They Came To Cordura
Page 21
But Renziehausen, seated near the cairn, put his head down and hugged his knees in a convulsion of remorse. “We oughtn’t to have done it,” he groaned. “We oughtn’t.”
Trubee turned the paper this way and that on his lap, bewildered. “Blows a man up all-hell big, don’t he?”
Chawk glowered at the cairn. “He druv us too hard.”
“Call of duty! Ha-ha-ha-ha!” The young officer waved his sheet, his body racked with hysterical laughter. “Ha-ha-ha-ha!”
He was echoed. But it was a shout. At the top of the grade they saw the figure in khaki signaling with something white, evidently his citation. It was Hetherington. He had left the handcar unnoticed and somehow made his way upward along the tracks. His shouting continued.
They climbed as swiftly as their limbs allowed, Chawk helping Trubee, the woman trailing. Winded, they reached the top. So used up by his exertions was Hetherington that he could only point.
Looping down the hillside the Tex—Mex leveled finally in a deep and verdant valley, along a river lined with cottonwoods, beside adobe houses of a town, while on the valley floor beyond the town were ranks of tents and great ricks of baled hay and straw and a row of canvas-hooded trucks, Whites and Jeffrey Quads from which a quartermaster company unloaded, and beyond these, pasturing on green, a herd of mules and remounts and, sparkling in sun, an aeroplane, pegged down and ringed by children.
They stared. With a sob, Andrew Hetherington started down the slope, fell headlong, regained his feet, and holding the sheet of paper tottered down again. Wilbur Renziehausen was the next to go, then the Geary woman, then slowly, John Chawk and Milo Trubee. The officer bawled at them to stop, they were fools not heroes, they would be tried for murder or decorated or both. When they did not listen, saved a second time despite their animal need, living once more for a moment beyond the limits of human conduct, William Fowler followed them with tears upon his cheeks. One by one, clutching their citations, some stiff-legged, against their will, others with joy, arms extended, running, stumbling, they came at last to Cordura.