“That’ll do, Ruffy,” he decided. “We can’t get it much better than that.”
“I reckon not, boss.” Bruce raised his voice. “Can you hear me?” There were muffled affinnatives from the bush on each side, and Bruce continued.
“If they come You must let them reach this spot before you open fire. I will mark it for you.” He went to a small shrub beside the line, broke off a branch and dropped it on the tracks.
“Can you see that?” Again the affirmatives from the men in ambush.
“You will be relieved before darkness - until then stay where you
are.” The train was hidden beyond a bend in the line, half a mile ahead, and Bruce walked back with Ruffy.
The engine driver was waiting for them, talking with Wally Hendry beside the rear truck.
“Any luck?” Bruce asked him.
regret, mon capitaine, that she is irreparably damaged.
The boiler is punctured in two places and there is considerable disruption of the copper tubing.”
“Thank you,” Bruce nodded. He was neither surprised nor disappointed. It was precisely what his own
judgement had told him after a brief examination of the locomotive.
“Where is Madame Cartier?” he asked Wally.
“Madame is preparing the luncheon, monsir,” Wally told him with heavy sarcasm. “Why do you ask, Bucko? Are you feeling randy again so
soon, hey? You feel like a slice of veal for lunch, is that it?” Bruce snuffed out the quick flare of his temper and walked past him. He found Shermaine with four gendarmes in the cab of the locomotive. They had scraped the coals from the furnace into a glowing heap on the steel floor and were chopping potatoes and onions into the five gallon pots.
The gendarmes were all laughing at something Shermaine had said.
Her usually pale cheeks were flushed with the heat; there was a sooty smudge on her forehead. She wielded the big knife with professional
dexterity. She looked up and saw Bruce, her face lighting instantly and her lips parting.
“We’re having a Hungarian goulash for lunch - bully beef, potatoes and onions.”
“As of now I am rating you acting second cook without pay.”
“You are too kind,” and she put her tongue out at him. It was a pink pointed little tongue like a cat’s. Bruce felt the old familiar tightening of his legs and the dryness in his throat as he looked at it.
“Shermaine, the locomotive is damaged beyond repair. It is of no further use.” He spoke in English.
“It makes a passable kitchen,” she demurred.
“Be serious.” Bruce’s anxiety made him irritable. “We’re stranded here until we think of something.”
“But, Bruce, you are the genius. I
have complete faith in you. I’m sure you’ll think of some truly
beautiful idea.” Her face was solemn but she couldn’t keep the banter out of her eyes. “Why don’t you go and ask General Moses to lend you his transportation?” Bruce’s eyes narrowed in thought and the black inverted curves of his eyebrows nearly touched above the bridge of his nose.
“The food better be good or I’ll break you to third cook,” he warned, clambered down from the cab to the ground and hurried back along the train.
“Hendry, Sergeant Major, come here, please. I want to discuss something with you.” They came to join him and he led the way up the ladder into one of the covered coaches. Hendry dropped on to the bunk and placed his feet on the washbasin.
“That was a quick one,” he grinned through the coppery stubble of his beard.
“You’re the most uncouth, filthy-mouthed son of a bitch I have ever met, Hendry,” said Bruce coldly. “When I get you back to
Elisabethville I’m going to beat you to pulp before I hand you over to the military authority for murder.”
“My, my,” laughed Hendry. “Big talker, hey? Curry, big, big talker.”
“Don’t make me kill you now -
don’t do that, please. I still need you.”
“What’s with you and that
Frenchy, hey? You love it or something? You love it, or you just fancy a bit of that fat little arse? It can’t be her titties - she ain’t got much there, not even a handful each side.” Bruce started for him, then changed his mind and swung round to stare out of the window.
His voice was strangled when he spoke.
“I’ll make a bargain with you, Hendry. Until we get out of this you keep off my back and I’ll keep off yours. When we reach Msapa
Junction the truce is off. You can do and say whatever you like and, if I don’t kill you for it, I’ll try my level best to see you hanged for murder.”
“I’m making no bargain with you or nobody, Curry. I play along until it suits me, and I won’t give you no warning when it doesn’t suit me to play along any more. And let me tell you now, Bucko! I don’t need you and I don’t need nobody. Not Haig or you, with your fancy too-good-to-kiss my-arse talk; when the time comes I’m
going to trim you down to size. - Remember that, Curry. And don’t say I
just didn’t warn you.” Hendry was leaning forward, hands on his knees, body braced and his whole face twisting and contotted with the vehemence of his speech.
“Let’s make it now, Hendry.” Bruce wheeled away from the window, crouching slightly, his hands stiffening into the flat hard blades of the judo fighter.
Sergeant Major Ruffararo stood up from the Opposite bunk with surprising grace and speed for such a big man.
He interposed his great body.
“You wanted to tell us something, boss?” Bruce straightened out of his crouch, his hands Slowly relaxing. Irritably he brushed at the damp lock of dark hair that had fallen on to his forehead, as if to brush Wally Hendry out of his mind with the same movement.
“Yes,” controlling his voice with an effort, “I wanted to discuss our next move.” He fished the cigarette pack from his top pocket and lit one, sucking the smoke down deep.
Then he perched on the lid of the washbasin and studied the ash on the tip of the cigarette. When he spoke again his voice was normal.
“There is no hope of repairing this locomotive, so we have to find
alternative transport out of here. Either we can walk two hundred miles back to Msapa junction with our friends the Baluba ready to dispute our passage, or we can ride back in General Moses’s trucks!” He paused to let it sink in.
“You going to pinch those trucks off him?” asked Ruffy.
“That’s going to take some doing, boss.”
“No, Ruffy, I don’t think we have any chance of getting them out from under his nose. What we will have to do is attack the town and wipe him out.”
“You’re bloody crazy,” exclaimed Wally. “You’re raving bloody mad.” Bruce ignored him. (I estimate that Moses has about sixty men. With Kanaki and nine men on the bridge, Haig and de Surrier and six others gone, we have thirty-four men left.
Correct, Sergeant Major?”
“That’s right, boss.”
“Very well,” Bruce
nodded. “We’ll have to leave at least ten men here to man that ambush in case Moses sends a patrol after us, or in case of an attack by the
Baluba. It’s not enough, I know, but we will just have to risk it.”
“Most of these civilians got arms with them, shotguns and sports rifles,” said Ruffy.
“Yes,” agreed Bruce. “They should be able to look after themselves. So that leaves twenty-four men to carry out the attack, something like three to one.”
“Those shufta will be so full of liquor, half of them won’t be able to stand up.”
“That’s what I am banking on:
drunkenness and surprise.
We’ll hit them and try and finish it before they know what’s happened. I don’t think they will have realized how badly we were hit; they probably expect us to be a hundred miles away by now.”