“All right, give them the rest of the chocolate,” instructed
Bruce. That was all he could get out of them, and time was wasting. He glanced back at the tower and saw that Haig and the engine driver had finished watering. For a further second he studied the boy. His own son would be about the same age now; it was twelve months since - Bruce stopped himself hurriedly. That way lay madness.
Hendry, take them back to the edge of the bush and turn them loose. Hurry up. We’ve wasted long enough.”
“You’re telling me!”
grunted Hendry and beckoned to the two children. With Hendry leading and a gendarme on each side they trotted away obediently and disappeared behind the station building.
“Driver, are your preparations complete?”
“Yes, monsieur, we are ready to depart.”
“Shovel all the coal in, we’ve gotta keep her rolling.” Bruce smiled at him, he liked the little man and their stilted exchanges gave him pleasure.
“Pardon, monsieur.”
“It was an imbecility, a joke - forgive me.”
“Ah, a joke!” The roly-poly stomach wobbled merrily.
“Okay, Mike,” Bruce shouted, “get your men aboard. We are, -” A
burst of automatic gunfire cut his voice short. It came from behind the station buildings, and it battered into the heat-muted morning with such startling violence that for an instant Bruce stood paralysed.
“Haig,” he yelled, “get up front and take over from de Surrier.”
That was the weak point, and Mike’s party ran down the train.
“You men.” Bruce stopped the six gendarmes. “Come with me.” They fell in behind him, and with a quick glance Bruce assured himself that the train was safe. All along its length rifle barrels were poking out protectively, while on the roof Ruffy was dragging the Bren round to cover the flank. A charge by even a thousand Baluba must fail before the fire power that was ready now to receive it.
“Come on,” said Bruce and ran, with the gendarmes behind him, to the sheltering wall of the station building.
There had been no shot fired since that initial burst, which could mean either that it was a false alarm or that Hendry’s party had been overwhelmed by the first rush.
The door of the station master’s office was locked. Bruce kicked and it crashed open with the weight of his booted foot behind it.
I’ve always wanted to do that, he thought happily in his excitement, ever since I saw Gable do it in San Francisco.
“You four - inside! Cover us from the windows.” They crowded into the room with their rifles held ready. Through the open door Bruce saw the telegraph equipment on the table by the far wall; it was clattering metallically from traffic on the Elisabethville-Jadotville line. Why is it that under the stimulus of excitement my mind always registers irrelevances? Which thought is another irrelevancy, he decided.
“Come on, you two, stay with me.” He led them down the outside
wall, keeping in close to its sheltering bulk, pausing at the corner to check the load of his rifle and slip the selector on to rapid fire.
A further moment he hesitated. What will I find around this corner? A hundred naked savages crowded round the mutilated bodies of
Hendry and his gendarmes, or … ?
Crouching, ready to jump back behind the wall, rifle held at high port across his chest, every muscle and nerve of his body cocked like a hair-trigger, Bruce stepped sideways into the open.
Hendry and the two gendarmes stood in the dusty road beyond the first cottage. They were relaxed, talking together, Hendry reloading his rifle, cramming the magazine with big red hands on which the gingery hair caught the sunlight. A cigarette dangled from his lower lip and he laughed suddenly, throwing his head back as he did so and the cigarette ash dropped down his jacket front. Bruce noticed the long dark sweat stain across his shoulders.
The two children lay in the road fifty yards farther on.
Bruce was suddenly cold, it came from inside, a cramping coldness of the guts and chest. Slowly he straightened up and began to walk towards the children. His feet fell silently in the powder dust and the only sound was his own breathing, hoarse, as though a wounded beast followed close behind him. He walked past Hendry and the two gendarmes
without looking at them; but they stopped talking, watching him
uneasily.
He reached the girl first and went down on one knee beside her, laying his rifle aside and turning her gently on to her back.
“This isn’t true,” he whispered. “This can’t be true.” The bullet had taken half her chest out with it, a hole the size of a coffee cup, with the blood still moving in it, but slowly, oozing, welling up into it with the viscosity of new honey.
Bruce moved across to the boy; he felt an almost dreamlike sense of unreality.
“No, this isn’t true.” He spoke louder, trying to undo it with words.
Three bullets had hit the boy; one had torn his arm loose at the shoulder and the sharp white end of the bone pointed accusingly out of the wound. The other bullets had severed his trunk almost in two.
It came from far away, like the rising roar of a train along a tunnel. Bruce could feel his whole being shaken by the strength of it, he shut his eyes and listened to the roaring in his head, and with his eyes tight closed his vision was filled with the colour of blood.
“Hold on!” a tiny voice screamed in his roaring head.
“Don’t let go, fight it. Fight it as you’ve fought before.” And he clung like a flood victim to the straw of his sanity while the great roaring was all around him. Then the roar was muted, rumbling away, gone past, a whisper, now nothing.
The coldness came back to him, a coldness more vast than the flood had been.
He opened his eyes and breathed again, stood up and walked back to where Hendry stood with the two gendarmes.
“Corporal,” Bruce addressed one of the men beside Hendry; and with a shock he heard that his own voice was calm, without any trace of the fury that had so nearly carried him away on its flood.
“Corporal, go back to the train. Tell Lieutenant Haig and
Sergeant Major Ruffararc, that I want them here.” Thankfully the man went, and Bruce spoke to Wally Hendry in the same dispassionate tone.
“I told you to turn them loose,” he said.
“So they could run home and call the whole pack down on us - is that what you wanted, Bucko?” Hendry had recovered now, he was defiant, grinning.
“So instead you murdered them?”
“Murdered! You crazy or something, Bruce? They’re Balubes, aren’t they? Bloody man-eating
Balubes!” shouted Hendry angrily, no longer grinning. “What’s wrong
with you man? This is war, Bucko, war. C’est laguerre, like the man said, c’est laguerre!” Then suddenly his voice moderated again.
“Let’s forget it. I did what was right, now let’s forget it; what’s two more bloody Balubes after all the killing that’s been going on?
Let’s forget it.” Bruce did not answer, he lit a cigarette and looked beyond Hendry for the others to come.
“How’s that, Bruce? You willing we just forget it?” persisted
Hendry.
“On the contrary, Hendry, I make you a sacred oath, and I call upon God to witness it.” Bruce was not looking at him, he couldn’t trust himself to look at Hendry without killing him. “This is my promise to you: I will have you hanged for this, not shot, hanged on good hemp rope. I have sent for Haig and Ruffararo so we’ll have plenty of witnesses. The first thing I do once we get back to
Elisabethville will be to turn you over to the proper authorities.”
“You don’t mean that!”
“I have never meant anything so seriously in my life.”
“Jesus, Bruce!-” Then Haig and Ruffy came; they came running until they saw, and they stopped suddenly and stood uncertainly in the bright sun, looking from Bruce to the two frail little corpses lying in the road.