The arrowhead wore a deep red stain that was smooth and had a sheen like fiberglass. That would be a neurotoxin made with excretions from a dart frog (Grady's research had indi cated it was the Matses version of curare and more effective) and mixed with various venoms.
'If I need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, it's your job,' he whispered, unable to resist the wisecrack.
'You can count on me.'
'Tell him we're friends,' Sam told Javier.
Javier spoke Spanish, but the man appeared not to under stand.
'He isn't so wild he doesn't speak Spanish, is he?'
'He looks Matses and he is in Matses territory. In these parts the Matses speak Spanish,' Javier said.
Moving very slowly, Sam removed a knife on a string from his pocket and demonstrated the folding and unfolding of the blade and then hung it over a branch. Doing his best to look at ease, he stepped back, signaling for Yodo, Grady, and Javier to move back as well. Grady needed no encourage ment. The gesture of giving the knife was called atraccao and meant luring. Early contact with pure jungle natives was normally accompanied by the presentation of gifts. With luck he would win reciprocity and more contact.
There was good muscle in the young man's shoulders even if the cheeks were slightly gaunt. Sam noticed a slight relaxing across his chest and the hand came forward, slowly reducing tension on the bowstring. As Sam watched the man, their eyes locked. The native was watchful. I am a friend, Sam repeated in his mind as if it were a mantra. Then, I want to hunt with you. Sam now saw three hairlike wood strands protruding through the man's nose-the 'cat whiskers' characteristic of the Matses. Around the man's mouth was a tattoo.
The cat man put his bow to his side and studied the knife. He opened and closed it with familiarity; Sam was sure that Cat-man had seen others, perhaps even owned one. Sam sensed that the man wished to make a return gift.
'Tell him that I am traveling, so I cannot carry any gift that he might wish to give.'
'Good thinking,' Javier said; then he tried to communicate that idea in Spanish.
'He doesn't understand. He doesn't speak Spanish. The Matses have their own language, but they all speak some Spanish. That's not all that's weird. Normally, the women wear the nose whiskers unless it's a special deal, and the men are dressing for dinner, so to speak.'
Reaching under his shirt, Sam removed his braided rawhide necklace with the gold locket. He opened the locket, walked forward three paces, and in the beam of a flashlight showed Cat-man a picture of his grandfather Stalking Bear. Cat-man studied the picture for a moment, then ran his fingers over it before turning his attention back to Sam.
Sam slowly squatted and cleared away leaves and vines on the forest floor until he came to dark soil. He waited a minute and then began patting the ground in a ritualistic fashion and smoothing it. When he had smoothed a three-foot-square area, he stopped. The native stepped out from behind the bush that had partially hidden him, squatted down, cleared the leaves and vines over a similar size square, patted the ground smooth, then stood next to the patch and stomped his feet. Then he stepped back.
Sam took a stick and drew a winding line in the ground, then drew a number of intersecting smaller lines. He was intending to depict the Yavari River and its tributaries, as well as the Blanca, Tapiche and Ucayali. If he were local Matses, the man would know the geography. Sam stood and stomped on the ground, then pointed with the stick at the crude lines, attempting to indicate their current location between the Galvez and the Tapiche and their direction of travel toward the Galvez. Then he pointed at the sky low on the horizon and circumscribed an arc to the opposite horizon. He pointed to a spot on the Tapiche and made two full arcs, indicating two days' journey.
'For him it wouldn't take two days,' Javier said.
Cat-man took the stick, went to his own square, and drew a river system similar to the Yavari, then drew what looked like a mound and made two arcs with his arm for two days. Then he put a round mark on the map and stomped his feet.
'That explains it,' Javier said. 'It would take us at least three days to get where he is indicating. Maybe more. It looks like he's saying he's from the Brazilian refuge. Probably Rio Lobo. Totally unusual because they don't cross over the border just to hunt or wander around.'
'Why is he alone?' Sam asked. 'I would think they would hunt in groups.'
'They would not come over here just to hunt.'
'Fala Portuguese? ' Javier asked.
'A minha lingua e Portuguese.'
'There is your answer. He speaks Portuguese. I don't speak much.'
'Interesting challenge,' Sam said.
'Tu nao deves de estar aqui.'
'What's he say?'
'Something like… that we are trespassing here. I will say that I know the people of San Jose.'
'Ask for his help in following the white men.'
'Too complicated,' Javier said.
'Eu consiou uma mulher dos Matses neste lado do Yavari e ela e muito boa e ela vai ser a mulher,' Cat-man said.
'What's he say?'
'Something about a woman. Maybe he's over here courting a wife.'
Sam opened the locket and once again showed him Grandfather's picture.
'Tell him this man was my grandfather.'
'I know the word for father.'
'That won't work.'
'Why?'
'Because I need the force of the truth. I want to take him back to the sandbar.'
'Vamos ao rio,' Javier said.
Pointing, Sam indicated that Cat-man should lead the way back in the direction Sam had come. The group went a couple of hundred feet through the jungle and Cat-man stopped. Without waiting, Sam kept going and broke through the jun gle onto the sandbank of a Yavari river tributary. On the river bar there were the footprints of the six booted men.
'Do you know the words for my son?'
'Meufilho.'
Sam said the words. Then he took Cat-man's arrow and pantomimed a man being shot, falling to the ground, and dying. Again he said the words: 'Meufilho.' Then Sam took Cat-man's hand gently and clasped it to his chest. 'Meufilho,' he said.
'Your son was killed by the men we are following?' Javier asked.
'Yes. That is the truth.'
Cat-man opened the gold medallion hanging around Sam's neck and took another look at Grandfather.
Sam pantomimed following the tracks in the sand. Again he repeated the pantomime of his son's death. Without any other communication Cat-man started off after the six men. Intermittently as they walked, he pointed out a footprint or two. It appeared to be a cautious, disciplined group they were following; they didn't leave signs like normal civilians would.
Now the men they followed were not far and Sam knew they were confident, even overconfident. He wondered if they could be beaten.
It occurred to him then that there was something not good about using Cat-man and his skills. No reasonably certain recipe had yet been found for bringing indigenous peoples into the modern world without bringing them onto welfare rolls to stagnate until they died. Cat-man was already in the netherworld between his natural state and civilization. An experience like this would carry him farther from his roots, if it did not kill him outright. But Sam balanced that against his desperate need to find and stop six men bent on harming and probably killing Michael Bowden and likely many others. All he could do was hope this walk through the jungle would not bring harm to Cat-man.
Sunlight came down through the top layers of the forest in cascades that exhausted themselves before they hit the ground and were gobbled by the largest leaves in the world, soaking up the rays and breathing in the carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen-the lungs of the earth. Sam had read that the Amazon basin produced 40 percent of
