Collection 1980 - Yondering Page 2

  “You’ll see them pretty quick,” Horne said. “There’s about a battalion in the first group, and there’s only one tank.”

  Benton lowered his cup, astonished. “You mean you’ve actually seen them? They are coming?”

  Horne nodded. “The main body isn’t far behind the first bunch.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” Sackworth demanded. His face was flushed and angry. “We could have warned the troops behind us.”

  “Yeah?” Horne did not look up from wiping the dust from the cartridges. “Well, we couldn’t. You see,” he added, looking up, “they broke through Monastir Pass two days ago. Your men back there know more about it than we do. This is just a supporting column to polish off any leftovers like us.”

  “Then—we’re cut off?” Pommy asked.

  Horne nodded. “You have been for two days. How long you been here?”

  “Just three days,” Benton said. He studied Horne thoughtfully. “What are you? A Yank?”

  Horne shrugged. “I guess so. When I joined up in Spain, they took my citizenship away. It was against the law to fight fascism then. If it was wrong then, it’s wrong now. But me, I feel just the same. I’ll fight them in China, in Spain, in Africa, or anywhere else.

  “In Spain when everything was busting up, I heard about this guy Koska. One of his men was with us, so when he went back, I trailed along.”

  “They’re coming,” Sackworth said. “I can see the tank.”

  “All right,” Benton said. He finished his coffee.

  “Did you fight any Germans in Spain?” Pommy asked.

  “Yeah.” Mike Horne brushed invisible dust from the gun and fed a belt of cartridges into it. “Most of them aren’t much better than the Italians. They fight better—the younger ones try harder—but all they know how to do is die.”

  “It’s something to know that,” Sackworth said.

  “Nuts. Anybody can die. Everybody does. And dead soldiers never won any battles. The good soldier is the one who keeps himself alive and fighting. This bravery stuff—that’s for milksops. For pantywaists. All of us are scared, but we fight just the same.”

  “The tank’s getting closer,” Sackworth said. He was plainly worried and showed it.

  “I got the .50,” Horne said. He settled himself comfortably into the sand and moved his gun on the swivel. “Let it get closer. Don’t fire until they are close up to us. I’ll take the tank. You take the first truck with the other gun, I’ll take the second, an’ so on. Get the drivers if you can.”

  They were silent. The rumble of the tank and heavy clank of the tread drew nearer. Behind them rolled the trucks, the men sitting in tight groups. They apparently expected no trouble.

  “I’d have expected them to send a patrol,” Benton said, low voiced.

  “They did,” Horne replied.

  They looked at him, startled. His eyes were on the gray-green column. He had sighted the fifty at the gun aperture on the tank.

  “All right,” he said suddenly.

  His gun broke into a hoarse chatter, slamming steel-jacketed bullets at the tank. Then its muzzle lifted suddenly and swept the second truck. Soldiers were shouting and yelling, spilling from trucks like madmen, but the two first trucks were smashed into carriers of death before the men could move. The Germans farther back had found their enemy, and steel-jacketed bullets smashed into the parapet. Pommy felt something like a hot whiplash along his jaw.

  They were above the column and out of reach of the tank. Mike Horne stood up suddenly and depressed the gun muzzle. The tank was just below. The gun chattered, and the tank slewed around sideways and drove full tilt into the rock wall as though to climb it.

  Horne dropped back. “The older ones have a soft spot on top,” he said.

  The men of the broken column ran for shelter. Some of them tried to rush the steep path, but the fire blasted them back to the road, dead or dying. Others, trying to escape the angry bursts from the two guns, tried to scramble up the walls of the pass but were mowed down relentlessly.

  It had been a complete and shocking surprise. The broken column became a rout. Horne stopped the .50 and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. He winked at Ryan.

  “Nice going, kid. That’s one tank that won’t bother your pals.”

  Ryan peered around the rocks. The pass was empty of life. The wrecked tank was jammed against the rock wall, and one of the trucks had plunged off the precipice into the ravine. Another was twisted across the road.

  A man was trying to get out of the first truck. He made it and tumbled to the road. His coat was stained with blood, and he was making whimpering sounds and trying to crawl. His face and head were bloody.

  “Next time it’ll be tough,” Horne said. “They know now. They’ll come in small bunches, scattered out, running for shelter behind the trucks.”

  Rifle fire began to sweep over the cup. They were low behind the parapet and out of sight. It was a searching, careful fire—expert fire.

  Benton was quiet. He looked over at Horne. Officially in charge, he had yielded his command to Horne’s superior knowledge.

  “What d’you think?” he asked.

  “We’ll stop them,” Horne said. “We’ll stop them this time, maybe next time. After that—”

  Horne grinned at Pommy. “First time under fire?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take it easy. You’re doing all right. Make every shot count. One cinch is worth five maybes.”

  Pommy crowded his body down into the gravel and rested his rifle in a niche in the rocks. He looked at Mike Horne and could see a thin trickle of fresh blood coming from under his bandage. The wound had opened again.

  Was it deep, he wondered, or just a scratch? He looked at the lines about Horne’s mouth and decided it was deep. Horne’s sleeve was torn, and he had a dragon tattooed on his forearm.

  They came with a rush. Rounding the bend, they broke into a scattered line; behind them, machine guns and rifles opened a hot fire to cover the advance.

  They waited, and just before the men could reach the trucks, swept them with a steel scythe of bullets that mowed them down in a row. One man tumbled off the brink and fell into the ravine; then another fell, caught his fingers on the lip, and tumbled head over heels into the ravine as the edge gave way.

  “How many got there?” Horne asked.

  “A dozen, I think,” Ryan said. “We got about thirty.”

  “Fair enough.” Horne looked at Sackworth. The young Englishman was still resentful. He didn’t like Horne. “Doing all right?” Horne asked.

  “Of course.” Sackworth was contemptuous, but his face was drawn and gray.

  “Ryan,” Horne said, “you and Pommy leave the main attack to the machine guns. Watch the men behind the trucks. Pick them off as they try to move closer. You take the right, Pommy.”

  The German with the bloody face had fallen flat. Now he was getting to his knees again.

  Then, suddenly, three men made a concerted rush. Ryan and Pommy fired instantly, and Ryan’s man dropped.

  “I missed!” Pommy said. “Blast it, I missed!”

  There was another rush, and both machine guns broke into a clattering roar. The gray line melted away, but more kept coming. Men rounded the bend and split to the right and left. Despite the heavy fire a few of them were getting through. Pommy and Ryan were firing continuously and methodically now.

  Suddenly a man broke from under the nearest truck and came on in a plunging rush. Both Ryan and Pommy fired, and the man went down, but before they could fire again, he lunged to his feet and dove into the hollow below the cliff on which their pit rested.

  “He can’t do anything there,” Sackworth said. “He—”

  A hurtling object shot upward from below, hit the slope below the guns, rolled a few feet, and then burst with an earth-shaking concussion.

  Horne looked up from where he had ducked his head. Nobody was hit.

  “He’s got grenades. Watch it. There’ll be anoth
er in a minute.”

  Ryan fired, and a man dropped his rifle and started back toward the trucks. He walked quite calmly while they stared. Then he fell flat and didn’t get up.

  Twice more grenades hit the slope, but the man was too close below the cliff. They didn’t quite reach the cup thrown from such an awkward angle. “If one of those makes it—” Benton looked sour.

  Pommy was shooting steadily now. There was another rush, and Benton opened up with the machine gun. Suddenly another grenade came up from below, traveling an arching course. It hit the slope, too short. It rolled free and fell. There was a terrific explosion.

  “Tough,” Ryan said. “He made a good try.”

  “Yeah,” Horne said. “So have we.”

  Hours passed. The machine guns rattled steadily now. Only at long intervals was there a lull. The sun had swung over and was setting behind the mountain.

  Horne straightened, his powerful body heavy with fatigue. He looked over at Ryan and grinned. Ryan’s face was swollen from the kick of the rifle. Benton picked up a canteen and tried to drink, but there was no water.

  “What now?” Pommy said.

  Horne shrugged. “We take it on the lam.”

  “What?” Sackworth demanded. “What does that mean?”

  “We beat it,” Mike Horne said. “We get out while the getting is good.”

  “What?” Sackworth was incredulous. “You mean—run? Leave our post?”

  “That’s just what I mean,” Horne said patiently. “We delayed this bunch long enough. We got ours from them, but now it doesn’t matter anymore. The Jerries are behind us now. We delayed them for a while. All around through these hills guys are delaying them just for a while. We’ve done all we could here. Now we scram. We fight somewhere else.”

  “Go if you want to,” Sackworth said stubbornly. “I’m staying.”

  Suddenly there was a terrific concussion, then another and another.

  “What the deuce?” Benton exclaimed. “They got a mortar. They—”

  The next shell hit right where he was sitting. It went off with an ear-splitting roar and a burst of flame. Pommy went down, hugged the earth with an awful fear. Something tore at his clothes; then sand and gravel showered over him. There was another concussion and another.

  Somebody had caught him by the foot. “Come on, kid. Let’s go.”

  They broke into a stumbling run down the slope back of the nest, then over the next ridge and down the ravine beyond. Even then they ran on, using every bit of cover. Once Pommy started to slow, but Horne nudged him with the rifle barrel.

  “Keep it up,” he panted. “We got to run.”

  They slid into a deeper ravine and found their way to a stream. They walked then, slipping and sliding in the gathering darkness. Once a patrol saw them, and shots rattled around, but they kept going.

  Then it was night, and clouds covered the moon and the stars. Wearily, sodden with exhaustion, they plodded on. Once, on the bank of a little stream, they paused for a drink. Then Horne opened the old haver-sack again and brought out the remnants of the sausage and bread. He broke each in half, and shared them with Pommy.

  “But—”

  Pommy’s voice caught in his throat. “Gone?” he said then.

  Horne nodded in the darkness. “Yeah. Lucky it wasn’t all of us.”

  “But what now?” Pommy asked. “You said they were behind us.”

  “Sure,” Horne agreed. “But we’re just two men. We’ll travel at night, keep to the hills. Maybe they’ll make a stand at Thermopylae. If not there, they might try to defend the Isthmus of Corinth. Maybe we can join them there.”

  “But if they don’t? If we can’t?”

  “Then Africa, Pommy, or Syria or Suez or Russia or England. They’ll always be fighting them somewhere, an’ that’s where I want to be. It won’t stop. The Germans win here, they win there, but they got to keep on fighting. They win battles, but none of them are decisive. None of them mean an end.

  “Ever fight a guy, kid, who won’t quit? You keep kicking him, and he keeps coming back for more, keeps trying. You knock him down, but he won’t stay down? It’s hell, that’s what it is. He won’t quit, so you can’t.

  “But they’ll be fighting them somewhere, and that’s where I want to be.”

  “Yeah,” Pommy said. “Me, too.”

  THE DANCING KATE

  * * *

  For those interested, the reef in this story is Pocklington, and its location has been described in the story itself.

  Misima Island is one of the Louisiade Archipelago, an extensive chain. Many of these islands are quite mountainous and rugged of aspect.

  They are heavily forested. Both alluvial and reef gold have been found there, as implied in the story.

  Until a few years ago the natives among the eastern islands were reputed to be cannibals, but according to the latest reports this is no longer true, if it ever was.

  It is a rarely beautiful chain of islands, picturesque and relatively untouched.

  * * *

  IT WAS A strip of grayish-yellow sand caught in the gaunt fingers of the reef like an upturned belly except here and there where the reef had been longest above the sea. Much of the reef was drying, and elsewhere the broken teeth of the coral formed ugly ridges flanked by a few black, half-submerged boulders.

  At one end of the bar the stark white ribs of an old ship thrust themselves from the sand, and nearby lay the rusting hulk of an iron freighter. It had been there more than sixty years.

  For eighteen miles in a northeast and southwest direction the reef lay across the face of the Coral Sea. At its widest, no more than three miles but narrowing to less than a mile. A strip of jagged coral and white water lost in the remote emptiness of the Pacific. The long dun swells of the sea hammered against the outer rocks, and overhead the towering vastness of the sky became a shell of copper with the afternoon sun.

  At the near end of the bar, protected from the breaking seas in all but a hurricane, a hollow of rock formed a natural cistern. In the bottom were a few scant inches of doubtful water. Beside it, he squatted in torn dungarees and battered sneakers.

  “Three days,” he estimated, staring into the cistern, eyes squinting against the surrounding glare. “Three days if I’m careful, and after that I’m washed up.”

  After that—thirst. The white, awful glare of the tropical sun, a parched throat, baking flesh, a few days or hours of delirium, and then a long time of lying wide-eyed to the sky before the gulls and the crabs finished the remains.

  He had no doubt as to where he was. The chart had been given him in Port Darwin and was worn along the creases, but there was no crease where this reef lay, hence no doubt of his position. He was sitting on a lonely reef, avoided by shipping, right in the middle of nowhere. His position was approximately 10°45′ S, 155°51′ E.

  The nearest land was eighty-two miles off and it might as well be eighty-two thousand.

  It started with the gold. The schooner on which he had been second mate had dropped anchor in Bugoiya Harbor, but it was not fit anchorage, so they could remain only a matter of hours. He was on the small wharf superintending the loading of some cargo when a boy approached him.

  He was a slender native boy with very large, beautiful eyes. When the boy was near him, he spoke, not looking at him. “Man say you come. Speak nobody.”

  “Come? Come where?”

  “You come. I show you.”

  “I’m busy, boy. I don’t want a girl now.”

  “No girl. Man die soon. He say please, you come?”

  Dugan looked at his watch. They were loading the last cargo now, but they would not sail for at least an hour.

  “How far is it?”

  “Ten minutes—you see.”

  A man was dying? But why come to him? Still, in these islands odd things were always happening, and he was a curious man.

  The captain was coming along the wharf, and he walked over to him. “Cap? Something’s come up. Thi
s boy wants to take me to some man who is dying. Says not to say anything, and he’s only ten minutes away.”

  Douglas glanced at the boy, then at his watch. “All right, but we’ve less than an hour. If we leave before you get back, we’ll be several days at Woodlark or Murua or whatever they call it. There’s a man in a village who is a friend of mine. Just ask for Sam. He will sail you over there.”

  “No need for that. I’ll be right back.”

  Douglas glanced at him, a faint humor showing. “Dugan, I’ve been in these islands for fifty years. A man never knows—never.”

  Misima, although only about twenty miles long and four or five miles wide, was densely wooded, and the mountains lifted from a thousand to three thousand feet, and as the south side was very steep, most of the villages were along the northern shore.

  The boy had walked off and was standing near a palm tree idly tossing stones into the lagoon. Taking off his cap, he walked away from the wharf, wiping the sweat from his brow. He walked back from the shore and then turned and strolled toward the shade, pausing occasionally. The boy had disappeared under the trees.

  At the edge of the trees Dugan sat down, leaning his back against one. After a moment a stone landed near his foot, and he glimpsed the boy behind a tree about thirty yards off. Dugan got up, stretched, and hands in his pockets, strolled along in the shade, getting deeper and deeper until he saw the boy standing in a little-used path.

  They walked along for half a mile. Dugan glanced at his watch. He would have to hurry.

  Suddenly the boy ducked into the brush, holding a branch aside for him. About thirty yards away he saw a small shanty with a thin column of smoke lifting it. The boy ran ahead, leading the way.

  There was a young woman there who, from her looks, was probably the boy’s mother. Inside, an old man lay on an army cot. His eyes were sunken into his head, and his cheeks were gaunt. He clutched Dugan’s hand. His fingers were thin and clawlike. “You must help me. You are with Douglas?”

  “I am.”

  “Good! He is honest. Everybody knows that of him. I need your help.” He paused for a minute, his breathing hoarse and labored. “I have a granddaughter. She is in Sydney.” He put his hand on a coarse brown sack under his cot. “She must have this.”