“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
THE 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!”
At 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 str
ess 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.
A bump struck their right wing. Harvey fought the stick and righted the plane. A heat area came under them and bounced them fifty feet before Harvey could once more nose down.
It was an atmospheric whirlpool, that spot. Harvey eyed the nearing sheer walls and saw them close in over the top of his head.
They rocketed for a cliff side. He banked and slammed the Caudron closer to earth. A boulder reached greedily at the right wheel and then whipped past.
The landing gear crunched. They rolled to a shuddering stop.
Rubio let go of the gunner’s pit turtleback and climbed out.
“Now what do we do?” he asked.
“Walk toward their camp, catch one of them and take him back with us.”
“Yes, yes,” said Rubio. “We’ll get it out of them. . . .” He made a movement with his hands, pantomiming the throttling of a throat.
Harvey stepped to the wing and then to the ground. He lashed the heavy automatic down to his thigh, turning up his ear flaps to keep his neck cool, and walked toward the end of the ravine. Small geysers of dust came up from his boot heels.
When they could sight another canyon, Harvey stopped.
“They might be looking for us,” he remarked.
“Those?” said Rubio. “The dirty beasts haven’t got sense enough to get out of sight, much less look for us. Remember what happened down there at . . .”
Harvey nodded, taking a long drag at the smoke.
“For France,” he said.
“For France!” echoed Rubio.
Harvey strode on toward the mouth of the second ravine. His eyes were alert for swirls of gray behind rocks, though he knew that their first warning of ambush would be the sharp whine of a maimed bullet turning over and over as it ricocheted from stone.
He loosened the automatic in its holster and laid back the flap. If they could just collar one of them and drag him back to the ship, everything would be set. But Berbers rarely travel alone and they rarely let you get within five hundred yards of them.
And five hundred yards across these ridges and canyons might as well be a thousand miles. Well, thought Harvey, it was a good idea anyway. After all, if Kirzigh got loose in the Legion outposts, a good many men would die.
Rubio was trotting along behind him, panting in the heat, his swarthy face greased with shining sweat.
Harvey stopped and looked at a wall two hundred yards away. Narrowing his eyes against the glare and shimmering heat waves, he stared intently. Yes, he was right. Someone had skipped from one boulder to another.
He went on toward the rock face as though he had seen nothing. Rubio, unknowing, followed hard on his heels.
Directly under the spot he had seen the movement, Harvey dived for the edge of the ravine. A bullet hit a rock with the spiteful sound of a broken banjo string.
Harvey scrambled up the steep slope toward a puff of dark smoke drifting languidly against the metal blue sky. A second bullet rapped shrilly and then a third.
The Berber was not only shooting at his enemy; he was also signaling the time-honored call of three. Bullets were far too precious to these Berbers. They even located spent French slugs after hours of search and remolded them.
Abruptly the down-slanting barrel of a Snider was above Harvey’s head. He grabbed at the warm barrel and with a tendon-spraining wrench, brought it toward him, brought the Berber with it.
For one fast-moving second he thought he had succeeded, that this was a lone sentry who
could be delivered for questioning.
And then swirls of dirty white sprouted from the barren slopes of the ravine. Harvey, with his hands full of rifle and native, sent one hasty glance down at Rubio. And saw that Rubio was lost in a sea of whirling cloth.
Across Jack Harvey’s vision there flashed the image of that head. That severed head with the eyeballs hanging by strings from the sockets. The head which had once rested on the stolid shoulders of Grauer.
Berbers came up the slope like an avalanche in reverse. Their scaly hands reached out as though already clutching the body of the Franzawi. Sniders, Mannlichers, flintlocks glittered in the hard sunlight. A howl came up from some hundred throats.
Harvey pulled his Berber down to him and threw the man headlong into the first wave. A small cluster of gray went spinning, skidding down the ravine, sending up a cloud of strangling dust.
The second wave drew back and dropped into the protection of boulders. After that only the black muzzles of rifles and the red-shot whites of eyes were visible.
Harvey took the automatic out of its holster and dropped it in the dust. They came up to him then, and took hold of his arms, leading him into the bottom of the canyon.
Rubio was swearing in a monotonous, high-pitched voice, trying to dash the blood out of his eyes so that he could see.
“Steady,” said Harvey.
They were marched by a twisting route to the village. As Harvey listened and watched his triumphant foes, he was reminded of a parade through the streets of Rome, where the captives were lashed to chariot wheels, made to walk before the multitudes, led ignominiously, like beasts.
The tallest, broadest, whitest house in the village seemed to be their destination. Standing there on the heat-cracked earth was Caid Kirzigh.
He was bland, not at all fierce and scowling. His smooth cheeks were no darker than an Italian’s; his beard was well combed. And his eyes were a light blue, suggesting Western ancestry. His burnoose was whiter than the rest and his hands were clean and soft. He was almost as tall as Jack Harvey though much older and therefore a little expansive about the belt line.