Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead by L. Ron Hubbard

Author:L. Ron Hubbard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Galaxy Press, LLC
Published: 2010-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

Her hand went down, came up and her wrist flexed.

Captain Eddie saw the dagger come and made the mistake

of thinking it was intended for his heart.

One barrel spoke with its tongue of flame and the Colt went skidding away.

Le général was not laughing now. He was an icy pillar of vengeance. Through his lipless mouth he spat, “Back up quickly! Piérre, Loup! Come here!”

Captain Eddie backed up and pulled the knife out of the back of his hand. It had missed the bones and had gone all the way through. He said nothing as he watched the lieutenants enter and when he saw the queen of spades clutch beseechingly at le général’s left arm. Captain Eddie dropped the flimsy bit of steel to the floor. To use it he would commit nothing but suicide. He was a fighting man, Captain Eddie, and he knew when the ammunition was low, and he was enough of a gambler to realize when the ace in the deck was crimped.

Piérre and Loup tied him up with a rather unnecessary amount of vigor, and then Loup went away to bring the hundred men needed to escort him back into the hills where they could torture him at leisure. Le général was standing there watching him and trying to think up a few new ones.

“La gendarmerie, bah!” said le général and spat squarely and accurately at Captain Eddie’s upturned face.

They put him in the back room amid the garbage the queen of spades had evidently forgotten to throw out into the street, and they left him there with blood running out of his hand and the smell of stale charcoal smoke in his nostrils—among other things—and for a time, at least, he was forgotten. The rope gag was cutting his lips as rope gags always do, but that was not the least of Captain Eddie’s worries.

He was AWOLoose. Court-martial if he ever got back. He’d disobeyed the colonel’s orders to forget Charley. He’d left his camp in turmoil just when the corps needed him the worst. When the senators of the Ways and Means Committee got there, they’d wonder where he was, and no matter how many lies that very capable Marine general would tell them, they’d know that everything was very slipshod and slovenly and that the corps wasn’t worth appropriating for. The senators evidently hadn’t thought so before, and they’d certainly be convinced of it now. Two thousand men out, morale shattered, Cramer retired with the others and all because Captain Eddie—no, Gunnery Sergeant Edwards—was lying here in a dirty kitchen smelling things not fit for the human nose. He felt very war-worn and weary.

To say that Captain Eddie did not know fear would be a deliberate lie. All men who have any bravery at all know fear but are strong enough to overwhelm it before it paralyzes them. Besides, there were certain things which had happened in his district which should have made him die on the spot from stark fright.

Le général, according to his own statement, was a gentleman.

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