Tales of Mysteries & Espionage - John Buchan Edition. Buchan John

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СКАЧАТЬ I remember, he fairly did me in. We were out rough shooting together and it was a blistering hot day. When we turned at the march burn, we were both a little bored, for we had seen very little, so by way of putting a spice of interest into the game, we agreed that I should carry what he shot and he what I shot, and I backed myself for a fiver to give him the heavier load. Well, I soon presented him with a hill partridge and a snipe, while he hadn’t let off his gun. Then I’m blessed if he didn’t shoot a roebuck and I had to sling the infernal brute on my back. After that he couldn’t miss, and I hadn’t the proper use of my arms. I staggered into Crask just about dead with heat, and laden like Balaam’s ass—roebuck on back, string of grouse and blackcock round my neck, rabbits in my pockets, and one and a half brace of snipe in my hat.”

      For a day or two the plateau drowsed in its bright aromatic heat, and no news arrived except what the Olifa wireless told—how Lossberg had begun to clear the Indian country, and the rebels, baseless and foodless, were for certain no more now than bands of refugees clinging to the mountains’ skirts. Fort Castor, their chief centre, had been occupied without serious opposition. It was anticipated that soon there must be a general surrender. Olifa was marching to an easy victory, and the President, in a public speech, spoke contemptuously of the rabble of amateurs which had attempted to defy the disciplined forces of the republic.

      The comments of the foreign press were no longer guarded. The military critics congratulated themselves on their prescience, and wrote, almost with regret, of the mathematical certainties of modern warfare. Their views did not disturb Janet’s peace of mind, but she had her own anxieties. She had an apprehension of some calamity approaching, and studied the blue sky for that enemy plane which might break through their guard. The drone of a machine arriving sent her hurrying out-of-doors, and she would wake with a start in the night and listen for the beat in the air which would be different from the beat of their own planes. Castor seemed to share her excitement; his eyes also were always turning skyward.

      Then came two days of storm, when the thunder rattled among the crags of Choharua, and the rain fell in torrents, and the outlook was limited to six yards of swirling vapour. After that came a wind which threatened to uproot the huts, and which brought the sound of a furious sea even up to that ledge of mountain. During these days the wireless was disordered by atmospherics, but from its broken messages one thing emerged. Something had happened, something of vital importance, something which had got on Olifa’s nerves. It could not be a battle? Surely Sandy had never been betrayed into measuring his meagre strength in lists chosen by the enemy.

      Then one afternoon Archie arrived, a weary Archie who could scarcely speak for drowsiness.

      “Has there been a battle?” Janet demanded.

      “Not likely. But we’ve begun the offensive.”

      “What losses?”

      “None. Practically none on either side. But there’s been the deuce of a lot of destruction of property. Sandy says it’s cheaper than human life and just as effective.”

      “What have you done? Quick! Tell me.”

      “We’ve cut the enemy’s communications. I’m dropping with sleep, Janet. In six hours you’ll hear everything.”

      In six hours a washed, shaven, fed, and refreshed Archie told this story.

      “Ever since Lossberg started pushing out from the Gran Seco city, our army has more or less disappeared. He felt us, but he didn’t often see us, barring, of course, our planes. Yet he was being sniped and shelled and bombed a good deal and Peters kept him lively at the Mines. Two things accordingly happened. The first was that Lossberg, not being able to get us into the open, thought we were far stronger than we were and grew more cautious than ever. The second was that he thought we had all our men in two places—up in the hills north-east of Fort Castor and in the eastern end of the Tierra Caliente. In that he was right—more or less—but he didn’t know the length of our range. The consequence was that he thought that the city and everything south and west of it were safe, but that the east and north-east were formidable and needed a big striking force. So he held the railway with only three garrisons between the city and the frontier—at San Luca, at Villa Bar, and at Gabones itself—and small posts of six men each every four miles.”

      Archie with pencil and paper drew a sketch of the railway.

      “You remember the big dry valley twenty-five miles down the line. I believe there’s occasionally a trickle in it in January, but just now it is like the Prophet’s Valley of Dry Bones. There’s a big viaduct crosses it—sixteen arches, the biggest and costliest piece of engineering on the whole line. It would have taken a cog-and-pinion arrangement or miles of circuitous gradients to get the railway across the valley. So the engineers very properly decided on a bridge.

      “Blenkiron always had his eye on the San Luca bridge, and so had Lossberg, for he had a post at each end, twenty men with machine guns at San Luca station—that’s the north end—and thirty-five at the south end, at a place called the Devil’s Ear. It was the only part of the line about which he showed any nervousness. But his posts weren’t very well placed, for they were at the abutments of the bridge, and the bridge has sixteen arches, and the valley is more than half a mile wide, so that if there was trouble about the middle of the viaduct it would be some little time before the ends heard of it and arrived to help.

      “Blenkiron—the scheme was his principally—wanted to cut the line at a place where it would be hard to mend. San Luca was an obvious spot, especially as the bridge was unguarded in the middle, since it was calculated that wandering bandits could do no harm to the huge stone piers.

      “Lossberg’s engineers in the Gran Seco could do any ordinary repairs that were required, but something very big would want help from Olifa. So Blenkiron’s second job was to make it pretty hard for Olifa to get to San Luca, and that meant a simultaneous bedevilment of the railway somewhere well to the south of the Devil’s Ear.”

      Again Archie had recourse to pencil and paper.

      “You see this point here, twelve miles north of Villa Bar and about twenty-three from San Luca. The railway runs in a deep cutting, the beginning of the long climb to the watershed. On the east side there’s a considerable mountain with a shaly face, which is shored up to prevent it slipping on to the metals. There was a little post about a mile off at a place called Tombequi—half a dozen sleepy Oliferos who spent their days playing spadillo and begging for drinks from the passing trains.

      “Well, it was Peters’s outfit that got the job, and it was decided to make it a long-range business. You see, not one of our fellows had so far been seen within fifty miles of the railway after the city was surrendered, so Lossberg assumed that all was well there and took no precautions.

      “We didn’t want to alarm him, so we took Pacheco for a base, the better part of one hundred and fifty miles off. It’s an ugly bit of country from there to the railway—the south rim of the Gran Seco basin, and on the north face of the rim an abomination of desolation, all pitted and tortured red rocks like the Sinai desert. The crest, however, is flattish, with a good deal of scrub on it, and there’s water in one or two places—the actual springs, I fancy, of streams that go down into the Vulpas valley. There used to be posts there, but Lossberg had no use for them, and on that bit of frontier all he has is a few mounted patrols which keep to the low ground on the north side under the rocks. Accordingly we fancied the high ground above the rocks, where there was nobody to spot us except vultures.

      “We left Pacheco last Tuesday night with Sandy in command. He insisted upon taking charge—said he wanted a little fresh air and exercise—I flew him over from Magdalena that evening. I never saw a fellow in such spirits—filled with ‘em, drunk with ‘em. СКАЧАТЬ