Left to Die
“What little time you have over, you will employ in wondering why you came to West Africa…”
Mary Kingsley
Halfway up a steep, rocky incline, well hidden within a thick circle of trees, a large flat area had been leveled to load railway cars. On it was a length of track that ran for several hundred feet and then dropped off abruptly into the river. Meg saw all this through the front windshield in the bright moonlight after the dark of the forest. But she hurriedly sank down flat, again, when the engine stopped.
She felt it was the better part of wisdom to pretend to be in the same state as Eddie Campbell than try to oppose three men who could each outmatch her in size and strength. In a few moments, the back doors opened with a rusty screech, but instead of being hauled out like so many sacks of grain, a quarrel ensued.
“You are the one to carry him,” said a voice. “He is not your headman.”
“I will not bring his angry ghost into my house. Carry him, yourselves!”
“As long as we do not spill his blood,” a third voice reasoned. “He will die by and by and be angry at no one but himself. It is the only way.”
“I tell you he will know it was us! We cannot touch him,” the first voice said.
“Why don’t we let him fall into one of the railcars?” replied the voice of reason. “And then push it into the loading shack. The lady with him.”
“I say, we better throw him into the eastern shaft with the others,” complained the outsider. “We are running out of time!”
“No – no! If he hits his head on a rock, then we will have spilt his blood! He will come after all of us!”
“Back the van up to the railcar, then. But hurry, or there will be no time to get far enough away after the explosions.”
Meg felt one wave of panic after another at each suggestion, but a great calm enveloped her, and she had the most comforting assurance that everything would be all right. Whether this meant that she would soon be seeing either Tom, or the Lord, Himself, she didn’t know. The miracle was that she was suddenly no longer afraid, and her mind became perfectly clear.
The engine roared to life again, and if the distance had been any more than twenty yards, they would have flown out on impact when the back of the van plowed into the nearest railcar.
“Stop! Stop, you devil!” The passenger door was flung open, and the voice of reason raised an octave higher as he jumped out. “You are an ostrich and an orphan child in one!” He came around to the back and hollered over the top of the two silent forms toward the driver in the front seat. “This van belong to my mother-in-law! She will have my head in a pot if it gets bust!”
“Tell me where to back…”
“You are backed, you monkey-beard!”
“Stop shouting and move them!” It was the outsider’s voice. “Before you raise every ghost in these holes! I am going to set the explosions.”
Meg suddenly felt herself lifted and fairly tossed into the bottom of the little steel car. It was everything she could do to keep from yelping when her shoulder came down hard on an unyielding bottom, and then again, when the entire weight of Eddie Campbell landed on top of her, having been shoved out the back by means of some object, rather than lifted. After that, it took both men to push the car along the rusty track and then veer off on the short spur that led to the shack. There was a pause while the corrugated doors were flung open, and then they proceeded a few more feet into the dark of a building that smelled deserted, damp, and rotten.
The doors quickly slammed shut, again. Meg heard another car being pushed up against them from the other side, and then footsteps hurrying away. She could hardly breathe, and her left ribs felt about to cave in where the two cameras in her string bag were wedged under her side.
“Sorry, mama.” Eddie Campbell carefully raised himself off of her. “But if I had said one word to those fools, they would have run off before we knew where the professor was.”
“I thought you were drugged!” Meg felt herself quickly lifted out of the car and saw the flash of a sharp knife before he began to cut the rope from her wrists and ankles.
“It was the only way to get here so quick with so little time. As soon as they leave, we will find the eastern shaft.”
“But how will we get out of here, when…”
A loud thunderous explosion rumbled under their feet and fairly made her ears ring. Before it even died away there was another one.
“Come!” Eddie pulled her toward the back of the building where there was a regular-sized door that opened onto the loading area. It was locked, but only from the inside, and in a moment, they were standing in bright moonlight, again.
“What if they see us?” Meg worried. She didn’t think one man with a knife could hold out against three, no matter how afraid of him they were.
“They are all cowards. You see? The van is leaving, already.”
“Oh, I pray we’re not too late!”
“The professor is a tough old man. It would take more than a week to starve him. Gilbert Minelli? I might leave in for another week. He is a worse fool than the rest of them.” He started toward the hillside with Meg following close behind. “Unless they are dead already from the explosions.”
Meg stopped in her tracks. “Oh, dear Lord!” There was a great billow of dust pouring out of the nearby entrance.
“Don’t worry, that is not the eastern shaft. Because of cave-ins, there are always other tunnels to get in and out of the mines. We only have to find the right one.”
The van was gone. But instead of silence, she suddenly became aware of the veritable racket of night birds and insect noises. Even more so than she had heard during the day. Meg smacked at a biting mosquito against her neck and then another. She was about to pull the netting down from the inside brim of her hat when she suddenly realized her hat was gone. And so were her glasses. Lost in the tumult between the town and the van somewhere. She heard a slithering sound in the underbrush they were tramping through, and breathed a silent prayer of thanks that she had not taken off her high leather boots when she wanted to.
Ten minutes later, they came to a small entrance, no larger than three feet square, which was slanted into the hillside.
“Here is an opening,” said Eddie, “and we are east.” He knelt down and stuck his head inside. “Professor!” he shouted, but even his strong voice seemed to disappear into the blackness. “You killed? Where are you man? Hey, hey, this is Eddie!”
“Pretty…much…” Came a very faint, but familiar reply that made Meg’s heart leap (he was alive!). “Tied tight down here…part of the roof…it’s caving in!”
“I’ll come get you.”
“Careful, big drop off, now, from the explosions. At least fifteen feet. You’ll need a…a rope, or something.”
Meg fished around in her bag and came up with a small flashlight. She handed it to Eddie, and he peered into the dark cavern.
“More like twenty-five,” he muttered.
“Maybe we could put the ends of the ropes we were tied with together,” Meg suggested. “Then you could lower me down, and…”
“Lower you down, what are you thinking? I can’t drop you into that black place!”
“It’s the logical thing.” She reasoned. “You’re the only one strong enough to haul us all up, again.”
“You are a bossy mama! Now, let me think.”
“Meanwhile you’re wasting time. Suppose the whole place caves in down there?”
“I will get a bush rope.” He handed her flashlight back and started off, only to turn abruptly around again, and point at her. “You stay there. Do nothing until I get back.”
“What on earth could I possibly…”
“Do nothing.”
When he disappeared, Meg sat down on a large rock close to the entrance and put her flashlight away. She thought of yelling some encouraging words down to the professor, but considering that he probably believed she had been involved in all this from the beginning, she decided to wait until they were face to face to explain things.
Then she thought how she was quite alone in a bit of West African forest where not a soul in the world, other than Eddie Campbell, knew where she was or how to find her. But the professor was alive! And there had been no plane crash. Tom wouldn’t appreciate her coming all this way without him, but she felt sure he would understand after he got over it. With nearly twenty goldmines in the vicinity, and the roof caving in, his father could have been dead before help finally arrived.
The very thought of the professor trapped in such a place and Tom thinking he was safe and waiting for him somewhere else! What if she hadn’t run into Vidalia? What if she hadn’t come here at all? Who knew how long it would take Tom to find out and get help from somewhere? Then a comforting thought occurred to her. It was a Scripture she had read from one of her favorite Psalms that said, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.”
Which suddenly took on a whole new meaning even though she had seen it countless times. It also meant that no matter how lost or tangled up a person became, the Lord was quite capable of bringing order to their chaos. Even when they were outnumbered. And even here on the Dark Continent, where evil seemed to be a way of life for so many. Meg couldn’t imagine people “collecting foolish tourists” by way of a business. Collecting them for what? And how did they get away with it?
Maybe they were holding people for ransom. Those two boys had been overly eager for her to write down the names of her family members, but it seemed to her that such a scheme couldn’t go on long without someone official coming to investigate. Of course, if it always turned out as if the “foolish tourists had killed themselves” through some unfortunate accident or other...
All at once, everything grew deathly silent.
Which seemed odd since only moments before there had been so much animal racket going on. Then, Meg felt the ground quiver like jelly beneath her.
“What on earth?” She scarcely had time to mutter, before the rock she was sitting on gave a violent jolt and began to plummet on a long sliding decline into the eastern shaft.
Like a wave frozen in mid-advance, the rock and debris beneath her that she had ridden down came to an abrupt halt somewhere in the dark interior of the shaft. What had happened? Was it a cave-in? She got gingerly to her feet, heard the edge of her skirt tear loose from two rocks it was caught between, and felt a warm trickle coming from one knee. Of all things! But nothing was broken. She groped for the flashlight in her bag, again, and clicked it on. The better part of the ceiling was still intact, but she was now at the bottom of the entrance instead of the top. Not twenty-five feet down anymore, but still too far to climb out.
“Professor Anderson?” She swung the beam all around her until it illuminated two figures several yards farther down. They were slumped against a wooden brace that had partially toppled and was now precariously holding up the last portion of ceiling. A fine stream of dirt poured over the top of them from above, like an hourglass with the time running out. But even covered in dirt, she recognized the same man she had seen sitting with the professor at the airport.
“We’re dead,” said Gilbert. “I can see some dame floating about ten feet up.”
The professor lifted a dust-covered head and blinked into the beam of Meg’s flashlight. “Why it’s…Meg, is that you? Why, blast it all, Gilbert!” He thumped the man with an angry foot. “You said she robbed me, and now here she is, just in the nick of time!”
There was a howl of pain and Gilbert swore profoundly and moaned. “Right in my busted leg, you old…”
“Would I be here if I robbed you?” Meg interrupted the heated exchange as she picked her way gingerly down over the rubble toward them. “I’ve been worried sick over all this!”
“Figured it out from the deed, did you? I knew you were the kind I could count on! Not like some nincompoops who can’t even do what they’re paid for!”
“So, I dipped into the coffers and didn’t want to get canned,” Gilbert complained. “I told you it was supposed to be a staged kidnapping. Rescue the old man and come out the hero. Only they tricked me. Sent me off on some wild goose chase looking for her, so they could do the real thing to you. Had to do a pretty piece of professional work to find you, again, too!”
“You’re a nincompoop and you’re fired!”
“You can argue about it later,” said Meg. “I’ve got to figure out how to get these ropes undone before the whole roof comes down on us.”
“Where’s Eddie?” asked the professor.
“He went for a bush rope. He’s got a knife with him, but he might not get back in time to use it.” She poked tentatively at the giant knot at his wrists beneath the beam of light. “Tight as a piano wire. What have you been doing, pulling it tighter?”
“Prisoner’s got a right to escape.” He gave a cough as another puff of dust filtered down on top of him. “Worst timing in the world for an earthquake.”
“Is that what that was? I thought it was a cave-in.”
“If it was a cave-in, we’d be dead. Does anyone else know we’re here?”
“The police are looking through all the mines, right now, trying to find you. But Tom thought you were at Little De Ambe, so he went there.”
“Blast! Don’t you have anything in that bag you can cut with?”
“I’ve got a knife in my left boot,” said Gilbert, “only it’s buried under about two feet of rock.”
Meg turned the light onto him. He was covered in enough dust to resemble a gray ghost with thick curly hair, but there was no mistaking the gleaming gold chain at his open collar. She gasped.
“Yeah, yeah,” he replied to her accusing glare. “There’s a sucker born every minute. But would I be here if I followed through with it?”
“I don’t know. Here, hold this.” Meg stuck the end of her flashlight in his mouth and began clearing away the rocks on top of his leg.
“Owww!” The light clattered onto the ground and rolled several yards away. “It’s busted! Did you hear me say it was busted? You got no sympathy?”
“Not much for nincompoops.” Meg moved off to pick the light up, again.
“She’s the daughter I’ve always wanted…” boasted the professor. “A chip off the old block!”
“She’s as loony as you are,” said Gilbert. “…and if she wrenches my leg, again, I’m gonna sue!”
“Which any judge would declare irrelevant when you are on trial for kidnapping.” Meg suddenly stepped on something soft and yielding and turned the flashlight onto her foot to see what it was. Red and white material of some kind, but in this light, and without her glasses, she couldn’t quite make it out. She bent closer. Polka dots. Huge red and white polka dots. And sticking out from beneath that…
A woman’s legs.