Cry Wolf - Smith Wilbur (книги онлайн без регистрации полностью .TXT) 📗

clump of camel-thorn or an amorphous pile of black rock.

Indeed, both men had looked at it fifty times in the last few minutes

without recognizing it, but the shell bursts, which began to leap about

it in fleeting graceful ostrich feathers of dust and smoke, drew

Gregorius's eye immediately.

"My grandfather!" he cried . anxiously. "They have been hit, Jake."

Jake swung the car and halted it, clambering out of the hatch, blowing

dust from the lens of his binoculars and then focusing them. The

picture of the destroyed car leaped into close-up and he recognized

instantly the two distant figures, one in tailored tweeds, the other in

flowing robes and swirling skirts; the two of them were locked together

breast to breast and for an unbelieving moment

Jake thought they were doing a Strauss waltz in the midst of an

artillery barrage. Then he saw Gareth lift the Ras off the ground and

stagger with him to the shelter of the overturned car.

"We must rescue them, Jake," Gregorius exclaimed passionately.

"They will be killed out there, if we do not." Perhaps it was the

telepathic transfer of Gareth Swales's suspicions, but Jake experienced

the sudden guilty prick of temptation. At that moment he knew he

loved

Vicky Camberwell, and there was an easy way to clear the field.

"Jake!" Gregorius called again, and suddenly Jake felt himself so

sickened by his own treacherous thoughts that there was a hollow

nauseous feeling in the centre of his gut, and he felt the swift flow

of saliva from under his tongue.

"Let's go," he said, and dropped down into the driver's hatch. He

swung Priscilla the Pig in a tight skidding turn and ran straight for

the forest of shell-bursts.

They drew no fire, the Italians were concentrating on the stationary

target and they seemed to be making better practice as they figured the

range. It was a matter of seconds before the Hump took a direct hit,

and Jake pressed the throttle flat to the floorboards, but Priscilla

the Pig chose this moment to show her true nature. He felt her baulk,

and the note of her engine changed momentarily, missing and stuttering,

power falling off then suddenly she picked up again and roared onwards

at full power.

"Good little darling. "Jake peered ahead through the visor, and swung

slightly out to the left, to come in under cover of the Italians"

own shell-bursts and the capsized hull of the Hump.

A shell burst directly ahead, and Jake weaved the big car expertly

around the gaping smoking crater, pulled in sharply and spun around to

a sliding halt, facing back the way he had come, ready for a quick

pull-away. He was hard up under cover of the destroyed hull, partially

screened from the Italians, and ten paces from where Gareth Swales was

sitting holding the Ras's frail body on his lap.

"Gary!" yelled Jake, sticking his head out of the hatch, and

Gareth looked up at him with a startled unbelieving expression. He had

been so deafened by shell-bursts that he had not realized that Jake had

come back for him. Jake had to shout again.

"Come on, damn you to hell," and this time Gareth moved with alacrity.

He picked up the Ras like a bundle of dirty laundry and ran with him to

the car. A shell burst so close that it almost knocked him off his

feet, and stones and clouds of earth splattered against the armoured

steel.

However, Gareth kept his feet and handed up the Ras to the willing

hands and loving care of his grandson.

"Is he all right?" Greg demanded anxiously.

"Hit by a stone, he'll be all right," Gareth grunted, and leaned for an

instant against the side of the car, his breathing sobbing painfully in

his throat, his hair and mustache thick with white dust,

and the sweat cutting deep wet runners down his filth-caked cheeks.

He looked up at Jake. "I thought you weren't coming back," he

croaked.

"It crossed my mind." Jake reached down and took his hand. He boosted

him up the side of the car, and Gareth held his hand for a second

longer than was necessary, squeezing slightly.

owe you one, old son."

"I'll call on you, "Jake grinned.

"Any time. Any time at all." At that moment, Priscilla the Pig roared

heroically, then abruptly backfired in opposition to the Italian

shell-bursts.

Her engine spluttered, surged, farted despairingly, and then fell

silent. "Oh, you son of a bitch!" said Jake with great and passionate

feeling."

"Not now!"

"Reminds me of a girl I knew in Australia,-"

Later, "Jake told him. "Get on the crank handle."

"My pleasure, old boy," and a near miss burst beside them and knocked

him off his precarious perch on the sponson.

Gareth picked himself up and dusted his lapels fastidiously as he

limped to the crank handle.

After a full minute at the handle, spinning it like a demented

organ-grinder with no effect at all, Gareth fell back panting again.

"I say, old chap, I'm a bit bushed," and they changed places quickly.

Jake stooped over the crank handle, ignoring the tempest of bursting

shells and swirling dust clouds, and the thick muscles in his arm

writhed as he spun the crank.

"She's dead, Gareth shouted after another minute. Jake persevered, his

face turning darkly red and the veins in his throat swelling into thick

blue cords but at last even he released the handle with disgust and

stepped back gasping.

"The tool kit is under the seat, "he said.

"You aren't going to do your handyman act here and now?"

Incredulously Gareth made a wide gesture that took in the bloody

battlefield, the Italian guns and the bursting shells.

"You've got a better idea?" Jake asked brusquely, and Gareth looked

about him forlornly, suddenly straightening his slumping shoulders, the

droop of his mouth lifting into that eternally jaunty grin.

"Funny you should risk, old son. It just so happens-" and like a

conjurer he indicated the apparition that appeared suddenly out of the

curtains of leaping dust and fuming cordite.

Miss Wobbly slammed to a dead stop beside them and both hatches flew

open. Sara's dark head appeared in one and Vicky's golden one in the

other.

Vicky leaned across towards Jake, cupping her hands to her mouth as she

shouted in the storm of shellfire, "What's wrong with

Priscilla?" And Jake gasped, still red-faced and sweating. "She's

thrown one of her fits."

"Grab the tow rope," Vicky instructed. "We'll pull you out." The

Ethiopian camp swarmed with victorious swaggering warriors; their

laughter was loud and their voices boastful. Admiring womenfolk, who

watched them from the cooking fires, were preparing the night's feast.

The big, black iron pots bubbled with a dozen varieties of wat, and the

smell of spices and meat lay heavily on the evening cool.

Vicky Camberwell bent over her typewriter, seated under the flap of her

tent, and her long supple fingers flew at the keys as the words tumbled

from her describing the courage and fighting qualities of a people who,

armed only with sword and horse, had routed a modern army equipped with

all the most fearsome weapons of war. When she was in literary flight,

Vicky sometimes overlooked small details that might detract from the