Hell's Legionnaire Read Online Free PDF Page B

atmospheric whirlpool, that spot. Harvey eyed the nearing sheer walls and saw them close in over the top of his head.
    They rocketed for a cliff side. He banked and slammed
the Caudron closer to earth. A boulder reached greedily at the right wheel and
then whipped past.
    The landing gear crunched. They rolled to a shuddering
stop.
    Rubio let go of the gunner’s pit turtleback and climbed
out.
    â€œNow what do we do?” he asked.
    â€œWalk toward their camp, catch one of them and take him
back with us.”
    â€œYes, yes,” said Rubio. “We’ll get it out of them. . .
.” He made a movement with his hands, pantomiming the throttling of a throat.
    Harvey stepped to the wing and
then to the ground. He lashed the heavy automatic down to his thigh, turning up
his ear flaps to keep his neck cool, and walked toward the end of the ravine.
Small geysers of dust came up from his boot heels.
    When they could sight another canyon, Harvey stopped.
    â€œThey might be looking for us,” he remarked.
    â€œThose?” said Rubio. “The dirty beasts haven’t got sense
enough to get out of sight, much less look for us. Remember what happened down
there at . . .”
    Harvey nodded, taking a long drag
at the smoke.
    â€œFor France,” he said.
    â€œFor France!” echoed Rubio.
    Harvey strode on toward the
mouth of the second ravine. His eyes were alert for swirls of gray behind
rocks, though he knew that their first warning of ambush would be the sharp
whine of a maimed bullet turning over and over as it ricocheted from stone.
    He loosened the automatic in its holster and laid back
the flap. If they could just collar one of them and drag him back to the ship,
everything would be set. But Berbers rarely travel alone and they rarely let
you get within five hundred yards of them.
    And five hundred yards across these ridges and canyons
might as well be a thousand miles. Well, thought Harvey, it was a good idea
anyway. After all, if Kirzigh got loose in the Legion outposts, a good many men
would die.
    Rubio was trotting along behind him, panting in the
heat, his swarthy face greased with shining sweat.
    Harvey stopped and looked at a
wall two hundred yards away. Narrowing his eyes against the glare and
shimmering heat waves, he stared intently. Yes, he was right. Someone had
skipped from one boulder to another.
    He went on toward the rock face as though he had seen
nothing. Rubio, unknowing, followed hard on his heels.
    Directly under the spot he had seen the movement, Harvey dived for the edge of the ravine. A bullet hit a rock with the spiteful sound of a
broken banjo string.
    Harvey scrambled up the steep
slope toward a puff of dark smoke drifting languidly against the metal blue
sky. A second bullet rapped shrilly and then a third.
    The Berber was not only shooting at his enemy; he was
also signaling the time-honored call of three. Bullets were far too precious to
these Berbers. They even located spent French slugs after hours of search and
remolded them.
    Abruptly the down-slanting barrel of a Snider was above Harvey’s head. He grabbed at the warm barrel and with a tendon-spraining wrench, brought
it toward him, brought the Berber with it.
    For one fast-moving second he thought he had succeeded,
that this was a lone sentry who could be delivered for questioning.
    And then swirls of dirty white sprouted from the barren
slopes of the ravine. Harvey, with his hands full of rifle and native, sent one
hasty glance down at Rubio. And saw that Rubio was lost in a sea of whirling
cloth.
    Across Jack Harvey’s vision there flashed the image of
that head. That severed head with the eyeballs hanging by strings from the
sockets. The head which had once rested on the stolid shoulders of Grauer.
    Berbers came up the slope like an avalanche in reverse.
Their scaly hands reached out as though already clutching the body of the Franzawi. Sniders, Mannlichers, flintlocks glittered in the hard