The Dark of the Sun - Smith Wilbur - Страница 8

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you." The Irishman nodded. "Let me see the pass." Bruce left the tracks,

climbed the earth wall and handed the pink slip to the

Irishman. He wore the three pips of a captain, and he glanced briefly at

the pass before speaking to the man beside him.

"Very well, Sergeant, you can be clearing the barrier now."

"I'll call the train through?" Bruce asked, and the captain nodded

again.

"But make sure there are no more accidents - we don't like hired

killers."

"Sure and begorrah now, Paddy, it's not your war you're a-fighting

either," snapped Bruce and abruptly turned his back on the man, jumped

down on to the tracks and waved to Mike Haig on the roof of

the coach.

The Irish sergeant and his party had cleared the tracks and while the

train rumbled slowly down to him Bruce struggled to control his

irritation. - the Irish captain's taunt had reached him.

Hired killer, and of course that was what he was. Could a man sink any

lower?

As the coach drew level with where he stood, Bruce caught the hand rail

and swung himself aboard, waved an ironical farewell to the Irish

captain and climbed up on to the roof.

"No trouble?" asked Mike.

"A bit of lip, delivered in music-hall brogue," Bruce answered)

"but nothing serious." He picked up the radio set.

"Driver."

"Monsieur?"

"Do not forget my instructions."

"I will not exceed forty kilometres the hour, and I shall at all times

be prepared for an emergency stop."

"Good!" Bruce switched off the set and sat down on the sandbags between

Ruffy and Mike.

Well, he thought, here we go at last. Six hours run to Msapa

Junction. That should be easy. And then - God knows, God alone knows.

The tracks curved, and Bruce looked back to see the last white-washed

buildings of Elisabethville disappear among the trees.

They were out into the open savannah forest.

Behind them the black smoke from the loco rolled sideways into the

trees; beneath them the crossties clattered in strict rhythm, and ahead

the line ran arrow straight for miles, dwindling with perspective until

it merged into the olive-green mass of the forest.

Bruce lifted his eyes. Half the sky was clear and tropical blue, but in

the north it was bruised with cloud, and beneath the cloud grey rain

drifted down to meet the earth.

The sunlight through the rain spun a rainbow, and the cloud shadow moved

across the land as slowly and as darkly as a herd of grazing buffalo.

He loosened the chin strap of his helmet and laid his rifle on the roof

beside him.

"You'd like a beer, boss?"

"Have you any?"

"Sure." Ruffy called to one of the gendarmes and the man climbed down

into the coach and came back with half a dozen bottles. Ruffy opened two

with his teeth. Each time half the contents frothed out and splattered

back along the wooden side of the coach.

"This beer's as wild as an angry woman," he grunted as he passed a bottle

to Bruce.

"It's wet anyway." Bruce tasted it, warm and gassy and too sweet.

"Here": how! said Ruffy.

Bruce looked down into the open trucks at the gendarmes who were

settling in for the journey. Apart from the gunners at the Brens, they

were lying or squatting in attitudes of complete relaxation and most of

them had stripped down to their underwear. One skinny little fellow was

already asleep on his back with his helmet as ! pillow and the tropical

sun beating into his face.

Bruce finished his beer and threw the bottle overboard.

Ruff opened another and placed it in his hand without comment.

"Why we going so slowly, boss?"

"I told the driver to keep the speed down - give us a chance to stop if

the tracks have been torn up."

"Yeah. Them Balubas might have done that - they're mad Arabs all of

them." The warm beer drunk in the sun was having a soothing effect on

bruce. He felt at peace, now, withdrawn from the need to make decisions,

to participate in the life around him.

"Listen to that train-talk," said Ruffy, and Bruce focused his hearing,

on the clicketv-chock of the crossties.

"Yes, I know. You can make it say anything you want it to," agreed

Bruce.

"And it can sing," Ruffy went on. "It's got real music in it, like

this." He inflated the great barrel of his chest, lifted his head and

let it come.

His voice was deep but with a resonance that caught the attention

of the men in the open trucks below them. Those who had been sprawled in

the amorphous shapes of sleep stirred and sat up. Another voice joined

in humming the tune, hesitantly at first, then more confidently; then

others took it up, the words were unimportant, it was the rhythm that

they could not resist. They had sung together many times before and like

a well-trained choir each voice found its place, the star performers

leading, changing the pace, improvising, quickening until the original

tune lost its identity and became one of the tribal chants. Bruce

recognize it as a planting song. It was one of his

favourites and he sat drinking his lukewarm beer and letting the

singing wash round him, build up into the chorus like storm waves, then

fall back into a tenor solo before rising once more.

And the train ran on-through the sunlight towards the rain clouds in the

north.

Presently Andre came out of the coach below him and picked his way

forward through the men in the trucks until he reached Hendry. The two

of them stood together, Andre's face turned up towards the taller man

and deadly earnest as he talked.

"Doll boy" Hendry had called him, and it was an accurate description of

the effeminately pretty face with the big toffee eyes; the steel helmet

he wore seemed too large for his shoulders to carry.

I wonder how old he is; Bruce watched him laugh suddenly, his face still

turned upwards to Hendry; not much over twenty and I have never seen

anything less like a hired killer.

"How the hell did anyone like de Surrier get mixed up in this?" His

voice echoed the thought, and beside him Mike answered.

"He was working in Elisabethville when it started, and he couldn't

return to Belgium. I don't know the reason but I guess it was something

personal. When it started his firm closed down. I suppose this was the

only employment he could find."

"That Irishman, the one at the barrier, he called me a hired killer."

Thinking of Andre's position in the scheme of things had turned Bruce's

thoughts back to his own status.

"I hadn't thought about it that way before, but I suppose he's right.

That is what we are." Mike Haig was silent for a moment, but when he

spoke there was a stark quality in his voice.

"Look at these hands!" Involuntarily Bruce glanced down.

at them, and for the first time noticed that they were narrow with long

moulded fingers, possessed of a functional beauty, the hands of an

artist.

"Look at them," Mike repeated, flexing them slightly; they were

fashioned for a purpose, they were made to hold a scalpel, they were

made to save life." Then he relaxed them and let them drop on to the

rifle across his lap, the long delicate fingers incongruous upon the

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