'We'll have to put a guard on it,' said Bruce, and the -expressions on
their faces changed as they thought about this.
'More pork chops for the boys in the bushes,' growled Hendry.
'You won't catch me sitting out on the bridge anight.'
'No one's asking you to,' snapped Bruce. 'All right, Ruffy.
Go and fetch the wood, and plenty of it.' Bruce completed the repairs to
the bridge in the late afternoon. The most anxious period was in the
middle of the day when he and four men had to leave the shelter and
clamber down on to the supports a few feet above the surface of the
river to set the kingposts in place. Here they were exposed at random
range to arrows from the undergrowth along the banks.
But no arrows came and they finished the job and climbed back to safety
again with something of a sense of anticlimax.
They nailed the crossties over the trusses and then roped everything
into a compact mass.
Bruce stood back and surveyed the fruit of two full days' labour.
'Functional,' he decided, speaking aloud. 'But we certainly aren't
going to win any prizes for aesthetic beauty or engineering design.' He
picked up his jacket and thrust his arms into the sleeves; his sweaty
upper body was cold now that the sun was almost down.
Home, gentlemen,' he said, and his gendarmes scattered to their
positions inside the shelter.
The metal shelter circled the laager, squatting every twenty or thirty
paces like an old woman preparing to relieve herself. When it lifted and
moved on it left a log fire behind it. The ring of fires was completed
by dark and the shelter returned to the laager.
'Are you ready, Ruffy?' From inside the shelter Bruce called across to
where Ruffy waited.
'All set, boss.' Followed by six heavily armed. gendarmes, Ruffy crossed
quickly to join Bruce and they set off to begin their all night vigil on
the bridge.
Before midnight it was cold in the corrugated iron shelter, for the wind
blew down the river and they were completely exposed to it, and there
was no cloud cover to hold the day's warmth against the earth.
The men in the shelter huddled under their gas capes and waited.
Bruce and Ruffy leaned together against the corrugated iron wall, their
shoulders almost touching, and there was sufficient light from the stars
to light the interior of the shelter and allow them to make out the
guard rails of the bridge through the open ends.
'Moon will be up in an hour,' murmured Ruffy.
'Only a quarter of it, but it will give us a little more light,' Bruce
concurred, and peered down into the black hole between his feet where he
had prised up one of the newly laid planks.
'How about taking a shine with the torch?' suggested Ruffy.
'No.' Bruce shook his head, and passed the flashlight into his other
hand. 'Not until I hear them.'
'You might not hear them.'
'If they swim downstream and climb up the piles, which is what I expect,
then we'll hear them all right. They'll be dripping water all over the
place,' said Bruce.
