Savage Coast Read Online Free PDF Page A

climbed up beside the engineer before the train started again.
    They were reaching a walled city. Pale yellow battlements, the high pale towers of Gerona stood delicately up over the deep hills. And at every crossing an armed peasant held his gun up.
    With the familiar grinding, the train stopped at the station platform, and the four young people got off.
    The family moved over to the bench opposite, and the two soldiers came in and sat down, facing each other, at the end.
    Next to the window, the old woman with the wicker basket, all in careful rusty black, pulled out some almonds and handed them to the young boy. He looked about twelve years old, tall and finely made, his iodine-colored eyes startling behind the clear-oil yellow of his skin, and his fair hair, cropped short and stiff as a blond field. He kept looking for approval to the dark, stout man sitting between them, whose fleshy, deep-grooved face could not have been farther removed from his own. The furrows ran vertically and double between his eyebrows and from his fleshy nostrils around the full, kind mouth. Only the arched nose was a point of resemblance and the smooth curve of his eyebrows, which was identical over the grandmother eyes of the old woman.
    â€œI wonder if they speak French,” Toni whispered. “I wish I knew how far we are from the city.”
    â€œIt would be fine if they did. We could find out if they are olive-trees, and why the slogans are up.”
    The train was edging along now, never reaching its speed, stopping at every crossing.
    â€œThere’s a castle!” cried Toni.
    GRANOLLERS WAS PAST , and the train hardly moved. The heat hooked on to every board, it seemed, rippling over the window-panes, seizing cloth and flesh.
    â€œI really ought to go back to see the American woman,” Helen said, struggling to rise through the torpor, through the weight of air.
    â€œLet her wait, if she’s what you say,” Toni objected, smiling his purple smile, looking at her sidelong. “And we must be almost there, anyway; we’ve been riding almost three hours.”
    The old woman spoke, suddenly with a flash, speaking French.“We’re not more than halfway between the frontier and Barcelona.” Helen and Toni leaned forward together; they could speak, here was a break made!
    â€œBut it’s a three-hour ride!” Toni exclaimed.
    â€œYes?” The old woman’s humor was noiseless and gentle, her wrinkled, lovely face very kind. The Sibylline face, grandmother. The young boy looked a question at her.
    â€œWe’ve never been here before,” Helen said, feeling like a little child before the old woman.
    â€œWe live there,” she answered. “I’ve just been with the grandson to spend a week on the coast, and my son here just came to take us home.” The boy said something in Catalan to his grandmother.
    â€œYes,” she answered, and turned again to them. “It’s a beautiful coast. Just over those hills—I wish we could see it from the train.”
    They followed her finger as she pointed. The hills, the fierce hills, on either side.
    â€œWe’re going in for the Olimpiada ,” Toni explained.
    The man began talking then, in French with a strong Spanish accent. “Then you won’t be like the tourists at the beach about the rumors,” he said. “Perhaps you can tell us something about Morocco.” The soldiers looked over sharply. He sat back. “I suppose it’s all rumors,” he said.
    â€œBetter not to say anything,” the old woman spoke slowly, and laid her hand on his arm. “Some on one side, some on the other.” She turned to Helen. “I know about rumors,” she told her, nodding. “First in France, where I come from, and then for forty-eight years here in Spain. And the rev—” she stopped short.
    Helen opened her pocketbook, and took out the cigarette case which she had filled in