"You believe your problems don't concern them?"
"Not yet. When the day comes..." Van Prez looked around at his friends. "I should have asked if you agree with me."
Heads nodded affirmatively. Johnson said, "Don't trust him. Honkie government man. He..."
"Don't you trust me?" van Prez asked gently. "I'm a honkie."
Johnson looked down. "I'm sorry."
"We understand. There was a time my people killed Englishmen on sight. Now some of us call ourselves Englishmen without thinking much about it. After all, John, we are all... men. Parts of the whole."
Nick stood up, slid Hugo from the sheath, and cut van Prez loose. "Mrs. Ryerson, please take a table knife and free all the others. Miss DeLong — shall we go?"
With an expressively silent flounce Booty picked up her handbag and opened the patio doors. The two dogs burst in, beaded for Nick but with their eyes on van Prez. The old man said, "Stay... Jane... Gymba... stay."
The dogs halted, wagged their tails, and caught pieces of meat on the fly which van Prez tossed them. Nick followed Booty outside.
Seated in the Singer, Nick looked at van Prez. "Sorry if I spoiled everybody's tea."
He thought there was a twinkle of amusement in the keen eyes. "No harm. It seemed to clear the air. Perhaps we all know better where we stand. I don't think the boys will really believe you till they find out you meant it about not talking." Suddenly van Prez straightened and held up a hand and bellowed, ""No! Wallo. It's all right."
Nick had ducked, his fingers probing toward Wilhelmina. At the foot of a low, green-brown tree two hundred yards away he saw the unmistakable silhouette of a man in prone firing position. He narrowed his remarkably keen eyes and decided Wallo was the Negro of the kitchen staff who had served them and run when Nick invaded the kitchen.
Nick squinted, compressing his 20/15 vision into sharp focus. There was a telescopic sight on the rifle. He said, "Well, Pieter, the tables turned again. Your men are determined. I thought that man and the woman who worked with him would be still running."
"We all jump to conclusions sometimes," van Prez answered. "Especially if we're preconditioned. None of my people have ever run very far. One of them gave his life for me, many years ago in the jungle. Perhaps I feel I owe them something for that. It's hard to untangle our personal motivations and social actions."
"What's your conclusion about me?" Nick asked, both curious and because it would be a valuable note for future reference.
"Are you wondering if I'll have you shot on your way to the highway?"
"Of course not. You could have let Wallo pot me a moment ago. I'm sure he's hunted enough big game to hit me dead center."
Van Prez nodded. "You're right. My opinion of you is that your word is good, as mine is. You have genuine courage, and usually that means honesty. It is the coward, dodging fear through no fault of his own, sometimes, who double-deals or stabs in the back or shoots wildly at foes. Or... bombs women and children."
Nick wagged his head without smiling. "You're leading me toward politics again. They're not my dish. I just want to get this tour group safely through..."
A bell rang, a trilling, amplified blurr-r. "Wait a moment," van Prez said. "That's the gate house you passed coming in. You don't want to meet a cattle truck on that road." He trotted up the wide steps — his step as light and springy as a youth's — and took a telephone instrument from a gray metal box. "Pieter here..." He listened. "Right" he barked, his whole attitude changed. "Stay out of sight."
He slammed the receiver down and yelled into the house. "Maxwell!'
An answering shout came. "Yes?"
"Army patrol coming in. Get on the horn to M5. Make it short. Code four."
"Code four." Maxwell's head appeared briefly at a porch window and then he vanished. Van Prez bounded down to the car.
"Army and police. Probably just checking up."
"How do they get through your highway gate?" Nick asked. "Smash it?"
"No. They demand duplicate keys from all of us." Van Prez looked worried, tension drawing extra lines in his weathered features for the first time since Nick had met him.
"I guess every minute counts now" Nick said softly. "Your code four must be between here and the jungle valley, and whoever they are they can't move fast. I'll give you a few more minutes. Booty — let's go."
Booty looked at van Prez. "Do as he says," the old man barked. He put his hand through the window. "Thanks, Grant. You must come from Highlanders."
Booty headed the Singer out the entrance road. They topped the first rise and the ranch vanished behind them. "Step on it!" Nick said.
"What are you going to do?"
"Give Pieter and the others a little time."
"Why would you do that?" Booty increased speed, bouncing the car through dips in the gravel.
"I owe it to them for an interesting afternoon." The pump house came in sight. It was as Nick remembered it — the pipes ran under the road and surfaced on both sides; there was room for only one car. "Stop right between those pipes — at the pump house."
Booty gunned the few hundred yards, braked to a halt in a shower of dust and dry earth. Nick jumped out, unscrewed the right rear tire valve, and the air whooshed out. He replaced the stem.
He went to the spare, removed its valve stem, and twisted it in his fingers until its core was bent. He leaned on Booty's window. "Here's our story when the army arrives. We had a flat. There was no air in the spare. I think it was a bum valve stem. All we need now is a pump."
"Here they come."
A sheet of dust billowed up against the cloudless sky — of a blue so clear it looked luminous, retouched by bright ink. The dust formed a soiled panel, rising, spreading. The road formed its base, a notch in the bundu. Through the notch came a jeep, a small red-and-yellow pennant whipping from its aerial as if an ancient lancer had lost his spear and flag to the machine age. Three armored personnel carriers followed the jeep, giant armadillos with heavy machine guns for snouts. Behind them came two six-by-six trucks, the last one towing an impudent little tank trailer that danced along the rough road as if to say, I may be littlest and last but not least — for it's water that you'll want when you're on the bloomin' trot...
Gunga Din with rubber tires.
The jeep stopped ten feet from the Singer. The officer in the right seat casually climbed out and approached Nick. He wore a British-type tropical rig with shorts, retaining a garrison cap instead of a solar topee. He was not over thirty, and had the strained expression of a man who takes his job seriously and is unhappy because he's not sure he's got the right one. The curse of modern military service was eating at him; they tell you it's your duty but they make the mistake of teaching you to reason so you can handle the modern equipment. You get your hands on the story of the Nuremberg trials and the Geneva Conferences and you realize that everybody is mixed up, which means that somebody must be lying to you. You get hold of a copy of Marx to see what they're all arguing about and you suddenly feel balanced on a shaky fence, listening to shouted bad advice.
Trouble?" the officer asked. He surveyed the surrounding bush carefully.
Nick noted that the quick firer in the first personnel carrier stayed on him, and the officer never got in the line of fire. The steel snouts in the next two carriers traversed outward, one left, one right. A soldier dropped from the first truck and made a quick inspection of the little pump house.
"Flat tire," Nick said. He held out the valve. "Bad valve. I replaced it but we don't have a pump."
"We may have one," the officer replied without looking at Nick. He continued to calmly survey the road ahead, the bundu, nearby trees, with the avid interest of a casual tourist, anxious to see everything but not worried at what he missed. Nick knew he wasn't missing anything. At last he looked at Nick and the Singer. "Odd place you stopped."