Hell's Legionnaire (8 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

The Skeleton

T
HE
short scrap of that
afternoon flashed across my mind. Then it had been the Berber who had been
below, trying to reach up to the
murette,
and whom I had pounded into a
bloody and battered pulp with bullets. It appeared that the tables were turned.
I did not seem to fear the awful pain of the knife thrust half so much as the
fall. Three hundred feet is a long way down. The white kepis below me looked
like dimes.

To do it I had to let
go with both hands. I jerked down a foot, dangling over space. Then I had the
hillman's knife wrist in my hand. He tried to shake me without pulling back. He
was wise, that one. He knew what I intended to do.

He must have felt
himself slipping too close to the edge. Pebbles were showering down all around
me. He jerked back and suddenly I was on hard earth. I rolled over, taking him
with me. Behind him burnooses swirled. I would have to act fast.

Planting both my feet
in his belly, I shoved up and back. He catapulted headfirst over the edge,
screaming, through emptiness.

A rifle spat beside my
face. I snatched the barrel and twisted it away. Evidently, the hillmen were
too terrified at their companion's fate. They turned and ran. It was an easy
matter to cut them down. Their white burnooses made excellent targets.

Then I had the hillman's knife wrist in my hand. He tried to
shake me without pulling back. He was wise, that one.
He knew what I intended to do.

Once more I lowered
the rope which I had coiled about my waist. Presently Gian and the machine gun
were both there. And, after another short interval, Maurice and Montrey were on
top and out of sight behind a boulder. Kraus, grunting and sweating, rolled
over the edge and reached back to help Ivan.

I took a sight along
the ridge, discovering that it ran in the direction we wanted to travel. There
did not seem to be any immediate end to it and so we struck out, running
rapidly from cover to cover, keeping the Berbers out of sight with a swift and
certain rear-guard action, taking turns at staying behind.

By the moonlight,
about 2 AM, I stopped and
consulted Copain's map. He had marked a water hole about a mile from our
course.

“We'll get something
to drink now,” I said. “But we may have to fight for it.”

“Why so?” challenged
Montrey. “Our retreat is losing those devils at the rate of a hundred a mile.”

“There are other
tribes through here,” I replied. “And water holes are few and far between. See
that fire about six miles behind us?”

He looked back and
stared at the blinking point of light.

“They're passing a
blanket before that flame,” I said. “They must have learned a few tricks from
the French. Anybody ahead of us will be on the scout, looking for us. And
they're bound to protect the water holes.”

“Oui, mon commandant,”
said Montrey with an
ugly, twisted smile. “You frighten me out of my senses.”

Ivan laughed, but
Maurice fumbled with his Chauchat as though he wanted to squirt lead.

We went on. The
dryness of our throats was increased by the rising dust. But the others did not
seem to care. Their minds were far ahead of us, over the ranges of the High
Atlas, and they dreamed of a mysterious, uncharted city where riches could be
picked up for the effort of reaching.

We spotted the water
hole far below us and began the descent to it, sliding through loose stone. In
the lead, I stopped and held up my hand. The others stopped behind me. An
errant breeze had come up from the ravine and with it had come the odor of wet
steam. The message was obvious. A fire had burned there until a few moments
before. The Berbers had poured water over it in the hopes of ambushing us when
we came down to drink.

“They're waiting for
us,” I said.

“Let's go down,”
insisted Montrey. “We can't go without water forever.”

“All right, Montrey.
If you're so thirsty, lead the way with an auto-rifle.”

He went ahead after
giving me a hard look. Ivan had been busy with his pet. Mounting a rock, he
straddled the tripod legs and pulled back the loading handle of the machine
gun. I followed Montrey.

A rifle roared ten
feet in front. Other rifles began to rave. The Chauchats went into action; the
machine gun rolled out a guttural bass to the overture. Berbers howled. That
which had been a black rocky pit suddenly swirled with white robes and lashing
flame.

I dived behind a rock
and began to fire into the thick of it with my Lebel. It was impossible to
miss.

Hastily organizing
themselves, the hillmen rolled out of the semicircular rock amphitheatre like a
typhoon. In an instant they were all around me. Ivan's gun sent a burst
ricocheting off my boulder. The Berbers drew away from me.

I saw Kraus pick up a
hillman by the waist and pitch him bodily back into the thick of the rush.

With three Chauchats
and a machine gun backing up rifle fire, the noise was head-splitting. A
hundred men pounding on a hundred anvils could not have made a greater racket.
Evidently it was too much for the Berbers, for to my right the gorge began to
fill up with men.

For a heart-stopping
instant I thought that reinforcements had come for the hillmen. Then a shaft of
moonlight showed me that their faces were turned away. I sent a parting clip
into the stragglers and then silence settled down upon the water hole.

As I approached the
small pool, I saw a big hillman lying in my path. He was not dead, though the
lower part of his burnoose was covered with blood. Suddenly he rolled over and
grabbed for his rifle. As the muzzle came up, my rifle drilled a hole between
his eyes.

We wasted but little
time in filling our canteens and our mouths with water. Though it was muddy and
foul it tasted like nectar. The hillmen had left a few kettles of boiled mutton
on the scene. It was still warm and we ate it, scooping the greasy mess out
with our bare hands.

Ten minutes later we
were once more on the trail, heading northwest toward the square on Copain's
map. Kraus was limping and saying nothing about it. He was afraid that we would
leave him if he confessed a wound. I let him be. His first-aid packet was open
and I knew he had dressed the hole. Maurice's jaw was covered with blood from a
torn ear.

By a combination of
luck and skill I found that we were on the trail which had been marked down by
Copain. Dawn broke to find us toiling up the side of a mountain range, heading
toward a pass. We had marched hard and fast as Legionnaires are supposed to
march and now we would need protection from the sun and daylight attacks.

We gained the summit.
It was Montrey that spotted an old
murette
halfway up a cliff. We made
for it. I was rather puzzled by its presence as this country had never been
posted. However, Copain and Tanner and André had come this way and this must
have been their handiwork.

Maurice was the first
one over the wall. He dropped out of sight and then came back to give the
others a hand. A slanting ray of sunlight struck us, showing up the old camp in
detail. I stopped halfway over and stared at the base of the cliff across the
compound.

A skeleton lay there
in the storm-beaten clothes of a Legionnaire. His tattered kepi had rolled
several feet away. His boots were cracked by sun and dust. His pack had been
torn apart and lay scattered about him.

From the back of the
faded tunic there protruded a French bayonet!

CHAPTER FIVE

Gold Madness

T
HE
man's kit revealed his
name—or the name he had borne in the Legion. It was Schrader, onetime
Intelligence private. I had never known him very well, but I did know that he
was one of the squad who had been with Copain on that mapping expedition.

Tanner, André, Copain
and now Schrader. All these men were dead, two of them because they knew too
much about a city lost in this mountain waste.

When I tried to pull
the bayonet out of Schrader's back, it would not come. There was no flesh to
hold it and I rolled the skeleton back from it.

The bayonet was
embedded three inches in the ground. They had killed him while he slept!

I was not especially
concerned that Copain and Tanner and André had killed Schrader. I was thinking
about my own neck. When Montrey and the others got to the city they might think
they had no further use for me. Perhaps they would strike out for the coast
without me. Perhaps they had learned enough about the direction of these
mountains to guide themselves.

That day I slept away
from them with one hand on my gun, the other on my bayonet.

When the midday heat
was gone, we buried the skeleton. Montrey was smiling as though he possessed a
new inspiration. I knew what that inspiration was. Montrey knew now that he did
not have to divide with the rest. Montrey was thinking that he would get it all
for himself.

Aside from a very
occasional bullet from great range we were not much troubled by the hillmen.
They had developed a healthy respect for the auto-rifle and machine gun.

With darkness
shrouding our movements we hit the trail again. All that night we tramped over
mountains, through passes, down ravines, and when dawn came again we had progressed
twenty-seven miles.

We had to build our
own
murette
that morning, but on the three succeeding days we found them
built for us.

That mapping squad had
taken no chances with the Berbers.

Six days' march from
our original base, we made camp on a high summit which overlooked countless
square miles of upended country.

Montrey sat on a
boulder beside me.

“I suppose you know
just exactly where you are, don't you. Right to a dot.”

“Pretty near,” I
replied, disregarding his surly tone.

“Wouldn't care to
point out the valley, would you?”

“No. I don't think I
would.”

“Afraid you'd get it
in the neck?”

“I know I would,
Montrey. Just as sure as I can see that valley from this point.”

The statement brought
the others to their feet. They crowded around me, their faces lit up, their
eyes burning with greed.

“Show us!” cried Gian.

“You'll be there when
the moon comes up late tonight,” I assured him.

Posting two sentries,
I rolled over against a boulder and went to sleep, facing the
murette
where Montrey and Maurice were standing the first watch.

I don't know how long
I slept, but I woke up on my feet. The machine gun was going full blast, with
Montrey behind the butt. Maurice was sprawled over the edge of the parapet,
blood gushing from a spot between his eyes.

In an instant I was
beside him, a Chauchat in my hands. Down the slope three men were scurrying
away, their white robes ballooning away from them. Montrey got two with one
burst.

I shot the other.

“How did they get so
close to you?” I demanded, staring at Maurice.

Montrey shrugged and
smiled crookedly.

“They got close to you
once, didn't they?”

Pulling Maurice back
into the compound, I inspected the wound. Looking up, I said, “Close is right,
Montrey. There are powder marks around this hole.”

Before he could jump away
I wrenched his revolver out of his belt and sniffed at the barrel.

It had certainly been
fired within ten minutes.

All the others were
up. Kraus glowered at Montrey. Gian licked his lips. Ivan stood with widespread
feet, glaring.

“Listen,” I said. “Watch
Montrey. He just shot Maurice under the cover of that attack and he may try to
get the rest of you.”

Ivan, slower witted
than the rest, growled, “Well, what is wrong with that? Maurice was playing in
with you,
mon
corporal
. It was—”

“Shut up, pig!” snapped
Montrey.

I studied their faces
for the space of a minute. I saw then that they were not glaring at Montrey.
Their eyes were on me. I already could feel the sharp points of their needle
bayonets going through my flesh.

I did not sleep any
more that day.