the log, with a muttering Vargas holding on to it for balance, to the indescribable mirth of the three Indians, who were clutching their sides with laughter. There was nothing particularly mean about it, it seemed to Gideon; nothing contemptuous or cruel. They just plain found it absolutely hilarious. Vargas, still grumbling, climbed onto the opposite shore and shook himself like a dog.
Gideon’s turn. The Indians looked at him with the obvious anticipation of more good fun.
“If I had toes like yours, I could do it too,” he griped up at them in English, bringing more gales of merriment, so artless and happy that they even forced a smile from Gideon.
But a few minutes later, all five of them were wriggling and slapping at themselves like a whole crowd of Charlie Chaplins that had blundered into a hornet’s nest, and nobody was laughing. They had apparently disturbed a colony of fire ants, and with astonishing speed thousands of the ferocious, minuscule insects had charged out of their mound a few yards away. These were tiny creatures, half the size of the fire ants of the American South, and their sting, Gideon quickly
learned, was more itch than pain, but itch of a truly excruciating intensity. Back to the river they ran to plunge in and get rid of the things.
“Don’t worry,” a grimacing, panting Vargas told him as they vigorously scrubbed themselves. “The itch, it doesn’t last long if you don’t have too many bites.”
“No talk,” growled Split-nose, who had never let go of his gun, and whose cool good humor had been severely strained by the ants.
In what Gideon estimated was another hour’s tough trekking they reached a second, larger river and turned left along it. They were back in virgin jungle here, with a welcome green canopy overhead to shield them from the sun. There was even a recognizable path, with no brambles to tear at their bloodied legs (the Indians’ legs showed plenty of old scars, but not a single fresh wound), and the Arimaguas speeded up the pace. With the increase in humidity, Vargas’s glasses immediately steamed up so much that he had to take them off.
After a while they came to a squalid riverside settlement of tar-paper, tin-roofed shacks, ugly, concrete-block houses, and mud streets “paved” with planks here and there over the worst of the potholes. An occasional swaybacked, dejected horse stood tethered to a wooden post, its head hanging. The few surly, furtive, unshaven men they passed didn’t bother to look twice at them. Apparently, there was nothing unusual about the sight of two filthy, bloody white men being practically frog-marched down the street by a gang of gun-toting Arimaguas.
At the riverfront there was a small, primitive pier, and at the head of it was a wooden shanty, a jungle cantina, into which Vargas and Gideon were marched. Inside there was a plank counter, behind
which were a few crooked shelves holding bottles, cans, and glasses, an ancient refrigerator with a clanking old generator, and an even more ancient woman, milky-eyed and toothless, chewing on her gums, who watched them come with no sign of interest. The Arimaguas immediately went to her, asked for and got Inca Kolas, and retreated with them to a wall, at the base of which they squatted, their shotguns propped upright between their knees. Gideon and Vargas were left standing in the middle of the room.
There were three rectangular, battered, extremely dirty tables— stains, crumbs, empty, toppled beer bottles, used glasses—with five or six old cane chairs around each. The nearer tables were unoccupied. At the farthest one sat four decidedly rough-looking men, the sole occupants of the bar other than the old lady. All of them were smoking cigarettes. Two of the three had rifles leaning up against the table at their sides. Another had a revolver in a shoulder holster, and the fourth appeared to be unarmed. The table held three brown bottles of beer, a clear, half-empty bottle of what looked like
Three of the men raised their heads to look speculatively— amusedly?—at the newcomers. The fourth didn’t turn, remaining as he sat partially facing away from them—purposely facing away, it seemed—very relaxed in his tipped-back chair, one hand loosely hanging, a cigarette between his fingers, and the other hand apparently tapping his knee under the table, slowly, appraisingly, as if he were considering the pros and cons of some difficult issue.
The boss, Gideon knew instantly.
This was confirmed when, with a tip of his head, he sent the other three to another table, taking their guns and their beers with them. They sat down, also watching. The boss man simply continued his contemplative smoking and knee tapping. He had yet to look at the newcomers, let alone acknowledge their presence.
Thirty seconds of this—of standing there filthy and parched and edgy and uncertain, waiting for who knew what—was enough to snap Vargas’s fragile self-restraint.
He stepped forward.
“Shut up,” the man said offhandedly in Spanish, and now he turned fully toward them, ground out his cigarette on the tabletop, dropped the butt on the floor, and brought his hand up from under the table. In it was a lovingly polished stainless steel knife that he laid in front of him with care, aligning it so that it was at a right angle to the table’s edge. But this was no ordinary knife, this was a Rambo knife, a Crocodile Dundee knife, a foot long, with an olive-drab handle and a broad, heavy, faintly scimitar-shaped blade, saw-toothed on top, that curved upward to a vicious hooked point. Gideon had seen a knife like this before. He even knew what it was called: a Krug Assegai combat knife. It had been used in the most horrific homicide that it had ever been his misfortune on which to consult.
We’re going to be killed, he knew with sudden, cold certainty.
