Assignment Bangkok by Unknown Author Page B

said wearily. “It’s been going on for months. If it keeps up, I’ll be wiped out.”
    “That’s a good sign,” Durell said. “If Mike threw in with them, they’d have stopped harassing you.”
    “Thanks for nothing,” she said bitterly.
    Durell turned abruptly. From over the rolling hills came faint popping noises, a dim shouting, thin as a whisper in the distance. He turned, strode out on the bungalow veranda. Long evening shadows lay on the valley. Several of the village women stood very still, looking up through the surrounding teak forest toward the mountain peak. The foreman, Nam, came out of the machine shed and also stared.
    Benjie whispered, “It’s gunfire.”
    “Speak of the devil. The Muc Tong?”
    “They’ve raided the logging crews before. Maybe they know I’ve just arrived. The men won’t work for a week, now.”
    “Have you any rifles?”
    She turned and ran into the bungalow and came out with two Remington .30-30’s. Nam, the foreman, had gotten into a jeep and came bouncing toward them, raising plumes of red dust in the evening air. The breeze felt suddenly colder. Durell checked the magazines of the rifles and waved Nam down.
    “It is trouble, Miss Benjie!”
    “I know. The elephants.” She turned to Durell to explain. “We’re logging a strip where we can’t jeep in. Only the elephants can do the work. If the Muc Tong kill them, we’re done for—they’re too expensive to replace and train.”
    The logging road led uphill, following the white rushing stream. Above the racket of the engine, they heard more distant gunfire, and then an explosion, as if a grenade had been thrown. Men screamed up there, in the dense green of the forest; but the stately, towering trees made an umbrella over the sky and screened off the camp and the cutting site.
    Teak was durable, lasting for centuries, and was not a prey to tropical termites. It was never cut until it was at least two feet in diameter, or about 150 years old. The logging method usually followed girdling to kill the tree, which was then left standing for two years to dry out, to lighten the density of the wood and permit it to float. Elephants were used to fell the trees, most often in the rainy season when the timber did not split easily; but obviously Benjie had been pushing her loggers to work now, even when it was dry. After the loggers trimmed the logs, the massive elephants, using chains guided by their mahouts, dragged the logs either to trucks or a narrow-gauge railroad for the trip over the mountainside to the nearest usable stream, where rafts were made up and regular watch-stations were erected to permit men and elephants to loosen any jams. Where the stream widened, rafts were constructed of the logs, using two or three hundred of them, and tower-huts for the crew, with rudders fore and aft, were set up for the year-long trip down to the delta sawmills.
    Durell’s thoughts were abruptly interrupted by a glimpse of running men through the tall trees. The path twisted sharply to the right, and Nam suddenly screamed. Directly before them stood a huge gray mass, with tiny, anger-reddened eyes.
    It was one of the logging elephants. A broken chain from one foreleg whipped like a vicious, incredible weapon through the air as the ponderous, terrified beast charged toward them. Blood ran down its side from several bullet wounds.
    Nam yelled and abandoned the wheel and jumped free.
    The jeep hit a rut in the dirt road and bounced, lifting on the right side, and came down with a bone-rattling crash. Durell grabbed at the wheel, but it tore out of his hands.
    The huge beast, maddened by its wounds, was only fifty feet away. Benjie called out something from the back of the jeep as the elephant thundered down on them.
    Durell got his foot on the brake, caught the wheel again, and turned the jeep into the brush. It was almost stopped when Nam, shrieking, ran ahead with arms outstretched, directly in the elephant’s path. The ground