Free Hell's Legionnaire by L. Ron Hubbard Page A

not dead, though the
lower part of his burnoose was covered with blood. Suddenly he rolled over and
grabbed for his rifle. As the muzzle came up, my rifle drilled a hole between
his eyes.
    We wasted but little
time in filling our canteens and our mouths with water. Though it was muddy and
foul it tasted like nectar. The hillmen had left a few kettles of boiled mutton
on the scene. It was still warm and we ate it, scooping the greasy mess out
with our bare hands.
    Ten minutes later we
were once more on the trail, heading northwest toward the square on Copain’s
map. Kraus was limping and saying nothing about it. He was afraid that we would
leave him if he confessed a wound. I let him be. His first-aid packet was open
and I knew he had dressed the hole. Maurice’s jaw was covered with blood from a
torn ear.
    By a combination of
luck and skill I found that we were on the trail which had been marked down by
Copain. Dawn broke to find us toiling up the side of a mountain range, heading
toward a pass. We had marched hard and fast as Legionnaires are supposed to
march and now we would need protection from the sun and daylight attacks.
    We gained the summit.
It was Montrey that spotted an old murette halfway up a cliff. We made
for it. I was rather puzzled by its presence as this country had never been
posted. However, Copain and Tanner and André had come this way and this must
have been their handiwork.
    Maurice was the first
one over the wall. He dropped out of sight and then came back to give the
others a hand. A slanting ray of sunlight struck us, showing up the old camp in
detail. I stopped halfway over and stared at the base of the cliff across the
compound.
    A skeleton lay there
in the storm-beaten clothes of a Legionnaire. His tattered kepi had rolled
several feet away. His boots were cracked by sun and dust. His pack had been
torn apart and lay scattered about him.
    From the back of the
faded tunic there protruded a French bayonet!

CHAPTER FIVE
    Gold Madness
    T HE man’s kit revealed his
name—or the name he had borne in the Legion. It was Schrader, onetime
Intelligence private. I had never known him very well, but I did know that he
was one of the squad who had been with Copain on that mapping expedition.
    Tanner, André, Copain
and now Schrader. All these men were dead, two of them because they knew too
much about a city lost in this mountain waste.
    When I tried to pull
the bayonet out of Schrader’s back, it would not come. There was no flesh to
hold it and I rolled the skeleton back from it.
    The bayonet was
embedded three inches in the ground. They had killed him while he slept!
    I was not especially
concerned that Copain and Tanner and André had killed Schrader. I was thinking
about my own neck. When Montrey and the others got to the city they might think
they had no further use for me. Perhaps they would strike out for the coast
without me. Perhaps they had learned enough about the direction of these
mountains to guide themselves.
    That day I slept away
from them with one hand on my gun, the other on my bayonet.
    When the midday heat
was gone, we buried the skeleton. Montrey was smiling as though he possessed a
new inspiration. I knew what that inspiration was. Montrey knew now that he did
not have to divide with the rest. Montrey was thinking that he would get it all
for himself.
    Aside from a very
occasional bullet from great range we were not much troubled by the hillmen.
They had developed a healthy respect for the auto-rifle and machine gun.
    With darkness
shrouding our movements we hit the trail again. All that night we tramped over
mountains, through passes, down ravines, and when dawn came again we had progressed
twenty-seven miles.
    We had to build our
own murette that morning, but on the three succeeding days we found them
built for us.
    That mapping squad had
taken no chances with the Berbers.
    Six days’ march from
our original base, we made camp on a high summit which