I didn't. Instead, I started to get to my feet. 'All right, buster,' shouted Gatt. 'Here it comes!' He squeezed the trigger and the hammer fell on an empty chamber with a dry click. He looked at it with startled eyes, and then backed away fast as he saw me coming at him with the upraised machete, turned tail and ran with me after him. He scrambled over a tree trunk and became entangled in branches. I took a swing at him and a spray of leaves and twigs flew up into the air. Gatt yelped in fear and broke free, trying to make for the open ground and the forest beyond, but I ran around the tree, cutting him off, and he backed away towards the cenote.
He was still holding the useless gun which he raised and tried to fire again, giving me another bad moment, but it clicked harmlessly. I stepped forward again, manoeuvring him backwards, and he stepped back cautiously, not daring to take his eyes off me until he stumbled over the concrete foundations of the hut.
I will say he was quick. He threw the gun at me with an unexpected movement and I ducked involuntarily, and when I recovered he also was armed with a machete, which he had picked up from the floor of the hut. He squared his shoulders and a new confidence seemed to come over him as he hefted the broad-bladed weapon. His lips parted and his mouth broke into a grin, but there was no humour in his watchful eyes.
I automatically fell into the sabre stance -- the classic 'on guard' position. As from a great distance seemed to come the ghostly voice of the maitre d'armes crying. 'Use your fingers on the cut, Wheale!' I hefted the machete. This was no light sporting sabre to be twitched about by finger action as the Hungarian masters have taught; it could be more appropriately compared with a naval cutlass.
Gatt jumped and took a swipe at me and I instinctively parried with a clash of steel, then jumped back six feet and felt the sweat start out on my chest beneath the rubber suit. I had used the wrong parry, forgetting the machete had no guard for the hand. Gatt had used a sideways slash and I had parried in second, catching his blade on mine. If I hadn't jumped back his blade would have slid along mine and chopped my hand off -- something that couldn't happen with a sabre.
I feinted at him to gain time to think and to watch his reaction to an attack. He tried to parry clumsily, missed my blade, jumped back and nearly fell. But he was agile for his age, and recovered quickly, successfully parrying again. I gave ground, well satisfied with what I had learned. Gatt was definitely no fencer. As a young mafioso he may have been an adept with a knife, but a machete is more like a sword than i an overgrown knife, and I had the advantage.
So here we were, fulfilling the hypothetical prophecy of Pat Harris -- Gatt and I alone in Quintano Roo with Gatt separated from his bodyguards. I was determined to make it as quick and as short as possible; I was going to kill Gatt as soon as I could. I didn't forget, however, that he was still highly dangerous, and advanced on him with due caution.
He had the sense to manoeuvre sideways so he would not have the wreckage of the hut behind him. That suited me because he could not retreat very far without coming to the edge of the cenote. He was sweating and breathing heavily, standing square on with his feet apart. He moved again, fast, and chopped down in a swing that would have cleaved my skull had it connected. I parried in quinte and stood my ground, which he didn't expect. For a split second he was very close and his eyes widened in fear as I released his blade and cut at his flank. It was only by a monstrous leap backwards that he avoided it, and the point of my machete ripped his shirt away.
I took advantage and pressed home the attack and he gave way slowly, his eyes looking apprehensively at my blade which is the wrong thing to watch -- he ought to have been looking at my sword hand. In desperation he attacked again and I parried, but my foot slipped on a branch which rolled under the instep and I staggered sideways. I lost contact with his blade and it sliced downwards into my side in a shallow cut.
But I recovered and engaged his blade again and drove him back with a series of feints. He parried frantically, waving the machete from side to side. I gave ground then and put my hand to my side as though tiring and he momentarily drooped his guard in relief. Then I went in for the kill -- a fleche and a lunge in the high line; he parried and I deceived the parry and chopped at his head.
The edge of the machete hit the side of his head just below me ear and I instinctively drew it back into a cut as I had been taught, and the blade sliced deep into his neck. He was dead before he knew it because I had damn near cut his head off. He twisted as he fell and rolled to the edge of the cenote, then slowly toppled over to fall with a thump on the wooden dock.
I didn't bother to look at him. I just staggered to the nearest support, which was a fallen tree, and leaned on the trunk. Then I vomited and nearly brought my heart up.
III
I must have passed out for a while because the next thing I knew was that I was lying on the ground, staring sideways at a column of industrious ants that looked as big as elephants from that angle. I picked myself up wearily and sat on the trunk of the tree. There was something nagging at the back of my head -- something I had to do. My head ached abominably and little pointless thoughts chittered about like bats in an attic.
Oh, yes; that's what I had to do. I had to make sure that Jack Edgecombe didn't make a balls-up of the farm; he wasn't too enthusiastic in the first place and a man like that could make an awful mess of all the Mayan ruins. There was that pillar I'd found right next to the oak tree great-grandfather had planted -- Old Cross-eyes I'd called him, and Fallon bad been very pleased, but I mustn't let Jack Edgecombe near him. Never mind, old Mr. Mount would see to everything -- he'd get a farm agent in to see to the excavation of the Temple of Yum Chac.
I put my hands to my eyes and wiped away the tears. Why the devil was I crying? There was nothing to cry about. I would go home now and Madge Edgecombe would make me tea, with scones spread thick with Devonshire cream and homemade strawberry jam. She'd use the Georgian silver set my mother had liked so much, and it would all be served on that big tray.
That big tray!
That brought it all back with a rush and my head nearly burst with the terror of it. I looked at my hand which was covered with drying blood and I wondered whose blood it was. I had killed a lot of men -- I didn't know how many -- so whose blood was this?
There and then I made a vow. That I would go back to England, to the sheltered combes of Devon, and I would never leave Hay Tree Farm again. I would stick close to the land of my people, the land that Wheales had toiled over for generations, and never again would I be such a damned fool as to look for adventure. There would be adventure enough for me in raising fat cattle and sinking a pint in the Kingsbridge Inn, and if ever again anyone called me a grey little man I would -- not in your condition,' he said, 'Some of these boys are trained swimmers -- I'll go see the teniente,'
I watched him walk across to a group of the soldiers, then I got to my feet, feeling every pain of it, and limped to the cenote and stood on the edge, looking down at the dark water. Pat came back at a run. The teniente has four scuba-trained swimmers and some oxygen bottles. If you'll tell them where the girl is, they can take oxygen down to her.' He looked down at the cenote. 'Good Christ!' he said involuntarily. 'Who's that?'
