The girl turned half-around and glanced at her brother. “Du,” she said in Kachin to Danforth. “You should not let him see this. He will have another fit like the other day. He should not be permitted to watch. He is a man in many ways.”
Danforth struck her hard across the face. She had been stretched out leaning on one arm and she went back over down. There were bruises all over her shoulders. Con had seen such bruises on Kachin women before and did not mind especially. Kachin women made savage love often, he knew. That was their way. But he was all knotted up with this thing of the half-wit.
Danforth twisted the girl’s arm. He reached over and took the half-wit’s hand and placed it on his sister’s stomach. The boy began to explore her, murmuring. She said no it wasn’t right in the eyes of the Hill-Gods. Danforth twisted her arm harder. The boy began to laugh gleefully running both hands all over. His mouth frothed. Danforth shoved him away hard. The boy was breathing heavily, thickly, his incoherent eyes fixed on his sister. He began to caress himself, mumbling.
Con had seen too much. He sprang into the clearing. “You rotten son-of-a-bitch. Let her go.”
Danforth looked up half-sneering. “Get out of here. Get out of here you sneaky bastard,” he said meanly, drunkenly.
“Let her go,” Con said slowly, temperedly. “Now.”
“You’re asking for it, Reynolds. You asked for it for a long time, bright boy. You can only push a man so far. So far,” Danforth said with baleful eyes, his hand sliding toward his knife as he rose up slowly.
Con took one quick step back whipping out his .38. Ringa did not move. Danforth’s hand stopped. Then slowly lowered to his side as he stood erect.
“You woman,” Con said in Kachin to the girl, “get out of here. Take the boy and go to Nautaung at the Headquarters. Quick. Quick.”
“Yes, Dua. At once, Dua,” she said.
She grabbed a blouse and taking the boy by the hand sped quickly away.
Danforth spit near Con’s feet. “You’re a pretty big boy with that rod in your hand ain’t you?” he sneered.
“You’re a pretty big man doing that to a half-wit kid. You’re through this time. Finished. You’re going out of here and to a court-martial.”
Danforth spit again. “You’ll never see the day, glory boy. You’re something. Really something. You pull your cheap shit then run hide behind your rank. You’re all alike. Why don’t you fight, boy? Why not? Le’ss fight.”
“You’re drunk.”
“I’m a fighter drunk or sober. You know that and you’re scared. Scared, boy. Ain’t he scared, Ringa? Ringa knows you.”
Ringa didn’t say anything. His face was an expressionless mask.
“The bigshot’s scared,” Danforth half-laughed sarcastically.
Con stared at him for seconds. “Throw your knife on the ground, Danforth.”
Danforth hesitated, then threw the knife near Ringa. As soon as the knife hit the ground Con flipped the safety on his .38 and tossed it to Ringa. “O.K. Danforth,” Con said, “satisfy yourself.”
For a second Danforth was caught unaware. Then he grinned a wild, leering grin. Clumsily the half-Indian rushed Con with fists up at the boxer’s ready. Con stepped alertly aside and threw his toe hard into Danforth’s crotch. Danforth started down. Con hit him once in mid-air with the side of his hand on his neck. Danforth went down doubling up. Danforth moaned in the dirt. He began to vomit. It was all over in ten seconds.
They gave him some water. He breathed heavily and vomited some more. After ten minutes the color began to return to his face. “So that’s the way you fight,” was the first thing he said. “I should have known that was the way.”
“What would you have done if I went down, Danforth?” Con spoke softly. “Brought me water? Ten minutes ago you tried to pull a knife on me. Then you wanted the advantage of an experienced fighter. Can’t you do anything without an advantage? I didn’t want to fight, John. You should have considered that I’ve been fighting to win and not to get hurt for too long.”
“You rotten son-of-a-bitch,” Danforth said getting up. His eyes said even more.
“You want more,” Con said. “I’ll give you more if that’s all you understand. I don’t want to but I will. If you press it I will. I’d be glad to give you more. There isn’t enough.”
He means it, Danforth thought. He’d go after me when I’m like this. He would. He really would. He’s that kind. Inside he’s like them cops in Seattle. He likes to have you resist so he can beat on you. I know how them kind is. You got to bide your time with them kind. “I’ve had enough,” he said.
At once Con wished he had never heard it. It was pitiful to hear it the way Danforth had said it. The bewildered defeat in the way he had said it. No man should feel like that ever, Con thought. Jesus, he didn’t know any better. He couldn’t have known. But something had to be done. I’d better go see Danny. We’d better talk this over carefully. Maybe the guy’s sick. Maybe he’s jungle like Lau’rel.
Danforth was nauseated again. He dryheaved several times. He stood up smacking his lips, his eyes red and watery.
“I’m going to see Danny about what’s to be done. Bring him up when he’s better, Ringa. Consider yourself under Ringa’s custody for the time being, Johnny,” Con said returning the .38 to his holster.
He turned to walk away. Danforth sprang grabbing his knife from the ground. The knife went up poised in the huge fist aimed for the middle of Con’s back. There was a shot. And the thick, heavy thud of bullet to flesh and bone. Ringa stood the .45 in his hand.
Danforth fell heavily, slowly, a bullet through his spine.
He couldn’t feel a thing. But he knew before he had hit the ground that he was dying. He had a raw thirst. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. He finally managed to rasp, “You did it, Ringa. You did it. You are like them. Jes like them,” he said bewildered, shocked, a great polyp of blood gushing from his mouth.
Con reached for his morphine tube. He came toward Danforth. The Indian shook his head frightenedly, whitely. “No. No.” he managed to gurgle.
Then Con remembered Danforth’s aversion to dope. He put the morphine away and set a field pack under Danforth’s head. The air was purple as death closed in a quiet cloud. Con was kneeling over him.
Up on the hill someone started to beat on the drums. Danforth heard it. Con and Ringa did not. There were totems and darkness. Then fires and totems. And darkness. The darkness was green, Danforth thought. The darkness was green like a whorehouse. He could smell the incense. The darkness was the green of a smoke filled stadium as he climbed into the ring. It was the green of an Oregon lake.
“Shall I get the Doc?” Ringa asked.
“It won’t do any good. But get him,” Con said.
Ringa stared at Danforth a long moment. Even dying he was a good looking son-of-a-bitch. Goddam if he wasn’t. He coulda’ been in the movies, Ringa thought. He left. He hadn’t gone ten feet when Con called him back.
Danforth was dead.
Con, Ringa, and the girl flew to base the next day. They delivered a verbal report of the incident to the Colonel. The Colonel assumed full responsibility and sent Ringa and Con back the next morning.
Con’s force headed south slowly. Danny swung north of Bahmo, crossed the Road, and started south. Con’s force meandered waiting for Danny to parallel his so that they could move down both sides of the Road, east and west, simultaneously. Con patrolled China as he went. The final campaign to open the Road was underway. They did not know the combat plan Headquarters CBI had derived for them back in Delhi. The young American and monocled Englishman would have objected vehemently.
CHAPTER XXXVII
They were seven days out of Sinlumkaba.
Con Reynolds was sitting on the ground his elbows on his knees, his field glasses to his eyes. He was studying the valley. “And that village. Is that Lewje?”
“Yes, Dua,” Nautaung said. “That’s Lewje in China.”
“
And that camp beyond. That is where the War Lord is?”
“Yes, Dua. And yesterday he took sixty mules with supplies to the Japanese troops. I counted them myself and watched the transaction.”
“And you said they have American equipment. Are you sure?”
“Yes, Dua. I went into the valley and a patrol passed not ten feet from where I lay in the brush. They have much equipment that is like ours.”
“I wonder where they got it,” Con said thinking out loud.
“I sent two men into the village with gifts. They said there are American convoys that supply the Chinese Army. Over there to the left, to the south. This man told our man, bragging, that his War Lord attacks these convoys.”
Con remembered what Stilwell had said about renegade Chinese. Still it was hard to believe. “How many are there?”
“Three or four hundred, Dua. We attack?”
“Yes, I think we will attack. But I wish to see this transfer of supplies to the Japanese with my own eyes.”
It was mid-morning. At noon they saw the Chinese guerrilas move out a supply train toward the Japanese forces. They followed them south for an hour and a half. They watched through the field glasses. They saw the delivery of the supplies and the actual payment.
“We will attack,” Con said. “How many men will we need?”
“Four hundred, Dua. They are not good fighters nor well equipped. One elite company and one other.”
“All right, Nautaung. We will move two companies to a point overlooking Lewje and attack in the morning. The early morning before the sun.”
They moved the two companies up to the high ground overlooking Lewje late that afternoon. They bedded the troops down early and awakened them at midnight. They marched them down into the valley in the dark and an hour before the first dawn attack. Niven with half of one company from the right, and Ringa with half of another from the left. Con holding the remaining force in reserve. Ringa and Niven got all the way to the town, then around the town, and within four hundred yards of the War Lord’s camp before they were noticed. The renegade Chinese were caught flatfooted. They panicked and broke. The Kachins killed thirtytwo and took twentyseven prisoners.
Then Ringa and Niven advanced on to two nearby smaller towns that were occupied by the Chinese bandit forces. They routed the forces and burned the towns, which were new towns built by the slave labor of the renegade troops.
Ringa and Niven returned to Lewje. Con had outposted the town and sent a message to base. He set up headquarters on the steps of an old abandoned Catholic missionary church. The prisoners were held inside the church. Con sent patrols to the fields and the surrounding hills to tell the people of the town their village was free of the War Lord, they could return in peace. The people began to return in the early afternoon. They were wary, expecting trickery at first. Con met the village Elder and explained who he was. The Elder left and soon, seemingly out of nowhere, the population of the town which was over four thousand began to return rapidly in droves, bringing their meager possessions.
The Elder spoke very good English. Con asked him to translate several of the documents they had captured. Con’s own Kachin-Chinese translator verified the Elder’s statements. Con left and went to radio headquarters to send a message. He returned with Ringa and Niven. Nautaung was talking to the Elder and simultaneously studying a very official paper. It looked like a bond of some sort and had a seal stamped on it.
“This is very serious,” Nautaung was saying. He handed the document to Con.
“It doesn’t mean anything to me, old man. What is it?” Con asked.
“It’s a warrant, Dua. It is from the government of Chiang Kai-shek at Chungking. It is a warrant for this War Lord to raid and to loot anything he wishes. Then the split the prize with the Chungking government. Half and half.”
“You mean Kai-shek’s government issued this,” Con said. “This document gives this War Lord the right to kill Americans?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes Dua. Anyone he wishes to kill. I have seen similar documents before. All protected War Lords carry them.”
In his mind Niven was analyzing it: Kai-shek had American troops convoying supplies to his own Chinese regulars. Then Kai-shek’s licensed War Lords raid and loot the American convoys that did the supplying. Then the War Lords sell the shit they steal to the Japanese, who the Chinese Regulars are supposed to be at war with. Then Chiang gets half the loot. Jesus Christ, he thought. What kind of a fucking war is this? What kind of a mother fucking war is this? Jesus Christ, it can’t be. It can’t be.…
“How many documents we got, Nautaung?” Con asked.
“Eight all together, Dua.”
“Guard them,” Con said. “Send a runner to the Subadar Major that our force will not return today. Then bring the prisoners on one by one.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon interrogating the prisoners. The prisoner-bandits were all dressed in black pants and blouses. They’re heads were all shaven, but many wore pigtails and coolie hats. The first prisoner had a wallet that had belonged to an American G.I. from Racine, Wisconsin. There was a picture of an infant baby and another of the G.I.’s wife. The baby picture was signed on the back:
Daddy,
I have never seen you before and want to. Please win the war quick and come home.
The wife’s picture was signed in the same handwriting:
I love you darling. Your son and I miss you. We are anxious and praying for the day of your safe return.
Con sent that prisoner away with Ringa and the interpreter. The prisoner confessed that he had thrown the still alive G.I. onto one of the flaming trucks and watched him burn alive. The G.I. had been bound hand and foot with wire.
Seventeen of the prisoners had personal effects of American G.I.’s on their person. There were eight wallets, other pictures, letters, charm bracelets, watches, dog tags, three .45’s, a Schaeffer fountain pen, a can of Kraft cheese, a pair of dice, two decks of cards, two bars of Lifebuoy soap, and one set of false teeth.
The bandits were all very fat compared with the thin of the native villagers. The local villagers told how the bandits had raped and pillaged the village and taken many into slave labor, and how they had kidnapped and slain the four sons of the village Elder who was the largest property owner, and had taken the youngest prettiest women as concubines.
The word of the documents had now reached the ears of the Kachin troops. It was very disillusioning to them that the Americans would support a man who would turn and slay their own people. They could not understand it. It made them begin to wonder about the Americans.
Now in the late evening Con, Niven, Ringa, and Nautaung sat on the steps of the church around the fire. The American personal effects were spread on a blanket before them. They had been waiting for a special message from base at 2300. They knew from the whrrr of the generator that the message was coming in now.
Con began to pace around the fire. The moon was near full and he could see down the street of the town for about two blocks to where the market place had once been.
“I feel like everything I’ve tried to do in this lousy war was for nothing,” Niven said.
“The American government must know what’s going on,” Ringa said. “They almost have to know.”
“I’d like to believe they didn’t know,” Con said. “I’d really like to believe that.”
“America the beautiful,” Ringa said disgustedly.
“Where there is war there is politics,” Nautaung said. “They are married. Like the religion man often marries, politics is the wife. No one understands her.”
“I used to think I was a bum,” Ringa said. “I ain’t got no conception what a bum is. No conception.”
“I know,” Con said. “There’s a saying. I don’t remember who said it but now I know what it means. ‘There is no greater injustice than an unjust man deemed just.’”
“I don’t think you got it right but it’s close enough,” Niven said. “It
was Plato in the Apology.”
‘There is no greater injustice than an unjust man deemed just,’ Ringa repeated in his mind. His blue-grey eyes were stony staring into the fire but in his belly he smiled. And inversely, too, he thought. I should read that guy. That’s pretty good.
“What will we do with the prisoners, Dua?” Nautaung asked.
“What would you do, Nautaung?” Con asked back.
“I would call a council of the Subadars first,” the old man answered unhesitatingly.
“What would they do then?”
“They would be severe. In our dealing with these bandits, Dacoits they are sometimes called, we treat them in the manner of their own law. For one thing their hands would be cut off. That is the penalty for thievery here.”
“Cut them off alive?” Ringa asked.
Niven catching the small boy interest on Ringa’s face was forced to chuckle.
“Yes, Du,” Nautaung said. “Alive.”
“Wouldn’t you execute them?” Niven asked.
“The people would demand it according to their law. However, I have never believed there was a value in killing. But man has chosen that as his way.”
“They should die slow,” Ringa said. “They made our guys die slow.”
“They are very severe with their prisoners,” Nautaung said. “They have ancient methods. And they hate the white man. Did not the village people say that no one was spared who attended the white man’s church?”
“I wish we had their leader,” Con said.
“It would make no difference, Dua,” Nautaung said. “If we had him there would be another like him, maybe worse, in his place by now.”
“I suppose,” Con said.
The young newly trained Kachin radio operator came in with the special message. Con read it aloud:
CHINESE GOVERNMENT VERY UPSET OVER YOUR ATTACK HOLD ALL DOCUMENTS CONTACTING GENERAL SULTAN NOW THIS IS AN INCIDENT CONSEQUENCES MAY BE SEVERE SORRY
RAY
“I never expected this,” Con said. “Nothing like this. Maybe Pearson didn’t understand. Maybe.…”
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