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Show ncse, behind were still more thousands. thou-sands. If one stopped, all had to stop. Careful and intent on his job of driving, Joe suddenly thr-t his hand through the cab winuow at his side to reduce the caravan's sliced. He had rounded a curve and in the road before him were swarms of Chinese. They were men and women, some of them carrying carry-ing babies. As the caravan threaded thread-ed its way among them, they answered an-swered the drivers' salutes with the watchword of modern China. "Chee li!" they shouted proud, exultant, defiant! "It means 'Arise'," Gail said quietly, sensing an opening to talk. "You'll hear a lot of it in China." "Chee li! Look at that!" exclaimed ex-claimed Joe pointing ahead. They had rounded another curve and in a longer straightaway there werr. literally thousands of Chinese men, women, and children; they carried tools, spades, baskets, bundles and ding u. -j. Tnc truck was sliding, not roll ing. Quick, expert twists of the wheels veered it away from jutting rocks that would have wrecked it. A dozen times during the few seconds of its plunge it seemed as thougii nothing under heaven could keep it rignt side up. Finally it lurched, full sidewise, onto the solid road below, inches short of the brink of another and more terrible drop. tiail, Kim How, and the other spellbound watchers saw the big machine pull a few yards down the road to make room for the other unwicldly toboggans and they saw Joe climb out of the cab, light & cigarette, and wave up cockily. Then the boss-man himself got an even greater thrill. As he started start-ed up the slope for his second car, he saw it nose over the edge and careen crazily down the tracks he had made. Gail Farwood, white, tight-lipped, but still in perfect poise, stepped out when It had y-TT"" iw -fBw n""- ......... .........,s.,. vvV-- - , ;" .- ' . ,. - , , , . R ... .,.., v i N ' t -XCV is 4 fa li A half mile of the road had been blasted out by Japanese bombs. an. 9 CB A YANK oh the Adapted from the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Picture by RANDALL M. WHITE CAST OF CHARACTERS Gail Farwood ..... Larsine Day Joe Tracey ..... Barry Nelson Tom Farwood .... Stuart Crawford Kim How ..... Keye Luke Wing Sen Yung Dr. Franklin Ling ..... Phillip Ahn Radio Announcer ... Knox Manning Rangoon Aide de Camp . Matthew Boulton Guerilla Leader .... James Leong Old Woman Mr. Poo Sal ! SYNOPSIS Joe Tracey (Barry Nelson), New York taxi driver, revelling in publicity drawn by his display dis-play of personal courage in the single-handed capture of the Bptnaldi brothers, gangster killers, kill-ers, has been selected by a Chinese War Relief Society to pilot a twelve-truck caravan of viedical supplies to Chungking over the dangerous Burma Road, with Kim How (Keye Luke), Chinese American, as his lie-u-tenant. In Rangoon, Burma, "Miss" Gail Farwood (Larraine Day), denied the right to travel to Chungking to join her renegade rene-gade husband, tricks Joe into hauling her as a hidden passenger. passen-ger. When she repulses his rough attentions, Joe begins to dream of Gail as his wife. Chapter Two Not within the province of other chump's convoy! con-voy! With me, this is the end of the line... Missus Farwood!" "Oh, please, Joe! that was what I wanted want-ed to tell you . . . when I didn't have the courage," Gail cried out in tears. "Have I done anything that any woman wouldn't do?" "Not any woman," retorted Joe and his words had a bite "...only that kind that blow along like leaves in Central Park and are just as easy to pick up! I must have been all out of marbles not to see the whole blueprint you conning me along, that hold-up gag in the hotel, and the way you crooned me into a coma back there in "What in thunder did you want to do that for?" cried Joe, relieved but angry. "You picked me up on the Burma Road . . . not like a leaf in Central Cen-tral Park," she answered calmly. "Look!" Over the brink came another of the trucks and its slide was just as perilous. Kim How climbed out when he had brought it to a stop. Joe sensed what he might expect. "Yell to those guys up there to hold it!" he shouted to Kim. "I'll bring the rest of 'em down!" "No, Mister Tracey," his lieutenant lieuten-ant replied. "You must let them do it. If not they will lose face on your account . . . and because the lady has shown bravery too." It was true that those native drivers were far from expert but they were doing a job for China and Confucius rode with them in their cabs. Only one missed a safe landing. A thin, piercing scream split the air as No. 12 slid completely com-pletely over the lower road and hurtled on down into the deeper chasm. Joe saw it roll end over end but its staunch construction held it together. Before he could reach where it had stopped in a thicket, the brush parted slowly and little Kim crawled out! "So sorry," he said. Not many miles farther on the caravan was stopped again. A bridge was cut. "The watchman says there's an emergency road up through the hills," Kim explained. "He says it's dangerous the Japs are bombing in that area, trying a break-through to Chungking." "Well, speaking of a breakthrough,'" break-through,'" Joe said quickly as he turned away, ". . . let's go! If any of those other trucks that have been stalling 'round here want to join the parade, tell 'em to keen Burma, but across the border in China where the Japanese had been waging war for years, did Joe Tracey expect to encounter real difficulties with his caravan. His own nerves grew taut as the trucks drew close to the boundary and he didn't think it strange that Gail, too, seemed much concerned about the little detail of crossing the line. A Chinese officer halted the caravan cara-van in the public square of Wan Tine, the border village. He was Lashio!" Gail's eyes brimmed with tears. She bowed her head from a sense of guilt. Her fumbling fingers were busy packing the small bag she carried. "All right, Joe . . . it's up to you," she said. A knock at the tailboard of the truck interrupted. "The men are ready!" Kim How called out. "Start 'em up!" Joe ordered gruffly. Gail moved toward the back of the truck. "I want you to know, Joe." she babies! "Arise, huh? Boy, they've risen! Where dy'e suppose they're goin'?" "Probably to fix a break in the road," answered Gail "That's one. thing the Japs don't seem to understand. un-derstand. For every devastating bomb they drop there are a hundred hun-dred thousand willing, determined hands to repair the damage and millions to fight to their death to avenge every act of aggression!" Gail's guess was right. Soon a Chinese workman flaereed the cara- scarcely interested in the official papers but, hesitatingly, Kim How interpreted that the commandant wanted to speak to Joe regarding an American girl who was traveling travel-ing in China without a passport. Courteously, the commandant explained ex-plained his interest in the young lady in question. "We have been informed," he said, "that she has attached herself to some motor convoy." Joe was vague. "I wouldn't know about that," he said. "I have too much admiration for what you are doing to doubt you," was the officer's embarrassing answer. an-swer. "You may cross when you are ready there will be no search." Joe had to ask for it and he got it! He tried to be casual. "This girl, Colonel," he asked. ". . . I've heard of her. What has she done that they won't let her travel in your country? I'm told she wants I to get to Chungking to join a ; friend." "Please, Mister Tracey," the commandant com-mandant replied, entirely without emotion, "that friend is one of China's enemies. He's a traitor named Farwood . . . the young lady"s husband!" Kim How saw the anger and the hurt in his associate's eyes. He wasn't around when Joe climb- i ' ed slowly aboard his truck. ; A smile and it wasn't a defiant sneer was Gail's greeting when the man she had duped and j learned to love tore aside the , tarpaulin under which she was J hiding. ; "All out! Last stop!" he said through lips that were as tight as 1 a crack in a drumhead. "But you haven't crossed yet," the girl exclaimed anxiously. 'Tve been crossed!" was the bit- ter, answer. ". . . and if you pick '3, 'em up and lay 'em down pretty i; you may be able to hitch-hike your j way back to Rangoon with some said haltingly and there could be no doubt of her sincerity "I'll never forget what you said . . . about seeing me there when you checked in your fares at night." She held out her hand in farewell. "Some day there'll be such a girl and I'll envy her all my life!" Joe took a step towards her. Then he raised a length of canvas laying on the floor. "Get under that they might change their minds about searching," he said and slid through the partition onto his driver's seat. Out of Wan Ting, Gail rode on the seat beside Joe, silent and ashamed. There had been time for books and study in her life. She knew this Burma Road they were traversing. What had been written about it was true: It had, indeed, been scratched out of the sides of mighty mountains by the fingernails of millions of desperately striving human beings. It wound like a dragon, symbol of their race that dragon which had slept for centuries cen-turies in a snug and certain past and had now been startled into rude awakening by the onslaughts of a ruthless aggressor. Seven hundred hun-dred twenty-six miles of it a thin streak so narrow most of the way that two modern vehicles cannot pass, curves so sharp that rarely can a driver see more than an eighth of a mile ahead, a surface so rough and rocky that even modern motor cars built to travel seventy or more miles an hour can proceed no faster than fifteen, no guard rails or other protective devices de-vices against sheer drops of from one to seven thousand feet into forbidding rocky chasms, never a place for refueling, repairs, or rest the most dangerous road in the world at any time, now doubly dangerous under the depredations of Japanese bombing planes trying to choke or destroy it. Ahead, as they toiled along, were thousands of trucks loaded with ammunition and supplies for the valiant Chi- van to a stop. Before him Joe saw a half mile of the road buried under un-der millions of tons of dirt and rock, part of the mountain dislodged dis-lodged from its ancient moorings by a blast from a Japanese bomb. "What does Confucius say now?" Joe asked Kim facetiously. Kim was overcome. "Confucius has no comment," he answered slowly, . . . but Nietsche says 'Be hard . . . live dangerously'!" Joe looked out over the jagged scenery. Beyond the slide, this challenging Burma Road began to wind again at a lower level, four or five hundred feet away, down a forty-five degree grade. Gail saw the growing glint in the boss-man's eyes. "You're not by any chance, thinking of . . . she asked in amazement of the young man she knew wouldn't be stopped. "There'll be thousands along soon to repair the road," Kim said. "You saw them . . . back there, but it will take them a long time without machinery!" Joe turned abruptly. "Be hard live dangerously!" which he fairly snarled, was scarcely an answer to the question Gail had asked in evident fear of his life. "I'm taking these big bruisers down that grade one after the other," he declared. "You folks can come down the toboggan on your hams!" Gail stepped forward to stop him as he leapt aboard his truck but turned away as the motor began be-gan to roar. With cool, deliberate calculation this New York taxi driver nosed the heavily laden machine slowly and carefully to the edge of the road. Little Wing, the bad boy of his group of native drivers, rushed forward and extended his hand. "Howla!" he said. "Howla yourself!" your-self!" Joe shouted with a grin, the words trailing off into the crunch of heavy wheels on dirt and stone and the slithtering shriek of skid- their eyes on our tailights!" A few minutes later, they were jolting slowly, painfully over an almost impassable mountain road. Gail stirred uneasily on the seat beside him as Joe's truck crept on through the night. "At Wan Ting, Joe," she said haltingly, "they told you my husb . . . Tom Farwood . . . was held as a traitor to China. Did they say he had been tried by court martial?" "They didn't say and I was too burned up to ask," was Joe's sullen sul-len reply. "He was a flyer a crack pilot," the girl said quietly it was hero-worship hero-worship speaking. Just then the night was shattered shat-tered by deafening explosions up ahead. Came the whine of airplane motors high in the heavens, then the awful, lightning-like cresendo of sound as these deadly hunters swooped earthward at their targets. The village of Fa Chien was just "scorched earth" when they reached reach-ed it. Dead and dying lay untended in the streets. Old men, women, and children in utter despair, crowded into corners behind charred char-red and tottering walls. "This Is what you call tough, Missus Farwood," Joe said bitterly, with hidden meaning. A Chinese patriarch who overheard leapt forward for-ward and harangued the strange white woman angrily. Kim How was reluctant to tell why. i "He heard the name "Farwood," " , he was- prevailed upon to disclose. ' "That's the name of a white man ' a German who was flying with the Japanese when they destroyed I this village; he was forced down ' not far from here!" A "Yank, fighting mad" in the I final installment. ' Printed In V. 8. iU Copyright 1042 by Loew'i Inc. |