Hell's Legionnaire

 

Behind them, the ambush was sprung with the speed of a steel bear trap. One moment the Moroccan sunlight was warm and peaceful upon this high pass of the Atlas Mountains. The next lashed the world with the sound of flaming Sniders and Mannlichers and flintlocks.

 

Gray and brown djellabas swirled behind protecting rocks. Bloodshot eyes stared down sights. Scorching lead reached in with hammers and battered out lives with the gruesome regularity of a ticking clock.

 

Ann Halliday’s shrill scream of terror was lost in an ocean of erupting sound. Her terrified Moorish barb plunged under her, striving to dash through the jamming corridor of the peaks.

 

Horses fell, maimed and screaming. Men died before they could reach their holsters, much less their guns. The two auto-rifles in the vanguard had been jerked from their packs but now they were covered with dust and blood and their gunners stared with glazed, dead eyes at the enemy, the Berbers.

 

John Halliday, Ann’s father, tried to ride back to her. Within five feet of her pony, he stiffened in his saddle, shot through the back. The next instant his face was torn away by a ricocheting slug. He pitched off at her feet.

 

Muskets and rifles rolled like kettledrums. Black powder smoke drifted heavily above the pass, a shroud to temporarily mark the passing of twenty men.

 

A voice was bellowing orders in Shilha and, dying a shot at a time, the volleying finally ceased. Then there was only dust and smoke and the blood-drenched floor of the pass.

 

Two Berbers, blue eyes hard and metallic in the hoods of their djellabas, jerked Ann Halliday from her barb. She struggled, but their sinews were trained by lifetimes spent on the Atlas and she might as well have tried to break steel chains.

 

Her boots made swirls of dust as she attempted to impede their progress. Once she looked back and saw a Berber delivering the death stroke to a wounded expedition aide. She did not look back again.

 

The Berbers half lifted, half threw her to the saddle of a waiting horse. Other mountain men were coming up, their arms filled with plunder. As though in a nightmare, Ann saw them mount their ponies.

 

They filed down the pass, up a slope, and trotted toward a mountain peak which loomed brown and sullen before them. The rapidity of the events was too much for her. They dazed her and made her slightly ill. But she had not yet realized that her party had been slain, that she was in the hands of revolting tribesmen. Mercifully, a sort of anesthetic had her in its grip.

 

Almost before she realized they were on their way, they stopped. Teeth flashed in laughter. Men were patting rifles and ammunition and bulky sacks of loot. Some of them pointed to her and laughed more loudly. She did not understand, not yet.

 

She did not struggle when they led her to the square block of a house. She thought that within she might have time to rest and collect herself, that she might be able to devise some means of escape. But when the cool interior surrounded her, she stared across the room and knew that her experience had not yet begun.

 

A Berber was sitting there, knees drawn up, djellaba hood thrown back. His eyes were gray and ugly. His cheeks were thin and his strong arms were bundles of muscle as he extended them before him. He was white, true, and his hair and beard were brown. But from him there exuded a web of evil, almost tangible in its strength.

 

“Get thee from me!” snapped the crouching one to her two guards. They went without a backward glance, doubtless glad to be free and able to take their part in the loot division.

 

The bearded one on the mat looked appraisingly at Ann. He saw her delicate face, her full lips, her dark blue eyes. His study swept down. She was clothed in a cool, thin dress which clung tightly to her beautifully molded body.

 

Her breasts were firm and tight against the cloth. The material clung to her thighs, outlining smooth, mysteriously stirring indentations and curves.

 

The Berber licked thin lips, scarcely visible through the thickness of his beard. His eyes came back with a jerk to her face.

 

“I,” he said slowly, “am Abd el Malek, the man who shall soon sweep the Franzawi from the plains and mountains of Morocco.” His French was flawless. “I wonder that they did not kill you, but now . . .” He let his metallic eyes linger on her thighs. “Now I am overjoyed that they did not.”

 

She threw back her head, her eyes alight with anger: “Abd el Malek, dubbed ‘The Killer.’ It might please you to know that I am not a Franzawi. I am an American and if anything should happen to me . . . I suppose you think you can wipe out an expedition and fail to have la Légion after you.”

 

“La Légion!” He spat as though the name tasted bad. “What do I care about la Légion? There is no company within five days’ march. Resign yourself, my little one, to the time you pass with me.”

 

Her eyes lost a little of their rage. Something of terror began to creep into them. “But . . . but there might be . . . ransom.”

 

“Ha! Ransom! What do I care for ransom? In my stronghold over the Atlas I have the price to buy every man, woman and child in Morocco. No, sweet morsel, I am not interested in ransom. Ordinarily I would not be interested in you, Christian dog that you are. I would not touch you.”

 

He stood up, towering over her. She backed up against the mud wall.

 

“No,” he said, “I would not be interested. But this campaign has been long, rather boring. My women are far away, and . . .” He smiled, fastening his hot eyes on her body.

 

Reaching out he tried to hold her wrist. She jerked it away and aimed a slap at his leathery cheek. He laughed, displaying discolored, uneven teeth. “So,” he said, “you will have it another way.”