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

away and the engine bellowed, the car bounded forward with a jerk that

threw most of the Gallas from the hull, and Jake was himself thrown

half clear, snatching at one of the welded brackets as he went over and

saving himself from falling into the swarming pack of Gallas but the

pistol dropped out of his hand as he clung grimly to his precarious

hold.

Miss Wobbly, under Vicky's thrusting foot, roared into the thick wall

of men ahead of her and few of them had a chance to avoid her charge.

Their bodies went down before her, thudding against the frontal plate

of the car, their blood roar changing swiftly to yells and shrieks of

consternation as they scattered away into the darkness and the car

burst free of the press and tore on down the slope.

Jake draiwed himself back on board and steadied himself against the

turret, as he rose to his knees. Beside him a Galla clung like a tick

to the back of an ox, wailing in terror while his sham ma swirled over

his head in the stream of racing air. Jake put one foot against the

man's raised buttocks and thrust hard. The man shot head first over

the side of the speeding car, and hit the earth with a crunch that was

audible even above the roaring engine.

Jake crawled back along the heaving, violently rocking hull and with

fist and foot he threw over side one at a time her deck cargo of

terrified Gallas. Vicky took the car down the slope under full

throttle, weaving wildly through the trees of the grove and at last out

on to the open moonlit plain.

Here at last, by pounding with his fist on the driver's hatch,

Jake managed to arrest Vicky's wild drive, and she braked the car to a

cautious halt.

She came out through the hatch and embraced him with both arms wound

tightly around his neck. Jake made no attempt to avoid the circle of

her arms, and a silence settled over them disturbed only by their

breathing. They had both almost forgotten about their prisoners in the

pleasure of the moment, but were reminded by the scuffling and

muttering in the depths of the car. Slowly they drew apart, and

Vicky's eyes were soft and lustrous in the moonlight.

"The poor things," she whispered. "You saved them from that-" and

words failed her as she remembered the one they had been too late to

save.

Yes, "Jake agreed. "But what the hell do we do with them now!"

"We could take them up to the Harari Camp the Ras would treat them

fairly."

"Don't bet money on it." Jake shook his head. "They are all

Ethiopians and their rules of the game are different from ours. I

wouldn't like to take a chance on it."

"Oh Jake, I'm sure he wouldn't allow them to be-, "Anyway," Jake

interrupted, "if we handed them over to the Hararil Ras Kullah would be

there the next minute demanding them back for his fun and if they

didn't agree, we'd all be in the middle of a tribal war. No, it won't

do."

"We'll have to turn them loose, "said Vicky at last.

"They'd never make it back to the Wells of Chaldi." Jake looked to the

east, across the brooding midnight plain. "The ground out there is

crawling with Ethiopian scouts. They would have their throats slit

before they'd gone a mile."

"We'll have to take them," said Vicky,

and Jake looked sharply at her.

"Take them?"

"In the car drive out to the Wells of Chaldi."

"The

Eyeties would love that," he grunted. "Have you forgotten those

flaming great cannons of theirs?"

"Under a flag of truce," said Vicky.

"There is no other way, Jake. Truly there isn't." Jake thought about

it silently for a full minute and then he -sighed wearily.

"It's a long drive. Let's get going." They drove without headlights,

not wanting to attract the attention of the Ethiopian scouts or the

Italians, but the moon was bright enough to light their way and define

the ravines and rougher ground with crisp black shadows,

although occasionally the wheels would crash painfully into one of the

deep round holes dug by the aardvarks, the nocturnal long-nosed beasts

which burrowed for the subterranean colonies of termites.

The three half-naked Italian survivors huddled down in the rear

compartment of the car, so exhausted by fear and the day's adventures

that they passed swiftly into sleep, a sleep so deep that neither the

noisy roar of the engine within the metal hull nor the bouncing over

rough ground could disturb them. They lay like dead men in an untidy

heap.

Vicky Camberwell climbed down out of the turret to escape the flow of

cool night air, and squeezed into the space beside the driver's seat.

For a while she spoke quietly with Jake, but soon her voice became

drowsy and finally dried up. Then slowly she toppled sideways against

him, and he smiled tenderly and eased her golden head down on to his

shoulder and held her like that, warm against him in the noisy hull, as

he drove on into the eastern night.

The Italian sentries were sweeping the perimeter of their camp at

regular intervals with a pair of powerful anti-aircraft searchlights,

probably in anticipation of a night attack by the Ethiopians, and the

glow of the beams burned up in a tall white cone of light into the

desert sky. Jake homed in upon it, gradually reducing his throttle

setting as he closed in. He knew that the engine beat would carry many

miles in the stillness, but that at lower revs it would be diffused and

impossible to pinpoint.

He guessed he was within two or three miles of the Italian camp when in

confirmation that the sentries had heard his approach, and that after

their recent experiences they were highly sensitive to the sound of a

Bentley engine, a star shell sailed upwards a thousand feet into the

sky and burst with a fierce blue-white light that lit the desert like a

stage for miles beneath it. Jake hit the brakes hard, and waited for

the shell to sink slowly to earth. He did not want movement to attract

attention. The light died away and left the night blacker than before,

but beside him the abrupt change of motion had woken Vicky and she sat

up groggily, pushing the hair out of her eyes and muttering sleepily.

"What is it?"

"We are here," he said, and another star shell rose in a high arc and

burst in brilliance that paled the moon.

"There." Jake pointed out the ridge above the Wells of Chaldi.

The dark shapes of the Italian vehicles were laagered in orderly

lines,

clearly silhouetted by the star shell. They hall let were two miles

ahead. Suddenly there was the distant ripping sound of a machine gun,

a sentry firing at shadows, and immediately after, a scattered

fusillade of rifle shots which petered out into a sheepish silence.

"It seems that everybody is awake, and jumpy as hell," Jake remarked

drily. "This is about as close as we can go." He crawled out of the

driver's seat and went back to where the prisoners were still piled

upon each other like a litter of sleeping puppies. One of them was

snoring like an asthmatic lion, and Jake had to put his boot amongst

them to stir them back to consciousness. They came awake slowly and

resentfully, and Jake swung open the rear doors and pushed them out

into the darkness. They stood dejectedly, clasping their naked trunks