Hell's Legionnaire (4 page)

The women standing
near, began to laugh with relief. Men were pounding toward the hut, calling out
for Abd el Malek. Suddenly the doorway was filled with alarmed faces.

Colton glanced to the
right and left. He was trapped and doomed. He had been a fool to try this. Why
hadn't he let well enough alone? They knew he came to them singly now. With
only a woman to back him. They would find Ann and torture them both.

Abd el Malek was
standing with folded arms. “Take away his plaything, my children.”

Colton braced his back
against the mud wall. “Try it.” But he knew he was only prolonging things—that
they would be harder on him if he resisted. He was whipped.

Berber hands were
reaching out for the flared muzzle of the auto-rifle.

A shot rapped harshly
through the gloom!

Abd el Malek weaved
slightly. He took one step to the right, tried to stay on his feet. A red flood
of frothy crimson bubbled from his thin lips.

In his eyes was the
agony of death!

Colton stared,
unbelieving. He could not understand. The Berbers were transfixed by the sight
of their leader.

Hands flexing like
talons, Abd el Malek went down on his knees. The flood of red doubled, trebled.

He coughed and fell on
his face to lie quite still.

And then came the
ragged notes of a bugle!

Colton caught his
breath.
La Légion!
Then that meant the
bataillon pénal—
the
Zephyrs
for him. Colton, murderer and deserter.

But something in him
wouldn't believe it. Something in him made him swing up the gun and
fire—although Berber torture was nothing compared to the living death of the
Zephyrs.

The auto-rifle spewed
an unending stream of ragged flame. Berbers, swerving away too late, caught the
bursts full in their chests. Colton strode forward to the door, his path
cleared and carpeted by dying men. His face was set and hard.

Men streamed at him
across the clearing. More Berbers. He fired the rest of the clip, replaced it,
kneeling in the shadow of the wall.

Screams of terror and
rage went up before him. The auto-rifle clattered on, punctuated by the bark of
rifles. Slugs whined out across the darkness, bit into the running bodies and
drove them to earth.

Ann's voice was in his
ears. A pony's rein was in his hand. “Ride! Ride, for God's sake!”

And then he knew that
she had blown the bugle and that she had killed Abd el Malek. For him? For
herself? No, thought Colton, wind against his hot face, for both of them.

I
t was nearing dawn
and the chill night was slowly ebbing away into faint yellowness in the east.
Colton drew in and looked behind them and saw nothing. He smiled and pointed
down to pinpoints of lights which glowed far below.

“Casablanca,” he said.

“We've made it,”
murmured the girl, softly. “We've made it, you and I.” And she sighed happily.

“We'll rest before we
go on. There's a spring here. Yes,” he said, dismounting, “we've made it and
we've got God knows how many thousands of dollars in this musette bag. Enough
to keep us the rest of our lives.”

“Us?” she said, a
little breathless.

He reached up to her
and dragged her bodily out of the saddle.

Pressing her against
him, he nodded. “Us.”

The Barbarians

The Barbarians

T
HE
package arrived by native runner. Major
Duprey, rotund and sleek in Foreign Legion khaki, eyed the thing distrustfully
as it lay on his desk, struck by a beam of hot Moroccan sunlight. Not that he
thought the package might explode before his face, but because the runner had
come from Intelligence. Anything from Intelligence to the infantry was to be
eyed—it usually meant the loss of a few men, a deal of worry.

The great square of Fez was visible through the open
door of the whitewashed office—colorful, noisy, smelly, crammed with tribesmen
down for the holiday. Ponies drooped sorrowfully in the rolling heat waves.

Major Duprey looked up from the package and stared at a
man who approached the office. The man towered above the natives as a slender
mountain peak towers above foothills.

“Capitaine
Harvey!” bawled Duprey.

The tall man looked languidly toward the open door and
then shoved his way toward it. He entered and sat down in a wicker chair,
thrusting his booted legs out before him. He rolled a cigarette, twisted the
end, placed it in his mouth. He spent almost a minute looking for a match as
though unconscious of Duprey's glare. It was not until blue smoke rolled from
Jack Harvey's cigarette that he glanced up inquiringly.

“Capitaine!”
said Duprey,
severely. “How often must I tell you that an officer of the Legion must not be
seen in undress uniform in public? And how often must I remind you to wear a
sun hat instead of that dirty white helmet? Besides,
Capitaine,
you have
grease spots on your jacket and that white silk scarf about your throat is not
regulation.”

Jack Harvey lifted the flying helmet from his black hair
and shoved it into his pocket. His sun-narrowed eyes, quite unperturbed,
wandered out to the square once more. His face was long and drooping, the
expression almost sad.

Duprey rubbed his hands together briskly. The two
runners who sat against the far wall, dozing in the stuffy heat of the office,
jerked up their heads, straightened their khaki shirts and generally began to
look alive.

Duprey's nose wrinkled as though he had smelled
something offensive. He glanced with long-suffering eyes at the square and then
looked back at the cubical package. Once more he rubbed his hands and then
untied the rope which held the paper in place.

Harvey watched him without
interest.

The wrapping paper fell away like a banana skin and a
box came to view. Once more Duprey paused to sniff. His attention was suddenly
riveted to the package.

He struck away the cardboard and jumped back as though a
snake had struck at him. One of the runners gagged. Harvey sat up straight,
very alert and forgot the cigarette.

“
Mon Dieu
!”
cried Duprey.
“Look at that!”

There was no need for the order. All eyes were on the
head.

It was a terrifying thing, that head. Its ragged,
severed throat was ringed by congealed blood. Its eyes had been gouged out.
Small twigs had been thrust through the jaws, leaving jagged holes. The
sightless sockets looked up at Duprey.

The runner gagged again and went to the door. Harvey swallowed twice, remembered his cigarette and took a drag from it. Duprey was
pressed all the way back against the wall, as though the head had a gun trained
on him.

“It's Grauer,” Duprey said.

“Poor devil,” said Harvey.

“And now,” Duprey snapped somewhat irritably, “we'll get
no further reports from the back country. The fool would have to get himself
caught.”

Harvey's eyes glinted.

“Yes,” he said. “A personal insult to you, Major.
Caid
Kirzigh was trying to be funny.”

“Caid Kirzigh,” nodded Duprey, looking down at the
tortured face. “The barbarian! I thank the good God that
I
belong to the
civilized parts of the world. I'll show that one! I'll show him that he cannot
flaunt our authority in this country.”

“How?” said Harvey and was immediately sorry that he had
spoken. The major's eyes were on him.

“How?” echoed Duprey. “We'll see to it that the Legion
wipes him out, that's how. We'll storm his territory and teach them a lesson.”

“Storm his stronghold? That would be about half of the
Atlas, wouldn't it?”

“Half the Atlas, yes. But the caid is bound to be
accessible. He must be with one or another body of his troops. We'll strike and
strike hard. Have to teach those barbarians a lesson. Can't let them get away
with such brutality, with such insults to France.” His eyes were once more on Harvey.

After a moment, the major said, “
Capitaine.
You
will proceed immediately with a gunner to the higher reaches of the Atlas. You
will land and scout Caid Kirzigh's position. Then you will return here and
report.”

“Major,” replied Harvey, with great slowness, “I am
perfectly willing to scout the position for you, but as for landing, the Atlas
are not under your authority. And if I am caught . . .”

“You are impertinent,” crackled Duprey. “Take a
Caudron
and make immediate reconnaissance. Land somewhere in the vicinity of . . . of .
. .”

“Go ahead,” smiled Harvey. “I'm listening.”

Duprey struck the desk with his fist. The head jumped
toward the edge, teetered there for an instant and then fell to the concrete
floor.

Harvey winced. The jaw had
fallen slack, displaying a blackened tongue and broken teeth. Duprey rounded
the edge of the desk and scooped the thing up, putting it back in place. But as
he did so something caught his eye.

Reaching into the mouth, he dragged forth a folded slip
of yellow paper, damp with blood.

Unfolding the slip, he read it quickly. “Thoughtful of
Grauer. Very thoughtful of him. He might know we would want this information.”

To Harvey came the cold realization that Grauer must
have known his fate long before it was meted out. He had written that message
in his stolid German way, while he waited for his execution. And that Grauer
had been told that his head would be shipped back to Fez.

“Kirzigh,” said Duprey, “is about a hundred and fifty
miles due south. He's holing in for a siege, putting up barricades about his
towns, intending to attack and then retreat, leading our troops into ambush. He
is now at village 8-G.”

Harvey was staring at the place
the head had been dented by the fall.

“Capitaine,”
crackled
Duprey. “You will go out to the
drome
immediately and take off. Do not fail to
be back by morning with the required intelligence.”

Harvey climbed to his feet. His
long body was as lithe as a strip of whalebone. His sun-narrowed eyes seemed to
sink into his long face. He swung a small stick back and forth. For a moment it
appeared that he was about to object. Then he shrugged and went out of the
office toward a waiting motorcycle.

Duprey
was rubbing his hands, looking at the head. “The barbarians. I'll show them they
can't insult
la Légion
! I'll show them, the filthy rabble!”

A
t the drome, with the heat waves rolling up from the hard-packed
plain like dry steam, Harvey stopped before the hangars and beckoned to a
sergeant.

“Rubio,” said Harvey, listlessly, “tell them to run out
a Caudron and gas her up.”

Rubio's Spanish face gleamed. His bright, hard eyes
glistened. “A patrol this time of day?
Sí, Capitaine.
”

“And Rubio,” said Harvey, calling the man back, “are you
doing anything tonight? Anything important?”

“Well, no,
Capitaine.
”

“All right, Rubio. You're going with me.”

“But,
Capitaine . . .
”

“I said you were going with me,” stated Harvey, swinging his small stick. He smiled wryly. “This, Rubio, is for France.”

“To be sure,
Capitaine.
For France!”

The Caudron came forth, looming hugely before the
hangar. The 450
hp
Moraine-Ditrich motor thundered into uproarious life and the
biplane quivered under the stress of cold cylinders. Looking at it, feeling the
hot, dry sun against his shoulders, Harvey thought to himself that those frail
wings alone would keep his head on his shoulders. A cigarette drooped from his
lips and he squinted his eyes to see through the smoke.

The
prop wash
was a fog of tan, stinging particles which
rose up to coat the world a drab monotone, matching the uniforms and faces of
the men. Far, far off, almost against the feet of the looming
High Atlas
, there
lay one patch of green. An olive orchard and vineyard. Harvey always circled it
before he landed, thankful for a splash of color in a brown world. Morocco had little in common with Georgia. It was even more lifeless than those desert stretches of
the Texas border where the customs patrol . . .

Rubio was climbing into the rear pit, swiveling the
machine guns, making certain that the ordnance officer had been on the job.
Rubio's glittery eyes were slightly worried.

The flaps of Harvey's helmet had been standing up like a
police dog's ears. He pulled them down, fastened the buckle and folded the
white scarf against his chest.

The Caudron rolled down the loose sand runway. The
Moraine-Ditrich thundered. The spreading wings throbbed in the dead, rocky air,
then they were soaring up against a metal blue sky and a copper sun.

The olive trees went under them slowly and then the
ground began to inch up toward their spindly undercarriage—although the Caudron
was climbing at a steep angle.

Harvey sat back and watched the
High Atlas play the usual trick of receding as you approached. The black
compass bowl swung back and forth, influenced by several billion tons of
unexploited iron ore, which now served only one purpose: to throw troops off
their route. A shadow fell across the instrument panel; the machine guns
pointed west. Harvey used the shadow as a guide. A Legionnaire lost and downed
in the Atlas was a dead Legionnaire.

Almost invisible, even in this hard, brilliant air, he
could see
Mt. Tizi-n-Tamjurt
hundreds of miles away, fourteen thousand feet
high. Looking back, he could have seen the Mediterranean, but he avoided that.
Men sailed away from there via the sea.

The Caudron forged onward, higher and higher, reaching
back into Berber country. Below,
Moorish barbs
toiled along a twisting road
beneath the weight of native riders. One of the riders shook a rifle and his
dark face opened to give vent to a challenging but unheard yell of defiance.

The machine guns racketed with harsh violence. Harvey jerked around to look at Rubio. The Spaniard was smiling as he swiveled the guns
back, locking their butts.

Far below the man and the barb were struggling feebly in
the hot, dry dust.

“For France,” said Harvey to himself and flew steadily
onward into thinning air.

The country was upended, twisted and gashed, offering
only ravines and craggy cliffs in lieu of landing fields. An occasional ridge
flattened out and ran crookedly for a space of a mile or more, to dip off into
a gully and disappear.

When they made the world, thought Harvey, they took all
the stones and rubbish which were left over and dumped them into northern Africa.

Rubio was slapping his helmet, pointing down. Harvey circled, one wing pointing steadily at the ground. Heat and wind lift combined in
their effort to upset the ship. Rubio was pointing at a tight huddle of dirt
houses. Down there men were running in circles, shouting, waving their guns.

Rubio cocked the machine guns and let drive. Small
patches of gray white did not move again.

“The empire of Caid Kirzigh.” Harvey told himself.

He flew on, deeper into the hills. His eyes raked the
ground as he searched out the impossible—a landing field. He had been ordered
to land and give the barbarians a lesson. Perhaps he could follow his orders.

Flying at half throttle, buffeted by blasting currents
of rising air, he came back toward the village. Rubio was slapping his helmet
again.

A canyon sliced a straight dark line across the world
for almost two miles. It was not wide, never more than a hundred yards, and
generally less by half. Boulders studded the flat floor. Harvey frowned and
dived two hundred meters. Yes, there was one place where no boulder existed. A
runway, about fifty yards wide and a thousand yards long.

Lift was careening up from the steep canyon sides. The
altimeter
needle was unable to react, seemingly paralyzed by the task of
recording their rapidly varying height.

Harvey sent the Caudron toward
the canyon end, did a wingover and came back. Cutting the Moraine-Ditrich down
to idling, he shot toward the one cleared space. The roar of the engine was
replaced by the shrill whistle of wires.