Rick Brant 10 The Golden Skull

by John Blaine

  Tony had dug up enough stuff for seven bags. That was a lot of artifacts. Each time Rick asked, “Was that one the skull?” And Chahda would shake his head.

  The seventh bag was the skull. Rick was sure because of the clasped-hands wave Scotty gave him, and because Tony did not retreat into the recess. As Rick turned for his run he saw the sleek form of a military plane slip past. Help had arrived. Hesighed his relief and held up his run to watch. The plane buzzed the Ifugaos and dropped a container with streamers attached. An Ifugao -Rick thought it was Nangolat-ran to get it.

  Rick could imagine what the note said. “Do not attempt further harm to the Americans or your village will be bombed.”Or some similar threat. Nangolat might not like it, but he would obey.

  “Here we go,” Rick said. He put the Sky Wagon on course and held it steady. The poles passed from sight and there was a strong jerk on the plane. That skull was heavy.

  “Bag tearing!Reel in!” Chahda yelled.

  Rick pushed the button and the winch whined,then suddenly screamed as the load was released. Gone!

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  The skull was gone! He swung in a vertical bank just in time to see Nast lift the bag to his shoulder. Rick pounded the seat beside him with helpless rage!

  The golden skull had fallen within reach of Nast and Lazada; it was in the hands of the enemy. Rick swung in a tight circle and saw them run to the station wagon and climb in.

  “They waste no time,” Chahda said bitterly. “That Lazada, hemove fast.”

  “We’ll never see that skull again,” Rick muttered. “What rotten luck!”

  The Hindu boy’s face tightened with determination. “We get that skull back. Rick, fly to Bontoc. Open throttle wide and let us go!”

  “There’s nothing we can do at Bontoc,” Rick objected. “No one there, or inBaguio either, would dare question Lazada.”

  “Go to Bontoc,” Chahda urged. “Leave this to me, Rick. Chahda will take over.”

  “But what can you do?”

  “I will know when the chance comes. You and Scotty will be ready. Somehow, some place, we will get our chance-and the golden skull will be ours again!”

  CHAPTER XIX

  The Nipa Hut

  Colonel Felix Rojas paced the floor of Tony Briotti’s room in the Manila Hotel. He was in uniform now, but his visit, as he made quite clear, was not official.At least not yet.

  Rick had just finished relating the story of how the golden skull had fallen into the hands of Lazada.

  “Can’t you just go to him and demand the skull?” he asked.

  Rojas smiled sadly. “If only it were that simple. Suppose two Malays arrived at your Department of Defense and claimed that your Assistant Secretary of the Interior had stolen a valuable Indian necklace from an archaeological expedition. What would happen?”

  Rick knew perfectly well what would happen. “They would get thrown out-if they could get anyone to listen to them in the first place.”

  “Exactly.The situation is not particularlydifferent, except that I’m sure we pay more attention to Americans here than you would to Malays in your country. After all, you owned us for nearly half a century.”

  “You warned us,” Scotty said. “Why?”

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  Rojas shrugged. “I may as well be frank. I knew of Nangolat’s visits to Lazada. In fact, I was present at one meeting. And I knew that our esteemed Assistant Secretary was hungry for that buried gold. If I could prove some of the things I know about that man, he would no longer hold public office. He would be in jail. My hands were tied, officially, but unofficially I tried to warn you. I couldn’t come right out and denounce Lazada.”

  “Of course not,” Tony agreed. “We’re grateful that you were able to say as much as you did.”

  Rojas nodded. “Let us continue. After you flew back to Bontoc, what happened?”

  Rick picked up his tale. “Pilipil was on the mountain, waiting. We dropped down and signaled for him to go to Banaue in the jeep,then we landed at Bontoc and picked up the other jeep. Chahda became an Igorot again. He took the jeep and started forBaguio right away, while I stayed behind in Bontoc.”

  “I don’t get the point of that,” Rojas interrupted.

  “Chahda intended to follow Lazada or Nast, whoever had the skull. They were coming over the mountain in a fast station wagon, and there were only two routes they could take-north to the Kalinga country, or south toBaguio . We didn’t think they would go north. So Chahda started forBaguio , knowing that they would probably catch up to him before the jeep reached theBaguio gate. They were in so much of a hurry that they would not suspect an Igorot who pulled to the side of the one-lane road to let them pass him, which would make trailing them easier.”

  “Smart,” Rojas said. “Then your friends arrived at Bontoc late that afternoon, and you flew them back toBaguio , leaving Angel Manotok to bring the truck.”

  “Yes. Of course we paid off Pilipil, Balaban, and the Igorots who had guarded the plane. Dog Meat rode back with Angel.”

  “And you haven’t heard from your Hindu friend since?”

  “No.”

  Rojas picked up his cap. “I would like very much to find Lazada with that golden skull in his possession.

  It would be a major service to thePhilippines , because it would give the Secretary and the President positive grounds for his dismissal. I ask a favor. If you hear from your friend, will you let me know?”

  “First thing,” Tony Briotti promised.

  When the constabulary colonel had gone, the three washed up and went downstairs. Tony was restless and Rick knew that he wanted to get to work on the artifacts they had flown down toManila . The Ifugao treasure, minus the skull, was under guard at the university museum.

  “Go on out to the museum,” Rick said. “You’re so restless I’m beginning to itch just watching you.”

  “Same here,” Scotty agreed.“Go on, Tony. We’ll wait here for word from Chahda.”

  “I really would like to,” Tony said. “Perhaps I will, if you’ll let me know the moment Chahda comes.”

  The boys promised to do so and Tony departed. They found comfortable chairs in the lounge and ordered fresh limeades.

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  “Angel should be arriving with the truck tomorrow,” Scotty observed.

  “Yes, with Dog Meat. Wonder if Chahda will be back by then?”

  “I wish he’d let us know where he is,” Scotty grumbled. “For all we know, Lazada may have captured him and tossed him intoManilaBay .”

  A waiter approached. “Ask him where our limeades are,” Scotty said. “I’m thirsty. And I’m getting hungry.”

  “Again?We finished dinner less than an hour ago.”

  “It didn’t seem like dinner,” Scotty explained. “I can’t get used to eating when the sun is high in the sky.

  I don’t care what time it is, it should be dark when we eat. Now it’s dusk and I’m hungry.”

  The waiter bowed.“Phone call for you, Mr. Brant- or Mr. Scott.”

  “Thank you. Wonder who this can be?”

  “Chahda?”Scotty asked.

  “That would be too much to hope for. Besides, he sends notes whenever he can.Doesn’t like to phone.”

  But it was Chahda. He gave them rapid instructions. Dress in dark clothing. Meet him at Parafiaque, a town to the south, just below the airport.Hurry. Chahda hung up. He had obviously been excited.

  Rick and Scotty ran for their room. They changed clothes,then Rick tried to phone Tony at the museum.

  There was no answer. Constabulary Headquarters regretted that Colonel Rojas did not answer the phone in his quarters. They would send a messenger to find him. Rick left the message that he and Scotty were meeting Chahda,then the boys hurried to the desk and left a similar message for Tony.

  A taxi took them to Parafiaque. Like most small towns in thePhilippines it consisted of a cathedral, a market, a botica or drugstore, and a few houses.

  They found Chahda in front o
f the cathedral. He was dressed Filipino style in slacks and sport shirt, and his hair had been recut to a modified crew cut-the only cut possible after the Igorot one.

  They dismissed the taxi. Chahda had the jeep. While he drove them through a backwoods road, he told them his story. He had pulled off the one-lane road to let Lazada and Nast pass just before he reachedBaguio . Following them had been no problem from then on. They went to a house on the outskirts ofBaguio , and by asking a few questions of the house servants-after first loosening their tongues with a fewpesos-he had found that Lazada was proceeding on toManila by car the following morning.

  “There was a chance he might give Nast the skull to take care of,” Chahda admitted, “but I not think so.

  Lazada not the kind of man with liking for letting gold out of his hands. So I go to barbershop, get haircut, pick up clothes where I left them with a friend of Dog Meat. Then I drive toManila and stop at Malolos .”

  That was a town to the north ofManila on the road toBaguio . Chahda had pulled the same trick of letting Lazada overtake him.

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  “He comes by, and Nast is with him,” Chahda continued. “I am surprised, because Lazada goes right to his house. I wait around nearly all day. Cannot call, because no phone handy. Well, tonight he took black limousine, and he and Nast come to Paranaque . He has skull. They go to this little barrio where we going, and go into nipa shack. Lazada stays there with the skull. Nast goes off in the limousine. So what I think?”

  “What do you think?” Rick asked.

  “I think Nast goes to get somebody, to bring them to Lazada. So I rush off and call you. Before you came, I saw Nast go by. So now the meeting is being held, and we must figure how to get the skull.”

  Chahda reached forward and switched off the jeep’s headlights. For an instant it was very dark,then as Rick’s eyes became adjusted to the darkness he saw that the road was visible as a white pathway between the rice paddies. Ahead were the lights of houses. They had reached the barrio where the meeting was to be held.

  Rick looked around and saw that the sky to the north was aglow with the lights ofManila . Then he saw a plane take off and realized that they were only a short distance from the airport.

  Chahda pulled off the road into a patch of nipa palms, went through the palms, and parked behind a feathery thicket of bamboo. “We walk to shack,” he said. He took a bolo from under the rear seat of the jeep and tucked it into his belt.

  The Hindu boy led them a hundred yards down the road,then turned off onto a path. In a moment he pointed.

  Ahead, alone in a clearing, was a typical nipa hut. It was built on stilts in the traditional Filipino way, and there was room underneath the supporting posts for a tall man to stand upright. The house itself was square, with walls of woven thatch made from the nipa palm. The roof was pyramidal, heavily thatched with layer after layer of straw. The floor was of split bamboo, a single layer of springy bamboo strips as wide as a man’s thumb laid across a framing of whole bamboo supports.

  Except that it allowed mosquitoes to roam in and out and gave no bar to lizards or snakes, it was ideal for the climate. The openwork floor allowed the breezes to circulate through the whole house. Also, housekeeping was simple. Dust couldn’t gather. It just fell through the floor.

  Filipinos had lived in houses like this for centuries, but the influence of Western civilization was visible in the form of electric lights. It was visible in another way at this particular nipa hut, too. Next to it was a shiny limousine, the property of Irineo Lazada.

  Chahda whispered, “We get close. Be very quiet and follow me.”

  It was dark enough. Chahda led the way, and Rick and Scotty followed. There was little cover, but there was no guard outside the house. Apparently Lazada and Nast felt quite safe. They did not know how effectively Chahda had shadowed them.

  Chahda made his way slowly until they were beside the big limousine. There was a murmur of voices from above, Lazada’s predominating.

  Rick swallowed hard as Chahda left the limousine and walked right under the hut, but he and Scotty Page 89

  followed, scarcely daring to breathe. It was dark and he almost knocked over a stack of wooden boxes.

  Then, under the hut, there was light.

  Rick had not realized that the bamboo floor was nothing more than a latticework of bamboo strips. He could look right up between them and see the occupants of the room!

  There was Lazada, of course, and Nast. And with them were two Chinese.

  Nast was talking. “Don’t you worry aboutdelivery. If I say I’ll get the skull intoMacao , I’ll do it. You just worry about the price.”

  Rick recognized the name ofMacao . It was the Portuguese colony on the Chinese coast just belowHong Kong . It had the reputation of being the gathering place for smugglers, gun-runners, Chinese river pirates, and equally unsavory folk.

  One Chinese spoke in sibilant, accented English. “The price you ask is too much. The skull is worth its exact weight in gold, at fifty American dollars an ounce. What do we care if it is a very old native religious object? That has value only for an Ifugao, not a Chinese, and our customers are not Ifugaos.”

  Rick gasped. Lazada and Nast were intending to sell the skull just for the gold in it!

  Lazada put his hand on a box that sat beside him on the floor. “The customers you have usually want bullion gold, true. But perhaps you have one very wealthy customer who could use a museum piece of great value.”

  “If we could have the skull legally, yes.But it is the only one of its kind. In a few days the press will have sent its description to every city in the world, because its loss is a good news story. No one in his right mind would buy such an object.”

  “I’m afraid he’s right,” Nast said. “We’ll have to settle for its value in weight. But that’s worth something.”

  Chahda pulled Rick’s sleeve, then Scotty’s. The boys followed him from under the house back to the edge of the clearing. He whispered, “See the box? I’m sure that is skull. Now, you feel brave?”

  “What’s your plan?” Scotty asked.

  Chahda drew his bolo. “Bamboo cuts easy. Two swings and box falls into our hands. We run like wild men, they not catch.”

  Rick objected. “The skull is too heavy. We couldn’t run with it easily. They’d catch whoever had it.”

  Scotty nodded. “And the box is too small for two people to get a good grip on it. We’d fall all over each other.”

  “Could be,” Chahda agreed, but he was not convinced. He said that there must be some way to get the box.

  Rick studied the house as though the sight of it might give him inspiration. The house didn’t, but something else did. “The purloined letter!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Remember the story by Poe? No one found the letter because it was in the most obvious place-so obvious that no one looked.” He whispered Page 90

  his daring plan.

  Scotty chuckled. “I’ll even forgive you for biting me inBaguio , for that one.”

  Chahda salaamed. “Mighty is the mind of Rick. I glad you on my side. Let’s go.”

  They sneaked back to the house and made preparations for the audacious recovery of the box. Chahda tested the edge of his bolo, reached up with it, and measured the length of his stroke and where the blade would touch. It would work. He looked at the boys expectantly.

  Rick knew that bamboo was remarkable stuff. It had great strength against nearly everything except a sharp blade applied across its grain. But it had to be cut cleanly. Also, Chahda would have to make two cuts before the box could drop through the floor. On the first cut, Lazada and Nast would be moving.

  They could make it down the stairs before the second cut was made.

  He shook his head at Chahda. Not yet. He motioned to Scotty and together they examined the stairs, which ran down the outside of the framing. Scotty gestured toward the boxes stacked at one corner of the house. They examined them. The boxes were full of a special kind of sea shell used
commercially in thePhilippines . They were fairly heavy.

  Working together, they piled a few boxes on the stairs. Anyone not watching his footing might fall over them.

  Then Scotty motioned to a stack of bamboo poles just outside the house pilings. He whispered, “You help Chahda. I’ll use one of these.” He selected a long one about two inches in diameter and held it in both hands like a lance. With Scotty standing beside the stairs, the pole would reach almost through the door of the hut.

  Scotty nodded. Rick stepped to a position beside Chahda and nodded.

  Chahda flexed his muscles, wrapped his fingers tightly around the handle of his bolo, spread his feet and swung.

  The steel blade hit the bamboo floor and sliced through, flying in a great arc.

  There were yells from the men upstairs. Chahda swung again as running feet made the floor vibrate.

  Scotty gave a wild yell and charged like a knight attacking an enemy. The bamboo pole caught Nast in the stomach and drove him back into the hut.

  The box containing the skull slid and caught.

  Chahda swung again, in desperation, and the box dropped through! Rick caught it, and the weight would have driven him to the ground had not Chahda given a hand.

  They rushed the box to its prearranged hiding place,then Rick gave a piercing whistle. They ran, all three of them, in three different directions.

  Chahda headed for the jeep. He ran quietly. Scotty headed south, yelling as he went; Rick ran north, giving an occasional bellow. That was to draw the pursuit away from Chahda, so he could get to the jeep undisturbed.

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  The pursuit had organized, apparently, because both Nast and Lazada were barking orders. Rick kept yelling, but he was now in the brush. Scotty was yelling, too.

  Rick pushed his way through the brush and emerged on the bank of a river or estuary of some kind.

  Beyond, on the opposite bank, were rows of wooden forms that marked the outline of salt pans. Water was let into the square pools in the early morning, and by nightfall it had evaporated, leaving its salt behind.