Chapter 4 LOST

When the soldiers had climbed out of sight into the mountains, Maria walked slowly back to find her mother, and Lucia after a hurried good-by ran home to tell Nana and Beppino the news.

She was far more worried over the possible order to evacuate than she would admit. As their cottage was the farthest north on the road, it would be the nearest to the Austrian guns. Personally Lucia scorned the very idea of the Austrian guns, but she could not help realizing the danger to Nana and Beppino and Garibaldi. She was still undecided what to do when she reached the cottage.

Nana Rudini was standing in the doorway, shading her eyes with her withered old hand, and staring intently in the direction that the soldiers had taken.

"Did you see the troops, Nana?" Lucia asked cheerfully. "They were a fine lot, eh? I guess they will be able to stop the enemy from coming any nearer."

"Nearer?" queried Nana, "what are you saying?"

"We have had bad luck," Lucia explained. "Tavola has been captured, and our soldiers are retreating. In town they say we may have to evacuate before to-morrow."

The old woman received the news without comment, but a look of despair came into her usually bright eyes, and for the moment made them tragic. Long years before, when Austria had crossed the mountains and entered Cellino, she had been a young girl. Now in her old age they were to come again, and there was no reason to hope that this time they would be less brutal in their triumph than they had been formerly. The memory of their brutality was still a vivid one.

"We will leave at once," she said at last, and her decision was so unexpected, that Lucia gasped in surprise.

"Leave? But, Nana, where will we go? What will become of our things?" she exclaimed. "Surely we had better wait at least until we are ordered out."

"No, we will leave at once," Nana replied firmly. "The order may come too late, as it did before. What do those boys who swagger about in men's places know about the enemy? There is not one that can remember them. But I, old Nana, have known them and their ways, and I say we must go at once."

Lucia looked at the new light of determination in her grandmother's eyes, and realized with a shock of surprise that to protest would be useless.

"Where is Beppi?" she asked. "I will go and find him."

"With the goats," Nana replied. "Call him, I will go in and start packing."

Lucia ran around the house and off to the sunny slope where she had left Beppi a few hours before. She saw the flock of goats grazing, and called, "Beppino mio, where are you?"

No one answered her. She hurried on, believing him to have fallen asleep.

"Beppi!" she shouted, "I have something exciting to tell you. Stop hiding from me."

She waited, but still no answer came.

In a sudden frenzy of fear she began running aimlessly up and down the hillside, and looking down into the tall grasses, but there was no sign of Beppi. There were no trees or houses in sight, no place that he could hide behind, nearer than the mountain path at the foot of the valley.

Lucia looked about her despairingly, then she went over to the goats. Garibaldi was not there.

"She has strayed away, and Beppi has gone after her," she said aloud in relief, and returned to the cottage.

Nana nodded when she explained. She was busy tying up the household treasures in sheets, and Lucia helped her.

Every few minutes she would go to the door and call, but Beppi did not reply. The afternoon wore on slowly and a bank of rain clouds hid the sun. Lucia's confidence gave way to her first feeling of terror, and Nana was growing impatient.

"Where can he be?" Lucia exclaimed. "I am frightened, he has been gone so long."

Nana shook her head. "He was off after the soldiers, I suppose," she replied. "He is always disobeying-no good will come to him and his naughty ways."

Lucia's eyes flashed.

"He is not naughty," she protested angrily, "and he may be lost this very minute. Anyway I am going to find him and I am not coming home until I do. If you are afraid to stay here go to Maria, she and aunt will look after you, and when I find Beppi I will meet you there."

Nana Rudini protested excitedly, but Lucia did not wait to hear what she said. She ran out of the house and down the road towards the footpath. She had no idea of where she was going, but fear lead her on. Beppi, her adored little brother, and Garibaldi were lost, and she was going to find them.

At the end of the road she paused and looked ahead of her. The sky was dark with rain-clouds and thunder rumbled in the west, an echo of the guns. Lucia took the path that she had taken early that morning, and as she climbed up the steep ascent she called and shouted. Her own voice came back to her from the flat rocks ahead, but there was no sound of Beppi.

Instead of going on to the little plateau where she left her pails, she branched off to the left. It was hard climbing, and after repeated shouts of "Beppi," she sat down and tried to think.

Big drops of rain were beginning to fall, and with the sun out of sight the fall air was damp and cold. She pulled her thin shawl around her shoulders and shivered.

"If Garibaldi ran away she came up here; she always does," she argued to herself. "She loves to climb, and she must have come this way in the hope of finding grass. Up above, and a little over to the left, there is a sort of sheltered spot. Perhaps-" she did not finish the thought, but jumped up and started to climb.

She hunted until she discovered a way to find the spot. It was not difficult, for she knew every foot of the mountains from long association. But Beppi was not to be seen, nor was Garibaldi. Lucia stopped, discouraged. Fear and helplessness were getting the better of her, and she would most likely have given way to the tears she so despised had her eye not caught sight of a tuft of fur on the ground. She seized upon it eagerly. It was without doubt part of Garibaldi's shaggy coat.

With a cry of joy she started off up the tiny trail that led higher up into the rocks.

"Beppi, Beppi!" she called, and stopped. Still no answer, but she was not discouraged for the guns were making so much noise that she realized her voice could not carry any great distance.

The rain was coming down in earnest now, and it was hard to keep from losing her footing on the slippery rocks. She stumbled on regardless of the danger, hoping against hope that she had chosen the right path, and that each step was bringing her nearer to Beppi. Between calling and climbing, she was tired, and she stopped for a moment to catch her breath.

A sound, faint but unmistakable, reached her.

"Naa, Naa!"

Garibaldi was complaining about the weather, at no very great distance away from her.

In her relief Lucia laughed excitedly.

"Beppi, Beppi, where are you?" she shouted, and waited eagerly for a reply, but none came. She looked puzzled and then Garibaldi answered her:

"Naa! Naa!"

The sound came from directly over her head, and she climbed up the steep rock as fast as she could. Garibaldi was standing at the opening of a cave. Lucia ran to her.

"Oh, my pet, I have found you at last. Where is Beppi?" she cried. Garibaldi did not exactly reply, but she stepped a little to one side, and Lucia saw Beppino curled up on a bed of dry leaves sheltered and snug from the storm, and sleeping quite as contentedly as he did on the mattress in the attic at home.

Lucia ran to him and shook him. He opened his eyes, and a dazed look came into them, then he said:

"Oh, yes, I remember, it began to rain and we were lost, your old crosspatch Garibaldi and I, so I found this nice little place, and I was going to pretend that I was a gypsy brigand, but I fell asleep."

Lucia was far too happy to attempt the scolding that she knew Beppi deserved. She picked him up in her arms, and hugged and kissed him, then she encircled Garibaldi's neck and kissed her too.

"My darlings, I thought you were both lost. What a terrible fright you have given me! But we are safe now, and we will wait until sunrise to-morrow, and then we will go home," she said happily.

"I saw the soldiers go away," Beppi said, pushing her face from him as she tried to kiss him again, "and they looked so fine with their shiny hats. It was while I looked at them that old crosspatch ran away. I did have a chase, I can tell you, she had such a big start."

"Are you very hungry, little one?" Lucia asked gently. "I should have brought bread with me, but I did not think."

Beppi giggled, and from the pocket of his little tunic he produced the pink paper bag.

"Two left," he announced as he opened it, "and both long ones. Here's yours and here's mine. Garibaldi's been eating grass all day, so she's not hungry."

Lucia accepted the candy, and they both had a drink of milk. Then Beppi snuggled down in his sister's arms and his eyelids grew heavy.

"Go on with that story," he said, "the one about the soldier at the gate."

Lucia smiled in the dark and hugged him tight. The guns were silent, and only occasional peals of thunder broke the stillness.

"Well, one day," she began, "a very cross girl came to the gate, and the soldier who was always on the lookout for the stolen princess stopped her and spoke to her. But the cross girl was feeling very mean indeed, and she teased the soldier and made him very unhappy. But later on in the afternoon she was ashamed, and so she found the nice girl who was really the stolen princess, and took her with her to the gate, and the soldier-"

Lucia broke off and sat up suddenly to listen. A queer "rat, tat, tat," detached itself from the other night noises. Beppi was sound asleep, and she rolled him gently into the nest of leaves, then she listened again. The sound came again.

"Rat, tat, tat." It was a sharp staccato hammering, muffled by the wall of rock behind her.

She stood up and crept softly to the mouth of the cave.

The wind and the rain made such a noise that she could hear nothing, and it was already too dark to distinguish anything but the vaguest outlines. She crept back into the shelter, believing that she had just imagined what she had heard, but she had not taken her place beside Beppi before she heard it again-a persistent "rat, tat, tat," too metallic and too regular to be accounted for by a natural cause.

Lucia's mind was alert at once. She put her ear up against the rock and listened again. Muffled sounds too indistinct to recognize came to her. Whatever they were, they were not far off, and right in a line with the back of the cave.

Lucia thought of several explanations, but could accept none of them. She tried to argue against her fears by saying over and over again that if it was a sound made by men, those men were surely Italian soldiers, but her arguments could not still the frightened beating of her heart, as the voice became more distinct. She was filled with terror.

Rumors of underground tunnels and mines blowing off whole mountain tops, that she had heard from the soldiers, came back to her and left her cold with fear.

Beppi had rolled over beside the goat for warmth, and was sleeping soundly. Lucia looked at him and then went once more to the mouth of the cave.

The cold rain in her face gave her back her courage, and she felt her way around the cliff and up between the crevices of the two rocks, until she was on the roof of the cave. It was flat and the ground seemed to stretch out level for quite a distance before her. She listened for a moment, but the rain beating down made it impossible for her to distinguish any other sound.

She lay down flat on the wet ground, and crawled forward for a few feet, then listened again. At first she heard only the rain and the wind, but after a little wait there was a muffled bang as if a bomb had exploded deep down in the earth, and the ground beneath her trembled.

Lucia sprang to her feet and ran terrified back to the cave. It was fortunate that she was as sure-footed as her goats, for the way was steep and slippery, and she did not pause to take care.

Over in the cave, with her hand on Beppi's curly head, she sat down to think. Her mind was not capable of arriving at any logical explanation. Two thoughts stood out clearly and beyond doubt. First, the enemy was doing something of which the Italians were unaware, and second, the Italians must be warned before it was too late. That she must warn them she realized at once, but the way was not easy to determine.

The mountains were tricky. From one side they might look deserted, and yet a whole army could be in hiding just over the other side. The giant peaks formed formidable and wellnigh impassable barriers between one range and the next. Lucia had seen the troops disappear that morning, as if the great rocks had opened and devoured them, and she knew that at this moment they might be within a half a mile of her, but where to begin to find them she did not know.

The close proximity of the Austrians frightened her, and she was afraid to go off at random, or even to call. Throughout the night she tried to think and plan as she sat up with her back against the rock listening for the rat, tat, tat, which began again after she returned to the cave, and continued at regular intervals.

Before dawn the rain stopped and the wind blew the clouds away. At the first streak of light Lucia stole softly away from the sleeping Beppi and Garibaldi, and crept down the tiny path to the plateau below. Once there she was on familiar ground and even in the pale light she could tell her way.

During the night she had decided to go to the rock where she took her milk in the morning, surely the mysterious hand that left the pennies for her would be there, and she was determined, to wait for him.

She reached the spot without encountering any difficulties, and sat down to wait. The sun rose east of Cellino, and she watched it as it climbed over the hill and lighted the windows of the church with its yellow low rays.

All the world looked as if it had just been bathed and freshly clothed to step out glistening and very clean to greet the day. The air was chilly, but so fresh and sweet that Lucia took long grateful breaths of it. She was just wondering how long she would have to wait, when a stone rolled down beside her and hit her foot. She jumped and turned around. A soldier with a broad smile that showed all his fine white teeth was climbing down towards her.

Lucia put her fingers to her lip to caution silence, and his smile changed to a look of sudden anxiety.

"What is it?" he demanded.

"Don't make any noise," Lucia warned. "Listen to me."

She told him all that she had discovered during the night.

"Are you sure of what you say?" the soldier questioned her seriously.

"Oh, yes, sir, I tell you I crawled out and listened. The sound was very near."

"Can you show me the place?"

"Yes, yes, I have just come from there, but it is a slippery climb." Lucia looked at him interrogatively.

The man nodded. "Never mind that, lead the way."

Lucia did not hesitate, but hurried back along the rocks, choosing the safest footholds and sometimes leaving her companion far behind.

When she reached the little grassy plateau, she stopped and pointed. "It is above here, sir."

She started to ascend, and the soldier followed in silence. When they reached the cave she pointed to the back wall and said: "Listen there."

The soldier was so tall that he had to stoop down before he could enter, but he was very careful to be quiet and not disturb the still sleeping Beppi.

He put his ear to the wall and Lucia watched him excitedly. By the expression of his face she knew he was hearing the "rat, tat, tat."

"Can you show me the place where you thought you heard the explosion?" he whispered.

Lucia nodded and beckoned to him to follow. In her eagerness she forgot that he could not climb as nimbly as she could, and she was on the roof of the cave before he had started to ascend.

It was fortunate that she was, for not ten feet ahead of her, crawling along the ground, his helmet shining in the sun, was a soldier in the Austrian uniform.