by John Buchan
The aeroplanes, which were still used only for intelligence purposes, and not for combat, brought back more authentic news than the war correspondents cabled to the press of the world, and that they gained it at some risk was proved by more than one that returned with damaged planes and bullets in its fuselage.
The Gobernador had shown little interest in the wireless messages from the world’s capitals. He had left Olifa with no more than a suit of dress-clothes, and had been fitted out from the wardrobe of Archie, who was much the same height and figure. One morning Sandy came in to breakfast with a new light in his eye.
“Things are beginning to move, sir,” he told Castor. “The time has come to get into campaigning kit. We shan’t be a dressy staff, but we can’t go about like earth-stoppers any more.”
Thereafter everyone appeared in simple khaki tunics and breeches. Castor submitted good-humouredly to the change.
“You look like General Smuts, sir,” Archie told him, “only a little darker and less benevolent.”
Castor smiled. “That would seem to be in keeping. Like Smuts, I am an intellectual compelled by fate to be a leader of guerrillas. Is it not so?”
That night Sandy and young Latimer pinned up on the wall of the mess-hut a big map mounted on calico, and proceeded to ornament it with little flags.
“There is your province, sir,” he said, “a better map than anything the Surveyor-General has in Olifa. The colour-washes represent altitudes. The red flags are our posts, and the green are the Olifa army. I am going to give a staff lecture, for the bell has rung and the curtain gone up.”
The map showed only the northern half of the republic, from Olifa city to the apex where the great mountains crowded down upon the sea. From the Courts of the Morning the land fell in tiers — first the wooded shelves, then the barrens of the Seco Boreal, and then the broad shallow cup where the Mines and the city lay. From the Gran Seco city the country ran westward for a hundred miles till it ended in the rocky sierras of the coast. Eastward it rose into the savannahs of the Indian reserve and the Tierra Caliente, till it met the main chain of the Cordilleras. The map did not embrace this latter feature, and there was no sign on it of the pass into the Poison Country. The south boundary of the Gran Seco was a ridge of dolomite cliffs, broken apparently only at one place — by the long winding valley up which the railway ran from Santa Ana.
From the contours it looked to be otherwise unapproachable from that side, save by one or two tortuous and difficult footpaths, at the head of which under Castor’s administration there had been block-houses and patrols. There was no breach at either end, for on the west this southern ridge ran out in the coast sierras, and on the east became a buttress of the main Cordilleras massif. There were red flags in the city and at the Universum, clusters at two points in the Indian Reserve, one of them very close to the mountains, and a chain running up towards the Courts of the Morning. In the plain of Olifa there was a big green concentration at Santa Ana, and a green blob half-way up the railway.
“Lossberg has got his rolling stock at last,” Sandy explained. “He has his pioneers and one of his machine-gun battalions at the frontier, and his cavalry patrols were last night within five miles of the Gran Seco city.”
Castor donned a pair of horn spectacles and examined the map closely. He studied especially the Seco Boreal and the eastern frontier. He ran his finger along the southern rim.
“That was always a troublesome place,” he said. “Practicable for a mountaineer or an Indian, but scarcely more. At least, so our reports said. But we had to watch it. Rosas “ — he smiled—”was always very strong about keeping posts there.”
He took a step backward and surveyed the map.
“It appears that the military gentlemen who write to the papers are right,” he said. “I seem to be in a very bad strategical position. Olifa can force a passage — it may take a little time and she may have losses, but she can fight her way up the railway to the Gran Seco. After that we are at her mercy, at least so far as the city and the Mines are concerned, for I do not suppose we can hope to win a field action against her.”
“Not a chance,” said Sandy cheerfully.
“Then nothing remains but a guerrilla war on our savannahs. I think she will beat us there, for ours is a hard dry soil and tanks and armoured cars can go anywhere. I speak as a civilian, but am I not right, Lord Clanroyden?”
“Perfectly.”
“Our troops are mounted?”
“All of them.”
“Where on earth did you get the horses? The Indian ponies are a miserable breed.”
“Not so bad as you think,” Sandy smiled. “But we had other sources of supply. Olifa is a famous horse-breeding country.”
“But how did you draw on Olifa? How did you get the horses up?”
“Some day I will tell you — but not now.”
The Gobernador looked puzzled.
“I take it we have a certain amount of food and munitions?”
“Enough to go on with.”
“But not indefinitely...Then it looks as if before long our present dwelling-place would become a point of some importance. It is now our poste de commandement, and presently it may be our last refuge. We have access of the sea. If we can find ships, we shall have to make a moonlight flitting, as your people did at Gallipoli.”
“I shouldn’t wonder.”
Castor took off his spectacles. “I speak with all modesty, but was it not a blunder to let Olifa strike first? I should have thought that our best chance would have been to obstruct the railway — like — like my Dutch prototype in Dur South African war. Can an inferior safely surrender the offensive?” And he smiled pleasantly.
Sandy shook his head. “It wouldn’t have done. We should have given old Lossberg a lot of trouble, but he would have smashed us in the long run.”
“Won’t he smash us anyhow in the long run?” Castor moved closer and again studied the map. “God has been unkind to us in planting that wall of rock and snow in the east. It is most unfortunate that the southern wall of the Gran Seco runs clean up to the mountains without a convenient pass for honest guerrilleros to descend upon Olifa.”
“Most unfortunate,” said Sandy, but there was no melancholy in his tone. “Well, that’s the layout. Now I will expound the meaning of our flags.”
He enumerated in detail the strength and composition of the various detachments, and then explained the composition and marching order of the Olifero forces. Castor listened attentively and asked questions. “We are holding the city lightly, but the Mines strongly. Ah, I see. We have a big detachment on the railway. Who, by the way, commands in the city? Rosas? We have given my friend the post of honour — and danger.”
Day by day the green flags crept northward till they were spilled in clusters beyond the Gran Seco frontier. Every evening Sandy gave his staff lecture. It was noticeable, now that the campaign had begun, that his spirits rose, and though he had scarcely time to feed or sleep he showed no trace of weariness. Yet there was tension in the air. The faces of the men would suddenly go blank as some problem swept them into preoccupation. Even the Gobernador was not exempt from these sudden silences. He alone had no routine work, but Janet, who had become his chief companion abroad, reported that he was becoming temperamental.
“I think it is this place,” she told Sandy. “I don’t believe he has ever been much out-of-doors in his life before. He has always lived in cities and railway-carriages, and Nature is rather a surprise to him and puts him off his balance. He told me to-day that this living with sunsets and sunrises made him giddy...His education is progressing. I wish I knew what he was thinking when he has that blindish look in his eyes.”
“He seems to be interested in the campaign,” said Sandy. “As an intellectual problem, I suppose. Something for his mind to work upon.”
The girl hesitated.
“Perhaps,” she said. “But I think there is something more in it than that. He has been adopted for the fir
st time in his life into a community. We others are busy at a game. He is like a child. He can’t help hankering a little to play too.”
Presently events began to crowd on each other. The green flags made a forest between the Gran Seco frontier and the city, and spread out till their right wing was very close to the Universum Mine.
“That’s the cavalry,” Sandy explained. “They’re finding it a tougher job than they reckoned. Yesterday they tried a sort of Jeb Stuart ride round the city and came in for some rough handling from Peters. They’ve first-rate cavalry, but indifferent M.I.”
Then came a halt and the green flags did not advance for a day or two.
“We put up quite a good little show,” was Sandy’s comment. “You remember the fifth mile-post down the line where it runs through a horse-shoe valley. That’s our position, and it is pretty much like that of the Boers at Magersfontein. They can’t find our trenches to shell us out of them. Lossberg is getting nervous about a frontal attack and is considering an enveloping movement. See! He has two of his machine-gun battalions moving east of the Universum. He’s bringing up another infantry division, too. That makes three, besides oddments. A pretty good muster against our modest territorials!”
Two days later the red flags had fallen back two miles along the railway. Sandy, with his eye on a smaller chart, elucidated the position on the big map. “Our forward zone has gone, and now we’re in our battle zone, though we don’t intend to have much of a battle. But we’ve got to stick it there for a couple of days...You see this bunch of red flags east of the Mines? That’s our counter-movement beginning.”
“It looks as if we were shaping for a big field action,” said one of the young Americans.
“Not a bit. We aren’t looking for any barren victories. This is all directed to Lossberg’s address. We know a good deal about him, and he’s a cautious warrior. He’s taking no risks, for he has the strength and he means to use it...I hope to Heaven Peters doesn’t dip in too deep.”
To Janet and Barbara these days were as thrilling as the last act of a good play. Up in that quiet place, they seemed to watch the struggle like gods from the empyrean. The very map became like a crystal in which their fancy could see the hot mustard-coloured hills, the puffs of shrapnel on the ridges, the ant-like movements of little mortals. Even the Gobernador lost something of his calm, and the eyes under his level brows kindled. In these days the aircraft were never idle. Every hour of the day and night heard the drone of their going or returning.
On the evening of July 17th Sandy had much to tell.
“You will be glad to hear that Lossberg has got his reinforcements. This morning the last division of his Expeditionary Force crossed the frontier.”
“You seem pleased?” asked the puzzled Janet.
“I am. I don’t want unnecessary bloodshed, and these small holding battles take their toll. It’s only a matter of hours now till we acknowledge defeat and fling up the sponge. It hasn’t been a bad show, except that Peters went further than I intended. He pushed his counter-attack at the Universum a little too deep, and suffered accordingly. That’s the worst of the enthusiastic amateur...There will be a great Olifa triumph presently. It will be fun to see what the papers make of it.”
Next day Sandy’s good-humour had increased. He appeared at luncheon silent but beaming, and when an excited company gathered in the mess-hut before dinner he arrived like a breathless boy.
“I want a drink, for I’ve had a dusty afternoon...Thanks, Bobby, a whisky-and-soda...We needn’t wait. I can give you the news now. Early this morning we fell back from our last positions and all our troops have been withdrawn from the city. Lossberg’s cavalry patrols must be in it now...Also the Universum is in his hands, and the Alhuema and the San Tome whenever he likes to have ‘em. He will meet with no opposition. The first bout is past and we’ve been knocked over the ropes. It’s Lossberg’s round...You needn’t look anxious, Excellency. There hasn’t been ten pounds’ worth of damage done to the Company’s property.”
“I wasn’t thinking of the Company,” said Castor, and his face had become very grave. “Has all this happened according to your plan?”
“More or less...except for Peters’s venture. I didn’t want our casualties to go beyond two hundred, and they’re actually three hundred and seventeen. Still, your army has not suffered badly.”
“For God’s sake don’t call it mine. I’m your prisoner and your enemy. What’s the next step? When is this infernal folly to cease?”
Sandy grinned benignly. “Properly speaking, the infernal folly has just begun. The sparring is over and the real business is about to commence.”
The other considered. “Your plan, I take it, was to put up just enough resistance to compel Olifa to send the whole of her Expeditionary Force inside the Gran Seco. You know, of course, that she has reserves?”
Sandy nodded. “But they will take some time to assemble, and they will have to make their way up.”
“Why should they not?”
“It may be difficult, for soon there will be a most imperfect railway.”
“And Lossberg.”
“Our first business was to get him in. Our business now is to see that he does not get out.”
Castor laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound.
“An ingenious plan! I have been obtuse. I might have guessed it.”
Dinner that evening was a strange meal and a short one.
There was little talk, since for the first time the unpredictable future brooded over all of them like a cloud. In the cloud there was no depression, but a certain awe.
Sandy and Castor were the last to rise. The elder man had recovered his balance, and as they left the hut his eyes met the other’s. “We are declared enemies. Lord Clanroyden,” he said, “and the gloves are off. I make you my compliments on your boldness. I take it you are about to leave me and assume the direct command of the revolutionaries?”
“As your lieutenant. I shall report to you regularly.”
“Let that fooling stop. I am at present your victim, but some day soon the parts will be reversed, I have only one thing to say to you. You have succeeded for the moment in putting me out of action. But I am something more than a single man marooned up on this shelf of mountain. I have my bodyguard — everywhere in the world, and also in Olifa, and in the Gran Seco. You cannot destroy that bodyguard, though no doubt you have tried, for most of it is subterranean and secret. That force will be fighting for me. Its methods are what you would call criminal, for it does not accept conventional standards of honour. But it is resourceful and subtle and it will stick at nothing. What chance have you against it? You will be compelled to take risks, and that force I speak of will make those risks a certainty of death.”
“I wonder why you tell me that. Is it meant as a friendly warning?”
“I am not your friend. It is a warning. I do not wish you to deceive yourself. I want you to know what is against you.”
For a moment Sandy stared at Castor’s face as if he sought something buried deep in the man. Then he laughed. “Thank you. Excellency...I hope they’ll make you comfortable while I’m away. If we meet again, we may be able to shake hands.”
III
The details of Lossberg’s advance up the railway, when, with overwhelming superiority of numbers and artillery, and after various checks, he drove in the screen of the defence, and on July 19th entered the Gran Seco city, do not belong to this story. They will be found set out at length in the dispatches of the correspondents who accompanied the Olifa army. Those veracious writers gave ample information about the Olifa command, for censorship was thought unnecessary in such a case, but they were very much in the dark as to in the personnel of the enemy. Castor was assumed to be commander-in-chief, and Rosas, described as a Mexican adventurer who had been once on the staff of Porfirio Diaz, was credited with such military talent as the rebels possessed.
The correspondents had followed the military critics in assuming th
at the result was a foregone conclusion. But presently a new name appeared in their dispatches — El Obro, an Indian word which was interpreted in Spanish as “el lobo gris”—”the grey wolf.” El Obro was believed to be the name of a guerrilla leader much reverenced by the Indians, who was assumed to be lurking in the hinterland.
As the weeks passed this name was to appear more often, till presently Castor and Rosas were almost forgotten and it had the headlines to itself.
On the day before the defence broke, Blenkiron was sitting on an empty shell-case in what had once been the garden of his house behind the Administration Buildings. An algarroba tree gave him a little shade from the pitiless sun, and, since he was grey from head to foot with dust and had a broad battered panama hat pulled down over his head like a burnous, he had something of the air of a cadi under a palm. Around him stood a small group in rough field-service kit, all of them dusty and a little hollow-eyed, their shoulders limp and rounded like those of men who have not lain flat in bed for several nights. The place was very quiet to be in the heart of a city. There was no sound except that of an occasional car driven at top-speed in the adjoining street, though an alert ear might have caught at intervals a curious pattering noise coming from the south, a noise which at times grew into something like the beating of muffled drums.
A man was speaking, a man with a drawl and a sleepy voice. This was Escrick, the submanager of the Alhuema Mine, who had once commanded a brigade of Australian infantry in France. He had been in charge of the position astride the railway, and had sited the trenches so skilfully that Lossberg’s guns had bombarded dummies and Lossberg’s advance had been time and again held up by concealed machine guns. He had now the task of drawing off his men by night, a task which, having been at the evacuation of Helles, he had no doubt as to his ability to perform.
