‘And now you come running up here.’ Jan was still walking towards him. ‘Let’s have the truth now. You’re scared of something. You’ve seen something or done something that has frightened you out of your wits. What is it?’ He lunged forward and caught Kostos by the arm. ‘Why have you abandoned Ali? What’s he done that’s frightened you?’ His grip tightened on the Greek’s arm and he began to twist it back. ‘Come on now. Let’s have the truth.’
‘Look out!’ I said. ‘He may have a knife.’ I had seen the Greek’s other hand slide under his jacket.
Jan flung the man away from him and turned angrily back towards us. He pushed his hand up through his hair. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘The old man dead. He was ill, I know, but…’ He turned again and stared at Kostos, who was standing there, breathing heavily, his eyes watching us uncertainly. ‘He knows something. I’d like to beat the truth out of the swine.’
‘I think you’d better go down to the Post,’ I said to Kostos.
‘No. I am staying here.’
‘Then suppose you tell us — ‘
‘Philip!’ It was Julie’s voice and it rang shrilly through the gorge. ‘Philip!’ There was a note of panic in it and I started to run, the others close behind me.
Julie stopped as she came round the base of the slide and saw us. Karen was with her and they stood there, panting. ‘What is it?’ I cried. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I think it’s Ali,’ she panted. ‘There’s a whole crowd of them coming up out of the palmerie. Some of them are on mules. They’re heading straight for the camp.’
‘Julie saw them first,’ Karen said. ‘I was in the tent. She called to me and then we began to run, up here.’
‘Okay,’ Ed said. ‘Let’s go and see what it’s all about.’
We didn’t have to go far. From the entrance of the gorge we could see them swarming over the camp and round the bus. ‘Goddammit!’ Ed cried. ‘They’re looting the place.’ He had unbuttoned the holster of his pistol and was pulling it out.
‘Better put that away,’ I said, ‘till we find out what they want.’
‘Do you think I’m going to stand by and see my whole outfit vanish under my nose?’
I tightened my grip on his arm. ‘How many rounds have you got on you?’
He stared at me. ‘Only what’s in the magazine,’ he said sullenly and began cursing under his breath.
Just twelve rounds and there were a hundred men milling around the camp. ‘Then I think you’d better regard that gun as being for purposes of bluff only.’
He nodded sullenly, staring at the scene with hard, angry eyes. A murmur of sound came up from the camp. They were like wasps round a jam pot. They were looting the food and all the time a man on a white mule was shouting at them. It was Ali and he was trying to get them to follow him up towards the gorge. The crowd increased steadily. It was being joined by little groups of men coming in from the desert and up out of the palmerie. A wisp of smoke rose in a blue spiral from the cook tent. It drifted lazily up into the still air and then died away as the tent disintegrated. The other tents were on fire now and then the bus was set alight. We could hear the crackle and the roar of the flames above the steady murmur of the mob.
‘The bastards!’ Ed cried. ‘The bastards!’ His eyes glistened with tears of rage and frustration. I kept a tight hold of his arm. The situation was explosive enough.
A hand touched my sleeve. It was Julie. She was staring at the bus which was now well alight and I knew she was thinking of her brother. It was her last link with him, apart from a few paintings scattered up and down the world. ‘Why are they doing it?’ she whispered. ‘Why are they doing it?’
‘The Caid is dead,’ I said. ‘And they think the water is poisoned.’ I turned and glanced back at the gorge. The sides were too steep to climb. We should have to retreat back into it until we could climb out. ‘Come on,’ I said to the others. ‘We’d better get started. I don’t think they will attack us.’
Jan nodded. ‘Yes. We’d better go.’ The mob was breaking away from the tents now and starting up towards us, packing close round their leader on his white mule. They weren’t shouting. They were, in fact, quite silent, so that we could hear the sound of the flames. Their silence was full of menace. ‘Come on,’ Jan said, and we went back hurriedly into the gorge.
But when he came to the bulldozers, Ed stopped. He had his gun out now. ‘I’m staying here,’ he said. He looked very young and a little frightened. But his tone was obstinate.
‘You’ll only get hurt,’ I said. ‘Come on now. There are the girls to think of.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You go back with the girls. But I’m staying here.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ Jan said.
Ed stared at him sullenly. ‘These machines represent all the cash I got in the world. If you think I’m going to run off and let these bastards… Latham. Will you stay here with me? I don’t speak their language. But if you were here, maybe we could — ‘
‘No,’ Julie said. ‘Please, Philip. Don’t stay.’
But Ed caught hold of my arm. ‘You’re not afraid to face them, are you? I’ve got a gun. I can hold them off. If you’ll only talk to them, explain to them.’
‘All right,’ I said, and I turned to Jan and told him to get the girls back up the gorge.
‘Do you rate a couple of bulldozers higher than your own life, or Philip’s?’ Julie demanded. ‘Please, Philip. Let’s get out of here.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘You go on. I’ll just have a word with Ali and see what I can do. They won’t harm us.’
She turned and faced Ed. ‘Damn you!’ she cried. ‘Damn you and your bloody bulldozers.’ She was crying with anger.
‘I’m sorry, Miss Corrigan,’ Ed said, his voice quiet and restrained. ‘I appreciate how you feel. But those bloody bulldozers cost me eighteen months’ work. No man likes to pass up eighteen months of his life without a fight.’ He looked at me. ‘You do what you think best, Latham.’
‘I’ll stay, for the moment,’ I said, and told Jan to take Karen and Julie back up the gorge. Julie hesitated, her jaw set, though her face was white and frightened. ‘Please,’ I said. ‘I’ll be with you in a few minutes.’
I turned to face the mob that was now coming into the gorge round the base of the slide. As I did so, I caught sight of Kostos. He was beside the bulldozer nearest the mine entrance and he was bending down, stuffing something into the pockets of his jacket. ‘Kostos!’ I shouted. ‘Get back with the others.’ And as he didn’t move, I shouted, ‘What are you doing? Get back with the others.’
He straightened up then and his pale, haggard face was twisted in an evil, frightened grin. He held out his hand so that I could see what he had been picking up. He held a stick of dynamite. ‘One gun is not enough,’ he said. ‘I like to be certain.’ And he bit the slow-match of the cartridge off short.
‘Kostos!’ Ali’s voice rang through the gorge. He had halted his white mule just in sight of us, sitting it very still. He was wearing a turban now like his followers and it gave him height, so that he looked a commanding figure with his aquiline face and his blazing eyes. His exile hadn’t made him a stranger to the land that had produced him. He belonged, and sitting there, with the sides of the gorge reared up on either side of him, he looked like some virile leader out of the Old Testament. The tribesmen were bunched together behind him. ‘So. This is where you are hiding. Come here! At once! You hear me?’ He had spoken in French, but Kostos didn’t move. And when he saw that the Greek wasn’t going to come, he turned and gave an order in Berber to the men who were mounted on mules close behind him. They thumped the flanks of their mounts with their bare heels and came riding forward at a trot, their voluminous clothes billowing out behind them.
I shouted at Kostos to come down and join us, for there was panic in his face. He was city bred with no sense of this country or these people, and I was afraid he’d light the fuse of that stick of dynamite and fling it without thought for the consequences. If he did, the Berbers would attack. There would be no holding them.