It was unjust. It was unfair.
Had there been a patron saint of corns and hard skin, Pepe would have prayed to him — or her. But as it was, he invoked the ubiquitous Santa Maria. It was murder — sheer murder. He longed and longed for that blessed, blissful moment when those boots would come off in the cool, dark room of the little whitewashed cabin which he occupied with his mother. His mother would bathe the feet, and Pepe Caravolente would be in Heaven.
Rolling his eyes in very present distress of hell-fire, Pepe glanced across the road at his companion, a morose and sedate guardia whose feet never seemed to trouble him, but whose long, thin frame seemed utterly weighed down with the heavy carbine. Carlos was a good man, saintly in his home life except when temptation pressed too heavily, and a most conscientious member of the Guardia Civil. But today he was feeling the strain too. As Pepe watched, a huge red handkerchief, not particularly clean, was swept out of Carlos’s pocket with a grand flourish, and Carlos’s helmet was lifted off. Carlos mopped his face, thus inducing yet more sweat to burst through into the vacated areas.
Carlos too groaned aloud.
In spite of the pain in his feet, Pepe mustered an encouraging grin. “Soon we will be back at the post, Carlos.”
“Uh.” Carlos flourished his handkerchief. They trudged on in silence. They faced, in fact, mile upon mile of white, scorching roadway which would have to be traversed before they reached the village where the Guardia Civil post was, the village where they would be able to sink to rest for a while, take off their helmets and their belts and lay down their arms, and quench their thirsts with some vino in the shop of Teresa Bandera — Pepe could almost taste that vino now, and he drooled slightly at the corners of his mouth at the mere thought of it, coming all cool and fresh from the stone jar behind that shady bar. And Teresa Bandera could, on the occasions when her husband was away on his own business — which concerned the smuggling of spirits — be persuaded into dispensing other comforts to the Guardia Civil as well…
The two men walked for two more dreadful miles, and then Pepe stopped. He listened. It was a car coming up behind them, and now that the thud-thud of his enormous boots had ceased he could hear it more distinctly. It seemed to be in a hurry; all he could see for the moment was a cloud of white dust.
“Carlos,” said Pepe, grinning happily, “why should we walk when there is a car?”
Unslinging their rifles, they stood ready to wave the car down. Surely no one, whatever their hurry, would drive past two poor hombres asking for a lift — certainly no one ever had in Pepe’s experience.
“Cuidado! Aqui viene la pareja!” Massias drew Garcia’s attention to the two figures moving into the roadway. “The Guardia Civil.”
Karina, in the back, had seen the unslung carbines. She said curtly, “I don’t know what their business is, but I’m not having any delays. Fast as you can, Garcia.”
“Perhaps they merely want a lift—”
“They’re not getting one!” Karina sat forward, spoke sharply. “We can have no prying eyes in here.”
“Señorita, I shall hit them — they will be so sure we shall stop—”
“Hit them, then.”
The other man, Massias, looked back at her, scared at the inflexibility in her voice, saw that her eyes were diamond-hard and bright. He shuddered a little. He knew that Garcia was right, and not from humanity alone. It was dangerous, very dangerous, to take risks with the Guardia Civil. If one should get hurt every official hand in Spain would be against them. He said as much to Karina.
“Shut up.” Karina sat forward still, and now in her hand was the small pistol. She leant forward farther and prodded the pistol into the back of Garcia’s neck, and he jumped a little and the car rocked, and he drove on, drove on almost blindly, in a terrible fear.
Pepe and Carlos saw the big scarlet-and-silver shape leap from the dust-cloud, a tearing, hurtling monster lurching wildly on its springs as it hit the pot-holes and the ridges. Pepe jumped back just in time. The car, with Garcia sweating away behind the wheel and his eyes almost shut to blot out the horror of what he was doing, tore on as he rammed his foot down hard.
He hit Carlos fair and square, drove over him with a wild lurch and a bump that brought his passengers’ heads cracking against the roof; and then swept onward, leaving a red stain and a flattened hump on the road.
Behind them Pepe, curses pouring from his mouth, which was now all puckered up in his ashen face, felt tears pricking at his eyes. He felt sick, and his hands shook as he brought his carbine up. He wasn’t capable in that moment of taking very good aim, and his bullets zipped harmlessly away into the distance, well clear of the speeding car, which was almost out of range anyway by this time.
Pepe had forgotten his poor corns and his hard skin now; the main thing was to get his wobbly legs to hold him upright, hold him up so that he could chase after that car, run to the nearest Guardia Civil post with a telephone, so that these soulless murderers could be intercepted. He started running. Sick to the stomach, and with tears pouring down his face, he left that poor red mess that had been Carlos, the red mess that was beyond help, in its pool of blood round which the flies were congregating already, Carlos who must be avenged, Carlos who had been looking forward to a glass of vino in Teresa Bandera’s and who would never patrol that stretch of road with him again…
Pepe pounded along.
Ahead of him Karina stopped the car, for she had had second thoughts — this guardia would be able to describe the car, have her stopped along the roads. She got out. And as Pepe came nearer a short burst of sound and light and smoke came from the sub-machine-gun in her hands. Only three bullets hit Pepe, but he fell; and the car drove on. As vultures fluttered up into the air from Carlos’s body, scared by the gunfire, Pepe staggered to his feet again, spitting out the welling blood, just in time to see the car swerve violently to the right to head along the San Pedro road.
A little later Shaw caught sight of the vultures hovering above the track ahead of him. When he saw the body he slowed, and when he came up to it, scattering the indignant birds from their grisly meal, he edged round it, telling Debonnair not to look, talking the car half on to the verge with difficulty. A little farther on he stopped. Leaving Debonnair in the car — telling her, when she asked, that there was nothing anybody could do — he got out, walked back to the body, and dragged it laboriously off the road and into the shade of some trees, where he hid it in the scrubby undergrowth.
When he got back to the car Debonnair asked, a little white about the lips and trembling, “Esmonde, why did you do that?”
He started the car up. He said between his teeth, “A dead guardia’s too risky to leave; it’s obvious to us that Karina did that, but if that body had been found by anyone else and reported, all cars on this road would have been suspect — and remember, we’ve not seen any other vehicles since we got on to the San Pedro road early this morning.” He gave a hard laugh. “What we’re doing is too important for us to risk getting hooked up on a charge like that.”