The Collected Works of P. C. Wren: Complete Beau Geste Series, Novels & Short Stories. P. C. Wren
the middle of the night, is just a dear little woolly lambkin, compared with the best of these murderous savages. . . ."
Maudie's face fell.
"I thought perhaps these was Sheikhs, Miss. . . . Like in the book. . . . But, anyhow, I was going to do what you do, Miss, and go where you go--of course, please, Miss."
"I am afraid you are another of those ordinary queer creatures that think faithfulness to friends and loyalty to comrades come first, dear," said Miss Vanbrugh, and gave Maudie's hand a squeeze. "But you'll do what I tell you, Maudie, won't you?"
"That's what I'm here for, please, Miss, thank you," replied the girl.
"Well, you're going with Major de Beaujolais," said Miss Vanbrugh. "I hate sending you off with a gentleman of his advanced views and superior standards--but I should hate shooting you, even more."
"Yes, Miss, thank you," answered Maudie, and I rose and strolled to my tent.
Ours is not an easy service. Duty is a very jealous God. . . .
* * *
Miss Vanbrugh came and dressed my arm, and we spoke no word to each other during the process. How I hated her! . . . The unfair, illogical little vixen! . . . The woman! . . .
A few minutes later Suleiman uttered a shout. He could see a rider on the horizon. I hurried towards him.
"It is Djikki, the black slave," he said.
"Djikki, the French Soudanese soldier, you dog," I growled at him, and at any other time would have fittingly rewarded the ugly scowl with which he regarded me.
"They are coming," shouted Djikki as his swift camel drew near; and we all rushed to work like fiends at packing-up and making preparations, for flight and fight respectively.
"They are more than ten hands of five fingers now," said Djikki, as he dismounted. . . . "More than a battalion of soldiers in numbers. . . . They are riding along our track. . . . Here in an hour."
"Miss Vanbrugh," said I, "I have got to go. If you stay here I shall go on and do my work. When that is successfully completed, I shall come back to this spot and shoot myself. . . . Think of Maudie, too--if you won't think of yourself or me. Do you want the girl to meet some of her 'Desert Sheikhs' at last?"
"Can you leave Dufour and the Brown Brothers, Major de Beaujolais? . . . I love that little Djikki-bird. . . ."
"I can, Miss Vanbrugh, because I must. And if I, a soldier, can do such a thing, a girl can. What could you do by stopping to die here?"
"Shoot," she replied, "as fast and as straight as any of them."
"My dear lady," I said, "if four rifles won't keep off a hundred, five won't. If five can, four can. . . . And I must slink off. . . ."
I could have wept. We stood silent, staring at each other.
"Your say goes, Major. I suppose you are right," answered the girl, and my heart leapt up again. "But I hate myself--and I loathe you. . . ."
All worked like slaves to get the four swiftest camels saddled and loaded with light and indispensable things. The fourth one, although a mehari, had to carry one tente d'abri and bed, water, and food.
I could hardly trust myself to speak as I wrung Dufour's hand, nor when I patted the shoulder of my splendid Achmet. Djikki put my hand to his forehead and his heart, and then knelt to kiss my feet.
The drop of comfort in the bitter suffering of that moment was my knowledge that these splendid colleagues of mine--white man, brown man, and black--knew that what I was doing was my Duty and that what they were about to do was theirs. . . .
I bade Suleiman fight for his life; he was too new a recruit to the Service to be expected to fight for an ideal. . . .
Miss Vanbrugh and Maudie mounted their mehari--Maudie still as cheerful and plucky as ever, and, I am certain, thrilled, and still hopeful of tender adventure.
I should be surprised if her novelette-turned brain and rubbish-fed imagination did not even yet picture the villainous desert wolves, who were so close on our trail, as the brave band of a "lovely" Desert Sheikh in hot pursuit of one Maudie Atkinson, of whose beauty and desirability he had somehow heard. . . .
There was a shout from Suleiman again. Something moving on the horizon.
I gave the word to start, and took a last look round.
My men's camels were barraked out of danger. Each man had a hundred rounds of ammunition, a girba of water, a little heap of dates, and an impregnable position behind a convenient rock. . . .
Four against scores--perhaps hundreds. . . . But in a narrow pass. . . . If only the Touareg would content themselves with shooting, and lack the courage to charge.
"Say, Major," called Mary, "let those desert dead-beats hear six rifles for a bit! They may remember an urgent date back in their home-town, to see a man about a dog or something. . . . Think we're a regular sheriff's posse of vigilantes or a big, bold band of Bad Men. . . ."
Dare I? It would take a tiny trifle of the load of misery from my shoulders. . . .
I would!
We brought our camels to their knees again, and rejoined the garrison of the pass, the men of this little African Thermopylæ. . . .
Miss Vanbrugh chose her rock, rested her rifle on it, sighted, raised the slide of her back-sight a little--all in a most business-like manner.
Maudie crouched at my feet, behind my rock, and I showed her how to work the bolt of my rifle, after each shot. I was one-handed, and Maudie had, of course, never handled a rifle in her life.
I waited until we could distinguish human and animal forms in the approaching cloud of dust, and then gave the range at 2,000 metres. "Fixe!" I cried coolly thereafter, for the benefit of my native soldiers. "Feux de salve. . . . En Joue! . . . Feu!"
It was an admirable volley, even Suleiman firing exactly on my word, "Feu," although he knew no word of French.
Three times I repeated the volley, and then gave the order for a rapid feu de joie as it were, at 1,500 metres, so that the advancing Touareg should hear at least six rifles, and suppose that there were probably many more.
I then ordered my men, in succession, to fire two shots as quickly as possible, each firing as soon as the man on his left had got his two shots off. This should create doubt and anxiety as to our numbers.
I then ordered rapid independent fire.
The Touareg had deployed wildly, dismounted, and opened fire. This rejoiced me, for I had conceived the quite unlikely possibility of their charging in one headlong overwhelming wave. . . .
It was time to go.
"Run to your camel, Maudie. Come on, Miss Vanbrugh," I shouted; and called to Dufour, "God watch over you, my dear friend."
I had to go to the American girl and drag her from the rock behind which she stood, firing steadily and methodically, changing her sights occasionally, a handful of empty cartridge-cases on the ground to her right, a handful of cartridges ready to her hand on the rock. . . .
I shall never forget that picture of Mary Vanbrugh--dressed as an Arab girl and fighting like a trained soldier. . . .
"I'm not coming!" she cried.
I shook her as hard as I could and then literally dragged her to her camel.
"Good-bye, my children," I cried as I abandoned them.
§ 2
We rode for the rest of that day, and I thanked God when I could no longer hear the sounds of rifle-fire, glad though I was that they had only died away as distance weakened them, and not with the suddenness that would have