The Secret of Santa Vittoria by Robert Crichton

Author:Robert Crichton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

WHEN THERE WERE ten minutes less than an hour left, since Captain von Prum had estimated it would take them fifty minutes to cross the valley and go up the mountain, he struck the flat of his hand against the sidecar, making a hollow boom, and raised his hand and shouted “Forward,” and the convoy moved out of the shade of the beech tree and onto the River Road. It is difficult to see the track that turns off to Santa Vittoria, since it dips down off the road so suddenly, but Sergeant Traub saw it in time and turned off the road a little faster than he would have liked, steeply down, and at the first turn in the track, far sooner than he had expected it to be, was the cart, and he was forced to apply his brakes so sharply that von Prum was almost thrown out of the sidecar and the truck behind them came close to hitting them.

Traub got off the seat to examine the cart. “I never saw one like it before,” he said. He spun one of the heavy iron-rimmed wheels. “Oak,” he said. “Like iron. It’s as heavy as a tank.”

“Can we get around it? Can we lift it off?”

Traub told the captain no.

“Can you hit it with one shot?”

“I can hit anything with one shot if it isn’t shooting back at me,” the sergeant said.

“I’m sure they’re all looking from the town,” von Prum said. “This will be a lesson.”

They unhitched the light dual-purpose gun from the back of the truck and they ran it up onto the edge of the River Road to give Traub aiming room. He was careful about it, a little longer than von Prum would have wished, but he made the first shot good. It hit near the heart of the cart and it split the oak grain and a shower of splinters flew out. He hit it again and again after that, until it came apart and looked naked and disgraceful in the sand. They lifted the pieces up then and threw them alongside the track, and it was the death of Bombolini’s Sicilian cart.

“It’s been a long time,” Traub said. He was proud of his work. “I like the way it jumps when it cuts loose.”

The road was dusty, and when they had gone perhaps a half mile more across the valley they stopped to clean the dust from their eyes and mouths and to put on glasses. The truck behind them was buried in a cloud of fine white chalk.

“They should pay for things like that,” Traub said. He motioned back toward the cart. He had liked the feeling of the gun and the smell of oil and the powder and the hot metal under his hands and the feeling of satisfaction he had felt when the shell had entered the oak and split it apart.

“It’s like with a puppy, sir. You aren’t cruel, but you make them pay for their annoyances.”

A kind of reasoned ruthlessness, the captain thought.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.