The Pistol (12 page)

Grace roiled thirty or forty yards down the two hundred yards of slope before he was able to dig in his heels and get himself stopped. He got up and in a half-scrambling run, staring up and grinning that mean, tough, squint-eyed grin, more a leer now than a grin, started back up the slope at Mast.

Mast, watching him, hastily and nervously set about getting the holster off the belt. Luckily for him it was only half-fastened or he wouldn’t have made it in time. He tossed the belt toward the tents behind him but continued to clutch the heavy, holstered pistol because he no longer trusted putting it down, and waited.

A few yards from the top Grace intelligently changed his direction off to the side, although it never would have occurred to Mast to kick him. Thus he came up to the path level with Mast eight or ten yards away. Pausing to breathe a moment and still wearing that fixed grin, he came down the path with his fists up. He was just about a head taller than Mast, although a little less husky, but his arms were at least six inches longer. Mast, trying to defend himself while still clutching the holstered pistol, took his first punch hard on the ear, making his whole head ring. It knocked him off of the path, and because he would not let go of the pistol he landed heavily on his side—and immediately found himself rolling dizzily down the slope toward the chimney, as Grace had done before him.

He still would not let go of the pistol, but by digging in the fingernails of his free hand and trying to dig in first with his toes and then his heels as he turned, he managed to squirm himself around perpendicular to the slope and get himself stopped.

Then he too started to scramble back up to the path. He knew now that to have possession of the pistol was not enough. He had to make Grace give it up voluntarily by whipping him, or Grace would make him. But he still couldn’t put the pistol down anywhere for fear of O’Brien or Fondriere taking it. He attempted, as he came back up, to utilize the same tactic Grace had, by turning off to one side, now that he knew about the kicking. But Grace, who had thought it up first, was not to be caught that way. He ran down the path above Mast, keeping himself directly above him.

A few feet from the top, just beyond kicking range, Mast stopped, breathing heavily, still clutching the pistol in his left hand.

“Come on, damn you,” Grace drawled. “I’m ready. I’ll kick your face off”.

Obviously there was nothing for it but to go on up, and Mast gathered himself, still staring upward, still breathing heavily. It was then that O’Brien intervened.

“Wait a minute! Mast, give me the pistol and I’ll hold it for you.”

“You?” Mast breathed.

“I promise I won’t keep it. I’ll give it back to you. Or to Grace, if you say so. Hell, you can’t fight like that.”

“He’ll say so,” Grace said with his mean grin.

“You think so?” Mast said. “All right,” he said to O’Brien. “Let me come on up,” he added, directing it at Grace.

“Go to hell,” Grace grinned. “I’m not giving away no advantages.”

“Here,” O’Brien said, and came down onto the path a few feet from Grace. “Toss it up then.”

For a long moment Mast stared at him in silence, breathing heavily.

“I promise I’ll give it back to you,” O’Brien said. “Or to Grace, if you say. I ain’t that kind of a louse. Not if I promise.”

After a moment of thought, staring up at him, Mast tossed the holstered pistol up to him in silence, and prepared himself to rush Grace. There was no other way to do it.

Mast jerked his head sideways when he saw it coming, and the kick grazed his ear, the same ear that had taken the punch earlier, and a hot streak of fire ran along the whole side of his head. Hurting fearfully, he dove upward and got Grace’s other leg with both hands and upended him, then rolled sideways and pulled. Grace, cursing savagely, tumbled on down over Mast’s back and commenced to roll down the slope again until he could get himself stopped, and Mast was once again in command of the path.

This time when Grace charged him, he did not allow Grace to go to the side but stayed in front of him as Grace had done to him. Just beyond range, Grace stopped too, gathering himself and his courage, and also getting a little wind. Then he charged, grinning evilly, his eyes wide and piercing. Mast, who had once had a one-semester course in boxing in high school, feinted, shifting his weight to his left foot, and when Grace jerked his head aside, delivered him a vicious kick in the face which carried with it all the righteous outrage that had been smouldering in him since this thing had started, that had been smouldering in him since long before that even, since all the way back to when the first man had tried the first time to beat him out of his pistol and his chance of being saved. And it was that kick that eventually won him the fight.

With a yelp of pain and then a stream of cursing Grace went over backwards with both hands to his face. When he finally got himself stopped on the slope, he paused crouching, his right hand to the already swelling side of his face, and then started back up again. This time, smiling triumphantly, Mast did not wait but launched himself down the slope at Grace as soon as Grace was in range, and they went lolling down the slope together, punching and grabbing at each other. This time they rolled more than half way down to the chimney before both intelligently decided to stop fighting until they could get themselves stopped from sliding right on over the edge.

After that, neither of them ever got back up to the trail again. The moment one of them started to try it the other would grab him and haul him back down and start punching him, thus gaining an advantage. After a few of these, neither tried again to get to the trail.

It was a strange, wild, insane fight, there on the steep side of the mountain, with the fluffy pure-white cumulus puffs moving serenely across the deep, startling blue of the Hawaiian sky above them in the sunshine. Far, far below down the steep, incredible skislide of the mountainside the white surf of the sea shone minutely against the black rocks and scattered beaches, and on the highway cars the size of lighter flints moved slowly along, oblivious of the two men who up here still fought.

Mast fought doggedly, tenaciously, slipping and sliding on the steep slope, taking punches that rang through his whole head and body like a great bell, actually heaving and gasping for breath now. It was impossible to kick here on this slope. He could hardly remember what the fight had been about, all he knew was that he had to win it, and that he was being beaten. Grace’s arms were too long for him, and while Grace was perhaps not quite as strong as he, Mast knew he was taking three times as many punches as he landed. Even as he continued to fight on, taking one more punch, sliding one more slide, he knew he was defeated. Even though he continued to throw punch after punch, he had resigned himself to defeat. So it came to him as a matter of astonishment and complete surprise when, after a particularly heavy exchange of blows, Grace muttered through swollen lips, “All right. I give up. I’m licked.”

Mast, his face swollen grotesquely and his arm cocked to deliver another blow, stared at him through puffy lids unbelievingly. Grace’s face was swollen also, perhaps even more so. And the right side of his face where the kick had landed was a liverish purple, and that eye was closed.

“I can’t take any more punches on that bad eye,” Grace mumbled through puffed lips, not without dignity.

Mast dropped his arm and turned and started off up the slope. Twice he slid to his knees before he got up there and he was not at all sure he was going to make it. But he did, and when he did, he went straight to O’Brien, took his pistol and holster out of his hands, and went to the tent and reattached it to the riflebelt that Grace had taken it from. Then he sat down. As an afterthought he reached for the belt and fastened it around him.

Grace came straggling along a few moments later. He too sat down by the tent doorway numbly.

“And after this you leave my pistol alone,” Mast said through puffy lips, staring at him through puffy eyes. “Or I’ll give you the same thing again. And if I want to leave my pistol lying in the tent, I will, and you’ll leave it alone.”

“Okay,” Grace said thickly. “But if you hadn’t landed that kick, you wouldn’t have whipped me. Maybe I’ll try you again sometime.”

But it was apparently mostly bravado, because during the week more that they remained he did not try again. Mast was glad. Nevertheless, and even though he had stated categorically that he would leave his pistol lying openly
in
the tent, Mast did not take it off again. It just wasn’t worth the chance. He started wearing it in his waist belt buttoned down under his shirt again when he went to bed, and he wore the rifle belt with the clips and holster on the outside. As soon as he was able, which was not until evening on the day of the fight, he informed Grace that he was moving out. He was not bunking with any cheating thief. He took down the tent, unbuttoned his half of it, his shelterhalf, took his rope and his share of the tentpegs, and made himself a bunk with his own shelterhalf and blankets on the other side of the fire.

Anyway, it didn’t matter. About the tent, or about wearing the pistol again. The harmony and accord which had characterized Marconi Pass and the historic first Marconi Pass patrol were shattered. Grace continued to make his bed where the tent had been, sullenly; the other two kept to their own tent quietly. The awareness that they were, after all, still in the Army, and that the Army and their world were in a state of war, came back over all of them. The curious, and almost idyllic, vacation from life as they must live it was somehow over from the moment the fistfight started. When their relief did not show up that day, and then again did not show up the next day, nobody really cared. The day before the fight they would have been overjoyed that the relief did not show up, but now no one wanted to meet anyone else’s eyes and there was almost no talking except when absolutely necessary. Needless to say, Mast did not speak to Grace. When, with shouts from below the rock chimney, their relief did show up and began to scramble up onto the slope, they were down to their last half can of water, their last half case of C ration and had already debated sending one man down to see what had happened. No one was unhappy to see the relief, or to be relieved.

Even Mast was not unhappy. As he rolled his pack and collected his gear, the main thought in his mind was what O’Brien had told him over a week ago, about how once they were down he would be after Mast’s pistol any way he could. Once as he worked he stood for a moment and looked down the long, long slide to the bottom, where flint-sized cars still crawled along the thread of highway. It was a beautiful sight and just to look at it you would not know that down there lurked men conspiring to take from him his pistol, his chance of being saved. But then, it was a beautiful view from there, looking up here, too. And look what had happened. His serenity long gone, even his memory of happiness destroyed, for the moment, Mast, his face nearly healed by now, prepared to descend again into the maelstrom of Makapoo to do battle for his salvation. At least there, there was Authority. And with Authority, there were rules. At least no one could assault him physically for it. Here, on the mountain, there wasn’t even that. Mast, like the rest of them, had become disillusioned with Marconi Pass.

One thing remained, and that was the awareness that they were veterans. It began as they reached the bottom of the rock chimney they had not seen for two weeks and then looked back up, and it increased as they went on down and around the boulders of the runlet to the truck, and it kept on increasing as they rode down in the truck, first out to the highway, then on along it to the CP. They had been the first Marconi Pass patrol, and they had been somewhere and done something these other men had not done.

M
AST DID NOT
have long to wait for the next assault against his salvation to take place, once he arrived back at Makapoo. Less than a week, in fact. He had been tricked, lied to and cheated, bribed, and manhandled, in that order. He thought he knew, and had become experienced in, just about every method. But there was one he had never considered: the honest man. In many ways this one was the worst.

But out of it came something else, something good for Mast. And that was confidence: for the first time, real, genuine confidence.

It was now more than three months since the Pearl Harbor attack and Mast’s arrival at Makapuu Head with the pistol. During that three months, in which Mast had battled so desperately to keep it, two things had emerged. One was that no one had ever actually assaulted him physically and taken it from him by force; even Grace hadn’t done that. And no one had tried to kill him for it. Not that, Mast suspected, someone wouldn’t have been willing to try. But the efficiency of Authority precluded that. There was hope to be seen in this, Mast felt.

The second thing which had emerged during the three desperate months was that never yet had anyone gone to higher authority, such as the lieutenant or the two platoon sergeants, about the pistol. Apparently none of these three, neither the lieutenant nor Sergeants Pender and Cowder, knew anything at all about Mast’s loose pistol. With all the pistol’s changing of hands, the attempted thefts, the jockeyings for position, the angers and rages and fights and near-fights, never did the three position commanders find out about it. With the wisdom of soldiers, or people under the hand of Authority anywhere, all this was carefully kept from them. And not once during all this time had anyone, not even Mast though he had contemplated it, as had some of the others probably, deliberately gone to them and told them about it. That distinction was reserved for Sergeant Paoli, the honest man.

Paoli came up to Mast one afternoon four days after he had returned from Marconi Pass. Short, chunky, dark, a former butcher from Brooklyn, he was a section sergeant in the machine gun platoon under Sergeant Pender and thus wore a pistol himself. Always a ‘book soldier’ and known laughingly in Mast’s company as ‘The Book Says’ Paoli, he was stupid, unimaginative, mechanically a genius with a machine-gun, and short with words.