it, she should have been right there. “I can hear ya, Becky, but I don’t see ya.”

“Down here, you ninny!”

The big bear parted the grass, took a step, and almost slid into a large pit dug into the sand. A dirty, disheveled Rebecca was standing at the bottom, about ten feet down. Snapping sand crabs, their claws clickitty-clacking like castanets, were rapidly scuttling out to meet her.

“Help,” she whimpered.

“Hang on, Beckers. Ol’ Baloo’ll get you outta this in a jiffy.” Baloo immediately flopped down on his stomach and reached for her outstretched hand, but she was too far down.

“Hurry, Baloo!” Rebecca shouted, kicking at sand crabs that were nipping at her toes. “Leave me alone, you crustaceans! Where's a big pot of boiling water when I need it?"

The pilot scrambled to his feet and looked around frantically. Nothing in sight was long enough to reach his boss. Getting a sudden idea, he sped away, bellowing, “Don’t go away. I’ll be right back!”

A few moments later, Baloo returned with an oar. He lowered it into the pit.

“‘Don’t go away?’” Rebecca said waspishly as she grabbed onto the blade end of the oar. She began to climb hand over hand. “How could I have gone anywhere, buster?”

“Hey, lady,” Baloo panted; he had a stitch in his side from sprinting all that way. “Don’t get all crabby on me.”

“Insults now? Let me tell you something, Baloo...” At that moment, Rebecca’s attention was arrested by a glimpse of white out of the corner of her eye. The largest ostrich feather she had ever seen was wedged in a crevice in the side of the pit, tantalizingly close yet so far away. Because she couldn’t reach it, she began to swing on the oar to get closer.

“Rebecca!” Baloo gasped. The pendulum motion of the oar was dragging him into the pit. The sandy ledge that he was lying on started to disintegrate from beneath him. “What’re ya doin’?”

“Ihave to get that feather!”

“You would.” Baloo gritted his teeth, dug his knees into the sand, and tightened his hold on the oar as it swung to and fro, fro and to in ever widening arcs.

Just at that moment, a sand crab skittered out of the pit. It stopped a few inches from Baloo’s face. Its curious, beady eyes studied the bear. Baloo stared back at it, murmuring, “Shoo! Scat, crab!”

Then it swiftly reached out and snapped onto the pilot’s nose with its sharp, vice-like claw, prompting a pained, “Yeowch!” from the big bear. Keeping hold of the oar, Baloo shook his head furiously, but that crab would not let go. With a fierce yank, Baloo pulled the oar and Rebecca out of the pit.

Triumphantly, Rebecca held up the feather. “That’s one!”

In a nasal voice, Baloo exclaimed, “Are you bananas, lady? You coulda got us both killed, and all because of a stupid feather!” He plucked the sand crab from his throbbing nose and tossed it back into the pit.

“But I didn’t.” Rebecca tucked the feather in her waistband before looking down into the deep hole. “What was that, anyway?”

“A nomad welcome mat. They want ta thank ya for droppin’ in by givin’ ya a bite while ya wait - literally. Oh, my achin’ nose.” That offending organ had swollen to twice its original size.

“This is no time to nurse your wounds. We’re almost there.” She started off again at a brisk pace, heading towards the tents.

Baloo, ruefully rubbing his sore nose, trudged behind, scowling.

As they walked, Rebecca talked about what she wanted to do with the money. “If we get enough feathers, I could buy another plane, hire another pilot. Just think of all the money we could make with two...”

Suddenly, Baloo clamped a paw over her mouth, dropped to his knees, and pulled her behind a clump of tall grass. He answered the silent question in her eyes with a whispered, “Nomads!”

Baloo removed his hand from her mouth. He carefully parted the rustling grass, praying that they hadn’t been seen by the nomads; otherwise, they were solid goners.

About one hundred feet upstream, several women were washing laundry in the river. They jabbered and chattered to each other in Watoosian, a language unintelligible to the two Uslandian bears. Nearby, half a dozen children splashed in the river, shouting and laughing in their play.

None of them gave any indication that they had seen Baloo and Rebecca.

The nomads were of goat descent with light grey, short-cropped fur. The women and girls wore multicolored wraparound sarongs with bright turbans encircling their heads. The boys were clad in loose cotton trousers and capes; the nubs of their small horns poked out from their turbans.

Just opposite them, about two hundred feet from the river, were the sun-bleached tents of the nomad encampment. There was something else on the opposite bank that made Rebecca want to jump for joy.

A large herd of ostriches was gathered by the water’s edge - male ostriches with their distinctive black and white feathers as well as their brown female counterparts. Many of the large flightless birds strutted around on their long strong legs, eating insects, grass, and saltbush leaves. Others lay on the ground, long necks tucked close to their body, legs folded underneath them, napping. Every now and again, one would dip its long neck into the river for a drink. The air was pierced with their peculiar, almost owlish call - a low ‘whoo-whoo-whoo.’ Their fluffy feathers lay thick on the ground, white as fresh-fallen Thembrian snow.

“There’s the ostriches!” Rebecca whispered excitedly. Visions of dollar signs danced in her head.

“An’there’s the nomads,” Baloo reminded her, pointing to the camp.

At that moment, two nomad men - one armed with a spear, the other with a bow - stepped to the river’s edge. From the way that they scanned the horizon, it was obvious that they were on guard duty.

“How do we get across the river without them seeing us?” Rebecca mused.

“Uh, we don’t?” Baloo cringed when one of the guards looked right at their clump of grass.

Rebecca snapped her fingers, whispering, “I know!” She reached into Baloo’s shirt pocket and pulled out a granola bar. She unwrapped it.

“Hey, I was savin’ that for later.”

“Once I get those feathers, I’ll buy you a hundred granola bars.” Crawling on her hands and knees to the edge of the river, concealed from the nomads by the tall grass, she whistled softly to the ostriches and waved the granola bar. “Come here, little ostriches. Pretty ostriches with pretty feathers. I’ve got something yummy for you,” she cooed softly.

One ostrich, who was getting a drink, figuratively perked up its ears. It tilted its head and blinked its long-lashed eyelids a few times as it studied the strangers. After a long moment, it cautiously waded across the river.

Laying as still as a mouse on her stomach, Rebecca silently held out the granola bar. The ostrich, who towered over the bears, bent its long neck. But, instead of going for the granola bar, it pecked at the shiny silver wrapper that lay on the ground beside her.

“Great, ya got one,” Baloo whispered. “Now what?”

“Now we hide behind the ostrich, keeping it between us and the nomads, and cross the river.” Rebecca tossed the granola bar aside, inciting an annoyed look from Baloo; he could have eaten that. She picked up the shiny wrapper and waved it in front of the ostrich’s face. “Let’s go visit your friends and their pretty feathers, Mr. Ostrich.”

Intrigued by the shininess of the wrapper, the ostrich immediately followed where the wrapper led.

“Aw, this is a dumb...ouch! Easy on the lobe, lady!” Baloo, bent over double, was yanked by his ear beside the ostrich. However, he wasn’t entirely concealed; his ample rear end stuck out.

They had to trot to keep up with bird’s long strides as they waded across the river. The river was fairly shallow; the water only came up to Rebecca's waist.

On the opposite shore, Rebecca flashed Baloo a triumphant grin. “See. My ideas always work.” She greedily eyed the cornucopia of large white plumes and immediately dropped to her knees, mindless of the multitudes of ostriches that flocked around her, curious to see what she was doing.

Crawling on her hands and knees, Rebecca scooped up every feather that she could lay her grubby hands on. When she had gathered an armful, she shoved them into Baloo’s hands. “Here! Hold these,” she whispered, smiling broadly. A little gleeful giggle escaped her lips.

Baloo concealed himself as best as he could behind a saltbush. Through the thin scrub grass off to his right, he could plainly see the nomad camp. Children ran around the tents, playfully shooting little blunt arrows at each other. A woman with a baby slung on her back tended to a pig roasting on a spit; the aroma of it made Baloo’s stomach growl. But the thought of food was driven from his mind when he spied three men sharpening their arrow heads.

The big bear began to sweat profusely, and not just because of the broiling heat. He didn’t like the look of those weapons that were slung across the male nomads’ backs, and he didn’t want to be stretched out like a pig on a spit. Instinctively feeling that there were several someones or somethings watching them, he whispered, “Becky, I don’t like this ticklish situation.”

She crawled over to him, piled more feathers in his arms, murmuring, “Just a few more,” then quickly returned to her task.

An ostrich nipped at Baloo’s ear. “Hey, I’m not your dinner, long legs! Let’s get outta this place, Rebecca.”

“Just a few more,” she reiterated firmly, pushing an ostrich’s foot aside so that she could get to a feather.

“Rebecca...” Baloo whined.

“Oh, quit your grousing, Baloo.”

Baloo sat there, buried under a pile of feathers; he could barely hang onto all of the soft, downy plumes. Then, something horrible happened. The feathers tickling his nose

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