He swung up on the black pony and went on down through the sun patterns which leaked into the dense tunnel. He wasn’t listening to the nerve-twisting silence now. He had something else to think about.
He found the trail, found the tracks. Several ponies had passed that way at a walk. He put a fresh clip in his Springfield and whipped up the black horse and left his own trail.
The path led into a country cut and slashed by ravines, the forerunners of the Yuloc Mountains. As it went gradually up, the vegetation became less thick, the trees bigger and further apart.
An hour and a half later, he slowed the black pony’s pace and began to look ahead each time he went over a canyon edge. And then, about five hundred yards away, he caught sight of white dots moving along a ravine bottom.
The trail there was long and straight, and from his position high above, Smith could command the entire length.
He dismounted and spread himself out on top of a limestone boulder. He adjusted his sling with neat precision, as though he was again on the firing line winning his expert rating all over again.
Seven white dots, he counted. One horse seemed to have no rider, until he made out the khaki lump which was draped like a meal sack over the saddle. If that was O’Brien, the man might well be dead.
He could almost hear the whir of the chain taking the ducks along their ledge. He could almost hear the crack, crack, crack of yapping .22s and the clang of the bells and the whistle and thump of bullets. He grinned down the sights and squeezed carefully.
A white duck pitched over on its side and out of sight. Another threw up its arms and toppled backward. The echo of the shots roared and pounded through the close canyon walls and the reports were curiously hollow out in the open this way.
Another mechanical duck jolted, almost fell, and then clung hard to a terror-stricken horse and bolted out of sight, just as though the duck was alive.
The remaining white dots did not wait to look back. They loosened the horse they led, and with quirts cracking against lathered flanks, fled out of sight into the brush. The sack of meal hung listlessly from the saddle, arms dangling as the mount danced about, lead rope tangled in its forefeet.
Win Smith swung onto his horse and with a hard slap, sent the animal plunging down the steep side and racing along the trail toward the released pony.
It did not take him long to get there. It did not take him long to unsnarl the rope and quiet the rearing horse. He was scared by the listless waving of O’Brien’s arms, by the small trickle of red which ran down out of the sleeve and dripped from the stubby fingers.
A pipe-barreled mountain rifle snapped peevishly from the brush. Smith grabbed O’Brien’s shoulder and shook it.
O’Brien’s eyes flickered for an instant and then opened wide. “Beat it,” snapped O’Brien with odd intensity. “Beat it.”
“Hey, it’s me, Win Smith. It’s me, Top. You’re okay.”
“Beat it,” cried O’Brien.
Delirious, decided Win Smith and immediately swung up on the black horse and led the other pony away from there at a swift pace. The mountain guns began to roar and crack down the trail. Powder music. Slugs spanged and howled away from rocks and trees. Win Smith grinned happily, and remained erect in his saddle.
The clatter of the pans in the galley, the rattle of mess kits and dixies, the slamming of aluminum beaten to the off-key song about Lulu teaching a baby to swim, filled the velvety darkness which had dropped over the camp of Company K.
Clinging to the hillside by its tent pegs, Company K was busy finishing its supper in a bedlam which was sweet to Win Smith’s silence-stung ears. Confident in the sentries, Win Smith could almost forget that still jungle and the men who scuttled like the lizards through the brush.
“That was hot going, baby,” said the corporal on Smith’s right. “I hear you popped off three of them.”
“Naw, just two. One rode off with the others.” Smith was not looking at the corporal’s eyes. Smith was looking at the two stripes which graced the corporal’s arm. He had just realized something.
After that trick, O’Brien might rate him. Smith began to grin. He hadn’t thought about it before, but if they made him a corporal, maybe he wouldn’t have to listen to silence anymore. Those stripes were mighty nice looking, too.
“He’s gotta idea,” said the corporal, speaking of O’Brien, “that the sooner we clean ’em up, the sooner we get out of this stinking mess. Maybe he’s right, but you can’t tell O’Brien nothin’. Fool trick to go off by himself that way. Of course he got bunged up. He was damned lucky you saw his nag and followed him up.”
A man in khaki with a small red cross on his sleeve slid into the circle and sat down on an empty ammunition case. “You Smith?” he said.
“Yeah.”
The corpsman nodded. “Thought you might like to know O’Brien is okay. You couldn’t kill that tough egg. Y’know what he did? Tried to knock me down and leave the shack. Said he wasn’t going to have no damned gob messing over him. I used up a bottle of iodine on him for that crack. One in the shoulder, another in the leg. No bones broke. He’s acting pretty mad about something.”
“Of course he is,” said the corporal. “Y’ever see a top kicker that wasn’t mad about something? Gets himself picked off by the rebels and has to be rescued. You expect he’d be singing about it?”
The corpsman looked long at Smith and then quietly went to work on his mulligan.
Four days later, Winchester Remington Smith was still in camp, a fact which set well with him. But, on that fatal fourth day, at ten o’clock in the morning, when he found himself facing the captain and the lieutenant and the patched-up O’Brien, he was very startled.
O’Brien’s ice eyes were fixed balefully upon him. O’Brien’s left hand dangled in a sling. O’Brien was using a crutch to stand, having refused the canvas chair.
The captain, clean and hard of face, with a great show of unconcern, said, “I suppose this is a deck court, Smith. For conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline.”
“Yes sir,” said Smith, avoiding O’Brien’s hard glance.
“In a way you have disobeyed your orders. In carrying dispatches destined for Company K, under orders to avoid any difficulties which might lead to the loss of those dispatches, you deliberately set yourself out of your way to track down an uncertain lead which, with a great deal of luck, brought you to O’Brien.”
“But … what could I do, sir?” said Smith.
“You should have come in, delivered your dispatches, and we could have sent out the patrol. Tracks do not fade that fast. For myself … well, I appreciate your feelings in the matter, but the sergeant here has, after all, discipline to maintain. Supposing we put this matter down in the book, Smith, and if, when we get outside, the sergeant still insists, we’ll write it into your record. That will be all, Smith.”
“Yes sir,” said Smith and saluted before he realized that he held his hat in his left hand. In great confusion, he about-faced and marched out of the tent.
He did not stop walking until he had placed several trees between himself and the captain. Then he halted and looked out at the valley below, a stunned expression on his face.
When he had been standing there several minutes, he heard the thump of a crutch coming up behind him.
“Listen, you,” said O’Brien, his jaw set and his jowls shaking, “you think you got away with it that time, but I’m sick of seeing a goldbrick around here, get it?”
Smith said nothing.
“The shavetail’s got some stuff that needs taking to a Guardia outfit over by Mount Pelo. Go get it.”
Smith’s face came alive. “Mount Pelo? I thought you sent all that stuff back to PC and had it dropped there by plane. No runner can get through to Pelo.”
“Oh, so that’s it. Now you’re telling me how to run the company, huh? You think you’re g
oing to go around shooting off that big face of yours just because you made a grandstand play, huh? I said there’s some stuff for Mount Pelo. Go get it and fast, or by God, I’ll knock your face through the back of your head and kick your laces up around your neck. Beat it.”
Smith looked at the sergeant’s slung arm and the crutch and then at the anger which leaped out of the set face. “What’s the matter?”
“Plenty’s the matter, you damned boot. You think you can get maybe a stripe or two for pulling that boner out on the trail, do you? You think maybe I’m supposed to overlook disobedience to orders, do you? Insubordination, that’s what it is. Insubordination! You think by pulling what you did you ought to have medals pinned on you, maybe—nice, shiny medals all over that stove-in chest of yours.
“Well, there ain’t any medals in this outfit for the bird that disobeys his orders. What if you’d been killed coming out there, huh?
“I think you was trying to get killed just for spite. And then what would have happened, huh? The goonies would have taken those dispatches and we’d be in a hell of a shape, we would. You’re a runner, not a goddam Red Cross dog, and the quicker you get it, the better off you’ll be.
“Trying to pull a hero stunt. What the hell do you think you’re in? The Girl Reserves? Why, I’ve got a notion to bash in your grinning, ugly face for you, you mother loving, baby snatching, perverted son. Now get out of my sight. Get out of my sight! Get those papers and get the hell out of camp. I don’t care if there are goonies on that trail. I don’t care if you have to wade in blankety-blank-blank up to your neck, get to Mount Pelo and get back, and by God if you get yourself bumped off I’ll knock a hole through you a cat could jump through. Now get out!”
Smith’s fists relaxed at his sides. Smith turned and went away. After all, you don’t hit a wounded man and you don’t hit the O’Briens of the corps.
When he had received the orders and when he had filled his bandolier out of a broken ammunition case, he saw the corpsman looking at him from the front of the sick bay. The corpsman was smiling in a knowing way.
“Where bound?” asked the corpsman.
“Mount Pelo.”
“Wheeooo! Been no runners over that way for weeks. Well, I wish you luck, leatherneck. I wish you luck.”
Silence.
A bush moved slowly against the wind. From under the branches peered a pair of tired blue eyes under the crumpled brim of a campaigner. Far out across the bleached grass of the plain reared the unshorn head of Mount Pelo, a shaggy sentinel hazy in the heat waves.
Win Smith hitched his Springfield up beside him just in case anything might move in all that expanse. He remained hidden for some minutes with the ringing silence weighing him down.
In two days he had traveled far, mostly by darkness, and the jungle trail had resounded at times with the plodding hoofs of tired native mounts and with the subdued chatter of the goonies moving restlessly through the mountains, bent on some errand Win Smith could not define. Many grimy shirts had passed through his ready sights, but he had held his fire, knowing that even the immense relief a shot would give him would, at the same time, betray the fact that a runner was near at hand to be hunted down.
Something was doing here, and the sooner he reached Mount Pelo, the better. There, at least, he could rest and eat in the company of the two Guardia officers.
Assured that he alone moved through the heat, he raised up and started across the plain. His pace was fast and his light pack bounced against his already raw shoulders.
Neguas, those insistent fleas which burrow into feet and lay their sacs of eggs, made walking a painful thing. For lack of attention, the sores were growing. Every few hours he had had to stop to remove blood-gorged ticks from beneath his leggings.
Mount Pelo sprawled out before him. On the northern slope he would find the outfit, if the outfit was still there.
A mountain gun cracked far to the right. A geyser of tan dust spouted in the path before him. Win Smith changed his course, increased his pace, and headed doggedly for his goal.
A second shot bullwhipped from the edge of the woods. Again he changed his course, getting as far as possible into the open.
He had made three hundred yards when he heard the rattle of hoofs on the trail behind him. He whirled and threw himself down into the dust, twisting about and staring back, rifle propped on one elbow, finger tensing on the trigger.
Two horsemen were charging at him, hat brims pressed back, legs jerking as they thumped bare heels into their ponies’ sides. Smith aimed carefully and squeezed. The first rider went down in a skidding swirl of dust. Smith fired again. The second threw up his arms; his mount whirled and plunged back toward the woods, dragging the bouncing body by the foot.
Smith got up and faced Pelo, breaking into a jog trot. He had the uncomfortable sensation of eyes staring at him from cover, and he knew that men had picked up his tracks. If they guessed that he was a courier, they would be waiting for him on the return trip.
An hour later, drenched with muddy sweat, he came to a halt before a low tent pitched at the side of a rude, sunburned parade ground.
A man in Marine uniform came out, a weary but immaculate man who bore the silver triangle of the Guardia on his hat. Surprise flickered for a moment on his face.
“Where the hell did you come from?”
Smith grinned. “From Company K.”
“What the hell? They’ve been sending their stuff over by PC and plane. Didn’t you have trouble getting through?”
“A little. There seems to be something up.” Smith handed the slips of onionskin over to the Guardia captain.
The captain loosed an oath which would have done credit to Fifty-Fifty O’Brien. “We’re to fall back. What the hell?”
“Don’t ask me,” said Smith, bold with weariness. “I’m just the messenger boy around here.”
The Guardia captain looked at him for several seconds, observing the muddy, ripped condition of the clothes, noting the absence of a clip in the bandolier, seeing the red veins in the haggard eyes.
“I meant,” said the captain, almost losing his gunnery-sergeant gruffness, “that this is funny. They tell me the post is in danger and we’re too far out. They tell me to fall back toward the PC. What the hell do they know about it? Sergeant Mallory and I don’t have to depend upon guesses. We’ve got plenty of boys here that know all the answers.
“It isn’t this outfit that’s in danger, dammit, it’s Company K. And the fools had you come through all that just to give me a couple screwy commands. What do they do down there? Cork off?
“But,” he added, rubbing his raw beef jaw judicially, “if they say move back, my people move back, and that’s that. But Pelo, damn her hide, won’t be easy to take again.
“See here, soldier, tell the cook to shovel you out some chow and then pipe down for some snores. You’ll go back with us, of course.”
Win Smith looked at this gunnery sergeant of the corps, this captain of the Guardia, and thought about another man like him—Fifty-Fifty O’Brien. The sensible thing to do would be to follow this gyrene’s advice, but a bull-tempered streak in Win Smith made him shake his head.
“O’Brien told me to come back. They’ll want to know the score. I’ll rest up and leave at dark.”
“So O’Brien sent you out here, did he? Now tell me what you did to O’Brien.”
“I … well, I guess I saved his life.”
“You saved his life and he sent you out here?”
“Yeah, you see, I shouldn’t have taken time to do it. I was carrying dispatch and I wasn’t supposed to swing off my course.”
“Aw, bunk! That isn’t the answer to it.”
“Then what is?”
The Guardia captain scratched his head in a puzzled way and shrugged. “I dunno. O’Brien is a funny duck—Tough but touchy. See here, soldier, I’m
not going to let O’Brien get you bumped. You trail along with us. No use crossing back the way you came. You’d never make it.”
“O’Brien said to get back.”
“All right, all right. What did he do? Hypnotize you?” He motioned toward the galley and a crowd of dusky Guardia men. “Go get what chow and rest you can, you’ll need it.”
Silence.
A mud-splattered shadow crept up a slippery trail inch by inch, stopping and lying still at intervals. The moonlight lay hazily over the world, painting blue shadows under the rocks and trees. Far over to the right a flicker of red indicated a bandit camp.
For a day and almost two nights, Win Smith had dragged himself down the slopes and through the canyons toward Company K. His khaki was a patch of dirty Irish pennants, the knees of his pants were gone, one legging was absent and his tan tie was torn half in two where he had caught it on a rock.
But it was not this that he minded. It was not that flicker of red. It was not the length of the way. It was the silence, the ringing, never-breaking silence of a brooding, sullen land.
A dogged stubbornness alone drove him on, a wish to show O’Brien that he could get through, that he could follow orders.
But, he thought bitterly, little good that would do him. They’d forget this effort in a day. They’d forget it and send him out again into more silence. And they probably wouldn’t even remove that farce deck court from the record.
A hell of a life this was.
How he ached for noise!
Powder music would be sweet, but with it he wanted a merry-go-round going, and a coaster dip roaring, and a nasal voice barking. So this was excitement, was it? Heavy, brute silence that walled you in and thundered in your ears.
Ruefully he remembered how he had stared at that corporal’s chevrons that night. He had been willing to give ten to one that he’d be wearing them soon himself—that night.
How the hell did you get ahead in this outfit, anyway? He’d done the thing he thought would be a cinch. Not consciously, but he might as well have done it that way for all the good it did him. You save a guy’s life, so he sends you out and hopes you won’t come back. Wasn’t the bird human? Hadn’t he ever heard of a thing called gratitude?