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.