Horizon (21 page)

From the hillside above him he heard the noise of a dislodged stone. He was ready by the time the boy reached him. The hoarse, excited whisper said, “Headlights. Car first, travelling fast. Two lorries a mile behind, moving slowly.”

“Right.” Lennox flapped the rope sharply three times and felt an answering tug from Johann. They lifted the rope carefully, pulling it even and taut, and secured it tightly round their trees. Perhaps because of the wire woven into it, it did not feel as if it were sagging. Lennox was wondering whether the blotched colouring of the rope would show—patches of the stain had come off on the boys’ hands and clothes as they carried it here—and then decided that perhaps these shadings would be better than a rope forming too much of a black line. Certainly, it didn’t form a white line, and it wasn’t obvious to his eye at the moment. But headlights might pick it up, even if its oblique stretch would lessen that danger. All he could do now was to trust the curving road which made headlights less effective. They ought to swing out over the ravine as the car came round that corner, and before they were focusing on the road properly the rope would be struck.

He hoped to God that Johann had moved away from the tree to his piece of chosen cover. If the car skidded it was likely to fall in his direction. This rope would only have halted a slow-moving lorry. But a quickly moving car by its own speed would have more damage done to it. That was what they hoped for,
anyway. Johann had insisted on taking that side of the road. He could, so he had solemnly sworn, hang on to a mountainside by his eyelashes if necessary.

The noise of rushing water had obliterated the sound of the car’s approach. Lennox heard it just before he saw the headlights’ yellow glare probing into the darkness. He had only time to flatten himself behind the tree. The grim sequence of noise was too confused, too quick, to be analysed. The rope snapped, and whipped dangerously over his head back around the tree. We have failed, he thought desperately; failed, God damn us to everlasting hell. And then he heard only the sound of rushing water. He raised his head.

The car was hanging on the edge of the road, its rear wheels on the last foot of ground. The rope had shattered its windscreen, and had been cut by the frame. The driver had lost control, and the road was torn where the wheels had skidded deeply into its surface.

Lennox couldn’t be sure that the four men in the car were dead. They seemed lifeless—two, at least, were unpleasant to look at—but they might only be stunned and injured. For a moment he stood looking at the two men in civilian clothes who had watched from the Kasal barn, the two men who had made such amiable Allied airmen. The others in the car were the two policemen who had questioned him in the Schichtl house that afternoon. Well, here was a combination that would work no more together. Whatever they knew would never be written down as a report.

“Let’s give it a push,” Johann said urgently. “There’s a good drop into the torrent.”

Lennox was already reaching into the car, feeling for the
reverse. Then it only needed a very short push indeed. The torrent was silenced as the car’s wild plunge ended. Lennox backed slowly away from the edge of the precipice, his ears still shocked by the sudden smash after the tense moment of waiting. The torrent’s voice lifted once more.

“Now your rope,” Johann’s practical voice said. He had already uncoiled the length from his tree. “We have less than two minutes.”

The boy who had brought the warning of the car’s approach was already unwinding the rope from the tree beside which Lennox had lain. The other boy had come down from his vantage-point to see what had happened. He helped, too. The rope was uncoiled and laboriously unknotted. The two boys, carrying its folds between them, started over the hill.

“They know what to do with it. And with themselves. Come on, we had better not be found near here either.” Johann’s advice was good. Lennox followed him wearily, imitating Johann’s bent shoulders and half-running pace. He would have liked to stay to see the lorries arrive, but it was safer to leave curiosity unsatisfied. The drivers must have heard the noise. They were probably travelling still more slowly, for they would now be expecting some kind of trouble. Then their lights would pick out the skid-marks on the road, for the surface had been badly torn. But even if they guessed that some accident had happened—a tyre suddenly blown out or a turn too sharp and too quick—they could see little over that precipice edge. It was too steep, too deep, and the night was too dark. Later, when the moon came up, they would be able to see something. But there could be no salvage party until daylight.

Once they were over the spine of the hill Johann’s pace
slackened, and he walked upright. But even being able to move more naturally didn’t lessen Lennox’s exhaustion.

“I’m tired. I’m damned tired,” he said to Johann. “I’m out of training, remember.”

“Maybe,” Johann said, without much conviction. “What happened in the village?”

“I’ll tell you when we see your uncle. I need my breath for climbing. I suppose we are heading in his direction now?”

“Yes. We’ve got to report.”

“At Schönau?”

“Yes. Good job you know how to cross the waterfall. It’s tricky at night.”

Lennox groaned. He had forgotten the waterfall.

“You’ll manage it,” Johann said cheerily. “After tonight we could manage anything, couldn’t we?”

Lennox wasn’t so inclined to agree with that.

Anyway, he thought, there was one thing they had managed to do. The reports and suspicions which that car had been carrying to Kastelruth had been blotted out. Other reports would be made, other suspicions might grow, but these particular ones would do no more damage. That was one thing they had managed to do. They and Eva Mussner.

Schönau—the beautiful high-meadow—was earning its name. The sun was strong today, so Lennox had taken off his jacket and opened the collarless neck of his shirt. He stretched his body contentedly on the carpet of fine green grass. There were more flowers spreading, their miniature petals close to the ground. The scent of pine and new leaved trees from the surrounding woods was stronger. Each day there was a little more of the promise of summer.

Lennox stopped looking at the blue sky with its soft white clouds, high and unmoving over the line of mountain-tops, and turned to watch the foresters’ hut. No one had come out yet. Either they were giving him plenty of time to make up his mind, or they were discussing some new points. Not that he could imagine them finding a new point: since he and Johann had arrived here last night, there had been enough careful discussion to fill a mill-pond.

It was the American who came out at last from the hut and walked casually towards Lennox. Nothing in his leisurely step—he was a loose-limbed sort of chap with easy movements—nothing in his placid face showed he was coming here with a purpose.

Lennox rose to his feet... “Private Lennox, sir, reporting.”

“Cut that out,” Thomson said, with his good-natured smile. He dropped into the grass, and motioned Lennox to sit beside him. “You’d better be careful,” he warned, “or we’ll commission you temporarily on the field.”

“I’d prefer to remain as I am,” Lennox said.

“Determined guy, aren’t you? But you’ve certainly been more co-operative than we expected.”

“Thank you,” Lennox said. He half-smiled, and he suddenly thought of the colonel. Not co-operative...was that the colonel’s description of him? Anyone seemed not co-operative when he was asked to do what he didn’t want to do. Especially if his mind had been quite made up otherwise. “I suppose I was a sort of resentful blighter,” he added, his smile broadening.

“You probably only needed a rest up here in these mountains. They’d cure anyone.”

Lennox nodded. “I didn’t know I was cured either. That’s the funny thing. I didn’t know it, until the two Jerries dressed as American airmen walked into the Schichtl kitchen. I had been telling myself all winter that I was a useless crock—” Lennox halted in embarrassment. He was saying too much. The American was so easy to talk to. He just sat there, with his arms around his knees and a friendly grin on his face. Not too much of a grin, either, but just enough to make you go on talking. Lennox went on, “There didn’t seem anything I
could do up here. You fellows were coming, and I was only a stop-gap. There didn’t even seem much for me to do if I ever managed that escape to the south. The Army would probably discharge me. This hand has been getting worse all winter. A prison camp wasn’t the best place to cure it properly.”

“Tough luck,” Thomson agreed. “But I’ve heard of left-handers who were crack shots. Don’t see why you couldn’t learn. Besides, this war won’t last for ever. You’ll be thinking of going back to your old job then, and it won’t matter a damn whether you can shoot a gun or not.”

Lennox was silent.

“Will it?” the American asked sympathetically.

“No. I don’t suppose it will.” His voice had changed, and the American watched him curiously. If the American had lost eight years of his life, Lennox thought, he wouldn’t be so puzzled. Eight years learning to paint, scraping up money for tuition, living from hand to mouth so that he could get abroad where the light was warm and the colours were bright. There had been trouble with his people because he wouldn’t settle down to a profession. There had been a lot of private trouble and disappointments because he had insisted on going on with his painting. And then, after eight years, there had been the beginning of some success. That was the summer of 1939. Eight years...eight years, hell! He wasn’t the only chap who was now finding that after this war he would have to start all over again.

“Have you made your decision?” Thomson asked. “Do you take, your long-promised trip south, or do you go into the North Tyrol with Johann?”

“It’s a long walk either way.” Lennox’s voice was quite normal now. “I’ll travel north with Johann.”

“Fine.” Thomson was genuinely pleased, perhaps even relieved. He rose. “Come on. They’re waiting for us in the hut.”

As they walked slowly over the broad meadow the American said, “Lennox, I should be keeping my mouth shut, but I won’t. If you travelled south there might be still hope for your hand. If you go north—well, you could get no specialist’s treatment there. You realise that?”

“Yes. I’ll just have to make my left hand useful,” Lennox said. And if I lose that one, he thought, I’m damned if I don’t learn to paint with my toes. He began to smile.

“We are about ready to push off,” Thomson said. “We’ve been given two of those guides you were talking about. You and Johann will leave tonight. Schroffenegger’s son is going along with you.”

Lennox nodded. “Is Johann still asleep?”

“Yes, he’s earned it.”

And that was true. For last night Johann had gone back to the village to scout carefully around. He had returned at dawn with a variety of news. The people had left the hillside, some to reach their distant houses, others to return to the village. They knew grimly that there had only been a respite and no material gain for them. Even now the Germans would be planning a change of policy towards their Austrian “cousins.” But there had been a moral victory for Eva Mussner. It was the girl’s death which had shocked the people most of all. They had been angered by the fact that the Germans had chosen their feast-day in order to gather a rich haul of what they would call volunteers. But it was the girl’s death they were talking about. Mussner’s treachery and the danger to the village, coming from all such treachery, had been clearly shown in that last scene in
the garden. Those who had witnessed it were describing it in detail to those who had already fled. They told how the girl had stood with her uncle’s revolver, no longer pointing, no longer threatening. Yet the Germans had killed her. And she had not shot her uncle as a murderess would have killed, out of envy or greed or evil. Yet the Germans had killed her. Without a trial. From now on, Johann had reported, there were no more neutrals in this district. Mahlknecht’s list of those who were doubtful friends of the Allied cause, because they were neutral, could now be scrapped.

“He’s earned it,” repeated Thomson. “By the way, we got some more news when you were asleep this morning. The Fifth is rolling up the Krauts like a red carpet. The Eighth is slugging right up the middle of Italy. I’ll lay you five to one we’ll be in Rome within the month.”

Lennox shared the American’s wide smile for a moment. “No takers,” he said. “I’m on your side.” He turned to stare at the mountain peaks to the south. He had stopped walking.

“Wish you were with them?” Thomson asked. “So do I. And yet we are, in a kind of a way. We’re an advance unit. That’s us.”

When Lennox didn’t answer he asked quietly, “What made you choose to go into the North Tyrol with Johann? You’ll be useful there. We need you. But why did you choose it?”

The American would never have got his answer if he hadn’t been so easy to talk to. If Shaw had asked that question Lennox would have said, “It’s a nice climate, I hear.” But to Thomson he said, “I’m trying to show someone I’m not just the selfish fool she thought I was.”

“Hope she appreciates that some day,” Thomson said. He looked as if he wanted to ask more, but he didn’t. It was just
as well. Lennox couldn’t have answered that one. He couldn’t have answered, “She is dead. She was shot by the Germans.”

In embarrassment he said quickly, “I’ll do more damage to Jerry up there than I could from a hospital behind our lines.”

Thomson was satisfied. Lennox suddenly felt satisfied too.

In the hut there were Mahlknecht and Shaw and young Josef Schroffenegger. Johann was snoring steadily on one of the straw mattresses. He could sleep until dusk came. And then he and Lennox and young Josef would set out together. They would climb to the mountain-hut near the top of the first peak on their journey. They should reach there before midnight, and sleep there, and leave there—to tackle the difficult part of crossing a mountain—in the good light of early morning.

On the bunk next to the one where Johann lay there was the equipment they would need, and the small packages of food which they could carry. Schroffenegger’s son had brought these necessary supplies this morning. He would be useful on this trip. Both he and Johann had climbed through that sea of mountains once before. Then it had been to avoid Italian recruitment for the Albanian campaign. Now it was to win recruits for the fight against Germany.