After he had stoked himself until he had to let out his belt a notch, Toughey renewed his attack on the car to learn at last that a battery cable had jarred loose.
He stood back and swabbed the grease from his hands and face with an already grimy handkerchief. He climbed up under the wheel and started the car. It ran with great smoothness.
With satisfaction radiating from him, he got down again and stowed the keg into the rear seat. “Who’s drivin’, Sarge?”
“I’ll take the first trick,” said Mitchell. “Are we all set, Father?”
“My boy, you have saved my life! We must get out of here before those troops come back.”
The reverend got into the front seat, knowing of old that it was the smoothest riding. Goldy luxuriously stretched herself on the cushions and went to sleep abruptly in the middle of a yawn.
Toughey planted both feet on the keg, settled his enormous bulk, stood his rifle between his knees and was snoring before the car had even reached the gate.
Mitchell drove out between the pillars and turned into the road, heading west.
Until that turn, the reverend was most complacent. Clamorously, now, he cried, “James! You have mistaken the direction! The coast is to the east! James!”
“I haven’t mistaken anything,” said Mitchell.
“But . . . but . . . good gracious, this is the direction all those troops took! We’re going into the very heart of the battle area! I demand that you turn around.”
“Demand away,” said Mitchell. “If you don’t like this direction, you can get out.”
“No. Oh, no. My goodness. I can’t stay in Yin-Meng! Please, my boy, have you no sense of duty to your father? Have you no sense of duty?”
“Father,” said Mitchell, “we’re headed for Shunkien. If you would rather come with us than stay behind, settle down and ride.”
“Shunkien,” wept the reverend. “But, my boy, it’s in a state of siege. You can never even approach the city!”
“I got orders to deliver a box and a keg to Shunkien, siege or no siege. And whether you like it or not, that’s our destination. Now put up or shut up.”
The reverend subsided for a long while and then he muttered, “You always were a wayward boy, James. A Marine and then a chorus girl and now you defy your own father.”
Rolling deeper into hostile China, the reverend wiped the emotional mist from his glasses and watched the rough miles go by.
Chapter Ten
AT the end of a rough twenty-five miles, during which they had been lucky enough to receive no attention from occasional cavalry squadrons, the sergeant gave up the wheel to Toughey.
Yawning and rubbing his eyes, Toughey slid under. Mitchell paused as he started to get into the rear seat.
“This is noon, Thursday,” said Mitchell. “Or is it?”
“I think so,” said Toughey, yawning cavernously.
“We ought to be rolling in there before night—if we can get through the Japanese lines ahead. Don’t drive too fast.”
“Okay, Sarge. You’ll be as safe as a babe in a cradle. Cork off to your heart’s desire.”
Mitchell got into the rear seat beside the sleeping girl and Toughey started up.
The sergeant looked at his pack lying in the bottom of the car. He pulled it to him and fumbled with the buckles, searching for an extra package of cigarettes. His hand encountered the cold side of the whisky bottle.
He glanced sideways at the girl and then at the back of the reverend’s neck. The reverend was sleeping, pince-nez awry, mouth open to display gold teeth. Toughey was intent on his driving.
It wouldn’t hurt, thought Mitchell. Not one small swig. He was getting so jittery he could hardly sit still. He pulled the bottle out of the pack and read the label:
Canadian Whisky. Five Years Old. One Quart.
He broke the seal and touched the cork.
Somehow he would have to bluff his way through the Japanese lines around Shunkien. His lack of orders would make it hard. What would he tell them?
He began to struggle with the cork. He needed a drink to steady him down. Just one and then he’d quit.
Again he looked at the reverend’s nodding pate. He frowned a little. He was so tired he couldn’t sleep and everything was passing in review behind his eyes. It seemed only that morning that he had slid through the mission gates to head for the coast and the States. He had been wearing a denim shirt and jeans, the kind his father sometimes gave to his workmen. He had some biscuits in his pocket and the contents of the poor box—which was not much.
He remembered how that money had scorched his thigh, how certain he had been that Jehovah would open up the heavens and knock him flat with a thunderbolt. Mile after mile he had watched the heavens and when nothing had happened he began to suspect that a later doom was waiting for him.
But he had needed that money. It had bought him meals and places to sleep, little as it was.
Since that time he had never passed a church without recalling that theft.
Things were different now. For fifteen years he had lived on gunpowder and excitement and flaming drink. The fifteen years before that had been spent in those mission walls behind them, praying every night, reading the Bible every day, saying grace lengthily before each meal, attending church and listening to his father’s droning sermons six hours out of every Sunday.
He had not been allowed to play with his Chinese friends because a white boy, according to his father, had a part to share in the “white man’s burden.”
What a funny kid he must have been! Crammed with biblical texts, living in fear of great and awful catastrophe when he had done wrong, holding his father in awe because the Chinese all about knew his gift of doctoring and considered him a great man.
He recalled the hour when he knew he could not bear it longer. He was alone in his room staring at a chromo of the manger scene upon the wall. He had slipped into the village the night before to talk with friends. It had been against the law and he had been detected. In his ears still rang the Voice of Doom which had intoned his wickedness. He was wayward. He would not conform. Unless he mended his ways, his was the Path to Eternal Darkness. His supper had been withheld and rebellion born of hunger had sent him forth.
He was Condemned Forever. He could do no more wrong. And he had robbed the poor box on his way through the gates.
That was fifteen years ago and there, on the front seat, was his kidnaped father, sleeping with his mouth open, with his collar unfastened and sticking out under his ear, with his coat in rags and his pants leg slit. . . .
A droning sound was in the air and Mitchell, sensing rather than hearing it, glanced down the road behind them, expecting to see another car. The road was empty fore and aft.
In sudden consternation, Mitchell slid the bottle hastily into his pack and leaned outside into the stream of wind.
Above and behind them, about a thousand feet high, roared three Japanese Kawasaki KDA-5s.
They were spread out, one behind the other in dive formation, and Mitchell was looking at them head-on as they started down.
“Toughey!” yelled Mitchell. “STOP!”
Toughey tromped upon the screaming brakes and the car slewed sideways in billowing dust, Toughey fighting the wheel.
“GET OUT!” shouted Mitchell, snatching at the girl’s arm and dragging her with him. They plunged over the door, the girl still half-asleep, hitting the road before the car had stopped moving.
The reverend’s glasses flew from his nose as his inertia threw him ahead. Toughey had him by the coat.
A chattering blast filled the air, audible above the shriek of wires and yammer of engines. Vicious spurts of dust streaked along the road toward the car.
Mitchell threw the girl into the protection of a ditch and jumped up again. Toughey was almost out of the car, dragging the reverend with him.
A small, hurtling shadow flashed across the earth at Mitchell’s feet. He cried, “DOWN!” and threw himself flat on hi
s face. An explosion battered the air over him. Dust geysered high, fragments hung for an instant against the sun, turned and dropped lazily down in a wide circle, pattering like hail.
Three shadows in quick succession spread their wings over Mitchell and then were gone. His ears began to roar in the descending silence. The three planes had gone.
Mitchell got up, spitting bits of highway from his mouth. His right side felt numb and damp but he had no thought for it in that instant.
The car was spewing smoke from under its punctured hood. The reverend was standing stupidly on the running board looking down and saying, “Dear me, dear me,” over and over in a toneless voice.
Toughey was trying to sit up, his big face gnarled with pain, recovering from shock. He looked down at his torn canvas legging and his ripped green pants and swore through clenched teeth.
Mitchell was instantly at his side. “Hit bad?”
“M’leg. Those ——— ——— ——— ——— ———!”
“Dear me,” said the reverend.
“Shut up,” snapped Mitchell, glaring at his father. “Dig out my pack and be quick about it.”
The reverend stood where he was, staring down at the pool of blood which began to grow about Toughey’s foot.
Goldy came up out of the ditch, a dazed expression on her smudged face. Now that she was wholly awake, it seemed to her that time had telescoped the group before her into the walled mission yard. She saw Toughey stretched out and Mitchell’s command penetrated to her.
Swiftly she hauled Mitchell’s pack into the road. He pulled it closer without looking up and fumbled for his brown first-aid packet.
“You hurt bad?” she whispered to Toughey.
“Naw,” he growled between pain-clenched teeth. “You . . . you can’t kill a Marine.”
Mitchell had Toughey’s bayonet and was slitting the legging. He cut the laces of the shoe and pulled it off.
Goldy swallowed hard and knelt beside Toughey. The reverend started to get down beside Mitchell but the sergeant thrust him away.
The bone was broken above the ankle in a compound fracture and Mitchell looked at it with hopeless eyes. He pulled the ring of the first-aid packet and then seemed to remember something.
“Lemme see,” begged Toughey.
Goldy held him down. “No. It’s not as bad as it looks. You’ll be all right, big boy.”
“Father,” said Mitchell in a hard voice. “You used to be good at this sort of thing. Patch him up.”
The reverend knelt down and took the bandages. Mitchell poured water out of his canteen into the dixie and looked around. Gasoline was leaking from the tank and he saturated the cushion stuffings with it. Over the green blaze he boiled the water.
Toughey’s face was the color of limestone. Mitchell reached into his pack and pulled out the Canadian whisky. Nobody noticed its presence or remarked it when he forced the amber fluid down Toughey’s throat.
The reverend set the bone and splinted it with bayonet and scabbard. Mitchell gave Toughey another drink and then put the bottle back into his pack.
“Sarge,” said Toughey, sitting up. “I . . . I can’t walk with this thing. You and Goldy and the reverend—”
“Shut up,” said Mitchell angrily.
“But I can’t . . .”
“You’ll walk,” said Mitchell.
Toughey looked at him with contracted brows. “But I’ll slow you down. I think—”
“Never mind thinking. I’ll do the thinking around here. Get up!”
Toughey tried and Goldy looked on, horrified.
“Get up!” snapped Mitchell.
“Ain’t you got any heart?” cried Goldy. “Good God, if he tried to walk on that—”
“Pipe down,” said Mitchell. He put his arm around Toughey and pulled him erect. Toughey leaned heavily against him.
Mitchell motioned toward the car. “Get his rifle and pack, Goldy. And get into them.”
“Huh?”
“You heard me. Father, do you see that keg?”
“Ah . . . yes. Yes, yes. Of course I see it, James.”
“Well, pick it up and put it on your shoulder and find out how much it weighs.”
“But, my boy!”
“Pick it up!”
The reverend polished his glasses in grief and then looked at his son’s unrelenting face. He sighed and started to haul the keg out of the car but when he felt its weight he paused, about to draw himself up in loud protest. He caught another glimpse of the gunnery sergeant’s face. The reverend boosted the keg to his shoulder with a despairing grunt.
“Somewhere ahead,” said Mitchell, “we’ll run into the Japanese lines. Maybe something can be done. We’re about twenty miles from Shunkien.”
“Practically there,” mourned Goldy, feeling for the first time in her life just how heavy a pack and rifle can be.
“March,” said Mitchell and moved off, more than half carrying the huge Toughey.
Chapter Eleven
TWO flares burned in the darkness and by their jumpy light could be seen the irregular pattern of sandbags stretched across the road and topped with barbed wire. Silhouetted in the foreground was a triangular stack of rifles and gleaming to one side squatted a spraddle-legged machine gun, manned by a sleepy Japanese crew.
A short row of tents faced the road, glowing with inner light and patterned with grotesque shadows, caricatures of the officers within.
A stocky sentry snapped erect to the right of the machine gunners. Rifle at port, he advanced two cautious paces, staring into the darkness down the road.
Four shadows were less dark than the night beyond.
“Todomeru!” barked the sentry. “Halt!”
The machine gunners popped up like jack-in-the-boxes. The shadows stopped moving on the walls of the tent and then surged toward the entrances.
Staggering under the almost inert weight of Toughey, Mitchell advanced until he could be seen in the light of the flares. Behind him the reverend stopped, panting, to set down the keg. Goldy paused uncertainly.
Mitchell saw an ammunition box on his right. He eased Toughey down to it and then stood erect again. He felt curiously lightheaded and his side was aching. He had not dared explore the wound.
Several curious officers closed into a semicircle about him. Two sentries moved warily down to better watch the other members of the party.
The silence was very long. Behind the impassive faces of the officers, astonishment was rife. There was no mistaking the globe and anchor and eagle on this haggard soldier’s cap. Officers of the Mikado were not prepared to see a United States Marine.
Mitchell started to speak in Shantung dialect and then stopped. It made no impression upon them. He swung back to English.
“I am Gunnery Sergeant James Mitchell of the United States Marines. I am under orders to proceed to Shunkien and report to United States Consul Jackson of that city. You will please let me pass.”
The officers stood where they were, just as blank as ever. Irritably, Mitchell started to speak again but a small, pigeon-breasted fellow, with a face as round and shining as the reverend’s bald head, stepped a pace forward.
“I speak English. Why do you want to go to Shunkien?”
“I am under orders from the commanding officer of the United States cruiser Miami. I wish to pass through your lines with my . . . my landing force.”
The Japanese massaged his face very thoughtfully, much like a sleek cat adjusting its whiskers. He stepped back and conversed very rapidly with a quick-eyed gentleman of higher rank.
Presently he spoke again. “Why do you wish to go to Shunkien? Did you not know that the city is under siege?”
“I am under orders,” said Mitchell stubbornly.
“It is impossible. We are very sorry. You, of course, have your orders with you?”
“The first Japanese PC I ran into relieved me of them.”
“Hmmmmm. This is very irregular. Have you a receipt for those orders?”
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Mitchell stilled his wrath. He reached into his right blouse pocket and found the spot spongy. The piece of paper he brought forth was stained a sticky red. He passed it over.
The Japanese clustered around their English-speaking member. They moved en masse to the front of a tent and inclined the slip to the light. They looked at each other and shook their heads.
The linguist stepped back to Mitchell, chest thrust forward importantly. “This might very well be anything. There is nothing but part of a signature here. I am sorry, but we cannot accept this. It is necessary that you be detained pending further investigation.”
Mitchell tried to muster up the energy to sound off long and loud. But he was too weary and too angry to say a great deal. It was, perhaps, fortunate.
“I am under orders to proceed to Shunkien and I am to be there before Saturday. It is imperative that you allow me to pass. If you do not—”
“Enough of this,” said the Japanese. “You will only be detained long enough for us to confirm these orders. Have we any proof that you are what you say you are? Perhaps you are renegades masquerading. Perhaps you have deserted. Ah . . . What do you have in that keg?”
“I do not know. I am under orders—”
“Yes, of course. You have said that before.” The Japanese turned and spoke swiftly to his commanding officer who, in turn, rattled orders to the sentries.
The soldiers thrust the reverend off the keg and rolled it forward. More commands were passed and a broadsword was produced.
When Mitchell lunged ahead, his way was barred by bayonets crossed before him. He stopped and looked helplessly and angrily on.
The keg was broken open and tipped on its side. A flood of golden guineas slid into the dust.
The Japanese officers clicked their tongues and felt of the coins and looked askance at Mitchell.
“This is very bad,” said the linguist. “You may have looted this somewhere. We shall check up.”
“How long will that take?” said Mitchell bitterly.
“Two days. Three days. A week.” He shrugged.
Another Japanese officer marched up with a file of infantry and indicated to Mitchell that his group was to fall in. Toughey did not respond to a thump on the back and a Japanese soldier, before Mitchell could stop him, yanked Toughey to his feet.