Taylor Five Read Online Free PDF Page B

Suritobo, tipping the brim of his hat with the barrel of the pistol, like the Man With No Name. He reloaded and spun around.
    Wham! Wham, wham, wham, wham, wham!
    Uncle put his hands over his ears. Two cans went down, another wobbled but stayed upright. . . . “Hmm. I need to practice.”
    “Where did you get it from? Why are you doing this?”
    “Because I’m Indonesian. A crazy Indonesian rain forest cowpuncher, pardners.”
    Tay wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly chilled.
    “You mean because you’re a foreigner?” said Donny. “Do you think the rebels will come and kill you? Oh, wow. Do you think they’ll kill us too?”
    Clint blew away cordite smoke and shook his head.
    “I think nothing will happen. Don’t tell your mother about my target practice.”
    “I’m sure she knows,” said Tay. “She’ll have heard the shots.”
    Clint just laughed. “Do you know why Uncle wouldn’t let them return him to the forest?” he asked them. “It’s because he knows it’s over. In a few years there will be no orangutans left except in zoos. You know it, don’t you, Uncle? But we’ll fight to the last.”
    “Don’t say that!” cried Tay. “There’s hundreds and thousands of miles of forest still. The apes can have a share. Why can’t human people ever
share
?”
    Clint started to reload his big old-fashioned handgun; and suddenly the rain came down, with a hiss and a roar. The children were drenched in seconds, gouts of white, shining water streaming from their T-shirts and shorts. Uncle, his fur equally streaming, ambled over to replace the cans and then stood there with his arms around his head, peering out at the children from between his elbow and his forearm.
    Ordinarily Donny and Tay would have enjoyed the rain. But suddenly there was no fun in getting drenched. They went indoors to change their clothes, leaving the ape and Dr. Suritobo to their ominous game.

a week went by and nothing happened, except that once more they didn’t get their mail drop. Only army planes and helicopters were allowed to fly over the forest. The refuge staff prepared for the worst—contacting other refuges, and even zoos, and generally working out how they would cope if they had to evacuate the apes in a hurry. But they meant to hold on. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” said Dad. “If we leave because of a temporary crisis, we might lose the reserve forever.”
    Nothing more was said about sending Tay and Donny to Singapore. On Friday, a week and a half after Mum’s birthday, Tay asked if they could go out by themselves for a whole day’s adventure. Mum agreed, on the usual conditions. Take a survival kit and a radiophone. Leave an itinerary posted on the common-room notice board. That means you say who you are, where you’re going and when you expect to be back, and you
don’t
change your minds and go somewhere else once you’re out in the forest. Phone in if you are going to be late, and don’t be out after dark for anything less than a real emergency.
    “Obey these sacred instructions,” said Mum, as she always did, “and all will be well. If you break any of the rules, and I find out,
you are grounded for life
.”
    “Yes, ma’am!” said Tay, saluting smartly. The clone business was buried, they just weren’t going to talk about it for a while. It was bad about the rebels but great to be back to normal: to be Mum and Tay again.
    On Saturday Tay woke Donny early, to the gibbons’ dawn chorus. It was the children’s job to help Minah the cook on Saturdays (which they didn’t mind, it was a good way to influence the Saturday-night menu). Before seven she and Donny had eaten their breakfast and were busy cleaning pans, fetching rice and beans from the storage loft in the kitchen roof and scraping fresh coconut for the creamy, sticky pudding called Gula Malacca, their favorite dessert. By eight-thirty they were free.
    Mum wasn’t around. She was in the ape clinic checking on an orphan