went, and Bruce spoke to Wally Hendry in the same dispassionate tone.
"I told you to turn them loose," he said.
"So they could run home and call the whole pack down on us - is that
what you wanted, Bucko?" Hendry had recovered now, he was defiant,
grinning.
"So instead you murdered them?"
"Murdered! You crazy or something, Bruce? They're Balubes, aren't they?
Bloody man-eating
Balubes!" shouted Hendry angrily, no longer grinning. "What's wrong
with you man? This is war, Bucko, war. C'est laguerre, like the man
said, c'est laguerre!" Then suddenly his voice moderated again.
"Let's forget it. I did what was right, now let's forget it; what's two
more bloody Balubes after all the killing that's been going on?
Let's forget it." Bruce did not answer, he lit a cigarette and looked
beyond Hendry for the others to come.
"How's that, Bruce? You willing we just forget it?" persisted
Hendry.
"On the contrary, Hendry, I make you a sacred oath, and I call upon God
to witness it." Bruce was not looking at him, he couldn't trust himself
to look at Hendry without killing him. "This is my promise to you: I
will have you hanged for this, not shot, hanged on good hemp rope. I
have sent for Haig and Ruffararo so we'll have plenty of witnesses. The
first thing I do once we get back to
Elisabethville will be to turn you over to the proper authorities."
"You don't mean that!"
"I have never meant anything so seriously in my life."
"Jesus, Bruce!-" Then Haig and Ruffy came; they came running until they
saw, and they stopped suddenly and stood uncertainly in the bright sun,
looking from Bruce to the two frail little corpses lying in the road.
"What happened?" asked Mike.
"Hendry shot them," answered Bruce.
"What for?"
"Only he knows."
"You mean he - he just killed them, just shot them down?"
"Yes." "My God," said Mike, and then again, his voice dull with shock,
my God."
"Go and look at them, Haig. I want you to look closely so you remember."
Haig walked across to the children.
"You too, Ruffy. You'll be a witness at the trial." Mike Haig and
Ruffy walked side by side to where the children lay, and stood staring
down at them. Hendry shuffled his feet in the dust awkwardly and then
went on loading the magazine of his rifle.
"Oh, for Chrissake!" he blustered. "What's all the fuss?
They're just a couple of Balubes." Wheeling slowly to face him
Mike Haig's face was a yellowish colour with only his cheeks and his
nose still flushed with the tiny burst of veins beneath the surface of
the skin, but there was no colour in his lips. Each breath he drew
sobbed in his throat. He started back towards Hendry, still breathing
that way, and his mouth was working as he tried to force it to speak.
As he came on he unslung the rifle from his shoulder.
"Haig! said Bruce sharply.
"This time - you you bloody - this is the last,-" mouthed Haig.
"Watch it, Bucko!" Hendry warned him. He stepped back, clumsily trying
to fit the loaded magazine on to his rifle.
Mike Haig dropped the point of his bayonet to the level of
Hendry's stomach.
"Haig!" shouted Bruce, and Haig charged surprisingly fast for a man of
his age, leaning forward, leading with the bayonet at Hendry's
stomach, the incoherent mouthings reaching their climax in a formless
bellow.
"Come on, then!" Hendry answered him and stepped forward. As they came
together Hendry swept the bayonet to one side with the butt of his own
rifle. The point went under his armpit and they collided chest to chest,
staggering as Haig's weight carried them backwards. Hendry dropped his
rifle and locked both arms round Haig's neck, forcing his head back so
that his face was tilted up at the right angle.
"Look out, Mike, he's going to butt!" Bruce had recognized the move, but
his warning came too late. Hendry's head jerked forward and
Mike gasped as the front of Hendry's steel helmet caught him across the
bridge of his nose. The rifle slipped from Mike's grip and fell into the
road, he lifted his hands and covered his face with Spread fingers and
the redness oozed out between them.
Again Hendry's head jerked forward like a hammer and again Mike gasped
as the steel smashed into his face and fingers.
"Knee him, Mike!" Bruce yelled as he tried to take up a position from
which to intervene, but they were staggering in a circle, turning like a
wheel and Bruce could not get in.
Hendry's legs were braced apart as he drew his head back to Strike
again, and Mike's knee went up between them, all the way up with power
into the fork of Hendry's crotch.
Breaking from the clinch, his mouth open in a silent scream of agony,
Hendry doubled up with both hands holding his lower stomach, and sagged
slowly on to his knees in the dust.
Dazed, with blood running into his mouth, Mike fumbled with the canvas
flap of his holster.
"I'll kill you, you murdering swine." The pistol came out into his right
hand; short-barrelled, blue and ugly.
Bruce stepped up behind him, his thumb found the nerve centre below the
elbow and as he dug in the pistol dropped from Mike's paralysed hand and
dangled on its lanyard against his knee.
Ruffy, stop him," Bruce shouted, for Hendry was clawing painfully at the
rifle that lay in the dust beside him.
"Got it, boss!" Ruffy stooped quickly over the crawling body at his
feet, in one swift movement opened the flap of the holster, drew the
revolver and the lanyard snapped like cotton as he jerked on it.
They stood like that: Bruce holding Haig from behind, and Hendry
crouched at Ruffy's feet. The only sound for several seconds was the
hoarse rasping of breath.
Bruce felt Mike relaxing in his grip as the madness left him; he
unclipped his pistol from his lanyard and let it drop.
"Leave me, Bruce. I'm all right now."
"Are you sure? I don't
want to shoot you."
"No, I'm all right."
"If you start it again, I'll have to shoot you. Do you understand?" Yes,
I'll be all right now. I
lost my senses for a moment." :You certainly did," Bruce agreed, and
released him.
They formed a circle round the kneeling Hendry, and Bruce spoke.
"If either you or Haig start it again you'll answer to me, do you hear
me?" Hendry looked up, his small eyes slitted with pain. He did
not answer.
"Do you hear me?" Bruce repeated the question and Hendry nodded.
"Good! From now on, Hendry, you are under open arrest.
I can't spare men to guard you, and you're welcome to escape if you'd
like to try. The local gentry would certainly entertain you most
handsomely, they'd probably arrange a special banquet in your honour."
Hendry's lips drew back in a snarl that exposed teeth with green slimy
stains on them.
"But remember my promise, Hendry, as soon as we get back to,-"
"Wally, Wally, are you hurt?" Andre came running from the direction of
the station. He knelt beside Hendry.
"Get away, leave me alone." Hendry struck out at him impatiently and
Andre recoiled.
"De Surrier, who gave you permission to leave your post?
Get back to the train." Andre looked up uncertainly, and then back to
Hendry.
"De Surrier, you heard me. Get going. And you also, Haig." He watched
them disappear behind the station building before he glanced once more
at the two children. There was a smear of blood and melted chocolate
across the boy's cheek and his eyes were wide open in an expression of
surprise. Already the flies were settling, crawling
delightedly over the two small corpses.
"Ruffy, get spades, Bury them under those trees." He pointed at the
avenue of casia flora. "But do it quickly." He spoke brusquely so that
how he felt would not show in his voice.
"Okay, boss. I'll fix it."
"Come on, Hendry," Bruce snapped, and
Wally Hendry heaved to his feet and followed him meekly back to the
train.
Slowly from Msapa junction they travelled northwards through the
forest. Each tree seemed to have been cast from the same mould, tall and
graceful in itself, but when multiplied countless million times the
effect was that of numbing monotony. Above them was a lane of open sky
with the clouds scattered, but slowly regrouping for the next assault,
and the forest shut in the moist heat so they sweated even in the wind
of the train's movement.
"How is your face?" asked Bruce and Mike Haig touched the parallel
swellings across his forehead where the skin was broken and discoloured.
"It will do," he decided; then he lifted his eyes and looked across the
open trucks at Wally Hendry. "You shouldn't have stopped me, Bruce."
Bruce did not answer, but he also watched Hendry as he leaned
uncomfortably against the side of the leading truck, obviously favouring
his injuries, his face turned half away from them, talking to
Andre.
"You should have let me kill him," Mike went on. "A man who can shoot
down two small children in cold blood and then laugh about it
afterwards-!" Mike left the rest unsaid, but his hands were opening and
closing in his lap.
"It's none of your business, said Bruce, sensitive to the implied
rebuke. "What are you? One of God's avenging angels?"
"None of my business, you say?" Mike turned quickly to face Bruce. "My
God, what kind of man are you? I hope for your sake you don't mean
that."
"I'll tell you in words of one syllable what kind of man I am, Haig,"
Bruce answered flatly. "I'm the kind that minds my own bloody business,
that lets other people lead their own lives. I am ready to take
reasonable measures to prevent others flouting the code which society
has drawn up
for us, but that's all. Hendry has committed murder; this I agree is a
bad thing, and when we get back to Elisabethville I will bring it to the
attention of the people whose business it is.
But I am not going to wave banners and quote from the Bible and froth at
the mouth."
"That's all?"
"That's all."
"You don't feel sorry for those two kids?"
"Yes I do. But pity doesn't heal bullet wounds; all "it does is distress
me. So I switch off the pity - they can't use it."
"You don't feel anger or disgust or horror at Hendry?"
"The same thing applies," explained Bruce, starting to lose patience
again. "I could work up a sweat about it if I let myself loose on an
emotional orgy, as you are doing."
"So instead you treat something as evil as Hendry with an indifferent
tolerance?" asked Mike.
"Jesus Christ!" grated Bruce. "What the hell do you want me to do?"
"I want you to stop playing dead. I want you to be able to recognize
evil and to destroy it." Mike was starting to lose his temper also; his
nerves were taut.
"That's great! Do you know where I can buy a secondhand crusader
outfit and a white horse, then singlehanded I will ride out to wage war
on cruelty and ignorance, lust and greed and hatred and poverty-"
"That's not what I-" Mike tried to interrupt, but Bruce overrode him,
his handsome face flushed darkly with anger and the sun. "You want me to
destroy evil wherever I find it. You old fool, don't you know that it
has a hundred heads and that for each one you cut off another hundred
grow in its place?"
"Don't you know that it's in you also, so to destroy it you have to
destroy yourself?"
"You're a coward, Curry!
The first time you burn a finger you run away and build yourself an
asbestos shelter,-"
"I don't like being called names, Haig. Put a leash on your tongue."
Mike paused and his expression changed, softening into a grin.
"I'm sorry, Bruce. I was just trying to teach you-"
"Thank you," scoffed Bruce, his voice still harsh; he had not been
placated by the
apology. "You are going to teach me, thanks very much! But what are you
going to teach me, Haig? What are you qualified to teach? "How to find
success and happiness" by Laughing. "Haig who worked his way down to a
lieutenancy in the black army of Katanga - how's that as a title for
your lecture, or do you prefer something more technical like: "The
applications of alcohol to spiritual research-""
"All right, Bruce. Drop it, I'll shut up," and Bruce saw how deeply he
had wounded
Mike. He regretted it then, he would have liked to unsay it. But that's
one thing you can never do.
Beside him Mike Haig was suddenly much older and more tired looking, the
pouched wrinkles below his eyes seemed to have deepened in the last few
seconds, and a little more of the twinkle had gone from his eyes. His
short laughter had a bitter humourless ring to it.
"When you put it that way it's really quite funny."
"I punched a little low," admitted Bruce, and then, perhaps I should let
you shoot
Hendry. A waste of ammunition really, but seeing that you want to so
badly," Bruce drew his pistol and offered it to Mike butt first, "use
mine." He grinned disarmingly at Mike and his grin was almost impossible
to resist; Mike started to laugh. It wasn't a very good joke, but
somehow it caught fire between them and suddenly they were laughing
together.
Mike Haig's battered features spread like warm butter and twenty
years dropped from his face. Bruce leaned back against the sandbags with
his mouth wide open, the pistol still in his hand and his long lean body
throbbing uncontrollably with laughter.
There was something feverish in it, as though they were trying with
laughter to gargle away the taste of blood and hatred. It was the
laughter of despair.
Below them the men in the trucks turned to watch them, puzzled at first,
and then beginning to chuckle in sympathy, not recognizing the sickness
of that sound.
Hey, boss," called Ruffy. "First time I ever seen you laugh like you
meant it." And the epidemic spread, everyone was laughing, even
Andre de Surrier was smiling.
Only Wally Hendry was untouched by it, silent and sullen, watching
them with small expressionless eyes.
They came to the bridge over the Cheke in the middle of the afternoon.
Both the road and the railway crossed it side by side, but after this