The Thin Red Line Read Online Free Page B

hands on.
    “Well, you better not have such sticky fingers, soldier,” the sergeant said, but it no longer carried much punch. He was trying to stifle his grin.
    “Anything layin around out in the open that loose, is fair game to me,” Doll said cheerfully. “And to any other old soldier. Tell your boy he oughtn’t to tempt people so much.”
    Behind the two, the other faces had begun to grin too, at the private’s discomfiture. The private himself had a hangdog look, as if he were the one at fault. The sergeant turned to him.
    “Hear that, Drake?” he grinned. “You better take better care of your fucking gear.”
    “Yeah. He sure better,” Doll said. “Or he won’t have it very goddam long.” He turned and went on leisurely toward the door, and nobody tried to stop him.
    Outside, back in the hatchway area once more, Doll stopped and allowed himself a long, whooshing sigh. Then he leaned against the bulkhead because his knees were shaking. If he had acted guilty—which was what he really had felt—they would have had him. And had him good. But he had carried it off. He had carried it off, and it was the private who had come out as the guilty party. Nervously, shakily, Doll laughed. And it had all been one big lie! Over and above his scare he had a sense of high elation and of pride. In a way, he really was that sort of guy, too, he thought suddenly: that type of guy he had pretended he was back there. At least, anymore he was. He hadn’t used to be.
    But he still hadn’t got a pistol. For a moment, Doll looked at his watch wondering, and worrying, about time. He hadn’t wanted to leave this deck, hadn’t wanted to get that far from C-for-Charlie. Then, on legs still a little shaky, but feeling triumphant, he began to mount the stairs to the deck above with a high sense of his own worth.
    From the moment Doll stepped into the bunk area on the deck above, everything played for him. He was still a little shaky, and certainly he was considerably more skittish than before. It didn’t matter. Everything worked perfectly for him, and for his purpose. It could not have worked more perfectly if he had requested this exact sequence of events personally from God. Doll did not know why, he did nothing himself to cause it, and had he been a minute earlier or a minute later, it might certainly have been different. But he wasn’t earlier or later. And he did not intend to stop to question fortune. This was the perfect situation and set-up that he had originally imagined himself seeing and, in a flash, recognizing, and he did recognize it that way now:
    He had not taken three steps inside before he saw not one but two pistols, lying almost side by side on the same bunk, right on the edge of the companionway. There was not a man in this entire end of the bunk area except for one, and before Doll could even take another step, this man had gotten up and gone off down to the other end where, apparently, everyone was congregated.
    That was all there was to it. All Doll had to do was step over, pick up one of the pistols, and put it on. Wearing the stranger’s pistol, he walked on through the bunk area. At the other end he merely went out and down the hatchway stairs, turned back left, and he was back safe in the midst of C-for-Charlie. The company had not yet begun to move and everything was just as when he left it. This time he made a point of passing close by to Tills and Mazzi, something he had deliberately avoided before, when returning empty-handed from the stern.
    Tills and Mazzi had not moved, and still sat against the bulkhead with their legs clutched up against their chests, sweating in the heat. Doll stopped in front of them with his hands on his hips, his right one resting on the pistol. They could not fail to notice it.
    “Hello, lover-boy,” Mazzi said.
    Tills, on the other hand, grinned. “We seen you sneakin past a while ago. On your way back from the stern. When Bugger caught you. Where you