darted to it, then back to Leo. He returned to the path and scurried ahead to join his fellow guides, for the time dissuaded from spouting his superstitious nonsense.
'That's going to cost us,' Colton said. 'First chance they get, they're going to bolt.'
'Let them. They served their purpose and got us up the river. They don't know this area of the jungle any better than we do. Why should we hang on to guides who can't guide anymore?'
'That's not the point. If we end up confronting these natives, having darker-skinned men fluent in Quechua would be helpful. Even if the natives don't speak Quechua, the sound of the language ought to be much closer to theirs than English.'
'Sam speaks Quechua.'
'She's a white
'Would you rather I let talk of demons undermine the entire expedition?'
'No,' Colton said. 'You did what you had to do. I'm just sorry it had to be done in the first place.'
The conversation lagged for several minutes before Sam dropped back to join them. She wore an expression of extreme concentration.
'I've been thinking about the man in the jungle,' she said. 'I would guess he's a member of some offshoot of the Chachapoya tribe. The shape of his eyes was almost Caucasian, and he was significantly taller than most indigenous Peruvians. Those were the trademarks of the Chachapoya people. Some historical accounts even referred to them as 'white.' Or I could totally be off-base. Without being able to see his clothes or the structure of his facial bones---or anything for that matter---I can only speculate. But here's what I
'It could be in any number of directions,' Colton said. 'We could be heading in the complete opposite direction.'
'Which would make the village somewhere near the mouth of the river where we camped last night. That's always a possibility, but I'm not inclined to think so. Granted, very few people travel that river. I just don't see any indigenous tribe staying so close to civilization. To remain autonomous, they would need a less accessible region, and one not visible from the air. That means they're ensconced in either a heavily-forested section of the jungle, or like their ancestors, they've built their village on the steep face of a tree-covered mountain. I favor the latter.'
'Then it could be anywhere,' Leo said. 'Hell, with as thick as this jungle is, we could be walking past it right now for all we know.'
'True,' Sam said. 'All I'm saying is that we need to be prepared for the possibility that we might stumble right into it, or come close enough that we could invite aggression.'
'Or we could be walking away from it, and soon enough our company will grow weary of watching us do nothing and return to report back to their elders or whatever,' Colton said.
'You could be absolutely right. I still think we should have a plan in place should we encounter the village, though. They may not ordinarily be hostile, but a bunch of strangers---especially
'Who's to say they wouldn't welcome us with open arms?'
'Is that a chance you're willing to take?' Sam asked, looking first at Leo, then at Colton, emphasizing the question with her raised eyebrows.
'We're prepared for anything that comes our way,' Colton said.
'We'd better be,' Sam said. She glanced back over her shoulder into the dark jungle. 'Can't you feel it? Something's wrong. The rainforest is too still, too quiet. There's something out there. Something's going to happen and all of the animals know better than to be around when it does.'
IV
The sun had nearly set by the time they reached a suitable spot to pitch camp, although under the nearly impenetrable canopy, darkness had settled over them long before. Had there been enough light to continue stumbling through the snarls of shrubbery and vines, even at a snail's pace, they would have gladly done so. An uneasy pall had descended over the lot of them. They could all feel it. Merritt was out of his element here, but even he had quickly recognized it, and once he had, the feeling became impossible to shake. The entire tropical rainforest had grown silent. No longer did strikingly-colored birds dart from tree to tree. No monkeys cavorted in the upper reaches of the branches. Even the occasional white-tailed deer failed to bound across their path. Eyelash vipers still dangled like vines from above them, and tegus and whiptails still popped up from time to time, though in nowhere near the same numbers. Only the mosquitoes and flies appeared unfazed, their ranks swelling with each passing mile.
Merritt was not one to be swayed by superstition, despite the genuine fear he could see in the eyes of their guides, but he trusted his instincts. And right now they were telling him that something definitely was not right.
They had found another light gap, though this one was only a fraction of the size of the last. The tree that created it must have fallen quite some time ago. The saplings were already taller than he was. Soon enough, they would close off the welcome view of the waxing moon and constellations. There was a small section where the trees had been hacked away to make room for a campfire. The trunk of a ceiba tree had been carved with Hunter's initials and the date that Leo had last spoken to him, which meant that they were only a few days away from their ultimate destination.
Merritt wondered if Gearhardt's son had felt a similar preternatural disquiet when he camped here.
Gearhardt and Colton sat apart from the others, conspiring in whispers. They scrutinized their maps, compared their current position to the GPS data on the handheld unit, and plotted the course ahead. Their four associates patrolled the overgrown perimeter, no longer maintaining the charade of being simply the hired excavation help. They didn't carry their weapons out in the open, but neither did they allow their hands to stray far from their holsters. He had seen one of the automatic pistols they carried. They weren't the kind one could pick up at a sporting goods store. SIG Sauer only dealt such heavy artillery to law enforcement agencies and the military. Considering he was armed with nothing more threatening than a Swiss Army knife, he drew a measure of comfort from the fact that someone had his back, even if he didn't trust them in the slightest. There was definitely more to the situation than any of them was willing to admit. Merritt sensed there were ulterior motives in play here. He had a pretty good grasp on the force driving Leo, but what was in it for Colton and his men beyond a simple paycheck? There had to be something else up there in those peaks, more than just the missing members of Hunter's party. What had that expedition originally been dispatched to find?
The wind shifted directions and assaulted him with smoke from the fire. He coughed and scooted down the fallen log toward the fresh air. Twenty-four hours ago, he would have reveled in the smoke, regardless of how badly it burned in his chest, but now that he had smeared Sam's concoction over every uncovered inch of his skin, he no longer had anything to fear from the mosquitoes. He smelled like he'd rolled in his grandmother's herb garden and the tackiness on his flesh took some getting used to, yet it was a small price to pay for a respite from the pain.
The birdman sat beside him, twirling a feather by the quill. All of his concentration was focused on the feather and his lips moved along with his unvoiced thoughts. His brow furrowed and he gnawed unconsciously on the inside of his lower lip. The campfire reflected from his glasses.
'Aren't you going to name the species for me?' Merritt asked.
Galen obviously didn't pick up on the sarcasm.
'I wish I could,' he whispered, still turning it over and over as though the answer could be ascertained from motion.
'I was beginning to think you knew everything there was to know about every bird in the rainforest.'
'No chance of that. I could probably identify just about every genera, and half of the thousands of species. Except this one. And raptors are my specialty.'
