The room grew quiet at once.
'This is the situation,' said Polagutin. 'The Petlura gangs that Pilsudski and the Rumanian boyars have been sheltering across the border are getting active again. They were seen in daylight today approaching our frontier. . . It is quite likely, comrades, that those gangs will be sent over our side tonight. It is your job and that of the frontier guards to give them a proper reception...' And raising his voice to a sharp tone of command, Polagutin said: 'All except those from the factory-training school, fall in! Commander of the factory school group, report to me!'
We crowded back from the door. Holding their rifles high, the chaps from the town groups filed past us. As the room emptied, my heart sank. 'What about us? What are we going to do? They'll go out of town to patrol the forests on the border, but just because we're a bit younger we'll be kept behind as usual to guard hay at the food stores, or else we'll have to stay right in town to guard the fortress bridge, in case some spy or other tries to blow it up. What fun was there in guarding a lot of wooden barns full of hay or lying in ambush where everyone could see you, on the busy brightly-lit fortress bridge!
An elderly special in a railwayman's cap ran into the room and shouted: 'All present and correct, Comrade Commander! The district secretary's arrived.'
'Kartamyshev here already?' Polagutin exclaimed joyfully. He turned to Polevoi and shook his hand
firmly: 'Good luck! Keep a sharp look-out, you've got a big responsibility. . . Good-bye, comrades!' And he walked out of the room.
'We're staying here. It will be our job to guard the headquarters and stores of the Special Detachment,' Polevoi announced solemnly. 'Fall in!'
A DANGEROUS POST
In front of me stands a line of posts with barbed wire stretched tight between them. Beyond the barbed wire are allotments—a big stretch of lumpy frozen ground, most of it hidden in darkness. Some distance away, near the road, there is another line of barbed wire, but you can't see it from here. All the time I keep thinking that distant barbed-wire fence has been cut and bandits are creeping towards me across the black, frozen earth. My ears are cold, very cold, but so as to hear better I purposely keep my collar down, and my fingers gripping the rifle are stiff and frozen.
So this is post No. 3 that I've heard so much about from chaps who have stood guard here before!
Behind me rises the cold brick wall of the shed that stands between me and the inner yard. The projecting edge of the roof sticks out just above my head. The narrow passage for the sentry with barbed wire on one side runs along the shed wall for about thirty paces. It comes to a dead-end at the high brick wall of the next house, which joins that of the shed at right angles.
'The chicken run'—that's what the Special Detachment men call post No. 3. A sentry on duty here feels cut off from his comrades, cut off from the whole world...
Ever since H had been on duty I had been unable to take my eyes off a black hump that was sticking up on the allotment about ten paces away. It was like the head of a man crouching on the ground. I was very sorry I hadn't asked the previous guard, a student from the farming institute, whether he had noticed that hump. Suddenly the hump seemed to move and creep nearer. Shivering, I poked the barrel of my rifle through the barbed wire and was just about to fire, when I stopped myself. Suppose it was not a man at all! It might be a ball of weed blown about by the wind? Or a heap of potato-tops? Or simply a pile of earth that someone had left after digging up their potatoes?
What then?... Then I should look a fool. The chaps would never let me forget it. My first dangerous post and I made a boob! They'd say I'd lost my nerve. . .
The wind blew and the iron roof above me made a harsh whistling sound. That wasn't someone walking over the roof, was it?... Craning my neck, I peered up under the eaves of the shed expecting to see the black head of a bandit pop out at any moment. He could easily have jumped from the roof of the house on to the barn.
Suspicious thumping noises sounded overhead. Surely they weren't footsteps?... I stood on tip-toe. Faint sounds reached my ears—a knocking in Kishinev Street, a rustling on the allotment, the creak of weathercock on the roof. My head swam from looking up at the mass of stars glittering above me in the cold frosty air.
The thumping noises on the roof grew louder. I took a firm grip on my rifle and pointed it in the direction of the noise. A distant star glinted at me from behind a tall chimney-pot.
'Ears like axes!' Polevoi had said as he marched us to our posts. 'You are guarding the arms store for the Communists and Komsomol members of the whole district!
Special Detachment stores are a very tempting target for capitalist spies.'
And even if he hadn't said that, we all knew what a responsible job it was to be guarding Special Detachment Headquarters. In the cellars there was a lot of dynamite, TNT, and ammunition. And we were guarding it all for the first time.
'Ears like axes! Ears like axes!' I repeated Polevoi's favourite saying to myself and my frozen ears began to feel as if they were growing longer and longer and getting as thin and sharp as axe-blades.
The roof was quiet again.
That noise must have been the wind romping with a loose sheet of iron. But wait! Where was that black hump?
I had forgotten about it... I searched for the black shape that had made me so uneasy. It was still there on the allotment and hadn't moved an inch.
... I paced slowly to and fro along the shed, trying to laugh at my fears. II reflected that dawn was near and soon I should have nothing to worry about. Why should anything special happen during my watch? Plenty of watches passed without anything happening at all. It would be the same with mine. But no one would be able to make fun of me for being the youngest in the group. And they didn't even know I had put an extra year on my age just to get accepted for the Special Detachment! Now I would come back off my watch a real fighting man, and for long afterwards I should be proud of having stood guard at post No. 3. They wouldn't have put a slacker here, however much he asked!
When he brought me to the post, Polevoi had said briefly and simply: 'If you see anyone on the allotment, just let him have it! There's no chance of a passer-by or a drunk wandering in here...'
'Just let him have it!' There was something grim and terrible in that order.
...Again the wind began to howl in the bare, icy branches of the trees; last year's weeds and potato-tops rustled against the barbed wire; the iron rumbled on the roof; the weathercock creaked behind the wall of the house.
And suddenly, in a fresh gust of wind, I caught the sound of Sasha's voice:
'What do you want?... Halt!... Halt! ... Hands... Hey, this way, chaps!'
For a moment everything was quiet, then I heard a piercing whistle. Doors banged in the guard-room. On the other side of the shed, men were running about the yard... Then I heard Sasha shouting again:
'There!... Over there!... Catch him.. .'
'Get a ladder! Quick!' came Polevoi's voice.
How I longed to run and help the other chaps and see what was going on! But I could not leave my post. Even if the whole place was on fire, I had no right to move from here.
Still listening to what was happening in the yard, I stared hard into the surrounding darkness. And so that nobody could make a grab at me from behind, I stood with my back to the wall of the shed.
My heart thumped, the rifle trembled in my hands. I was expecting something terrific to happen...
A shot thundered just above me, in the attic of the shed. Then another. I heard a faint groan some distance away. Then everything was quiet again.
About five minutes passed. Quick footsteps crunched in the narrow passage that led from the yard to my post. I jumped back into the corner and prepared to shoot...
'Halt!' I shouted wildly as a shadow appeared round the corner of the wall.
'You all right, Mandzhura?' Polevoi asked with anxiety in his voice. 'Everything all right here?'
'Everything's all right,' I answered and at once realized that I had made a mistake in not asking
