Colin stayed at home all the next day, but there was no sign of Bonnecourt. By the evening he was obviously fussing—obviously at least to Julia, who had known him all his life. Over sherry, out by the spring, while Luzia was preparing supper, she put a blunt question—‘Colin, what exactly are you trying to find out, here? What are all these walks in aid of, and this drinking at the pub?’
Even with Julia, Colin could not easily break his ingrained habit of being cagey.
‘Oh, the usual sort of thing—routine collecting of information.’
‘I think you’re being very silly to stall like this’ his cousin said coolly. ‘It’s obvious that Luzia and I, sitting here all the time, might be able to help you quite a bit—especially Luzia. But we can’t unless we know what you’re after.’
‘Why especially Luzia?’ the young man asked.
‘Oh, because she gets around, as I can’t just now—doing the shopping, and fetching the milk from that farm; she talks to everyone, and everyone talks to her—you heard her last night.’
Colin sat silent, frowning a little.
‘Anyhow your job is no news to her’ Julia pursued.
‘What do you mean? She’s a foreigner.’
‘Yes, but it was she who went out into her Father’s kitchen at Gralheira and spotted the chief Communist agent, who was after that Hungarian priest Hugh Torrens was getting out, and produced quite a lot of other information; she was only a child then, of course, but Hugh thought the world of her. She’s very intelligent. You’d do much better to come clean, Colin.’
Colin, though impressed by the mention of Major Torrens—who like Philip Jamieson was one of his superiors—could only bring himself to come partially clean, and in a very generalised fashion. There were known, he said, to be Communist groups at Tarbes, a garrison town beyond Pau, and also at Toulouse; their main organisation was almost certainly in Spain, and it was suspected that there was a fairly constant coming and going across the Pyrenees, by the small and little-known smugglers’ paths. He was trying to check on these and to find out which, if any, of the local people acted as guides.
‘Oh, I see. Hence your interest in Bonnecourt; of course he’d make the perfect guide. I wonder why he hasn’t turned up? Well, I’ll talk to Luzia.’
‘I wonder if you’d better’ Colin said doubtfully.
‘Of course I’d better. Ring up Hugh if you want to check on her—though I doubt if you’ll be able to hear London through the noise the Colorado beetles make at the Post Office!’
When Julia passed on the gist of Colin’s remarks to Luzia, while they were laying the table for supper, the young girl said—‘This is not altogether clear to me. I will talk to Colin myself. Of course I should like to help him, but I do not fully understand.’ She held up one of the squat tumblers to the light, and polished it with a clean linen cloth. ‘Poor Torrens!’ she said, setting the glass on the table. ‘He was not very clear, but he was more clear than your cousin—perhaps less nervous.’ Julia smiled, amused that Luzia should so soon have noticed Colin’s besetting weakness.
After supper, drinking coffee, the girl tackled Colin, and showed herself one too many for him from the start.
‘Of what do you suspect the isard-hunter?’ she began.
‘I didn’t say I suspected him of anything.’
‘No, but you asked Julia about him, and today you stay at home all day, hoping to see him. So you must have ideas in this connection. What are your ideas?’
‘Well’—Colin paused, and then spoke rather reluctantly. ‘It’s possible that he might be someone who serves as a guide to—er—people crossing the mountains.’
‘To Spain, or from Spain?’
‘Both’ Colin said, looking upset.
‘I understand. To cause dégats at Lacq, and then to escape again.’
‘I never said that!’ Colin growled.
‘It was not necessary to say it—it sees itself! And you wish to know, definitively, if Bonnecourt does this?’
Colin looked thoroughly disturbed.
‘Luzia, you’d better lay off the whole thing. You can’t go round asking those sort of questions.’ The girl gave him a cool smile.
‘One can learn much without asking any questions, if one knows what one desires to know! It shall have attention’ Luzia said firmly. ‘But how I wish ce monsieur would bring the gigôt d’isard!—Mme. Monnier says it is absolutely delicious!’
Colin hung about for a second day, hoping to see Bonnecourt, who however again failed to appear. The young man had fuller reasons than he had vouchsafed to either Julia or Luzia for wishing to meet the isard-hunter and take his measure. He had been given hints, even at home, that the danger of sabotage at Lacq came less from the Communists than from the O.A.S., the Organisation de l’Armée Secrète, who had taken a considerable part in the war in Algeria; the Société des Pétroles d’Acquitaine, which operated Lacq, also had interests in oilfields in the Sahara, now become Algerian territory—hence the bitter enmity of the O.A.S. against Lacq and its owners. But the Communists were certainly going to and fro across the frontier too; and it was extremely important for him, Colin, to know which lot—if either—Bonnecourt was assisting. He had gathered for himself that the man was a fine mountaineer, and also that he occasionally went in for smuggling, so he would know all the smugglers’minute paths and by-ways, and be an ideal guide to either party. It was this knowledge which had prompted his original question about him to Julia.
When on the third day the Heriot boys came up as promised to help with bottling the old farmer’s wine, Colin was still hanging about. Julia lamented aloud—‘I’d hoped to give you isard for lunch; a man called Bonnecourt came three days ago, and promised to bring me a leg, but he never has.’
‘The old wretch!’ said Dick. ‘Usually he keeps his promises.’
‘Why, do you know him?’
‘Goodness yes—we often go out shooting with him.’ Colin pricked up his ears at this. ‘He’s a splendid type’ Dick pursued—‘the prettiest rock-climber you ever saw.’ It emerged from the twins, in their usual strophe and anti-strophe, that they knew that Bonnecourt sometimes went in for smuggling—‘Just for the hell of it, really.’ Julia mentioned Luzia’s murder story; the Heriots showed real anger. ‘That’s a typical bit of Larégeois spite and malice! His first wife was a perfect fool—she insisted on climbing with him, because she was jealous of his going out without her; but she couldn’t climb for toffee! She jolly nearly killed him as well when she fell—all her own fault—on the Pic.’
After lunch—Luzia again gave them plancia steaks, this time off the meat-van—Dick Heriot reverted to the subject of Bonnecourt, over coffee; he was plainly troubled by the bad impression local gossip might have created about a man he liked. ‘He helped a lot of English to escape into Spain during the war’he said.
‘Airmen?’ Julia asked.
‘Yes, but not only airmen. English civilians living in France too, who missed the bus at all the French ports as they fell to the Germans, one after another; a lot of them came trickling down to Pau, hoping to be safe—but then of course when the Germans occupied the whole of France they were sunk, and had to get out, or try to. Nick, you can remember the story of that funny old English couple that B. rescued, can’t you? I seem to recall that it was rather dramatic.’
‘It was’ Nick said. ‘The man had been in business in Paris for years; when the Germans came he and his wife drove to port after port, but always too late. At last they fetched up at St. Jean de Luz, where a British destroyer was lying off-shore; one of her officers was standing on a sand-castle on the beach, bellowing through a megaphone that the ship would take anyone with a British passport to England—but with one suitcase only. The wretched Smiths, or whatever their name was, couldn’t face that; they had a car-ful of all their most treasured possessions. So they drove on to Tardets, and took rooms, and settled down there, hoping for better times.’
‘Where is Tardets?’ Julia asked.
‘Oh, a good way west of here.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well of course food was terribly short, and everyone collected whatever they could, to keep alive; this old pair were up in the woods one afternoon gathering beech-nuts—full of oil, most nourishing—when they heard a lorry on the road below. They peered out, and it was full of German soldiers in Pickel-Hauben.’
‘Good Heavens!’ Julia exclaimed.
‘Yes. If you want drama, that was it. The poor old things had never bothered to get visas for Spain, and the only place for them was Pau; old Smith came bumbling over, but when he saw the queues, and the faces of the people coming out empty-handed, he passed it up, and decided to try to drag his old wife across the frontier. He’d got quite a lot of French money, so he could afford to hire a guide; but apparently he hit on a bad type.’
‘What do you mean by that, exactly?’ Julia asked, frowning over this story.
‘Oh—well; he’d lived in France long enough only to pay the man half till they were actually on the path leading into Spain, but that Tardets devil was too smart for him. They had to go at night, of course, and it was pitch dark, and teeming with rain; old Smith was holding his brolly up over his wife when the guide stopped and said—‘Alors, now go 200 metres up this slope in front of you, and you come to the path; then turn left. Now my money, or I shoot!’ What is more he grabbed the umbrella, for good measure.’
‘But this is hideous!’ Luzia exclaimed.
‘Oh, well, yes—some of the French are hideous, where money is concerned—let’s face it. Anyhow the old pair struggled up the slope, alone, and sure enough at the top there was a tiny path, and they went along it, to the left; but they were dead beat, and presently they decided to sit down and have some coffee—old Smith had a Thermos in his knapsack. So down they sat, right on the path; nowhere else to sit—cliff above, a steep slope below—anyhow it was running with water, so they weren’t too comfortable.’
‘How ghastly!’ Julia interjected, thinking of the miserable and exhausted old couple sitting in puddles on a mountain-side, in the middle of the night.
‘Oh yes, not at all nice!—but there was worse to come. For safety Smith had stowed some £300 worth of English fivers in the Thermos, between the glass flask and the outer metal cover; most of the touchable capital he’d got left, of what he’d been able to raise and bring from Paris. Well they each had a cup; but their torch was giving out, and somehow or other, in the dark and that cramped space, between them they managed to knock the Thermos over the edge of the path, and heard it clattering away down the slope below.’
‘Good God!’ Colin ejaculated.
‘Yes. Not exactly a cheerful situation’ Nick said. ‘And it was there, sitting in the wet, waiting for daylight in the hope of retrieving the flask and their money, that Bonnecourt came on them on his way back from seeing a couple of British airmen across the frontier into Spain.’
‘What did he do?’ Luzia asked, her fine dark brows knitted over this horrifying story.
‘Everything he could. He was carrying a powerful torch with spare batteries, and first of all he went down the slope and found the Thermos. The extraordinary thing was that the glass hadn’t broken, so the notes weren’t drowned with coffee! Then he gave the soaking old Smiths brandy, and aspirins, and chocolate; and as soon as day began to break he led them down into Spain.’
‘He shall also have been soaked, in the rain all night’ Luzia put in.
‘Oh obviously—but he wasn’t old. He did his best for them with the Spanish authorities, but there wasn’t much he could do; they spent weeks in that camp at Vitoria, till at last our Embassy in Madrid got them out and sent them home to England.’
‘What a story!’ Julia said. ‘Who did you hear it from? M. Bonnecourt?’
‘Not originally—we were hardly born then! Her Ladyship ran into the old pair somewhere in England, a bit later on, and they told her about it; and when we got to know Bonnecourt Nick had the curiosity to get his version. Nick is the one with the good memory’ Dick said cheerfully. ‘But let’s finish this bottling job, and then we’ll go down and rustle the old thing up, and make him take us out to get you some isard, Mrs. Jamieson.’
The bottling finished—the twins were much better at using the machine than Colin—this plan was carried out; but it was Luzia who suggested, in the most natural way in the world, that Colin should go with them to meet this so interesting and merciful person—the young man gave her a grateful glance.
Bonnecourt’s house was on the outskirts of the village on the farther side, above the dam. He was in, and as usual Dick did most of the talking.
‘This gentleman, Monsieur Monro, is the brother of the lady who stays at present in the Stansteds’house. She is so déçue that you never brought her the gigôt d’isard that you promised her the other day.’
While Bonnecourt was regretting, and excusing himself, Colin studied him with interest. Medium height, rather slender, with noticeably long arms—he must have a magnificent reach on rocks; a dark, keen face; probably in the late forties or early fifties, Colin concluded; an educated accent, a certain crispness of speech.
‘Well, we must not keep this so exceptionally beautiful lady’—a sketch of a bow to Colin—‘waiting a moment longer than we can help, after my unfortunate miss the other day. If you two sluggards can be up here tomorrow morning, at six hours precisely, with your rifles, we will see what we can do.’ He opened the window and leaned out. ‘Yes, the wind should be right.’ He turned to Colin. ‘And Monsieur? I know that you make ascensions.’
‘I’d very much like to come, but I’m afraid that I’m no shot with a rifle’ Colin said. ‘Could I just be a spectator?’
‘You can be a porter, and help to carry down the meat!’ Bonnecourt said, with a rather pleasant grin. ‘A demain, then—and please convey my apologies to Madame votre soeur.’
They all mustered at six the next morning at the isard-hunter’s house, and set off. Their route lay first up open slopes overlooking the dam and the pool behind it; then they entered thick woods, passing a small inn; the valley now narrowed to a wooded gorge, beyond which it broadened out again and stretched ahead of them, wide and open, full of grazing merino sheep, with their pearl-coloured fleeces. This valley led them close in under the silver saw-teeth of the ridge, and a pull up a steep slope brought them to a group of shepherds’ cabanes, low wooden structures with rather flat roofs—a bearskin, freshly killed, was pegged out to dry on the door of one of them, to Colin’s amazement. There was no one about, but as they examined the skin a couple of the appallingly savage Pyrenean sheepdogs appeared, looking like cream-coloured wolves—and every bit as savage as wolves; Bonnecourt stopped as if to pick up a stone and yelled ‘Couchez!’—the creatures retreated, snarling. Colin had in fact been warned never to go out without a stick, because of the dogs—but so far he had not encountered any.
They pushed on towards a col on their right, some two hundred feet above the cabanes; just before they reached it Bonnecourt said ‘A plat ventre!’—they lay on their stomachs and wormed their way up, the hunter slightly ahead. He had got out a pair of powerful field-glasses, and from behind a small rock he examined the valley beyond. Yes, there were some isard there, he told his companions, but they would have to manoeuvre a little, to approach them against the wind; sliding down off the skyline he gave his instructions with great precision. Dick and Mr. Monnro, keeping well below the col on this side, were to make their way up to the summit ridge on their left—‘to prevent these creatures from escaping into Spain’; when they were in position on the ridge, up by that big rock tower, he and Nick would start to stalk the animals. ‘You may shoot only when we have shot’he said firmly to Dick, ‘if they should pass close to you.’
Colin and Dick, obediently, kept just below the col, and found a gully up which, by a stiffish scramble, they reached the frontier ridge; they crawled cautiously along this, keeping as far as possible to the Spanish side, till they reached the rock tower. There they lay on the sun-warmed rocks and looked out over France into a valley running westwards, roughly parallel with the Larége shelf, but separated from it by a lower intervening ridge. As soon as their heads appeared Nick and Bonnecourt crossed the col, also crawling; they made a wide détour, and presently disappeared from view. The two young men lit cigarettes, and waited for some time.
‘By the way, Julia—Mrs. Jamieson—is my cousin, not my sister’ Colin said. ‘You might explain that sometime.’
‘Oh, sorry! Still if you’re staying with her like this, it might be just as well to be her brother, especially in Larège!’ Dick Heriot said, with a very amiable grin.
At that moment they heard the crack of a rifle, almost simultaneously followed by a second shot—then came two sharp blasts on a whistle.
‘That’s his signal—we can go down now’ Dick said; he got up and began to climb carefully down the rather loose limestone of the ridge, Colin following. The rock presently gave way to extremely steep grass slopes, and on these Colin admired Dick’s technique: heels in, knees wide apart, and so bent that he was almost squatting on the ground behind him—the only way to negotiate steep grass fast without the risk of breaking an ankle, or pitching forward headlong. As they reached the foot of the ridge Nick suddenly appeared, some three hundred yeards away; they walked over to him.
‘Yes, two’ he said. ‘Old B. let me have the first shot; he can kill them on the wing!—and he got his as well. Did you see the rest of them? There were five.’
‘No, they didn’t come our way,’ Dick replied. ‘I wish they had—I’d have liked Monro to see them.’
Monro would have liked to see running isard too, but he was interested to see a dead one. When they came up to Bonnecourt he had just finished lacing the fine slender legs of the first ibex, with their small pointed feet, together; he slung the animal over the barrel of Dick’s rifle.
‘There—you and Monsieur Monnro can carry that one’he said, and walked off.
‘Why doesn’t he gralloch it? It would weigh much less’ Colin said.
‘They never do, here. You see on steep ground one has to tie them round one’s neck to carry them, and they’re cleaner whole, for that.’
‘This isn’t steep ground’ Colin objected.
‘Well, they just don’t’ Nick said, with finality.
They came up with Bonnecourt some fifty yards further on, again lacing the delicate legs of the second creature together; when he had finished he walked over to a minute stream, washed his hands, and returned to the others. ‘Now, let us eat something’ he said.
By now it was 11.30, and some food was very welcome. Bonnecourt praised Nick’s shot, Nick praised his—‘Yours was moving!’ But soon they were interrupted by two Spanish frontier-guards; drawn by the sound of the shots, they had come down to investigate—they greeted Bonnecourt with friendly warmth.
‘Ah, Señor Coronel! You have had good sport, evidently. But who are these?’
‘Surely you know the Señores Heriot?’ The Spaniards now nodded agreement. ‘And this is a Señor Ingles, who makes a holiday in Larége.’ The guards, delighted with this break in the monotony of their lonely patrol, sat down; Bonnecourt and the Heriots offered them some of their sandwiches, and Colin followed suit—the guards in return proffered their wine-skins, which they carried slung at their backs. Both Bonnecourt and the Heriot boys knew the trick of drinking from a wine-skin: to hold it a little away from the face, and pour the wine from the spout straight into one’s open mouth. Colin had never mastered this art—it is an art—and rather apologetically brought out a collapsible aluminium mug, and drank from that; this greatly amused the Spaniards. But they were intrigued by the mug, and when it was empty they examined it closely, expanding it and pushing it together again. ‘Very intelligent—very convenient’ one said. ‘Can one buy such in France?’
‘This came from England’ Colin told him.
‘Ah, the Señor speaks Spanish. Does he know Spain?’
‘Morocco better’ Colin said prudently.
‘Morocco! Do the Moriscos speak Spanish, then?’
‘Many of them.’
‘Ah. Well, tell them that we shall not give up Ceuta!’
‘You might tell the Caudillo that we shall not give up Gibraltar either’ Dick said laughing.
‘Ah, my Señor, this is another matter’the older guard said earnestly. ‘Gibraltar is Spanish territory.’
‘And Ceuta is Moroccan territory’ Dick replied. ‘The Señor can’t have it both ways.’
Bonnecourt intervened. ‘Assez!’ he said curtly to Dick; he took out a packet of Gauloises cigarettes, and offered it first to the Spaniards, then to the others. Colin, who loathed Gauloises, refused with a polite apology, and pulled out a packet of Players; to his amusement the senior guard leaned across to him, holding out his hand.
‘The Señor Coronel will excuse, but when I have the opportunity to smoke a Playaire, I take it’he said, and suited the action to the word; his companion did likewise, but both tucked the less acceptable Gauloises into their breast pockets. Bonnecourt smiled.
‘And how did the Señor bring in these cigarettes?’ the younger guard asked—though quite amiably.
‘I bought them on the plane to Bordeaux. For travellers, it is permitted to bring in a certain quantity.’
‘You see that you have no chance of impounding the Señor’s cigarettes!’ Bonnecourt said mockingly. ‘Tell me, are you catching many smugglers just now?’
But the Spaniards could take a hand at mockery too.
‘Ah, Señor Coronel, when you are occupied with hunting isard, who is to do the smuggling?’ one asked. The twins shouted with laughter, in which Bonnecourt joined.
Colin was immensely puzzled and interested by all this: that the guards should know Bonnecourt so well, and be on such easy terms with him, although they definitely regarded him as a smuggler. And why did they address him as Colonel? His mind went back to a morning in the office, sitting at a desk with a very senior grey-haired clerk, drinking the usual horrible office tea, and examining rather fragmentary notes from the card-index on various Pyrenean characters. Wasn’t there someone who had been in the French Army?—who was it? And was he for or against the régime? Could this be the same man? Oh, what a nuisance that one always had to destroy one’s notes!—and that his own memory was so fallible. He wondered if he would get anything out of a talk alone with Bonnecourt; he decided to try it on.
When the frontier-guards had gone off, climbing up towards the ridge, the others started homewards, Dick and Colin carrying one isard slung from a rifle, Nick and Bonnecourt the other. They did not return via the cabanes, but took an easy lower col which led over onto the slopes above Larége, below the woods where the inn stood. Further down on these slopes, near the village, were patches of potatoes, many of them being steadily and audibly destroyed by Colorado beetles; Colin was as appalled as Julia had been in the Post Office garden.
Back at his house, Bonnecourt turned to active and deft butchering—a hind-quarter of isard was soon handed to the twins—‘pour Madame votre mère. Your chef can skin this.’ Another haunch he skinned himself, rapidly and skilfully. ‘At last, here is the promised gigot for Madame votre soeur’he said to Colin—‘I know she has no chef!’ While Dick and Nick were carrying their piece of meat out to the car, Colin took the opportunity of asking Bonnecourt if he would not come up and have a drink with him at Barraterre’s?
‘Monsieur Monnro, let us dispose of les jumeaux, and then have a little glass quietly together, here; then we can talk peaceably. Un petit moment—Lady ‘Eriott will want the liver and the kidneys.’ He quickly produced these from the insides of one animal, and stowed them in a polythene bag, which he handed to the twins when they returned to say Goodbye—‘I know that Milord likes kidneys.’
‘And how!’ Dick said. They also thanked their host, and took themselves off.
Bonnecourt, again apologising for the delay, hung up both carcases inside a neat wire-meshed game-larder, standing in a shaded space on the north side of the house, and stowed the offals in it on dishes; then he washel his hands at an outside tap, above which a towel hung from a nail, and ushered his guest into the sitting-room, where he produced Vermouth and glasses. Over their drinks Colin opened, rather tentatively, by saying that he had learned from the Heriots how much Bonnecourt had done for English refugees and escapees during the last War—his host agreed, though deprecatingly and very nicely. ‘Did the boys also tell you that I smuggle?’ he asked, cheerfully.
‘No—but those jolly Spanish guards seemed to think that you do.’
‘Ah, they like their joke!’ Bonnecourt said.
‘Why did they call you Colonel?’ Colin asked, still thinking of his session with the grey-haired clerk and the card-index in the office in London.
‘I used to be in the Army—I was in Indo-China.’ He praised de Lattre de Tassigny warmly, and then on a long sigh—‘So much courage, and so much blood, poured out in vain!’
Colin expressed suitable sympathy. ‘I expect many French officers feel that about Algeria too,’ he added. His host looked at him rather keenly.
‘Assuredly! Another sell-out! But I was not in Algeria—I was invalided out of Indo-China with dysentery after Dien Bien Phu, and had to leave the Army altogether.’
Colin wondered privately whether the Heriot boys knew about the Indo-China or not—Bonnecourt’s attitude would fit in with the rumours of his helping the O.A.S. But he switched from a possibly awkward subject to mention the story of the old Smiths—on this Bonnecourt opened up. ‘Miraculous, that the glass in this Thermos did not break’ he said at the end. ‘It would have been terrible for the poor old man to lose all his money.’
When Colin got home he found Julia sitting out by the spring. ‘Well, I’ve brought your gigôt d’isard’ he said; ‘I gave it to Luzia.’
‘She mustn’t put it in the frig’ Julia said, making to rise from her chair.
‘She hasn’t. She’s pinning it up in some muslin—one of her petticoats, I imagine!—and she’s going to hang it behind the wine-table, against the north wall.’
Julia sat back again. ‘What a splendid creature that is!’ she said. ‘Now, tell me how your day went.’
Colin told her in some detail. The points Julia at once fastened on were the guards’ addressing Bonnecourt as a ‘Coronel’, and his having been in Indo-China. ‘Of course that Army background points to his helping the O.A.S.’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Still, it’s all pretty vague’ her cousin replied.
‘All pointers—you can’t have too many. What’s he like?’
‘A terribly nice man, I would say.
She reflected. ‘What’s your next move?’
‘I think I’d better get back fairly soon to Pamplona, and check up with the lads there on B. and his goings-on. But I want at least one more day here—I ought to look at the smugglers’ paths west of this; they’ re nearer to Lacq. I’ve covered most of the rest, and made notes. I’d better do that last stretch before I leave.’
As usual he demanded sandwiches overnight from Luzia, and well before 6 a.m. next day he set out. He took the path behind the house up past the spot where one emptied la poubelle, and followed it on, up and round the shoulder of the hill, where it passed through a beech-wood; beyond, another valley opened out on his left—he walked through it, and struck up to the frontier ridge. A tiny, barely discernible path descended from this; Colin followed it till he could look down on the opposite side, where, still barely visible, it led into Spain. He made a note of the path, and then scanned the further slope; there his eye was caught by two figures climbing up on the Spanish side, over steepish rocks, only some 300 yards away—they had no rope, and seemed to be making rather heavy weather of the rocks, especially the second man, who looked older than the leader. Colin watched them till a projecting bluff cut off his view; he climbed along the ridge in their direction—it might be interesting to learn who and what they were. One of the innumerable limestone towers common in that part of the Pyrenees presently blocked his passage along the ridge; he scrambled down on the French side to circumvent it—the rocks were quite steep and rather loose, from a climber’s point of view a nasty place.
Just as he regained the ridge the two men reappeared, and paused on the crest; then they began trying to make their way down into France; but they too had those unpleasant rocks to negotiate. Colin looked about for a place from which he could watch them, himself unseen; a boulder on the ridge a few yards ahead seemed to offer a suitable spot, and he moved carefully towards it. But in so doing he dislodged a loose slab, which fell with an immense clatter; he just saved himself from falling, and reached the boulder—but as he did so he heard a loud cry, and more noise of falling stones. Panting a little, he peered out to see what had happened. The older man had fallen, and was lying at the foot of the rocks a hundred feet below; his companion was working his way down to him, calling out in French, ‘Jean, have you hurt yourself?’
Colin climbed down too—a good deal faster and more skilfully. In fact the older man had hurt himself considerably; he was bleeding profusely from a scalp-wound, and averred that he had broken his leg. Colin, when alone in the mountains, always carried a small First-Aid case, and quickly strapped up the headwound with plaster—then he asked in French where they were making for?
‘Now, to the nearest place where we can find a Doctor’ the younger man said, vexedly. ‘Grand Dieu, that this should have to happen at this moment! Does Monsieur know this region, and where we can obtain medical assistance?’
Colin, much struck by the fact of two Frenchmen climbing up out of Spain into France, wanted most of all to find out where they were going, and whether indeed they knew where they were? He replied, carefully, that he didn’t know the district very well— he was just there en vacances. Had Monsieur perhaps a map? The younger man drew out a large-scale map; Colin peered at it over his shoulder. Yes—faint pencil-dots indicated the path by which he himself had gone up to the ridge, which they must somehow have missed on the Spanish side; but the dots led down, not to Larége but to a spot on the Grandpont road close to Labielle, where there was a tiny pencilled X. H’ m—that was where they were to have met whoever they had come to meet. Could it be Bonnecourt, he wondered? He thought there were figures beside the X, but they were too faint to read. He put his finger on the name Larége.
‘Somehow we must get him there—it is the nearest place, and I have a car. Then we can find a Doctor, and drive him down.’
‘But how is he to get to Larége?’ the young man asked wretchedly. ‘He cannot walk!’ He looked at his watch. ‘Mon Dieu, it is so late already.’
‘Let us see if we cannot get him along between us’ Colin suggested. They took the injured man under the elbows, and tried to support him; but he proved limp and inert, and cried out with pain if he set his injured leg to the ground.
‘This is no good’ Colin exclaimed. ‘You stay with him, and I’ ll go down to the village and try to get a stretcher, and some help.’
‘You could not go to Labielle?’
‘Why? It’s miles further away.’
‘We—have friends there’ the younger man said, with slight hesitation.
‘Well we’ll find them later, when we’ve got him into the car’ Colin said briefly, and hurried away.
On his way back to Larége Colin decided that even at the cost of some delay he had better go down to Bonnecourt’s, as a check—if the hunter was out he might conceivably be the ‘friends’ the two Frenchmen intended to meet at Labielle. He also speculated as to whom he could rope in to help to carry the Frenchman down?—he was thickset, and heavy. And what in?—he doubted whether Larége boasted such a thing as a stretcher. On reaching the house he ran in to ask Julia to look out a strong blanket; at a pinch one could carry a man in that.
Julia was lying on the sofa in the big room; Colin hurriedly explained the situation. ‘Find an old one—we shall have to cut holes in the corners to get a grip.’
‘What a mercy Dick’s here’ Julia said, getting up.
‘Is he? Where?’
‘He was going to take Luzia down to the dam for a swim.’
‘Good—I’ll go and find him. Get that blanket.’
Striding on through the hot cobbled streets of the village Colin thought how well all this fitted in: Dick to help carry the patient, and a perfect excuse to call at Bonnecourt’s house, which was not far from the dam. He went to the house first—a fair, plainish woman, not very young, opened the door to him. No, Monsieur was out for the day. With la voiture? Colin asked. ‘Mais oui.’
So he wasn’t after isard, Colin thought—it might well be as he had suspected. He went a little further along the path, till he could see the dam and the pool behind it—there was no one there. He walked back to the square and turned in at Barraterre’s to make his enquiries—Mme. Barraterre was all interest. Colin asked first for the nearest Doctor?
‘Dr. Fourget, at Labielle. Is it pour Madame Jimmison?—les douleurs commencent?’
‘No!’ Colin said irritably. ‘It is a man who has fallen in the mountains, and injured himself. We need a brancard to bring him down.’
‘But in this case one must alerter the gendarmerie; they have a Rescue Service—my sons are volunteers in it! Only it is rather expensive—they alert four communes and send sixty men.’ She looked eagerly towards the telephone in the narrow hall. Colin headed her off, appalled.
‘A little moment, Madame! There is no need for sixty men, or for the gendarmerie!—all I need is the brancard, and to warn the Doctor.’
‘Ah oui, oui, for the injections!—le tétanus!’ This surprised Colin—he did not realise how intensely aware of the danger of tetanus French country-people are. In France it is not a matter of infection by the odd shaving-brush from China; it is a daily menace. But Mme. Barraterre was equally well-informed about the rules concerning accidents.
‘Monsieur must absolutely inform the gendarmerie—they have to make le constat in the case of any accident.’
‘Of course I shall do this’ Colin said. ‘But for the moment the essential is to bring le blessé down, and for that I require the stretcher. Where is the gendarmerie post?’
‘Monsieur, here in Larège we have none. Only at Labielle.’ Again she looked at the telephone. Colin thanked her, and left. They would just have to manage with the blanket. But where on earth was Dick Heriot? He had seen his car at the turn. And what a nuisance this constat with the police was likely to be—probably messing up his own enquiries. He walked homewards feeling vexed and frustrated.
By now poor Colin was not only hot. but extremely thirsty; and instead of going into the house he went on to the shed, to get an ice-cold drink from the spout, and sluice his face and hands in the trough. But he never did either. On the lawn immediately below him he caught sight, between the silvery trunks of the trees by the spring, of Luzia in a deckchair, looking cool and beautiful, with a slightly mocking expression; Dick Heriot was kneeling on the grass beside her, holding her hands, and apparently making a declaration. Irritated and disconcerted, still unwashed and still thirsty, he went back and into the house.
‘Did you find him?’ Julia asked—she was again on the sofa, stitching away at a rough old Army blanket.
‘Not exactly—I mean they weren’t at the dam. They’re out by the spring; Dick seems to be proposing to Luzia.’
‘Well let him stop proposing’ Julia said with the utmost calmness, ‘and go up with you and get this wretched man down.’
‘It’s a bit embarrassing to interrupt them.’
‘Oh nonsense, Colin.’ She hoisted herself off the sofa, put her head out of the open window, and called—‘Dick! Come at once! I want you.’ She handed the blanket to Colin. ‘I’ve cut slits in all four corners, and stitched down the edges, folded over. It should hold.’
Dick came in through the big doorway, alone.
‘Yes, Mrs. Jamieson?’ he asked.
‘There’s been an accident. I think you’d better go up with Colin and help to bring the casualty down. Can you?’
‘Yes of course—if someone could ring up Her Ladyship and say I may be a bit late. She worries.’
‘We can see to that. Where’s Luzia?’
‘Here’ the girl said, also walking in at the door.
‘Oh, good. All right—you two breeze off’ Julia said to the two men. ‘Want a drink first?’
‘Just water’ Colin said, filling a tumbler from the earthenware jug, and gulping down a great draught. ‘And ring that Doctor too.’ He had been examining the blanket. ‘I think that will hold’ he said. ‘Come on, Dick.’
When they had gone Julia took a writing-pad from the table by the sofa, and wrote two messages in French—one to Lady Heriot, whose number she knew, to say that Dick was helping to bring down a climber who had fallen and was injured, and might therefore be delayed. ‘Send that as a telegram’ she said, tearing off the top sheet—‘Save time.’ She wrote again. ‘Telephone this one—it’s to Dr. Fourget, at Labielle. You can look out his number.’ (The thoughtful Madame Monnier had determinedly given cette pauvre Mme. Jimmison the local Doctor’s name.) ‘If you happen to catch him, it would be handy to know how soon he can come up.’
Luzia read through the messages.
‘I do this’ she said, and went out.