Read Online Behind Mt. Baldy by Christopher Cummings - Free Book Online Page A

blood you mean,” Roger
retorted.
    He took out his water bottle and
had a long drink. Then he stood in the road and looked around. ‘The jungle is
certainly thick,’ he noted, thankful that their hike did not require them to go
into it.
    Then his eye wandered down the
tunnel of trees along where the road ran straight for several hundred metres.
    “There’s a black car parked down
there. What a funny place to park,” he said.
    The others looked idly along the
road. The car was at least two hundred metres away, parked in a patch of shadow
but once seen it was obvious. 
    “Probably someone pinching
orchids from the State Forest,” Stephen said.
    “Or nature lovers,” Graham
suggested.
    “In this!” Peter laughed, “ with all that ‘wait-a-while’?”
    “Not those sort of ‘nature
lovers’,” Graham replied. “Come on. Packs on.  
Time we were gone. Steve, you've got a leech on your collar.”
    They stood up, checked each other
for leeches, then pulled on their gear. To Roger it
seemed to be even heavier than before. He found all his sore muscles had gone
stiff during the short halt so the first few steps were a painful hobble.
    They trudged along in single file
on the right of the road. The effort of getting back into their stride kept
them all silent.
    As they drew close to the parked
car Roger eyed it curiously. For some reason it made him feel uneasy. A
fleeting thought crossed his mind that they would find another body in it but
he could see no shape slumped over the wheel.
    Just as Graham drew level with
the car they heard voices in the jungle and ten metres ahead of them two men
dressed in black walked out onto the track.
    That the men were surprised was
obvious. They stopped in their stride with mouths agape. The first man, who had
a hard, thin face and close-cropped fair hair let drop a compass which hung on
a cord around his neck and his hand flashed to his pocket. The second man, also
thin but with a black moustache and black hair was carrying a rifle. He threw
it up ready to use and uttered a cry.
    The boys stopped in shock. The
sight of the rifle pointing at him made Roger go cold with fright. For a moment
he could not move or speak. Then he joined the others bunched behind Graham,
who had stopped facing the men.
    “Army?” the first man asked in a
hard voice, his hand in his pocket. His eyes rapidly scanned them. Roger had
the distinct impression the man was about to dive for cover.
    “ No .. no .. Cadets,” Graham managed to say.
    The first man spoke out of the
side of his mouth in a foreign language. The only words Roger understood were
‘Bruno’ and ‘Cadets’, only pronounced in a hard European way with a K. The
second man lowered the rifle but still held it in both hands and looked
suspiciously at them.
    The first man forced a smile.
“You are not soldiers? You are Kadeten?” He could see they were unarmed. He
ostentatiously pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow. “You
startled us. Gave us fright, you know.”
    “Sorry,” Graham replied. The four
cadets stood uncertain what to do.
    The first man kept talking. It
seemed obvious to Roger the man was very nervous and guilty about something.
The memory of his dream the previous night seemed to swamp his consciousness
and ice-cold needles of fear stabbed down through his skull into his brain.
    The man gestured casually. “We
have the rifle in case of the wild pigs. You need to be very careful of them
you boys.” He gave a short, forced laugh and pushed the handkerchief back into
a pocket, which Roger could see bulged with something else. From a shirt pocket
the man extracted a cigarette packet. As he fumbled for a lighter he turned and
said something in the foreign language to the other man. The second man nodded,
unsmiling, and walked over to the car and unlocked it.
    Graham was now speaking and he
was angry. “You shouldn’t carry guns in a State Forest. It’s against the law. And
I don’t like people