Anatoly Rybakov - THE BRONZE BIRD

"Will you go?" Misha asked quietly.

Longshanks shook his head.

"All right. Stay here and wait for us. You're not afraid?"

Longshanks nodded.

"Which way must we go?"

Longshanks pointed to the right and whispered:

"Keep to the edge of the woods. When you get to the four oaks, turn to the left. You'll find a cutting and it will take you right up to the swamp. That is where the brushwood road begins. I'll wait for you here." He sat down by the trunk of a birch and leaned back against it.!

Misha and Genka moved on, carefully keeping close to the trees so that they could not be seen. The moon was shining from the direction of the clearing and the boys' shadows merged with the shadows of the trees.

Suddenly, Genka seized Misha by the arm.

"Quiet! Can you hear?"

Flattening themselves against a tree, the boys looked round. Misha too thought he heard someone creeping up towards them. They listened. There was no further sound.

But the moment the boys started off they again heard something moving behind them. They stopped. A branch crackled softly underfoot. It seemed to Misha and Genka that the woods were teeming with mysterious beings, who were furtively closing in on them. They felt lonely, surrounded by enemies. Genka pressed closer to Misha. Misha heard the thumping of Genka's heart. He was a deal frightened himself and had it not been for Genka, before whom he could not betray cowardice, he would have taken to his heels.

So they stood, barely breathing, and listening hard. They thought they heard weird sounds, rustling, cautious footsteps, the crackling of boughs, the whispering of people, and it seemed to them that they saw shadows moving across the fields, on the fringe of the woods, between the trees.

"Let's go back," Genka said, forcing the words through his teeth.

"Scared?" Misha whispered back.

Genka nodded.

"Yes."

With gladness in his heart, but with a look which showed he was yielding only because Genka was afraid, Misha shrugged his shoulders and noiselessly began to make his way back.

But hardly had he made a step than he saw the outline of a man standing behind a tree. He froze in his tracks. The figure emerged from the shadow of a tree. It was Longshanks. So that was who had been creeping after them! What a nut! He had made their hair stand on end for nothing.

"It was frightening to sit there all alone," Longshanks said in a low voice.

"But why the hell..." Genka began irately, but in actual fact he was tingling with joy to have someone to blame his fright on.

Misha silenced him with a sign. He too was mad at Longshanks, but this was neither the time nor the place to speak about it: they might be heard.

The boys now felt more confident. Now that Longshanks was with them both Misha and Genka felt they could not afford to show the least sign of fear. Misha again led the way to the Goligin Brushwood Road. Genka and Longshanks kept close behind him.

As before, they moved in silence, keeping in the shadow of the trees. They reached the cutting and if Longshanks had not been with them, Misha would never have guessed that it was a path, so thickly Was it overgrown with young firs.

With a gesture, Misha ordered Longshanks to go forward and show the way. The latter glanced plaintively at him, but obeyed, and although he felt Misha's breath behind him, he kept glancing back as if to make sure that Misha was there.

When they had covered another kilometre, the woods gave way to a sparse thicket of low trees. The smell of decay coming from the swamp grew stronger. The ground grew miry and yielded underfoot.

Longshanks suddenly stopped and looked closely at the ground. Misha and Genka also bent forward. There was a deep hole about a metre wide and two metres long with a mound of fresh earth around it.

The boys peered into the gloom. Some distance away they saw another hole, then a third.

Longshanks lifted his hands to show that the holes were not here before.

A short walk brought the boys to the end of the cutting.

Longshanks halted and pointed with a quaking hand.

"The brushwood road."

The moon was illumining a dark, undulating swamp. What looked like logs or cut-down trees were sticking out here and there. A milky mist hung over the swamp, forming uncanny moving figures. Now and then the boys caught sight of moving lights-green, blue, yellow. Although Misha knew that they were only swamp lights and the milk-white figures resembling shrouded corpses was just the evaporation rising from the swamp, he shuddered with alarm. Genka and Longshanks shivered so violently that they could hardly keep on their feet.

The boys stood in dead silence, petrified by the terrifying picture of the swamp at night. They felt that one of these white, shifting phantoms would draw near to them at any moment and they would see the dead count with his ghastly bearded head in his hands.

Suddenly, from only a short distance away, a hollow thumping came at regular intervals. It was as though somebody were hammering under the ground. A new spasm of fear shot through Longshanks and he dropped to the ground, hiding his head between his knees.

Misha and Genka also sat down. It was not terror, as they later recounted, that made them sit down, but a fear that the people making these sounds might see them. They were positive that they were human beings, for neither Misha nor Genka believed in ghosts.

The thumping started again. Misha listened. After he got over his first fright he quickly realized that the thumping was not coming from under the ground or from the swamp, but from somewhere to the right, from the woods just a little away from them.

Pressing a finger to his lips, he signed to his friends not to move and then, bending close to the ground, crept in the direction of the strange sounds. But Genka crawled after him and Longshanks followed. Nothing could now make Longshanks remain behind.

The boys covered some two hundred paces. The thumping grew louder. It was now quite clear to them that somebody was digging nearby. A moonbeam shone between the trees. Carefully, Misha parted the branches.

Before them the boys saw a tiny glade in the middle of which was a hole. There were two mounds of earth along its edges. Near the hole sat two men. They were smoking.

Misha and his friends were only a few paces away. It was amazing that the men had not heard them approaching.

They smoked in silence. Although it was hard to recognize people in moonlight, Misha instantly saw that they were the pair to whom the boatman had turned over the sacks. What were they digging for in the woods? Possibly, the holes Longshanks had stumbled across had also been made by them.

Then one of the men spat on his stub, threw it away, stood up, took his spade and resumed digging. The other man did the same. Neither said a word.

Once again the stillness was broken by the thumping of the spades.

Misha made a warning sign to Genka and Longshanks and noiselessly began to crawl back. Genka and Longshanks inched along after him.

In a few minutes, three small, nimble shadows were darting along the edge of a path leading back to the camp.

The youngsters exulted at the success of their expedition. The two strangers were in the woods. The suspicion that there was a gang in the woods had proved to be right, otherwise why were the strangers hiding. The boatman was, undoubtedly, their leader. And, of course, they were the people who had murdered Kuzmin.

True, they were digging for something all over the woods. Perhaps it was treasure that they were looking for, after all, but the investigator, the doctor and the artist had scoffed at the very idea that there was any buried treasure. That made it all the more probable that they were the murderers of Kuzmin. All that now remained was to prove it.