Hazards (20 page)

“Howdy, brethren,” I said.

“Greetings,” replied one of them.

“Nice night for a war,” I said.

“Oh?” said another. “Who are you mad at?”

Well, when I mulled it over, I decided the only two people in the world I was mad at were Erich von Horst, and the sheriff what arrested Bubbles La Tour the last time I saw her, when she was giving a thoughtful demonstration of half a dozen new and unique uses for a broom, not a one of which had anything to do with sweeping the floor, but of course neither of ’em was actually countries, so it didn’t hardly seem worth the bother to declare war on ’em.

“I suppose we ought to be democratic about this,” I said, since I didn’t hold no grudge against Uruguay. “Who would you fellers like to go to war with?”

“My mother-in-law,” said one of ’em promptly.

“My boss,” said another.

“You don’t
have
a boss,” said a third.

“Well, I would—if I had a job.”

“The man who made this tequila,” said another, taking a swig out of the bottle and making a face.

Pretty soon they all had a bunch of people they wanted to do battle with, but the problem was that all of them was local.

“Tell you what,” I said at last. “If you guys will pitch in and help me conquer Uruguay for the Third Fatherland, I’ll pay bus fare both ways.”

“What happened to the first two Fatherlands?” asked the one who didn’t have a boss.

“I guess the Motherlands caught ’em playing around and guv ’em the gate.”

A beat-up old bus with busted windows, torn seats, and worn tires pulled up just then, and I loaded all six of them onto it, bought seven tickets, and then joined ’em.

“Damned lucky I found you fellows so easy,” I said. “I was afraid I was going to have to look for loaded cannons and things like that.”

“Why would we have a loaded cannon?”

“Well, you a
re
the German army,” I said.

“No such thing, Señor. We are the janitors for the buildings on this block. We were on our break when you showed up.”

“What happened to the army?” I asked.

“Those other men? They got tired of waiting, so they all went home.”

“Well, even though you ain’t the regular army, I’m still paying your fare both ways,” I said, “and as soon as we conquer Uruguay I’m buying the first round of drinks.” Then I thunk a little more, and said, “Ah, what the hell—it ain’t
that
small a country: the first
two
rounds.”

“What about Madame Fifi’s House of Scarlet Pleasures?” said one of ’em.

“I give up,” I said. “What
about
Madame Fifi’s House of Scarlet Pleasures?”

“If I bring you the Uruguayan president in chains, will you treat us to it?”

“Tell you what,” I said. “You bring him in chains, and
he
can treat us
all
to it.”

They let out a rousing cheer.

Well, we talked about this and that for the next few hours, mostly concentrating on some of the more unusual features to be found at Madame Fifi’s, and then the bus driver announced that we had crossed the border and entered Uruguay.

“Keep your heads down, men,” I warned ’em. “We’re in enemy territory.”

“You’re on the 3A Bus Route,” corrected the driver in bored tones. “I take it every day of the year.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but we ain’t never declared war on Uruguay before.”

“Pablo did once, didn’t you?” asked one of them.

“Yes, but I didn’t really mean it,” explained Pablo. “I was dating a girl from Uruguay and she stood me up.”

I turned to the driver. “Where does this here assault vehicle let us off?”

“Montevideo,” he said.

“Montevideo to you,” I replied politely. “Now, where does it stop?”

“Downtown Montevideo,” he said irritably. “That is the capital of Uruguay.”

“Not much longer,” I said. “We may take the whole town back to Buenos Aires with us.”

I pulled out a deck of cards and gave my men a crash course in higher mathematics, all having to do with the number twenty-one, and before we knew it the driver announced that we had reached Montevideo.

I walked up to the front and looked out the window. “Well,” I said, “if we’re going to conquer Uruguay, this is the place to do it. Pull over at the next corner.”

He did as I told him, but then I saw a cop walking his beat.

“Is he carrying a gun?” I asked, peering at him through the glass.

“Yes, I think so,” said the driver.

“Go another two or three blocks,” I said.

He drove three blocks and stopped.

“See any more cops around?” I asked him.

“No, Señor.”

“Fine.” I turned to my army. “Men, we’re getting out here.” As they clambered down onto the sidewalk, I turned to the driver. “Pick us up on your way back.”

“That will be in about five minutes, Señor.”

“No problem,” I said. “It ain’t that big a country.”

I stepped down onto the pavement, briefly examined the area to make sure there weren’t no cops around, and cleared my throat.

“I, Lucifer Jones, hereby declare Uruguay conquered and now the property of the Third Fatherland. If anyone’s got any objections, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.”

“I have one,” said Pablo.

“Shut up,” I said. “You’re on
our
side.” I waited a respectable thirty seconds, and there weren’t no more objections. “Man and boy, that was the easiest five hundred deutschmarks I ever made,” I announced. “Have we got time for a victory drink?”

“I don’t think so,” said Pablo mournfully. “Here comes the bus.”

“Climb aboard,” I said. “We’ll get our drink at some little town along the way, where they don’t water their liquor and the prices are better.”

And a moment later, with Uruguay all wrapped up and ready to be delivered, we boarded the bus and headed back to Argentina. We sang martial songs, especially about oversexed enemy captives named Rosita, and played a little more blackjack, and were all set to stop for a drink in some village near the border (which I suppose didn’t officially exist no more), when the bus came to a stop again.

“Out of gas?” I asked.

“Out of courage,” said the driver, pointing nervously ahead of us, where there were some fifty uniformed soldiers with guns, and most of them guns were pointed right at us.

I turned to say a word or two of encouragement to my victorious army, but all six of ’em was hiding under the seats, so I just climbed down off the bus and walked forward, with my hands up in the air so everyone could see I didn’t have no weapons or hidden aces in ’em.

“Greetings, brothers,” I said. “To what do I owe the honor of this here get-together?”

“You are our prisoner,” announced an officer, stepping forward.

“I’d love to be your prisoner,” I said, “but we’ll have to do it some other time. I’m in a hurry to get back to Buenos Aires and report that Uruguay has fallen.”

“It has?” he said, turning white as a dirty sheet. “I never heard a shot.”

“It was a pretty bloodless victory,” I said.

“Miguel!” he hollered. “Did you hear the news?”

“I don’t believe it!” said the officer called Miguel.

“Don’t take
my
word for it,” I said. “Ask the men in the bus.”

I indicated my troops, who all nodded their heads vigorously, then ducked back behind the seats again.

“This is tragic!” said the one called Miguel. “What foul fiend perpetrated this heinous sneak attack?”

“’Twasn’t no sneak attack,” I said. “It was right out there in the open for everyone to see. But in answer to your question, the foul fiends are Colonel Guenther Schnitzel, Colonel Hans Grueber, and Colonel Wilhelm Schnabble, and my understanding is that they’re considering packing up the whole country and shipping it to Germany.”

“Those bastards!” screamed the first officer. “
We
were going to conquer Uruguay next week!”

“Actually,” said the other apologetically, “we were going to conquer it
last
week, but I had a hangnail and his cousin was getting married.”

“We’re not going to permit them to plunder the treasury
we
were going to plunder!” yelled the first one. He turned to me. “I am Colonel José Marcos of the Uruguayan army, and this is my co-conspirator…ah…my fellow officer, Colonel Miguel Garcia.”

“And I’m the Right Reverend Doctor Lucifer Jones,” I said, wondering what it was about being colonels that made people so bloodthirsty.

“We will give you one thousand American dollars if you will lead us to these German usurpers,” said José. “Half now, half when you deliver them.”

“Right,” said Miguel. “We will find them, cut them to ribbons, and then Paraguay will be ours.”

“Uruguay, Miguel,” said José.
“Uruguay.”

“Oh, right,” apologized Miguel. “Paraguay is
next
month.”

I resisted the urge to say “You go Uruguay and I’ll go mine,” because they clearly weren’t in the mood for highbrow sophisticated witticisms, so I simply allowed that it was a right generous offer, and the sooner they paid it the sooner I could put ’em in touch with the German colonels, who were probably right where I’d left ’em unless they finally found them other two Reichs what went missing and took ’em home.

Well, money changed hands, and in my good-heartedness I told ’em that they’d not only paid for a cornerstone, or at least a corner brick, of the Tabernacle of Saint Luke, but they’d also bought absolution for any sins they committed at Madame Fifi’s for the next 72 hours.

I thought Miguel was going to head right off to Madame Fifi’s, but José said no, they’d paid for the information and now they wanted it. So I told ’em that the three colonels in question had been sprawled out in the garden of the Hotel Presidente when last I saw ’em, and I couldn’t see no reason why they should stray too far from it.

“We don’t want to march right down de Julio Avenue,” said Miguel. “Who knows what kind of trap they might have set?”

“Right,” said José. “We should make them come to
our
trap.”

“Do we have one?” asked Miguel.

“You, Reverend Jones,” continued José, “will arrange a meeting between Miguel and myself, and your three German officers, in the little border town of Salto. Then, when they arrive, our men will attack and cut them to pieces, and Uruguay will be ours.”

I got back on the bus, and then we began driving off to Buenos Aires. Me and the army started swapping risible stories—I especially liked the one about the blind carpenter and the dancing girl—and then almost before I knew it we were pulling up to the Hotel Presidente. The colonels were still in the beer garden, crushing the flowers in between bouts of watering ’em, and I walked over to report that Uruguay had fallen. For some reason this seemed to surprise them, but I assured them we’d done it without no casualties nor even any collateral damage, and finally they offered to walk me inside and buy me a victory drink.

“Well, that’s mighty nice of you,” I said, “but I got urgent business in Salto.”

“Oh?” said Guenther suspiciously. “What’s in Salto?”

I’d thunk long and hard about it on the way back, and I figgered if I told ’em a bunch of guys were waiting there to chop them into fishbait they’d probably decide they had urgent business elsewhere, so instead I said that Madame Fifi’s House of Scarlet Pleasures had opened up a branch in Salto and was giving out free coupons, and suddenly all three colonels made a beeline for the bus and had the driver gun the gas pedal, even before the conquering army could get off and go back to work.

All they could talk about was Madame Fifi’s, though Wilhelm, who was clearly the most sensitive of ’em, kept asking if making love to a member of an inferior species might not constitute bestiality, which was good for ten years in the hoosegow back in Germany.

It began raining about halfway through the trip, and pretty soon it was pouring cats and dogs and other critters that unlike most men got enough brains to come in out of the rain. Finally the bus pulled up in the mud in the middle of Salto, and everyone got out—the Germans, who still hadn’t stopped talking about Madame Fifi’s, and the army and me and the bus driver, just to stretch our legs and keep clear of the coming slaughter.

Then José and Miguel walked out from a nearby building, and I could see that the rest of their army was hiding behind it. José stopped by the bus long enough to pay me my final five hundred dollars, and then the two Uruguayan colonels walked straight up to the three German colonels.

“You have a lot of nerve, Señors,” said José. “Uruguay is
ours
, and I demand that you relinquish it right now.”

“We won it fair and square,” said Guenther, “and we are not giving it back.”

“We’ll see about that!” snapped Miguel. “You are outnumbered fifty to one!”

“That’s seventeen to one,” José corrected him. “With one left over.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Miguel.

“Well, we have fifty armed men, plus ourselves, so that’s fifty-two, and there are three of them, so that comes to seventeen-to one, with one of us left over.”

“Who cares?” screamed Miguel. “They’re outnumbered and we’re going to kill them! That’s all that counts!”

“I beg to differ,” said Hans calmly. “We are members of the Aryan race. One of us is worth fifteen of you.”

“Even if that’s true, and I’m not conceding it for an instant,” re-plied José, “then we
still
outumber you one-point-sixteen-to-one!”

“Ah, but it’s raining,” noted Guenther. “That decreases your mobility by nineteen percent.”

“But
you
wear a monocle,” said José. “That decreases your field of vision eleven percent even if it wasn’t raining.”

“But there’s also a nine percent chance that your pistol will misfire in the rain,” noted Hans.

“Can we just stop talking and kill them, please?” said Miguel wearily.

“Oh, all right,” said José. “Anything to make you happy. Let’s step out of the way of our bayonet-wielding infantry.”

Nobody moved.

“Uh…I can’t lift my legs,” said Miguel.

“Neither can I,” said Guenther, frowning.