Valley of the Mountain Goddess - Table of Contents 

In his excitement Rajan had not felt the wound he had sustained on his left arm. To his relief, Sabu saw that his arm was not broken. One of the bullets had grazed the flesh causing a wound as wide as a little finger. Sabu pressed some leaves of a creeper into a paste and applied it on the wound. Next, he tore a piece from Priya’s frock and bandaged the wound. 
 Rajan had already lost much blood and he was feeling dizzy. Sabu asked him to lie down for a while.
 Now Sabu turned his attention to Priya, who was lying still as if dead.
 Opening the flask, he sprinkled some vegetable fluid on her face.
 Priya opened her big blue eyes and stared blankly at him. For a while, she seemed to remember nothing. Suddenly she sat up, her face contorted with fear.
 “Where’s he?” she asked in a whisper.
 “Don’t fear, my friend,” said Sabu. “We’ve finished him off.” 
 Priya timidly looked where her friend pointed. She could not believe what she saw. 
 She stood up.  She was all right, though her legs were shaking.
 “Let’s move on,” said Sabu.
 He helped Rajan to his feet. Taking the kitbag himself, he helped both his friends to scramble down the rock. The children wanted to get to the vallom as soon as possible and get away from the kidnapper. Although he was lying as good as dead, Priya dreaded his presence.
 At the back of his mind, Sabu had two conflicting fears. One was whether the man was dead. The second was whether he would revive very soon and threaten them again.
 He approached the fallen man and, bending over him, examined him carefully.  He was unconscious but was groaning and writhing in agony.
 Weighing his great responsibility of taking his friends home against the pathetic condition of the kidnapper, he decided to leave the criminal to his fate. 
 Pushing the vallom to the lake was a tremendous task. Priya pushed it from one end and Sabu pulled from the other. Rajan was too weak to offer any help in this matter.
 Once in the vallom, they moved north always trying to keep close to the shore. A little way ahead they found their raft and recovered the bed sheets from it. Rajan lay in the vallom and immediately went to sleep.
 The sun had become very hot and it was impossible to continue in the blazing sun. Sabu decided to land and wait for cooler hours.
 Securing the vallom to a bush, he helped Priya to land. Sabu and Priya walked up the hill, supporting Rajan between them. They spread the sheets over a flat rock under a tree for Rajan to sleep on. 
In the afternoon, they sailed for an hour more. Sabu was very careful to keep close to the shore. As soon as clouds began to race across the sky, he landed and led his friends to the woods where he chose a suitable place to camp.
 He was hungry. He knew Priya was hungry too.
 “I’ll be back in a minute,” said Sabu.
 “Where are you going?” said Priya alarmed.
 “I know you are hungry. Let me see if I can find something to eat.”
 “Don’t go Sabu, please!”
 “Don’t fear, my friend. I’ll be back in a minute.”
 “Don’t be long!”
Even though he wandered for a long time, he could not find anything fit to eat.
 Seeing a movement some distance away, he climbed up a small tree to have a better view. 
 He saw a man examining his face in the rear view mirror of a red jeep. When he hoisted himself up to the wheel - he seemed to do it with great difficulty - Sabu startled to recognise him. He was none other than the criminal they had stoned down a few hours back.
 It seemed that the path ran parallel to the lake and the jeep was going in the direction where Priya and Rajan were resting.
 Sabu covered the few hundred feet between him and his friends, running hard.
 Under the tree Priya was sitting, her eyes red and tears flowing down her cheeks.
 “What’s the matter, Priya?” asked Sabu anxiously.
 “As soon as you left, I dozed off,” she said. “I woke up hearing a vehicle passing.  When I cried for help, the jeep had just passed us.”
 Sabu roared with laughter.  Priya looked offended.
 She said, “What’s there to laugh even if I wanted to beg the help of a stranger in a jeep?”
 “Who do you think was driving that red jeep, madam?” asked Sabu.
 “Maybe it was a hunter, maybe it was a forest officer,” she said indignantly.
 “My dear friend, it was none other than our kidnapper, the villain with a rifle,” Sabu explained.
Priya shook with fear.
“Isn’t he dead?” she asked.
 “I’m happy he isn’t. But I wonder whether he would ever manage the jeep to the plains,” Sabu said.
 “We have sailed for more than five hours and covered twenty kilometres or more.  How did he reach this place if his condition is as bad as you tell me?” asked Priya.
“There’s a mountain jutting out into the lake. First we sailed in one direction and then in the opposite direction alongside its two sides. He had to travel only two kilometres to reach this spot and we had to cover more than twenty,” explained Sabu.
 A brisk wind blew away the clouds and it didn’t rain. Sabu made a fire and the three children went to sleep.
Early next morning, Sabu caught some small fish from the lake and a dozen of fat frogs from a nearby marsh. Thus breakfast was sumptuous with fish and frogs roasted over fire. Rajan ate little. His wound ached and his arm was swollen. Soon after breakfast, Sabu took his friends to the vallom again.
 Sabu paddled vigorously and Rajan lay on a bed of bamboo leaves and a sheet spread on it. Priya dreamed of home and thought of her brave friends. 
 Priya, who scanned the shores occasionally through the binoculars, suddenly cried out, “Look Sabu, I see some buildings out there!”
 Sabu picked up the binoculars the kidnapper had left in the vallom. On a distant hill, he could see a cluster of buildings. On the hilltop he saw Rajan’s house. There was a jeep on the yard.
 Rajan sat up forgetting his pain, and saw his dear sweet home a few miles away. He started singing a song of the tribesmen and his friends sang in chorus.