by John Buchan
Behind them appeared Bobby Latimer. The aeroplanes had been left in the Gran Seco, all but one flight, which kept Charcillo in touch with Luis and Blenkiron. Bobby himself made long private patrols mostly in the direction of the city. That day, however, he had shaped his course for the north. As he saluted, Janet saw that his face was solemn.
“There’s hell loose in the passes, sir,” he said. “I have been up the road we came from the Gran Seco, and somebody’s put Lossberg wise to it. There’s a good-sized army on its way down — ten troops of horse, and about four thousand infantry, and an unholy lot of light batteries. They were in the Thunderer Valley three hours ago, and should make the place we called the Tennis Court before dark. To-morrow evening they’ll be on the Vulpas.”
A slow smile spread over Sandy’s face.
“I spoke too soon,” he said to Janet, “when I complained that I had nothing to do. I’m about to be the busiest man in this continent. Bobby, when you’ve fed and washed, you go off to Don Luis. I’ll have a message written out for you. Janet, dear, run and tell Rogerson to be in my room in half an hour. I’ll wait and have a word with Ackroyd.”
“It’s pretty serious, isn’t it, sir?” Latimer asked.
“It’s so serious that if that column shows its nose on the Vulpas we may chuck up the sponge. But thank God, it’s still in the narrows. I’ve got a thousand men — three times what old Leonidas had — and I’m going to try the Thermopylae stunt.”
He found his arm clutched by Barbara.
“Is it worth it?” she cried, and even in his absorption he noticed that her face had gone very pale. “Is it worth it?” she repeated. “We can’t spare you...Nobody came back from Thermopylae.”
Her eyes sobered him. He even flushed slightly. “I’m coming back all right, Miss Dasent, and so are my men. I might be spared, but we couldn’t do without them. We’re not brave like the Spartans. Our Thermopylae is going to be a more cunning affair than the old one.”
IV
Half an hour later Blenkiron arrived by aeroplane. He had not been expected, and when he walked into the room where Sandy was giving his final instructions to Rogerson he was greeted with a shout of joy.
“Thank God!” Sandy cried. “You’re the one man in the whole world I wanted. What providence has brought you here?”
“Why, I wanted to get some notion of the general proposition.” His goggles had preserved his eyes from the fine dust which coated his face, so that he looked like a red owl with great staring eye-holes. “We’ve gotten our show pretty well advanced, and I could turn it over to Melville with an easy mind. There’ll be no traffic south of Gabones for quite a while.”
“You’ve closed that port?” Sandy demanded.
“Sure. Closed it and sealed it and put a heap of stones at the door. Things are going nicely at Pecos too. But I’ve heard nothing from the south, and I kind of hoped to be put wise about the general proposition—”
“Never mind the general proposition. There’s a special one we’ve got to face. Lossberg is half through the passes.”
“You don’t say.” Blenkiron’s face ceased to be that of an owl, and contracted into something hard and vigilant. “Who brought word?”
“Bobby Latimer — less than an hour ago.”
“Good boy! Say, this is getting central. We’ve certainly got to push him back.”
“We certainly have. Do you realise that as yet we’re nowhere near winning? Everything is still on a knife-edge. The country is waiting to see what happens before it makes up its mind — I mean the great bulk of the people, for Luis’s lads are only a sprinkling. We’ve got to bluff the Government into surrender, and we haven’t the foggiest chance if Lossberg shows his face in Olifa. If the passes are opened, we’re absolutely done in. Have you got that?”
“Sure.”
“Then in one hour’s time we start out to stop that bolt-hole. You and I and a few others. Thank the Lord you’ve turned up, for this is more your kind of show than mine.”
Blenkiron groaned, But his eyes were cheerful. “There’s no rest for the weary, but it’s mighty good for my figure. I’ve dropped thirty pounds since I went to the wars. Have you a map handy? I’d like to refresh my memory about that patch of country.”
“We made a rough drawing coming down, and here’s the result.” Sandy spread out a big sheet on his desk. “The distances are more or less correct...See, here’s Charcillo. It’s about ten miles to the main stream of the Vulpas, and about twenty more to its head. Then there’s the pass — four more till you look into the Thunderer.”
Blenkiron put on his horn spectacles and with a grubby forefinger traced the route from the Gran Seco, by which they had come and by which their enemy was now following. From Pacheco the trail ran to the valley under the hills which the Indians called the river of the Blue Wolf. It did not turn up the tributary water of the Catalpas, by which Janet and Archie had escaped, but continued up the main stream, which presently bent due eastward. When the alley narrowed to a glen the road turned south and crossed the southern containing wall to the upper waters of an eastward-flowing river which the Indians called the Thunderer. Hitherto the road had been intricate and steep, but passable or men and animals and even for light motors, since it as reasonably broad and its floor was the shaly mountain ravel. But the glen of the Thunderer was ancient chaos, strewn with immense boulders and the debris of old landslides, and in the middle was a torrent which amply earned its Indian name. Yet there was a road for those who knew it, and the stream could be forded at one place, where it spread into a broad shallow pool on a shelf of rock before hurling itself into its customary abyss. That ford was six miles down from the pass which led from the Blue Wolf, and after it the road climbed among the cliffs and screes of the southern containing wall, till it reached a broad flat mantelpiece which could have accommodated an army corps.
This was the place to which Luis had given the name of the Tennis Court, and it was the key of the route. For from it a track led upward, a track which seemed to be driving aimlessly at a sheer precipice. But after running for a little southward in the moraine below the rocks, it turned a corner, and a cleft was revealed above it, a narrow saddle between two great fingers of mountain. The elevation was too low for ice, but the couloir, white with alkali, had the look of a long tongue of glacier running up to a snow saddle...The saddle itself was a fearsome place, for above the pad of gravel the cliffs beetled in a dreadful overhang. Rockfalls were frequent, and on the journey down Luis had insisted on the troops making the passage in small detachments, very slowly, and in complete silence...Beyond, the track corkscrewed down a long ravine until it reached the flowers and grass of the upper Vulpas.
Sandy put his finger on the Tennis Court.
“Bobby says they will be there this evening late, and they must camp. They will probably send on pickets to the Vulpas pass...but they won’t move till dawn, and the main body won’t be in the pass till well on in the forenoon. I don’t think they can be allowed to come so far. I’ve elected the Tennis Court as the ne plus ultra. What do you think?”
Blenkiron had screwed his forehead into a thousand wrinkles as he pored over the map. He now took off his spectacles.
“I guess they’d better stay there,” he said blandly. “I get your notion.”
“You see, when Providence made this country, He put rather loosely together. We ought to be able to shake its bones a bit, and you understand that sort of thing better an I do.”
“Maybe. How many men will you take?”
“I’ll take Corbett — he knows the game. He was with Dick Hannay in Rhodesia. And I’ll take a hundred troopers. Castor any moment may want every fighting man he can lay his hands on, and you don’t need many in my kind of war. Only enough to put up a fight with Lossberg’s pickets, if he has had the forethought to post them in the pass...Now for food. We must be in the saddle by eight-thirty.”
An hour later in the big paddock behind the corrals Sandy reviewed his men.
Except for white troop — sergeants, they were all Indian, selected men of the foothills rather than of the Tierra Caliente. He spoke to them in their own tongue. “On the work of this night,” he said, “the freedom of your people depends. The enemy is in the passes, but he will not leave them. We will move the mountains so as to close the way. But first it is necessary to get there. When the moon rises, we must be where the Vulpas is only a little stream. I trust you as I would trust my brother by blood.”
Janet watched them go, but Barbara did not appear. As they swung out to the open downs, it might have been observed that certain of the horsemen had their saddles encumbered with mysterious packages.
The first part of the road was across open downs on which the starlight showed the contours but not the colours One dark, opaque, velvet ridge succeeded another — a monotint world, though the sky above was so crowded with stars that part of it was like a phosphorescent belt, wherein there was more light than darkness. The going was good for at this season of the year; the coarse herbage of the savannah was short, and there were great spaces of grainy sand dotted with scrub scarcely taller than the grasses. It was like Sussex downland, since in most of the hollows there were no streams. Water was only crossed twice, till the troops found themselves on a long decline, and saw far below them the stars reflected in the pools of a river.
The Vulpas valley, before it runs out into the coastal plain, is some five miles broad and defined only by shallow ridges. But as the traveller goes eastward he finds that it narrows and deepens, until it makes a sharp-cut gulf among the foothills. The expedition struck the valley where it was on the edge of becoming a mountain-glen. Most of was Luis’s own land, and the only dwellers in it his vaqueros, but they were lower down, and in all its topmost course the stream flowed through lonely upland pastures, which would be heavily stocked later when the midsummer drought had parched the lower lands.
The scent of the place, drawn out by night, came to sandy as a thing familiar. It was the scent of uplands all the world over, upspringing greenery and water and clean tone and shallow soil. The moon had not risen when they reached the meadows by the stream side, and rode eastward along a series of grassy steps, with the Vulpas water talking more loudly with every mile as it approached its mountain cradle. There was no sound, not even a wandering night-bird, except for the river and the beat of hoofs muffled in herbage and the occasional clash of buckle on rifle-butt. Even Blenkiron, short of sleep and rather weary, felt the intoxication of the hour and the place. Sandy beside him seemed to be happy, for just above his breath he was humming a tune.
Suddenly a wash of faint colour flooded the glen, a colour which deepened from a pale amber to the tint of ripe corn. The moon was beginning to climb the sky. Also the distances began to reveal themselves; the containing slopes, now the outflankers of the mountains, were clearly seen, and in front there was a dark loom into the mid-heavens. Sandy looked at his watch and nodded cheerfully to Blenkiron. They had made good time, and would be in the narrows of the pass before the moon was fairly up.
After another mile he halted his command. On each side the containing walls had drawn in till the valley was the half a mile wide, and the Vulpas had become a brawling torrent. The troops separated into detachments, and a patrol of five led the van at a distance of some hundred yards from the next group. Sandy and Blenkiron were in the second group. The course was now altered, and instead of keeping beside the stream they moved well up on the slopes to the right, which were of short grass and outcrops of rock set at an easy angle. They went more slowly now and more circumspectly, avoiding patches of shingle which might echo the sound of movement.
Quickly they climbed till they were in the throat of a ravine, a dark sword-cut where the moon gave only the faintest illumination. Far up its light could be seen golden on the cliffs and ridges, but they themselves rode in an umber dusk. The ravine twined and turned, so that the advance patrol was often completely lost to sight and hearing.
The word was passed back for extra care and quiet. “In two miles,” Sandy whispered, “we shall be under the Saddle. There we leave the horses. There is a little amphitheatre where the Vulpas rises, with room enough to picket our beasts.”
But at the next angle of the ravine Sandy reined in violently, so that Blenkiron cannoned into him. There was a shuffling and a drawing of breath as the men behind followed suit. Someone was coming towards them...Sandy and Blenkiron lowered their pistols when they saw that it was the advance patrol. The riders forced their horses alongside till their leader could speak into Sandy’s ear.
“There are men below the rocks,” he whispered. “Many men — more than we have with us. They are camped beside the water, and they are confident, for they have made fires.”
Sandy looked at Blenkiron and laughed. “They have done the right thing,” he said. “Flung an advanced body across the Saddle to guard the descent while the others cross. I should have thought of that...I’ve got into a bad habit of underrating old Lossberg.”
He sat for a little whistling softly between his teeth. Then he began to think aloud, resuming between every sentence his low whistling. He seemed to be cheerful.
“Can we climb the rocks? That’s the question...If half a dozen of us can get to the Saddle, the trick is done...We should be able to raise a few cragsmen...Corbett would know...Also we must make those beggars hands-up. How many did you say? Half as many again as ourselves...Well, it’s plain we can’t do that job with our present strength...Somebody has got to get back to Charcillo hell-for-leather and bring supports. It’s force majeure we want. No needless heroics and no needless casualties...What do you say, John S.?”
“I guess that’s correct. We’d better get our man off right away. If Lossberg has come this far, he’ll aim to have the rest of his push over the Saddle pretty early in the morning.”
Sandy tore a leaf from a pocket-book, and, using the cliff face as a desk, wrote a message. Then he folded it and looked round.
“Whom shall we send?” he asked Blenkiron. “Corbett would be able to find a man.”
“Send me!” A voice spoke at his elbow, and it spoke in English. It could not be Corbett, for he was in charge of the rear, nor was it Corbett’s voice. Sandy found himself taring at a slim figure in a trooper’s kit, riding an animal which he recognised. It was Luis’s favourite mare.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “Good God! It can’t be! Barbara — Miss Dasent—”
There was not light enough to see the girl’s face. It may have shown confusion and embarrassment, but there was nothing of the sort in her voice. The voice was cool, self-reliant, almost imperious.
“I’m glad I came, for now I can be useful. If I go, will save a fighting man. I know the road — I’m accustomed to know how to get back any road I come — and I’m better mounted than any of you.” She patted her mare’s neck.
“You had no business to come. You did very wrong.” Sandy’s voice was hard and angry. “Good God, this is place for a woman. I don’t like you going back alone, but you’re safer on the road than here...Give this note Colonel Ackroyd, and after that go straight to bed. You understand, Miss Dasent. These are my orders.”
She took the note and sidled her mare round in the narrow place below the cliff.
“Send Corbett along as you pass,” he added. “I needn’t remind you that the business is urgent.”
“You needn’t,” she said, and disappeared round the corner of rock.
The two men stared after her till the sound of her going was lost in the forward movement of the next detachment.
“I’d like to know,” said Blenkiron reflectively, “just why Babs has gotten the bit in her teeth?”
“Can she do it? I mean, is it safe for her?” The tenseness in Sandy’s voice was anxiety, not irritation.
“You bet she’ll do it, and I don’t worry about risks as long as she’s on a horse. You can’t puzzle her there.”
Two hours later six men were perched high up among the roc
ks on the right side (what mountaineers would call the ‘true left’) of the couloir which led from the springs of Vulpas to the Saddle. Five of them were Indians, hunters from the Blue Wolf valley, and the sixth was Sandy. It had been a precarious and intricate journey. First they had made their way up the cliffs from the point where the advance troop had halted. This had been easy enough, for the angle was not too steep and there was plenty of scrub. But even there they had been dismayed by the rottenness of the rock. Boulders would come loose in their of hands, and be left delicately poised to descend in the first gale.
When the right elevation had been attained, the next step was to traverse the side of the amphitheatre where Lossberg’s van was encamped. Here it was necessary to proceed with extreme caution. Happily that part of the ravine was in shadow, and no eyes from below could detect them, but it was essential that there should be no slipping or sending down of stones, lest the enemy should become alarmed and patrol the track that led to the Saddle. It was horribly difficult to move with speed and softness, and often it seemed impossible to move at all. For the whole hillside was loose, a gigantic scree with boulders instead of gravel, and each man of the six, beside his rifle, was encumbered with explosives. There were scaurs of crumbling earth, where the whole mountain seemed to shift at their tread. These were passed an inch at a time, holding hands, and in one place the last man swung into the void, while his foothold, with a sound like a great sigh, sunk into the depth beneath him. There were masses of friable rock, which had to be crossed with the body splayed out like a swimmer’s. There was one point where, to circumvent the cliff, it became necessary to ascend a rotten chimney, and then traverse a ledge which looked like giving way any moment and precipitating he company on to the bivouac below. Sandy, to his disgust, found that he was the least efficient of the six. The Indians with their soft leather footgear had a certitude far beyond his, and more than once he had to depend on their aid. All the time the bivouac lights were plain eight hundred feet beneath them, and in the still night every sound of the camp rose as sharp and clear as if it were at their elbow.
