'What makes this one so unique then?' Merrit asked. Not that he was genuinely intrigued, but he figured the opportunity to razz the birdman might momentarily amuse him.
'Everything about it. The background color, the strange iridescence. Even the calamus has an unusual tapered shape. There are no downy barbs, and one would expect to see a small amount of skin surrounding the proximal umbilicus where the feather plugs into the wing, but in this case, there isn't any.'
'All feathers look alike to me. Some are obviously longer and more colorful than others. I don't understand why you're beating yourself up over this. It's just a feather after all.'
'Just a feather? I found this near the remains of the jaguar. It's from the exact same species as the feathers that were in Hunter Gearhardt's possession when he died. This bird had been standing precisely where I stood, and I'm still no closer to identifying it than I was when we left.'
'I'm sure you'll get it,' Merritt said. He rose and clapped the man on the shoulder. The pudgy little guy was getting himself way too worked up. It was starting to make Merritt uncomfortable.
He walked away from the fire and toward his tent. The exhaustion set in with a dull ache that he could feel all the way into his bones. Perhaps it was time to call it a day. He'd just slip off behind a tree, drain his bladder, and pass out for a few hours until they roused him before sunrise to put him to work again.
On the other side of a tree with roots that formed a skeletal teepee around the trunk, he unzipped and sighed. Fluid trickled through the leaves. He leaned his head back and looked up toward the night sky. A single star twinkled through a tiny gap between the rustling branches. Something skittered over his right shoe. He flinched and hosed down his left shin in his hurry to flick it away.
'Son of a---' he started, but his words died when he caught a hint of movement through the trees.
He could clearly see the silhouette of a man against the foliage.
Merritt held perfectly still while he weighed his options. If the man had wanted to kill him, he'd be dead already. So what did that mean? He slowly zipped up his pants and continued to face straight ahead while he monitored the shadow from the corner of his eye. Was it the same native Jay had captured on film earlier? If so, and they had nothing to fear from this silent watcher, then perhaps the time had come to make contact.
Cautiously, he turned until he faced the man, raised his hand in greeting, and took a step toward the silhouette.
The man retreated deeper into the darkness. Merritt caught the faint reflection of firelight from the whites of two narrowed eyes.
'I'm not going to hurt you,' Merritt said. He walked forward, both hands where they could be easily seen.
Another step and he was nearly close enough to reach out and grab the man, who shrunk back into a cluster of shrubs. The outline of a bow protruded from behind the man's right shoulder like the broken wing of an angel. He could barely discern the feathered ends of the arrows in the quiver over the opposite shoulder.
In one swift motion, the native sprinted toward the jungle to Merritt's right.
Instinctively, Merritt lunged for the man, but only managed to grab a handful of wool from his skirt.
A rustle of leaves and a few soft footsteps on the detritus, and the native was gone, a ghost vanishing into the ether.
No, definitely not a ghost.
Merritt brushed the wiry wool from his right palm and walked toward the clump of saplings through which the man had disappeared. His left foot kicked something on the ground. With one final glance at the jungle, he stooped, picked up the object, and headed back toward the campfire.
As he neared, he studied what appeared to be a leather satchel cinched closed by a drawstring. He opened it and fished around in the contents until his fingers settled over something hard and metallic.
He stepped from the forest into the firelight and held up what looked like a miniature pickaxe. One end was sharp, the other blunted.
A rock hammer.
He caught Leo's stare from where the older man sat on a log by the flames in time to see the expression of pain wash over his face.
V
Colton turned the satchel over and over in his lap. It was the dried stomach of some large animal, easily identifiable by the telltale horn shape and the coarse rugae lining the inside. He couldn't bear to look at Leo, who stared helplessly between the small hammer and the shadowed wilderness, where the hired crew tromped through the underbrush in search of tracks they would never find. Dahlia and Jay followed them in hopes of capturing the native on film, which saved him the trouble of having to run them off for attempting to memorialize Leo's suffering. There were probably consolatory words that should be said, but he didn't know any of them. Instead, he scrutinized the remaining contents of the native's bag. There were several arrowheads, dried lengths of jerked meat, and two irregular clumps of what he had at first erroneously believed to be clods of mud. He broke one open and inspected it more closely. At the center of the sphere was a small chunk of something metallic. It was an amalgam of some sort, part reddish and flaking, the remainder a smoky gray. The outer portion that had been packed around the odd core was composed of clay that had been mixed with metal shavings. He brought it closer to the fire. The flecks glinted of silver and copper.
'Well, what do you know?' he said out loud.
'What is it?' Galen asked from behind him. Colton didn't realize he had drawn an audience.
'See this outer layer? Those metal shavings are copper and magnesium.' He pinched off some of the clay and carefully set it on one of the branches in the fire. After a moment, a fierce greenish-white glare enveloped the clay like a birthing star. It faded quickly to nothing again. 'And this chunk of metal in the center? The red portion is iron oxide, more commonly known as rust. The grayish part is aluminum. Together they form an incendiary compound called thermite.' He crumbled off a section and threw it into the flames.
'Nothing happened,' Galen said after a long moment.
'Right. That's because the temperature required for the auto-ignition of thermite is higher than the fire can generate alone. But throw in the magnesium as a fuse...'
He wadded up the ball again and dropped it into the fire.
It smoked and smoldered before the magnesium flare blazed again. A heartbeat later, the thermite ignited with a brilliant expulsion of light and heat. The logs in the campfire incinerated and the blinding glow eclipsed the flames.
Galen stumbled backward and fell onto his rear end with a gasp.
Colton chuckled and moved away from the fire. His shins already ached from the searing heat.
Powdered rust and aluminum combined to form a flash powder that burned extremely hot and fast. He had never experimented with them in this rock-like form. Was it created through come sort of metallic precipitation process?
'You could have at least warned me,' Galen said. He picked himself up and dusted off his backside.
Colton smirked.
The thermite continued to burn.
They were dealing with some very smart natives. And while that in itself didn't trouble him, something else did. Why in the world did an aboriginal tribe in the middle of nowhere need incendiary devices?
VI
Once the intense heat and flames had diminished enough to comfortably approach, Leo had taken a seat on the fallen trunk by the fire. He clung to the rock hammer as though his life depended on it. Whatever semblance of
