CHAPTER V

_A Light at the End of the Trail_

The petition was delivered and acknowledged, and there the matter rested for some time. The rainy season dwindled away more and more. Each day increased the suspense hanging over the vast army camp. More ships arrived, with guns, bombs, airplanes, tanks and men. Men were there from all over,--America, Alabama, Illinois, Vermont, Washington, Texas. Not a state but was represented. There were some guessed hundreds of thousands of Americans and perhaps as many British. All of which added up to one fact--the colonel was going back to Burma. Only one question remained for the girls--"Are we to go?"

Then one day, having recalled the colonel's words about temples, Gale invited Isabelle to go temple hunting with her.

At first they wandered through the narrow streets in silence, just the two of them, in an utterly foreign world. As they saw the pinched faces of children and peeped into the narrow, cramped quarters where they lived their life away, strange questions passed through their minds.

"Do you know," said Isabelle, "I have always thought of this war as if it effected only our own people in America. Now I find myself thinking of these strange people of India. Yes, and of China, Japan and Russia. But most of all, of these people of India--they hold my attention. They say there are a billion people in Asia. There are only a few of our people in America, compared to that. Life is strange. All this disturbs me. Sometimes I almost wish I hadn't asked to come."

"I wouldn't have missed it for the world," Gale exclaimed, squaring her shoulders. "For no matter how many worlds I live in after this, I can visit this one but once. I want to see it all."

After that they walked on in silence until they came to a winding path leading up a hill. There were no homes on the hill--only ancient trees and the solemn air of early evening hours.

"Let's follow the path," Isabelle suggested. "There's nothing I like better than following a strange path, and I've heard there's a temple up here somewhere."

"Okay. Let's go." Gale led the way.

The path grew steep and rocky as they advanced, but the rocks were worn smooth, as if ten million pairs of feet had passed that way.

"Ten million," Gale thought. "India is very old. But where could they all have been going?"

The forest trees that loomed above the trail grew thicker and taller as they advanced until at last they shut out the sun.

"It's like something I read in a book called Pilgrim's Progress," Isabelle said with a little shudder. "I've never cared much for shadows since I read that book. I was twelve then. I love the sunshine best."

"Pilgrim's Progress," Gale murmured. "Perhaps we are pilgrims on some great quest." She spoke more wisely than she knew, but this quest was to have a strange ending.

Gale was one of those persons whose mind is driven to thoughts of wild determination as she walked rapidly or climbed some steep hill. The steeper the path became, the deeper the shadows, the more fiercely her mind worked on the problem that she knew lay very close at hand. Would she, or would she not go forward with the colonel and his men as they retraced the steps he had taken in retreat?

"I'll beard him in his den," she whispered fiercely. "I'll say to him, 'Colonel, all my people have been fighters,--five generations that we know about. Dad was in the World War; Grandfather in the Spanish-American War, and my great grandfather in the Civil War. I have no brothers so my father sent me. You just _must_ let me go with you on your march back to victory!'"

She closed her eyes for a moment and fell over a stone, nearly cracking a kneecap. She had been seeing Sheridan on his black charger shouting to his men, "Turn boys! We're going back!"

"Turn boys! We're going back!" she exclaimed as she picked herself up.

"Why?" Isabelle stared. "Why should we turn back? Look. There's light at the end of the trail. I'm dying to see what's up there."

"Light at the end of the trail," murmured Gale. "Oh! Oh! Yes--by all means, let's go on. I--I must have been dreaming."

"I'll say you were!" Isabelle exclaimed.

Hurrying forward they at last burst out into a little world all aglow with golden sunset. Just before them were beds of flowers--such flowers as they had never before dreamed of--flowers and tall graceful palm trees. Back of all this was a temple. It was not large, but set as it was, a mass of red stone in the midst of a gorgeous garden of flowers, and contrasting so strangely with the shadows that lay behind them, it set the two girls back on their heels.

"Isabelle!" Gale murmured softly. "Did you ever see anything more wonderful?"

"Never!" Isabelle replied in a hoarse whisper.

"Do people fight wars to defend their temples?" Gale asked.

"Perhaps," was the solemn reply.

Even as they stood there entranced, the light of day began to flicker and go out. As if they had been a thousand bright lamps, all alight, the flowers lost their brightness. As if loathe to leave it, the sunlight lingered for a moment on the dome of the temple. Then, all of a sudden, all was in shadow.

"Come on," Isabelle whispered. "We must see this."

Together they hurried along the path of red gravel leading to the temple door, and as they hurried, there came the melodious ringing of many temple bells.

The temple door was open. At first, the large room that in the shadows appeared vast and endless, seemed entirely dark and deserted. A closer look showed a single red light burning before the shadowy figure of a Buddha that even in this faint light appeared to smile.

"Come on." Isabelle gripped Gale's hand, and together they moved forward and to the left of the door until they came to a low bench. There they seated themselves.

Leaning far forward, Isabelle sat as a child sits before the opening of some entrancing drama.

Gale leaned back. With the shadows, serious problems had again entered her mind. "I am a soldier," she thought fiercely. "Then I must fight!"

At that moment she seemed to see her toothless ninety-year-old great grandfather, and to hear him tell his tales of the Civil War. Weird and entrancing those tales had been. There was one,--a battle fought in a great forest. He had been wounded and lay all day behind a half-rotten log while the enemy's bullets striking the log had knocked dirt in his face.

"Then at night," he would go on, "A huge black man, lookin' like a dark angel or a devil, found me and carried me away to a corncrib all full of good soft corn husks.

"My wound hurt something awful," he would continue. "But I was dog tired. We'd fought for three days and three nights, so I fell asleep in that good soft bed, and never woke up until my own captain called my name. We had won the battle, and I had been found again."

There had been more to the old man's story, much more. He had told it over and over, but each time Gale's soul was fired anew, and she would whisper:

"Oh! That's wonderful! When I grow up I'm going to be a soldier."

And always the old man had laughed his cackling laugh and exclaimed:

"Oh, no you won't! Because then you'll be a lady and ladies don't go to war--just only men."

"But women do go to war," she assured herself as she sat there in the temple. "And I'm a soldier right now."

On coming out of her day dream she was a little startled to find that Isabelle was no longer at her side.

"She's poking around to see what she can discover," she assured herself. That, she knew, was like Isabelle. As for herself, she had always been a little timid in strange places of religious worship. It was so easy to commit some prodigious blunder and to bring the wrath of gods down upon you.

So she sat on in the waning light. As her eyes became accustomed to the place, she made out the huge Buddha and the many banners that hung from the walls.

As she wondered what they all meant a breeze swept through the temple. Like avenging ghosts the banners flapped in the wind.

All of a sudden she caught the sound of movement. Then she made out the form of some person, perhaps a monk, or a visiting pilgrim, bending before the Buddha.

She had scarcely made this discovery when the person, who was garbed in a long robe, arose, turned about, then began making his way toward the door.

"He's a monk," she thought. "He'll pass close to me and I'll ask him about the temple."

As if he had read her thoughts and wished to avoid her, the man turned at an angle, walked a few paces, then followed the opposite wall.

"That's strange," she thought. Her friends had visited such temples. They had found these monks most eager to talk, and more eager still to receive an offering.

There was something strange, almost fanatic about the man. He was of ordinary height, but quite thin, and he walked rather clumsily.

"As if he were a little lame in both feet," she told herself.

In a moment he was gone, and the place, it seemed to her, save for herself, was deserted.

All of a sudden she started and stood up. The faint light of fading day had blinked out.

"The door!" she thought, in mild panic. "It has been closed!" At the same time she became conscious of a disturbing odor. "Incense," she whispered.

Then she discovered that by some strange magic two great bronze apes, one on either side of the Buddha, had been set all aglow, and that from their nostrils thin columns of smoke rose straight toward the ceiling.

"It's dark!" she thought. "We must be getting back. I wish Isabelle would come."

Then, in a leisurely manner she moved toward the door. Arrived there, she put out a hand for the knob. Then she started back. There was no knob, no nothing--a very heavy teakwood door, perfectly blank. That was all. And the smoke of incense in the room grew thicker with every passing moment.

"Isabelle!" she called. No answer. "Isabelle!" Her voice rose. Still no answer.

Determined to remain calm, she walked slowly around the room searching for the door or some other opening. There was no door, only high, flat walls. And all the time the Buddha smiled and the bronze apes half hidden by smoke appeared to her.