When she approached the men, her purse in her hand, David looked at her. “Mr. Mahoney says that he’ll be satisfied with seven pounds ten each for the sheep, Ellen. There were seven of them, so that comes to, let me see, fifty-two pounds and ten, which is what? Fifty pounds is one hundred forty dollars, plus two pounds is another five-sixty, and ten shillings is a dollar-forty. That comes to what?”
The policeman shook his head.
David said, “One hundred forty-seven dollars, so if you’ll give Mr. Mahoney an even hundred and fifty that should be good all around. And we’ll need the registration papers for the car. Check your purse and see if you can find everything, if you’re not too nervous.”
Bewildered, she made a show of opening her purse and checking its contents. The pistol, which she had momentarily forgotten, lay wickedly in her purse. Was that what he wanted?
“Having trouble, dear?”
The cars were coming closer; she could hear them clearly now, two of them, with the powerful rumble characteristic of American engines and instantly identifiable on a quiet Irish lane. “See if you can find everything, if you’re not too nervous,” he had said. Was that her cue? And he was walking to her side now to join her.…
She raised her head apologetically. “I’m so sorry,” she said, “but I’m such a muddle, I can’t see straight. I’m so shaken. David, will you look for me?”
He took the purse from her. The shepherd, anxious now to be paid for his dead sheep, was at David’s side. In a flash David had an arm around the little old man. His free hand held the gun pointed at the policeman.
“Nobody move,” he snapped. To the garda he said, “Raise your hands and keep them high. Don’t make a move.”
“You’re after making a mistake, lad,” the garda said. “You’ll save fifty pounds and buy a world of trouble. Put the gun down.”
“Ellen, move over by the motorcycle.”
“First be thinking, girl.”
“Ellen—”
The cars. She went to the motorcycle.
David released the shepherd and told him to run off with his sheep. The man was plainly terrified.
David waved the gun at him. “Run!”
The shepherd ran.
David said, “There’s no time. You—get over by the side of the road. Stand out of the way. Ellen, keep this pointed at him.” She took the gun and aimed it at the policeman, knowing that she could do nothing if he tried to take it away from her, that she could not bring herself to shoot him in a million years. It was all bluff—but as long as the policeman didn’t know it was bluff, it didn’t matter.
And the policeman wasn’t sure enough to make his move. He stood at the roadside, his hands in the air, waiting.
Ellen was terrified, and she was ashamed of what she and David had to do, but she was at this moment grateful that policemen in Ireland, like those in England, carried no guns.
David was astride the cycle. He kicked off the stand, got the engine started. “Give me the gun.” She gave it to him, and he jammed it down beneath the waistband of his trousers. “Now get on behind me. Lock your arms around my waist. And take hold of the purse, you’ve got to hang on to it, because I have to drive. Hold on as tight as you can.…”
The cars. She heard the lead auto now, Koenig’s, coming around the bend. She heard the squeal of brakes as the heavy car pulled to a jolting stop inches from the torn bodies of the dead sheep.
Then the motorcycle leaped forward, shaking and bucking like an unbroken stallion, and she held on to David for dear life.
Eighteen
It was a shaking, bone-jolting ride. The motorcycle’s top speed was slightly higher than that of the Triumph but seemed to Ellen at least three times as fast. She rode with her arms locked tightly around David’s middle and her face pressed up against the back of his bulky sweater. The wind, cold and rain-laden, played furiously with her hair. Rain was everywhere, soaking into her clothes and wetting her to the skin, splashing up at her from puddles in the road.
At first she had been certain that they would be caught. Koenig had never come so close before, and only the dead sheep on the road had saved them. Koenig had had to brake hard, his attention fastened on stopping the huge car safely, and before he could settle himself and send bullets their way they were off, the motorcycle leaping beneath them, plunging headlong down the road.
She was wrapped in wind and rain and noise, the constant roar of the cycle, the whining of the wind in her ear. There were things she wanted to say to David, questions she had to ask him, but conversation was presently impossible. Once, she tried to shout to him, but he failed to hear her over the combined roar of motorcycle and wind. She gave up the attempt and held on to him for dear life.
She could barely believe what had happened, and her own feelings were hopelessly confused. On the one hand she was overcome with admiration for David. He had acted so quickly, so precisely, sending her for her purse, taking it from her, then using the gun to force the policeman to surrender his motorcycle. Another moment’s delay and they would have been finished, and the shepherd and policeman killed in the bargain. But now, at least for the time being, they were free.
And at the same time she was afraid, terribly afraid, of what they had done. They had stolen an Irish policeman’s motorcycle. Their earlier plan, one of seeking refuge with the police at Tipperary, was no longer workable. A single act had transformed the police from friends to enemies, at least until they could straighten things out. They had to run, not only from Koenig and Farrell and their gang, but from the police as well. Before, they had been fugitives from evil; now they were fugitives from the law, too.
She pressed her face into the comforting warmth of David’s sweater. Her eyes glanced down at the road surface below as it flew by beneath the wheels of the motorcycle. She had never been on a motorcycle before, had always been scared to take a ride. It did not frighten her now—as though there were no room within her for additional fear, as though she already had as much fear in her as she could manage at one time.
Koenig and Farrell could be behind them right now, she thought. They could have caught up, they could be bearing down on the motorcycle at any moment and she would never know it. She could not turn around to look behind her. Surely the carnage in the roadway would have delayed them for a while, but not for very long. And it was impossible for her to estimate how fast the motorcycle was going. She couldn’t see the speedometer from where she sat, and although it felt to her as though they were exceeding the speed of sound, she knew they were probably making less speed than a fast car was capable of.
Without warning, tears welled up behind her eyes and spilled onto her cheeks. She was not sobbing; the tears simply flowed of their own accord, fighting her attempts to blink them back. She tightened her grip around David’s body, clinging to him, her eyes tightly shut, her teeth clenched hard together.
She wished, not for the first time, that she could pray.…
When finally he braked the motorcycle to a gradual stop she loosened her grip around his waist and dismounted. He lowered the kickstand and stepped away from the motorcycle. There were no cars approaching from either direction. She found her cigarettes in her purse. She gave one to him and kept one for herself, and he lit them both, cupping the match in his hand to shield the flame from wind and rain.
She said, “Where are we?”
“Two miles outside of Mitchelstown, according to the sign.
“In Tipperary?”
“In Cork, but close to the county line. I don’t dare drive into Mitchelstown. That garda must have got to a phone by now, and they’ll be waiting for us. And we can’t stay on the road any longer because they’ll come looking for us.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.” He took his cigarette from his lips and looked at it. The rain had put it out. He shook his head and threw the cigarette off to the side of the road. “We made very good time. The motorcycle was flying.”
; “It felt that way.”
“So we should have a good jump on Farrell and Koenig. But where do we go from here?”
“Do you think we might have lost them?”
“We could have, on any other road in the world. But this damned thing didn’t have a single side road branching off ever since we got on the motorcycle. They could follow us with their eyes closed. There was just the one road, and we stayed with it, and so will they.” He sighed. “Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe we shouldn’t have taken the motorcycle, maybe we should have stayed there.”
“We’d have been killed.”
“That’s what I figured. You know, if he tried to stop them, they might have shot him. But I don’t think he would. Unless—”
“Unless what?”
“He may have asked them to give him a ride after us. And they may have refused, or else they may have taken the easiest way of refusal. By putting a bullet in him.” He shook his head. “Poor man. He was very decent with us, made it very easy for us to pay for the sheep and cut through all sorts of red tape. And the price for the sheep certainly seemed reasonable enough. Though I don’t honestly have any idea what a sheep’s worth. Still, it seemed reasonable, didn’t it?”
She nodded. She could still hear the horrible sounds of the dying sheep and the sounds Mr. Mahoney had made as he ended their suffering.
“They’d never have been so easy with us if the same thing happened in the States. So we return the favor by taking his motorcycle away from him. I wonder who’s going to catch us first, the law or Farrell.”
“Isn’t there anywhere we can go?”
“There must be, but I can’t think of it. Maybe we can hide the motorcycle and work our way into Mitchelstown on foot. Find someone there to hide us from Farrell and the police. But how do you walk up to someone out of the blue and tell him you’ve got a gang of spies after you, and the police as well? A man would have to be mad to take us in. More likely he’d hold a gun on us and call the gardai.”
But she was only half-listening to him. There was something she remembered, something that had struck a responsive chord somewhere inside her. Something, a place to hide.…
“They’re used to hiding men on the run. On the run from the British or from the Irish forces during the Civil War. But would they hide strangers? And strangers from overseas? Somebody might, but we don’t know anyone. You didn’t happen to pass through this part of the country on your way to Tralee?”
“No, I went south of here. I was in Cork City, so I took the southern route over. David…”
“If we only knew someone.”
“David—Mitchelstown Caves!”
He looked blank.
“In the song,” she said. “One of the verses to “The Croppy Boy.” It’s not in the standard versions, they all take place in Wexford, but there’s one that I heard this trip where one of the croppy boys is a Tipperary boy who hides in the Mitchelstown caves. Oh, how does it go?”
She sang,
When we were beaten at Vinegar Hill
And the Saxon victors did burn and kill
Then I did fly straight to Mitchelstown
And in one damp cavern did I lay me down
And it’s in this cavern dark I lie today
And pray no Saxon shall pass this way
Or from the scaffold at old Mountjoy
They’ll hang the body of the Croppy Boy
“An old woman taught me the song,” she said. “The caves are in Tipperary, a few miles northeast from Mitchelstown.”
“Do you think we could find them?”
“Why not?”
He considered this. “It just might work. ‘One damp cavern,’ eh? It can’t be much damper than I am already. We’d have to go on foot, and if it’s five miles from Mitchelstown we’ve got an hour of walking ahead of us at the very least. It may be fairly dark by then, I don’t know. Do you feel up to it?”
“I think so. We certainly can’t stay here.”
“No, we can’t. We can’t even walk on the road. We’ll have to cut cross-country. We’d better get rid of the motorcycle. I wish there were a break in the fence. The thing’s a perfect tipoff; anyone seeing it will know we’ve quit the road and started hiking.”
“Can we lift it over?”
“Far too heavy. Give me a hand.” They wheeled the machine off to the side of the road and propped it against the fence. David got the knife from her purse and climbed over the fence, hacking at some of the shrubbery. He passed branches over the fence to her and she arranged them upon the motorcycle, piling them up to obscure it from view. He climbed back over the fence and examined the motorcycle under its pile of camouflage.
“To me,” he said, “it looks like a motorcycle with branches piled on it.”
“But if they come roaring by at sixty miles an hour…”
“That’s a thought. I don’t know, it might work. Let’s get off the road, Ellen. We’ll want to cut this way”—he pointed—“and just walk until we come to something that looks like a cave, I guess. I don’t know. How are you feeling?”
“All right.”
“Cold and wet and miserable?”
“A little of each, I suppose. But I’ll manage.”
“And hungry?”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t mention it. I’ve been trying not to think about it.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s all right. I’m tired, too, as far as that goes. And soaked and scared. I’ll feel better when we get far enough from the road so that they won’t be able to see us. I hope that cave’s there. And that we’ll come somewhere close to it.”
By the time they reached the cave she had long ago given up hope of ever finding it. She was walking on sheer momentum and running low of that. Before, she had been cold and wet and miserable and hungry and tired and afraid. Now she was all these things to an even greater extent. The ground over which they had been walking was spongy with rain. Her shoes were soaked through and her feet were chilled to the bone. Walking had grown progressively more arduous. The muscles in her calves knotted up, and for a time every step was agony. Then it grew easier; either the knots had worked out of the muscles or she was too numb to notice them.
They walked on, they blundered around, they climbed over ditches and banks and unmortared stone fences. The twilight grew dimmer and the darkness came on, and the rain did not let up or the wind abate. Several times she felt at the point of collapse. She was sure they would drop in a field, only to awaken chilled and feverish at dawn. But they walked on. David held her when she was weak and comforted her when her fear threatened to rage out of control, and because he was there she was able to go on.
When they found the cave, when it turned out to be right where it was supposed to be, when it loomed before them like a whale’s mouth, she thought at first that it could only be a mirage. Just as men saw water in the desert, she and David were seeing a cave in the middle of the waterlogged hilly meadows of Tipperary. But it was no mirage. They hurried to the cave and found shelter inside it.
It was dark, and they had no flashlight. David lit matches to illuminate the cave’s interior. It was large, larger than the inside of Gallarus Oratory, and extended back much further, with labyrinthine passages working far back into the side of a hill. Whether it was damp she could not say. She was too wet herself to know.
David was kneeling at the rear. “There have been people here,” he said. “See? The remains of a campfire here, and dry wood stacked against the wall for another fire. I wish I knew how recent the fire was. It could have been made a day ago or many years ago. There’s probably a way to tell, but I don’t know it.”
“Maybe it was the croppy boy’s.”
“Could be. Should I build a fire?”
“I don’t know. If they could see it…”
“Go outside for a minute,” he said. “I’ll light a match and hold it around. Let me know if you can see it.”
She went to the mouth of the cave and stepped outside.
“Anything?”
“I can’t see a thing.”
“Good,” he said. “Come on back.”
She went to him. He was gathering firewood from the pile at the side of the cave, shaving down a few sticks with the long knife to make kindling. He worked quickly, whittling a pile of scraps that would catch a flame and give a start to the larger branches and logs.
“What about the smoke?”
“There’s a fissure overhead,” he said. “A break in the rock. It should serve as a natural chimney. Besides, this wood is bone dry. It’s been here a long time, and it shouldn’t throw much smoke at all.” He shrugged. “I suppose it’s chancy, but it’s a chance we pretty much have to take. We’ll be able to dry our clothes and warm ourselves. I don’t know about you, but if I don’t thaw out soon I’m going to turn blue. And you look in pretty sad shape yourself.”
“I have had better days.”
“Uh-huh.”
He scratched a match and used its light to arrange the kindling in a neat ball upon the ashes of the former campfire. Then he positioned thinner sticks over the ball of kindling, making a tent-shaped arrangement. He set up a neat square of larger pieces of wood around the little tent, then scratched another match and applied it to the kindling. In just a few minutes a small fire was burning brightly, casting a warm glow around the interior of the cave.
“You must have been a Boy Scout.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I think you qualify for a fire-building merit badge. Is there such a thing?”
“I don’t know. But I’m a man of many talents. Wait a minute—I want to see if the fire shows at all from the outside.”
He was back seconds later, reporting that it was quite invisible. “And it’s getting darker and darker now,” he said. “They’ll probably quit for the night. I think we’re safe, croppy girl. You found us a good place to hide.”
Passport to Peril Page 16
