“Anything else to go on?” Biff wanted to know.
“Well, we do know how much gas Charlie was carrying. Enough for about 1,200 miles. He’d have to allow for a safety margin. As I told you, I figure he planned on about 500 miles in, and 500 back, of course. That would give him a 200-mile safety factor.”
Jack leaned back against the map table, scratched his head, and lit a cigarette.
“Another thing ... that radio signal we got.”
“You mean the one yesterday?”
“Yes. Now if that was your uncle calling....”
“You’re still not sure it was Uncle Charlie?”
“Well, I guess I am. Let’s say it was. That’s another reason I figure he’s over toward the mountain range.”
“I’m not reading you too clearly right now,” Biff said.
Jack laughed. “I’ll try to explain. Charlie had a portable radio transmitter with him. A good one, battery operated. Its maximum range would be about 500 miles under ideal conditions. That means he’d have to have straight-line transmission.”
“You mean nothing in the way, like a high mountain?”
“That’s right, Biff. Transmission is greatly reduced if your wave has to bend over hills or mountains.”
“So you figure he’s got to be high enough to shoot a straight wave directly to Unhao.”
Jack nodded his head. “And the elevation around Jaraminka really fills that bill—5,000 to 6,000 feet.”
“How could he ever land in such rugged terrain?” Biff asked.
“Plenty of small plateaus. Some of them have been cleared for farming.”
Biff picked up a drawing compass. He adjusted its opening to fit the five-hundred-mile mark on the scale of miles at the bottom of the map. Then, placing the steel point on the dot marking Unhao, he swirled the compass. The pencil end cut right through the area Jack was describing.
“Nice figuring, Jack.” A faraway look floated across Biff’s face.
“Hey! You’re not getting any ideas, are you?” Jack demanded. “An American boy could never make it across the border. Natives, sure—but you—never.”
Maybe not, thought Biff, but in his thoughts, he was already there.
A light-skinned boy could never make it. That thought, first suggested by Chuba, restated by Jack Hudson, kept running through Biff’s head. The Chinese Reds’ border patrol would spot a white boy instantly. Biff remembered stories he had read of Americans captured in Red China. The stories weren’t pleasant.
Biff left Headquarters House deep in thought. He walked slowly across the compound. Chuba was waiting for him in the palm grove.
“Biff has big thoughts?” was Chuba’s greeting. “Maybe Chuba can help.”
“Maybe you can, Chuba. Maybe you just can. I’ve got an idea. See what you think of it.”
For fifteen minutes Biff spoke to Chuba. At first, the native boy kept shaking his head. Then, as Biff’s enthusiasm mounted, Chuba was swept up by the idea. Negative shakes of his head became excited head shakes of agreement. Chuba’s eyes lighted up. Now he cut in on Biff’s enthusiasm with bursts of his own. He took over Biff’s plan, and added to it. Biff was a hard one to resist when he became enthusiastic about anything he wanted to do. And this he meant to do.
“We can do it, Biff,” Chuba said. There was no holding the boy now. “I get things ready on double quick. Have much ideas. But will take time.”
“How much time?” Biff demanded.
“Two hours—maybe three. Then you come to the house of my father. You know, where you saw Evil Spirit Box. Chuba be all ready.”
“Chuba, you’re a really smooth operator.”
“Like real American boy?”
“You said it.”
Chuba’s mouth was split into a wide grin of pride. No praise could have pleased him more.
Toward late afternoon, Jack Hudson ran his hand over his forehead. He was tired. He hated paper work. All afternoon, he had been poring over files, checking bills, answering letters. The work had to be done, but he wished there was someone else to do it. Action, that’s what he liked. Not sitting at a desk in a hot room.
As cluttered as his mind was with facts and figures, the thought of his missing friend, Charles Keene, kept coming back again and again. Jack thought of Biff, too. He didn’t like the idea he felt sure was building in Biff’s mind. Too risky, of course. But, he told himself, this sitting around, just waiting, was getting him down too.
With an impatient sweep of his arm, Jack shoved the papers away from him. He stretched, got up, and made for the front entrance of Headquarters House. On the raised platform, six steps above the ground, Jack stopped to light a cigarette. As he did so, his attention was caught by a beggar boy coming at a run across the compound. The boy reached the foot of the steps and sprawled on the ground.
“Baksheesh, Sahib! Baksheesh!” the boy wailed.
Jack Hudson looked down at the boy, his feeling of disgust mingled with one of sympathy. These poor kids, he thought, trained to beg from the day they could walk. Baksheesh, the word for a tip, a present, was used in many places in the East and Far East.
“Baksheesh! Baksheesh!” the boy continued to moan.
Jack looked about him. He spotted Chuba’s father.
“Ti Pao. Come here. Chop! Chop!”
Ti Pao came on the run. He could tell Sahib Hudson was annoyed.
“You know my orders, Ti Pao. No beggars allowed in the compound. How did this boy get in?”
Ti Pao shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe slip through gate, or hide in truck coming through.”
“Well, get him out of here. You know that twice a week, we hand out food and alms to the beggars. They are not to come inside.”
“Baksheesh, Sahib! Baksheesh.” The plea came again.
“Take him away, Ti Pao.” Jack Hudson turned, and started to reenter the building. As he did so, the beggar said softly, “No baksheesh? Not even Coke money?”
Jack whirled around. The beggar boy was already heading for the gate. Jack scratched his head. “I could have sworn he said— Nah! I must have been hearing things. Must be the heat,” he mumbled to himself. He shook his head and went through the door.
The beggar boy neared the gate, then cut to the left. He raced through the palm grove, then carefully, stealthily, made his way to the cabin of Ti Pao. There was just a flash of brown, ragged clothing as he slipped through the door.
“It work. It work! Biff!” Chuba danced up and down in his excitement.
The beggar boy grinned. It was the grin of a happy Biff Brewster.
“I’ll say it worked. Even your father didn’t recognize me.”
“Not Sahib Hudson, either?”
Biff shook his head. “Nope. I fooled him completely. I even spoke some American words. Course, I said them low, just as I was leaving. Don’t know whether he heard them or not.”
“Let me take closer look,” Chuba said. Biff turned slowly around as Chuba made his inspection.
“Is much okays. I only afraid sweat make betel nut juice get all smeary.”
“I was afraid of that, too, Chuba. But the stain didn’t run.”
Biff looked as much like a native boy as Chuba did. The tattered shorts and torn shirt that he wore had been dug up by the always astonishing Chuba. Biff’s face, his body, his legs, were stained a light, yellowish brown. This had been done with the juice of betel nuts, mixed and thinned with still another liquid, to lighten the blackish fluid crushed from the betel.
On his feet, Biff wore floppy, torn sandals.
“Only one thing, Biff. Your eyes. Should be more slanty. I fix.”
Chuba took out a piece of charcoal. At the outside corners of each of Biff’s eyes, Chuba deftly applied upward strokes with the charcoal. He stepped back to view his handiwork. Then he went into a gale of laughter.
“You much China boy now. No one could tell difference.”
“Just call me the Chop Suey Kid,” Biff laughed.
“Chop Suey Kid? What’s chop suey?”
“You never heard of it?”
Chuba shook his head.
“Well, back in America it’s our favorite Chinese food.”
Chuba looked puzzled. He still didn’t get it. He shrugged it off. “Now, we all set. No border guard ever spot you. Never tell you American boy.”
Biff had passed his test. Neither Jack Hudson nor, even more important, Ti Pao, had penetrated his disguise.
“Okay then, Chuba. We’re all set. It’s still an hour before the night mess call. I think we’d better be well on our way by then. I’ll be missed when I don’t show up for chow. And Jack Hudson will guess where I’ve headed. But by then, it will be too late, too dark, to start a search. What about food, and other stuff?”
“All set. Chuba has everything. Even bottle of juice in case you start turning back into white boy. We got food for two days. After that, Chuba get more wherever we are.”
“All right, Chuba. Now I’m really going to let your father put me out the gate. I’ll follow the river until I reach the second bend. Then I’ll wait for you.”
“All is good. Chuba be right after you. Not look good for me to leave here with lowly beggar boy.” Chuba grinned, and Biff returned his smile.
That night, by nine o’clock, the two boys were deep in the swampy jungle between the Irrawaddy River and the border of China.
Night turned the Burmese jungle into a frightening enemy. Towering trees, teak, acle, ironwood, shot straight upward, so close packed and dense that they blotted out the starlit sky.
Vines, some of them as thick as a man’s arm, were forever stretching low across the boys’ path, as if trying to hold them back from their bold venture.
What bothered Biff most of all was the sickening smell of the jungle. Rotted vegetation gave off a rank, stifling odor. Biff had been in the jungles of Brazil, but they were nothing compared to the one he and Chuba were forcing their way through.
During the two hours they had traveled in the waning daylight, their progress had been swift. Chuba knew the trails well. Sometimes, moving at a trot several steps ahead of Biff, the native boy would seem to be swallowed by hedges of low, thick brushwood. But he would reappear, parting the thick growth so that Biff could follow.
Moving swiftly, silently, without talking, to conserve their breath, Biff was suddenly startled. From directly overhead came a chorus of angry screams. Biff stopped and looked up.
“Only monkeys, Biff,” Chuba called back. “We wake them from their sleep, and they no like. Come.”
Once again Chuba took up his steady pace. Thorny bushes grabbed at Biff’s already tattered clothes. Ugly scratches marked his legs. Most upsetting was the unexpected change from dry land into dank, oozing swampland. Chuba never stopped, or gave any warning of what lay ahead. Time and again the native boy plunged into a narrow stream. Once the water, muddy, almost hot, came up to Biff’s waist. As he neared the opposite bank, he halted a moment to look back.
“Biff! Biff! Hurry! Out of the water!”
Biff leaped for the bank just as a partly submerged log moved swiftly through the water to the spot where he had been standing. As it reached the bank, the “log’s” jaws opened, and Biff heard the chilling sound of teeth gnashing together.
“Crocodile, Biff. Never stop in stream. Old croc might be hungry.”
“If he likes mud-flavored boy, I’m his dish,” Biff thought.
Biff heard the chilling sound of teeth gnashing together
Biff heard the chilling sound of teeth gnashing together
After traveling for six hours with only brief rest breaks, the boys were bone weary. Biff figured it must be midnight or a little after. They had reached a small clearing, a circle about thirty feet across. Toward one side a single ironwood tree rose high above the surrounding underbrush.
“We stop here for the night,” Chuba said. “You ever sleep in a tree?”
“Once. Didn’t find it very comfortable though. Do we have to?”
“Is much better. This tree has nice big limbs. Find good crotch, settle in it, and sleep real good. Too many animals on the ground. Animals and insects. Big ants, geckos, even wild pigs. You know gecko? Is big, slimy lizard. Wild pigs don’t care who they eat. And ants sting real bad. Much better in tree.”
Chuba stood at the base of the tree. “You give me push up to first limb. Then I can give you my hand to pull you up. Come on.”
Biff didn’t reply, or move. His eyes were intent on a vine that hung down from one of the higher limbs. It seemed to sway slightly. But there was no breeze.
“Back, Chuba! Back!” Biff shouted.
Chuba leaped backward. Biff, fascinated, watched the “vine” stretch downward, then slither off the branch and plunge downward.
“Python!” Chuba cried out.
“Yes. Python. I’ve seen them before. Not pythons like that one, but boas. Boa constrictors of South America. They’re of the same family.”
The boys now stood in the center of the circle. The python, nearly twenty feet long, seemed to stare at Biff and Chuba. Then it slowly slithered into the underbrush.
Biff looked at Chuba. The native boy lowered his head. “Is Chuba’s mistake. Always, my father tell me to be sure and check sleeping tree for python. Chuba forget this time. If Biff not so alert, maybe python now be around Chuba’s neck instead of deep in forest.”
“Any chance of its coming back? If it went up that tree once, why shouldn’t it come up again? And with us up there!”
“Oh, no. Once snake scared away, it not come back. This Chuba knows. Python climb up tree to attack enemies by dropping down. Never climb up to find enemies.”
“Well, I just hope you’re right. Come on, let’s hop into our upper berths.”
“Upper berths?” Chuba asked.
Biff explained, and the two boys climbed up the tree to their sleeping quarters. Biff watched Chuba as he nestled down on a stout limb forming a crotch with the trunk of the tree. Chuba stretched out backward, his legs on either side of the tree trunk. Biff did the same. At first, the position was most uncomfortable. Biff felt he had to keep his knees tightly pressed against the tree trunk to keep from falling. Gradually, though, he squirmed into a position where his legs dangled down, each touching the trunk with just enough pressure to keep him balanced.
Some bed, Biff thought. Then, his body aching from battling his way through the jungle, Biff slept.
Early in the morning, with the sun fighting to send its rays through the dense jungle, Biff was awakened by a call from just above him. Chuba was about five limbs higher up.
“Good sleep, Biff?” Chuba called down.
Before answering, Biff tested his cramped arms and legs. He was stiff all over. Sleeping in a tree might be safe, but it certainly was no featherbed. He knew though, that after half an hour in the hot, steamy jungle, he would sweat all the stiffness out of his body.
“Guess so. I slept, anyway,” he called up to Chuba.
“Then we go down, and be on our way. We should reach border in two more hours.”
The sun had brightened the circular opening below, about the only spot where the sun’s rays could get through. Biff heard Chuba scrambling down from above him. Then he looked down and gasped. There in the center of the circle, stretched out asleep, was the most magnificent animal he had ever seen.
“Hold it up there, Chuba,” Biff said softly. The scrambling stopped. “Can you see down through the leaves?”
Chuba’s answering gasp told him that he could.
The animal below, enjoying a morning snooze, was a tiger.
Both boys held their breath, afraid that even the slightest sound might awaken the sleeping beast. Moments passed. Then, in a whisper, Biff asked, “What do we do now?”
Chuba’s answering whisper came down through the leaves. “We wait, Biff. All we can do. If we try to scare him away, he get mad, wait for us to fall out of tree and eat us.”
Chuba’s knowledge, Biff realized, was mixed up with superstition and tales handed down from one generation to another. Tigers, Biff knew, were man-eaters only in certain circumstances. A wounded tiger would attack a man. So would one so old that it could no longer get its food easily. Then, man, less quick, less nimble than the animals tigers usually fed on, could well become the evening meal of a tiger.
Biff looked down at the sleeping animal. Its sleek, glistening fur told him that this was a young tiger. Its white furry underbelly was puffed out. That tiger had had a good meal, Biff knew. Probably caught his breakfast just before daylight, and now he was having a nice nap in the sun.
“Is he still sleeping?” Chuba whispered.
“Like a baby after its morning bottle,” Biff whispered back. Biff didn’t think the tiger would sleep too long. Not as the morning sun rose higher, and its fiery rays burned down on the opening. Once they hit Mr. Tiger, the animal would move off to a shady spot and complete his rest.
As Biff watched the animal, the jungle suddenly came alive with the screeching, cawing, and screaming of hundreds of birds and animals.
The tiger sat up quickly. It rose to its feet, its long tail switching back and forth. Then it opened its mouth in a gaping yawn, showing glistening white teeth and fangs. It turned its head from side to side, looking to spot any danger.
“That noise from the monkeys,” Chuba called down. “Or maybe wildcats. They chasing the parrots. All very much mad at each other.”
“Good for them,” Biff called back. “They woke up our friend down there. I think old tiger’s going to move along.”
Biff watched the tiger. He saw it stretch, arching its back very much like any tomcat. It slowly trotted out of the clearing into the dense undergrowth.
“Tiger’s gone, Chuba. We’ll wait awhile, then let’s take off from here fast.”
Biff had no way of counting the passing minutes. He had left his watch back at Unhao. It would be a fatal error, he knew, if a Chinese beggar boy were spotted wearing a wrist watch. He forced himself to wait. He wanted to be sure that the tiger was long gone to another sleeping spot. The minutes went by as the sounds of the jungle grew louder and louder. Crows added their angry caws to the symphony of sounds coming from herons, silver pheasants, and other birds.
“I think it’s safe now, Chuba. What do you think?”
Biff’s answer was the sound of Chuba scrambling down from his perch.
“Okay, Biff, we go.”
The boys climbed down, dropping the final ten feet to the ground. Chuba opened his bundle and took from it two handfuls of cooked rice. They ate as they took up their trek once again, scooping up a handful of water from the first clear stream they came to.
After traveling an hour, by which time the sweat was pouring off Biff’s body, soaking his ragged clothes, Chuba stopped.
“We’re not far from border now, Biff. Maybe another hour, maybe less, until we get there.”
“And where we cross there won’t be any border guards?” Biff asked.
“Chuba doesn’t think so. Main road where guard always patrols is south of here, almost a day’s walk. Thus path we on leads to small, narrow river. River is boundary between Burma and China. Where we cross is a small clearing. River not deep there. Only up to knees. Easy to get to other side.”
The other side was China. The thought sent a thrilling chill through Biff’s body.
“We move with much quiet now,” Chuba said. “Stay close together. Might be others at clearing. Not guards, but maybe Chinese bandits. They use this path too, when they fleeing Chinese soldiers.”
Biff and Chuba moved quickly but cautiously along the trail. Every few yards, Chuba would stop, straining to catch any unusual sound that might warn of danger ahead. At every hidden turn in the path, Chuba would crawl forward, then signal to Biff that all was clear, to come ahead.
“We’re almost there now,” Chuba whispered. “Around next bend in path, we come to clearing and the river. Go slow now. Most careful.”
The boys seemed to move ahead by inches. They neared the final bend. On reaching it, Chuba slipped off the path, pressing his body behind a large palm tree. Biff came up behind, looking over Chuba’s shoulder. They craned their necks around the tree trunk until the edge of the clearing came in sight.
“Looks like it’s all clear,” Biff said.
Chuba nodded his head. They left the protection of the tree. Darting from one low bush to another, they came to the edge of the opening. All was clear in the opening on their side of the river. Then, raising their heads, they looked across the thirty feet of water separating them from China.
Both drew back quickly. Two men, wearing peaked, long-billed caps sat in the middle of the clearing on the opposite bank. Red stars on the front of their caps told the boys who they were. Not bandits, not others seeking a safe passage from one country to the other. These two men were members of the border patrol. The two ugly, snub-nosed sub-machine guns were further proof, if further proof was necessary.
Biff shot a quick look at Chuba. For the first time Biff saw fear—stark terror—written on the native boy’s face.
Biff placed a hand on his friend’s arm. Why, Chuba was trembling! The realization of Chuba’s fear of the border patrol was startling to Biff. Chuba showed no such fear in the jungle. He wasn’t afraid of crocodiles, snakes, or tigers. He respected them as man’s natural enemies.
But now, confronted with the border guard, Chuba was near panic. Biff thought back to Chuba’s talk about how easy it was to cross the border, how he said he’d crossed several times. When they were discussing this dangerous trip, Chuba had practically brushed the guards aside as no problem. But the fear must have been there, just the same. Chuba was a good actor. Biff realized just how much courage it must have taken on Chuba’s part to agree to guide him into China. He gripped the native boy’s arm in friendship and to reassure him.
“Take it easy, Chuba. We’re all right. But let’s cut back down the trail and figure out what we can do.” Biff flashed a smile at Chuba and signaled the direction he meant to take. Chuba followed close on his heels like a puppy.
After retracing their steps for about one hundred yards down the path, the boys ducked off the trail and found a hiding place behind a thick clump of bushes.
For a few moments Biff talked quietly. He talked about Indianapolis, his home, about the United States. He talked about anything that came into his head. He wanted to calm Chuba down. “American talk,” he thought, would do the trick since it was Chuba’s favorite subject. Soon a weak smile came over Chuba’s face. “I’m sorry, Biff,” he apologized. “I’m sorry I act like chicken.”
“That’s okay, Chuba. I’d have been scared, too, if I knew as much about the border guard as you do.”
“I hear many things. All bad.”
“Tell me honestly, Chuba. You said you’ve crossed over several times. Have you, really?”
“Yes, Biff. Chuba not lie. Only,” he paused, “never any border guard around when Chuba slip over before.”
“I see. Well, what do we do about it? You think the guard will stay there all day?”
“Can’t tell. Much likely they will stay long time.”
“I suppose so,” Biff said. He thought a minute. “It might be that there’s been a lot of slipping across the border here lately, and these guards have been assigned to stop it.”
“I think you right, Biff.”
Neither spoke for several minutes. Both were trying to figure a way out of the spot they found themselves in.
“How about this, Chuba? Couldn’t we either go up the river a couple hundred yards or more, or down the river and slip across?”
Chuba shook his head. “No, Biff. River narrow, run very quick on both sides of the clearing. Too deep. Jungle grow real thick and fierce right to water’s edge. Can’t get through.”
“Well, we’ve just got to get across somehow. We’re losing time.” As Biff spoke, another thought was building in his head.
“Now let me ask you this, Chuba. See if you think this plan might work. Supposing I cut off the trail about a hundred feet from the clearing. I’ll make my way through the underbrush to a spot say seventy-five feet away from the trail. You go hide behind that tree where we first spotted the guard. You follow me?”
“Okay so far.”
“Right. Then I’ll yell like a Comanche. That ought to distract the guard. They’ll try to find who’s making the noise. If they leave the clearing, you can slip across the river.”
“Good idea, Biff. But how about you? How you going to get across?”
“Same way. Only this timeyoudo the distracting. You yell like a Comanche.”
Chuba grinned. “Could work. But how does Comanche bird yell?”
Biff decided to postpone his lecture on TV westerns until another time. “Don’t worry about it. Just yell like I do. We’ve got to try it. It’s our only chance. Now, if you get across all right, wait. Wait a good long time. By then, the guards will probably give up the search and return to their post in the clearing. I don’t imagine they like prowling around the jungle too much.”
“No, too many wild animals.”
“Okay. So, you’d better make your way a good distance from the clearing. Say you go to a place about a hundred yards opposite the river—downriver—so I’ll know where to listen for you. You’re going to be on the same side as the guards, so be sure you’re in a safe place and can make a fast getaway if they should come anywhere near you.”
“Don’t worry about that. Chuba can hide good in jungle.”
“All right, let’s get moving.” But neither moved for a few minutes. Both boys were reluctant to part company. They knew the danger lying before them. They might never see one another again, if Biff’s plan failed.
“Now, where will we meet?” Biff asked.
“You just keep running down path after you cross river. Get as far as you can. Then find good hiding place. When I know guard has gone back to clearing, I’ll move along trail making sound like a crow. Like this.”
Chuba let out a soft “caw, caw.” It was an exact imitation. Chuba wouldn’t have any trouble being a “Comanche bird,” either, Biff thought.
“Good. I’m off.” Biff pushed his way into the underbrush. It was tough going. The low, dense vegetation tore at him. Vines dropped like heavy curtains from the tall trees hiding whatever lay ahead. It was steaming hot. Biff wrestled the jungle growth, sweat streaming down his face and body. It must have taken him nearly half an hour to penetrate a distance of about 75 or 100 feet.
Chuba could hear Biff making his way through the brush. At first, he didn’t move. He knew he had to go back to the clearing, but the thought was frightening. It took all his courage to force himself back up the path. But he knew that if he didn’t, he would let his friend down. Biff’s plan depended on Chuba’s being at the clearing at the right moment. Yet, if the plan misfired—Chuba shuddered.
Back at the edge of the clearing, Chuba crawled on his stomach to where the low growth stopped. Carefully he parted the bush he lay behind. The peephole allowed him a full view of the clearing.
They were still there. The two guards squatted on their haunches. One was munching some food. The other braced himself by holding onto the barrel of his sub-machine gun, the gun’s butt resting on the ground.
Chuba inched backward. He took up his position behind the tree. Biff’s yelling could come any moment now. What would the guards do? Would they come charging across the stream to do their searching? Chuba didn’t think so. If they did, then they would be crossing the border illegally, although Chuba knew that often the guards paid scant attention to this regulation.
What if only one guard took up the search, the other remaining behind to guard the clearing? One good thing, Chuba knew, was that from the direction Biff had taken, it might appear that the yelling came from the same side of the river that the guards were on. There was a sharp turn in the stream about thirty feet to the west of the clearing. If Biff made his way toward the riverbank, he might actually be behind the guards, but still on the side opposite from them.
“Eeeeee-owieeeee!”
The sharp, piercing scream rose above the constant chattering of the monkeys, the shrill calls of jungle birds. For a moment, the jungle became silent. The monkeys and birds were as startled as the two guards. Sothatwas American bird yell! “Much wow!” Chuba was impressed.
Chuba, moving slightly forward, saw the guards leap to their feet. They looked about them quickly. Both released the safety catches on their weapons. They raised their guns to firing position.
“Eeeee-owieeeee!” Again the wild cry blasted through the jungle.
The guards turned in the direction the cry came from.
“Yow! Yow! Yow! Yow!”
The series of short cries came in rapid succession.
The jungle had never heard a sound like it. It could only come from a human being. One of the guards motioned in the direction of the cries. Then he started toward the spot. The other guard held back, until his companion turned and spoke to him in an angry voice. The two plunged into the undergrowth.
Now was his chance. With his heart pounding, fear tightening his throat muscles, Chuba made his dash. He was in mid-stream when once more Biff let out a series of short cries, followed by a long “Eeeee-owieeee!”
A good thing he did, too. His shouting drowned out the splashes made by Chuba as he raced through the water which tugged at his legs. Now Chuba had reached the opposite shore. He tore down the trail, his lungs bursting from his effort.
When he felt the guards were well behind him, Chuba cut off to the left of the trail, spotted a hiding place, and dived under the sprawling bush. He lay there gasping for breath.
How long he lay there, Chuba had no way of telling. Finally, he forced himself to his feet. Biff might already be at the tree, waiting for Chuba to take over his part in the action.
Chuba moved along the path back toward the river. He moved cautiously, silently, making no more noise than a big cat stalking its prey. When he neared the clearing, Chuba went down to his hands and knees. Taking advantage of the cover offered by the low bushes, he crept forward. Again carefully parting a heavy bush, he looked into the clearing.
The guards had returned. They were talking rapidly to one another. Chuba couldn’t make out their words, but he felt sure they were talking about the strange cry they had heard. They were probably frightened by it, and at this thought, Chuba smiled. He felt a lot better now. He had made it over the border. But even as he had this thought, he remembered Biff. Biff had to get across. Only half the job was done.
Biff would surely be back at the tree by now. Time for more action. A frown of doubt crossed Chuba’s face. Would the guard be fooled a second time?
Chuba went ahead with the plan. He walked back up the trail for one hundred paces. Then he slithered into the underbrush, crawling, forcing his way through the wall of thick, spiny growth.
If he, Chuba, made the same kind of noise Biff had made, wouldn’t the guards’ suspicions be aroused? Already they would be tense, nervous. They hadn’t found anything the first time. Wouldn’t they just ignore a second set of strange “Yows” and “Eeeee-owieeees?” Chuba felt sure they would. So what could he do? He just had to help Biff cross. Okay, he knew what he would do. He could outsmart the guard in the denseness of the jungle. They would never be able to catch him.
Chuba reached a position he thought would do. It was near the spot he and Biff had discussed, as far as he could figure. He took a deep breath, then, shouting in Chinese, he called out, “Help! Help! Strange man here! Strange man! Help! Help!”
He waited. Moments passed. He repeated his call for help. Seconds later, he heard the crashing of the guards as they fought through the underbrush.
Chuba waited no longer. He got himself away from the spot where he had called out as fast as he could wriggle his body along. He knew he had made a safe getaway when he could no longer hear the guards struggling against the brush. Chuba smiled to himself. He knew he was only about fifty feet from the trail. He sat down. He would wait, a long wait this time, to make sure the guard had gotten back to the clearing, and that Biff had had plenty of time to put a good distance between himself and the river.
Chuba leaned back against the base of a tree. He felt good about the way things had gone.
Suddenly, the noises of the jungle were drowned out by the most horrible noise of all—the angry, “bup,bup,bup” of a sub-machine gun’s fire. First there was a short burst. Another short burst. This was followed by a longer burst as several rounds were fired. Then, silence.
Eerie silence spread over the jungle following the machine-gun firing. The jungle was holding its breath. The monkeys, birds, even the cicadas, stopped their endless chattering and calling for several moments. Chuba sat rigid, his fists clenched, as fear tore at his nerves. Biff! What had happened to his friend Biff?
What could he do? What was there to do? The questions whirled in his head. No sensible answers came. If he went back down the trail toward the river, he might run into the guards, still prowling, ready to let loose their deadly spray of bullets at the slightest strange sound or movement. But what about Biff? Had those shots been directed at him? And had they reached him? Chuba shuddered at the thought.
After waiting as long as his worried mind would permit him, Chuba decided to investigate. On his stomach, he wormed his way toward the path. At the edge of the brush, he stopped. For minutes he lay still, listening, listening, straining his ears to catch any sound that might warn him of the guards’ presence.
“It’s all right,” he told himself, trying desperately to rebuild his courage. “They’ve gone back to the clearing. It’s safe for me to explore.”
Just as Chuba snaked his body halfway out on the trail, he tensed. He heard a noise behind him. Not much of a noise, only the faintest rustle in the brush. Quickly the native boy worked his way backward off the trail.
Again he heard the noise, slightly louder this time. An animal, a snake? Chuba knew that his knife, long and sharp as it was, would be little protection against a jungle animal. And even less against guards armed with rapid-fire weapons.
Then he caught another faint sound, soft, so soft as to be barely heard.
“Eeeee-owieeeee.” Silence. Then, slightly louder, “Yow ... Yow.”
Chuba’s face brightened. “Caww ... caww,” he answered.
“Chuba” was the one word whispered in reply to his crow call.
The native boy wiped his forehead with his forearm and sighed in relief. It was Biff. It had to be. Biff was all right.
“Biff?” Chuba called in a squeaky voice. The boy scrambled to the edge of the trail again. He looked carefully to his right, down the trail toward the river. Then he looked left, where the Comanche call had been sounded. He saw Biff’s stained face poke out of the bushes about ten feet away. A big grin showed white teeth even whiter against his brown face.
The two boys wasted no time in talk. They made tracks, and fast, away from the river, away from the border guard. After an hour of steady traveling, Chuba darted off the main path, following a little used one deep into the bush.
“We rest here,” Chuba said, gasping for breath.
“Okay by me,” said Biff. It seemed to him that every bone, every muscle in his body ached. The struggle through the jungle growth, the tension of making the river crossing, had worn both boys out. Both were only too happy to stretch out and let their bodies regain strength.
“So this is China,” Biff said wearily.
He sat up, dug into his bundle, and took out a small bottle of antiseptic. This he rubbed over the scratches on his legs and arms. He handed the bottle to Chuba. Then he took out a large tube of insect repellant. Flies and mosquitoes had formed a small cloud around the two.
“What happened?” Chuba asked. “I heard much gun shoots. I worry. I think maybe they shoot Biff.”
“They tried to, Chuba. I fooled ’em, though.”
“How you do this?”
“Well, I got across the river all right without being seen. Those guards really jumped when they heard you call. I’d gone maybe fifty feet down the trail, on this side, when I heard the guards coming back out of the brush, back to the trail. So I dived into a thicket and crawled away from the trail. I don’t know how long I waited. Then I heard the guards getting nearer the spot where I was hiding.”
“They almost find you?”
“Darn near it. I don’t believe they could have been more than ten feet from me at one time. That’s when I figured I had to do something. I found a stick about three feet long and as thick as your arm. I heard the guards talking to one another. Then I hurled the stick as far as I could. It crashed in the brush, made quite a noise. Just what I wanted. The guards rushed back down the trail toward the spot where the stick landed. Then they opened up. That’s the shooting you heard.”
Chuba smiled. “I bet they cut big hole in underbrush with those bullets.”
“But we fooled them, Chuba. We got across.”
“Now we better get moving again,” the boy was suddenly very businesslike. “Not far from here is small village. When we get there, we take main road. Now we’re inside China, no more have to take to secret trails and paths. We just two Chinese beggar boys.”
By nightfall the boys had reached the crumbling gray wall surrounding a small village.