Free The Pistol by James Jones Page B

night-black sea, even when they talked. It would have been easy just to pick up belt, holster, pistol and all and walk out with it, as far as those two were concerned. But Mast had come unprepared for such an easy-to-manage eventuality, he had prepared himself only for looking the place over. And he could not bring himself to make the fatal, conclusive movement of reaching out his arm. After chatting with them a while he got up and left.
    Down below on the flat, where other men were sleeping out in the open in the wind as he did, Mast rolled up on the rocky ground and putting his shelterhalf over his head, smoked a cigarette. He should have done it while he was there, and what he ought to do now was go right back up there and get it. Winstock might not leave it out like that again. It was unbelievable that he had this time. Perhaps he didn’t know about the nocturnal attempts to steal it. Mast had never told anyone. But it took a while for him to steel himself to it. After a second cigarette, which he carefully stubbed out on the ground beside the first before uncovering his head, Mast unwrapped himself and started back up the hill.
    It was ridiculously easy. One of the things that had bothered Mast was the problem of taking Winstock’s rifle belt. One of the least stolen items in the services everyone nonetheless had his name and serial number inked or stamped on the inside of his rifle belt. To take it also would be to invoke the question of truly stolen equipment, something the taking of the pistol would not do. Mast might throw it away, over the cliff, but the problem of stolen equipment would still exist, something Winstock could legitimately use, perhaps against Mast himself.
    He solved it easily, and simply. He simply went down into the hole, mumbled something about being unable to sleep, a statement never in question around this rocky, windy, uncomfortable place, and then while he talked to the two sleepy men who talked back but nevertheless did not look around, proceeded to unhook the holstered pistol from Winstock’s belt, leaving the belt there, and attached it to his own. The magnitude of his own courage astounded him, as did the simple easiness of it. After putting his own belt back around his waist with the pistol on it, he removed the extra pistol clips from the pouch in Winstock’s belt and put them in his own. Then he said good night and went back down and rolled up again, his pistol at his hip again. It was that easy. And as he buttoned his shirt down over it in his waist belt and zippered up his field jacket, the feeling of comfort that it gave him, being there again, was indescribable. Mast felt saved again, had a chance to survive again. And to hell with Corporal Winstock. When he checked the serial number, as the still-unresolved element of doubt forced him to do, although he did not want to, he found that it was really his own pistol.
    Next day when he saw Winstock, the little corporal looked at him hatefully but there was nevertheless in his glance, despite the hate, a measure of respect that had never been in his eyes before when he looked at Mast. Apparently Winstock had ascertained for himself just what had happened last night. Mast did not say anything to him, and he did not say anything to Mast. And in fact, after that, Mast and Winstock did not speak at all, except when necessary in line of duty, just as Mast and O’Brien did not speak. But O’Brien, while he and Mast still did not speak, nevertheless appeared to be pleased that Winstock had not gotten away with his double swindle of both himself and Mast.
    When two or three men, following the evolutions of the pistol about the beach position with the interest of uninvolved observers, asked him about having it back, Mast merely said he had changed his mind and bought it back from Winstock.
    If Winstock objected to this explanation, Mast did not hear of it.

Seven
    T HE LOADING OF THE demolition across the road caused a number of