“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.”
CHAPTER XXIV
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.