Not a pilot left the Secret Forest that day but caught his breath as he saw the eastern sky blackened by Jap planes.
“Somebody’s tipped them off,” one bright-eyed boy shouted. “But let them come!”
In half an hour the sky was filled with planes. American fighters ganged up like catbirds after crows, to down Jap bombers before they reached their objective. Nor were the fighter planes all the trouble those Jap planes met that day. Together with twenty other gunners, Gale’s friend Mac was stationed on a rocky ledge outside the forest. A lucky shot at the very start brought a bomber down so close to him that he was obliged to bury himself in a bush to escape its flying parts. Even Isabelle’s Pete had driven his tank to the edge of the forest and was having a go at them with a machine gun.
“It’s a beautiful scrap,” Jan was all but sobbing with terror and delight.
“Beautiful and terrible,” was Gale’s solemn reply. “I saw one of our planes go down and the pilot didn’t bail out.”
In the main Gale had eyes for but one plane, a small one with long, slender wings, Jimmie’s plane. After studying the sky for ten minutes she decided he was not there.
“Oh, Jimmie!” she whispered, “Where are you?” Then with a start she recalled a promise she had made to him. “If I disappear,” he had said, “And you suspect that something has happened to me, listen in at your radio every night at ten.” He had written down the wave length and given it to her. “If I have any sort of a radio,” he had added, “I’ll be on the air. I might even talk from the other world.” He gave a strange laugh.
“I promised,” she told herself now. “I’ll listen tonight.”
The air battle was brief, fierce and decisive. A few of the enemy bombers got through to drop their bombs on the Secret Forest. There were some casualties—not many. Most of the bombers were driven off or destroyed. Once more the boys of the U. S. Air Force had won a signal victory and not a little of the credit was due to “Radar Gale” as the young WAC with the flying hair was often called.
At the very end of this battle something startling and terrible happened. Gale and Jan were in their hideout. Gale was feeling about in the sky with her radar for possible Jap attackers when Jan exclaimed:
“Look, Gale! That Jap plane is coming straight at us and no one is after it!”
The plane, a rather large Zero with a powerful motor was headed straight for them. Only a few moments before Gale had seen just such a plane drop a bomb.
“Quick!” she cried. “Get into the cellar! He’s got us spotted!”
They tumbled rather than climbed down the rocky stairs and had half way slid the steel door to their bomb shelter shut when an explosion all but over their heads seemed to tear the very side of the mountain away.
Jan reeled backward but stayed on her feet. Gale crumpled down, hit her head on the rock floor, rolled over and lay still.
“Oh! My God!” Jan exclaimed. “She must be dead! It’s the concussion! What shall I do?” Greatly excited she cried:
“Gale! Gale!”
But Gale neither moved nor answered.
Jan was frantic. In the air raid shelter, gas from the explosion was stifling. “I’ve got to get Gale out of here,” she told herself. She tried to move the steel door. It was jammed,—would not move—but was still half open. She was able to crowd her ample body through the opening. Outside she worked frantically removing rocks that shut away the outside air. After that she dragged the unconscious form of her companion from the cellar and up over tumbled rocks to a place in the sunshine above.
All the time she was listening, watching. The plane might return. The roar of motors, the rat-tat-tat of machine-gun fire now seemed far away. But who could tell what a moment might bring?
With her companion lying on a sunny rock, Jan rushed back to the cellar for a gallon thermos bottle filled with cold water.
Back at Gale’s side, in her excitement she poured the entire contents of the bottle on Gale’s face. Some of it went into Gale’s mouth. Suddenly she sat up, coughing and spouting water.
“Oh! Oh! Thank God you’re not dead!” Jan was fairly beside herself with joy.
“Of—of course not,” Gale sputtered.
“Well, anyway, you passed out.”
“Wha—what happened?” Gale asked.
“It wasn’t a direct hit,”—Jan glanced about. “If it had been it would have blown us to glory. It blew the top of our hideout and your radar set down to the rocks below.”
“We—we have to get that radar set. Remember. Three Secrets of Radar!” Gale was feeling better. “Listen!” she whispered. “They’re coming back.”
“Oh, no.” Jan studied the sky. “The fighting is far away.”
“One plane is coming. I hear it,” Gale insisted.
There came the sound of voices.
“Who’s that?” Gale opened her eyes, then wiped the water from her face.
“It’s our Chinese guard. They weren’t killed. That’s swell!” said Jan.
Two youthful Chinese soldiers appeared round a ledge, dragging a heavy machine-gun after them.
“Too bad,” said the taller of the pair. “Wanna shoot this plane. Can’t shoot airplane—too fast.”
“Let me see that gun.” Gale staggered to her feet.
“Made in America,” she murmured. “Good old America!”
With skilled hands she set the gun up behind a pile of rocks. Then she examined each part with care.
“Good gun,” she told Jan. “My father is an expert on machine-guns. He showed me all about them.”
“Can you shoot them?” Jan asked.
“Can I?” Gale laughed hoarsely. There was still some water in her throat. “Father had a range set up. We practiced together. I used to beat him.”
“I bet you did,” Jan replied admiringly.
“Listen!” Gale held up a hand. “That plane is coming back. Wants to see if he got us.”
“Maybe he got one more—’nother bomb.” The tall Chinese soldier turned green as he spoke.
“Perhaps they have,” Gale agreed. “You’d better go hide again.”
“If you wantee me, I stayee.” The Chinese boy was game.
“No. You go. I’ll shoot that plane.” Gale ran her eye over the barrel.
“You shoot him?” The Chinaman stared.
“Sure. Why not?” Gale adjusted the sight. “You scram!”
In ten seconds the guards had lost themselves among the rocks.
Gale and Jan were now lying flat on the rocks.
“Jan,”—Gale’s voice was husky. “You crawl back down into that cellar. Crawl. Don’t walk. That way he can’t see you. Let him think we’re dead.”
“Wha—what will you do?” Jan breathed.
“I’ll lie right here and when the time comes I’ll bend my finger, that’s all,” was Gale’s slow reply. “I don’t like that Jap, not a bit. Think of coming back to gloat over what you’ve done to a couple of girls!”
“He didn’t know we were girls,” said Jan.
“Oh no? Well, perhaps he did. They know too much, those little brown men, or think they do. Well, here comes one that may not know a thing after today.
“Now you slide out of here, and slide fast!” Gale commanded. And Jan slid.
The Jap plane had been coming in low. That was so any American planes above wouldn’t see it. Perhaps the pilot had been ordered back to observe and report. Gale wouldn’t know about that,—not for sure. As the Chinese soldier had said, he might be bringing in one more bomb to finish the job. One thing was sure. He did have a machine-gun. That was dangerous.
Gale’s suit was the color of the rocks. But her face? She tore a hole in her khaki handkerchief, then tied it on as a mask.
The plane was coming up now. “Report to Tojo, will you?” she hissed. “Perhaps you’ll report to that other big man who was killed in an airplane months ago.”
Her finger was crooked around the trigger, her gun aimed. She might have to change the aim a bit,—not much though. These little brown men had one-track minds. She had seen the course he took before. “He won’t change,” she told herself.
Gale was right. He did not change, but she did. A sudden dizziness took possession of her. Was it the fumes she had been breathing, or the knock on her head when she fell? The reason did not matter. All that mattered now was that everything went dim before her eyes.
Like Samson, she prayed,—“God, give me my sight.”
As if by a miracle, her sight was restored.
And now, here was the plane. It was close, very close. Three seconds now.
“One, two, three,” she counted. Then her gun spoke in a long, rasping chatter. She didn’t want to look but she had to. Perhaps she had missed. Perhaps he did carry a bomb.
She saw the look of pained surprise on the pilot’s face. His engine was half shot away. She changed her aim a little and fired another volley. After that she did not look. It wasn’t necessary. Half a minute later the sound of an explosion came up from below.
“Yes,” she whispered, “He did have another bomb.”
She stood up. She was trembling like a leaf.
“Gale! You are a mess!” said a voice from behind her. “Your face is black and your hair is flying wild.”
“Who cares?” Gale laughed hoarsely. “The soldiers have a song they sing. I don’t like it, but it fits just now:
“What makes the wild WACS wild, Bill? What makes the wild WACS wild?” she sang.
“They’re wild because they’re wild, Bill.”
“They’re wild because they’re wild,” Jan chimed in, “They’re wild because they’re wild.”
“Look!” Gale exclaimed suddenly. “Who’s boss here?”
“You are, of course.” Jan’s chin dropped.
“Then why didn’t you go down in that cellar as I commanded you to?”
“Listen!” said Jan. “What did you do when your father was a sheriff and got into a fight?”
“I climbed onto a chair, of course. He was my daddy.”
“All right. You’re MY pal. You might have passed out again. Then I’d have had to drag you into the cellar.”
“I nearly did,” Gale confessed.
“Well, then, there you are!” Jan laughed softly. “Besides, I wanted to see you shoot that plane down,” Jan admitted. “I knew you’d do it. You’re just wonderful.”
“Ah, Jan darling!” Gale threw an arm over the big girl’s shoulder. “You’re a real pal!”
Had some artist seen them then, their clothes torn and disarranged, their faces black and hair flying, two WACS facing the sun on a ridge down which all their equipment and a Jap bomber had gone, he might have painted their picture and immortalized them forever.
As it was, Gale heaved a deep sigh, then said in a matter-of-fact voice, “Jan, we’ve just got to rescue my radar set.”
“It’s smashed to bits,” Jan sighed wearily.
“It may not be. And if it is, the parts are all there.” Gale’s tone was insistent. “And think what it would mean if some dirty enemy spy got it! Come on! Let’s see if we can get down there.” So down they started.
And as they went Gale told herself,—“I mustn’t forget to listen on the radio tonight at ten for Jimmie. He said he might talk from another world.” He did, almost, at that.
Gale and Jan climbed down the rocky cliff over which the radar set had been blown by the enemy’s bomb until it seemed they could go no farther. They at last found themselves on a narrow rocky ledge that overlooked a perpendicular wall of rock.
“Get a grip on my leg,” Jan said. “Just in case I get dizzy. I’ll lay down flat and look over.”
“I’ve got you.” Gripping Jan’s right ankle with both her hands, Gale sat down and braced herself with her feet.
“Okay. Here I go,” Jan grunted. Flat on her stomach, she crept out a foot—two feet—until her head and shoulders hung over thin air.
“Jan! That’s far enough!” Gale cried in consternation. “You’ll be killed! Let the old radar set go!”
“I—I see it,” Jan panted.
“How far down?”
“’Bout forty feet.”
“Fine!” Gale tried to be cheerful about it. “We’ll take it at a running jump.”
“I—I see something else,” Jan puffed. “That wire cable that brought us our electricity is caught on this ledge we’re on, only farther over. If we could only get hold of that—”
“We could fasten it some way and I could shinny down it!” In the excitement Gale barely missed letting go of Jan’s leg.
“Al—all right. We—we’ll try. Pull me back,” Jan ordered.
It was only by a feat of acrobatics, plus expert mountain climbing in which Gale narrowly escaped tumbling into the abyss below that they at last reached the tangled mass of wire.
After testing the wire and finding it devoid of electric current, they untangled it far enough to give Gale support on her way down.
“Now for a good secure hold.” Gale looked about her.
“There’s the very thing!” Jan exclaimed. “A regular thumb of rock reaching up from the ledge.”
After making their way a little farther along the ledge, they found a three-foot column of rock jutting up from the main ledge and really a part of it.
“Fair enough!” Jan exclaimed. “An elephant couldn’t tear that loose. Even I could go down!” she laughed. “Why not let me?”
“No. I’ll go. I want to make sure that I have all the secret parts when you pull it up. Well,” Gale sighed, “Here I go.”
Bracing her feet against the side of the rocky wall and at the same time gripping the cable with both hands, she went hand-over-hand and foot-over-foot down the perpendicular wall until with a low grunt she hit bottom.
After shouting “Yoo-hoo! Okay!” she started her search for the spot where the radar set had landed.
This was a wide ledge. On it grew many scrub pines that, gnarled and twisted, seemed a company of grotesque gnomes watching her at her task.
As she passed these Gale imagined she heard a sound like the scraping of a heavy shoe on a rock.
Stepping short she thrust her hand into her jacket pocket to grip the handle of a small blue automatic.
Jimmie had given her this dangerous plaything. “A girl with hair like yours, wild and unruly, needs a real gun,” he had said with a laugh. “I got it off of a dead Jap.”
“But it was made in America,” she had exclaimed.
“Just one of those nice little things we did for the Japs before the war.” His laugh was pleasant to hear. “We sold them, of course. Someone made money on that deal. Now the Japs use the guns to kill us.”
“But not this one,” she had said, thrusting the gun into her pocket.
She was in a lonely spot at this moment, perhaps too in a tight place. The cold steel in her hand felt good.
For three tense moments she stood there, poised like a tiger for a sudden spring. It was hot down there. A breeze set the gnome-like pines whispering. Other than this, there was no sound.
“Probably imagined that,” she told herself. “Nobody here.”
At that instant Jan called: “Gale! Are you there? Did you find it?”
“Here!” Gale called back. “I’ll have it in a jiffy.” She wasn’t going to get Jan excited about nothing.
A few moments later she came upon a tumbled pile of rocks, broken glass and wood that had but an hour before been her hideout.
Half hidden in this pile, was her precious radar set. It had been badly torn and crushed. For all that, it somehow managed to hang together while she dragged it out.
“Grand prize for our enemies,” she grunted softly. Then with a start she straightened up. Again from behind a row of twisted pines there had come a sound. “Might be a tiger,” she thought with a shudder. That there were tigers in these mountains she knew well enough. “Or head-hunters, or even enemy spies,” she went on thinking. Which did she fear most? She could not tell.
“Better get up out of here,” she told herself. Then she called:
“Jan! Jan! Here I am!”
“Coming!” Jan called.
“Jan. Draw the cable up. Bring it over this way. Then let it down again.”
“Okay.” Gale could hear Jan moving along the ledge above.
Keeping her eyes on the dwarf pines as much as possible, Gale dragged a tangled mass of electric wire from the mass of rocks. After untangling this, she wound it round and round the radar set.
“There,” she breathed. “Now I can attach it to the cable and Jan can draw it up.”
“Here it comes,” Jan called a moment later as the twisted cable came gliding down the rocky wall.
In a twinkle Gale had the cable attached to the radar set and was watching it go up.
Strangely enough, at that moment she was seized with a sense of wild panic. It was only by exerting all her will power that she avoided ordering Jan to let the radar set down so she could go up instead. Little wonder, for she had been through much that day.
And then she heard it again,—that strange scraping on rock that was like shuffling footsteps, but not quite. Instantly her eyes were on the dwarf pines. Did she get a fleeting glimpse of a face and gleaming eyes? She could not be sure.
“In case of doubt, act!” had been her father’s motto. She acted now. Aiming low, she fired two shots. Bang! Bang! To her startled ears, the shots echoing in the cavern seemed like cannon fire.
There followed a sound of commotion behind the pines. Then all was silence.
Out of that silence came Jan’s voice.
“Gale! Who fired those shots? Gale! Are you hurt?”
Gale made no reply. Instead, pistol in hand, she strode across the rocks toward the pines. Arrived there, she parted the branches to find herself staring into a wide empty space beyond.
She stood there staring in surprise. No living creature was there.
Her eyes swept the place in all directions. Then she looked down. There, almost at her feet, was a thing covered with leather. It was like a shoe. There was a strap attached to it. The strap had been cut by a bullet.
With a low cry she picked the thing up and thrust it deep into the pocket of her coat. Then stepping back over the rocks, she called:
“Jan! Lower the cable. I’m ready to come up.”
“Cable coming down,” was the instant reply.
That night Gale kept her resolve to listen in on Jimmie’s wave-length at ten, and with startling results.
Half an hour later an orderly from headquarters was at the door of her tent to say that the colonel wanted to see her at once.
“What a night!” she exclaimed. “This is one night when I shouldn’t be surprised if all the stars were to fall!”
When she at last stood before the colonel with a smart salute, her usual composure came back to her, for the colonel at once put her at her ease.
“I understand you had a little trouble today,” he said quietly.
“We lost our station,” she admitted.
“Bombed out?”
“Yes. But not until we had done our work.”
“That’s fine.” The colonel gave her a rare smile.
“We recovered our radar set,” she added.
“You did?” He showed some surprise.
“Yes. It was blown into a gully by the bomb. Getting down wasn’t easy. But we had it to do. There are secrets to radar, you know.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Three main secrets. We call those the Three Secrets of Radar. I’m sure that enemy spies are after them—a woman in purple and a black dwarf.”
“Isabelle told me about these, and that you have seen the woman in a temple near here. It is not easy to keep track of all the people around us. I sent two Intelligence Officers to investigate.”
“You did?” Gale leaned forward eagerly.
“Yes. They got on the woman’s trail and followed it for hours. They lost it at last in a terrible stretch of jungle the flyers call ‘Hell’s Half Hour’.”
“Hell’s Half Hour!” the girl breathed, in sudden surprise. “Then—” she caught herself and did not finish. Instead, she said: “I’m sure the Black Dwarf is not with that woman.”
“Why?” he asked simply.
“I shot at something when I was recovering my radar.” She reached deep in her pocket. “Someone was watching me. He was after my radar. He got a shot instead. My bullet cut the strap—from this.” She drew something strange from her pocket.
“What is it?” he asked in surprise.
“It’s made of aluminum, covered with thin leather,” she replied. “It’s about six inches high and fits the right foot.”
“A shoe?”
“No. Only an extension to a shoe. A pair of them would made a dwarf look like a tall, thin man,” she explained.
“And you’ve seen such a man?” he asked.
“Three times.” Gale told of her adventures with the tall, thin man in the temple back at the city, and of the other times she had seen him.
“Looks as if the Woman in Purple and the Black Dwarf who is sometimes a tall, thin man, were on your trail. But that,” the colonel straightened up in his chair, “That’s not why I sent for you. Tonight,”—he leaned forward to speak in a whisper—“Tonight at one A.M. is the Zero-hour. The big push starts then.” His eyes gleamed.
For a full moment Gale stared at him in awed silence. Then, speaking with an effort, she said: “I—I wish you luck.” She put out a hand. He gripped it hard.
“It means a lot to me.” His voice was almost solemn. “That other time we did our best, but always we had too little, too late.”
“But now—”
“Now we’ve got everything—tanks, guns, men, airplanes—everything. We’ll beat the tar out of them. I wondered,”—again he leaned forward, “if you’d like to go along?”
Gale stared, but said never a word. “It’s been hard to arrange.” His voice rumbled. “But I’ve got it all fixed.”
“I—I—,” her throat was dry. “I don’t want to go.”
It was his turn to stare. “At least,” she added, “not yet. You see,” she went on, leaning across the desk, “Jimmie and his plane are down off there on Hell’s Half Hour.”
“Jimmie who?”
“Jimmie Nightingale.”
“What?” He half rose from his chair. “He was on a very secret mission.”
“The mission is safe enough. It was on his way back that they got him. Someone must have tipped the Japs off. Two planes took him by surprise. He got away in his parachute, but hung up in a tall tree, then fell. One leg is injured. He can only drag himself along. He got to his wrecked plane and is living on emergency rations.”
“But how could you know all this?” He stared.
“We had an agreement about listening at ten. I listened tonight. He had his radio going—the speaking end. The listening part is wrecked. The Woman in Purple is up there somewhere. Jimmie is helpless. That’s where I want to go!” Her words came out like a cry in the night.
“You’d give up the big push for Jimmie?” There was a strange light in his eyes.
“Yes, and so would you,” was the quick reply.
“You are right, I would. Jimmie is one of my boys, one of my best. I can’t go. The big push is on. You go. I’ll give you Jan and her jeep for transportation. Jan will drive that jeep of hers through hell and high water. You go, and God guide you.” He stood up.
“But—but I want to join you later,” she insisted.
“Oh, sure! Soon as you can,” he agreed. “We’ll be in China again. I’ll team you and Mac up again to guard my headquarters.”
“Thanks. We’ll guard it well.”
Just then an orderly announced the arrival of Than Shwe.
“Than Shwe, my child,” said the colonel as the little nurse stood in the doorway. “We march tonight. You will report here in two hours with about four times as much baggage as you carried on our retreat.”
“Oh, my colonel!” Than Shwe rushed to the old colonel and threw her arms about his neck. “I knew you would not leave me behind when the big push came!”
“Certainly not,” said the colonel, after engineering his escape from the girl’s embrace. “I would leave anyone else behind first. We went through hell and high water together.” He laughed a joyous roaring laugh.
“We waded the river for hours.” Than Shwe was laughing too. “The younger men they were too hot, too tired. They were about to drop. But you, you who are sixty, you were magnificent.
“You marched along with your Tommy-gun on your shoulder and you said, ‘What’s the matter with these young men? When I was young, if I couldn’t do this before breakfast I’d have been ashamed.’”
“And you, Than Shwe!” said the colonel. “You and all the native nurses were magnificent. You held your dresses high and splashed the water—you danced and sang crazy songs while all the time you knew that bombs from a Jap plane or machine-gun fire from shore might at any moment send all to Kingdom Come. Yes! Yes! Than Shwe, you are going, you and Isabelle will ride in my car.”
“And Gale?” The little nurse was loyal to all her friends.
“Gale is to go on another mission. One of her own choosing,” was the quiet reply. “And now,” he added, “scram, you girls. I’ve got to give twenty thousand boys their final marching orders.”
“Just like that,” Gale whispered to Than Shwe. “Was there ever such a colonel?”
“Never!” was the quick reply. “This is his great moment.”
“Yes. Perhaps the greatest of his life. And yet he has time for us.” Gale was happy and proud. Then she thought of Jimmie, lost out there in the wilds, injured and alone. Her step quickened. “Nothing can hold me back,” she whispered, “just nothing at all.”
Though Jimmie had given Gale the name of the river that flowed out of the narrow valley where his plane had been wrecked and had even told her that he was on the right bank of that river, she experienced the greatest difficulty in securing the directions necessary to speed her on her way.
At last she came upon an English captain who could direct her. “Oh! No, my dear!” he exclaimed. “It would be entirely impossible for you to drive a jeep up the way this terrible woman you have spoken of has gone. You must follow the colonel’s road back to this point.” He placed his pencil on the map. “Then you must follow this river over a road that is not a road really, only a camel’s track. But I daresay you’ll make it for some distance in a jeep. Those things are more or less of a camel breed.” He laughed heartily. “In the end, however, you’ll be obliged to walk a long, long way.”
“Walkin’s the best thing we do,” Jan declared stoutly.
“Oh my! Yes! I daresay,” the captain agreed. “And by the way, it’s jolly good I thought of this. There’s a Buddhist temple up that river, rather a long way up.”
“Oh! Another temple!” Gale sighed. “Temples have brought us only bad luck.”
“You don’t say!” the captain exclaimed. “Well now, perhaps your luck will change. I’ve heard some good things about this particular temple—a good little man at the head of it, and all that. But then, one never knows. Well, cheerio! I’ll be going. I was with the colonel on his retreat.”
“Oh! Were you?” Gale exclaimed.
“Well, rather. So I must be in on his triumph, if there is to be a triumph. Well, rather!” He laughed as he vanished into the night.
“They’ll never believe us when we tell them at home about the things that have happened to us,” Gale laughed.
“No. Nor the kind of people we met. I’ll say they won’t!” Jan exclaimed. “Well, what d’you say we stuff our duffle bags, turn the old jeep over, and ramble?”
A half hour later they rambled into the night.
At first they met many trucks and cars feeling their way over the road with dimmed lights.
“Coming to join the big push.” Jan’s voice was husky. “And here we are, going the other way.”
“I know,” was Gale’s slow reply. “It breaks my heart. It’s the biggest thing we’ll ever know, and we’re stepping out of it. But you can’t desert a pal.”
“Who wants to?” Jan demanded. “Somebody had to make this trip. That Jimmie of yours was right up here fighting before his country was in the war at all. Somebody had to go. They couldn’t spare fighting men—not just now they couldn’t. So they sent us. It’s always a woman’s job to fill in when there’s not enough men to go ’round.”
“I know,” Gale agreed. “It’s good of you to step into it all the same.”
They came at last to the spot where they must leave the Colonel’s fine road and turn up a camel trail.
“Jeepers!” Jan exclaimed, as her jeep took a steep ridge between trees so close together that they brushed them. “This is going to be something!” And it was.
At times the sturdy little jeep, working on all four wheels, stood straight up on end and pawed the air like a bucking bronco, then leapt forward into space to land on all fours and plunge forward again.
“It’s a good thing I was raised on a ranch!” Jan exclaimed once. “If I hadn’t been I’d never be able to wrangle this.”
The time came at last when it seemed they could go no farther and they were still a good twenty miles from the spot on the map at which the English captain had said, “Here you must leave your jeep.”
“He’s not been up this trail lately,” was Jan’s sad comment. The winter rains had washed the trail away leaving a perpendicular bank of earth up which no jeep, however stout, could hope to travel.
“Let’s get out and think,” was Gale’s suggestion.
“Think, and drink coffee,” Jan amended. “Coffee always helps.” There was a jug of hot coffee in the car.
“Yes, coffee helps,” Gale agreed. “But it will never help enough this time, Jeep,” she patted their iron steed with real affection, “you’ve done nobly, but here you stay.”
Did some hopeful gremlin whisper, “Little you know about that!”? If he did, Gale was too busy uncorking the coffee jug to hear him.
* * * * * * * *
In the meantime, travelling before the oncoming army, Isabelle and Than Shwe rode with the colonel in the back seat of his big car. Driver and orderly rode in front while three guards rode the sides.
Isabelle told herself that out of all her experiences this one might prove to be the most thrilling. They drove in absolute darkness. There was no moon. Great overhanging trees hid the stars. The road wound in and out along the mountain slope. There must be a place here and there where they hung at the brink of an abyss. She dared not think of that. Instead, she thought of Jimmie lost in the wilds, and of her good pals going to his rescue. She thought too of her home, thought how the trees cast shadows on the green lawn, and how her father and mother would be sitting at the breakfast table, perhaps talking about her. She wished they could see her now. Of course she knew that time was different on that side of the world. Perhaps it was noon now, or sunset. This did not disturb her at all.
Than Shwe was thinking how she had trudged up this road, then only a rugged trail, barefoot, and was hoping many things. The colonel thought of victories won and of men lost. And so they rode on in silence through the night.
* * * * * * * *
As Gale and Jan sat beside the trail that had come to an abrupt end, they became conscious of a stirring in the brush. A dusky brown figure appeared in the spot of light made by their car’s lamps. Another appeared, another, and yet another. Short, stout appearing natives, they were half naked, and did not seem afraid. Many were lurking in the shadows.
“Like gnomes of the forest,” Jan whispered.
Gale made no reply. Truth is, she was frightened.
But Jan! “Hi folks!” she called. “Want a good hot drink? It’s coffee!”
A solemn old man edged closer. Gale watched, fascinated. Jan offered him her cup. He took it, sniffed it, then drank it down.
Instantly the natives swarmed about them. Almost as quickly the hot coffee they had hoped would last through the night and the next day was gone.
“Might as well be sociable!” Jan laughed merrily, and the natives laughed with her. Then they did an astonishing thing. After cutting two stout poles, they ran them through beneath Jan’s tired jeep. Then at a grunt from their leader, they picked up the poles, jeep and all, and solemnly marched away. Like chief mourners, Jan and Gale marched behind.
It was quite a long march. The jeep could not have made it alone. There were huge rocks in some places, and narrow stretches in others, but somehow the clever savages made it, and in due time the jeep, quite unharmed, was deposited on the trail above the mud bank. At that the natives disappeared into the bush from which they had come.
“That,” said Jan, “was mighty stout coffee!”
“It was,” Gale agreed.
“And now, let’s ramble!” Gale took her place at the wheel and again they rambled on into the night.
* * * * * * * *
In the meantime the colonel’s car had reached the end of the road. Beyond lay the river. Here, under a rocky bank into which an air raid shelter had been cut, he set up temporary headquarters in a tent. This done, with orderly and guard at his heels, he strode away to make some final arrangements for the big push.
Left to themselves, Isabelle and Than Shwe felt their way over a hard-beaten trail to the spot where the road appeared to end at the brink of the river.
“It doesn’t really end,” said Isabelle in great surprise. “There’s a bridge.”
“Part of a bridge.” The little native nurse had sharp eyes.
Soon Isabelle realized that army engineers, working swiftly and silently in the night, were throwing a bridge across the river.
“There are other bridges going up,” said a voice at her elbow. It was the colonel. “Our road winds back and forth across the river.”
“We know that river—you and I,” Than Shwe laughed quietly.
“Boats will be coming down the hill soon, hundreds and hundreds of them. But just now, you and I,”—he touched Isabelle’s arm, “must get out some orders.”
From that time till dawn, under a pale light in a dark corner of the air raid shelter, Isabelle’s portable type-writer clicked.
“There. That will do,” the colonel sighed at last. “The big parade should arrive at any minute now. You girls might like to see it.”
“Indeed, yes!” Than Shwe exclaimed.
“It will be worth seeing,” the colonel rumbled.
“I’m sure it will,” Isabelle agreed. And it was.
The first faint flush of dawn gave them a shadowy view of the grand parade’s vanguard, a General Sherman tank. Astride this tank rose a long figure. Strange as it may seem, Isabelle recognized the figure instantly. She had seen it outlined against the sunset on some football bench too often to miss.
“Pete!” she screamed above the rattle of the tank. “Hi there, Pete!” She struggled hard to keep the tears from her voice. It’s bad enough when you tell your little man goodbye at the depot, but to see him riding at the head of the procession, going to battle on a tank, that was almost too much.
The girl’s dominant desire at the moment was to give the big redhead something to remember her by. She racked her brain for a moment. Then she had it.
“A red, red rose!” she whispered, snatching at her breast.
The colonel was fond of roses. He had brought a large potted rose, in full bloom, to the Secret Forest. Intending to leave this behind, he had cut two of the roses and given them to Isabelle and Than Shwe.
Now, as Isabelle plucked hers from her jacket where it was pinned, she raced along beside Pete’s tank screaming “Pete! Pete! Here’s something to take into battle!”
“What? Oh! There you are! Great stuff!” Pete leaned far over to grasp the hand that held the rose. Then relinquishing the hand, he grasped the rose.
“I’ll take it into battle,” he shouted. “It will bring me luck. You’ll be proud of me, Isabelle, you really will!”
The tank rumbled on, and Isabelle turned aside to brush her eyes, then to exclaim to Than Shwe, “War is just what Sherman said it was.”
“What did Sherman say?” Than Shwe asked.
“He said it was hot stuff,” Isabelle laughed through her tears. “Redheads always come back,” she murmured.
And so Pete rode away to war, astride his tank, Red Dynamite, with the stem of a red rose between his teeth. And the battle that day was to be real enough. Red Dynamite was to have its turret blown clean off and Pete—well, the fortunes of war are often strange.