Collection 1980 - Yondering

by Louis L'Amour

  Pete broke his paralysis and yelled, then grabbed for his gun. It was too late to think about the future questions. As Pete’s hand closed on the butt, Dugan shot him.

  Randall loomed in the companionway, but all he saw was the wink of fire from Dugan’s gun. He fell forward, half on deck.

  Pete lay in the scuppers, his big body rolling slightly with the schooner.

  The Bugi looked at Dugan and said, “No good mans.”

  “No good,” Dugan agreed.

  One by one he tilted them over the side and gave them to the sea.

  “My ship is waiting at Woodlark Island,” Dugan said.

  The Bugi glanced at him. “Is Cap’n Douglas ship. I know.” Suddenly he smiled. “I have two brother on your ship—long time now.”

  “Two brothers? Well, I’ll be damned!”

  Kahler was lying on the bunk when he went below. His body had been bandaged, but he had lost blood.

  “We’re going to Woodlark,” Dugan said. “If you behave yourself, you might make it.”

  Kahler closed his eyes, and Dugan lay down on the other bunk and looked up at the deck overhead. The day after tomorrow—

  It would be good to be back aboard, lying in his own bunk. He remembered the brief note in the Pilot Book for the area.

  This coral reef, discovered in 1825, lies about 82 miles east-northeast of Rossel Island. The reef is 18 miles in length, in a northeast and southwest direction. The greatest breadth is 3 miles, but in some places it is not more than a mile wide. At the northeastern end of the reef there are some rocks 6 feet high. No anchorage is available off the reef.

  Wreck. The wreck of a large iron vessel above water lies (1880) on the middle of the southeastern side of the reef.

  If they wanted to know any more, they could just ask him. He’d tell them.

  BY THE RUINS OF ‘EL WALARIEH’

  * * *

  FROM THE HILLSIDE above the ruins of El Walarieh one could watch the surf breaking along the shore, and although the grass was sparse, thin goats grazed among the occasional clumps of brushwood high on the hill behind me. It was a strange and lonely coast, not without its own wild beauty.

  Three times I had been there before the boy approached. He was a thin boy with large, beautiful eyes and smooth brown skin. He squatted beside me, his shins brown and dirty, looking curiously toward the sea, where I was looking.

  “You sit here often?”

  “Yes, very often.”

  “You look at something?”

  “I look at the sea. I look at the sea and the shore, sometimes at the clouds.” I shifted my position a little. “It is very beautiful.”

  “Beautiful?” He was astonished. “The sea is beautiful?” He looked again to be sure that I was not mildly insane.

  “I like the sea, and I like to look at those ruins and to wonder who lived there, and what their lives were like.”

  He glanced at the ancient, time-blackened ruins. “They are no good, even for goats. The roofs have fallen in. Why do you look at the sea and not at the goats? I think the goats are more beautiful than the sea. Look at them!”

  I turned my head to please him. There were at least fifty, and they browsed or slept upon the hillside above me. They were white against the green of the hill. Yes, there was beauty there, too. He seemed pleased that I agreed with him.

  “They are not my goats,” he explained, “but someday I shall own goats. Perhaps as many as these. Then you will see beauty. They shall be like white clouds upon the green sky of the hillside.”

  He studied the camera that lay on the grass near my feet. “You have a machine,” he said. “What is it for?”

  “To make pictures. I want to get pictures of the sea and the ruins.”

  “Of the goats, too?”

  To please him, I agreed. “Yes, also of the goats.”

  The idea seemed to satisfy him, yet he was obviously puzzled, too. There was something he did not understand. He broached the idea to me, as one gentleman to another. “You take pictures of the sea and the ruins…also of the goats. Why do you take these?”

  “To look at them. To catch their beauty.”

  “But why a picture?” He was still puzzled. “They are here! You can see them without a picture. The sea is here, the sky, the ruins…the goats, too. They are always here.”

  “Yes, but I shall not always be here. I shall go away, and I want them to remember, to look at many times.”

  “You need the machine for that? I can remember. I can remember all of the goats. Each one of them.” He paused, thinking about it. “Ah! The machine then is your memory. It is very strange to remember with a machine.”

  Neither of us spoke for a few minutes. “I think you have machines for many things. I would not like that.”

  The following day I was back on the hillside. It had not been my plan to come again, yet somehow the conversation left me unsatisfied. I had the feeling that somehow I’d been bested. I wanted the goatherd to understand.

  When he saw me sitting there, he came down the hillside. He saluted me gravely, then sat down. I handed him a cigarette, and he accepted it gravely. “You have a woman?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “What, no woman? It is good for a man to have a woman.”

  “No doubt.” He was, I thought, all of thirteen. “You have a woman?” I asked the question gravely.

  He accepted it in the same manner. “No. I am young for a woman. And they are much trouble. I prefer the goats.”

  “They are no trouble?”

  He shrugged. “Goats are goats.”

  The comment seemed to explain much. He smoked in silence, and I waited for him to speak again. “If I had a woman, I would beat her. Women are good when beaten often, but they are not so productive as goats.”

  It was a question I did not wish to debate. He seemed to have all the advantage in the argument. He undoubtedly knew goats, and spoke of women with profound wisdom. I knew neither goats nor women.

  “If you like the hillside,” he said at last, “why do you not stay? The picture will be no good. It will be the sea and the ruins only at one time, and they are not always the same. They change,” he added.

  “My home is elsewhere. I must go back.”

  “Then why do you leave? Is it not good there? I think you are very restless.” He looked at me. “Have you goats at home?”

  “No.” I was ashamed to admit it, feeling that the confession would lower me in his esteem. “I have no goats.”

  “A camel?” He was giving me every chance.

  “No,” I confessed reluctantly, “no camel.” Inspiration hit me suddenly. “I have horses. Two of them.”

  He considered that. “It is good to have a horse, but a horse is like a woman. It is unproductive. If you have a horse or a woman, you must also have goats.”

  “If one has a woman,” I ventured, “one must have many goats.”

  He nodded. I had but stated a fact.

  GLORIOUS! GLORIOUS!

  * * *

  In 1893 and again in 1909 Riffian tribesmen attacked Spanish settlements in Spanish Morocco. Finally, in 1921, this became an all-out war that resulted in a series of defeats for the Spanish. In the battle at Anual an army of twenty thousand men was thoroughly defeated by the Riffs under Abd-el-Krim, and twelve thousand were slain. Fighting continued for five years, and the Spanish Foreign Legion was in the thick of it.

  Supply lines to many scattered outposts were cut or severely hampered by mud caused by torrential rains that made travel difficult to impossible. Much bravery was exhibited by officers and men, but among their superiors there was often total incompetence.

  Chentafa was destroyed, and Seriya held off repeated attacks for seventy-odd days before the post was wiped out.

  Abd-el-Krim was a competent commander and an able tactician, as were several of his subordinates. He was only defeated when the French came into the fight, and he was exiled to the isle of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, installed on a c
ountry estate, and provided with a considerable pension.

  The Riffs are a Berber people, excellent rifle shots, and first-class fighting men. From about 15,000 B.C. Berbers occupied just about all of North Africa, including the Sahara. The veiled Tuareg, once considered the fiercest of desert raiders, were Berbers. Among the Riffs the percentage of redcoats is about the same as can be found in Scotland or Ireland.

  In my story I have used the terms Moor and Riff interchangeably. Correctly speaking, a Moor is of the Arab race but born in Morocco. As a matter of fact a large percentage are of mixed Arab and Berber blood. The Riffs are so called because of their residence in the Riff Hills, a part of the Atlas Mountains, a lovely but rugged country cloaked in pine and cedar.

  * * *

  THE FOUR MEN crouched together in the narrow shadow of the parapet. The sun was setting slowly behind a curtain of greasy cloud, and the air, as always at twilight, was very clear and still. A hundred and fifty yards away was the dirty gray earth where the Riffs were hidden. The declining sun threw long fingers of queer, brassy light across the rise of the hill behind them.

  On their left the trench was blown away by artillery fire; here and there a foot or a shoulder showed above the dirt thrown up by explosions. They had marched, eaten, and fought beside those men, dead now.

  “Better keep your head away from that opening, kid, or you’ll get it blown away.”

  Dugan pulled his head back, and almost on the instant a spout of sand leaped from the sandbag and splattered over his face.

  Slim smiled wryly, and the Biscayan looked up from the knife he was sharpening. He was always sharpening his knife and kept it with a razor edge. Short, thick-bodied, he had a square-jawed, pockmarked face and small eyes. Dugan was glad they were fighting on the same side.

  “You got anything to eat?” Slim asked suddenly, looking over at Dugan.

  “Nothing. I ate my last biscuit before that last attack,” he said. “I could have eaten forty.”

  “You?” Slim looked at the Irishman.

  Jerry shrugged. “I ate mine so long ago I’ve forgotten.”

  He was bandaging his foot with a soiled piece of his shirt. A bullet had clipped the butt of his heel the day before, making a nasty wound.

  Somewhere down the broken line of trenches there was a brief volley followed by several spaced rifle shots, then another brief spatter of firing.

  Slim was wiping the dust from his rifle, testing the action. Then he reloaded, taking his time. “They’re tough,” he said, “real tough.”

  “I figured they’d be A-rabs or black,” Jerry said, “and they ain’t either one.”

  “North Africa was never black,” Dugan said. “Nearly all the country north of the Niger is Berber country, and Berbers are white. These Riffs—there’s as many redheaded ones as in Scotland.”

  “I was in Carthage once,” Slim said. “It’s all busted up—ruins.”

  “They were Semitic,” Dugan said. “Phoenicians originally.”

  “How you know so much about it?” Slim asked.

  “There was a book somebody left in the barracks all about this country and the Sahara.”

  “You can have it,” Jerry said. “This country, I mean.”

  “Book belonged to that colonel—the fat one.” Dugan moved a small stone, settled himself more comfortably. “He let it lay one time, and somebody swiped it.”

  “Hey!” Jerry sat up suddenly. He held the bandage tight to survey the job he was doing, then continued with it. “That reminds me. I know where there’s some wine.”

  Slim turned his long neck. “Some what?”

  He looked gaunt and gloomy in his dirty, ill-fitting uniform. One shoulder was stained with blood, and the threads had begun to ravel around a bullet hole. He had been hit nine times since the fighting began, but mostly they were scratches. He’d lost one shoe, and the foot was wrapped in canvas. It was a swell war.

  Jerry continued to wrap his foot, and nobody said anything. Dugan watched him, thinking of the wine. Then he looked across at the neat row of men lying side by side near the far parapet. As he looked, a bullet struck one of them, and the body jerked stiffly. It did not matter. They were all dead.

  “Over there in the cellar,” Jerry said. He nodded his head to indicate a squat gray stone building on the peak of a conical hill about a quarter of a mile off. “The colonel found a cellar the monks had. He brought his own wine with him and a lot of canned meat and cheese. He stored it in that cellar—just like in an icebox. I helped pack some of it in not over two weeks ago. He kept me on patrol duty three days extra just for breaking a bottle. He brought in a lot of grub, too.”

  The Biscayan glanced up, mumbling something in Spanish. He pulled a hair from his head and tested the edge of the blade, showing his teeth when the hair cut neatly.

  “What’s he say?”

  “He says it may still be there.” Jerry shifted his rifle and glanced speculatively at the low hill. “Shall we have a look?”

  “They’d blow our heads off before we could get there,” Slim protested, “night or no night.”

  “Look,” Jerry said, “we’re liable to get it, anyway. This is going to be like Anual, where they wiped them all out. Look how long we’ve been here and no relief. I think they’ve written us off.”

  “It’s been seventy-five days,” Dugan agreed.

  “Look what happened at Chentafa. The officer in command saw they’d had it and set fire to the post; then he died with his men.”

  “That’s more than these will do.”

  “Hell,” Jerry said, “I think they’re already dead. I haven’t seen an officer in a week. Only that corporal.”

  “They pick them off first. Those Moors can shoot.” Slim looked at Dugan. “How’d you get into this outfit, anyway?”

  “My ship was in Barcelona. I came ashore and was shanghaied. I mean an army patrol just gathered in a lot of us, and when I said I was an American citizen, they just paid no attention.”

  “Did you get any training?”

  “A week. That was it. They asked me if I’d ever fired a gun, and like a damned fool I told them I had. Hell, I grew up with a gun. I was twelve years old before I found out it wasn’t part of me. So here I am.”

  “They wanted men, and they didn’t care where or how they got them. Me, I’ve no excuse,” Slim said, “I joined the Spanish Foreign Legion on my own. I was broke, hungry, and in a different country. It looked like an easy way out.”

  Far off to the left there was an outburst of firing, then silence.

  “What happened to the colonel? The fat one who had all that wine brought in?”

  “Killed himself. Look, they tell me there’s a general for every twenty-five men in this army. This colonel had connections. They told him spend a month over there and we’ll promote you to general, so he came, and then we got pinned down, and he couldn’t get out. From Tetuan to Chaouen there’s a whole line of posts like this one here at Seriya. There’s no way to get supplies, no way to communicate.”

  The talk died away. It was very hot even though the sun was setting.

  A big Russian came up and joined them. He looked like a big schoolboy with his close-cropped yellow hair and his pink cheeks. “They come,” he said.

  There was a crackle of shots, and the four climbed to their feet. Dugan lurched from weariness, caught himself, and faced about. The Russian was already firing.

  A long line of Moors was coming down the opposite slope, their advance covered by a barrage of machine-gun fire from the trenches farther up the hill. Here and there a captured field gun boomed. Dugan broke open a box of cartridges and laid them out on a sandbag close at hand. Slowly and methodically, making each shot count, he began to fire.

  The Biscayan was muttering curses and firing rapidly. He did not like long-range fighting. Jerry leaned against the sandbags, resting his forehead on one. Dugan could see a trickle of sweat cutting a trail through the dust.

  Somewhere down the parapet one
of their own machine guns opened up, the gray and white line before them melted like wax, and the attack broke. Slim grounded his rifle butt and leaned against the sandbags, fumbling for a cigarette. His narrow, cadaverous features looked yellow in the pale light. He looked around at Dugan. “How d’you like it, kid? Had enough?”

  Dugan shrugged and reloaded his rifle, then stuffed his pockets with cartridges. The powder smoke made his head ache, or maybe it was hunger and the sound of guns. His cheek was swollen from the rifle stock, and his gums were sore and swollen. All of them were indescribably dirty. For seventy-five days they had held the outpost against a steady, unrelenting, consistent, energy-draining attack that seemed to take no thought of men lost. Their food was gone; only a little of the brackish water remained, and there would be no relief.

  “They’ve written us off,” Slim said. “We’re dead.” He was hollow eyed and sagging, yet he was still a fighting man. He looked at Jerry. “How about that wine?”

  “Let’s go get it. There’s a machine gun there, too, and enough ammo to fight the battle of the Marne.”

  “Does the sergeant major know?”

  “He did.” Jerry indicated the line of dead bodies. “He’s over there.”

  “Who’s in command?” Dugan asked.

  “Maybe nobody. The lieutenant was killed several days ago, shot from behind. He was a fool to hit that Turk. He slugged one guy too many.”

  The sun was gone, and darkness was falling over the low hills. There was no movement in the trenches across the way. The Russian stood up, then sat down abruptly, his throat shot away. He started to rise again, then just sat back down and slowly rolled over.

  Slim picked him up as though he were a child and carried him to the line of bodies, placing him gently on the ground. Then he unbuckled his cartridge pouches and hung them around his own waist. Dugan looked through an opening in the sandbagged parapet at the broad shoulders of shadow along the slope. A dead Moor hung head down over the barbed wire about fifty feet away, and a slight breeze made his burnoose swell.