“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.
“In this village,” said Chuba, “lives the young brother of my father. He will give us shelter for the night.”
The boys passed through the village gate. Biff saw a small, rust-stained cannon seemingly hanging down from the wall on one side of the gate. At the other side, another cannon lay in the dirt at the base of the wall. It had long since broken away from its emplacement. Once, many years ago, these cannon protected the village from the raids of bandits. But now, the wall was crumbling in many places, and the city was open to anyone wishing to enter.