Vendetta for the Saint. (24 page)

Watching the road ahead for any side tracks
that
could plausibly
lead to a farm, he finally spotted a
suitable turning and said: “Right here—don’t try
to take me to the door, you’d have a job
turning
around to get
out again. And thanks a million.”

“You’re
welcome.”

Simon got out, and the car shot off as he
waved
good-bye.

Now until they stopped the station wagon and
questioned the driver, Destamio’s cohorts
would
be partially
baffled—unless someone realized that
a man on foot could travel in any direction, if he
was fool enough to climb over a sun-blasted
moun
tain instead of
skirting it. Which was precisely the
Saint’s intention.

But the plan was not as hare-brained to him
as it
might have
seemed to a less original fugitive. On a previous visit to Sicily he had driven
from Messina
to Palermo, and
had remarked on the numbers
of
people waiting at bus stops along the high
way, who had apparently landed from boats or
lived under rocks by the wayside, since they
were
nowhere near
any visible human habitation. His companion, who knew the island, had pointed
out the dusty dirt tracks that wound back between the buttresses of the hills,
and explained that higher up
in
most of the valleys, closer to sources of precious
water, there was a hidden village. Though they
might be only a few miles apart on the map, the
normal route from one to another was down to the
sea, along the coast,
and back up again—a long
way around, but
much more attractive in a climate
that
discouraged strenuous exertion. To the Saint,
however, to do whatever
would be most unex
pected was far more
important than an economy of
sweat.

And sweat, in plain common language, was what
his eccentricity exacted,
in copious quantities. As
he
climbed higher, so did the sun, making it clear
why Sicily had never become the Mecca of mid
summer mountain-hikers. To add to its
natural dis
advantages for
such sport, Simon Templar also
had
to contend not only with the after-effects of a
mild concussion but also with the fact that
he had had no breakfast, or any other food or drink since
last night’s dinner.

It was good evidence of his mental as well
as his
physical toughness that he set and
maintained a
pace which would not have
disgraced a week-end
hiker over some
gentle undulations in an English autumn. His shirt was already sodden when the
ter
raced groves and vineyards gave
up their encroach
ment on a baked and
crumbling mountain-side
where only
straggling shrubs and cacti grew; but
the
sun only worked harder to imitate the orifice of a blast furnace. More
insidious was the temptation
to let
his mind dwell on thoughts of cool refreshing
drinks, which only intensified the craving. The hu
man body can go without food for a month, but
dies in a few days without water. Simon was not
about to die, but he had never been so thirsty as he
was when he reached the summit of the range he
had
aimed for.

By then it was almost noon, and his brains
felt as
if they were being cooked inside his
skull. The
rocks shimmered in the blaze,
heat-induced
mirages plagued his
vision, and the blood pounded
in his
temples. But if he had chosen the right ridge,
he should be able to come down in a valley that
would bring him to the sea from a totally
different
quarter and in a totally
different area from where
the hunters would be watching for him.

A rustling sound like wind-blown leaves came
to
him as he rounded a jutting
promontory some way
below the
crest, and he found himself suddenly face
to face with three startled goats. They were
moth-
eaten, dusty,
and lean to a point of emaciation
which was understandable if their only grazing was
the withered herbage of that scorched
hillside. Two
of them were
females with large but not distended
udders, and the explanation of that detail dawned on him an instant too
late for him to draw back
behind
the sheltering shoulder of magma. By that time he had seen the goatherd, and
seen that the
goatherd also saw him.

They stared at each other for a silent moment,
the goatherd looking as surprised as his charges.
He was a thin youth as dusty and tattered as the goats, in a faded shirt with
the sleeves torn off at
the shoulders
and pants that had been mended so
many
times that it was difficult to tell which was the original material and which
the patches. A
knotted rope served
him for a belt, and completed the sum of his wardrobe; the soles of his bare
feet
must have been calloused like
hoofs to be able to
ignore the
abrasive and cauterizing surfaces which
were all that his pastures offered them to walk on.
He brushed
back his uncut mop of hair to get a
better
view of the extraordinary apparition which had shattered all the precedents of
his lonely do
main.

“Buon giorno,”
said the Saint reassuringly. “A
beautiful day for a walk in the hills.”

“Sissignore,”
responded the young man politely,
to avoid offending an obvious lunatic. He
specu
lated:
“You are English?”

Simon nodded, deciding that it was better to
ac
cept that assumption than
be taken for a mad dog.
He
sighted a tiny patch of shade under a projecting
rock and sat down to rest in it for a minute.

“It was not as hot as this when I
started out,” he
said,
in an attempt to partly explain his irrational
behavior.

“You
must be thirsty,” the herdboy said.

Something in Simon’s manner had erased his
first fear and he came and squatted close by.

“My mouth is so dry that I doubt if I could lick
a stamp.”

“You
would like a drink?”

“I would love one. I would like about six
drinks,” said the
Saint wistfully. “Tall ones, ice-
cold. I would not be fussy about what they were.
Orange juice, beer, cider, wine, tomato
juice, even
water. Do you
have a refrigerator in a cave any
where
near by?”

“You
can have some of my water if you like.”

The lad reached behind him and swung into
sight a skin bottle that had been hanging
down his
back,
suspended from a loop of gray string. He
pulled the cork from the neck and extended
the
flask to the
Saint, who took it in a state of numbed
shock.

“And I thought you were kidding…”
Simon raised the
bottle to his lips and let a
trickle
of hot, sour, but life-giving wetness moisten
his tongue and flow down his throat. At any
other
time it would
have been almost nauseating, but in
his condition it was like nectar. He sipped slowly,
to extract the maximum humidity from it and to
give himself the impression of a prolonged draught
without actually draining the container. He re
turned the skin still more than half full, and sighed
gratefully.

“Mille
grazie.
You may have
saved my life.”
On
the other hand, the youth might equally prove to be a contributor to the
Saint’s death.
There was no way to make him
forget the en
counter, short of knocking him
on the head and pitching his body into the nearest ravine, which
would
have been a somewhat churlish return for
his
good Samaritanism. But eventually the
goatherd
would hear about the foreigner who was
being
sought, and would tell about their meeting,
and would be able to indicate which way the Saint had gone. With one
quirk of fate, Simon had lost much of the advantage that he had toiled so
painfully to gain—how much, depended on how soon
the boy’s story reached one of the search parties.
But that was only another hazard that had to be
accepted.

There
was nothing more to be gained by perching
on that ledge like a becalmed buzzard and
brood
ing about it.
Simon climbed to his feet again, count
ing the compensation of the brief rest and re
freshment, and pointed down the steep slope.

“There
is a village down that way?”

“Sissignore.
It is where I live. Would you like me
to guide you?”

“No, if I keep
going downhill I must come to it.”

“After you pass around that hill there
with the
two dead trees
on the side you will see it. But I have
to go back there before long in any
case.”

“I am in a hurry, and I have already
interfered
with you too much,” said the
Saint hastily. “Thank
you again, and
may your goats multiply like rab
bits.”

He turned and plunged on down the slope with
a dynamic purposefulness designed to leave the lad
too far behind for further argument before any
such argument could suggest
itself.

He only slackened his pace when he felt sure,
without turning to look back, that the goatherd
had been left shrugging helplessly at the incon
testable arbitrariness of Anglo-Saxons, and when
the precipitousness of the path reminded him that
a
twisted ankle could eventually prove just as fatal as a broken neck. He had to
work his way across a
perilous field of
broken scree on the direct course
he had set for the two dead trees
which had been
pointed out as his next
landmark, but soon after he
passed
them he scrambled over another barren
hump
to be greeted by a vista that justified all the
toil and sweat of its attainment.

In the brown hollow of the hills far below
clustered the white-washed buildings of
another
village, with
a road leading away from them down
the widening canyon that could ultimately
meander nowhere but to the coast. His venture
seemed to have paid off.

His descent from the heights seemed like a
sleigh
ride only by
comparison with the preceding climb.
A steep downhill trail, pedestrians whose walking
is confined to city pavements might be
surprised to
learn, is
almost as tiring as an uphill: the body’s
weight does not have to be lifted, but its
grav
itational pull
has to be cushioned instead, and the
shocks come on the unsprung heels which make the
muscles of the thighs work harder to soften
the
jolts. It was
true that he had had a cupful of water to drink, but to boil it off there was
an afternoon
heat more
intense if possible than the morning.
Having breakfasted on nothing but thin air, he was
now sampling more of the same menu for lunch.
If
he had been inclined to
self-pity, he could have
summarized
that he was parched with thirst, faint with hunger, stumbling with fatigue, and
baked to
the verge of heat prostration; but
he never per
mitted himself such an
indulgence. On the con
trary, renewed
hope winged his steps and helped
him to forget exhaustion.

Nevertheless, a more coldly impersonal
faculty
warned him that
he couldn’t continue drawing in
definitely
on nothing but will-power and his
stored-up reserves of strength. He would have to
find liquid and solid sustenance in the
village. If he by-passed it, he might be able to reach the coast on foot, but
he would be in no shape to cope with any
minions of the Mafia that he might meet
there or run into on the road. The risk of attracting atten
tion in town had to be balanced against the
physi
cal and mental
improvement that its resources of
food and
drink could give him.

As he worked his way closer to it, suffering
all
the added
disadvantages of pathfinding as the price
of refusing the young goatherd’s offer of
guidance, the echoing clangor of the inevitable church bell
reached him, striking the half-hour which his
wrist watch confirmed to be one-thirty. Ten minutes later he slithered by
accident across a well-worn path
which
would probably have brought him as far
with half the effort if he could have been
shown it,
but which at
least eased the last quarter-hour’s slog
to the most outlying cottages.