Captain Gringo awakened with a start, rolled off his bunk with his pillow gun, and wound up prone, naked, armed, and dangerous in the dark before he was fully awake. He lay with his weight on his elbows, both hands gripping the double-action .38 trained on the stateroom door. His heart pounded against the hard decking as he strained with all his senses to determine what the hell he was doing down on the floor. He hadn’t been dreaming. So something else must have gone bump in the night. But what?

There was a sliver of lamplight under his stateroom door. Said door had been locked from the inside before he’d turned in, but nobody seemed to be out in the companionway close enough to matter. He recalled that the companionway lamp was on the bulkhead opposite his stateroom. Feet cast shadows, and there were no shadows, so what was left?

He listened, holding his breath. Save for his own heartbeat, all he heard were the usual creakings of a rusty old tramp steamer under way. He shook his head again and muttered, “I must be getting Fugitive Fever. It’s my own fault for going to bed alone and sober!”

He climbed back onto the bunk, placing the gun on the crumpled linens beside him as he groped in the dark for his shirt and a smoke. He glanced idly at the small porthole across the way, wondering what time it was. Then the penny dropped.

He muttered, “What the hell?” as he resized what had awakened him. He hadn’t heard any additional bumps in the night. In fact, he had awakened because he had heard too few. When he’d turned in, the fusty old tub had been threatening to pop the last of the rivets holding her together as they’d wallowed south in the ground swells of the trade winds. Now they were steaming smooth as silk. Ergo, they were no longer standing out to sea. So where the hell were they?

Captain Gringo picked up his shirt, fished out a Havana claro and a box of wax matches, and lit up before he rose to go to the porthole. He hadn’t thought to worry about that side of the tiny stateroom before, since the porthole opened out the sheer side of the hull, amidships. As he peered out, he swore softly. Harbor lights were something a guy had to swear at, this far north. He and his sidekick, Gaston, were wanted in every port north of Limón. They’d been off Honduras when he’d turned in for the night. There was no way this tub could have steamed six hundred sea miles since midnight!

The deal Gaston had made with the French purser had not included putting in this side of Costa Rica. Gaston had assured Captain Gringo that the purser of this rust bucket was an old pal from the Legion who knew the facts of life, and they’d paid the son of a bitch double the going rate.

Captain Gringo pressed his nose to the glass as he studied the ominous noose of shore lights they were steaming into. One harbor looked much like any other at night. Wherever they were, they were in trouble.

He took a deep drag on his cigar and used the glowing tip to light the oil lamp over the bunk. Then he dressed, pronto. He’d just slipped his linen jacket on over the gun he’d put back in its shoulder rig when he heard Gaston’s knock.

He opened the stateroom door, and as the older, smaller soldier of fortune slipped in, Captain Gringo said, “I noticed. I thought you said we could trust these sons of bitches!”

Gaston sat down and sighed. “Merde alors, one would be a fool to trust his mother if she ever read all the reward posters out on the two of us. But I don’t think it’s that, Dick. I have enough on the rogues on the bridge of this thrice-accursed vessel to assure their joining us in durance vile. I just came from the bridge. They say the problem is salt water.”

“They say what? We were just steaming down the Caribbean, you idiot!”

“Ah, you noticed that, Dick? The problem is not the salt in the sea. This species of a rusty antique has salt water in her boilers, too. Don’t look at me like so. I assure you I didn’t turn the wrong valve. I don’t even know why a steam engine can’t run on salt water.”

Captain Gringo grimaced and said, “I do. If we’re boiling brine, we’re lucky to be moving at all. The damned condenser tubes must have finally rusted through. I told you when we boarded this tub in Mexico that it looked like nobody’d so much as swabbed the deck since it was launched, God knows when!”

As if to make his point, an added hush fell over the hitherto throbbing vessel. Gaston cocked an eyebrow and said, “The engines have stopped, non?”

“The engines have stopped, yes. We’re losing headway already. But the skipper turned in soon enough to keep from going dead in the water out on the bounding main. Do you have any idea where the hell we are, by the way?”

Gaston nodded and said, “Oui. Puerto Cabezas.”

“Jesus, Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua?”

“Sacre bleu, don’t look at me like that, Dick. I told you I didn’t do it! Look at the bright side, my tall tanned youth with glowering eyes of gray. Puerto Cabezas is just south of the Nicaraguan border. A sixty-mile moonlight romp through the jungles of the adorable Mosquito Coast would see us safely across the Rio Segovia, running trés amuse through the jungles of Honduras, hein?”

“For God’s sake, we’re wanted in Honduras, too!”

“True, but not as badly as in Nicaragua. I told you as we last left Nicaragua that they would never forgive you for sinking that gunboat so noisily, hein? If we can make it to Laguna Caratasca, up the Honduran coast, I used to know some rogues there who would no doubt take us in. Coastal pirates can always use extra hands who know which end of a gun the bullets come out, non?”

Captain Gringo moved back to the port as he asked, “How long back did you say it was when you knew these knock-around guys, Gaston?”

Gaston shrugged and said, “Ten, maybe twelve years ago. Piracy is not my usual line of work. But any old port in a storm is better than the one we seem to be in at the moment, non?”

Captain Gringo looked out and said, “Shit, we’re dead in the water and a tug’s coming out to take us in tow. That’ll mean customs officials about to board. We’d better get out on deck where a guy can duck more than one way.”

They stepped out into the companionway, saw nobody in sight, and moved up a ladder. Their supercargo staterooms had been booked under the amidships of the three-island freighter, so when they got topside, they were in the dark by the funnel, aft of the bridge superstructure. Two lifeboats hung at either side of the funnel. So they were covered by the dark shadows aft the bridge while gaining a bird’s-eye view of the dismal scene below. A couple of guys in white uniforms stood in the bow of the tug as it approached the steamer. Captain Gringo muttered, “What did I tell you? Those are customs officials, sure as hell!”

Gaston shrugged and said, “Eh bien, our friends in the crew are old hands at dealing with customs in strange ports. We are not in our staterooms. Our passages will hardly be engraved in stone on the ship’s no-doubt-quite-in-order papers. Since we did not put in here to discharge any cargo, there is no need for anyone to make a trés fatigue search of the whole vessel, hein?”

“I hope you’re right. Let’s talk about pirates again. Even down here, piracy seems to be a pretty obsolete industry. Didn’t the British navy go boom boom a lot at some coast pirates off the Half Moon Reefs a few years ago?”

“Oui. I read the names of the men they hanged. None of them were anyone I ever worked with.”

“I’m so happy for you. The point is that the Half Moons are just east of Laguna Caratasca, and there’s been no piracy in that neighborhood since. What would these old pals of yours be doing there now—gathering Spanish moss for drinking money?”

“Merde alors, how should I know? I told you I haven’t dropped by for supper in the last ten years. I agree they may not be there now. But do you have somewhere more important to go?”

“Let’s move behind the funnel. Those shits are sure to come up on the bridge, if only to strut their stuff. We could probably take that tug over. The top of her cabin’s too far to jump, but if we worked our way down to the cargo deck …”

Gaston waited until they were hidden in the shadow of the funnel before he sighed and said, “Behave yourself, you naughty child! I am trés certain you could seize that poor little steam tug. I’ve seen you seize everything from a railroad train to a balloon since I made the mistake of escaping that firing squad with you. But leave that tug alone. There’s nowhere to go in a shallow-draft vessel from here. I know this harbor. It is trés small and trés land-locked. Our best chance is to—”

“Hush! They’re coming topside!” the tall blond American cut in, drawing his .38 with one hand as he snuffed his smoke with the other.

Gaston murmured, “Good thinking. Why should there be smoke from the vicinity of a dead funnel, non?”

“Will you shut up? They’re on the bridge, talking to the skipper!”

Gaston drew his own pistol, silently for a change. As the two soldiers of fortune crouched in the shadows, straining their ears, they couldn’t make out the words, but the conversation up ahead didn’t sound excited.

A million years went by. Then they heard the familiar bustle of crewmen making ready for a tow. Captain Gringo hissed, “Cover me!” and crabbed over between the lifeboats. Nothing happened topside, so he peeked over the side, and, sure enough, the two guys in white were back aboard the tug. They were standing on the fan deck, watching with idle interest as the smaller vessel took the crippled tramp in tow.

Gaston joined him, had his own peek, and said, “Eh bien, all is well that does not end trés fatigue. We have been exciting ourselves over nothing, my old and nervous. They have bought our adorable skipper’s story, since it is mostly true in the first place. Shall we join him and find out how long we shall have to stay here?”

Captain Gringo thought, nodded, and put his gun away. Gaston did the same before leading the way to the bridge via a hatchway opening on the deck they’d climbed to.

The skipper was not on the bridge. But Gaston knew the French watch officer as well or better. Captain Gringo listened, bemused, as the two of them spoke machine-gun French too fast for him to follow. His Spanish had gotten pretty good since he’d first jumped the U.S. border just ahead of a U.S. Army hangman. High-school French worked only when people spoke slowly. Unfortunately, he’d yet to meet a Frenchman who did.

Gaston swore in French that Captain Gringo could understand, since in their travels he called lots of people motherfuckers. Gaston turned from the watch officer and told Captain Gringo, “All is lost. For the moment they have satisfied the local authorities. But we are putting into a shipyard for extensive repairs. This offspring of an unfortunate incestuous union of halfwits tells me that the captain applied for permission to give his entire crew shore leave while this bucket of rusty bolts waits for spare parts from New Orleans.”

Captain Gringo nodded soberly and said, “Right. If we stay aboard, some nosy Nicaraguan is going to wonder why. It’s almost four o’clock, and the sun will be up long before we could leg it far enough to matter, even if I liked the idea of running for a hideout that might not be there anymore. We’d better hole up ashore and hope for another boat out.”

Gaston grimaced and said, “Very funny. Puerto Cabezas is an out-of-the-way port of call and one could kick one of your silly Yanqui footballs the length of the main street.”

“Okay, since you know the place so well, do you know a nice hotel with hot and cold running no-questions?”

Gaston thought, shrugged, and said, “Oui, but I was hoping to spend at least some of that loot from Mexico on the good things of life in Costa Rica. Bribery is trés expensive in Nicaragua these days. The unpopular current government pays its police informers well above the usual rates.”

Gaston started to move on. They were alone in a companionway by this time. Captain Gringo grabbed his arm and said, “Hold it. There’s nothing in our staterooms we can’t replace. We’re packing our money belts and guns.”

“Oui, but the staterooms have doors that lock. As we put in, a swarm of Nicaraguans are going to swarm aboard, non?”

“Exactly. Let’s move down to the cargo deck. It’s dark. There’s bound to be a certain amount of confusion. So we slip ashore before anyone can get around to questioning us and—”

“But, Dick, the purser owes us. Our deal with him was passage to Limon, where neither of us are wanted by the trés fatigue law.”

“So? We’re two-thirds of the way there, and we don’t have to let the son of a bitch in on any future plans. You may be right about him not turning us in for the rewards aboard this tub. But make him mad, then go ashore, and what does he have to lose?”

“Merde alors, don’t you mean what does he have to gain? Eh bein, I kiss my lovely Mexican gold adieu. But I must say, travel seems trés expensive down here these days.”

~*~

The “hotel” Gaston remembered from his last run through Puerto Cabezas wasn’t exactly a hotel, or even a posada. It was a waterfront whorehouse. Captain Gringo said he should have known.

The tall American waited in the parlor downstairs while Gaston made a deal with the French Creole madam in her “office.” Captain Gringo sat in a corner trying to look invisible. It wasn’t easy. He had to take off his sombrero, and not another guy in the place was a gray-eyed blond with obviously Anglo-Saxon features. On the other hand, some of the working girls were blondes, thanks to peroxide, and the local males seemed more interested in dames of any color or complexion, so what the hell.

There were six or eight johns and a dozen whores lounging around among the red velvet settees, potted rubber plants, and brass cuspidors. The guys all wore the white linens of reasonably prosperous gents in these parts. The whores wore next to nothing, with lots of black lace and/or red sateen. A rinky-dink piano was playing ragtime in a corner by the small bar. Both the piano player and the barkeep were female, black, and not wearing much more than were their working sisters. A couple of the latter were giving Captain Gringo the eye as he sat there smoking a cigar and trying to look innocent. He mostly felt dumb. What in the hell was keeping Gaston? The little Frenchman had been alone with that shop-worn old redhead a lot longer than it took to say yes or no.

A muchacha with iced-tea skin and lemonade hair came over to sit on the arm of his red velvet chair. Her face was fair, her body was fantastic. She must have been proud of it. She was wearing only black mesh stockings, and she wasn’t really blond all over. She smiled down at Captain Gringo and asked, “What are we drinking, querido?”

He said, “If I order us gin and tonic, the barkeep won’t have to put tea in your water. But all I have on me is Mexican money. Can do?”

“Is it paper or silver, querido?”

“Gold. My smallest change is a twenty-peso gold piece.”

The whore laughed and said, “For that you can get drunk as well as laid in this place, good-looking. I am called Armida, and remember, I saw you first. Do you really need a drink to get up your courage with me? I hate to see a big spender throw his money away on club soda, but you can’t drink here alone.” He said he understood the rules of the game as he fished out a coin and handed it to her. She shrugged and moved over to the bar, wiggling her bare brown rump more than she really needed to in those high heels. Captain Gringo took out his watch. Gaston had been gone nearly an hour, damn his horny hide. All but one of the guys who’d been there in the parlor when he’d first sat down had gone up to the cribs. The one guy who was still there was across the room, pretending to read a newspaper. None of the whores had joined him. He either had V.D. or, more likely, had to be the professor, or a cop. He didn’t look big enough to bounce anyone. Nobody but a cop would be allowed to fall back on that bulge under his left armpit. Was there a telephone in the hall outside? Captain Gringo thought back, decided he’d have noticed if there was an easy way to call police headquarters from here, and tried to relax. If the guy was a cop, it was just as likely he’d come to see the madam for a payoff. He was probably wondering what was keeping her all this time, too.

Armida came back with two glasses filled with tepid liquid. His really had a little gin in it. The tonic water had gone flat. Ice was a semi mythical, exotic substance in a tropic dive like this. They had one of those new electric ceiling fans, moving sluggishly above. It was still too hot even to think about sex, even if he’d been in the habit of paying for it. But Armida leaned to brush a nipple against his ear as she husked, “Now that we have our drinks, what say we go upstairs, eh?”

He said, “Not just yet. I’m waiting for someone. I don’t suppose there was any change, huh?”

“Why do you want change, big spender? I told you you’d paid for me as well as the drinks.”

He was too polite to point out that she couldn’t be worth half that much, and, what the hell, he’d stolen the gold pesos. The guy across the way was staring over the top of his paper, eyes opaque. He wasn’t looking at them in particular, but he didn’t seem to be missing much. Captain Gringo slid his free hand around the Mestiza’s naked waist to satisfy the stranger’s curiosity as he told her, again, “I have to stay here until my compañero finishes with your madam, querida.”

She chuckled and said, “They’ve been alone in there long enough to do it all three ways, twice. They must be old friends. Madam Fifi seldom entertains customers herself. You say you hombres just came down from Mexico?”

He hadn’t, but the coin he’d given her had. He said, “I won some pesos playing cards the other night. My amigo and me are from Costa Rica.”

The whore laughed and said, “No, you’re not. If you are not a gringo, I am the Queen of England. But I understand. We get lots of your sort here. Is it not fortunate that Costa Rica is one of the few countries that has no extradition treaty with Tio Sam?”

He felt her up, absently, as he smiled sheepishly and said, “I heard you people here were understanding, Armida. As long as we’re on the subject, who’s that hombre over there behind the newspaper, a cop?”

She shook her bleached head slightly and said, “Not a cop. Don’t ask any more about him. He won’t ask about you. Rules of the house.”

“I like your rules, Armida.”

“You seem to like my ass, too. I told you it was yours for the taking, but for God’s sake let’s do it upstairs. Madam allows no shocking behavior down here in the parlor, and you have a shocking finger against my asshole. Are you trying to warm me up for Greek loving? Bueno, I am game, unless you are as big all over. Shoulders like yours can worry a girl!”

He doubted she’d be worried by a well-hung stallion. But he raised his hand to the small of her back, anyway. He knew she was trying to get him hot. The hell of it was—he was. He’d thought when he parted company with that big dumb Yankee gal in. Nuevo Santiago that he wouldn’t want to see another snatch for at least a month. But the long slow sea voyage had done wonders for his health, and it was hard to remember his own rules while running his hands over well-stacked naked female flesh.

He’d paid for it in his time. Any man over twenty-one who hadn’t tried at least one whore was probably a prude. But he’d never really enjoyed a whore, unless she put out for free. Gaston accused him of having a trés fatigue romantique nature. Gaston was probably right. But it sure felt dumb to bounce up and down on a dame who was doubtless thinking about something else, once you’d paid her.

He fumbled a sip from his glass with the cigar held awkwardly in the same hand, since the other was busy. Armida took the cigar, puffed it sensually, and said, “You are going to burn your eyebrows. Would you like to see me smoke this with my pussy?”

“Not hardly; it’s an expensive cigar. I thought you said you weren’t supposed to do anything shocking down here.”

“Silly, I meant upstairs. Listen, if you let me have all the change from these drinks, I am yours all day. La siesta will be starting soon, and most of our customers are required to go home and reassure their wives during la siesta. I can smoke with my rectum, too. I have fantastic control of my love muscles.”

His own love muscles were getting out of control indeed, even though he knew he was supposed to feel disgusted by this little waterfront bawd. What the hell, she was younger than he, so how many more times than he could she have changed partners, right? She apparently liked him, and it wasn’t as if he’d paid her, exactly. He knew he’d never get his change back without wrecking the joint, whether he took her brown ass in trade or not.

Then Gaston came into the parlor, looking tired but rather pleased with himself. The little Frenchman moved his head to signal a move to the bar. Captain Gringo told Armida he’d see her around the campus and got up to join Gaston. Armida was too smart to follow.

As the two soldiers of fortune bellied up to the bar together, Captain Gringo muttered, “It’s about time. How many times did you come in that old pig?”

Gaston chuckled and replied, “Now, Dick, is that any way to talk about our landlady? We are, as you say, all set. Aside from being happy to see an old friend, Fifi is a member of the Conservative party.”

Captain Gringo started to ask a dumb question. Then he remembered that the so-called Nicaraguan Liberal party had won the last revolution. The names meant nothing. The Liberals were a bunch of totalitarian militarists, and the so-called Conservatives were another, who weren’t related to them closely enough to get on the public payroll. The little people on both sides had been screwed, so why they fought for either eluded Captain Gringo, but it wasn’t his country so it wasn’t his problem.

Gaston said, “I hope you didn’t pay for that drink. Now that Fifi and I have resumed our, ah, companionship, everything is on the house. We have a couple of cribs upstairs. Sanitary facilities should be amusing, since we share the bathroom down the hall with les girls. Fifi says she will send food up to us privately. I don’t think we should spend too much time down here among the customers, hein?”

“When you’re right – you’re right, Gaston. But are you saying you didn’t have to give the madam anything?”

“Merde alors. I gave her my all, and had to eat her, too! She did accept a hundred pesos, graciously, but had I not made her come, to her considerable surprise and delight—”

“Never mind your sex life. I can see you’re fixed up, and I’m more worried about getting back to our base in Costa Rica. What did she say about a ship out of here?”

“Merde alors, what could she say? As you see, Fifi sells booze and broads, not steamship tickets. This is a whorehouse, not a travel agency.”

“I noticed that. Look, Gaston, not even your dicking is going to keep us here indefinitely, and you were right about it being a small dull town, outside. Let’s say we have, oh, seventy-two hours before Madam Fifi has her fill of you. Then what?”

Gaston shrugged and answered, “I can usually keep most women satisfied a month before they start nagging me about not having a steady job and telling me I am only using them. That is why they call it the honeymoon.”

The tall American sighed and said, “I think I must have dated their kid sisters. But whores have even shorter attention spans, Gaston. There’s no way we can stay here more than a day or so.”

The black barkeep slid down to them. Gaston ordered two more gin and tonics and said it was on the house. The black girl said Madam Fifi hadn’t said anything about that to her. As Gaston swore and put a coin on the bar, Captain Gringo said, “See what I mean? You’d better put on your cape of invisibility and start scouting up at least a southbound fishing boat.”

Gaston sipped his drink, grimaced at all the water in it, and replied, “Eh bien, I learned in my youth never to trust a place that waters drinks. I’ll go out after la siesta. Even us small gray cats draw a certain amount of attention when the streets are deserted. Let us take a bottle along with these glasses as we climb the stairs, hein? Fifi said she might be joining me for a siesta, and a man my age needs to keep up his strength.”

Captain Gringo asked the black girl for a bottle of gin. When she slid it across the mahogany, he said, “Take it out of the change you forgot to give me before.”

She frowned and asked, “Aren’t you paying Armida?”

“For what? She’s talking to another john now, and that was a twenty-peso gold piece I gave you, doll!”

He turned away with the bottle and Gaston before she could bitch about it. As they left, Armida shot Captain Gringo a hurt look from where she sat in another man’s lap, bare-assed.

They went upstairs. Gaston started counting off the numbers as they passed the close-set doors on either side. He nodded and said, “Eh bien, here we are. This one’s mine. Yours is next door, Dick.”

“Don’t we get keys?”

“In a whorehouse? Surely you jest. Hopefully there are barrel bolts inside. Fifi says these cribs are not currently in use, so, hopefully, we don’t have to worry about the linen.”

A door down the hall opened and a tipsy fat man came out, buttoning his pants. By unspoken agreement the two soldiers of fortune made themselves scarce by ducking into their respective cribs.

Captain Gringo found his small, paneled with white-enameled pine, and already crowded as he stood in the narrow space by the bed, which took up most of the room. There was a narrow jalousied window. He opened the slats to see a blank stucco wall staring him in the face across a narrow alley. He didn’t think he could get out through such a narrow slot in any case. He left the slats open to have some light on the subject.

He closed the door. It had once had an inside bolt, but someone had kicked the door in at one time. The brass hardware had never been replaced, and he saw nothing he could prop against the door.

Save for the brass bedstead, the only furniture was an end table improvised from a packing crate. There were hooks on the walls and an Edison bulb hanging from the ceiling on a threadbare wire. Since it was still early, it wasn’t important whether the light worked. The idea of spending a whole night here, dark or otherwise, was too grim to contemplate. So he didn’t.

He took off his hat and jacket and hung them up. It didn’t help much. Even with the jalousies open it was hot and stuffy. He pulled down the bed covers. The linen looked clean. He took off his gun rig and slid his hardware under the pillow. Then he sat down on the bed, wondering what the hell he was going to do for the rest of the day.

His smoke was about gone. He snuffed out the claro in a tin tray on the end table and didn’t light another. He sipped one of the two glasses he’d brought from the bar. Where the hell was the bottle? Oh, yeah, Gaston had taken it on the way up. Gaston was like that. But once the streets were safe again, nobody could beat Gaston at moving around unobserved. Gaston didn’t sneak. He was too old a hand at invisibility to pussy-foot. Gaston took advantage of the fact that nobody seemed to notice a small middle-aged guy unless he made sudden moves. The little Frenchman’s Spanish was letter perfect and he could pass for a native in most Latin ports.

If there was a southbound vessel with an understanding purser in Puerto Cabezas, Gaston would find it. If there wasn’t … then what? That run for the old pirate base in Honduras sounded lousy. Running in any other direction sounded worse. The last time they’d been here in Nicaragua they’d been fighting for the side that lost. The winning side had an awesome reward posted on the two of them, dead or otherwise, and Gaston’s old playmate, Madam Fifi, would sell you her own ass, for small change!

He took off his shirt and hung it up. It felt so good that he took off his boots and pants as well. It was still too hot, but the starched linen felt cooler on his naked flesh as he reclined on the bed, draining the first glass and picking up the other.

The door opened and Armida came in. She must have noticed what a hot day it was getting to be, too. She’d even peeled off her mesh stockings. So they were both naked as jays when she sat down on the bed and calmly took his shaft in hand.

It was limp, of course. Captain Gringo had more delicate feelings. He grimaced and said, “That was quick, even for a pro.”

She said, “Don’t be vulgar. Poor Pablo never goes upstairs with any of us. He just comes to drink and listen to dirty talk before going home to his mujer with renewed inspiration.”

Captain Gringo was feeling inspired now, too. For, despite a certain distaste for his surroundings and present company, he hadn’t been getting any lately, and her strange skilled fingers on his dawning erection sure felt better than his own could have.

Nonetheless, he said, “Hold it, Armida. Before we get into a dreadful misunderstanding, it’s only fair to warn you there’s no more gold on its way out of my pocket.”

She held it indeed as she frowned down at him and asked, “Don’t you think I’m worth it?”

“You would be if I made a habit of paying. I don’t mind being overcharged for booze, even when my sidekick winds up with it. But let go of my friend there while we establish some new ground rules. You see, Gaston and I are guests of Madam Fifi, not johns, and …”

Armida half-rose, cocked a long shapely leg over him to plant one heel on the mattress, with the other on the floor, and lowered her slit to sit herself on his raging erection, saying, “I know all about that. Madam said I was to make you comfortable and … Oh, yes! That does feel most comfortable, no?”

He hissed in pleasure, too, as she gripped hard with her internal muscles. It was obvious she’d told the truth when she’d said she could smoke a cigar with her educated pussy.

Armida moved up and down slowly with her love muscles rippling faster. She gripped him so tightly it would have chafed them both if she’d been drier inside. He was too polite to ask if her lubrication was friendship or mineral oil. It sure felt like the real thing. She leaned forward to place her palms on his heaving chest for balance. Then she started moving her pelvis astoundingly as he grinned up at her, admiring the view. Her nipples were turgid and her breasts bobbed in rhythm with her rippling lower torso muscles as she moved in a way that an Arabian belly dancer would have envied. She was literally sucking him off with her body, and he was tempted to roll her over and finish right.

But he knew she’d expect to be kissed if he got on top, and a guy had to draw the line somewhere. A whore showing off was the best there was, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to kiss those painted lips without assurances she’d gargled with disinfectant since the last customer!

She moaned. “Oh, I can’t believe it! I’m going to come! You’ll ruin me for the day, you naughty thing!”

He didn’t see why he should believe that. But as she fell weakly down against him, her nipples teasing his chest as her spasming love box went on milking his tool, he closed his eyes and ejaculated in her, hard.

Armida giggled and said, “I felt that. I just came, too. There’s no sense going downstairs now. A working girl needs an objective attitude, and you have me hot as a blushing bride.

It’s almost siesta time anyway. Would you like to spend the whole siesta in me, querido?”

He answered by thrusting his still-erect shaft deeper. She laughed and said, “I can’t do it again on top. As a matter of fact, I need a drink before I do it again at all. Did you not say something about a bottle?”

As she sat up, arching her back to raise her arms and smooth her hair, he said, “I bought the bottle. Gaston grabbed it. All I have is what’s left in that one glass.”

She leaned forward, his shaft still in her, and her left breast kissed his lips as she stretched an arm to get the glass from the end table. She sat up again, took a sip, and asked him if he wanted to kill it.

He said, “Can’t, in this position. Let me sit up.”

Armida got off with an audible wet pop and rolled to a seated position by him as Captain Gringo sat up, took the glass, and started to drink from it. Then he sighed, smiled fondly at the treacherous blond bitch, and cold-cocked her with a left cross to the jaw.

Armida’s head flew back and bounced off the pine paneling above the bed before she sprawled unconscious across it, hips on the edge of the mattress and long shapely legs spread invitingly. Captain Gringo wiped himself dry with a corner of the sheet, got to his feet, and put on his shirt and gun rig as he stared down at her pink slit wistfully and muttered, “Hell, it was just getting hot, too!”

He didn’t have time to take her up on her unconscious offer. Having armed himself, he sat down again and hauled on his pants and cordovan mosquito boots. He’d just stood up to stomp his boots firmly in place when the door opened. He whipped out his .38, saw that it was Gaston, fully dressed, and said, “Don’t ever do that without knocking. I was just coming for you.”

Gaston smiled thinly down at the unconscious whore and said, “I see you came for her, too. Eh bein, I’m glad you smelled the chloral hydrate in time.”

“So am I. She must have had the knockout pill in her hair. They gave her a dose for a whole bottle, so dropping it in half a glass of gin and tonic was a little much. It would have killed me if I’d been dumb enough to drink it!”

“Oui, but look at it this way, the reward says dead or alive. Madam Fifi certainly disappointed me, Dick. I am mortified to have gotten you into this.”

“Let’s worry about getting out of it. Obviously the cops are waiting for la siesta and an empty cathouse before they move in. That gives us, let’s say, five minutes in case my watch is slow. What’s the story on old Fifi?”

“The same as yours. Great minds run in the same channels, non? It was harder to smell her sleeping potion in a whole bottle of gin, but when one has been rolled as many times as I, one’s nose develops skills the mundane john may not have. Of course I knocked her out before I left her bound and gagged next door. We’d better do the same to this one before we leave, non?”

Captain Gringo didn’t answer as Gaston picked up the end of the sheet Armida wasn’t on and proceeded to tear it into strips. The tall American was more interested in the window. He twisted his shoulders sideways and, just, managed to lean his upper body out to study the narrow slot between the buildings. By reaching out one hand, he could brace himself against the rough stucco across the alley, or air shaft, or whatever the hell it was. He decided it was just a gap left over when they’d built the joint. The ground below was covered with weeds and broken glass.

Toward the front of the whorehouse, a whitewashed wooden wall had been erected to keep drunks from coming in there to piss. Back the other way, the slot ended in the wall of an ell built out to take full advantage of the space. There was no window facing him from either direction, Allah be praised.

He ducked back inside. Gaston had tied Armida’s wrists above her head to the head rails of the brass bedstead. Her eyes were open, but she couldn’t say much with that linen gag in her mouth. But she was moving pretty good as Gaston lay atop her with his pants down, tearing off a piece.

Captain Gringo laughed incredulously and asked, “What the fuck are you doing? You sure have a grotesque sense of timing, Gaston.”

“I’ll be with you in a moment, m’sieur. I had to knock Fifi out in the middle of a blow job and I can’t run fast with an erection.” He went on raping the whore, if rape was the right term, as he added, conversationally, “What is the story outside? Ah, it’s very nice in here, and … Voila! I am satisfied, for the moment.”

“Pull your goddamn pants up and get over here. There’s no way I’d ever be able to draw while oozing through this skinny window. So you’d better go first and cover me.”

“Eh bien, but what about these two ladies we must bid adieu so post-haste? The trés fatigue police will ask them which way we went, and if we leave them in condition to talk—”

“Let ’em. Anyone can see there’s only one way out. By the time anyone opens either discreetly closed door, we’ll be a mile or more into the jungle. Come on, Gaston, move it!”

Gaston did. Since he was much smaller, he had no trouble sliding out the window and dropping to the weeds below from the second-story window.

As Gaston covered the wooden fence with his own revolver, Captain Gringo followed, grimacing as he scraped himself through the narrow space and cursing as he landed harder than a man his weight was supposed to.

But the two-story drop hadn’t sprained anything important, and, as he picked himself up, Gaston said, “Eh bien. Over the fence and into the woods, to grandmere’s house we go?”

“Don’t be silly. Didn’t you just hear me tell that whore that that was the plan?”

“Oui, I assumed it was what you wanted her to tell the police. But I am missing something here, Dick. As anyone can see, over that fence is the only way out of this narrow slot, non?”

Captain Gringo said, “No,” and braced his back against one stucco wall as he raised a boot heel to brace against the opposite wall. As he started levering himself skyward, Gaston grinned and said, “Ah, the old roof trick. Mundane, but usually effective, when the flicks expect to find you somewhere else!”

Gaston wedged his own lighter body the same way, and, while his legs had less leverage, he had less to lift, so it tended to even out. A few minutes later the two soldiers of fortune had shimmied themselves to rooftop level. Captain Gringo beat Gaston to the whorehouse roof and reached down to haul his comrade up beside him. As they crouched atop the flat roof, Gaston pointed with his chin and said, “Merde alors, we could have done it the easy way! There’s a triple-titted trap door over there by the chimney pots!”

“Yeah. We can’t stay here. The laziest cops usually pop open a door at the top of a stairway. Let’s see, now. It’s an easy jump across to the building we were just kicking the shit out of. But it’s got a tile roof. Too noisy. Follow me.”

Gaston did, as the tall American crawled the other way, keeping his ass down. The flat roof of Madam Fifi’s had a low stucco parapet, so nobody could see them from street level, but there were higher buildings in the neighborhood, and though very few people took their siesta on a rooftop under a blazing tropic sun, why take chances?

They made it to the opposite side. Captain Gringo eased his head up for a look over the parapet and said, “That’s better. Next building has a flat gravel roof, too.”

They rolled over the parapet. Gaston said, “Eh bien, if we lay low, here …”

“We bake like tortillas on the hearth till some wise-ass cop sticks his head over the edge. Keep crawling, damn it!”

They did, crossing three roofs before they came to a six-or eight-foot gap before the next building on the block. Captain Gringo said, “This must be the place. No cop’s about to jump across that gap without a hell of a good reason, and the girls should tell ’em we said something about a jungle. ”

Gaston peered over the edge and muttered, “No Frenchman in his right mind is going to try it either! That’s a three-story drop, Dick!”

“I’ll go first and catch you. No running jump. People wonder about the pitty pat of tiny feet on their bedroom ceiling. Try to land on that brick parapet over there instead of the roof itself.”

Gaston was still bitching when Captain Gringo stood up, mounted the parapet, and bent his knees for a standing broad jump that had to be right the first time.

He made it, just, and teetered for a frightening moment on the rim across the way before he managed to recover his balance and step down softly to safer footing. He cursed the heat, and that whore, as he recovered his relative calm. For he’d jumped that far, easier, in his West Point days.

He turned and motioned to Gaston. The little Frenchman couldn’t bitch out loud, for a change, so he made the sign of the cross and tried. He almost made it. His toes hit the stucco just below the top of the parapet, and he would have dropped down the slot had Captain Gringo not caught a wildly flailing arm and hauled him safely atop the roof. Gaston muttered, “I must be getting old. At the rate you are going, I doubt I’ll get much older. Have I ever told you that you are a maniac, my overactive child?”

“Many, many times. It must be the company I keep. Okay, I think that takes care of strolling cops. The next problem is finding some shade. It’s damn near high noon and we’re about fourteen degrees north of the equator.”

“True, it would be trés droll to suffer heat stroke instead of police bullets. But where do you suggest we go from here? As you see, we are near the end of the block. La siesta has started by now, and people are most surprised to see one on the streets during la siesta, even when they know your face.”

“Good thinking. There’s a shack of some kind over on the next roof. We’d better get on the far side in case some cop doesn’t buy the tale we planted and decides to have a look around up here.”

They moved quietly toward what seemed to be an improvised wooden hut someone had built on the flat roof of the last building on the block. As they approached, Captain Gringo muttered, “Swing left. There’s a trap door to the right.”

It was well that they did so. The two soldiers of fortune had just flattened out against the far side of the ramshackle structure when they heard the creak of hinges. They looked silently at each other and drew their guns in unspoken agreement. A muffled female voice called out, “Tico, why are you going up there at this hour? You will fry your brains, my son!”

A too-close-for-comfort youthful voice replied, “I have to water my pigeons, mamacita!”

“Ay que muchacho, leave those stupid birds alone and come down here this instant! Even pigeons know better than to go out in the hot sun at this time of day!”

“Si, un momento, mamacita. I just have to make sure they have water.”

The two soldiers of fortune strained their ears as, on the far side of the thin wooden wall, they heard the softer sounds of baby talk and gurgling water. The woman below called out again, adding a threat to send papacito up with a switch. Tico, if that was his name, slammed the pigeon-loft door and they heard his footsteps running for the trap door. Then it slammed and they could breathe again.

Captain Gringo grinned and said, “You were looking for some shade?”

“Oui, but in a pigeon loft?”

“Why not? I’m sure there’s room. That kid won’t come back until at least three, right?”

He led the way around the side not exposed to the street and quietly opened the door. The white pigeons all around tried to bark like dogs, but all they could manage were soft, albeit angry, coos as the two of them got inside and shut the door again. The interior of the pigeon loft was about as comfortable as a Turkish bath perfumed with bird shit, but at least they were out of the sun now.

Here and there sunlight lanced through cracks in the rough planking, so they could see well enough. Gaston picked up the water olla the kid had left and helped himself to a long swig before he said, “God bless that child,” and handed it to Captain Gringo.

The tall American said, “Yeah, I was already thirsty when I smelled the chloral hydrate in my glass. Don't light that smoke, you idiot!”

“Why not? I assure you I have no intention of setting one of these birds on fire.”

“No, but if you stink this stuffy loft up with cigar smoke, young Tico’s sure going to wonder when his pets started smoking.” He took a healthy swig of tepid water, put the olla back on its shelf, and added, “We’d better leave here about two-thirty. That kid’s eager about his hobby and might jump the gun on the official end of la siesta at three.”

Gaston hunkered down with his back braced against a post and said, “That sounds sensible. But we still have a bit of a problem, Dick. In your enthusiasm, you let that whore hear you say we were running into the jungle. Ergo, the annoying people who run this distressing country will be covering all the trails out of Puerto Cabezas long before two-thirty, non?”

“Yeah, I never liked that idea of running off to be a pirate, anyway. I outgrew ideas like that even before Tom Sawyer did.”

“I’ve heard of that new novel, though I have not read it. I agree a romp through the jungle would not be wise right now. You just pointed out that we can’t stay here, even if one enjoyed the company of dirty birds. So where do you suggest we go, Dick?”

“Beats me. You’re the guy who knows this town, Gaston.”

“Merde alors, I told you it was small enough to kick a football across! Fifi was the only old friend I knew here, and, as you just saw, she seems to have forgotten her old friends. What if we went back to the ship? We left them in a hopefully friendly mood, and the purser still owes us.”

Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “No way. Assuming the purser’s an honest crook, old Fifi wasn’t, so they know we’re in town. The only way we could have gotten here was aboard that crippled steamer. For God’s sake, do I have to draw diagrams on the blackboard for you?”

“Mais non, the picture emerges from the mists with distressing clarity. Eh bien, we can’t go back to Fifi’s. We can’t go back to the ship. If we run for the trees, we are certain to fall into an ambush. Traveling with you is trés fatigue, Dick. We seem to be, how you say, up the creek without any paddle!”

“Look at the bright side. We’re still alive. The waterfront should be crowded this evening, and nobody can see my hair if I keep this sombrero down tight. The cops will have chased our shadows through the jungle a lot by then. Hopefully, they’ll give us credit for being slicker jungle runners than them and shouldn’t expect to see us in town tonight.”

“I give that fifty-fifty. But so what? We can mingle with the crowd until the streets are once more deserted for the night. But we don’t dare try another hotel accommodation. The country’s hovering on the brink of revolution, and with less than a dozen posadas to check out—”

“We tried a no-questions joint and it didn’t turn out so hot,” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “If we can’t get out by land, it’ll have to be by sea.”

Gaston grimaced and said, “I already considered that. There are no other steamers in port at the moment. I told you it was an out-of-the-way port of call.”

“You did. I noticed a mess of fishing boats in the harbor as we came in last night, too. The two of us ought to be able to man a fishing ketch, and they can’t all be guarded after dark.”

Gaston shook his head in disgust and muttered, half to himself, “I really could have saved myself a trés fatigue old age if I’d just let them shoot me that time we met in Mexico. Since I have been running through life with you, I have hardly had a good night’s sleep.”

“What can I tell you? You said you wanted to be a pirate when you grew up.”

“Merde alors, grabbing a fishing ketch goes beyond mere piracy into an exercise in futility, Dick! Where in the devil do you propose we sail in our beautiful pea-green boat? We’re a good three hundred miles or more from Limón, and even if the open sea doesn’t kill us, even Costa Rica frowns on sailing in aboard a stolen vessel, non?”

Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “Jesus, what a worry wart. We haven’t even stolen the boat yet and he’s bitching about explaining it in Limón. Can’t you see we’ll probably be shipwrecked long before we get there, pal?”

~*~

They left the rooftops at two-thirty, skulked in an alley for an even less interesting time, and then went to three-o’clock Mass at a nearby church Gaston remembered. Neither of them had suddenly gotten religion. Gaston pointed out that most Nicaraguan priests belonged to the Conservative party that was currently out of power.

The reward posters out on Captain Gringo had him down as a Protestant, which might have been true, back in the days when he’d thought someone might be running this mad universe. Gaston had been born a nominal Catholic, but who looked for knock-around guys in church when the cantinas were starting to open up again for the evening?

They took a back pew, put a gold coin in the collection plate when it was passed, and nobody saw fit to bother them after Mass was over and everyone but a few old women in shawls filed out.

It was cool, quiet, and they had plenty of time to plan their next moves as they waited for the sun to go down. But when it seemed safe to leave, they still hadn’t come up with anything better than Captain Gringo’s plan to swipe a fishing boat, and Gaston said he was already getting sea sick.

When they left the old church the shadows were long and lavender under a flamingo sky. It was hard to make out features in the never-never light of the gloaming, and, as they’d foreseen, the streets were crowding up as the locals made ready for the nightly paseo.

The young and single of Puerto Cabezas were out for adventure in the cool of the evening. The older poor married slobs could at least watch and get drunk. Having dozed the hot afternoon away, nobody would be turning in this side of midnight unless they got lucky with a lady who had her own room. So they couldn’t grab a boat until things settled down, and, despite the tricky light, there were limits to how well a tall blond Anglo-Saxon could blend into a crowd of darker, mostly shorter natives.

Captain Gringo knew he’d get in trouble if they hung around the main plaza during the paseo. With the women strolling the plaza one way, the men strolling the other, and one and all giving everyone a good looking-over as they passed, someone was sure to notice and, worse yet, comment on a tall gringo stranger in their tiny town.

Gaston knew a couple of cantinas along the waterfront. Gaston apparently had never passed a waterfront cantina south of the Tropic of Cancer without checking it out. Captain Gringo got in trouble in bars a lot, too. He asked if the Frenchman knew a quieter, darker place to hang out awhile.

Gaston lit a smoke as he keel hauled Puerto Cabezas through his memory. Then he nodded and said, “I have just the place. We can get something to eat there, too!”

That reminded Captain Gringo that he hadn’t eaten all day. He said, “I’m game for anything that doesn’t hurt. How far is this restaurant of yours?”

“Ah, it’s not exactly a restaurant and it’s hardly mine, Dick. There’s a trés expensive posada near the docks, catering mostly to foolishly rich foreigners. They serve a buffet in the deliciously dark lobby, as I recall. I can park you there while scouting up some transportation, now?”

Captain Gringo frowned and said, “I asked about a discreet place, not a tourist hotel, for God’s sake!”

“Eh bien, I heard you. As I said, it’s too expensive to attract the locals, or even crewmen from that steamer we just left. The beauty of my plan is that nobody is supposed to use the buffet lounge unless they are guests of the posada. Wait, I know what you are thinking. Of course one must register if one checks into the overpriced establishment. On the other hand, there is a side entrance nobody can see from the desk. How do you like it so far?”

Captain Gringo thought as he lit his own claro. Then he nodded and said, “Right, I used to do that in fancy New York hotels when I was a cadet at the Point. If you act like a guest in the lobby, everyone assumes you’ve checked in. Better yet, since your name’s not on the register, the cops who drop by from time to time to check on mysterious new big spenders in town don’t case the joint downstairs. It’s easier to just leaf through the register at said desk. You say they have food on tap?”

“Oui. Free. The drinks in the lounge are outrageously overpriced, but nobody cares how many hors d’oeuvres one helps oneself to from the buffet, if one is not an obvious pig about it. Come, it’s down this way, as I recall.”

Gaston led the way toward the waterfront as Captain Gringo got his bearings. A shot tower in the distance told him they were at the far end of town from the shipyards to which the crippled steamer had been towed. That wasn’t saying much in a port this size, but hopefully the crewmen who knew their faces would find booze and broads closer to their ship.

The posada was a big rambling pile of wedding cake Spanish baroque, taking up most of a whole block. Gaston steered them into an alley well clear of the main entrance down the walk, saying, “The side door I told you about opens into this adorable dark cul-de-sac. Regard the lights ahead.”

Captain Gringo did. But he was more interested in what stood parked between them and the lamp-lit windows of the lounge beyond. A big black Stanley Steamer sulked quietly on its red rubber tires, staring at them owlishly with its unlit brass headlights. As they eased between the mysterious horseless carriage and the plaster wall, he noticed that the pilot light was purring like a big cat under the long hood. He said, “Jesus, what a funny place to see a Stanley Steamer. It’s parked there with a full head of steam, too.”

Gaston said, “Forget it. You drive like a maniac; besides, there is no open road from this species of fishing village to anywhere at all important.”

“I wasn’t thinking about stealing it. I was just wondering what the hell it’s doing here. Horseless carriages in a half-horse town don’t make sense. A Stanley costs a bundle, too.”

“Eh bien, perhaps there is a rich eccentric staying here. I told you they charged outrageous prices. Let us eat, for God’s sake!”

Nobody commented when the two soldiers of fortune came in the side door and strode boldly to the bar at one end of the dimly lit lounge. The white-jacketed black barkeep served them gin and tonic, with ice, yet, and asked politely if they wanted the tabs put on their guest bills. Gaston said, calmly, that they’d better keep their room service and bar tabs separate.

When the barkeep saw the twenty-peso gold piece on the mahogany, he seemed satisfied that they weren’t a couple of bums in off the street. They left him a nice tip from the change and eased over to a couple of chairs under a potted palm to give everyone a chance to get used to them being there. It wasn’t easy. A long buffet table ran along the nearby wall, and the smell of all that grub was pure torture to a pair of half-starved castaways.

By tacit agreement, Gaston cased the lounge one way and Captain Gringo the other as they sat there sipping like a couple of bored rich tourists. It was just as well the light was so murky. Their planter’s sombreros were acceptable headgear in these parts, but their linen suits were a mite grimy after crawling and sweating a lot that afternoon.

There were only a few other guests in the lounge. Nobody looked like anyone they had to worry about. A tall, skinny old guy with a horsey laugh was trying to pick up a dame he should have been ashamed to be seen in public with. She looked like a sparrow dressed up to become a schoolmarm. Captain Gringo doubted that the old gent was going to get anywhere with her, but neither seemed at all interested in him and Gaston, so he wished them well. Gaston cased a fat man reading a book with one hand as he drank himself to death with the other. Gaston murmured, “Eh bien. You stay here. I shall get us some goodies from the buffet.” He handed his glass to Captain Gringo, got up as if he’d just noticed the food, and wandered over to investigate. He kept his back to the bar as he piled two plates full of hors d’oeuvres and brought them back to base camp under the potted palm. As he handed one to Captain Gringo, the big Yank laughed and said, “I thought we weren’t supposed to be piggy. There’s enough here to feed an army!”

“The fewer trips the better, non? Besides, like most hors d’oeuvres, it’s mostly air.”

The assortment of pastry and cold cuts tasted good, though, and in no time they’d both cleaned their plates. Gaston suggested second helpings. Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “Wait awhile. It’s too damned empty in here. That barkeep has nothing to keep him busy. What time does the action start around here?”

Gaston shrugged and said, “I am not sure it ever does. Any guest looking for a pickup would do better over at the paseo. That idiot trying to make time with the traveling spinster is obviously new to the tropics.”

Captain Gringo consulted his watch and said, “It should be dark enough outside to case the waterfront now.”

Gaston said, “You stay right where you are, you conspicuous moose. Since you won’t let me eat seriously here, I may as well wend my weary way along the quay to see if there’s a boat that is neither under guard nor in immediate danger of sinking at its moorings. I take it we desire a ketch rig, non?”

“Yeah, a sloop’s too slow and a schooner rig’s too much for us to man. If you can find one with auxiliary power I’ll kiss you.”

“Merde alors, if I can find a fishing boat with an engine, I can walk on water! Try to stay out of trouble until I get back, hein?”

After Gaston left, the lounge seemed even more boring. Captain Gringo nursed his drink as long as he could without being obvious. Then he bought another and, as long as he was on his feet, helped himself to another plate of grub. But after a guy drinks, eats, and smokes for a couple of hours, potted palms get mighty uninteresting to look at, and that silly laugh from the idiot down at the far end was beginning to affect him like fingernails on a schoolroom blackboard.

What was the matter with the dumb turd? Anyone could see the ugly little dame didn’t put out. And come to think of it, what was the matter with her? Anyone could see the guy was lusting for her drab flesh. Maybe she didn’t have anything to read upstairs?

He checked his watch again. It couldn’t be that early. Gaston had left sometime during the last ice age and Rome had fallen while he was getting that last drink from the bar.

A guest dressed like a Gibson Girl came in. She wore no hat, so he knew she’d come down from an upstairs room. He tried to ignore her. It wasn’t easy. She was a stunning brunette with cameo features and eyes so big he could tell they were blue, even in this dim light.

It was safe to look her over as she stood at the bar with her back to him, of course, so he did. He liked the view from that angle, too. The waistline above; the hip-hugging whipcord skirt she wore had to be the result of a painfully tight corset. Nobody hour-glassed that nicely without expensive, impractical underwear. Her outer duds were more sensible for the tropics, though. The thin khaki blouse above the whipcord skirt looked like she planned some jungle running. She obviously hadn’t already done any. Her pinned-up hair and ivory skin hadn’t spent much time down here yet. The last dame he’d had had been a blond native. He’d had to knock her out before she’d half-satisfied him. He wondered what it would be like to switch to a dark-haired white woman. He decided he’d better not try to find out.

The tall horsey guy and the ugly little sparrow crossed his line of vision, arm in arm and obviously going somewhere in a hurry. He repressed a chuckle. It just went to show that you just couldn’t judge a cunt by its cover. He got up and moved his hat, his drink, and himself over to the corner they’d vacated. He’d noticed it was a better place to wait for Gaston. As he seated himself in one of the side-by-side leather chairs, he saw that he now had both the side door and the lobby entrance covered. He was less noticeable from the bar now. The barkeep had to crane to see into this corner, and the dame he was serving was now half-hidden by a pillar. The window to his left opened onto the alley and gave him a sneaky preview of anyone making for the side entrance. He saw the steam car still parked out there. Otherwise the alley was empty and, as it was blind, anyone coming up it would have his back to the window unless he looked in obviously.

The brunette came back in view as she turned from the bar and walked his way with a tall highball glass. He kept his eyes polite. He could look her over some more when she sat down some place with her profile to him. She came all the way to his corner, sat down in the chair the horsey guy had vacated, and said, “I say, this is a spot of luck, Captain Gringo! We’d about given up on you still being in town!”

He stared at her silently. Even up close, he knew he’d never seen her before. Hers was the kind of face a guy remembered, if he had any glands at all. She dimpled even prettier and continued, “It’s all right. I’m on your side. We tried to recruit you in Costa Rica, but you and your little French friend were nowhere to be found in San José. I’m Sylvia Porter, by the way.”

“So who is Sylvia?” he asked, smiling thinly. The accent was British. But their old chum Greystoke of British Intelligence wouldn’t have been looking for them in Costa Rica. They’d just done a job for the prick up the coast, and been stiffed.

She said, “I’m with a syndicate of treasure hunters. We’re on our way to Laguna Caratasca, just up the coast. It’s supposed to be deserted these days. Just in case it’s not, we picked up a couple of Maxim machine guns. They say you’re the best machine gunner south of Texas. True?”

There was no sense being modest, since she already had his number. He shrugged and said, “Great minds sure run in the same channel. Gaston Verrier and I were thinking about Laguna Caratasca. We gave it up as too iffy.”

She frowned and asked, “You already know about the pirate treasure? We thought it was our own little secret. But if it’s already on the grapevine, we may need you more than ever.” He kept a card close to his vest by not saying he didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. Instead, he asked, “How did you know I’d be here? I didn’t know, myself, until a little while ago!” ‘

She explained, “We heard you were in town. Half of Nicaragua seems to be looking for you, and not to hire you! Running into you here was sheer good fortune for both of us. One of our party heard you’d run into the perishing jungle. That’s where all the enthusiastic local law officers are right now, you’ll be pleased to know.”

She looked around thoughtfully, nodded, and added, “I might have known you’d run to earth in a place like this. Very neat. I’d never think to look for such a desperado in such sedate surroundings.” Then she said, “But you can’t last long on your own. Do you want the job with us?”

“Tell me about it.”

She sipped her sweet rum highball and gathered her thoughts before she explained, “There are a dozen in my syndicate. All British, of course. These perishing natives would murder us for the gold if and when we find it. We have one English remittance man who says he can lead us to the lagoon. But he hasn’t been there in several years and we have conflicting stories on Laguna Caratasca. Some say there’s been nobody there since the Royal Navy cleaned it out a few years ago. Others say land pirates have moved in to replace the sea pirates who used to hunt out of there. What do you think, Captain Gringo?”

“Call me Dick; you’re not a Mexican. I can’t tell you anything about the area. I’ve never been there. Gaston has, ten years or so out of date. I can’t see what bandits would be doing there. Who would they rob? The idea of Laguna Caratasca in the bad old days was that it was too far from the Honduran capital up in the highlands for Honduran law to care about. There are no towns there, officially. The lagoon’s over fifty miles long on the map. The map shows the larger islands. Probably leaves off a mess of little turtle keys and reefs are up for grabs.”

“We have a map. A treasure map at that. The Royal Navy didn’t nail all the coast pirates. But, like your friend Gaston, our map is out of date. Hurricanes can play havoc with sandbars and mangrove swamps in ten or twelve years. But let’s worry about that when we get there. You did say you were coming, didn’t you?”

He didn’t even have a hard-on. He said, “I’m thinking about it. What kind of a boat do you kiddies have? You’re talking about shallow, treacherous waters on a lee coast. Do you have auxiliary power?”

She pointed her dimpled chin at the window beyond him and said, “We’re driving motorcars, by land. My Stanley’s right outside. The others are up the quay, near the north end of town.”

He blinked in surprise and said, “You never drove from Costa Rica!”

She laughed and said, “Of course not. That’s why most of our vehicles are still on the quay. We unloaded them the other day from a coastal steamer.”

“For God’s sake, why?”

“Don’t you see how clever it is, Dick? Anyone watching for strangers at Laguna Caratasca will have all eyes, and hopefully all guns, trained on the seaward approaches. Our guide knows a jungle trail running from here in Nicaragua to the landward side of the big lagoon. In the bad old days, the pirates used it to carry loot and supplies across the border. One assumes they had some arrangement with the Nicaraguan government of the time. Before you object about that, the Nicaraguan Conservatives were in power and cahoots with the coast pirates. The law here, now, knows next to nothing.”

He sighed and said, “Neither do you guys, if you think you can drive horseless carriages up the Mosquito Coast a good sixty miles! I hate to have to be the one to tell you this, doll, but you don’t see many filling stations along your average jungle trail. Said trails were not hacked out with rubber tires in mind, either!”

She said, “Pooh! We knew that when we ordered team cars instead of internal-combustion or electrics. The Stanley brothers build a very sturdy machine. There’s water everywhere, and almost anything that will burn will keep said water boiling. Our steamers have been fitted with heavy-duty lorry springs and solid rubber tires.”

“Ouch. Okay, it might work if you drive slow, and I don’t see how anyone could drive fast through a jungle. Let’s talk about the machine guns. How much ammo would I have if push came to shove?”

“We have a couple of cases for each gun.”

“That’s not enough. A Maxim spits six hundred rounds a minute if you’re shooting at anyone important. If four cases of thirty-thirty will stop ’em, they ain’t all that important.”

“Brrr! You do paint a grim picture. If I can get you more ammo, will you take the job?”

“Where can you get a couple of thousand extra rounds, and, more important, what’s in it for Gaston and me?”

“You mean money? Well, your share in the treasure would come to one-fourteenth, since there’d be fourteen of us, all told. Does that sound fair?”

“Hell no! I might have known you were asking us to work on spec! What if we don’t find any treasure? Lots of old drunks sell maps, you know.”

She sniffed and said, “I assure you we got the map from a good source, which I’m not at liberty to discuss. Try it another way. What happens if you stay here in Puerto Cabezas when we drive on?”

“You paint grim pictures, too. Okay. Gaston’s not going to like it, but we’ll see you safely to Laguna Caratasca and maybe hang around long enough to see if you look like you know what you’re doing. If all we find up there are mosquitoes and snakes, all bets are off!”

She held out her hand to shake on it. Her hand felt nice in his as she said, “Good. We were planning to leave tonight, after the paseo ran down and the natives were less restless. I’d better drive up the quay and see about more ammo. There’s a no-questions chandler up there who’s already sold us supplies he asked us never to mention to his current government.”

He hung on to her hand to keep her seated as he said, “Hold it. Half the natives here think horseless carriages run on black magic, and most of them are on the street right now!”

“Oh, you’re right. I’d better pop into a hired horse-drawn hack. Do you want to tag along, Dick?”

“Want to. Can’t. I promised to wait here for Gaston. How do I find you guys if things get confusing?”

“My friends are at another posada, called La Golondrina, next to the warehouse we have the other cars in. The chandler’s shop is right down the quay and … Never mind; if you have to leave here in a hurry, go to the warehouse next to La Golondrina. I’ll tell everyone to expect you.”

She got her hand back and rose to leave before he could ask more. He had a couple of questions indeed. But if she was a police informant, she sure liked to do things the complicated way.

He got up and went to the bar for another drink. He’d been tipping well and the black barkeep had gotten friendlier every time he served him. So Captain Gringo said, “I forgot to ask the lady I was just with her room number. You, ah, wouldn’t like to have a drink on me, would you?”

The barkeep smiled knowingly, but said, “I can’t help you, señor. She is a stranger to me, too. She must have just checked in, like yourself.”

The tall American nodded and took his drink back to the corner to brood a bit. But wait a minute. Sylvia’s car had been parked out in the alley when they arrived. She couldn’t have had them tailed from the whorehouse. So what was left?

He sipped his drink as he considered. He nodded and muttered half-aloud, “Sure. They know your rep and they knew the cops were breathing down your back. She came down to this end of town and parked while she had a discreet peek at the few places a smart-ass guy on the run might duck into. How many could there be in a town this size?”

He was a third of the way down the gin and tonic when Gaston popped in via the lobby entrance, spotted him, and came over as fast as he could walk without running. Gaston didn’t sit down. He said, “Let’s go. I think I spotted someone on my tail, just as I turned in to the front entrance!”

Captain Gringo put the glass on an end table and got up, saying, “Side exit. I’ve got something to tell you if we make it.”

They strolled to the door through which they’d first entered. Captain Gringo put a casual hand on the knob and twisted. The door was locked. He looked thoughtfully at the barkeep, who seemed intent on wiping something awful off the mahogany and wasn’t looking their way. Captain Gringo growled, “Know any other neat places to hole up? I might have known they’d have a telephone out in the fucking lobby!”

Gaston didn’t answer. He’d whipped out his gun to blast the first cop coming through the archway from the lobby!

The uniformed intruder went down nicely, but there had to be more where he came from. Captain Gringo growled, “Shoot that barkeep!” as he picked up a potted palm, brass pot and all. He’d said it in English, so the barkeep was too slow in ducking and Gaston nailed him right over the left eye, as Captain Gringo threw the potted palm through the glass by the side of the treacherously locked door, pot and all.

He drew his own .38 as he dived out the opening. Behind him, Gaston put another cop on the lobby rug before diving out after him. They got as far as the parked Stanley Steamer before some other prick leaned around the corner at the far end of the alley and winged a shot at them before ducking back out of sight.

Gaston said, “Merde alors, we are boxed!”

But Captain Gringo said, “No, we’re not. Get in that car. I’m driving, so cover me!”

Gaston hesitated a split second, grasped the idea, and leaped up on the high seat behind the low hood. Captain Gringo jumped in beside him, released the parking brake, and opened the steam throttle. The results scared even him.

The Stanley Steamer had its shortcomings. But he guessed nobody was going to build a faster automobile until well into the coming century. As the dry steam hit the powerful cylinders between the rear wheels, the big horseless carriage burned rubber all the way out of the alley and was doing at least fifty when it hit the street!

‘Turn, turn, you maniac!” wailed Gaston as they tore straight at a storefront across the way, while bewildered bullets whipped through the spaces they kept leaving. Captain Gringo swung the wheel hard over and they slid broadside, solid tires screaming and smoking until they decided which way they wanted to go. And then, as the startled cops all around the posada hurled lead and curses, they were gone in a cloud of blue rubber smoke and kerosene fumes!

Captain Gringo swung inland at the next corner to tear blindly up the narrow dark street, while Gaston made more noise about it than the nearly silent steam engine. Captain Gringo said, “Yeah, yeah, I heard you,” and swung around another corner before braking to a stop to get his bearings. He spotted the moon above the rooftops, nodded, and opened the throttle again, more sedately. As they purred quietly as a cat along the northbound back street, he said, “We could light the headlamps. But that would really attract attention. Doesn’t this thing sound neat, Gaston? Listen. It makes less noise than two giggly girls on bikes!”

Gaston crossed himself and said, “You just cost me a year’s growth!” Then he laughed and added, “I think we just made some flicks wet their pants, too! Where are we going in this locomotive, my impetuous youth? I know this village lane from old. The pavement, such as it is, ends less than a mile away!”

“I know. Isn’t it nice to have it all to ourselves with everyone in town flirting over at the main plaza? There must be a few old farts who stayed home tonight. But who’s going to hear us from inside? Boy, this is some buggy. If it were a Duryea or even a Benz, we’d be making enough noise for a modest revolution between these stucco walls on either side. This thing makes no more noise than a kitten pissing under the sofa!”

“It’s adorably discreet, Dick. Now tell me where the fuck we’re going in it!”

So Captain Gringo filled him in on Sylvia Porter’s offer as they cruised silently toward the warehouse where she’d said to meet her. Gaston heard him out before he snorted in disgust and said, “Sacre bleu, they sound like amateurs who just escaped from an English boarding school. Have you any idea how many old pirate treasure maps are circulating, Dick?”

“I told her some drunk had probably whipped it up on hotel stationery aged with coffee, Gaston. But look at the bright side. They have the money to buy toys like this steam car and those machine guns.”

“Oui, but you said they expect us to join the party just for the pleasure of their company. I told you I passed through Laguna Caratasca when it was still a pirate base, Dick. If anyone in that trés scruffy crew had enough treasure to see fit for burial, he never mentioned it to me!”

“Hey, what can I tell you? If you were a pirate, would you blab about your buried treasure to everyone just passing through? Besides, it doesn’t matter what they’re looking for up there. Even if her whole story is a crock of shit, Sylvia offered us a way out of here! Everyone else we’ve met went and called the law. And by the way, she’s not bad-looking, either!”

Sylvia Porter was pretty as ever, but she seemed a bit chagrined when they drove in the back door of the warehouse and slid to a stop with a squeal of rubber, just inches from the side of a big black sedan made by White in the States. As the English girl and her companions stared at him in surprise, Captain Gringo called out, “Sorry. I’m not used to such sudden responses. You’d better get in back, Sylvia. We left the place you parked it with lots of guns going off. Did you get the ammo, and where are the Maxims?”

Before she could answer, a big husky guy with a toothbrush mustache shouted, “Who in God’s name are these blokes, Sylvia?”

Captain Gringo let her explain as he looked over the rest of the expedition. There were four steam cars lined up in the warehouse, making it five vehicles for fourteen people. Not bad, even with all the shit they had piled in or strapped on the big heavy horseless carriages.

There were three other women in addition to Sylvia. They, like the men, wore light tan travel dusters. The eight male members of Sylvia’s crew interested him even less. All but one. He nodded at the stubby guy who’d been reading the paper so much in Madam Fifi’s and said, “So now we know how you guys found us. You’ve all been busy little bees. Now it’s time we all buzzed off. Which of you is the guide Sylvia said we were supposed to have?”

The stubby guy he’d taken for a possible police informant smiled sheepishly and said, “That’s me, Captain Gringo. I was trying to find a moment alone with you at Madam Fifi’s, but you seemed, ah, otherwise occupied. When the police arrived, I naturally gave up on waiting for you two to come back down. How in the devil did you chaps get out of there? They had the perishing block surrounded!”

“We flew with the pigeons. Do you have a name?”

“Oh, sorry, Marlowe, here. Alfred Marlowe, late of Essex and all that.”

“Okay, Al. You can call me Dick. You know Gaston’s handle. Like I said, it’s time to get out of here. So why don’t you get the lead out and take the damned point?”

Marlowe looked uncertainly at the one with the toothbrush on his upper lip and asked, “Major Wallace?”

The husky Wallace frowned at Captain Gringo and asked, “Are you sure you were followed? We hadn’t planned to leave just yet.”

“They don’t have to follow anyone to figure out, sooner or later, that if you’re looking for a horseless carriage, you go to the only place in town where they are! You guys didn’t unload these steam cars hidden under your dusters, for God’s sake! Sylvia told me the plan to leave at a more discreet hour. It was a swell idea, but I just blew it. If we don’t leave now, forget it!”

Major Wallace didn’t look like he was used to taking suggestions from other people. But he nodded stiffly and said, “Very well. Everyone mount up as we planned. You take the lead, Marlowe. No headlamps, of course, until we’re well clear of this perishing village!”

There was a mad scramble as everyone piled aboard the vehicles they’d been practicing with. Sylvia and another girl came to the steam car Captain Gringo and Gaston were in. She said, “You two had best sit in the back. I’m driving.”

“I know how to drive this thing, Sylvia.”

“That’s what I mean, Dick. Move out of the way, dammit! Marlowe’s already starting and we have no tail lamps to follow!”

Captain Gringo and Gaston rolled over the back of the front seat to make room for the two girls. The one now seated by Sylvia was named Pat. It was hard to see what she looked like. The light was dim and Pat wore a big hat with a mosquito veil as well as her shapeless duster.

Sylvia let the major’s vehicle follow Marlowe’s out the wide rear doors of the warehouse before she fed the Stanley some steam and followed smoothly and silently. Gaston chuckled and said, “Now this, Dick, is how I was just trying to tell you one should drive a horseless carriage!”

Captain Gringo ignored the jibe and asked Sylvia again about the machine guns. She said, “In the major’s car, just ahead. Those pine crates in the backseat. We can worry about them when we need them.”

He looked back, saw nothing but the dim outlines of the steam cars behind, and muttered, “When we need them, she says! We’re maybe a hop and two skips ahead of the cops, and the only serious weapons on hand are not on hand. When’s the last time those Maxims were stripped and cleaned, Sylvia?”

“Cleaned and stripped? Whatever for? They’re still in the packing they came in from the factory. Major Wallace said we should wait till we had someone who knew something about machine guns before we unpacked them.”

The two soldiers of fortune exchanged glances. Captain Gringo saw no need to explain to anyone that dumb. Gaston snorted in disgust and said, “Eh bien, the humidity is only about ninety down here at this time of the year. Perhaps all the grease did not run off as the adorable weapons sweltered in their soggy wooden crates, non?”

Captain Gringo didn’t answer. When he had a chance to open the crates, he’d see if they had two weapons that would shoot, enough sound parts to cannibalize into one that might, or a lot of expensive rust that wouldn’t shoot at all. He asked Sylvia again if they had the extra ammo. She hadn’t answered the first time he’d asked. She nodded and said, “It’s in the last automobile. The White you almost demolished coming in.” Gaston said, “Oh, I love it. The Maxims are up ahead, the ammunition is trailing well to the tear, and the only ones who can man a machine gun are driving through the countryside with pretty girls all in a row.”

He looked off into the darkness and added, “Speaking of countryside, where in the devil are we? There used to be a moon around here somewhere. I can’t see a thing!”

Sylvia, at the wheel, answered calmly, “I can feel the ruts we’re following. Don’t worry, Gaston. If Marlowe steers into a tree, we’ll hear it in plenty of time.”

“I think I’d rather get out and walk,” Gaston said with a sigh.

Captain Gringo had to admit that he had a point. They weren’t going fast. About six miles an hour, as far as he could judge as he spotted an occasional lighter blur they passed in the darkness. But he said, “We’re moving faster than any troops can march. We don’t have to stop for trail breaks, either. Do you know if the law back there has horses, Gaston?”

Gaston shook his head and said, “Not the town constabulary. The military of course has cavalry. But it should take them a day or so to get over to this coast. Why, did you want to steal a horse, too?”

“No, just figuring the odds. If Marlowe doesn’t run us into a swamp before morning, we’ll make it to the border by daybreak at the rate we’re moving. The Nicaraguans can figure that out as well as we can, so they probably won’t chase us seriously.”

“Ah, in that case, may I suggest we all slow down, m’mselle? I believe you about solid rubber tires. My kidneys will never forgive you, even at this modest speed.”

Sylvia said, “I know the road’s bumpy. I’m the one who’s trying to keep us in the ruts. We have to keep up with the lead automobiles and Marlowe seems to be a speed demon.” They hit a bump that would have flipped them had they been going fifteen miles an hour. Pat gleeped in terror and would have fallen out had not Gaston reached forward to grab her as Captain Gringo cursed and Sylvia called her steering wheel something worse. He said, “Jesus, he must be in a hurry. You say Marlowe’s the guy who knows the old coastal pirate layout. I hope you kiddies didn’t buy the map from him.”

“Heavens, no. I told you he was a remittance man. Major Wallace found him a couple of weeks ago, down the coast. He speaks like a man from a good family. They obviously sent him over here to keep him from disgracing them. He’s all right when he’s sober and, thanks to the major, he usually is, these days.”

“I know what a remittance man is. American families have black sheep too. What was Marlowe doing up the coast in the bad old days? He doesn’t look like a pirate.”

“I doubt he has the backbone to steal fruit off a stand. He wasn’t there with any pirates. I told you the Royal Navy cleaned them out long ago, back in the days when you Yanks weren’t so fussy about your silly Monroe Doctrine and Great Britain almost claimed this whole area. You know of course that the Royal Navy still uses Bluefields, down the other way, even though your tiresome President Cleveland keeps insisting it belongs to Nicaragua?”

“Never mind about the Monroe Doctrine. Just get us out of Nicaragua. Did Marlowe say what he was doing up in Laguna Caratasca if it was after the pirates had been cleaned out?”

Pat said, “I heard him tell the major he was with some turtle hunters. Apparently there’s a lot of turtle grass on the tidal flats of the big lagoon.”

Captain Gringo nudged Gaston and asked, “Pearls?”

Gaston shook his head and said, “Mais non. He was probably really there with turtle hunters. There are no pearl beds in such shallow stagnant water. As I recall from my previous romp through the swampy place, turtles make more sense than anything else. Piracy is no longer allowed, and there is no great profit in mosquito skins, even though the ones up there are big enough to skin.”

Pat laughed and said, “Surely you jest? No insects could possibly be that big!”

Captain Gringo had learned at his mother’s knee never to play cards with strangers on a train or attempt to explain a joke to a Brit. But Gaston had enjoyed hauling Pat back from the brink a few times by now, so he said soberly, “You have not been in the tropics long, I see. When I was an artillery officer in the Mexican army, we found, after wearing out many a mule, that nothing pulled field guns as well as the local cockroaches. They are harder to break to harness than mules, of course. But once one has them properly trained …”

“Oh, you’re pulling my leg!” Pat giggled, adding, “I’ve seen the great roaches down here. I nearly fainted the first time one ran across my poor foot. But they’re' not much bigger than mice, or maybe rats.”

“True. We used to hitch them to our field guns in twenty-roach teams. As to pulling your leg, which one would you prefer I start with, M’mselle?”

The silly conversation ended when Sylvia responded to a beep up ahead by braking hard. The two men in the back almost fell atop the girls in front as the steam car slid to a stop. Captain Gringo asked what was up. Sylvia said, “I don’t know. We haven’t, driven far enough to need fresh boiler water.”

Captain Gringo thought about that as the tiny gleam of a bull’s-eye lantern slowly came their way in the darkness all around. In his earlier enthusiasm for the Stanley Steamer he’d forgotten why the electric and internal-combustion jobs were still giving steam cars a run for the money.

Already heavy to start with, steam cars saved weight by having no condensers. Like railroad locomotives, they used the steam once and had to drink more boiler water from time to time. Unlike railroad locomotives, they only had little boilers that could fit under a horseless carriage hood. So they had to stop for water more often.

He stood up in the high-riding Stanley and looked back. Nothing. The drivers behind had stopped, thank God. If anyone was following them up the coast road, they were as much in the dark as he was. But they couldn’t be far from Puerto Cabezas yet.

The guy with the little spotlight turned out to be Major Wallace. He shone the light on Sylvia and said, “We may as well take this opportunity to top our boiler water. That beggar Marlowe seems to have lost his bloody way!”

Sylvia replied, “For heaven’s sake, we can’t be fifteen miles out of town yet!”

“That’s what I mean!” sighed Wallace, sweeping his beam off to the side at the banana trees all around as he added, “We’re still in settled country and Marlowe’s balked at the first damned fork in the road we’ve come to!”

Captain Gringo said, “Hold it, Major. Swing that light a little to your left and, yeah, hold it there. Do you see what I see, Gaston?”

Gaston was already climbing down as Wallace ran his beam up and down the bare wooden pole, saying, “It’s a telegraph pole. What of it?”

Captain Gringo said, “Gaston will get the wire. He climbs like a squirrel. It’s a habit we’ve picked up, with all sorts of nasty people chasing us.”

Gaston moved into the beam, making for the pole, as Wallace said, “We’d better not. It may give our position away, and by now they should have wired ahead, if that was the plan.”

Captain Gringo said, “If they don’t know we took this road out of town, the whole town’s blind. They may already have wired up the coast. They may not have thought of it yet. First we make sure they can't. Then we make sure we don’t drive into any village with telegraph poles leading into it!”

Wallace shrugged and said, “Well, we hired you as security. I have to tell the others to top their boilers.”

He moved on in the dark. Sylvia had climbed down and, as far as Captain Gringo could tell in the dark, was handling something metallic. He climbed down too, asking, “Where are you and how can I help, doll?”

She said, “Stay out of my blinking way if you don’t like being scalded. I have the water canister, and I can find my way to the bathroom in the dark, thank you very much.”

Captain Gringo took a cigar from his breast pocket to kill two birds with one stone when he struck a match. By the flickering little light he could see Sylvia pouring water into a little tank under the now open hood. The feed tank was fastened to the firewall ahead of the steering wheel. Most of the space under the hood was occupied by a modest-sized boiler wrapped in piano wire. No light escaped from the oil-fired firebox under it. He asked, “Don’t you think we might as well feed her some more kerosene while we’re at it? I drove this thing a ways before we found you guys, you know.”

She said, “You damned near burned the tires off doing it, too. And we are not tending this vehicle. I am tending this blinking vehicle. The fuel’s not the problem. The dial on the dash tells me we’ve more than enough kerosene in the tank under my seat. Before you ask, yes, we do have extra tins of fuel and water in the rear trunk.”

He didn’t see what she had to bitch about. He shook out the match and walked up to Major Wallace’s car ahead. He hauled one of the crates over the rear, dropped it to the roadway, and used his pocketknife to open the lid. He struck another light. The Maxim machine gun lay in a bed of wood chips, and as he gagged at the vile smell of castor oil he saw it was in pretty good shape, save for rust spots here and there where the oil had been absorbed by the packing. He left the tripod in the case as he pulled the Maxim into an upright position, took a kerchief from his pocket, and wiped it down until it was clean enough to carry. Then he picked it up and took it back to the other vehicle. Sylvia had finished topping her boiler and asked what smelled so awful. He put the machine gun in the back and replied, “I like to keep busy. They packed the machine guns in castor oil, bless their heats. These are second-hand black-market guns, right?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the major.”

He shrugged, went back to reload the crate into the major’s vehicle, then moved down the line to get some ammo. He encountered the Englishman with the bull’s-eye, which came as no great surprise. Wallace said, “Oh, it’s you. What are you doing out of your seat? We have to get a move on.”

Captain Gringo said, “No, we don’t. Your guide is lost. I’ll talk to you about that in a minute. Got to get some ammo.”

“Whatever for? Have you seen or heard something, Walker?”

“Not yet. I want a belt in the Maxim when and if I do! Hold your horseless carriages till Gaston gets down off that pole. Marlowe’s not the only guy around here who knows his way to Laguna Caratasca.”

“Oh, I say! That does solve the problem! I’ll put him up in Marlowe’s White Steamer and—”

“No, you won’t. Gaston and me are a team. Let me get the ammo. Then we’ll take the lead with Pat and Sylvia. As you move up the line, pass the word to light the headlights.”

“Are you mad? What if someone spots our lights?”

“I’ll be sitting above Sylvia with a loaded machine gun. Gaston only moves like a cat. He can’t really see in the dark.” He saw that wasn’t going down too well with the self-important Wallace, so he added soothingly, “Look, we’re clear of the town, and the cops don’t seem to be chasing us. They must have figured out how futile it is to chase horseless carriages on foot.”

“Yes, but if they wired ahead—”

“That’s why we’d better drive faster and have some idea what the front bumper’s aimed at. I know our headlights will be spotted by anyone setting up a roadblock. But so what? We want to see them, too! These steam cars are pretty quiet, but not that quiet. Guys crouched behind a log across the road would hear us coming and open up before we knew they were there in any case, see?”

Wallace hesitated, then said, “Well, they say you know your business,” and moved on before Captain Gringo could think of a polite way to ask just who they might be.

He was still thinking about that as he groped his way to the last vehicle, told the people in it what he wanted, and was handed a bulky square canister. He told the driver about the change in plans, adding, “Don’t turn on your headlights until you hear a beep from the head of the column. Do any of you guys have a gun?”

One of the men in the back said he was holding a Winchester across his knees. Captain Gringo said, “Don’t hold it across your knees. Prop it over the back of your seat and keep your eyes to the rear. You guys are tail end. So anyone on our tail will nail you first if you don’t spot him first.”

Having cheered them immensely, Captain Gringo returned to his own steam car to find Gaston already in the rear seat. He handed the ammo to the Frenchman and climbed in behind the two girls before he told Sylvia about the change in plans, adding, “It could get a little rough up at the head of this motorcade. Maybe you girls should ride with the major?”

“Who would drive?” asked Sylvia, adding, “No. I’ve seen the way you drive.”

Pat said, “The other vehicles are crowded. Aside from passengers, the gear we were supposed to have strapped to this steamer had to be tossed in the others willy-nilly when we left so suddenly.”

There went the chance he wanted to consult with Gaston privately. He nodded and said, “Okay, switch on your headlights and see if we can move up between the bananas and the cars ahead.”

Sylvia did no such thing. She climbed out again, walked around to the front of the Stanley, and lit the headlights with a match. As she got back in, he frowned and asked, “Isn’t there any way to dim those lights from behind the wheel?”

“How? Only the electric cars have Edison bulb headlights. Ours run on carbide.”

She fed steam and they lurched out of the ruts to bounce over the weeds until they’d passed Wallace’s and Marlowe’s steamers. As she stopped just ahead of the original lead vehicle, they saw why Marlowe had stopped. The road ahead forked at a thirty-degree angle. Sylvia stopped, too.

Captain Gringo said, “Beep your beeper. I didn’t know it took so long to light up. Gaston?”

Gaston waited till Sylvia squeezed the bulb of the horn mounted by her side before he said, “We take the fork to the left, m’mselle.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, adding, “The road that way is almost overgrown with weeds, and besides, it leads inland. I thought we were trying to follow the coast line.”

Gaston said, “We are. A very soggy coast line, m’mselle. The fork to the right is heavily traveled and doubtless leads to some plantation on one of the coves the Mosquito Coast is so tediously provided with. We want to go the shorter, hopefully drier way on the higher ground to the west.”

Captain Gringo looked back, saw that the other four cars were lit up, and told Sylvia, “Take the left fork. He only lies about bugs and his sex life.” So Sylvia shrugged, fed steam, and followed the route Gaston had picked. The solid rubber wheels rolled more softly in the weed-filled ruts of the overgrown wagon trace. Captain Gringo didn’t have to suggest speeding up a bit. Sylvia knew what she was doing. He hauled the machine gun into his lap and began to field strip it by feel, putting the parts in the side pocket of his jacket as he made sure they were all there. The castor oil was going to stink him up like a skunk with an overprotective mother, but it couldn’t be helped, and while castor oil was an awful thing to make a kid swallow, it couldn’t be beat as a lubricant in humid heat. Lots of racing drivers used it in their red-hot engines since it burned off without leaving charred carbon on the metal. He checked the bore with a match when Sylvia slowed for a water-filled dip. The gun seemed in good shape. He adjusted the head spacing, since it had apparently been fired hot by the previous owner. There was no water in the jacket, of course. Captain Gringo didn’t water a Maxim unless he meant to fire long serious bursts, and there wasn’t that much ammo to spare, even with the extra rounds he’d asked for. He started putting the gun back together as he told Gaston they were in business, and asked the Frenchman to hand him the end of an ammo belt. Gaston did so, saying, “I find it trés curious about your M’sieur Marlowe getting lost back there, don’t you, Dick?”

“What can I tell you? He must have needed the job. At least he can drive, even if he fibbed about knowing the way to Laguna Caratasca.”

“Merde alors, even a beachcomber should have been able to read that fork in the road back there!”

“So he’s not a good beachcomber. I read it the same way, and I’ve never been anywhere near the lagoon.”

Pat turned brightly in her seat to say, “Oh, I understand why we went this way! If the pirates and everyone else no longer use this road, it accounts for the weeds, right?”

One could see her profile under the veil now, with the glow ahead outlining her. Pat didn’t look as dumb as she sounded. She was sort of pretty in a pug-nosed way. Gaston said, “Bless you, my child. Stick with me and I’ll smother you in rhinestones. You have the makings of a beachcomber, but this wagon trace has not been completely abandoned for ten or more years. Unless wheels roll from time to time, what they so amusingly describe as weeds in these parts soon grow up to be trees.”

Pat just frowned in concentration. Sylvia got it. She said, “Then we still may run into traffic on this effing road?”

Captain Gringo said, “Not at night. Guys driving an ox cart of bananas to town like to have more light on the subject.” The headlights picked up something black and shiny slithering off the ruts ahead, so he added, “See what I mean?”

“My God, was that a snake?”

“Yeah, don’t ask me what kind. They come in all varieties down here and most of them hunt just after sundown. By midnight most of the snakes and people down here call it a night.”

Gaston slapped the side of his face, swore, and said, “The mosquitoes don’t. I got the monster just as she was about to fly off to her nest with me. Could you drive a little faster, m’mselle? Dick and I are not wearing veils, and the night-flying bloodsuckers will get worse before they get better!”

~*~

Morning found the motorcade surrounded by what they hoped was uninhabited jungle. Mist hugged the ground between the mossy boles of glandular trees on either side. It was even mistier out on the silent sheet of water ahead. The weedy ruts they’d followed through the night ended in the fetid mud of a riverbank. As Sylvia braked to a stop, she asked, “Is that the Rio Segovia, Gaston?”

He said, “Oui, and I am feeling rather smug about it. I was beginning to wonder why we didn’t seem to be getting to it. As I said, it was a long time ago.”

Captain Gringo started to ask how far north they’d come from Puerto Cabezas. Then he remembered that the border was sixty miles as the crow flies. They hadn’t been riding crows. The goddamn road had twisted all over as it followed the high ground. But he had to admit they’d never have made such good time on foot, or even mounted. Anyone chasing them was out of the race. Assuming, of course, they kept moving. Unless steam cars floated, that was going to be a problem.

He turned to Gaston and asked, “Okay, you’re the world traveler. How does one find a ferry boat around here on such short notice?”

Gaston said, “You don’t need one. The Segovia is shallow enough to ford here. Why else did you think the trail led here?” The American studied the wide sheet of sluggish tea-colored water as Sylvia asked how deep it was. Gaston said, “It comes up to one’s chest as one wades across, crocodiles permitting.”

Captain Gringo had been afraid he’d say something like that. The tops of the steam cars would make it. Their low-slung fire boxes wouldn’t.

The others of course had also stopped. Major Wallace came forward with the shame-faced Marlowe. Wallace said, “I say, you told me there was a bridge, Marlowe!”

Marlowe looked down and muttered, “I told you last night this wasn’t the trail I remembered. I came down the coast by another.”

Wallace grimaced and turned to Captain Gringo to observe, “At least there seems to be no military outpost guarding the border, eh what?”

Captain Gringo repressed a snort of disgust and said, “I admire a man who thinks ahead. I could have told you there’d be no border guards. You only guard roads crossing your border when they lead someplace. According to Gaston here, there’s no road up the coast beyond the lagoon country. So if Nicaragua’s worried about being invaded by Honduras, or vice versa, this ain’t the way either army would come. Smugglers always buy off the cops at both ends, so why bother about that either, see?” He turned to Gaston and said, “You and I had better scout the far side while the major here builds a lot of nice rafts. The sound of falling timber carries and we wouldn’t want to be ambushed in the middle of a river, would we?”

Wallace asked, “Rafts?” Then, since nobody could really be that stupid, he added, “Oh, right, I’ll have the chaps break out some saws and axes from the supplies.”

Sylvia had been thinking. She said, “Wait a mo’, you lot. Gaston says the water’s only up to his chest. If I stand behind the wheel I won’t even get my Aunt Fanny Adams wet.”

Captain Gringo said, “You’ll drown your fire, though.”

She nodded and said, “I know. Not to worry. If we turn up the flames with the throttles shut and build up pressure till the safety valves are ready to pop, we can make it across with the fires out before the steam’s all gone!”

Wallace laughed and said, “I say, the lass is on to something there! The river’s not that wide. But tell me, Sylvia, won’t we have to dry our burners a bit after drowning the poor things in that mucky brew?”

She shrugged and said, “We will. But meanwhile we’ll be on the other side.”

Captain Gringo climbed down, picked up the machine gun, and said, “You kiddies work it out. Meanwhile, we’ll make sure there’s nothing else to worry about on the far side. Gaston, grab the end of this belt. I don’t want to get the canvas wet.”

Gaston sighed and followed, holding the end of the ammo belt as he told Wallace, “Wait for our signal before you do anything grotesque. If you get no signal, forget about crossing. You children don’t really wish to meet anything that can take the two of us out!”

Captain Gringo was already wading into the river, so Gaston had no choice but to follow, holding the ammo belt taut at shoulder height. Captain Gringo rested the Maxim on one shoulder to draw his .38 with the other hand as the bouillon-warm water rose around his thighs. Gaston murmured, “About those crocodiles I mentioned, Dick …”

But the taller American said, “Screw the crocodiles. There’s nothing we can do about them. Keep your eyes on those fucking trees on the far shore. If you were out to ambush a motorcade you knew was coming your way, could you come up with a better place?”

“As a matter of fact, there are endless opportunities for ambush between here and the old pirate camp. But your point is well taken. Where did you suppose that telegraph wire I cut last night led to, Dick?”

“Not this way. I’ve been watching for wires.”

The water rose higher until Gaston was in to the nipples and Captain Gringo was wet to the floating ribs. Then the slick muddy bottom started getting shallower again. They pressed on and floundered up the far bank. Said bank was low. The problem was the road beyond. There didn’t seem to be any. Captain Gringo found a fallen log to brace the Maxim across as he growled, “Now I see why nobody was waiting for us on this side. Where’s the fucking trail, Gaston?”

Gaston dropped the end of the ammo belt on the reasonably dry leaves as he looked around to get his bearings. Then he nodded and said, “Ah, there she is, the poor thing. As I observed last night just before the mosquitoes consumed me, when one does not use a jungle trail, it tries to heal itself. Those gumbo limbos are of recent vintage, Dick.”

Captain Gringo spotted the ruts leading through the skinny saplings Gaston meant. Some of the young trees grew right in the ruts. He grunted and said, “Okay, when the Royal Navy cleans out a pirate cove it stays cleaned out. I’ll cover the landward approaches with the Maxim just in case while you wave them on across. Okay?”

“Are you serious? You and I could doubtless follow the overgrown trail on foot, if we had machetes, but …”

“Wave them over, dammit! You don’t need machetes if you’ve got a steel bumper and plenty of power. It’s broad daylight and Sylvia’s good at following ruts, so what the hell.” He moved back to the machine gun, muttering about having to do all the thinking around here. That was something to think about as he crouched down and fed a round into the chamber, pocketing the unfired round he’d spent to check the action again. There was something fishy as hell about the people they were traveling with these days.

He was having enough trouble buying the yam about buried treasure. The coastal pirates who’d hung on long after the golden days of guys like Morgan and Rogers had been little more than half-breed scum, putting out to sea in sailing caribs to attack small coastal schooners. People with serious cargoes sent them by steamer these days. Nobody could board a steamship from a low-slung native craft. So how much treasure could the desperate riffraff have collected before the Royal Navy dealt with them as a general nuisance?

And even if Wallace and the others believed in pirate treasure, why were they going about recovering it in such a wrong-headed way? The steam cars and other expensive gear meant money, lots of money, behind this dumb operation. So why was it so dumb? Who’d ever heard of taking dames and other halfwits along if, as Wallace suspected, there could be an opposing team up at Laguna Caratasca.

The way most knock-around guys would have done it would have been a lot less complicated. He knew if it had been up to him, and he’d thought there was any point in going, he’d load up a lot of guns and hardcase guys aboard a power launch and just steam in the easy way. If there was an outfit strong enough to hold that big lagoon against a well-armed waterborne gang of pros, he wouldn’t go.

He heard splashing. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Sylvia driving across, standing like a chariotress behind the wheel as she made like a steamboat with her steam car. He turned back to watch the trees. He’d worry about treachery from those quarters later. Whatever the weird Brits were up to, turning him and Gaston in for the rewards couldn’t be it.

You don’t drag wanted men across borders into uninhabited country to turn them in to the cops. Sylvia had spotted him at the hotel before he’d known who she was. So far, everything that she’d said was going to happen, had. He’d worry about her lying to him when he caught her in a lie. So far, she and her chums had just been acting terribly odd. Maybe the trouble Yanks had telling Brits a joke cut two ways. He sure didn’t get the point of this joke, but he didn’t see what else to call it!

Sylvia didn’t think it was funny when she churned up the bank arid saw Gaston waving her into the solid-looking wall of gumbo limbo, but she caught on fast and plowed into them, following the ruts by feel as Pat screamed and saplings went down like wheat, with the Stanley’s bumper acting as the scythe. Sylvia drove a good fifty yards into the new growth before her pressure gave out and she had to stop.

The others came over in good order, save for Marlowe, who managed to stall in mid-stream. Major Wallace walked over to Captain Gringo, cursing, as the last car in the motorcade hissed to a soggy stop nearby. Wallace said, “Look at the perishing sod! He’s waving at us like a ruddy shipwrecked sailor on a raft!”

Captain Gringo got to his feet, saying, “There doesn’t seem to be anything to worry about over here. Keep your eyes skinned anyway. Mosquito Indian kids are liable to put an arrow into anything they stumble over just for the hell of it. I take it we’ve lost that White Steamer?”

“Not bloody likely. We can winch it out as soon as my firebox is dry. I had my steam car fitted with a winch geared to its engine, with just such emergencies in mind.”

“Yeah, I can see you thought of everything. You sure picked a swell guide, Major.”

“He picked me, actually. As you know, we tried to recruit you or some chaps like you when we first arrived. You weren’t in San José and we had no luck finding anyone else with your reputation. Marlowe approached us and said he heard we were mounting an expedition, so …”

“Gotcha. If you can’t hire a pro, find a guy who needs drinking money. He got lost before we were barely clear of town last night. He’s full of shit about having taken another road the last time. Gaston says this is the only one, and Gaston was making a living knowing things like that before you and I were born.”

Wallace nodded and said, “I said he was a bloody sod, He just managed to mire his wheels out there, and I must say that took ingenuity, even for a moron! There’s no way to stall a steam car if you have a full head of steam, damn his drunken soul!” Captain Gringo saw Sylvia and Pat doing something under the hood of their Stanley. He moved over to join them, as Wallace strode up and down the bank, yelling out across the water for Marlowe either to wade ashore or, preferably, to drown himself.

Gaston came over too, as Sylvia slid the burner pan out to let the asbestos kerosene wicks have some air. Captain Gringo saw why Gaston was so interested in engineering these days. Both girls had removed their hats and veils, since the mosquitoes had been replaced by humid heat in the shade. Pat was a roguish-looking little Irish redhead with big green bedroom eyes, and the little Frenchman had dibs on her, damn his horny old soul!

Sylvia looked prettier, albeit more reserved, even with that grease on her pale cheek. He looked up at the sparkling green forest canopy and told them, “You’d better keep your lids on, ladies. It’s not the sunlight you see that does you in in the tropics. The bigger trees have almost locked arms over this overgrown trail, but almost isn’t good enough and some rays are getting through.”

Sylvia said, “In a minute. The air’s so perishing damp it’s going to take forever for the burner to dry. Are we going to have to knock down trees all the way to Laguna Caratasca, for heaven’s sake?”

“If we’re lucky. The map says we have less than thirty miles to go. God knows what the jungle says.” He turned to Gaston to ask, “Does the road ahead beeline or make like a snake, Gaston?”

Gaston snorted and said, “What road? M’mselle is correct in assuming it to be a rhubarb patch, these days. Most naturally it has always wound its weary way trés fatigue. I think we’d do as well driving cross-country between the trees, non?”

Captain Gringo thought about that. He’d run through enough jungle by now to know it was true that the going was easier in the cathedral gloom of tall timber where sunlight never reached the ground to drive the underbrush crazy. He frowned and said, “Guys can walk pretty good between the big timber’s buttress roots under virgin canopy. I’m not sure there’s room to squeeze a motor vehicle through. You get to step over lots of fallen logs in the tall timber, too. Besides, how the hell could you ever find the way if we leave the only trail there?”

Gaston pointed to the gumbo limbo leaning away from Sylvia’s front bumper and said, “Easy. This adorable hedgerow that used to be the trail should be headed the same way it always has, non?”

The taller American nodded thoughtfully and said, “It might work, if we kept a bearing on this wall of greenery as we drove. So which side do you suggest, east or west?”

“West, of course. One wishes to stay on the dry side.”

Pat asked, “Coo, do you call this dry? I feel like I walked into a steambath with all my clothes on!”

Gaston suggested she take them off, adding, “We shall be wetter long before we are drier, even if it fails to rain today, M’mselle Pat. This trail followed such high ground as there was between here and the lagoons to the north. Fortunately, our high wheels should do most of the wading in the muck I foresee ahead.”

Sylvia took Captain Gringo’s elbow and steered him away from Gaston and the giggling little redhead. As they walked toward the river’s edge, he thought she wanted to watch Major Wallace do something about the steam car still stuck out in the middle. But she avoided the pacing and cursing Wallace, too, as she murmured, “Dick, we have to do something about your friend Gaston.”

“Really? I thought Pat had her eye on Gaston.”

“That’s what I’m talking about, and it’s not bloody funny. He seems intent to have his way with her.”

“I noticed. So what? Is she under twenty-one?”

“Mentally? I’d say she has the mind of a nine-year-old. One who’d just love to play doctor in the shed with the lad next door.”

He chuckled and said, “Yeah, and I let Gaston get in the first bids. I guess you’re not interested in playing doctor, huh?”

“Don’t be beastly. How are we to keep that dirty old man out of poor Pat’s knickers?”

“Are you her mother? Dirty old men need love and affection, too, and Pat can decide for herself about her knickers. He won’t attack her, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Sylvia grimaced and said, “He won’t have to. I noticed coming over on the ship that she can’t say no. Had a dreadful row with her when she tried to bring a second-class passenger to the cabin I was forced to share with her.”

“I see you don’t like parties, either. Don’t worry, Sylvia. Old Gaston is too sneaky to do anything naughty in front of you, unless you ask him. He’s not a kiss-and-tell guy, if you’re worried about the other guys getting jealous. By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask how you four dames and eight guys pair off.”

“We don’t,” she said flatly, adding, “I told you in the beginning this was strictly a business syndicate. All of us but Marlowe, of course, knew Major Wallace socially in Blighty. When he approached us with the story of the treasure, each of us chipped in to mount this expedition. I confess my own interest was as much for the adventure as anything. I already have sufficient income for my needs, but, God, it can get dull in Belgravia if one’s not interested in musical beds or an early grave from drugs and drink!”

He nodded as a couple of pieces fell into place. Belgravia, he knew, was a pretty fancy London neighborhood. He’d thought they all seemed sort of hoity-toity for a knock-around crew. It explained the dames tagging along, too. A bored rich dame who invested in a treasure hunt wasn’t about to sit home with her sewing as she waited for results. It was still a hell of a way to run a railroad. He asked, “Is there any chance you kiddies could have been led down the garden path? Treasure hunts are a pretty standard con, you know.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Major Wallace rowed for Harrow. Besides, he was a great friend of my late husband and—”

“You’re a recent widow, Sylvia?” he cut in.

She shrugged and said, “Bruce died about two years ago. That’s recent enough, if you’re asking if I’ve another bloke in Blighty.”

He didn’t ask. He could tell by her occasional lapses into East End slang that she’d married up a couple of notches. That explained a few things, too. Even a nice Cockney widow with the wherewithal to go on living in Belgravia wouldn’t make many friends of her own there. Major Wallace accepted people socially if they had the dough to back his whatever the hell. It was possible he really thought they were hunting for a long-lost treasure. There didn’t seem to be anything more interesting up the coast.

One of the other male drivers and two of the remaining women in the party came over to join them. Captain Gringo couldn’t remember their names and Sylvia didn’t see fit to reintroduce them. The dames were both okay, although Sylvia and Pat were the prettier members of the pack. One of the other English girls wore glasses and spoke so veddy-veddy he could barely understand her as she asked how long they would be staying here. Captain Gringo pointed at the stalled steam car in the river and explained they had to wait until Wallace had power to winch Marlowe ashore. She said, “Oh, good. In that case I have time to take a shit,” and strode grandly out of sight into the trees as Captain Gringo tried not to laugh. He knew she’d been born with her money. People raised by servants who always told them they were right didn’t have to bother with learning middle-class manners.

The other man said, “I never would have hired that remittance man. Had to drive around him when he stalled out there. That Marlowe’s a rum chap, even for a beachcomber. He lies, you see.”

“Oh? I hadn’t noticed.”

The other man nodded soberly and said, “Marlowe claims to come from a good family in Essex. It so happens I have relations in Colchester.”

“That’d be the county seat of Essex, right?”

The other man turned to the remaining other woman and said, “You see, Phoebe? Even a Yank knows his English geography better than that rum Marlowe beggar! The blighter tried to tell me his home was in Norwich, in Essex, of all bleeding shires!”

Captain Gringo envisioned his old geography atlas. It had been a long time since things like that had seemed important, but even he knew that Norwich was either in Connecticut or somewhere on the east coast of England. He shrugged and said, “Maybe he just didn’t want to tell you where he really comes from. Family skeletons and all that.”

“That’s no flaming excuse to put Norwich, the cathedral town of Norfolk, in flaming Essex, two flaming shires to the south!”

The girl with him soothed, “Now, Bertie, don’t be unkind. Mr. Marlowe’s been away from England a long time and I’m sure Captain Walker’s right about him wanting to hide some sticky family business.”

“Then why can’t he do it right, for God’s sake? A bloody Welshman would know where Norwich was! Norwich is hardly a hidden village in the Outback of Australia, you know!”

“There, there, I’m sure Mr. Marlowe’s not a Welshman. He speaks with an educated home-county accent.”

“My point exactly. Why put on the airs of a middle-class education if you don’t know the geography a schoolboy would need to know to get out of the lower forms? Mark my words, Phoebe, he’s a ruddy valet or footman who learned his manners from his betters and probably had to leave England after he committed a terrible crime! ”

Bertie brightened as a new thought hit him and he announced, “I say, Marlowe could be Jack the Ripper! They never caught Saucy Jack, you know, and it’s only been a few years since he gave up his disgusting habits in the East End! What do you think, Captain?”

Captain Gringo laughed as he stared out across the water at the sad dejected figure sitting in the stranded White before he said, “If Marlowe had ever been Jack the Ripper, Jack the Ripper would have been caught.”

Everyone laughed but Sylvia. He decided he liked old Phoebe better, even if she wasn’t as pretty. It was a waste of God’s time to create beautiful women with brooding dispositions. He suspected that even if he could get next to Sylvia he’d regret it in the cold gray dawn. Moody bitches were only fun going in. Getting out could get tedious as hell.

Major Wallace came their way, holding one end of a manila line he was uncoiling from under the rear of his own steam car. He nodded at them and said, “Got my fire going again. Must say these little flash boilers build pressure quickly.”

He moved to the river’s edge until his boots were starting to sink in the mud before he called out, “Hoy, Marlowe! Wade in and take this line.”

Out on the river, Marlowe called back, “I’ll get wet!” Wallace yelled, “That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all day! Of course you’ll get wet, you idiot! Who the flaming hell is supposed to get wet for you, me? Not bloody likely! You stalled out there. Come in and take this line!”

As the remittance man stepped warily down into the waist-deep water, the major growled in a lower tone, “I’d leave the sod, if it weren’t for the car and its supplies. Must say he’s a fair driver. Can’t understand how he managed to stall out there, though.”

Captain Gringo told the major about Gaston’s plan to leave the old trail and try for a run between the jungle trees. Wallace frowned and said, “Doubt it’ll work, but it’s worth a try. If we can’t get the machines between the big stuff, we can always work back to the trail and merrily mow our way through the lighter second growth.”

Sylvia protested, “Not while I’m driving the lead car! Half the shattered branches landed in my lap just now!”

Captain Gringo said, “She’s got a point, Major. Actually, most of the stuff she flattened fell the other way. But there are tree snakes to consider, and, worse yet, we’ll be making one hell of a racket as we push blind thought the gumbo limbo like tin elephants.”

Wallace didn’t answer right away. Marlowe floundered up the bank and the major handed him the end of the line, saying, “Take this back and make sure you tie it to the frame properly. What are you waiting for, a kiss goodbye? You’ve delayed us a flaming hour, you stupid bastard!”

Marlowe reddened and started back with the line, head downcast. Captain Gringo didn’t blame him. It hadn’t been an hour and most of the steamers were still waterlogged. Anyone could get stuck in the mud. The guy had just driven into a soft spot that his wet tires couldn’t handle, right?

Major Wallace turned to signal his associate standing by his own car. As the other Englishman bent to start the steam winch, Captain Gringo said, “Hold it! If Marlowe’s in mud to his hubs, you could wind up with two cars in the river!”

But the manila line had already snapped taut, and anyone could see that the car stuck in the river was the only one moving. Captain Gringo stared thoughtfully at the red tires of Wallace’s machine. The brakes of course would be locked. But Wallace hadn’t choked his wheels on the mud and fallen leaves over there. Captain Gringo told Wallace, “When you get him out, take his gun away and hold him here till I get back. No time to explain, but fort your people up between the steam cars and the river!”

And then he was running back to where he’d left Gaston, Pat, and the machine gun. He grabbed the Maxim and kept going, letting the ammo belt lash behind him like the tail of an angry boa. Gaston ran after him, and as he caught up under the trees he gasped, “Who are we after, Dick?”

Captain Gringo snapped, “Not sure yet. Keep it down to a roar and watch the undergrowth to our right!”

He leaped over a fallen forest giant, spotted a shaft of sunlight in the distance, and cut sharply to the west. Gaston had spotted sunlight where sunlight didn’t usually grow, too. As he kept pace with his longer-legged comrade he said, “Very clever. They knew we’d scout the ford before we let everyone cross, non?”

“Shut up. We’ll work around by swinging wider and move in from their rear flank. You were here before; what’s just up the trail from the river?”

“You told me to shut up. Besides, I don’t remember anything.”

Captain Gringo judged they’d moved far enough to the northwest and started moving due east, silent as a cat as his boot heels met only the evil-smelling soggy mat of rotting leaves between the big trees. He saw the pale green glow again and homed in on it. Gaston started to say it looked like someone had macheted a clearing and been camped there sometime, but he didn’t. He knew Captain Gringo had it figured.

The ragged line of white-clad ambushers, lined up with their guns trained casually on the gumbo limbo they’d left so considerately for the motorcade to follow, looked like natives as Captain Gringo eyed them over the top of yet another mossy fallen log. Gaston crawled into place at his side and moved the ammo belt to make sure it wouldn’t snarl, when and if. The if didn’t seem too likely. Gaston grimaced and whispered, “Ladróns. Regard those ashes over there behind the last man. They’ve been here some time. Business must be slow.”

“They were waiting for us. Nobody else is expected.”

“Merde alors, why? The triple-titted treasure is supposed to be up ahead, not on us, yet! What are we waiting for, Dick? Have you for some reason grown fond of that corporal’s squad of thieves?”

Captain Gringo shook his head as he sighted along the nine-man line with its exposed right flank to them. He murmured, “It is a corporal’s squad, and those are military rifles. Bolt-action repeaters. Makes a guy wonder. How do you figure we take at least one alive?”

“I don’t. I do not make it my habit to converse with strange men with guns in their hands.”

Before Captain Gringo could answer, they heard two distant gunshots. The ambushers had ears too, so they started to move on the sounds of fire. Captain Gringo didn’t want them to, so he fired before they could get out of line. The machine gun-cleared its throat with a mad woodpecker death rattle. He had to traverse to hose them all down, since a couple moved like old pros and almost made it to cover before the Maxim fire laid them low.

As the machine gun fell silent, leaving them with ringing ears, Gaston spat and observed, “As I was saying, it is trés difficult to carry on civilized conversations at times like these. You were right about the military training. That last one you got hit the dirt and rolled like a jolly U.S. Marine!”

Captain Gringo saw he had a third of the belt left. He said, “Stay here and cover me while I see if we had any luck.” They hadn’t. As he stepped out in the clearing and started rolling people over, none of them had anything to tell him. He went through the pockets of the dead, getting nothing for his pains but pocket change and sticky fingers. He wiped the blood off on the shirt of the last man down the line, then went back to rejoin Gaston by the log, saying, “That’s the trouble with soft-nosed slugs. They kill you almost anywhere they hit you in the trunk. The rifles are Krags.”

“U.S. issue?”

“Can’t tell. Uncle Sam buys Krags from Sweden because they shoot so good. But the Swedes sell ’em to anyone with the money. The eight-man squad and whoever was their leader all had the same arms and ammo. No I.D. You figure it out, Gaston. You’ve been a soldier of fortune longer than me.”

As Captain Gringo picked up the warm Maxim, Gaston shook his head and said, “I confess it is beyond me, too. Honduran soldiers should have had on Honduran uniforms. Perhaps Nicaraguan rebels?”

“Why pick on us, then? The Nicaraguan establishment wants our heads on a plate, and if rebels knew we were coming...”

“Nicaraguan military? Wearing peon cottons and sombreros to avoid an international incident working in another country.” Captain Gringo started walking back to where they’d left the others as he tried that, saw it wouldn’t work either, and said, “Nicaraguan troops don’t read right. We just came from Nicaragua, damn it.”

“Ah, but we were only there long enough to share that blonde.”

“Don’t talk dirty. That ambush was meant for the Brits we signed on with. If Nicaragua wanted ’em dead, they’d have taken them out while they were fucking around in Puerto Cabezas all that time. Besides, those guys were good. You were right about them moving like guys who’d been under fire before. I read ’em as European-or U.S.-trained.”

“They looked like natives, Dick.”

“So do you, dressed right for the part. Any dark guy with a good tan looks like a peon in white cotton and straw. None of them looked as Swedish as their guns, but none of them looked particularly Indian, either. Let’s drop it for now. Keep your eyes open till we find out who fired those other shots. They sounded like they came from somewhere near the cars.”

“Oui, but in that case, why only two? Nobody can take out twelve people with two shots, and unless one does, at least ten survivors should be making a lot of noise right now, non?”

They found out what had happened when they rejoined the others near the riverbank. Exactly ten people stood around two figures on the ground between Major Wallace’s steam car and the one he’d winched out of the river.

Wallace was one of the guys on the ground. The other was Marlowe. Captain Gringo put the Maxim in the rear of Sylvia’s Stanley and walked over to join them. He didn’t ask if they were dead. He’d seen dead men before. Major Wallace lay on his back with a puzzled expression on his face. Marlowe lay face down with a little whore pistol still gripped in his hand. Captain Gringo asked what had happened. The one called Bertie said, “I shot Marlowe. Had to. The rum bugger whipped his gun out and fired point-blank at the Major for no reason at all!”

The girl called Phoebe said, “I think he had a reason. The poor major had just said to put his hands up. I fear there was more to our Mr. Marlowe than met the eye!”

Captain Gringo said that was for sure, as he knelt to roll Marlowe over and go through his pockets. Sylvia asked, “Why was Major Wallace holding him up, for heaven’s sake?” Captain Gringo couldn’t ask Marlowe. The remittance man’s dead face was covered with mud in place of any expression it might still have worn.

Captain Gringo got Marlowe’s wallet as he explained, “I told him to, when it occurred to me he’d stalled his car out there on purpose. There was only one reason for him to do that. He wanted to be left behind. Gaston and I just met his friends a quarter mile up the road. You boys and girls were expected. ”

He opened the wallet. The damned I.D. said that Marlowe was Marlowe. He started going through the other pockets as he added, “In fairness to this slob, he tried to stop you the nice way by getting lost a lot. The ambush up a ways was the backup in case you really got this far. Here’s a Swiss army knife. Big deal. You can buy that in any good hardware store. He didn’t take any chances about being searched, did he?”

Bertie said, “Oh, I say, why should any of us have suspected him of . . . whatever it was?”

Captain Gringo was too polite to say they’d been taken in like a bunch of greenhorns by a guy they’d never seen before. He stood up, pocketing the nice knife, and stepped over to the major’s body. As he knelt to go through the other cadaver’s pockets, Sylvia said, “For God’s sake, we know who he was! He and my late husband belonged to the same club!” Captain Gringo took the folded map from Wallace’s perforated shirt pocket. To his mild surprise, the “treasure map” was a modern merchant-marine navigational chart printed on linen bond. It, too, had been perforated. As he unfolded it, Marlowe’s bullet hole multiplied to a dozen, and the bloodstains didn’t do much to make the map legible, either. Captain Gringo grimaced and said, “This poor slob sure got his ticket punched. Is this the only copy of the map?”

Bertie said each driver had been issued a copy by the late major and scampered off to his steam car before Captain Gringo could tell him not to bother. The tall American put the mined map aside, rolled the body to get at its wallet, and satisfied himself that Wallace had I D. no sneakier than Marlowe’s. But Marlowe had to have been a sneak.

He rose to his feet again and said, “Well, gang, I’d say that tears it. Without a leader, the party’s over. You all know the way back to Puerto Cabezas. Gaston and I have private reasons for not going back there, but—”

Sylvia snapped, “Don’t be ridiculous. We still have the maps, and what just happened doesn’t mean the treasure’s been shifted.”

A surly male voice in the crowd muttered, “Reasons, indeed! Leave you two up here to look for the perishing treasure on your own? Not bloody likely!”

Sweet little Phoebe said, “Oh, I say, these chaps wouldn’t play us false. They don’t know where the treasure is!”

Captain Gringo ignored both remarks as he explained, “If there ever was anything worth digging up at Laguna Caratasca, it’s long dug. Can’t you all see what’s just happened? Marlowe joined your expedition to steer you wrong. Those fake guerrillas a quarter mile ahead were waiting to make double-certain. In other words, the other side was on to you before you started!”

The redhead, Pat, of all people, said, “Pooh; if some other chaps beat us to the treasure, why would they have gone to so much trouble to stop us? What poor Major Wallace was after must still be there!”

Sylvia said, “She’s right. They may know about the treasure, but they haven’t found it yet, Dick. By the way, whom do you suppose they are?”

He shrugged and replied, “Professionals, which is more than you folks can say. Look, you’ve all got money and nice homes to return to. This has gotten beyond an adventurous lark. The other side is playing for keeps and we don’t even know who they are!”

Bertie came back with his own copy of the map and handed it to Captain Gringo already unfolded. As the American scanned it, Sylvia said, “We’re pressing on, with or without you and Gaston!”

There was a chorus of agreement as Captain Gringo studied the neatly inked-in additions to the printed blowup of Laguna Caratasca. He whistled wearily, started folding the map again, and said, “Okay, you’d probably never make it back alive alone anyway. We haven’t time for an election. So I’m the new numero uno and Gaston is my segundo. Gaston?”

“Oui?”

“I’m taking Marlowe’s White Steamer for a cover-up joy ride as soon as we can unload the supplies and get up a head of steam. I want you to lead everyone and everything northeast into the big timber at least a couple of miles before you fort up and wait for me there.”

Gaston nodded and turned to point at two of the Englishmen, saying, “You and you will assist me in unloading Marlowe’s horseless carriage. The rest of you to your vehicles and fire up your boilers, avec dispatch!”

One of the Englishmen made the mistake of asking why he had to take orders from a perishing little Frog. So Gaston kicked him in the balls.

As the victim writhed on the ground in pain, Captain Gringo said, “Sorry about that. I forgot to tell you Gaston’s used to commanding Foreign Legion thugs. I said there wasn’t time for an election and this is not a debating society. We have maybe an hour to get the fuck out of here, if we’re lucky. We’re up against pros, damn it! They had a squad of well-trained riflemen backing Marlowe. So what do you bet they have someone even meaner backing the guys we just took out?”

~*~

After Gaston and the others had driven away, Captain Gringo loaded the two bodies into the back of the White Steamer and got in the front with the machine gun. He opened the throttle gingerly and the big steam car responded by lurching forward. He saw that its engine was less responsive than a Stanley’s. So much the better. He wanted weight and power, not speed.

He drove over the stubble cleared by Sylvia’s push into the gumbo limbo, and when he came to standing saplings, he kept going. He admitted she’d had a point about wanting to drive all the way to the lagoon country through this shit. Most of the trees went down ahead of him as the bumper cut them off near the ground. Some of the springy trunks whipped the wrong way and tried to ride with him. But fortunately they were only a little thicker than broom sticks so he didn’t get seriously clubbed.

He leaned into the whipping with his head as low as the steering wheel, following the ruts by feel until he burst out into the clearing where the would-be ambushers had waited. They were still there, with company. A mess of turkey buzzards had settled to feed on the corpses. He braked to a stop and looked away as one helped itself to a juicy eyeball, ignoring him and the steam car.

He turned and said, “This is where you get out,” to Marlowe’s corpse. He rolled the dead sneak over the side to sprawl artistically in the gumbo limbo stubble. He thought about moving over to the flank to police the brass he’d spilled mowing down the other bodies in the clearing. He grimaced and muttered, “Hell with it. Anyone who can read sign will know these slobs were taken on the flank. If we leave ’em a really interesting trail, they won’t bother looking for the few footprints Gaston and I might have left in the dead leaves over there.”

He put the steam car in reverse and drove backward in a circle, the way a panic-stricken or wounded driver might have at greater speed. He cut a swath of underbrush, reversed, and made a K turn out into the clearing deliberately to run over a corpse with a squishy bump while he left some tire tracks to read. Then he drove back the way he’d come and ran over Marlowe as long as he was about it. Why make it easy for his friends to recognize the bastard, right?

He drove back near the river and circled around aimlessly to wipe out or confuse the pattern of tracks left earlier by other vehicles. Then he stopped, dragged the dead Wallace up front, and got out. He sat the corpse more or less behind the wheel, picked up his machine gun, and opened the throttle a bit with his free hand. The White Steamer slowly backed into the river. Its firebox hissed and went out as the sluggish water rose to swallow it. But the steam on tap kept the White moving. So Captain Gringo braced the Maxim on his hip and proceeded to shoot the shit out of it. As the boiler blew with a billowing cloud of steam, the big car stopped a dozen yards off shore. He’d used up the rest of the belt. He ejected it and tossed it into the river for the current, such as it was, to carry away.

He surveyed his handiwork. Wallace slumped nicely over the wheel out there as Captain Gringo put himself in another’s boots and murmured, “Let’s see, they throve into the ambush as planned, but the wise-ass sons of bitches had flank scouts out on foot and it was a mutual disaster. The agent we planted in the expedition bought the farm. The leader was hit in the shootout and only made it to here, but it sure looks like the others made it back across the Segovia. By now they’d have made it back to Puerto Cabezas, and then …? Shit, why worry about them?”

He hefted the spent machine gun to his shoulder and picked up a snapped-off sapling before following the tire tracks Gaston and the others had left cutting into the woods. As he walked backward out of the clearing near the river, he swept soggy dead leaves into meaningless patterns with his heavy improvised broom. It was hard work in this humid heat, but he made sure there were no tire tracks within a city block of the clearing before he dropped the sapling, turned, and followed the remaining tracks.

It wasn’t as easy as it might have been. At Gaston’s direction, Sylvia’s lead car had zigzagged for the high and dry between the buttress roots of the big timber, and the soggy forest duff had sprung or oozed to heal its furrowed surface. He’d have lost the trail if he hadn’t known it was there and the general direction they’d taken. But after he’d walked a million weary miles with the heavy Maxim and was cursing Gaston for driving off so fucking far, he spotted the side of a steam car ahead between the trees. Better yet, Gaston had posted a perimeter and he was challenged by Bertie as he came in. As they met, Bertie said, “Oh, sorry. We’ve assigned Phoebe to drive Wallace’s steamer. Wilson didn’t do so well getting here. Don’t know if he’s less experienced or if it was the kick in the nuts.”

Captain Gringo made a mental note that the possible troublemaker was named Wilson. He’d memorize the other names when he had time for contemplation. He moved on, saw that Gaston had drawn the big vehicles into a wagon laager, and heaved the Maxim into the back of Sylvia’s Stanley with a sigh of relief as the others joined him, babbling all at once.

He nodded approvingly at the extra gear now strapped neatly to the Stanley, but said, “Don’t bunch up, damn it.”

Gaston elbowed through to say, “Merde alors, Dick, are you expecting an artillery shelling?”

Captain Gringo said, “Don’t know. They had mighty up-to-date rifles. Okay, as long as the gang’s all here, I think I left them a false trail. The reason for all these dramatics was on your maps. Professional draftsmen inked those printed charts for Wallace. I’d say that was where he made his-first mistake. A journeyman draftsman doesn’t make enough to live on in London if he likes booze and broads enough to matter. The poor dumb Wallace had them ink in the words Treasure Trove on at least five charts, and anyone can read Laguna Caratasca when it’s printed halfway across a damned navigational chart! One of the draftsmen made a private copy to show his drinking buddies. Jack the Ripper can’t be the only criminal London’s ever seen. So you kiddies weren’t the only gang recruited to go treasure hunting. Damn, I wish Wallace hadn’t bought the farm! He left us with so many loose ends!” He turned to Sylvia and said, ‘Tell me more about Wallace, Sylvia.”

She said, “I thought I had. He rowed for Harrow and belonged to my late husband’s club. I assure you he was socially acceptable.”

“Where did he get that major’s rank?”

She looked blank. Bertie said, “Indian Army, retired, he said.”

“Retired, Bertie? The guy couldn’t have been much more than thirty-five or so.”

“Well, now that I think about it, I do believe there was some sort of a row. Chap at the club said Wallace had gotten into some sort of sticky wicket in the Punjab and been allowed to retire for the good of the service or some such rot. Sorry, don’t have any details to offer. By the way, I do hope he was buried properly back there?”

“I disposed of both the bodies properly,” said Captain Gringo, which was true, when you studied it. He said, “All right, we’ll sort out the small print later. Right now we’d better put some more distance between our butts and whomsoever. Gaston, how tough was it driving through this tall timber?”

Gaston said, “Formidable, but not as impossible as I expected at first. I frankly thought you were mad to suggest chiving through a jungle in horseless carriages. I always thought they had been designed with paved roads in mind.”

“Let’s hope that’s what the other side thinks. Sylvia, do you have a pocket compass?”

“No, but there’s a compass on the dashboard. Didn’t you notice?”

“No. Who looks at dials when cops are shooting at you? With dashboard compasses, this gets even better. You sure can’t navigate by the sun, down here under all this spinach. Okay, everyone mount up and follow us. We’re going for a drive in the country.”

Nobody argued. Nobody wanted to be kicked in the balls. As he got in with Gaston, Pat, and Sylvia, he said, “Drive due west, doll.”

Sylvia started the Stanley and swung the wheel as he’d told her to, but objected, “Why are we headed for the Pacific, Dick?”

He explained, “We can’t get there from here. Honduras is too bumpy away from the coastal lowlands. Anyone trailing us will be afoot, or at best aboard a bronc, and horses need lots of rest in the tropics. The plan is to drive so far that nobody can possibly catch up before we’ve taken time to rest up, sort things out, and plan our next move. You were right about the seaward approaches to the lagoon being guarded. Wallace was an old military hand and had the standard marks for gun emplacements inked in. Unless he had a vivid imagination, somebody on the other side sure has lots of money and a private army. Where Wallace screwed up was in marking his own sneaky landward approach. The trail we just left wasn’t on the original charts until he had it inked in. Assuming the other side has a copy, we don’t want to approach the lagoon anywhere near that damn trail! If our luck holds out we may be able to swing around through the jungle in a wide circle and come in from the northwest, which would surprise the hell out of me if I were holding the lagoon right now. The lagoon runs nearly fifty miles along the Mosquito Coast. A force big enough to have every approach covered would be big enough to take all of Honduras, so why fool around with hidden treasure?”

At his side in the back, Gaston said, “Eh bien, but Laguna Caratasca is not our target, Dick. We know where that was without Wallace’s map. Did the map pinpoint the treasure?”

“Of course not. The other side wouldn’t still be looking for whatever Wallace was after if he’d been that dumb. There’s a two-mile-square area just north of the end of the old trail where he was dumb enough to letter in ‘Area of the Buried Treasure.’ Where was that old pirate camp?”

“In the area he outlined, of course. I am beginning to see the light. Wallace didn’t know the exact location himself. He just knew where the coastal pirates used to hide out between sea forays. He heard or, worse yet, assumed some of them buried some loot before they were shelled to premature retirement by Queen Victoria’s adorable gunboats. It is my understanding that they did not content themselves with pounding the pirates from the sea. After they pulverized the camp, they sent landing parties in to mop up. The pirates may not have been in condition to discuss buried treasure with the Royal Marines, but it seems to me the heavy shelling should have unearthed anything that was not buried trés deep, non?”

Captain Gringo smiled thinly and said, “That works even better. Wallace was a military man and marines talk to soldiers if they’re buying the drinks. Try it this way. The pirates didn’t bury anything. Like you said, why should they have?”

Gaston nodded and said, “Oui, les Royal Marines are paid better than my gay old Legion, but not that much more. Let us say one or more of the landing party found some goodies in the ruins, shoved them into a shell crater, and kicked as much sand in atop the loot as they could manage before their officers got wise! It falls together much better than a barefoot Captain Kidd, non?”

“All except the amount involved. We can’t be talking about even a chest of coins, Gaston. Look at the money represented in this rolling stock alone! And the other side has field guns dug in to guard the seaward approaches while they do their own looking, for God’s sake! Sylvia, did Wallace tell you or the others how much money was involved?”

She steered wide of a big quinine tree before answering, “Not in exact figures. But he said we’d each get at least ten quid back for each one we put in. My own investment was two thousand pounds, if that’s your next question.”

It had been. Captain Gringo whistled thoughtfully, Sylvia’s investment alone came to ten thousand dollars in real money. And Wallace had sold the idea to, let’s see, ten people, not counting himself and the late Marlowe. Assuming they’d all invested about the same amount, Wallace had raised at least a hundred grand before they’d left England!

Gaston had been counting too. He said, “Eh bien, it could not have been the game of con. With a fortune like that in his hot little hands, Wallace could simply have run off to Tahiti and lived happily ever after, non?”

“Okay, so what’s worth a million that you can shove in a hole in a hurry? He promised a ten-to-one return, and that’s what she adds up to in round figures!”

Gaston shrugged and said, “Not gold. A million in gold specie would be trés heavy, and we are assuming a hasty burial. Besides, had the unwashed coastal pirates gathered a million—and I don’t see how—why would they have been there waiting to be wiped out by the Royal Navy? As I said, they were bush-league riffraff, not followers of the great Morgan.”

The redhead, Pat, turned in her seat by Sylvia to offer, “Diamonds? Those uncouth ruffians may have relieved some poor señorita of jewels they didn’t know the value of. Perhaps a family treasure, ripped from the heaving breast of a poor frightened girl in inexpensive clothes, since she was living in genteel poverty and—”

“Hey, don’t make up a romance novel, Pat!” Captain Gringo cut in with a laugh, adding, “You could be on to something, leaving out the dramatic trimmings we’ll probably never know in detail. It works more than one way, damn it. The pirates may well have had something they didn’t know the value of. On the other hand, a couple of marines may have made an awful mistake with the rhinestones of some pirate’s adelita! I can’t see even Queen Victoria sending assault troops ashore with jeweler’s loupes screwed to their eyes, and it takes a pro to tell real jewelry from good paste!”

Gaston said, “I vote we drive on to Patuca, the next port up the coast. I think we can make it by horseless carriage, and, more important, it is a small but adorable out-of-the-way port where we could no doubt catch a passing schooner long before the alcalde could get word to the capital that a bunch of maniacs had just driven into his town from the jungle.”

Gaston always said things like that, so Captain Gringo didn’t answer. But Sylvia’s jaw was stubbornly set as she said, “See here, I have too much invested to give up now!”

Pat said, “Me too. I know all too well about genteel poverty. I had to borrow my share from a beastly maiden aunt who’s never going to let me live it down should I return empty-handed. I’ll be keeping house for the old bawd the rest of my perishing life!”

They rounded a giant mahogany to see an even bigger tree stretched out across their route. Sylvia braked to a stop and said, “Blast. Which way around is shorter?”

Captain Gringo said, “Hold it. The ground slopes down beyond that windfall, and when the ground dips here, it gets even muddier. How far have we driven, Sylvia?”

She looked at her instrument panel and said, “Almost fifteen miles. Why?”

“Swing due north. We’ll follow this rise another ten and make camp.”

She started the way indicated, but protested, “We’ve plenty of daylight left, Dick.”

He said, “I know. I want to know where the hell we are when we stop. Twenty-five miles into the trees should be about right, and I mean to make a comfortable dry camp, so we may have to scout around for a good rise with water within reach. We’ll be staying there awhile.”

Pat asked, “We’re camping in this uncharted wilderness more than a few hours, Dick?”

He said, “You bet your sweet fanny we are. I want to give the other side time to assume we’ve left for good before we move any closer in on ’em!”

Gaston nudged him and shot him a silent frown as the two girls stared ahead. Captain Gringo grinned but nodded encouragement. He knew Gaston had seen the redhead first, the bastard.

Sylvia was even prettier. But they didn’t seem to be hitting it off. He supposed that, having married up to Belgravia, she was no longer interested in guys who didn’t wear neckties and hadn’t rowed for Harrow. Nobody was as big a snob as a snob who’d started out poor, and he didn’t like snobs of any background. So, damn it, Gaston figured to get laid in the near future and Captain Gringo was already feeling left out!

~*~

They made camp on what was probably a lonely island in the rainy season. The ground sloped gently away between the close-ranked trees on all sides. A quarter mile away, a sluggish little stream of tea-colored water wound mysteriously from nowhere to anywhere through the jungle. Some of the others wanted to camp closer to water. Some of the others hadn’t camped in mosquito country before.

Captain Gringo would have ordered them to pitch their tents at least two miles from the nearest water if that had been possible in this soggy stretch of rain forest. Mosquitoes ranged a little over a mile from where they’d hatched. He hoped that not many had, in the nearby stream. The water was moving and minnows darted about under the surface. The water was stained by tannin from the trees all around, not from silt, and the two soldiers of fortune had learned that neither mosquitoes nor the more dangerous organisms of tropic dysentery liked to dwell in acid water.

Like everything else about the crazy English expedition, the tents and camping gear Wallace had bought with other people’s money added up to no spared expenses. Captain Gringo remembered how upset the Duke of Wellington had been when his junior officers unfurled those umbrellas at the Battle of Waterloo. For an exploring face, limeys sure took along lots of the comforts of home.

But hell, he enjoyed comfort too, and since old Wallace had no further use for it, he commandeered the dead leader’s tent. It was a gasser. Thick rubberized canvas formed a nice dry floor, and there was room enough inside to hold a tea party, if he’d had any friends. Gaston had encountered no resistance as he’d helped Pat set up her tent. But Captain Gringo detected a certain reserve from the others, now that he’d taken command. It hardly seemed fair. Gaston was the one who’d kicked Wilson in the nuts. But it was always lonely at the top. Maybe it was just British reserve.

Aside from Bertie and the now recovered Wilson, a rather dour Scot even when he wasn’t nursing a bruised ball, the other male survivors, now that he’d had time to learn their names, were called Baxter, Gordon, Fenton and Jerome.

He hadn’t figured out if Jerome was the guy’s first or last name. It hardly mattered. Jerome was a little shriveled-up guy with not much to distinguish him but an enlarged Adam’s apple, which he kept swallowing as he refused to meet anyone’s eyes. It seemed he had some sort of nervous tic that made him gulp like that. It was Jerome’s problem, thank God.

Nobody argued as Captain Gringo directed them to build a fire in the middle of the encircled tents. He explained that after they’d used the fire to cook the last meal of the day, he meant to pile lots of forest duff on the coals to leave it smoking but not showing after dark. The smoke would help with the bugs. It was nobody else’s business where said fire might be. All the tents had netting, of course, so there was a fifty-fifty chance they wouldn’t be completely drained of blood by morning.

The women took over the cooking chores without being told to, bless them. By now he knew them well enough to call them Sylvia, Pat, Phoebe, and Matilda. Matilda was the big tough dame who said “shit’’ in an upper-class accent the queen might have envied.

By desperately casual questioning during the day he’d established that all four dames were more or less unattached. Matilda had a husband back in Kensington, apparently left behind to water her plants and keep an eye on the servants while she was off treasure hunting on her own. He could see why her old man hadn’t objected too hard. She wasn’t exactly unattractive, but, in addition to cussing like a man, she moved like a tall youth in skirts and would have bossed hell out of the other girls if they’d paid any attention to her.

As they put the high tea on the fire, Captain Gringo took Bertie aside, since he seemed to think on his feet pretty well despite the Oxford that came out of his ruddy face. The American said, “You know more than me about Wallace. But before we talk about him, what can you tell me about the fuel situation? I’ve only seen the spare kerosene tins in the back of Sylvia’s steamer. Had I been Wallace, I’d have brought a lot more.”

“I say, how was he to know we’d be driving all over the map? I’m sure we’ve enough to get to the lagoon, even after this wide detour.”

“Okay, then what? Didn’t Wallace plan on driving back? I don’t think Sylvia has enough spare fuel. Unless the rest of you have twice as much as she started out with, you don’t have enough either.”

“Oh, well, as I said, we never expected all this extra mileage.”

“Will you listen with both ears, Bertie? We wouldn’t have gotten to Laguna Caratasca yet if we’d driven straight down that original path. Sylvia’s fuel is already more than half used up. I know it’s not cricket to speak ill of the dead, but Wallace couldn’t have been planning to come back by horseless carriage, see?”

“Oh, I say, I certainly do now! I confess I feel rather silly, too. Of course we let Major Wallace do all the logistical planning. Until you mentioned it just now, I hadn’t even considered whether I had enough kerosene or not. Whatever do you imagine he had in mind?”

“A double-cross, maybe. One car could make it easy on the tins left in the other four. Three, now. Gaston was smart enough to toss the extra fuel from the White into other vehicles, but there’s still not enough.”

“I say, that couldn’t have been Wallace’s plan. The rest of us would have raised a bit of a row, you know.”

“Yeah, if any of you were alive.”

“Good God, what a beastly idea! Are you suggesting Wallace intended to do us all in after using us to find what he was looking for?”

“It’s happened. But if Wallace had been that slick with a gun, Marlowe never would have beaten him to the draw. You managed to nail Marlowe, and I notice the other men and that big butch Matilda are wearing sidearms. So let’s talk about the others. Wallace couldn’t have planned to knock off so many people without help. Marlowe obviously wasn’t in cahoots with him. He recruited Gaston and me knowing we were professional fighting men. I’d say it’d take at least three guns, crossfire, to do the job right, even if the rest of us were caught flat-footed. What’s the story on Wilson, for openers?”

“Oh, it couldn’t be Wilson, he’s related to the Duke of Caithness and played rugby as a lad. He’s a bit of a brawler and has a beastly temper when he’s been drinking. He’s a Scot, you see, but nonetheless a proper gentleman. I’ve played cards with him many a time.”

“How’s he fixed for money?”

“Oh, he’s oozing with it. I said he was a Scot, and even if he did spend lavishly, he owns a distillery in Glen Spey. He’d never murder anyone for money. ”

“Maybe he could have another reason. Who’s Baxter?”

“Oh, Freddy? He went up to Oxford with me. Didn’t graduate, of course. Something about riding his horse through the dean’s marigolds one night. He’s a bit queer in other ways. Has a bachelor flat in Mayfair and seems to like rosy-cheeked boys, but he’s never murdered any of them as far as anyone knows. He oozes money, too. Family owns a shipyard or something.”

“Was Wallace a queer?”

“Good Lord, do you suppose I ever asked? Wait, he couldn’t have been. As I recall his trouble in the Indian army, it involved another officer’s wife.”

“Okay, some guys swing both ways, but we’ll put Baxter on the back of the stove for now. Who’s Gordon?”

“Another Scot, of course. Highlander. Not as dour as Wilson. Given to singing songs about Bonny Prince Charlie when he’s had a bit too much at the club. His people are no longer Catholic, of course. George the Third converted all the Jacobite clans by giving them back their kilts in exchange for switching to the High Kirk. Let’s see, I think Gordon’s related to the Earl of Huntley. He likes girls, as all Highlanders seem to. Never met a queer Highlander, now that I think about it. I rather imagine being raised in kilts has something to do with it, although I can’t see why. At any rate, you can forget Jock Gordon as a Murderer. Turned down a commission in the family regiment to devote his time to raising milch kine on his family estates. That’s estates in the plural, by the way. He sells milk to half the country. In tins of course. Gordon Condensed Milk.”

“I’ve seen the label on many a can. Okay, I know this is silly, but what about Jerome?”

“Good God, he’s a religious fanatic. Welsh chapel. Family is in coal. Not really in the coal, of course. They sell it, in Cardiff. He’s a rather silly twit but filthy rich. I say, we seem to have run out of chaps and none of them fits your grim picture, what?”

“Neither did Wallace, but the more I study him the more I smell a rat. I know about Sylvia and Pat. Who’s your little chum with the glasses?”

“Phoebe Chambers? Lord, I wish she were my little chum. Tried, of course. I don’t seem to be her type. The sad part is, she’s supposed to be a bit of a bawd, despite her sedate looks. Saw her in a bathing dress at Brighton once and, well, those glasses don’t tell the whole story. As a suspect for other transgressions, Phoebe won’t do. She has a very good income left her by a father who mucked about in Australian wool. Not in the wool itself of course, but …”

“Right, he sold lots of wool and left her lots of money. You say she has a rep for round heels? Could she have been laying down a lot for old Wallace?”

“How on earth should I know a thing like that? She’s never invited me to her bedroom, with or without other company present. I don’t think they were lovers, though. Must say I was rather surprised, after the stories I’d heard about her. She runs with a rather fast crowd from Bloomsbury, although she lives in a better neighborhood, of course.”

Captain Gringo said, “Maybe she’s picky, or maybe someone just talks nasty about a lady with bohemian leanings. Who’s Matilda and how come her husband couldn’t make it?”

“Oh, she’s quite mad. He must be too. They have one of those marriages of convenience. Both from titled families, so they never got to choose. He’s a Cecil. She’s a Harcourt. The old boy has a seat in Lords and makes all sorts of things out of steel in the Black Country. The people who work for him do, that is. They live between the Palace and Marble Arch, on Park Row, when they’re in London. Never been to their country place in Cornwall. Hear it’s seven thousand acres under cultivation with a great swamping moor for birding. She’s a jolly good shot. But as far as I know she’s never shot anything but birds. On the wing of course. Can’t see her shooting me. We get along quite well, as a matter of fact.”

“Yeah, and Sylvia says you have more money than brains.”

“Did she? I say, I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not. In all modesty, I do have a rather decent income. Bonds backed by the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street and a few shares in Lloyd’s. The bank, not the insurance chaps. Don’t ask me how the devil stocks and bonds work. I just have to clip the coupons and send them in whenever I have bills to pay. It seems to pile up faster than I can spend it. Never have understood why.”

Captain Gringo left Bertie to ponder his unfortunate fate. The still confused American moved over to Sylvia’s steamer, parked with the others outside the tent circle, and was cleaning the bore of the Maxim when Gaston joined him.

The Frenchman sat on the running board to mutter darkly, “Sacre God damn, Pat is sharing her tent with that Sylvia. Why do I do such mad things, Dick? After investing all that charm on the redhead, I learn the big buck-toothed Matilda insisted on her own private tent! Do you think it is too late to start a new campaign?”

Captain Gringo said it was worth a try. Maybe Gaston was too big a chump to see that if Matilda slept alone, it left Phoebe in another private, tent as well. On the other hand, Phoebe couldn’t be as easy a lay as she was reputed to be, if she was still sleeping alone, and he had more important things to worry about. A guy could always get laid, sooner or later, but if somebody killed you, you didn’t even get to jerk off for one hell of a long time.

He filled Gaston in on his suspicions. Gaston agreed with them and asked in a more serious than usual tone what the hell they were doing with this bunch of misfits. He added, “Whatever Wallace planned and whatever he was after is ancient history, Dick. Even if there is a treasure worth the time of people who already have money to burn, and even if that trés suspicious Wallace had left an X to mark the spot, there seems to be a gang sitting on it. A big one, with cannon, for God’s sake!”

“Hey, I said the whole story was nuts, Gaston. Meanwhile, it got us out of Nicaragua one jump ahead of the firing squad, so what the hell. I’m open to suggestions, but did you have someplace better to go?”

“Oui; I told you there was a trés discreet seaport just up the coast on the far side of the big lagoon.”

“I know. I found Patuca on the map. Even if I could talk the others into it, Patuca’s too far. We don’t have enough kerosene. We’ve barely enough to make Laguna Caratasca.”

“Merde alors, have the humming birds built nests in your ears? That’s where the other gang is. The ones with all the big guns!”

“Yeah, and unless they like to read in the dark, a lot of fuel oil. These boilers will ran on any kind of liquid fuel from kerosene to coconut oil. Those other guys must have supplies. Both these crazy expeditions are well funded. Too well funded for any sensible reason I can come up with, but we’ll find the answers over by the old pirate camp, not in Patuca.”

“You are suffering sunstroke, despite the forest gloom, Dick. That rifle squad we took out was not made up of fruity rich Englishmen and four women for God’s sake! The only person on our side who looks at all tough is that big Matilda. These people are rank amateurs! Even if they were not, there are only a dozen of us to God knows what, hein?”

“That’s one of the things we’ll find out when we get there. Don’t you have any curiosity, Gaston? Hell, for all we know, we scared them worse than they scared us! Those nine we took out might have been most of their strength.”

“Sacre bleu, don’t shit my bull, Dick. Wallace marked out gun positions on both sides of the lagoon entrance. Cannon come with cannoneers. The one’s we brushed with were infantry. Trained infantry, despite their casual dress. Nobody hires a mere squad of infantry. The basic unit is a company.”

“For God’s sake, you’ve been talking to Pat too much. You’re starting to sound dramatic, too. Wallace didn’t recruit any goddamn company, or even a serious platoon. They’re probably common criminals. Okay, so some may have deserted an army some time ago. There can’t be any official military units in the area. Honduras and Nicaragua are not at war this season, and if anyone else was invading, both countries would be yelling to Uncle Sam about the Monroe Doctrine by now. I read the papers back in Puerto Cabezas while we were screwing around to kill time that afternoon. There was not a word about any international crisis calling for anybody’s military intervention, and remember, Wallace planned this caper months in advance. The other side must have too, to beat him here.”

“Merde alors, who cares? If we helped ourselves to one of the steam cars and loaded it up with extra fuel tins—”

“Hold it!” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “That’s pretty shitty, even from you, Gaston. I thought you liked Pat.”

“Not enough to die for her! There are times a man must be practique. ”

“Your idea isn’t practical. It’s murder. How long would these poor greenhorns last in this jungle if we deserted them?”

“Long enough to walk back to Puerto Cabezas, if they had any sense.”

“They don’t. I’ve already suggested they turn back. They won’t. Nothing is as stubborn as ten grand invested for a hundred. Break open an ammo canister and hand me a belt, will you? I’ll leave this one here and put the other on the far side if it doesn’t come out of its case too rusty. Guess who gets to take turns with me on perimeter guard tonight.”

“Merde, I’d never be able to sleep with any of these other halfwits standing guard. Regard that species of Matilda waving imperiously over by the fire. Let us see if the food is better than Wallace’s other weird plans. It can’t be any worse, non?”

~*~

Captain Gringo was awakened by a hair-raising scream. So he sat up in his sleeping bag with pillow gun in hand before he figured out what it was. Then he sighed and lay back down, naked, to tuck the .38 away. A jaguar had been singing to its lady love in the jungle. The big spotted cats did that a lot, but they seldom came close to the smell of gun oil, and what the hell, Gaston was out there prowling, too.

The big Yank didn’t check the time. Gaston had his own watch and he knew all too well that the Frenchman would wake him with worse noises than a jungle cat when it was his turn at bat.

The canvas above him rippled gently as a mysterious night breeze swept between the big trees all around. That probably meant rain before morning. Meanwhile it had gotten comfortably cool. Had he left a tarp over the one good gun outside? Yeah, he had. The other son-of-a-bitching Maxim had been wasted freight. If Wallace had been alive when he’d opened the crate after supper, he’d probably have been as chagrined.

You were supposed to ship weapons in oil, not rust. He’d cleaned and pocketed a few spare parts just in case. Most of the action had been shot after some stupid bastard packed the gun without cleaning and greasing it after it had last been fired.

He heard his tent flap open. He couldn’t see who had entered but assumed it was Gaston. So he was surprised when whoever it was got under the sheets with him, naked. He knew it couldn’t be Gaston, even if Gaston had gone nuts. Gaston didn’t have such nice tits.