Rick Brant 10 The Golden Skull Page 5

  “Glad to have you, if you don’t mind our going ahead with our work,” Rick told him.

  “Don’t let me get in the way. Go right ahead.”

  The boys did so, and Rick explained the fine points of the Sky Wagon to Nast while he worked to check every possible point of sabotage. He liked talking about the plane. It was something to be proud of. And Nast was an interested listener who apparently knew something about planes.

  After the check up, they rolled the plane outside and Rick warmed up the engine. Then, while he was testing the radio, Angel Manotok arrived with a truck. Rick immediately shut the engine off and got out, curious to see what Angel had found. Scotty was already looking it over, with Nast an interested spectator. Rick introduced him to Angel,then asked:

  “Is it in good condition?”

  “Very good.The man said it had been overhauled recently, and I believe him. The tires are in good condition and there are two spares.”

  The truck was a typical Army vehicle with double rear wheels, both front and rear drive, and a winch on the front. The motor purred sweetly. Angel had apparently done well.

  Nast asked, “Going to use both the truck and the plane? Or will you leave the plane atBaguio ?”

  “We’re not sure,” Rick said. “Depends on whether we find a landing place at Bontoc. Have you been there?”

  “A few times.There are no decent fields. But you could land on the road. It’s black top, and there are few power lines or phone lines. I think you can do it.”

  “Glad to hear that,” Rick said, relieved. To Scotty and Angel he said, “We can go on back to the hotel and load the truck. We’ll have to check the plane engine before take-off, anyway.”

  “Think the plane will be safe?” Scotty asked.

  “Sure. We’ll put it in the hangar and lock the door. I notice the airport guards go by pretty often, and besides, the plane has been all right so far.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Scotty agreed. “But let’s put the alarm out, anyway.”

  The alarm was a very loud horn wired into a circuit which caused it to go off if the plane was so much as touched. Rick set it, then locked the door of the plane. Removing the key from the lock activated the circuit. Then they closed and locked the hangar door. The plane would be all right.

  Nast was talking to Angel Manotok in Tagalog. Angel was replying, but not very enthusiastically.

  Rick spoke up. “You speak the local language pretty well, Mr. Nast.”

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  “Have to,” Nast said cheerfully. “The Filipino families that work for me can’t speak English, often as not.

  Well, good hunting. Perhaps we’ll meet inBaguio .”

  The boys shook hands. “Good luck to you. Hope your shipment arrives.”

  “It will. The planes fromHong Kong are often late. The airport there is closed in half the time from fog.

  Good luck.”

  The boys got into the truck with Angel and he drove out to the main highway.

  “What where you and Nast talking about?”Scotty asked.

  Angel took his time about answering. “He just wanted to know when we were going toBaguio . I think he was making small talk. Maybe he wanted to show off his Tagalog.”

  “Was his Tagalog good?” Rick asked.

  “Yes.Very good.”

  Angel said no more, and Rick wondered for a moment. What had Nast really said? He decided that it wasn’t of any importance. Perhaps Nast was one of those Americans who always talk to people of other lands in a half-insulting way. Rick had met them-and mighty poor advertisements forAmerica they were.

  They parked the truck behind the hotel and took Angel to their room. “We’ll get help and have the crates carried down for you.” Rick said.

  Angel grinned. “Why bother? You two take one and I’ll take the other.”

  The boys looked at each other. True, the crates weren’t huge, but each was a hefty load for two men.

  “Stop bragging,” Scotty said. The jocular tone of his voice made a playful challenge of the words.

  Angel took the challenge. He went to the largest crate, swung it easily to his head, and balanced it with one hand. “Let’s go,” he said, grinning.

  Scotty stepped forward, blood in his eye, and tackled the second crate. He got it up, but it was obvious that it was too much of a load even for his above-normal strength. Rick lent a hand and they carried the crate along behind Angel, who walked as though he had a feather pillow balanced on his head.

  “Manotok the Mighty,” Scotty said, and there was t genuine awe in his voice.

  Angel pronounced his name in the Spanish style, Ahng-hel , but now he shifted to the English pronunciation and said, “I’m an angel, and my strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.”

  The boys laughed. “That was first applied to Galahad, wasn’t it?” Rick asked.

  “Don’t know,” Angel replied. “But I like it, anyway.”

  The crates took up little room in the truck. Angel lashed them in,then the three went to the main dining Page 28

  room to meet Tony. They had time for a glass of limeade before the scientist showed up. He came to the table and asked, “Do you know a man by the name of Nast?”

  Rick’s eyebrows went up. “Yes.Met him this morning. Why?”

  “He left a phone message at the desk.Wants you to call him.”

  Rick rose and went to the lobby, puzzled. What could Nast want? He got the number Nast had left. It turned out to be the freight office at the airport. Then there was a wait while the man was paged. At last he came to the phone.

  “Brant? . . .Nast here. Look, I’m terribly sorry to impose on such short acquaintance, but I want to ask a favor. My shipment came in, but now I can’t get a truck. The one I usually ship on has a regular run, and the driver took off forBaguio without checking. So I’m stranded. If you haven’t too much of a load, could I ride along with your Filipino driver? My shipment weighs only two hundred pounds.”

  Rick considered. Nothing in the truck would be in any danger. The earth scanner was safely stowed in the luggage compartment of the plane.

  Nast added, “I’ll be glad to pay for the trip. It will save me waiting over until tomorrow.”

  “No need,” Rick said. “We’ll be glad to accommodate you. Meet you at the hangar in an hour.” He hung up, very thoughtful. Why should his instincts rebel against doing Nash such a small favor? Again he told himself that no harm could come of it. Even if Nast were finger-man for a bandit gang he would get nothing except clothes and ordinary, easily replaced tools. And it was ridiculous to imagine the American as any such thing. True, he was not an educated man, but that meant less than nothing. Education, as such, has little to do with honesty. No, Nast was just an American sailor who had decided to stay in the tropics, and apparently was making a go of it in a business way.

  “Let him ride,” Rick thought. “It will be okay. He can’t do any damage, I guess . . .”

  CHAPTER VI

  Chahda Checks In

  Rick had expected the flight toBaguio to be a snap, but as it turned out, he had to call for help. Angel Manotok carried the three Spindrifters to the airport in the truck, Rick and Scotty riding behind,then Angel departed forBaguio with Nast and his bundle of silks.

  Rick checked in at the Philippine Aeronautics Commission, seeking information on the airport atBaguio .

  He took one look at the approach pattern and gulped. The approach was between high mountains, down a valley, and then up a mountainside. What made it worse was that one mountain looked much like another on the topographical map.

  He exclaimed, “Boy!” That’s a rugged landing field to find!”

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  The Filipino official smiled. “You have maybe Navy flying experience?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Best experience for landing atBaguio is making landings on aircraft carrier.”

  “Thanks,” Rick said.“Any advice?”

  “Yes. Go to
Philippine Air Lines. Talk to flight dispatcher. PAL flight leaves here maybe two hours.Just right for you. Fly to rendezvous. Pretty soon along comes PAL flight and you follow in.”

  The advice was good, Rick realized. He could not do better than follow a regular air-line flight into the field. He did as directed, met the pilot of the nextBaguio flight, a former Filipino pilot in the United States Air Force, and was told the approximate time the PAL flight would pass the KennonRoad horseshoe curve for theBaguio approach.

  “Follow the KennonRoad ,” the pilot advised. “Pick me up when I go over the curve. You can’t mistake the place. Nothing elselike it.”

  While Rick made arrangements, Tony and Scotty loaded their personal suitcases into the luggage compartment with the earth scanner. Scotty started the engine and checked the plane, so that it was warm when Rick arrived. They took off at once and headed north across the great central plain of Luzon.

  The landscape below was flat, cut up by creeks and estuaries. It was perfect rice country. Later they passedMount Arayat , once the hide-out of the Hukbalahap - the lawless forces that had been such a threat to Philippine stability. Ahead of them rose the mountains of northernLuzon . Within those mountains they would findBaguio andMountainProvince .

  Rick picked up the KennonRoad without trouble as it wound its way through the foothills. Staying high, he followed it until he reached a great switchback curve. A car following that road would literally double back on itself, he thought. He glanced at his watch. The PAL plane would be along in about two minutes.

  The pilot had estimated Rick’s flying time perfectly. Rick climbed, then circled until Scotty saw the twin-engine transport approaching.

  The PAL pilot waggled his wings, and Rick followed as the air liner throttled down, swung between mountain peaks, and threaded its way down a wide valley. Rick gulped. A good thing he had had the experienced pilot to follow. He would never have found the way alone. The peaks were completely confusing to someone who had never seen them before.

  The air liner turned suddenly and Rick’s heart leaped into his throat. He thought the PAL plane was flying right into the mountainside. But such was not the case. The plane settled down on a landing strip that had been hewn from a mountaintop. It was obvious what the PAL official had meant when he joked about carrier landings.

  Rick followed the PAL plane in, and had to fight down his instinctive feeling to gain altitude when he saw the mountainside rushing at him. He nearly overshot the landing strip. But then the Sky Wagon was down, and he taxied toward the control station.

  Scotty wiped his brow. “Some field!”

  “Next time will be okay,” Rick replied. “But this time I aged ten years.”

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  The Filipino pilot walked to meet them, grinning. “How do you likeBaguio airport?”

  “I’ve landed on fields I liked better,” Rick replied. “Thanks for leading us in.”

  “You’re welcome. I remember my first landing.Couldn’t fly again for a week. All I could think of was spreading my passengers all over the hillside. But only the first time is hard. We fly in and out of here several times a day, and we’ve never had a serious accident.”

  “Your air line doesn’t go in for accidents,” Tony Briotti said. “You have a remarkable safety record.”

  “We do our best,” the pilot said. “Going into town? I am. I have a car behind the control shack. Be glad to give you a lift.”

  “Thanks a million,” Rick answered. “First I have to make arrangements for my plane.”

  The pilot grinned.“None to make. No hangars, no service except gas. Just stake it down and lock the door. It will be all right.”

  It had to be all right. There was nothing else to do. The Spindrifters took the earth scanner and their personal luggage, then locked the plane, leaving the alarm activated. As an afterthought, Rick left a duplicate key with the Filipino field official. Someone might touch it casually and set the alarm off, and it would sound until the door was unlocked and relocked again with the key. He explained how it worked and then joined the pilot and his friends in the official air-line car.

  The pilot dropped them at Muller’s, a combination boardinghouse and old-fashioned inn. They checked in,then climbed a nearby hill for a view ofBaguio .

  As far as the eye could see, there were mountains. Steep ridges and deep clefts made a picturesque jumble of the landscape. Beyond, over the ridge, was theTrinidadValley , a farm garden area where the American colony of thePhilippines got most of its temperate zone vegetables and fruit. On the other side of town was the Golden Bowl of Benguet , where fabulous gold mines were worked by Igorot miners clad only in breech-cloths and hard-rock helmets.

  Baguioitself was a modern city in most respects. But the population-a strange mixture of Christian Filipinos and primitive, pagan Igorots-was unusual. The Filipinos wore typical Western dress, and actually dressed pretty warmly. The Igorot men wore the breechcloth, perhaps with a shirt or sweater, perhaps with nothing at all. Most of the men had tiny pillbox caps of woven straw on the backs of their heads. The little round boxes were decorated with such oddments as boar’s tusks and coke bottle caps.

  The Igorot women wore a tight-fitting skirt of colorful wool, usually patterned in red or yellow. They wore blouses of embroidered white cotton, or jackets of colored wool. Their skirts had balls of yarn on the hips. The women wore no hats. Both sexes were usually barefoot.

  There were contrasts. For example, next to a great Christian cathedral was the Igorot dog market. The Igorots were eaters of dog meat.

  But it was not the Igorots or the mountains that had madeBaguio famous and turned it into the summer capital of the Philippines-it was the climate. WhileManila burned in the tropical sun,Baguio , thousands of feet higher, had cool, fall-like weather. There was hardly a night during the year when blankets were not comfortable. Even the foliage was temperate rather than tropical.Baguio had pine trees, a welcome sight to the Spindrift trio.

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  There was a tall, fragrant pine just outside the window of the room shared by Rick and Scotty. When the boys returned to their rooms to wash up for an early dinner, Rick leaned out and broke off a pine cone. Then, by reaching only a bit further, he grabbed a cluster of purple-red blossoms from a bougainvillea vine that had climbed the tree to their second-floor height.

  In the comfortable dining room, they chose a table in front of a roaring fireplace, glad of the warmth. It was chilly inBaguio . While they waited to be served,

  Rick mentioned the pine tree to Tony and commented that it was odd that a tree should be left so close to a building.

  “The forest practices of the Igorots and Ifugaos could well be copied by us,” Tony told the boys.

  “Anyone who cuts down a tree for anything other than genuine use is severely punished. In the old days the punishment might have been loss of his head. That’s how much respect they have for their water supply, which is dependent directly on their forests.”

  “You talk as though these were civilized people,” Scotty commented.

  Tony grinned. “Depends on what you call civilization. But they have a very highly developed and complex culture. They have a history, too, which they know better than we know ours. For instance, an Ifugao can recite his ancestry as far back as twenty-five generations. Can you?”

  “Not sure I’d want to,” Scotty retorted.“Might be a few horse thieves along the way. Seriously, I see what you mean.”

  “Their priests must know all about fifteen hundred different gods and all the legends and taboos connected with each. No written books to consult, either. All must be memorized.”

  “That certainly proves that they have good memories,” Rick said. “I’m not sure what else it proves.”

  “Wait until you see the rice terraces. Now let’s order dinner. This cool air has whetted my appetite like a razor’s edge.”

  After a delicious meal of broiled steak, fresh vegetables fromTrinidadValley , and the huge strawberries fo
r which the valley is famous, the three lingered over coffee and Tony recited more details of the Igorot and Ifugao way of life, so different from their own. In the midst of the recital Angel Manotok arrived.

  “Good trip?” Rick asked.

  “Yes. No trouble. The truck is a beauty. What do you want me to do now?”

  Rick handed him the keys to their room. “You’re pretty dusty. Wash up, eat,then go to the airport.

  You’ll find a spare bedroll in the crate you carried by yourself back at the Manila Hotel. Keep an eye on the plane, and we’ll join you at breakfast time.”

  Although there was no reason to suspect that anyone would harm the plane, none of them felt comfortable about leaving it unguarded. They were sure it would be safe during the daylight hours, but darkness afforded an opportunity for sabotage.

  Angel took the keys and went on his way. In a short time he returned, gave the keys back to Rick, and Page 32

  said, “I’ll get supper at a Filipino place. See you in the morning.”

  “Businesslike,” Tony said approvingly. “No waste words or motion. I think we were lucky to get him.”

  The boys agreed. “Wonder how he and Nast got along?” Rick queried. “I forgot to ask him.”

  “He probably dropped off Nast and his silks before he came here,” Scotty commented.

  At Tony’s suggestion they walked around town, taking in the interesting marketplace, the several cathedrals, the summer palace of thePhilippines president, and the parks.Baguio was different-and very peaceful and pleasant. As they walked, they discussed their plans for the next day.

  Rick and Tony were to fly to Bontoc, which was still in Igorot country, then cross the mountain to Banaue, which was the objective of the trip, land of the Ifugaos and home of the fabled rice terraces. It was to be a nonstop trip, mostly to familiarize Rick with the terrain. At the same time, Scotty and Angel were to go by truck to Bontoc, several hours’ drive to the north. They would remain overnight. If Scotty could arrange a landing place for the Sky Wagon, he would phone Rick at Muller’s. Then Rick and Tony would fly up the next morning. Scotty was a pilot himself, so he knew the requirements for a good landing strip.