OCR Text |
Show i THE RICH COUNTY REAPER. RANDOLPH, UTAH With Ernie Pyle CHAPTER I The giant moths of Kokee those damp black ghosts and the smell of sour honey, which were so trivial as facts but so vital to Zorie Coreys fears, were among the things that made it hard for her to put a proper valuation on the events themselves. There were moments of terror which, when she awoke in the night, she could now contemplate with amused detachment. And there were moments of lesser danger which, even in retrospect, could bring a scream into her throat. Perhaps Paul Duncan could have explained all of it, in his clever, analytical way. Some of it he did try to explain, because, in his jealous heart, he adored her. And some of it was better left unexplained and even unremembered. It might have hastened her recovery if she could have wiped from her memory when she that night in fell down and down through endless blackness, with that soft, terrifying whisper in her ears mid-Pacif- ic Ah-na- Ah-na- h! sor Bowdoin J. Folsome was head of the English Department. Zorie Corsecretary, and ey was his half-tim-e his notion of the hours that a halftime secretary should keep was from noon sharp until she slid from her chair with exhaustion. The half-da- y was supposed to end at five, but she y nine often worked until sometimes midnight. She expertly estimated that the work he had piled on her desk would keep her occupied until seven-thirtAfter that she must deliver his wifes invitations. There would be about thirty of them and the addresses would be scattered all over six-thirt- y. town. And she had a date tonight with Paul Duncan. Paul did not like to be kept waiting. Next to cleanliness, with Paul, came punctuality. She gave herself the brief luxury of contemplating, in a private archive of her mind, her fiances lean, n g face, his clear his slender eyes, strong, gray-gree- good-lookin- h! And she could have well forgotten, dawn when too, the jasmine-scente- d she stood beside a stunted tree three thousand feet above the green and purple depths of the tropical canyon with an automatic pistol kicking in her hand, although it would always seem that it had happened not to her but to an unbelievable girl who had stepped out of her just long enough to attempt murder. Yet all of it fitted into the one bright romantic pattern of intrigue and adventure which she would al- ways cherish, even unimportant trifles the quarreling of the minah birds just at dusk and again just at dawn; the annoying habit Grandfather Duncan had of saying, You understand hm? and the metallic luster of moonlight on palm fronds the gleam leaping in the trade-winin Pierre Savoyards eyes whenever he ate meat; and the pride that Amber, the t girl from Martinique, took in herself; and the strange urbanity of the man who called himself Winthrop Lanning. Her memory of the rest of that ordeal was vague. But she was never vague about Stephen Decatur Duncan, with his languid manner, his mocking blue eyes and his treachery. Probing about in her mind on these sleepless nights, in a blacked-ou- t room on an island at war, she saw herself, on that dismal afternoon in early December, in a drowsy little university town, sitting at her desk and wishing, among other things, that she was not so meek. She was privately very certain that her wishing had started it and that every step she took that day was an unerring step in the direction of her destiny. From her. typewriter desk, in the English Department, Zorie Corey could look out across the small campus and over some of the rooftops of this town in which she had grown up and of which she was now, she told herself, a helpless victim. She had just uttered the fraudulent wish so often voiced by youth when it is overcome by a sense of frustration she wished shed never been born. She then uttered three wishes, all related, in a row. She wished she wasnt so meek. She wished she had courage. She wished shed had the gumption to tell the wife of her distinguished employer to jump in the river. My dear Miss Corey, Mrs. in her gushing way, had said over the telephone a few minutes d; Fol-som- e, would you mind terripreviously, bly distributing the invitations for my tea next week? They really should go out tonight and I think its so much nicer having them delivered by hand, dont you? And Professor says youre so dependable. So will you drop around for them when youre through? Id love to, Mrs. Fclsome, Zorie Corey had said in her melodious young voice, instead of any number of appropriate things she might have said. She might have mentioned that she didnt possess a car; that it was going to rain; that she was terribly rushed. She might have suggested that Mrs. Folsome neatly affix a stamp in the upper right-han- d corner of each of the envelopes and drop them in one of the green receptacles that an government has placed at numerous street corners for the convenience of its citizens. Why, Zorie Corey rebelliously muttered, dont you deliver them two-ce- nt all-seei- with your own hand, you old tightwad? Zorie Corey wished she was a war nurse. Then she wished she lived in California. But anywhere would do. Anywhere byt Elleryton. Professor says youre so dependable. And well he might! Profes Plant had glowed brightly for in the glare from the moment a surrounded the which floodlights buildings one of the measures being taken to discourage saboteurs and this glow had let the curving surfaces of the Siamese Buddha catch and momentarily hold a ghostly gleam. Even his eyes seemed to glimmer. I wish . . . Zorie Corey began impetuously, and hesitated. Then she made her wish. She wished she could be whisked to a leisurely land n of palms and seas, of flowers with intoxicating strange scents, of birds that left bright flames in their wake, and of delightful people too gallant to take advantage of her meekness. She next wished that Paul Duncan was there with her. Then she wished that she would lose her meekness. That made a total of three wishes, and three wishes were, according to tradition, the correct number. There should be, of course, some sort of ritual. She bent down quickjungle ly and kissed the cast-iro- n Buddha three times on the brow, one kiss for each wish. He tasted dusty and rusty. She stepped back and gazed somewhat defiantly at the Buddha, who no longer glowed, but sat there in the jungle of a fusty old English professors desk, a dark lump in the darkness, as if, in glowing once, he had spent his magic force and would never glow again. Zorie waited and a curious tingling went along her spine. Nothing noteworthy happened. Zorie Corey did not find herself speeding through the night on a Persian rug, nor did she feel one degree less meek. The telephone in her cubicle began to ring. She ran down the hall with her heart racing out of all proportion to the amount of exercise she was giving it. As she ran, she pictured the man who was calling her, and the man was, curiously enough, not Paul Duncan. He was a total stranger. He was tall, bronzed and with merry eyes and curly hair and a big easy smile and a lazy, romantic way about him. He would say to her in a deep, resonant, cheery voice: Miss Corey? I have just been authorized to offer you an opportunity to leave Elleryton at once and take a very interesting journey. But the voice that responded to her breathless hello was neither deep, resonant, nor cheery. My dear, it said, with just a hint of severity, I thought youd be over for these invitations ages ago. Had you forgotten? No, I hadnt forgotten, Zorie answered in her melodiously meek voice. Im just leaving. It was an unseasonal December night, rainy and warm the kind of night that might be transformed by a sudden north wind into a glitter d of trees and telephone wires. As she started along the campus, with her head bowed, as if in shame, against the drizzle, she indulged in still another wish. She wished she had had the courage to ask her Aunt Hannah for her coupe for a couple of hours. Zorie went up on the wide porch of the big old fashioned gray house where the Folsomes lived. A colored maid answered the doorbell and brought Zorie the stack of invitations in a cellophane wrapper. Zorie was on the point of asking her if she could borrow an umbrella, but the door was quickly closed, and she decided against pressing the button again, for the maid had looked cross. She went down the steps and into the rain. Less than one hundred feet from the Folsomes front porch, on the corner, was a telephone pole to which was affixed a street light. The street light clearly illuminated two objects, a mailbox and a large trash basket on the side of which was a stencilled sign. Zorie stopped. Two temptations were tugging at her. The first was to buy thirty two-cestamps and mail the invitations. The other temptation appealed strongly to the renegade in her, but it was as spurious as her wish that shed never been born. Thinking of the malicious gossip that flew around at these faculty teas, she gazed at the sign on the trash basket. KEEP YOUR TOWN CLEAN Body jade-gree- ed As she looked at the wishing Bud- dha a curious thing happened. began to glow. It hands. She loved Pauls hands. They were clever and nervous and yet they were very masculine. Paul had a brilliant mind, and his understanding of human foibles, his amusing way of pricking the bubbles of vanity and conceit and hypocrisy was a source of delight to Zorie. Paul was an instructor of psychology. And he was much too good for this small midwestern university. She would, she decided, knock off at five-thirt- y. At six, she was still typing in her fast, efficient way. At she called Pauls boarding-housHe wasnt home. The voice that answered didnt know when he would six-thirt- y, e. return. At seven, Zorie called again. Paul, she was told, had dined out. He was probably in the library doing research on his dissertation. At seven-twenty-eig- she finished the last of her typing and laid her afternoons production, in neat piles, on Professor Folsomes desk. She would be late for her date with Paul, and he would tell her again that the trait he admired most in the wives of the men he knew was punctuality. One of the troubles with being meek, of always saying yes and never no to a request, Zorie reflected, is that youre always getting yourself into hot water. She paused and looked about the gloomy office, with its littered desk, its overflowing wastebasket, the pamphlets and catalogs and books scattered and stacked about all so typical of Professor Folsomes untidiness. At the back of the desk, a confusion of books, memoranda, pens, pencils, and bottles and pots of ink of various colors, was presided over Buddha about by a gilded cast-iro- n eight inches high. Zorie Corey was a sensible girl and she took no stock in heathen idols or any of the nonsense you hear about them, but as she looked at the wishing Buddha, a curious thing happened. It began to glow. The explanation of this phenomenon was prosaic and simple, but Zorie wasnt instantly aware of that. The glow was greenish and ghostly and it seemed to come on as if the jungle Buddha were trying to call her attention to himself and his reputation. What had happened was that the shifting clouds above the Fenwick ice-cla- nt USE THIS! How Id love to! she murmured. Across the street was a taxicab with the meter ticking. She was too preoccupied to notice it. Yet she would remember every other detail of that night, of that moment: the sound of it, the look of it, the smell of it, the feel of it; all the little things that make a great moment so real in afterthought the rattle of the rain on the tree. (TO BE CONTINUED) ' at the Front Brave Medics Carry On Under Heavy Nazi Shelling i Are Hit , Ernie While Hundreds Has Charmed Life and Escapes By Ernie Pyle ON THE WESTERN FRONT. The afternoon was tense, and full of caution and dire little I was wandering up a dirt lane where the infantrymen were squatting alongside in a ditch, waiting their turn to advance. They close to the front. always squat like that when theyre $ might-have-bee- ns. German shells started one I had just left had been hit us. I jumped into a around banging while I was on the way. ditch between a couple of soldiers g A solid shell and squatted. Shells were clipa window had gone through right ping the hedgeand a man I knew had his tops right over cut off. That evening the leg our heads and other officers took the big steel crashing into the slug over to the hospital so he next pasture. would have a souvenir. Then suddenly one exploded, not When I got to another battalion with a crash, but with a ring "as command post, later in the day, though'" youd they were just ready to move. A serd geant had been forward about half struck a bell. The a mile in a jeep and picked out a debris of burned farmhouse. He said it was the cleanErnie Pyle wadding and dirt est, nicest one he had been in for a came showering down over us. My long time. So we piled into several jeeps and head rang, and my right ear drove up there. It had been only couldnt hear anything. The shell had struck behind us, about 20 minutes since the sergeant 20 feet away. We had been saved had left. But when we got to the by the earthen bank of the hedge- new house, it wasnt there. A shell had hit it in the last 20 row. It was the next day before my minutes and set it afire, and it had ear returned to normal. A minute later a soldier crouch- burned to the ground. So we drove ing next in line, a couple of feet up the road a little farther and away, turned to me and asked, picked out another one. We had been there about half an hour when Are you a war correspondent? I said I was, and he said, I want a shell struck in an orchard 50 yards And he in front of us. to shake your hand. In a few minutes our litter bearreached around the bush and we ers came past, carrying a captain. shook hands. Thats all either of us said. It He was the surgeon of our adjoindidnt occur to me until later that ing battalion, and he had been lookit was a sort of unusual experience. ing in the orchard for a likely place And I was so addled by the close to move his first-ai- d station. A shell to down I hit beside him. that put explosions forgot right his name. Thats the way war is on an afternoon that is tense and full of A few minutes later a friend for some of us, and of mine, Lieut. Col. Oma Bates awful realities for others. of Gloster, Miss., came past and It just depends on what your numsaid he was hunting our new ber is. I dont believe in that numbattalion command post. It was ber business at all, but in war you sort of let your belief hover around supposed to be in a farmhouse about a hundred yards from os, it, for its about all you have left. so I got up and went with him. We couldnt find it at first. We One afternoon I went with our lost about five minutes, walking wounded battalion medics to around in orchards looking for , men who had been pick up back to carried it. That was a blessed five minsome shattered houses just behind utes. For when we got within our lines, and to gather some others 90 yards of the house it got a diright off the battlefield. rect shell hit which killed one The battalion surgeon was Capt. officer and wounded several Lucien Strawn, from Morgantown, aien. W. Va. He drives his jeep himself and goes into the lines with The Germ jins now rained shells his aidmen.right around our little area. You couldnt We drive forward about a mile in walk 10 feet without hitting the our two jeeps, so loaded with litter ground. They came past our heads bearers were even riding on so quickly you didnt take time to the hood.they Finally we had to stop fall forward I found the quickest and wait until a bulldozer filled a way down was to flop back and side- new shell crater in the middle of the ways. road. We had gone only about a In a little while the seat of my hundred yards beyond the crater pants was plastered thick with wet when we ran into some infantry. red clay, and my hands were They stopped us and said: scratched from hitting rocks and Be careful where youre gobriars to break quick falls. The Germans are only 200 ing. Nobody ever fastens the chin up the road. yards straps on his helmet in the front said he Strawn Captain for the blasts from nearby lines, to the wounded couldnt get bursts have been known to catch men that way so he turned helmets and break peoples necks. around to try another way. A when you Consequently, squat side road led off at an angle quickly you descend faster than from a shattered village we had your helmet and you leave it in midjust passed through. He decided air above you. Of course in a fracto try to get up that road. tion of a second it follows you down But when we got there the road and hits you on the head, and settles had a house blown across it, and it over sideways your ear and down over your eyes. It makes you feel was blocked. We went forward a little on foot and found two deep silly. bomb craters, also impassable. So Captain Strawn walked back Once more shells drove me into a roadside ditch. I squatted there, just to the bulldozer, and asked the a bewildered guy in brown, part of driver if he would go ahead of us a thin line of other bewildered guys and clear the road. The first thing as far up and down the ditch as the driver asked was, How close to the front is it? you could see. The doctor said, Well, at least was It really frightening. Our own shells were whanging overhead and it isnt any closer than you are right hitting just beyond. The German now. So the dozer driver agreed shells tore through the orchards to clear the road ahead pf us. around us. There was machine gunWhile we were waiting a soldier ning all around, and bullets zipped came over and showed us two eggs he had just found in the backyard of through the trees above us. I could tell by their shoulder a jumbled house. There wasnt an patches that the soldiers near me untouched house left standing in the were from a division to our right, town, and some of the houses were and I wondered what they were do- still smoking inside. ing there. Then I heard one of them At the far edge of the town we say: came to a partly wrecked farmThis is a fine foul-u- p for you! house that had two Germans in it I knew that lieutenant was getting one was wounded and the other was lost. Hell, were service troops, and just staying with him. We ran our here we are right in the front lines. jeeps into the yard and the litter Grim as the moment was, I had bearers went on across the field. to laugh to myself at their pitiful The doctor took his scissors and plight. began cutting his clothes open to see if he was wounded anywhere ' I left a command post in a except in the arm. He wasnt. But farmhouse and started to anhe had been sick at his stomach other about 10 minutes away. and then rolled over. He was sure When I got there, they said the a' superman sad sack. ' Suddenly armor-piercin- high-tone- might-have-bee- ns , |