Frank squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh, God, they found him. Oh, please, no.”
“Not necessarily. They—” Arden’s voice died in his throat at the unmistakable
Frank turned stricken eyes toward the sound and actually began to stumble blindly in that direction.
Arden grabbed him by the collar. “What the hell are you doing? There’s nothing we can do for him now. Come on, snap out of it. We have to keep going.”
Frank let himself be turned around by Arden and goaded into moving forward again, but he was like a man in a trance now, going wherever Arden pushed or pulled him. They had thrown off their
heavy backpacks—the precious bag of seeds now hung from Arden’s belt—and they were crossing a less thickly overgrown area where the going was easier and quieter, and they were less likely to be overheard.
But the same was true for the Chayacuro.
Like his brother before him, he plucked it out and threw it away. As with his brother, it made little difference. Half paralyzed already, perhaps with grief or despair, he stumbled after Arden into a heavier, more concealing thicket, but made it only fifty yards before collapsing in a heap across Arden’s legs, sending them both sprawling. Arden got quickly to his feet, but Frank lay where he was. One trembling hand reached up to Arden.
Arden recoiled from it as if it were a snake. The skin on the back of his neck tightened instinctively against the prick that must surely come at any moment. “Frank—”
Instead of a dart, a slender, naked Indian burst out of the brush only five yards from them and froze, staring shocked and open-mouthed at them. He carried an immensely long blowgun, longer than he was, but he was only a youth, thin and unmuscled, Arden saw, no more than twelve or thirteen.
“Hahhhh!” He shook the blowgun at them.
Arden, in a sort of dull shock of his own, raised the Beretta and shot him in the chest, then shot him again as he crumpled with a sigh.
Whether Frank was even aware of what had happened was unclear. His gaze was loose and unfocused. “Arden, don’t leave me here,” he said thickly. “I can make it. Just help . . . just ...uhh ...”
Arden turned and fled, but quickly came to a stop. Hesitating for only a moment, he ran back to where Frank and the boy lay. The
boy’s eyes were open, staring at the sky. A pool of blood was spreading out from under his shoulders, but the two black holes in his chest were almost bloodless.
“Arden...,” Frank said, his eyes shining. “Thank ...thank you. God bless you...I knew ...I knew you wouldn’t . . .”
Arden tried not to look at him. He snatched up the bag of seeds that had come untied from his belt when the two of them had fallen and dashed back into the jungle, toward the river.
