When it was dark, the corporal came along the trench. He looked old. His thin, haggard face was expressionless. He said what they all knew.
“There won’t be any relief. I think everything behind us is wiped out, too. We wouldn’t stand a chance in trying to get away. They’re out there waiting, hoping we try it.
“There’ll be at least one night attack, but with day-break they’ll come. There’s thirty-eight of us left. Fire as long as you can, and when they get through the wire, it’s every man for himself.”
He looked around vacantly, then started back up the line. His shoes were broken, and one leg was bandaged. He looked tired. He stopped suddenly, looking back. “If any of you have the guts to try it, go ahead.” He looked from Jerry to Slim, then at Dugan. “We’re through.”
Slim walked over to the dead officer and took his automatic, then the cartridges for it. He took some money, too, then dropped it into the sand. Having a second thought, he picked it up.
“If a man could get away,” he said, looking over at Dugan, “this would pay a boatman. Gibraltar—that would be the place.”
Dugan sat down, his back to the parapet. He glanced along the trench. Far down he could see movement.
Thirty-eight left! There had been 374 when they occupied the post. He tilted his head back and looked at the stars. They had looked the same way at home. How long ago was that?
Jerry got up. He glanced at Slim, and the Texan shrugged. “Let’s go,” he said. And they went.
Jerry pointed. “We’ll go down that shallow place, and there’s a ditch. Follow that to the right and it takes you right up to the building. If we get into that ditch, we’ve got it made.”
There was no moon, but the stars were bright. The rear parapet had been partly knocked down by the explosion of a shell. They went over fast, Jerry first, then Dugan. Flat on their faces, they wormed across the dark ground, moving fast but silently. The ground was still hot. In the darkness his hand touched something warm. It was a gun, an automatic. He thought of Slim and felt suddenly sick; then he remembered the sergeant who had been killed out here a few days before. He took the gun but turned at right angles. The Biscayan was close behind him, his knife in his teeth, his rifle lying across his forearms.
Dugan heard a slight movement and looked up suddenly into the eyes of a Moor. For a split second they both stared, and then Dugan jerked his rifle forward, and the muzzle struck the Moor right below the eye. The Moor rolled back and then came up, very fast, with a knife. Dugan kicked him on the kneecap, then hit him with the butt and followed with the barrel. He went down, but another loomed up.
There was a scream as the Biscayan ripped one up, and then Slim broke into the fight with an automatic. Then there was a roar of shots from all along the parapet. It was the expected night attack, sooner than believed and almost successful.
Dugan came up running, saw a Moor loom up before him, and shot without lifting the rifle above his belt line. The Moor spun out of the way and fell, and Dugan fell into the ditch just one jump ahead of the Biscayan. Then Slim and Jerry joined them. Jerry was carrying three rifles and a bandoleer of cartridges.
They went along the ditch at a stumbling run. Dugan slipped once and almost fell, but when he straightened up, the stone house was looming above them. Jerry led them to the trap door at the end of the ditch.
The room was empty except for a desk and a couple of chairs. One chair was tipped on its side, and there were papers scattered about. The room had a musty smell, as the door and windows were heavily shuttered and barred. Both openings could be covered by rifles from the trenches below, and as the position was not a good one, the Moors had not taken it.
Jerry dragged the heavy desk aside and struck a match to find the iron ring concealed in a crack. With a heave he opened the cellar. In the flare of the match Dugan saw that Jerry’s scalp was deeply lacerated and dried blood matted his hair on one side.
Slim slid into the hole and a moment later was handing up bottles. Then he sent up a magnum of champagne, and the Biscayan came up with some canned fruit and cheese.
“This guy had a taste for knickknacks,” Slim said. “There’s everything down here that you could get into a can.”
“He took three hot ones right through the belly on the first day,” Jerry said. “He was scared and crying like a baby. I don’t believe he’d ever done a day’s duty in his life.”
Dugan took a bottle of Chateau Margaux and a can of the cheese. The wine tasted good. After a bit he crawled into a corner, made a pillow of some cartridge pouches, and went to sleep. When he awakened, light was filtering into the room from around the shutters. Jerry was sitting wide legged near the cellar door, and he was drunk, Slim was at the desk.
“Kid,” Slim said, “come here.”
He had a map laid out. “See? If you get the chance, take the ditch to here, then down along that dry creek. It’s not far to the coast, and most of those boat guys will give you a lift for money. You got any money?”
“About twenty bucks. I’ve been hiding it in case.”
“Here.” Slim took the money he’d taken from the dead officer. “You take this.”
“What about you?”
“I ain’t goin’ to make it, kid. I got a hunch. If I do, we’ll go together. If you board that boat, they may take your rifle, but you keep your sidearm, you hear? Keep it hidden. You may need it before you get across.”
He turned to look at Dugan. “How old are you, kid?”
“Twenty-two,” Dugan said, and he lied. He was just past sixteen.
“You look younger. Anyway, go through their pockets, whoever’s dead. They won’t mind, and you’ll need whatever there is.
“Don’t go near the army or a big town. Head for the seacoast and stay out of sight. Anybody you meet out here will try to stop you. Don’t let it happen. You get away—you hear?”
Jerry lifted the bottle in a toast. “Tomorrow we die!” he said.
“Today, you mean,” Slim said.
The Biscayan came up from the cellar with a machine gun. It was brand-spanking-new. He went down again and came up with several belts of ammo, then a box of them. He set the machine gun up at a shuttered window and fed a belt into it.
Dugan looked at the automatic he had picked up. It was in good shape. He found another in the cellar and several spare clips. He loaded them.
Scattered shooting broke into a steady roar. A shell exploded not too far away.
Slim had found two Spanish versions of the Colt pistols and loaded them. He strapped them on, pleased. “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to get good and drunk, and then I’m going to open that door and show them how we do it down in Texas!”
He emptied half a bottle of the wine and looked at Dugan. “You ever been in Texas, kid?”
“I worked on a ranch there—in the Panhandle.”
“I grew up on a ranch,” Slim said. “Rode for a couple of outfits in New Mexico before I started out to see the world. I knew this would happen sometime. Just never figured it would be here, in a place like this.”
He picked up the bottle of wine and looked at it. “What I need is some tequila. This here is a she-male’s drink! Or some bourbon an’ branch water.”
Dugan took his rifle and walked to the window. He helped the Biscayan move the machine gun to a more advantageous position, a little closer, a little more to the left. He checked his rifle again and loaded two more and stood them close by. From a crack in the shutters he studied the route he might get a chance to take. It must be done before the whole country was overrun by the Moors.
Suddenly Jerry moved, the dried blood still caked in his stubble of beard. He crawled on hands and knees to the edge of the trapdoor from the ditch. Then he stopped, breathing hoarsely, waiting.
Dugan had heard nothing above the occasional rattle of distant rifle fire as the Riffs began to mop up. Suddenly the trapdoor began to lift, very cautiously, then with more confidence. When it had lifted about a foot, a b
ig Riff thrust his head up and stared into the room. All the occupants were out of his immediate range, and he lifted his head higher, peering into the semidarkness. In that instant Jerry swung the empty magnum. The solid bop of the blow was loud in the room, and the man vanished, the door falling into place. Jerry jerked it open, slammed it back, and leaped down into the hole. There was a brief scuffle, and then Jerry came back through the trapdoor, carrying a new rifle and a bandoleer.
Now the crescendo of firing had lifted to a loud and continuous roar, and Slim started to sing. In the tight stone room his voice boomed loudly.
Glorious! Glorious!
One keg o’ beer for the four of us!
Glory be to heaven that there isn’t
ten or ’leven,
For the four of us can drink it all alone!
The Biscayan took down the bar and threw the shutters wide. Below them and away across the tawny hill the Riffian trench was suddenly vomiting up a long line of men. From behind the parapet before them a scattering fire threw a pitiful challenge at the charging line.
Dugan wiped the sweat from his eyebrows and leaned against the edge of the window. He was sagging with incredible exhaustion, and his body stank from the unwashed weeks, the sweat and the dirt. He lifted the rifle and held it against his swollen cheek and began to fire.
Behind him Jerry and Slim were singing “Casey Jones.” Dugan looked down at the Biscayan, a solid chunk of man who lived to fight. Hunched behind the machine gun, he waited, watching the line as an angler watches a big fish approaching the hook.
Suddenly the firing stopped, waiting for a killing volley at close quarters.
Dugan had stopped, too. One man, a tall Moor on a fine-looking horse, had ridden out on a point a good six hundred yards away, watching the attack. He stood in his stirrups, lifting a hand to shout a command, unheard at the distance. For what seemed a long minute Dugan held his aim, then squeezed off the shot, and the man stood tall in his stirrups, then fell from the saddle to the dust and lay there. Then the Biscayan opened fire.
Dugan looked down at him, aware for the first time that the Biscayan was drunk. The gray line melted before him, and the Biscayan lifted the bottle for another drink.
The unexpected fire from the stone house, cutting a wide swath in their ranks, paralyzed the attack. Then a bunch of the Riffs broke away from the main attack and started toward the stone house. Jerry was up, firing slowly, methodically. Suddenly the machine gun swung, fired three short bursts, and the bunch of attackers melted away. From behind the parapet came a wavering cheer. Dugan winced at the few voices. So many were gone!
Dugan squinted his eyes against the sun, remembering the line of silent men beside the parapet and the big Russian with the schoolboy pink in his cheeks.
The Biscayan lifted his bottle to drink, and it shattered in his hand, spilling wine over him. With a lurid burst of Spanish he dropped the neck of the bottle and reached for another. And he had never been a drinking man.
Slim sat on the floor, muttering. “I’m goin’ to get damn good an’ drunk an’ go out there and show ’em how we do it down in Texas.”
He started to rise and sat down hard, a long red furrow along his jaw. He swore in a dull, monotonous voice.
Dugan saw the line of Moors sweep forward and across the parapet. There was scattered shooting, some rising dust, then silence. He blinked, feeling a lump in his throat. He had known few of them, for they had been together too short a time. Only weeks had passed since he lay in his bunk aboard ship, feeling the gentle roll as it steamed west from Port Said.
The sunlight was bright and clear. Outside, except for the scattered bodies of the slain, all was quiet and peaceful under the morning sun. Dugan looked across the valley, thinking of what he would do. There was little time. Perhaps time had already run out.
The afternoon was waning before they attacked again. This time they were careful, taking advantage of the slight roll of the hill to get closer. The last hundred yards was in the open, and they seemed unaware of the ditch, which would be hidden from them until they were almost fallen into it.
Dugan’s face was swollen and sore from the kick of the rifle. He was hot and tired, and he switched rifles again.
A single shot sounded, lonely against the hills, and something gasped beside him. He turned to see Jerry fall across the sill. Before he could pull him back, three more bullets chugged into his body.
“Kid,” Slim said, “you better go. It’s time.”
He took the bar down from the door and looked down the sunlit hill. A knot of Moors was coming toward him, good men, fighting men, dangerous men. Slim stepped out with a pistol in each hand and started down toward them.
He was drunk. Magnificently, roaring drunk, and he had a pistol in either hand. “I’m a-goin’ to show them how we do it down in Texas!” He opened fire, then his body jerked, and he went to his knees.
Dugan snapped a quick shot at a Moor running up with a rifle ready to fire, and then Slim got up. He had lost one gun, but he started to fire from waist level. His whole left side was bloody.
Dugan turned to yell at the Biscayan, but the man was slumped across his machine gun. He had been shot between the eyes.
Dugan pushed him away from the gun and swung it toward the front of the house. In the distance, against the pale-blue sky, above the heat waves dancing, a vulture swung in slow circles against the sky. Slim was down, all sprawled out, and the enemy was closing in.
He pointed the gun toward them and opened up, singing in a hoarse, toneless voice.
Glorious! Glorious!
One keg o’ beer for the four of us!
Glory be to heaven that there isn’t
Ten or ’leven,
For the four of us can drink it all alone!
His belt went empty, and the hill was bare of all but the bodies. He got up and closed the heavy plank door.
He caught up a bandoleer and another pistol. Then he dropped through the trapdoor.
All was still. He stepped over the dead Moor and went out into the shadowed stillness of the ditch.
And then he began to run.
DEAD-END DRIFT
* * *
Most of these stories were written in retrospect, when the events that led to them were already far behind. Fortunately I never experienced what happened in this story but thought of it from time to time. Such things were not much talked about, but I worked with miners who had survived them.
I never worked in a coal mine, only in hard-rock mines in the West, in one copper mine, in several silver, lead, and zinc or gold mines. Often several minerals were found in the same mine. In some silver or copper mines enough gold is found to pay the expense of mining. I was never an expert miner, although I’ve worked with a stopper. Usually they had me tramming or on the business end of a muck stick (shovel), and at the latter, I always felt I need take second place to no man. (I was probably wrong.) I was also a better than fair hand with a double jack (sledgehammer).
In the larger mines we usually came out to the station to eat our lunches and to wait when the shift was over to let the miners count their shots. Those were great times for me, as many of the older miners had worked the boom camps such as Tonopah, Goldfield, Rawhide, Cripple Creek, Leadville, Central City, and Virginia City. Resting time was also a time when they told stories or talked about characters they had known such as Ten-Day Murphy, Slasher Harrington, and Shorty Harris.
Shorty was always a favorite character of mine because of the rare sort of character he was. He made big mining discoveries but never cashed in on any of them, but at the end he was buried standing up at the bottom of Death Valley, and he would have liked that.
Boxing had always been a major interest of mine, and we had a tough old Irish miner there who had boxed a four-round exhibition with John L. Sullivan and several who had known Jack Dempsey when he was a saloon bouncer or worked in the mines. They had also seen him fight. And Malloy, Johnny Sudenberg, and some of the early fighter
s.
I met Jack briefly once when eating lunch in his New York restaurant but, never told him I’d fought in some of the same places or worked in the same mining camps.
There were miners there who had seen Joe Gans fight Battling Nelson for the world’s lightweight title in Goldfield. Joe Gans won on a foul in forty-two rounds.
There are still stories from those days that I must write and will write. There are ghost stories, fight stories, and even the story of a man who was going to raise the dead. He even invited everybody to come and see him do it.
* * *
THE TRICKLE OF sand ceased, and there was silence. Then a small rock dropped from overhead into the rubble beneath, and the flat finality of the sound put a period to the moment.
There was a heavy odor of dust, and one of the men coughed, the dry, hacking cough of miner’s consumption. Silence hung heavily in the thick, dead air.
“Better sit still.” Bert’s voice was quiet and unexcited. “I’ll make a light.” They waited, listening to the miner fumbling with his hand lamp. “We might dislodge something,” he added, “and start it again.”
They heard his palm strike the lamp, and he struck several times before the flint gave off the spark to light the flame. An arrow of flame leaped from the burner. The sudden change from the impenetrable darkness at the end of the tunnel to the bright glare of the miner’s lamp left them blinking. They sat very still, looking slowly around, careful to disturb nothing. The suddenness of the disaster had stunned them into quiet acceptance.
Frank’s breathing made a hoarse, ugly sound, and when their eyes found him, they could see the dark, spreading stain on his shirt front and the misshapen look of his broken body. He was a powerful man, with blond, curly hair above a square, hard face. There was blood on the rocks near him and blood on the jagged rock he had rolled from his body after the cave-in.
Collection 1980 - Yondering Page 5