another half hour before she exclaimed, "He has taken the carbon rod
out of the distributor. Oh, the sneaky swine." Sara's head popped out
of the turret. "Gareth?"she asked.
"No," answered Vicky. "Jake."
"I didn't expect it of him." Sara climbed down beside Vicky to inspect
the damage.
"They're all the same."
"Where has he hidden it?"
"Probably in his own pocket."
"What are we going to do?" Sara wrung her hands anxiously.
"We'll miss the battle!" Vicky thought a moment and then her
expression changed. "In my bag, in the tent, is an Ever-Ready
flashlight.
There is also a leather cosmetic case. Bring them both to me,
please." One of the flashlight dry-cell batteries, split open by the
curved blade of the dagger from Sara's belt, yielded a thick carbon rod
from its core, and Vicky shaped it carefully with the nail-file from
her cosmetic case, until it slipped neatly into the central shaft of
the distributor and the engine fired at the first swing of the crank.
"You are really very clever, Miss Camberwell, said Sara, with such
patent and solemn sincerity that Vicky was deeply touched. She smiled
up at the girl who stood above the driver's seat, her head and
shoulders in the turret and her knees braced against the back of the
driver's seat.
"Think you can work that gun yet?" she asked, and Sara nodded
uncertainly and placed her slim dark hands on the clumsy mahogany
pistol grips, standing on tiptoe to squint through the sights.
"Just take me to them, Miss Camberwell." Vicky let out the clutch and
swung the car in a tight lock out from under the acacia" trees and on
to the steep rocky track which led to the wide open grassland in the
funnel of the mountains.
am very angry with Jake," declared Sara, clutching wildly for support
as the car pounded and thumped over the rough track. "I did not expect
him to behave that way hiding the carbon rod. That is more like
Gareth. I am disappointed in him."
"You are?"
"Yes, I think we should punish him."
"How?"
"I think Gareth should be your lover," Sara stated firmly.
"I think that is how we will punish Jake." In between wrestling with
the heavy steering, and dancing her feet over the steel pedals of brake
and clutch, Vicky thought about what Sara had said. She thought also
of Jake's broad rangy shoulders, and thickly muscled arms she thought
about his mop of curly hair and that wide boyish grin that could change
so quickly to a heavy frown.
Suddenly she realized how very much she wanted to be with him, and how
she would miss him if he were gone.
"I must thank you for sorting out my affairs for me," she called to the
girl in the turret. "You have a knack."
"It's a pleasure, Miss
Camberwell," Sara called back. "It is just that I understand these
things." As the afternoon wore on, so thunderheads of cloud "Aformed
upon the mountains in the west. They soared into a sky of endless
sapphire blue, smoothly rounded masses of silver that rolled and
swirled with a ponderous majesty, swelling high and darkening to the
colour of ripening grapes and old bruises.
Yet over the plain the sky was open, clear and high, and the sun burned
down and heated the earth so that the air above it shimmered and
danced, distorting vision and distance. At one moment the mountains
were so close that it seemed they reached to the heavens and they must
topple upon the small group of men crouched in the shade of the two
concealed armoured cars; at the next they seemed remote and
miniaturized by distance.
The sun had heated the hulls of the cars so that the steel would
blister skin at a touch and the men who waited, all of them except
Jake Barton and Gareth Swales, crawled like survivors of a catastrophe
beneath the hulls, seeking relief from the unrelenting sun.
The heat was so intense that the gin rummy game had long been
abandoned, and the two white men panted like dogs, the sweat drying
instantly on their skins and crusting into a thin film of white salt
crystals.
Gregorius looked to the mountains, and the clouds upon them, and he
said softly, "Soon it will rain." He looked up to where Jake Barton
sat like a statue on the turret of Priscilla the Pig. Jake had swathed
his head and upper body in a white linen sham ma to protect it from the
sun and he held the binoculars in his lap. Every few minutes, he would
lift them to his eyes and make one slow sweep of the land ahead before
slumping motionless again.
Slowly the shadows crept out from the hulls of the cars, the sun turned
across its zenith and gradually lost its white glare, its rays toned
with yellows and reds. Once again, Jake lifted the binoculars and this
time paused midway in his automatic sweep of the horizon.
In the lens the familiar dun feather of the distant cloud once again
wavered softly at the line where pale earth and paler sky joined.
He watched it for five minutes, and it seemed that the dust cloud was
fading shrivelling, and that the shimmering pillars of heat-distorted
air were rising, screening his vision.
Jake lowered the glasses and a warm flood of sweat broke from his
hairline, trickled down his forehead into his eyes.
