The Best Ye Breed

Aftermath

Homer Crawford, his face in exhaustion, stood on the ridge of the rectangle and stared out over it. His flac rifle had fallen to the ground beside him. Cliff sat on the sand and gravel, panting, and wiping sweat from his face and neck with a dirty handkerchief.

Before them was devastation. The burnt-out helio-jet was still smoldering at one end of the entrenchments, so near one of the machine gun nests that it had almost crashed atop it. In the enclosure, one of the lorries was also burning and the jeep was a shot-up wreck.

About a dozen of the mercenaries were gathered together, those still standing, with their hands behind their necks. The others, wounded, sat or were stretched out on the sand. The remaining of Guémama’s camelmen, jubilant, were about them, jeering and sometimes mockingly threatening them with their rifles or arm daggers.

Jeeps and trucks from the fort were beginning to arrive, their occupants in high excitement.

Isobel came hurrying up the hill to them. She stopped before Homer, checked quickly with her eyes to see that he was all right and then Cliff. Relief swept over her face.

“What happened?” she gasped.

“They caved in after Kenny hit the rescuing aircraft with a couple of bursts,” Homer said. “But it was all over anyway.”

Isobel said, in a gush, “Homer, it’s the happy ending. The radio says that Casablanca, Rabat, Algiers and even Tunis have all declared for El Hassan.”

Homer shook his head wordlessly.

Kenny trekked up the hill from below and stood for a moment, catching his breath. One of his arms was in an improvised sling. Doctor Smythe and Meg McDaid hadn’t arrived as yet.

Homer said to him, “How many casualties?”

Kenny Ballalou took a deep breath and got out, “Three of the Tuaghi dead, seven more took hits, most of them not too bad. And… Guémama took his final one when he rushed that machine gun with his grenades. But I guess you saw that in your binoculars.”

Homer nodded wanly, “How about the others?”

“The French captain was shot by his own men when he tried to keep them from surrendering. Why he tried, we’ll never know. They’d already had it, once that helio-jet was shot down. Major Ryan evidently shot himself. Either somebody else helped, or he managed to get through two and a half of those bottles of brandy Lon left him.”

“The other one? Meg’s man.”

“All shot up, but he ought to live.” Jimmy Peters, alone in a jeep, came driving up the hill alone. He jumped from the vehicle and came hurrying through the sand and gravel. He said urgently, “Homer. On the radio…” Homer Crawford looked at him. “Yes?”

“The Arab Union has declared war. They’re coming south through Libya.”

El Hassan closed his eyes in still mounting weariness and looked emptily at the woman he loved. He said, “Isobel, in history there is no happy ending. There is no ending at all. You go from one crisis to the next but there is no ending.”