It seemed to Bowman that the 2nd half of the hurricane was as bad as the 1st half, but maybe that was because there was little rain. Still, it was bad enough. When Riley left the road he had driven the Land-Rover into the rough bush on the hillside and had found an almost imperceptible dip in the ground. This was the best he could do to ensure their vehicle's safety.
Bowman said, "Why not stay inside?"
Riley disillusioned him. "It wouldn't take much to push it over on its side even though I've jammed it among the trees. We can't take the chance."
So Bowman gave up hope of being out of the wind and they started looking for personal shelter further along the hillside. The wind was already bad and steadily increasing in strength. In the more violent gusts they were hard put to it by their footing. Presently they encountered the outlying flank of the regiment that Sorel had sent to the ridge above the Ochoa. The men were digging in and Riley was able to borrow an entrenching tool to do a bit of burrowing himself.
Digging in was harder than it had been outside Trois Fourches; the ground was hard and stony with bedrock not far beneath, the thin layer of poor soil and all he could manage was a shallow scrape. But he took as much advantage of inequalities of the ground as he could and chose a place where there was an outcropping of rock to windward which would give immovable protection.
When he had finished he said to Bowman, "You stay here. I'm going to see if I can find one of the officers of this crowd."
Bowman huddled behind the rock and looked apprehensively at the sky. "Take it easy---that's no spring shower you're walking in."
Riley crept away, keeping very close to the ground. The wind closed in on him like a giant's hand and tried to pick him up and shake him, but he flattened out to elude its grip and crawled on his belly to the nearest foxhole, where he found a curled-up bundle of clothing which, when straightened out, would be a soldier.
"Where's your officers?" he yelled.
A thumb jerked, indicating that he should go further along the hillside.
"How far?"
Spread fingers said three hundred feet---or was it meters? A long way in either case. Puzzled brown eyes watched Riley as he crawled away and then was shrouded in a coat as the wind blew harder.
It took Riley a long time to find an officer, but when he did so he recognized him as one he'd seen in Sorel's HQ. Better still, the officer recognized Riley and and welcomed him with a white-toothed grin. "Allo, pied-blanc, he shouted. "Come down."
Riley dropped into the foxhole and jammed himself next to the officer. He regained his breath, then said, "Have you seen a white woman round here?"
"I have seen nobody. There is nobody this high up on the hillside but the regiment." He grinned widely. "Just unfortunate soldiers."
Riley was disappointed even though he had not really expected good news. He said, "Where are the people---and how are they taking this?"
"Down there," said the officer. "Near the bottom of the valley. I have no idea how they are---we had no time to find out. I sent some men down there but they didn't come back."
Riley nodded. The regiment had done a magnificent job---a forced march of nearly 10 miles and then a frantic burrowing into the ground, all in 2 hours. It was too much to expect them to have done more.
The officer said, "But I expected to find some of them up here."
"It's more exposed at this height," said Riley. "They're safer down there. I don't suppose they'll get a wind much above 80 or 90 miles an hour. Up here it's different. How do you think you're men will take it?"
"We shall be all right," said the officer stiffly. "We are soldiers of Laron Sorel. There have been worse things than wind."
"I'm sure," said Riley. "But the wind's bad enough."
The officer nodded his assent vigorously, then he said. "I am Pierre Rondelle. I had a plantation higher up in the Ochoa---I will get it back now that Martinet is gone. You must come and see me, pied-Riley, when this is over. You shall always be welcome---you shall be welcome anywhere in Esperance."
"Thank you," said Riley. "But I don't know if I'll stay."
Rondelle opened his eyes in shock. "But of course you will stay. You saved the people of Esperance; you showed us how to kill Martinet. You will be a great man here---they will make a statue better than the one of Martinet in St. Martin's Square. It is better to make a statue of a man who saves lives."
"Saves lives?!" echoed Riley sardonically. "But you said I showed you how to kill Martinet---and his whole army."
"That is different." Rondelle shrugged. "Laron Sorel told me you saw Martinet and he did not believe you when you said there would be a hurricane."
"That is true."
"Then it is his own fault he is dead. He was stupid."
"I must get back," said Riley. "I have a friend."
"It is better for you to stay here," said Rondelle, raising his head to listen to the wind.
"No, he is expecting me."
"All right, pied-Riley; but come and see me at l'Ouest when this is over." He held out a muscular brown hand which Riley gripped. "You must not leave Esperance, pied-Riley; you must stay and show us what to do when the hurricane comes again." He grinned. "We are not always fighting in Esperance---only when we must."
Riley climbed out of the foxhole as the wind buffeted him. He had been tempted to stay with Rondelle but he knew he had to get back. If Bowman got into trouble he could not do much to help himself with his hurt hands and Riley wanted to be with him. It took him over 30 minutes to find Bowman and he was tired as he climbed around the outcrop and tumbled into the shallow hole.
"I thought you'd been blown away," shouted Bowman as he rearranged his limbs. "What's happening?"
"Nothing much. There's been no sign of Davon or Mrs. Moore. They're probably down on the lower slopes, and it's just as well."
"How far are we from the map position that man gave us back in Trois Fourches?"
"It's a little over a mile up the valley." Bowman pulled his jacket about his chest and huddled against the rock. "We'll just have to sit this one out, then." He had been doing a lot of thinking in Riley's absence, planning what to do when the hurricane was over. He would not stay in Trois Fourches; he would go right back to New York and rearrange his affairs. Then he would come back to Esperance, buy a house overlooking the sea, and buy a boat and do a lot of fishing. And write a book every now and then. His last three books hadn't been too good; they had sold because of Ziemer's jazzy publicity, but in his heart he knew they weren't good books even though the critics had let them pass. He wondered why he had lost his steam and had been troubled about it, but now he knew he could write again as well---or better--than he had ever done.
He smiled slightly as he thought of his agent. Ziemer would have already written a lot of crap about Big Oscar Bowman, the great hero, practically saving Esperance single-handedly, but he wouldn't really give a shit whether Bowman was alive or dead---in fact, if Bowman had been killed it would be a red-hot story. Bowman would take great pleasure in reading all the press releases and then tearing them up and littering Ziemer's desk with the pieces. This was one episode in his life that wasn't going to be fouled and twisted for profit by a conniving press agent. Or a conniving and dastardly writer, for that matter.
Could he write the story of the last few days himself? He had always wanted to tackle a great non-fiction subject and this was it. He would tell the story of Commodore Rodriguez, of Martinet and Sorel, of Davon Ellison and Antoine Messier, and of the thousands of people caught in the double disaster of war and wind. And, of course, it would be the story of Riley Martin. There would be little, if anything, in it of himself. He'd done nothing but get Riley in jail and cause trouble all around. That would go in the book---but no false heroics, none of Ziemer's synthetic glorification. It'd be one damn good book.
He twisted and lay closer to the ground in an effort to avoid the driving wind.
The day wore on and again Esperance was subject to the agony of the hurricane. Once more the big wind tormented the island, sweeping in from the sea like a destroying demon and battering furiously at the central core of mountains as if it would sweep even those back into the sea from where they had come. Perhaps the hurricane did contribute towards the time when this small piece of land would be finally obliterated---a landslide here, a new watercourse gouged into the earth there, and a fraction of a millimeter removed from the top of the highest mountain in the Massif de Mallicar. But the land would survive many more hurricanes before being finally defeated.
Life was more vulnerable than inanimate rock. The soft green plants were uprooted, torn from the soil to fly on the wind; the trees broke, and even the tough grasses, stubbornly clumped with long spreading roots, felt the very earth dissolve beneath. The animals of the mountains died in hundreds; the wild boar was flung from the precipice to spill its brains against the stone, the wild dog whimpered in its rocky shelter, and scratched futilely against the earthfall that sealed the entrance, and the birds were blown from the trees to be whirled away in the blast and drown in the far sea.
But what about the people?
On the slopes of the Ochoa alone were almost 60,000 exposed men, women and children. Many died. The old and tired died of exposure, and the young and fit died of the violence of air. Some died of stupidity, not having the sense to find proper shelter, and some died despite their intelligence through mere bad luck. Others died of sickness---those with weak hearts, weak chests, and other ailments. Some even died of shock; perhaps one can say that these died of surprise at the raw violence of the world in which they lived.
But not as many died as would have died if they had stayed in the ruined city of Trois Fourches.
For 10 hours the storm fed on the island---the hurricane---the big wind. Ten hours, every minute of which was a stupefying eternity of shattering noise and hammering air. There was nothing left to do except to cower closer to the earth and hope to survive. Riley and Bowman crouched in their shallow trench behind the rock and, as Bowman had said, they "sat this one out."
At first Riley thought in some astonishment of what Rondelle had said, and he smiled sardonically. So this was how legends were made. He was to be cast as a savior; a hero of Esperance---the man who had saved a whole population and won a war. He'd be praised for the good he had done and the bad he'd been unable to prevent. Obviously Rondelle had been quite sincere. To him, Martinet and all who followed him had been devils incarnate and deserved no better than they had recieved. But to Riley, Martinet had been sick with madness, and his followers, while misguided, had been men like any others, and he had been the one who had shown Sorel the trap into which they might be led. Others might forgive me, or even not realize there was anything to forgive, but he would never forgive himself.
And then the hurricane drowned all thought and he lay there supine, waiting patiently for the time when he would be permitted to rouse himself to action and go down into the valley in search of the one person in the world he wanted to bring out safely---Davon Ellison.
The hurricane reached its height at 11:00 in the morning and from that time the wind started to decrease in violence very slowly. Riley knew there would not be any sudden drop in wind-speed as when the eye of the hurricane came over the island; the wind would quieten over a period of hours and would stay blustery for quite a while.
It wasn't until 3:00 in the afternoon that it became safe enough for a man to stand in the open and even then it was risky but Riley was not in the mood to wait any longer. He said to Bowman, "I'm going into the valley now."
"You think it's safe?"
"It's safe enough."
"Okay," said Bowman, sitting up. "Which way do we go?"
"It'll be best to go right down, and then across the lower slopes." Riley turned and looked across the hillside in the direction of Rondelle's foxhole. "I'm going to have a word with that officer again."
They walked gingerly across the slope and Riley bent down and shouted to Rondelle, "I'd wait another hour before you get your men out."
Rondelle looked up. His face was tired and his voice was husky as he said, "Are you going down now?"
"Yes."
"Then so will we," said Rondelle. He heaved himself up and groped in his pocket. "Those people down there might not be able to wait for another hour." He blew shrilly on a whistle and slowly the hillside stirred as his men emerged from a multitude of holes and trenches. One of his sergeants came up and Rondelle fired off a rapid string of instructions.
Riley said, "You should take it easy on the way down -- it's not too hard to break a leg. If you come across any white people, please let me know."
Rondelle smiled. "Sorel said we were to watch for a Miss Ellison. He said you were worried about her."
"He did?" said Riley in surprise. "Now, how did he know?"
"Sorel knows everything," said Rondelle proudly. "He misses nothing. I think he spoke with the other Englishman -- Fletcher."
"I owe him a debt of thanks."
Rondelle shook his head. "We owe you more than thanks, pied-Riley; what else could we do? If I find Miss Ellison I will inform you."
"Thank you." Riley looked at Rondelle and knew he'd changed his mind. "Yes, I'll certainly come to see you at your plantation. Where did you say it was?"
"Up the Ochoa -- at l'Ouest." Rondelle grinned. "But please wait until I have cleaned it up and re-planted -- you would not like it there now."
"I'll wait," promised Riley, and turned away.
It was hard to go down the hill. The wind plucked at them viciously and the surface had been loosened at the storm's height so that little landslides were easy to start. There were many fallen trees around which they had to make their way, and the pulled-up trees left huge gaping holes. It was 3/4s of 1 hour before they finally reached the first of the survivors, a huddle of bodies lying in a small depression. The wind was still harsh and they had not yet stirred.
Bowman looked at them with an expression of horror. "They're dead!" he cried. "Every one of them---they're dead!"
Riley stepped down and shook the nearest shoulder. Slowly the man lifted his head up and looked at Riley, a blank vacant expression on his face, then he curled up again as Riley released him. "They'll be okay," said Riley. "Let's move on. The army will look after them."
Riley looked up the hill. "They're coming down now." He pointed through the bare trees to the long line of men descending the slope.
They went further down the hill and saw more and more people, scatterings of bodies among the trees that looked like bundles of old clothes that had been carelessly thrown away. None of them moved, and from time to time Riley investigated more closely. He said to Bowman, "They're all alive, but they need medical attention. They've got no greater drive than to survive. And, my God, the poor bastards don't even know if they've survived yet."
"Sounds like disaster shock."
"That's exactly what it is," said Riley. "I've never seen it before, only read about it in accounts of hurricane aftermaths." He straightened up from the woman he was examining. "A person has to have a greater purpose than just survival to fight it -- a purpose like they have." He pointed to the soldiers coming down the hill. "Let's go; there isn't anything we can do here that Sorel's men can't do better. We'll go right down to the water and then up the valley."
It was at the water's edge that they found their first dead bodies, those who drowned and were cast ashore at the rim of this strange new lake. Later, they found the first survivors had practically no constructive life in them, none whatsoever. A few men and women looked about anxiously, probably in search of their missing relatives. They wandered about like zombies and when Riley spoke to them they would not -- or could not -- answer. He gave up, and said, "Let's go up the valley to where that soldier reported the white woman."
It was a frightening journey. After they had gone 1/2 a mile Bowman looked around and said, "This is a mess! A hopeless, goddamn mess!" He pointed to a woman who was hugging a child in her arms, a dead child, apparently--- the head hung unnaturally on one side like that of a broken-jointed doll -- but the woman seemed to be unaware of it. "What can you do about something like that?" he asked.
"Nothing," said Riley. "It's best to leave her to her own people."
Bowman looked back along the hill. "But there are thousands here -- what can one regiment of men do? There are no. medical supplies, no doctors, no hospitals left standing in St. Pierre. A lot of these people are going to die -- even those who have survived so far."
"There are lots of people on the other side of the valley, too," said Riley, pointing across the flood. "It's like this all along the Ochoa -- on both sides."
The hillside heaved with slow, torpid movement as the residents of Trois Fourches came to the exhausted realization that their agony was finally over. Sorel's men were now among them, but they could not do anything beyond separating the living from the dead, and the men who had enough first-aid knowledge to be able to splint a broken limb were kept very busy.
Riley said hopelessly, "How can we find one person in this lot?"
"Davon's white," said Bowman. "She'll stick out like a sore thumb."
"A lot of these people are more white than we are," said Riley glumly. "Let's move on."
They took to the slopes again where an arm of the flood crept inland, and Riley paused constantly to ask the more alert-seeming survivors if they had seen a white woman. Some didn't answer, others replied with curses, and others were slow and incoherent in their replies -- but none of them knew anything about a white woman. Once Riley yelled, "There she is!" and plunged back down the hill to grasp a woman by the arm. She turned and looked at him, revealing the creamy skin of an octoroon, and he let her arm fall limply.
Finally they arrived at their goal and began a more systematic search, patrolling up and down the hill and looking very closely at each group of people. They searched for nearly 1 hour and failed to find Davon or any other white person, male or female. Bowman was sickened by what he saw, and estimated that if what he saw was a good sample there must have been 1,000 killed on the one side of the Ochoa alone -- and the injured were beyond calculation.
The people seemed unable to fight their way clear of the state of shock into which they had been plunged. The air was alive with the moaning and screaming of the injured, while the fit either just sat looking into space or moved aimlessly with the gait of tortoises. Only a minute few seemed to have recovered their initiative enough to leave the hillside or help in the rescue work.
Riley and Bowman met again and Bowman shook his head heavily in response to Riley's inquiring and wild-eyed look. "The man couldn't have made a mistake," said Riley frantically. "He couldn't have."
"Hey, the only thing we can do is keep looking," said Bowman. "What else have we got to do?"
"We can go over to the coast road, which is where they went in the first place. We know that."
"We'd better finish checking here first," said Bowman stolidly. He looked over Riley's shoulder. "Hey, there's one of Sorel's guerillas coming this way -- it looks as though he wants us."
Riley spun on his heel as the soldier ran up. "You looking for a bland" asked the man.
"A woman?" asked Riley tersely.
"That's right; she's over there -- just over the rise."
"Come on," shouted Riley and started to run, with Bowman close behind. They came to the top of the slight rise and looked down at the 200 people, some of whom raised inquiring black faces and rolling eyes in their direction.
"There!" jerked out Bowman. "Over there." He stopped and said quietly, "It's the Moore woman!"
"She'll know where Davon is," said Riley exultantly, and ran down the slope. He pushed his way among the people and reached out to grasp Mrs. Moore's arm. "You're safe now," he said. "Where's Davon --- Miss Ellison?"
Mrs. Moore looked up at him and burst into tears. "Oh, thank God -- thank God for a white face. Am I glad to see you!"
"What happened to Davon -- and the others?"
Her face crumpled. "The bastards killed him," she said hysterically. "They shot him and ran him through his back with a bayonet . . . again . . . and again. God ... Oh, God.....the blood . . ."
Riley went cold. "Who did they kill? Cubbins? Messier?" he demanded urgently.
Mrs. Moore looked at the backs of her hands. "There was a lot of blood," she said with unnatural quietness. "It was very red on the grass."
Riley made a mammoth effort to control himself. "Who . . . did . . . they. . . kill?"
She looked up. "The Louisianan. They blamed me for it. It wasn't my fault, not my fault at all. I had to do it. But they blamed me."
Bowman said, "Who blamed you?"
"That girl -- that shit of a girl. She said I killed him, but I didn't. He was killed by a soldier with a gun and a bayonet."
"Where is Davon now?" asked Riley tensely.
"I don't know," said Mrs. Moore shrilly. "And I don't give a damn. She kept on hitting me, so I ran away. I was scared to death she'd kill me---she threatened to."
Riley looked at Bowman in shocked surprise, then he said dangerously softly, "Where did you run from?"
"From the other side, near the sea," she said. . "That's where we'd been locked up. Then I ran away. There was a river and a waterfall -- we all got wet." She shivered. "I thought I'd get pneumonia."
"Is there a river between here and the coast?" asked Bowman.
Riley shook his head. "No." Mrs. Moore was obviously in a state of shock and would have to be treated with kid gloves if they were going to get anything out of her. He said gently, "This river, where was it?"
"On top of a hill," said Mrs. Moore incomprehensibly. Bowman sighed audibly and she looked up at him. "Why should I tell you where they are? They're only gonna tell you lots of lies about me," she said spitefully. "I'll be damned if I'm going tell you a goddamn thing!" She clenched her fists and the nails dug into her palms,. "I want her to die, dammit. Just like she meant me to."
Bowman tapped Riley on the shoulder. "C'mere," he said. Riley was looking horrified at Mrs. Moore, but he backed away under Riley's pressure until they stood just a few paces away from her. Bowman said, "What in the hell is this all about? Has that woman gone crazy?"
"She has indeed," said Riley. He was trembling.
"But she knows where Davon is all right. Something's thrown one helluva a scare into her, and it wasn't the hurricane, although that probably tipped her over the edge. Maybe she did kill Antoine and Davon saw her do it -- that means she's scared of a murder charge. Oh, she's crazy all right---crazy like a fox---faking it, that is."
"We've got to get it out of her," said Riley. "If only I knew how."
"I know how," said Bowman savagely. "You're an English gentleman -- you don't know the first thing about handling her kind. Now, me -- I'm an eighteen-carat diamond-studded American son-of-a-bitch -- I'll get it out of her even if I have to bash her brains out!"
He walked back to her and said in a deceptively conciliatory manner, "Now, Mrs. Moore; you will tell me where Davon Ellison and Mr. Cubbins are, right?"
"The hell I will! I won't stand for people tattling and telling lies about me."
Bowman's voice hardened. "You do know who you're talking to, don't you?"
"Big Oscar Bowman, if I remember right. You'll get me out of here, won't you?" Her voice broke pathetically into a wail. "I wanna go back to the States!"
He said dangerously, "Then you know my reputation. They say I'm a bit of a bastard---and they're right! Now, you got one chance to get back to the States, and one only. Tell me where Cubbins is or I'll have you held here pending the inquiry into the disappearance of a British consul. Oh, there'll be an inquiry, all right--- the British are conservative, they don't like losing officials, not even minor ones."
"On top of the hill," she said sullenly. "There's a gully up there."
"Point it out to me!" His eyes followed the direction of her wavering hand, then he looked back at her. "You've come out of this hurricane with flying colors," he said grimly. "Someone has no doubt been looking after you. You need to be thankful, not spiteful."
He went back to Riley. "Got it! There's a gully up there somewhere." He waved his hand. "In that direction."
Without saying a word Riley left at a run and began climbing up the hill. Bowman grinned and moved after him at a slower, more economical pace. He heard a noise in the air and looked up to see a helicopter coming over the rim of the hill like a giant grasshopper "Hey!" he shouted. "It's the Navy -- they came back!"
But Riley was far ahead, climbing the hill as though his life depended on it.
Actually, it did.
ns 172.70.131.141da2