before snapping her head forward and breaking his nose with her forehead. The man went flying backward, smashing into a table and chairs, where men scattered. Charlie stood her ground, tapped the bar counter with the bottle, gaining the attention of the barman, who, like everyone else, was watching the stricken man staggering to his feet, pushing away helping hands.
“Another beer,” she said, “to go.”
She would ask questions later. Right now she had what she needed.
Respect.
Max was ready. Flint would help him get to the cave through the back streams and rivers of the mountains where the shallow water could take no boat other than his own.
He now had a spear, food and water and a leather satchel made by one of the women. A curved panga-type knife for cutting through foliage, better than any machete, Flint had told him, sat firmly in a scabbard on his belt. But what Max really needed, Flint said, was a specialized weapon to take into the hostile environment. In particular, a frog. A small blue frog.
Orsino Flint tiptoed quietly, barely disturbing the ground beneath his feet. As fast as a striking snake, his arm whipped out and caught the small creature. He gestured for Max to join him and eased a slim wooden dart along the frog’s skin. He did this with another four darts. “You use these in the blowpipe; it’s a neurotoxin. It’ll kill an animal and put a man down in a couple of minutes. You won’t kill him, but it will disable him for a couple of hours. Be careful how you handle them.”
He gave them to Max, who put them into a thin wooden tube used for carrying the blowpipe darts. He knew about indigenous people’s poisons from the time he spent in Africa with a Bushman boy. He tucked the tube into his waistband; the meter-long blowpipe was already nestled across his back on a thin cord. Flint handed him four small bunches of herbs wrapped in cotton.
“This is jackass bitters,” Flint told him, opening one of the packets. “You sprinkle the powder on any sores you get. You already know how bad an infection can get. And this”-he opened another small square of cloth-“this is if you get a wound.”
Max had put his nose to the crushed leaves. It was a mixture of subdued smells. “What is it?” he asked.
“Red clover and marigold with basil and amaranth. It’s what we put into your shoulder, remember?”
Max nodded. Everything you needed to survive in the jungle was there if you knew where to look, but there were plenty of things ready to cause you harm if you did not.
“OK. Time to go,” Flint said.
It was a wild boat ride. The propeller chopped the air and whirred them along at breakneck speed. Xavier had had no choice other than to accompany Max-Flint did not want him in the village. The boy had yelped with excitement for the first couple of minutes as Flint bent them round blind corners and skimmed vast flatbeds of green weed. And then Flint had opened the throttle and shown them what real speed was on a narrow, curving river that grew narrower with every kilometer that flashed by. Xavier fell silent, gripped the handrail and at times closed his eyes.
Max’s attention stayed glued to the blurring river. He was spotting exactly where Flint was taking them. Figuring out in his head, in split-second bursts, where the boat could founder and his quest could suddenly end. But Flint knew every river and its tributaries. He was as much at home in the jungle as the jaguar.
The river turned into smaller side streams, then into what were little more than shallow creeks. The tree canopy created a tunnel of cool, gloomy shade. The engine slowed and then the huge fan whirred gradually to a stop. They had been traveling for almost five hours, and now, as their hearing returned, they could hear the birdcalls again.
Flint let the boat’s momentum carry it onto a mud bank. “There are no crocs here. It’s too far upriver. Watch out for snakes and spiders.” The boat stopped. Xavier’s legs were shaky from the ride, and Max helped steady him as he climbed out of the boat.
Flint tied the boat’s mooring line to a tree and pushed on through the jungle, finding natural breaks, and the boys followed. It was hard going on the steep, muddy bank, but Max reckoned this would probably turn out to be the easy bit.
After twenty minutes, drenched in sweat, lungs heaving from the exertion, Flint stopped and sank down onto his haunches. Xavier, who Max had had to pull up the last few meters, guzzled the water Flint offered him, spilling a lot of it down his chest. Max reached out and steadied his shaking hand. When they had all drunk and their breathing had settled, Flint crawled on another few meters and then pulled back a low branch.
Beyond this fringe of trees lay a wasteland, half a kilometer of cleared land, a deep red scar across the landscape.
“Armed men patrol this area. They have tree-cutting machinery; it chews the jungle, keeping it back, so they can see anyone who shouldn’t be here. No one is gonna get in there unless they are lucky, or unlucky.”
“Why? Just what is it that they don’t want people to see?”
Flint wiped the sweat from his face and shook his head. “I don’t know. But it ain’t worth dying for, that’s for sure.”
Max’s eyes scanned quickly across this devastated area to the soaring cliffs. Beyond the slashed land, dense forest blanketed the approach to the low foothills and stretched up to the higher peaks, which were almost bare of vegetation. The mountain range, two or three thousand meters high, swept beyond Max’s vision, but its curve told him that on the other side of those peaks was an amphitheater. A hidden place-forbidden, as Flint said.
“That’s it, isn’t it?”
Flint nodded. “You can’t see the volcano today. There are often clouds sitting up there. Lot of waterfalls make the rock wall impossible to climb.”
“You really gonna do this,
Flint unfolded a piece of cloth that had a rough plan, simple but clear, drawn on it. “There’s no way in or out except three or four places, and that’s where people die.” His finger touched the map and then pointed to sections of the jungle-clad mountains. “That’s where the hummingbird god destroys them.”
How much to believe of ancient customs and legends? Max wondered. Something was killing people, but a bird god? It didn’t matter; from what Flint had told him, he’d chosen to take an even worse risk. “Where’s the Cave of the Stone Serpent?”
Flint pointed. “South, beyond this open area, into the forest. In those trees are lots of small creeks. No more than a meter deep. The mud’ll suck you down, but the big snakes lie in there. You understand me? They’ll crush you to death and swallow you. You have to get through there fast. It’s no more than a kilometer until there’s a sheer ravine. You watch out-it falls right out of the jungle, sixty meters down into the river. It’s fast; you can’t get a boat down there, but you stay on the low bank and when you hear the waterfall, you know the cave is there. It’s an open jaw, Max. It breathes smoke. You can smell the dead.…” Flint’s voice trailed off. His gaze held the cloud-topped mountains for a moment longer before looking back, regretfully, at Max. “I can’t go in there with you, son. You know that.”
Max nodded. He had to concentrate to keep his fear at bay. If he thought about what might happen, what could happen, through wild imaginings, he would not be able to get to his feet and go on. “What are the prevailing winds here?”
“Wind?” Flint asked.
“Look,” Max said, tugging out one of the pictures of his mother. “That’s the volcano behind her in the distance. The smoke’s curling to the right. If the wind comes from the west or the north, then this tells me she was in the southern part of these mountains. She might have even gone through the cave.”
Flint nodded. “Of course. Yes. This time of year, the north. But inside those mountains it can veer around. So, who knows? We get storms off the sea as well. The cave is south of the volcano.” He shrugged. Nothing was predictable.
Max put the picture back. “OK. It’s a start. Let’s get going.”
“I need a cigarette,” Xavier said.
“No more smoking,” Max said. “If there are men in there, they’ll smell the tobacco on you. We can’t take the risk.”
“Hey, cousin, I don’ wanna take any risk here. I wanna go home. You know, I got family, too, yeah?”
