Renegade Page 17

  “That’s one of the things that’s bothering me. You keep calling this a revolution and mentioning a committee. Just who is this committee and how organized is this so-called revolution? So far, we seem to be taking on the whole government on our own. Is anyone out there doing anything to help us? Do we ever get supplies? Do you have any plans at all about when and where all these guerrillas get paid?”

  The old man looked hurt and said, “I see. You think money is more important than the cause we serve.”

  “I’m not sure I know what your cause is, Professor. I sort of fell into this, whatever, simply because the Rurales decided to shoot me for no reason at all and I didn’t like it. Up to now, it’s been great fun. But sooner or later a man has to start thinking of his future, and I’ve got less than a hundred dollars in my pants, counting what I stole from other people. Wait: Before you cloud up and rain all over me as a heartless mercenary, forget my expenses and let’s talk about all those other men and women back there. Sooner or later, even a crusader expects to be paid something for risking his ass. During our American Revolution men deserted Washington’s army because they hadn’t been paid on time in anything they could spend. An army has to have a quartermaster and a pay officer. The flags and uniforms are less important. So let’s talk about this revolutionary committee. Are they doing anything about organizing a real army, anywhere at all, or is this all a dangerous pipe dream?”

  “That is a very nasty way to put things, Captain Gringo.”

  “We have over a hundred men and women back there in a very nasty situation, Professor. It would be nice to think there was some point to it all.”

  “Damn it! Of course there’s a point to it all! Mexico needs land reform, social justice, a controlled economy!”

  “In other words, you and your secret pals are Marxist Utopians. All right. I can see that any change in this country would be for the better. So I’ll not quibble about the holes in the socialist argument. Just tell me how serious this mysterious committee is about them. Where the hell are they?”

  “Most of our leaders are living in exile. The States. Other Latin-American countries. They support our cause with publications and advice for the most part. Funds, as you can imagine, are limited.”

  Captain Gringo swore and said, “That’s just what I was afraid of! We’re fighting a war in Cloud Land, but the other side shoots real bullets!”

  The professor looked as if he were ready to cry as he protested, “You mock our cause and I will not have it! I had much this same discussion with that Frenchman, Gaston, just before he deserted. It was your idea to join us. Nobody asked you to declare war on the Diaz regime!”

  “You and Gaston both have a point. I didn’t declare war on Mexico. Mexico declared war on me. As to Gaston’s reasons for leaving, it’s obvious others will be thinking along the same lines before very long. It may not sound noble, but soldiers expect to be paid. Those men back there have women to think of. Some have kids. They’ve all given up what little they might have had for your cause and they’ve put their lives on the line for you. You owe them, Professor.”

  “I know. After the revolution—”

  “Screw your revolution! You said yourself it’s going to take at least twenty years to put your glorious reforms through! When do my men get a square meal, or a bar of fucking soap?”

  “Your men?” The old man blazed. “Since when have these peones become your men, Yanqui?”

  “Since they trusted me with their lives. I may be an outlaw and a foreigner, but I’m a professional officer and one who looks after his people. So you worry about theory and land reform and I’ll look after these poor idiots you’ve drawn into this mess.”

  “See here. If you are not enthusiastic about our struggle you are free to leave, as Colonel Gaston did.”

  “Don’t tempt me. I’ve been thinking about it. One man and Rosalita could fade into the scenery pretty good with a hundred bucks and a head start.”

  “I know. I don’t think Gaston was taken either. But tell me: If desertion is so tempting, what keeps you here with us?”

  “Jesus, haven’t you grasped a thing I’ve said? You and those other poor bastards would be dead and gone by now if I’d left you to your own devices in Vegas Salinas!”

  “I agree. We are both idealists. If you are not going to desert us in the next few minutes, would you tell me what I should do about something I see just down the track ahead? We seem to be rolling into another town.”

  Captain Gringo swung himself out the side opening and stared at the dark mass of an approaching water tower for a long, thoughtful minute. Then he said, “Looks like another little tank town. Couple of shacks and a loading corral. The trackside wire’s tied in to that small building near the tower.”

  “Do we stop or run on through?”

  “We stop and take on water. There can’t be more than a handful of men, and this uniform should bluff ’em with the wires down behind us.”

  The professor eased up on the steam and let the train coast in to a halt with the tender under the water tower. For a moment there was no sign of life. The sleepy little pueblo dozed in the afternoon sun. Silent, save for the rattlesnake buzzing of the trackside grasshoppers.

  Then a door opened and a disheveled man came out, adjusting his pants. Captain Gringo called down, “Passenger Special for Tampico with a military escort. We need to top off our tanks. Do you want to see our dispatches?”

  The stationmaster answered, “No matter, I can’t read. I don’t have a tower crew, either. I used to have a tower crew. Lazy good-for-nothing Indios. They ran away when we got reports about bandits along the line. Have you seen bandits, señores?”

  “No. Heard about ’em. That’s why they assigned us to this special. We’ll pull the water down ourselves. Do you have a telegraph here?”

  “We have a telegraph, but nobody to work it. We used to have a man who knew how to send telegraphs, but he got married and moved away. Everybody moves away. This town is dying since the mines closed down up the line.”

  Captain Gringo thanked the man, and the man wandered back to his shack, apparently half asleep. As Robles and some other men pulled the sheet-iron spigot down to water the tender the stationmaster went inside and closed the door. Then he nodded grimly at a uniformed man inside and said, “It’s them, all right. I knew it the moment I saw all those unwashed peones grinning out the windows at me. Since when do peones ride in the first-class coaches of any train?”

  The Rurale moved to the desk and began to send a message on the waiting telegraph set, saying, “You did well. You should be on the stage.”

  “One acts as one must, Sergeant. The bastards had a dozen guns trained on me as I played pobrecito.”

  Outside, as the water gushed into the tanks behind them, the professor was saying, “Nobody could be that stupid! Who ever heard of a stationmaster who can’t read and write?”

  Captain Gringo grinned and said, “I know. This comic opera’s getting interesting. They probably don’t have a dozen guns in the whole town and know the pass through the mountains ahead are blocked.”

  “We pull out, innocently, then cut the line as usual?”

  “No. No trick works if you keep repeating it. They can’t send a wire back the way we came. So let’s let them wire Monterrey we’re headed their way. They’ll expect us about sundown and—”

  “But Captain Gringo, you said we are not headed for Monterrey and the Sierra Oriental!”

  “You’re learning, Professor. What you just witnessed is known in poker as a double bluff.”

  “And do you win at poker often, Captain Gringo?”

  “I do against greenhorns. They’ve gotten over their first confusion and are starting to play a cooler game. I’m hoping they don’t know I know about that abandoned siding up the line. We’re running out of chips.”

  “And if they do think to search for us there?”

  “Damn it, I just told you. The game is over. And guess who’s won?”


  As the sun went down, a group of officers in far-off Mexico City stared morosely down at a railroad map. The map was spread on a plywood table under a hanging bulb and was dotted with colored pins in a bewildering constellation of red and blue. The blue pins stood for government positions and could be shifted at will by wired instructions. The red pins stood for reported positions of the professor’s rebel band, and made no sense at all to any of the men in the room.

  The door opened and an officious noncom bellowed, “El Presidente!” as every man in the room snapped to attention. The white-haired man who swept in, ramrod stiff but oddly benign in appearance, said, “As you were, gentlemen. This is no time for ceremony.”

  President Porfirio Diaz was that most dangerous of tyrants, a sincere and dedicated patriot convinced he knew what was right for his country. As a younger man the sleekly charming mestizo had fought hard and well for Mexico’s freedom. He was a gallant officer and gentleman who loved little children. His only blind spot was his firm conviction that everyone in Mexico, of any age, was his child, and that Father knew best. He was quite sincere in this conviction and was deeply hurt that some of his naughty children didn’t love him as they should. As a strict albeit loving parent, he believed naughty children should be shot. It was simple justice. He obeyed God, and lesser people obeyed him. Anyone who couldn’t grasp this was obviously and dangerously mad.

  The dictator smiled pleasantly at the officer in charge and asked, “What is the present situation with those cockroach rebels, General?”

  “Forgive me, El Presidente, but I do not understand what they are up to! As you see, they keep bouncing back and forth like a tennis ball. Our last report has them making for Tampico. We have blocked the tunnels through the Sierra Oriental.”

  “I approve. But we must contain this situation soon, gentlemen. The damned foreign press has gotten wind of the story, and you know we have a stable government with a very contented populace. Professor Morales is already some sort of Robin Hood to the so-called liberal press in other parts of the world. The damned communist must be run to ground, and soon!”

  “May I suggest discreet censorship, El Presidente?”

  “You may not, General! What would you have them call our government, a dictatorship?”

  “Forgive me, sir. Some thrice-accursed foreign papers already do.”

  The old man shrugged and said, “Not the papers most respectable world leaders read. Not yet, at any rate. It’s essential this situation be swept discreetly under the rug as soon as possible. Aside from putting pretty pins in that map, what are you gentlemen doing about these bandits?”

  “We’ve dispatched an armored train north, sir, and—”

  “Recall that damned armored train! Better yet, shunt it on a siding and leave it there out of sight! Where did you leave your brains when you got up from your siesta this afternoon, General?”

  “I did not take a siesta today, sir. As for my dispatching the fortified troop train, the rebels seem to have a machine gun.”

  “So I have heard. And the international community has eyes! That rolling stock we got from Krupp is for display, here at the capital. I want them all to know Mexico is strong, not that she needs Krupp steel against her children!”

  He caught the look that passed between two officers and quickly added, “Listen, boys. I, too, am an old soldier. I know what you’re up against and what a stupidly small guerrilla force can do against organized troops. I once led a stupidly small guerrilla force and we chopped the shit out of the French Foreign Legion. But now I am a politician, and you must trust me with the political angles. The damned French syndicate seems committed to building across near Panama City. I’ve got a British syndicate sparring with Washington about a canal across Tehuantepec, and it’s very delicate. The Americans are, as always, worried more about their hazy Monroe Doctrine than practicality, so they’ll probably send us more money just to twist Queen Victoria’s senile tail. On the other hand, those bastards in Nicaragua have the Vanderbilts and other Yanqui big shots clamoring for yet another canal route. Frankly, most engineers I’ve talked to seem to think Nicaragua has certain geological advantages. The card I keep playing is Mexico’s political stability. The crazy Nicaraguans have a revolution every Sunday. The Colombians who own Panama sit up in the Andes pretending they are Olympians and arguing obtuse theology while ignoring the bandits and wild Indians in the lowland jungles near Panama. Most of the international business community is convinced we have the most civilized country in Latin America, here. So this is how we must keep it. I want those guerrillas civilized quietly, against a wall in some remote pueblo.”

  The general nodded and suggested, “If you would permit us to lock off every rail division north of the city and shut down all traffic for a day or so, sir—”

  “And strand thousands of passengers, including foreign visitors, in the dry heat of the meseta? Surely you jest! We’re supposed to be in full control of this democracy, goddamn it! Everything must appear as normal as possible. I have just come from a press conference where I assured both the London Times and the Wall Street Journal that we were having a small local disturbance with some cattle rustlers!”

  A junior officer took a deep breath and said, uncertainly, “May I make a suggestion, sir? Our uniformed federal troops do attract attention as the rebels run them around in circles. If we simply let the Rurales handle it, with a full sweep across country—”

  “Are you trying to make corporal, Major? You know Los Rurales are a bunch of worthless butchers.”

  “El Presidente said this, not I. But since the subject has been raised, sir, I have often wondered why we have Los Rurales policing the rural districts, since, as El Presidente just observed—”

  “They are little more than bandits. I can see you are not a student of Machiavelli. Will you explain it to him, General, or am I the only politician in this room?”

  The general grimaced in distaste and said, “We have irregulars in vaquero costume policing the open country for several reasons, Major. For one thing, countries who use their regular armies as police are known as military dictatorships, and Mexico, as you know, is a democracy.”

  Diaz smiled thinly and added, “More important, Los Rurales attract our more truculent peones as recruits. Many of them are congenital killers who, in less well-run countries, would be out there anyway, as bandits. Our sainted Juarez never understood this. When we won our revolution he thought all the peones we’d armed and trained would simply go home to their corn fields and the simple pleasures of poverty. I take personal credit for seeing how their natural lust for blood and slaughter could be put to use. In time I hope to modify their roughshod methods, or at least to get rid of the more obvious lunatics in Los Rurales. For the moment they serve to keep the people in line and, more important, help our tax collectors instead of robbing them.”

  He took out a pocket watch and glanced at it before adding, “We are not here to discuss Los Rurales, gentlemen. It’s those other bandits I am worried about. You say that Texas banker, Sinclair, has been mollified and sent happily on his way?”

  The general nodded and said, “Yes, sir. He’s on his way home with an armed escort and a check to cover the loss of his private car. He says it was very white of you, whatever that means.”

  “I know what it means. He wasn’t commenting on my Indian grandmother. What was that he mentioned about a gringo machine gunner riding with the professor?”

  “Sinclair was hazy about this, Sir. He wasn’t clear whether the gringo was in command or simply being important. The bandits call this mysterious one Captain Gringo. He’s obviously an adventurer. Probably a wanted man who’s jumped the border from the North. I have run this Captain Gringo’s description through the files. He almost fits a U.S. Army deserter named Walker. But Walker has blond hair, and this Captain Gringo is a redhead. The only redheaded gringo who might have been in Chihuahua when this mess started was a short, fat Texan wanted for stealing cattle.”

 
“No matter. We shall learn his identity when we shoot him. Most gringos make foolish remarks about being American citizens about the time we put them against the wall.”

  “I agree, sir. Do you wish us to inform the American authorities of his capture, after his execution, of course?”

  “I certainly do not! Do you think we have nothing better to do with our time than to answer endless questions from the American Embassy?”

  “But if the man is a wanted criminal, sir.”

  “I don’t care who else may want him. I want the son-of-a-bitch in an unmarked grave and forgotten forever! It is well known and accepted that gringos have a habit of vanishing in our large, mysterious country. So let it be with Captain Gringo. I want him out of my hair, not in the newspapers. I have to go to a party at the German Embassy, now. I trust by the time the party’s over you’ll have taken care of the matter.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Captain Gringo stood with the professor near the gently hissing locomotive as the stars came out in a purple sky and crickets began to serenade their sweethearts. They were parked on the deserted spur track amid the dark and empty loading tipples and outbuildings of the abandoned mine. The spur track looped just past the ghost town, so they’d turned around and were facing the main line once more as the men fanned out to secure the area. Robles joined them, carrying his rifle muzzle down, and said, “Nothing lives here but lizards and insects. The bastards didn’t even leave a can of beans behind when they pulled out.”

  Captain Gringo said, “Good. Sometimes these old ghost towns attract a hermit or two. If there’s nothing here to salvage we probably don’t have to expect company tonight. I want a perimeter guard posted anyway.”

  Robles said, “The people are worried about food and water. There are still the supplies we found in the diner of this passenger train, but they won’t last long at the rate they’re going.”

  The professor said, “We shall have to order short rations, of course.”

  But the tall American shook his head and said, “I wouldn’t. Most of that luxurious dining-car food is perishable and the ice is half melted. They may as well eat it all before it spoils.”