The queue stopped. Jimmy called out, “Everybody exhale. That’ll do it.”
Somebody called back, “Throw Jimmy off. . . that will do it.” The line moved again, slowly. In ten minutes they accomplished the sardinepacking problem of fitting nearly seventy people into a space comfortable for not more than a dozen. It could not even be standing room since a man could stand erect only on the outer shelf. The girls were shoved inside, sitting or squatting, jammed so that they hardly had air to breathe. The men farthest out could stand but were in danger of stepping off the edge in the dark, or of being elbowed off.
Grant said, “Watch things, Rod, while I have a look.” He disappeared up the path, came back in a few minutes. “Crowded as the bottom of a sack,” he said. “Here’s the plan. They can scrunch back farther if they have to. It will be uncomfortable for the wounded and Carmen may have to sit up she’s lying down but it can be done. When the fires die out, we’ll shoehorn the rest in. With spears poking out under the overhang at the top of the path we ought to be able to hold out until daylight. Check me?”
“Sounds as good as can be managed.”
“All right. When the time comes, you go up next to last, I go up last.”
“Unh . . . I’ll match you.”
Cowper answered with surprising vulgarity and added, “I’m boss; I go last. We’ll make the rounds and pile anything left on the fires, then gather them all here. You take the bank, I take the fence.”
It did not take long to put the remnants on the fires, then they gathered around the path and waited Roy, Kenny, Doug, Dick, Charlie, Howard, and Rod and Grant. Another wave of senseless migration was rolling but the fires held it, bypassed it around by the water.
Rod grew stiff and shifted his spear to his left hand. The dying fires were only glowing coals in spots. He looked for signs of daylight in the east. Howard Goldstein said, “One broke through at the far end.”
“Hold it, Goldie,” Cowper said. “We won’t bother it unless it comes here.” Rod shifted his spear back to his right hand.
The wall of fire was now broken in many places. Not only could joes get through, but worse, it was hard to see them, so little light did the embers give off. Cowper turned to Rod and said, “All right, everybody up. You tally them.” Then he shouted, “Bill! Agnes! Make room, I’m sending them up.”
Rod threw a glance at the fence, then turned. “Okay, Kenny first. Doug next, don’t crowd. Goldie and then Dick. Who’s left? Roy” He turned, uneasily aware that something had changed.
Grant was no longer behind him. Rod spotted him bending over a dying fire. “Hey, Grant!”
“Be right with you.” Cowper selected a stick from the embers, waved it into flame. He hopped over the coals, picked his way through sharpened stakes, reached the thorn bush barrier, shoved his torch into it. The dry branches flared up. He moved slowly away, picking his way through the stake trap.
“I’ll help you!” Rod shouted. “I’ll fire the other end.” Cowper turned and light from the burning thorn showed his stern, bearded face. “Stay back. Get the others up. That’s an order!” f
The movement upward had stopped. Rod snarled, “Get on up, you lunk-heads! Move!” He jabbed with the butt of his spear, then turned around.
Cowper had set the fire in a new place. He straightened up, about to move farther down, suddenly turned and jumped over the dying line of fire. He stopped and jabbed at something in the darkness . . . then screamed.
“Grant!” Rod jumped down, ran toward him. But Grant was down before he reached him, down with a joe worrying each leg and more coming. Rod thrnst at one, jerked his spear out, and jabbed at the other, trying not to stab Grant. He felt one grab his leg and wondered that it did not hurt.
Then it did hurt, terribly, and he realized that he was down and his spear was not in his hand. But his hand found his knife without asking; Colonel Bowie finished off the beast clamped to his ankle.