_Red-Heads Always Come Back_
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.