ran crouching to the gun and loaded two more belts. Tolliver started firing again. There was blood all over him and the firing handles. Gatling picked up the light gun and started firing.
The Pedro II kept coming, but the stern was underwater and the decks were awash. Then its boilers exploded and sent the paddlewheels crashing into the river. After that the enormous riverboat sank in seconds. The channel there was shallow and it just settled to the bottom of the river. It looked like a cracked and peeling old summer hotel up to its second floor in water. The cannons were out of action, covered by thirty feet of water. Men were scrambling to get to the upper decks; the Maxims chased them with bullets. Ragged fire still came from the upper decks. Gatling ran to reload the other Maxims. He checked the water reservoirs, but they were all right for the moment. He told the gunners to keep firing.
He went back to Tolliver, who was still bleeding and cursing and firing steadily. “Going to be a tight squeeze,” Tolliver shouted. Gatling agreed; the Pedro II had slewed around when it sank and it blocked most of the channel.
“It’s your boat,” Gatling shouted back. The rattle of the three machine guns and the Winchesters was deafening. “I say take her through.”
Tolliver shouted at one of the riflemen. “You there, Rollins, go tell the helmsman to take us through. Full speed ahead. Don’t run, for Christ’s sake—crawl! But crawl fast!” Suddenly the rifle fire from the Pedro II eased off and stopped. Gatling knew their enemies were waiting to see what happened. Suarez’s men had the advantage of being able to shoot down at the Ruffin, and the Maxims could be elevated just so much. If they got stuck in the channel, that would be the end of it. Hundreds of men were still on the Pedro II and they would come swarming down and bury Gatling and the others with sheer numbers.
As Rollins came crawling back, the engines roared and the stern wheel began to spin; the Ruffin started to move. A roar went up from the Pedro II when Suarez’s men saw it coming. There was just enough time and distance for the Ruffin to get up a full head of steam. The Ruffin wasn’t a new boat, but it was small and well maintained; it surged through the muddy water like a terrier about to take on a mastiff. Gatling took four capped sticks from the box and pulled it closer to the sandbags protecting the riflemen and the guns. One shot would blow the Ruffin and all aboard to kingdom come. The wild men on the Pedro II howled and cheered and opened fire with everything they had. Tolliver’s riflemen were crouched behind the wall of sandbags on the portside; the three Maxims were turned to fire at the big riverboat as they swept past.
When they pulled within a hundred yards of the Pedro II, the big boat looked even bigger. Gatling piled sandbags around the dynamite box and handed two sticks to Tolliver, kept two for himself, then lit two thin cigars at the same time and gave one to Tolliver.
“How’s your pitching arm?” Gatling yelled at Tolliver, who was crouched down, the cigar in his mouth, a stick of dynamite in both hands.
“Never better,” Tolliver yelled back.
Hit by heavy fire, the Ruffin started into the narrowed channel between the Pedro II and the sandbank. Three riflemen dropped as bullets tore into them.
“Now!” Gatling jumped to his feet with the short fuse hissing down to the cap. He threw the stick and put it through an open door on the second deck. It exploded as soon as it landed. Tolliver threw his first stick all the way up to the third deck. The two explosions ran together and the big riverboat started to burn. Gatling and Tolliver threw the second sticks; a tremendous bump shook the Ruffin as Tolliver’s stick bounced back and exploded underwater. The shock was so great that the Ruffin was thrust against the hard-packed sandbar. It hung there for seconds, with the stern wheel scraping the bar, but it didn’t stick. Its engines roared as it bumped off the bar and back into the channel. The small boat seemed to race because the space between the two boats was so narrow. No more fire came from the Pedro II, which was burning along its entire length. The decrepit old steamboat, its sun-bleached wood tinder dry, burned as fast as a brush fire.
With barely ten feet of clearance, the Ruffin bumped against the side of the burning boat, then got through to open water. Gatling ran to the stern with the light gun and opened fire on the men jumping to escape the flames or already in the water. The piranhas would have a real feast that day; he stopped firing when the fast-moving riverboat took him out of range. He went back to where Tolliver and others were checking the dead and wounded.
“Six dead, four wounded,” Tolliver said. “Looks like two of the wounded won’t last long. Maybe they’ll all die. This country is hell on any kind of bad wound. We’ll put the dead in the river. Can’t get them home in this heat. Bodies would be stinking by the time we got there.”
Gatling saw the sense in Tolliver’s remarks; it hardly mattered how dead bodies were disposed of. If they put ashore to bury the dead, the rest of the attackers still in the jungle might catch up with them.
“Where’s Kilby?” Gatling asked. He hadn’t seen him during the fight.
Tolliver’s smile was bitter. “Poor feller looked sick and shaky, so I sent him below to keep an eye on the boilers. Had to give the general’s son something important to do.”
Far behind them the Pedro II was nothing but an enormous column of black smoke darkening the sky. Tolliver’s men were dropping the dead bodies into the river.
“Did he argue with you, Mr. Tolliver?”
“Sure he did, but finally he went below. I guess we’ll be seeing him now the fight’s over. Here he comes, the little gentleman.”
Kilby must have been nipping below decks because he was full of piss and vinegar. Gatling felt like throwing him in the river with the dead men. A little unsteadily, he came over to where they were. A wounded man screamed and died. Gatling looked at Tolliver. The big man was clenching his fists.
“By God, we showed the bastards, didn’t we?” Kilby said. “When I heard those explosions I thought the boilers were ready to blow. Would be a painless death, I guess. The whole boiler-room shook. The boilermen were pissing their pants.”
Tolliver looked at him stone faced. “But not you, Otis?”
Kilby had too much booze in him to catch the insult. “Damn right, I didn’t, Burt. Sure, everybody’s a little scared in a fight. It’s how you handle it that makes the difference.”
Tolliver stood up and walked away without a word. Kilby sat on the box facing Gatling and took a swig from his pocket flask. “Damn! I needed that drink. What’s the matter with Burt?”
“I guess he lost some friends today. You know how it is.” Gatling decided he would just have to put up with Kilby. He was the general’s son; nothing to be gained by telling him what a rotten drunken coward he was. Gatling was there to do a job and would be well paid for it if he survived. Kilby was a problem, but he wasn’t Gatling’s problem.
Kilby shook his empty flask and put it back in his pocket. “I guess that’s why he was so short with me. Burt and I are the best of friends. He’s the colony’s best blacksmith, you know.”
Gatling wondered what Tolliver would say to all that. “He’s a good man and a born fighter, whatever he is.”
Kilby forgot his flask was empty and tried to take another drink from it. His nervous laugh grated on Gatling’s nerves. “Must get this thing refilled. Guess it will have to be good old sugarcane.” He turned to look as Tolliver stooped down beside a wounded man who died a moment later. Tolliver closed the dead man’s eyes with thumb and forefinger and stood up. Then he moved on to the next man.
Kilby looked away. “The main thing is the bastards didn’t get the guns.”
No thanks to you, Gatling thought, but said nothing. They were dropping the man who had just died into the river. The body count had changed to eight dead, two wounded. Gatling watched as the bent old cook pushed and pulled Tolliver and made him sit on a box so he could bandage his ear.
“How many men did we lose?” Kilby suddenly remembered to ask. The question was an afterthought; he had been bullshitting about everything else, especially his courage in the boiler-room.
When Gatling told him, Kilby shook his head in sadness and admiration. “Brave men! Fine men! The best!” He hiccupped.
Even for Gatling his hypocrisy was too much. “I’ve got to clean the Maxims,” he said and walked away.
When he looked back, Kilby was sneaking into the cook’s galley to fill his flask with sugarcane rum.