Story of the Phantom (9 page)

The pygmies received them in silence. A Phantom returning in this fashion was a tradition among them. Some came back alive, some dead. There would be another Phantom. But this time, there were only the twins. They carried the brother into the cave and examined his wound. The bullet had missed his spine, had not touched his heart, or lungs. He would live, he would be all right. But recovery would take time, a long time.

A long time? Julie thought of the young missionary. Who could help him now? Not her brother. Not the Jungle Patrol. She made a quick decision. She could ride and shoot as well as her brother. They thought her brother dead. She would go back as the Phantom. She hurriedly prepared a costume out of a bolt of material in the closet. She took her brother's guns and his mask, and, fully attired, stepped 40

out of the cave. The pygmies were amazed, for they had known Julie since she was a baby. They tried to dissuade her from going, but she was firm. They wanted to accompany her, but she was in a hurry and their dogtrot was too slow. But they could do something for her: start the tom-toms going and send a message to the patrol to come to the lake shore.

And as she rode off, through the waterfall into the jungle, the tom-toms started, carrying the message across valley and hill, picked up and relayed from tribe to tribe. Patrol-come to Black Lake.

Julie reached the lake. Two days and a night had passed. Was she too late? No, the houseboat was still there, the bandits still carrying on their drinking and feasting. The patrol had not yet arrived.

They might never arrive. She wouldn't wait to see. She was afraid, but the memory of her brother's treatment filled her with such anger that she did not hesitate, but dived into the dark water. There were no encounters with crocodiles this time and she reached the boat safely. As she climbed over the deck rail, near the missionary, a bandit was there and offering a drink of wine to the exhausted captive. The missionary was refusing it, and the bandit hurled the wine into his face. At that moment, he turned to see the masked figure leap upon the deck. His eyes popped. Instead of reaching for his pistol, he turned and ran. The young missionary stared at her in a daze. Masked, like before, but different. Her knife was out and she hurriedly sliced his ropes as three bandits raced upon the deck in answer to their fellow's shouts. They too stared at the figure they thought dead in the lake. The deck was shadowy; they had not yet seen her clearly. Then they raced for their rifles, standing at the railing. As they turned back to her, rifles in hand, she coolly shot them. One, two, three, and they hit the deck almost together. The fat bandit chief bounded onto the deck. With him was the bandit with the skull mark who had mistreated her brother. Both had guns. These men had slaughtered a dozen men, women, and children in the caravan, she remembered. As they raised their guns to fire, she shot the skull-marked bandit between the eyes. A second shot, less lethal, dropped the bandit chief to the deck. It has been said that "the female of the species is more deadly than the male." Julie was proving it. At her direction, the dazed young missionary picked up a rifle and pointed it at the half-dozen remaining bandits who were in a confused clump near the stern.

"If anyone moves, shoot them in the head," she commanded.

"In the head?" said the young missionary in a weak voice.

"In the head!" she cried.

The bandits, dazed by the appearance of the man they thought dead, now stared through the semidarkness.

"It's a woman!" one of them shouted.

"A woman?" yelled another, and he rushed forward with a knife toward the slight, shapely masked figure. Julie glanced quickly at the young missionary. He stood there with his rifle, motionless, unused to this violence. Julie fired, dropping the knife-bearer to the deck.

There were shouts from the shore. The Jungle Patrol.

"Stay where you are," she yelled.

On shore the patrolmen looked at each other.

"Wasn't that a woman's voice?"

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"Pick up those poles and push us to shore," Julie said to the remaining bandits. They did as she ordered, using the twelve-foot poles to push the houseboat through the shallow water. As they neared the shore, she turned to the missionary who was leaning against the cabin wall, weak from his ordeal.

"Are you strong enough to keep that rifle on them?" she asked. He nodded grimly.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"A friend," she said and just as the boat touched the reeds, she leaped off. Patrolmen were waiting nearby, and they rushed onto the deck with drawn guns.

"You! Stop," yelled one of them at the small figure moving among the reeds, "Stop, or I'll shoot!"

"No!" cried the missionary, "She saved me."

"She?" said the patrolman. But by this time, the figure was gone. Julie rode back to the Deep Woods.

Now that it was all over, she was shaken with fear and exhaustion.

When she reached the cave, her brother was still asleep. She went to her chamber and fell upon her pile of furs, collapsing into a deep sleep.

"So it is written," said the Twentieth, closing the Chronicle as Kit and his mother listened attentively.

"That can't be all!" shouted Kit.

"Doesn't that sound like the end of a story?" said his father smiling.

"Don't be a tease," said Kit's mother. "You know there's more. What happened to Julie?"

"Yes, there's more. Shall we have supper first?" he said.

"No, now, now," said young Kit.

"Very well," said his father, opening the book. "'And as I slowly mended'" he read from the Chronicle of the Seventeenth, "'my beloved sister Julie nursed and tended me, but she was strangely silent and irritable, unlike her usual sunny self.'"

Her twin puzzled over her behavior but put it down as a reaction to the violence she had gone through on the houseboat. As he regained his health and strength, she refused to hunt and ride with him, but remained in the cave or took long walks in the woods alone.

"Julie, what is it?" he finally demanded.

"I'm tired of living this way. I want to wear real clothes again, and be a woman."

"Be a woman?" he said, mystified. "But you are a woman."

"You dunce," she snapped at him and strode away.

Her twin was no dunce and he knew his sister well. He remembered the years in Rome when she had been courted by the most eligible bachelors there. And she had been interested in none of them. But now she was obviously mooning over some man. Who could it be? Not much choice in the Deep 42

Woods. He ran after her, catching her at the Skull Throne.

"Julie, are you in love?"

Her eyes blazed at him and she turned away without replying.

"It's that young missionary, on the houseboat!" he shouted.

She sat on the dais and smiled hopelessly.

"Isn't it stupid?" she said. "After all the men we've known. I hardly talked to him. He was so exhausted, he hardly knew I was there. Besides, I was masked, and wearing that ... that costume."

Her brother laughed.

"You were quite an eyeful in that. If he saw you, he hasn't forgotten," he said.

"Mind dropping the subject, for good?" said Julie, stalking away. Her brother watched her thoughtfully, and, in the following days, made a few inquiries about the missionary who was now safe in his new house in a seaside village. Then one day, he persuaded Julie to put on one of her prettiest Roman dresses to take a trip into town. They rode through the woods, Julie riding sidesaddle, wearing a modish evening gown. It amused her to put on this formal dress in the jungle. They soon reached the seacoast, and rode on the uninhabited beaches toward a nearby fishing village.

"I thought you said we're going to town, to Mawitaan," she said, naming the sleepy little capital.

"No, this town," said her brother.

"You can't go into town like that," she said indicating his costume.

"I'm not," he said, stopping near a bungalow. "This is as far as we go. Wait here."

Puzzled, Julie watched her brother enter the bungalow, then come out on the veranda with a young man. Startled, she recognized the missionary. She crept forward in the bushes near the veranda to hear them.

"You are the masked man who came to the houseboat and tried to save me," said the missionary.

"But-they killed you."

"They tried," said t/z~' Seventeenth.

"But later, who was the girl . . ."

"My sister, Julie," said her brother.

"Julie! What a beautiful name! I've been thinking about her, wondering what her name was, hoping to see her."

"Well, she's in love with you and wants to see you too," said the Seventeenth, pleased at the way things were going.

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In the bushes, Julie gasped. Then she turned and ran for her horse. The men saw her going.

"Julie," shouted her brother.

But she was on her horse and gone.

"What happened to her?" said her brother, amazed.

"Maybe she's shy," said the young missionary, being just as stupid about women as the Seventeenth.

"I'll go after her and find out," said her brother.

"May I go with you?" asked the young missionary.

As they rode along, he talked about Julie. The slim masked figure had filled his mind all day and his dreams all night.

"I haven't been able to do my work properly. I've lost my appetite. I don't know what's wrong with me."

The Seventeenth looked at the missionary carefully. He was a fine strong young man, intelligent and earnest, but as innocent of the world and its ways as a baby. After all the brilliant suitors in Rome, what did she see in this fellow? The ways of women were mysterious.

"Tell it to Julie," was all he said.

Down the beach, Julie was walking, leading her horse.

"Wait here," said the Seventeenth. He rode to her.

"Julie why did you? . . ." he started to ask her.

She turned on him in a fury.

"How dare you tell that stranger I love him? Of all the stupid asinine things to say. . ."

"Julie," said the Seventeenth calmly, "you wanted him. I got him for you. Why all the fuss?"

She looked at her twin and smiled, in spite of her anger. "All men are fools," she said.

"Agreed," said her brother. "And here comes one."

And he rode off slowly as the young missionary approached Julie, and dismounted.

"Miss Julie . . . I feel that we know each other ... I can't tell you how I've longed to find you ... I've thought about you... to thank you. . ."

He stared at her, this radiant blushing girl in her stylish gown. Was this the beautiful masked figure who had struck the bandits like an avenging angel? It was.

Kit and his mother waited almost breathlessly as his father closed the Chronicles. "Now it is time for dinner," he announced.

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Kit yowled.

"What happened?" he shouted.

"Oh they married, and had six children, and that was the end of the female Phantom," he said, bending down to kiss his wife.

"How sweet," she said. "Boys or girls?"

"An even mixture I believe," said the Twentieth.

Along with the tales of olden times, Kit continued to learn the secrets by which the Phantom lives and dies. Most important of all was the Oath of the Skull, made by the First over four hundred years ago, an oath sworn on the skull of his father's pirate murderer: "I swear to devote my life to the destruction of piracy, cruelty and injustice, and my sons and their sons will follow me."

Kit memorized the oath, repeating it to himself endlessly. So this is what the Phantom does! This is what his father has been doing on his mysterious missions. Fighting piracy, in all its many forms on land and sea; fighting cruelty and injustice.

He learned that, for ages, the Phantom had been the Keeper of the Peace in this jungle. He was an arbitrator of disputes between tribes, helping to settle disagreements on land, hunting and water rights, trying to halt battles when tempers flared. And though nothing is perfect and though some hostile tribes and renegades roamed the vast jungle, there was a relative state of peace and safety.

Safer perhaps than many large cities. It is said-thanks to the Phantom peace-that a beautiful woman wearing rich jewels could walk through the jungle at midnight without fear. This is an exaggeration of course. There are always a few criminals at large, and predatory animals are not aware of the Phantom peace. But all the folk recognized that the jungle was a better place because the Phantom was there. They liked him and trusted him. The fact that most of them thought he was four hundred years old and immortal only added to the sense of security. He had always been there. He would always be there.

The Jungle Patrol was part of this peace-keeping. The patrol was limited to the jungle borders and the no-man's- land between the small countries along a thousand mile border. This was an elite corps.

Thousands of young men of all races from all over the world applied each year. After rigorous tests, only ten were accepted annually. There was great pride among the corpsmen. They boasted that one patrolman could handle ten criminals. The patrol was organized with a full chain of command, from private to colonel. Above that, there was a mystery. The commander. No one in the patrol, including the colonel, knew who he was. His orders were received mysteriously. Some guessed the commander might not be only one man, but many. All that anyone knew was that the patrol was two centuries old, and it had always been that way. Its actual origins had been forgotten. None knew that the Sixth Phantom had formed the first patrol with Redbeard and his pirate band. But the Phantoms, while watching and guiding the patrol, had always remained anonymous. Kit was amazed to learn that his father was the unknown commander, and that someday this would be his duty among all the others.