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Chapter 9

   NEW PLANS

   KIKI was glad to see the two men go. "Shut the door!" she shouted after them. "Shut the door!"

   The men ran off, and only stopped when they were well away from the shed. Juan mopped his forehead.

   "What do you make of that?" he said. "A voice — and nothing else!"

   The other man was rapidly recovering.

   "Where there's a voice there's a body," he said. "There's somebody here — somebody playing tricks on us. I thought when I saw that flattened piece this morning that we were not alone here. Who's here? Do you think anybody's got wind of the treasure?"

   The four children, hidden well in the leaves of the tree, just above the heads of the two men, pricked up their ears at once. Treasure! Oho! So that was what the men were after in this lonely, deserted valley. Treasure!

   "How could anyone know what we know?" said Juan scornfully. "Don't get nerves just because you heard a voice, Pepi. Why, maybe it was just a parrot."

   Pepi laughed loudly. It was his turn to be scornful now. "A parrot! What will you say next, Juan?" he said with a sneer. "Have you ever known parrots to live here before? And talking ones, too? If that's a parrot, I'll eat my hat and yours as well!"

   The listening children grinned at one another. Lucy-Ann thought she would like to see Pepi, whoever he was, eating his hat. He would have to eat Juan's too, for Kiki was most certainly a parrot.

   "It's somebody hiding about here," said Pepi. "Though how they got here goodness knows. Juan, maybe there is a cellar beneath that cowshed. We will go and find out if anyone is hiding there. He will be very — very — sorry for himself."

   The children didn't like the tone of his voice at all. Lucy-Ann shivered. What horrid men!

   They went cautiously to the cowshed. Juan stood at the broken-down doorway. He called loudly.

   "Come out of the cellar, whoever you are! We give you this one chance!"

   No-one came out, of course. For one thing there was no-one to come out, and for another there was no cellar to come from. Juan held a revolver in his hand. Kiki, rather alarmed at the shouting voice, said nothing at all, which was fortunate for her.

   The silence was too much for Juan. He took aim at where he supposed a cellar might be and a shot rang out. BANG!

   Kiki almost tumbled off the beam in fright and the four children nearly fell out of their tree. Jack just clutched Lucy-Ann in time and held her tightly.

   BANG! Another shot. The children imagined that Juan must be firing blindly, merely to frighten the person he thought he had heard talking. What a pity Kiki had been in the shed, sulking. Jack felt most alarmed. He was afraid she might have been shot.

   The men came out again. They stood looking about for some moments and then walked near to the chestnut tree, talking.

   "No-one there now. Must have slipped off. I tell you, Pepi, there has been someone here — maybe spying on us!"

   "Well, he surely wouldn't give himself away by telling us to wipe our feet and shut the door," said Pepi scornfully.

   "We'll come back tomorrow and scour this place completely," said Juan. "I'm certain there's somebody here. Talking English, too! What does it mean? I feel very alarmed about it. We didn't want anyone to get wind of our mission."

   "Certainly we must scour this place well," said Pepi. "We must find out who is the owner of that voice. No doubt about that. I'd start a good hunt now, but it's getting dark and I'm hungry. Come on — let's get back."

   To the children's huge relief the two men disappeared. Jack, who by climbing to the very top of the tree could see the aeroplane, waited till he could see the two men passing by it on their way to their own hut.

   Then he called down to the others, "All clear now. They're by the plane. My word — what a shock I had when those shots went off! Lucy-Ann nearly fell off her branch."

   "Lizzie shot out of my pocket and disappeared," said Philip. "I say, I hope Kiki's all right, Jack. She must have been scared out of her life when the shots rang out in that little shed."

   Kiki was sitting petrified on the beam when the children went into the cowshed. She crouched down, trembling. Jack called to her softly.

   "It's all right, Kiki. Come on down. I'm here to fetch you."

   Kiki flew down at once and landed on Jack's shoulder. She made a great fuss of him. "Mmm-mm-mm!" she kept saying. "Mm-mm-mm!"

   It was dark in the shed. The children didn't like it. Lucy-Ann kept feeling there might be someone hiding in the corners. "Let's come out," she said. "What are we going to do tonight? Is it safe to sleep where we did last night?"

   "No. We'd better take our rugs and things somewhere else," said Jack. "There's a patch of bushes higher up, where we'd be sheltered from the wind and hidden from view too. We could take them there."

   "I say — do you know what we left in the shed?" said Philip suddenly. "We left our sacks of tins. Look, there they are in that corner!"

   "What a mercy the men didn't notice they were full of something!" said Jack. "Still, I'm not surprised they took no notice of them, really. They just look like heaps of rubbish. We'll drag them up to the bushes, though. Our store of food is too precious to be left behind."

   They dragged the sacks to the patch of bushes and left them there. Then they debated what to do about the things up the tree.

   "Let's just bring down the rugs and our macks," said Jack. "The clothes we used for pillows are wrapped in the rugs. We could leave the suitcases up there. We don't want them dragged about with us."

   It was now getting so dark that it was quite difficult to get the rugs and macks down, but they managed it somehow. Then they made their way again to the bushes. Dinah and Lucy-Ann spread out the "bed," as they called it.

   "It won't be so warm here," said Dinah. "The wind creeps round rather. Where are we going to hide tomorrow? Those men will look behind these bushes, that's certain."

   "Do you remember that waterfall?" asked Philip. "There seemed to be a nice lot of rocks and hiding-places down towards the foot. I believe we could climb down there and find quite a good place."

   "Yes, let's," said Lucy-Ann. "I'd like to see that waterfall again."

   They all lay down on the rug. They pressed close together, for it was certainly cold. Dinah took a pullover from her "pillow" and put it on.

   Suddenly she gave a scream, making the others jump. "Oh! OH! There's something running over me! It must be a rat!"

   "Well, it isn't," came Philip's delighted voice. "It's Lizzie! She's found me. Good old Lizzie!"

   So it was. How the little lizard had discovered where Philip was nobody could imagine. It was part of the spell that Philip always seemed to exercise on wild creatures.

   "Don't worry, Dinah," said Philip. "Lizzie is safely in my pocket now. Poor thing, I bet she felt dizzy falling down the tree."

   "Dizzy Lizzie," said Kiki at once, delighted with the two words. "Dizzy Lizzie."

   Everyone laughed. Kiki was really funny at times. "Doesn't she love to put words together that have the same sounds?" said Lucy-Ann. "Do you remember last hols she kept saying 'fusty-musty-dusty' till we nearly screamed at her?"

   "Fusty-musty-dusty, dizzy Lizzie," said Kiki at once, and screeched.

   "Don't," said Jack. "You're only showing off now, Kiki. Go to sleep. And if you dig your claws into my tummy like you did this morning, I'll smack you."

   "God save the King," said Kiki devoutly, and said no more.

   The children talked for a little while longer. Then the girls and Philip fell asleep. Jack lay on his back, with Kiki on one of his ankles. He looked up at the stars. What was the good of promising Aunt Allie they wouldn't have any more adventures? The very night they had promised her, they had whizzed off in a strange aeroplane to an unknown valley, where, apparently, some sort of "treasure" was hidden. Most extraordinary. Most — extra —— And then Jack was asleep too, and the stars shone down on the four children, moving across the sky till dawn slid into the east and put out all the stars one by one.

   Philip awoke early. He had meant to, for he did not know how early the men might start hunting for the owner of the "voice." He awoke the others and would not listen to their protests.

   "No, you've really got to wake up, Dinah," he said. "We must start early today. Go on — wake up! — or I'll put dizzy Lizzie down your neck."

   That woke poor Dinah up properly. She sat up and tried to slap Philip, but he dodged away. She hit Kiki instead. The parrot gave a surprised and aggrieved squawk.

   "Oh, sorry, Kiki," said Dinah. "Sorry. I didn't mean that for you. Poor, poor Kiki!"

   "What a pity, what a pity!" said Kiki, flying off in case Dinah sent out any more slaps.

   "We'll have a quick breakfast," said Jack. "Sardines, biscuits and milk, I think. I saw a tin of sardines at the top of one of our sacks. Yes, here it is."

   They saw smoke rising up from where the two men were, and knew that they too were up. So they finished their breakfast quickly, and Dinah once more pushed the tins down a convenient rabbit-hole. Then they ruffled up the grass on which they had been lying, so that it did not look quite so flat.

   "I think we'd better find a good hiding-place for most of these tins," said Philip, "and take just a few of them with us to last us for today. We can't possibly lug these heavy sacks along all the way."

   "Couldn't we drop them into the middle of these bushes?" said Dinah. "They're awfully thick. Nobody would guess they were there. We could slip back and fetch any we wanted."

   So the sacks were dropped into the middle of the bushes, and certainly no one could see them unless they actually crawled into the very middle. Then the children gathered up their rugs, macks and odd clothes and set off. The boys carried the tins, and Jack had his camera and his glasses as well. So they were heavily laden and could not go very fast.

   They took the same way that they had taken before. When they came to the grassy, flower-strewn hillside they sat down for a rest. After all, the men would hardly be following them! They would be hunting all round and about the cowshed.

   Suddenly, from far off, Jack caught sight of a brilliant, twinkling flash. He lay down flat at once, telling the others to do the same. "There's someone using field-glasses down there," he said. "We may not be seen if we lie flat. I just caught the flash of the sun on the eye-lenses. Dash! I forgot the men might sweep the mountainside with glasses. They'll be after us if they've seen us."

   "Let's crawl to that rock and get behind it," said Philip. "Come on. Once we're behind there we can get on and find the waterfall."

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