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Chapter 7

A flock of parakeets announced the dawn. They chattered and gossiped in the jungle beyond the island. A misty, bluish-white morning light covered the sky. Smokey mist hid the river upstream and downstream. Smaller birds added their sounds to the day: flutterings, chirps, twitters.

Jeb heard the birds as though their calls pulled him a long distance up to wakefulness. He awoke sweating, and feeling strangely weak, sat up.

Monti had moved away from him in the night. She slept curled against her door.

There was a feeling of moist, unhealthy warmth in the air of the closed cabin.

Jeb leaned forward to look through the overhead curve of windshield. His back ached from sleeping in a cramped position. The sky was an empty grey slate prepared only as a setting for one vulture that sailed into view across the treetops, wings motionless. The vulture tipped majestically, beat its wings, flew upstream. Jeb lowered his gaze, noted the plush growth of parasite moss covering the underside of the tangled logs on the island. He turned around.

David sat silently awake in his corner. His eyes were red-rimmed, sleepy. Gettler beside him stared downstream, trying to see through the mists.

“We’ll meet rapids today,” murmured Gettler.

“This is our second day,” said David. “Will they be looking for us yet?”

Jeb shrugged.

David lifted his camera. “I got my camera ready to take pictures of the plane when it comes for us.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” said Gettler.

Jeb opened his door, slipped down to the float, froze motionless with one hand on the door. Something moved in the log jam. Then he recognized it: a river pig, the kind the Indians called carpi. Jeb looked up to Gettler, saw that he had seen the pig.

“Give me the rifle,” whispered Jeb.

Gettler hesitated, then passed the gun out the door.

Jeb kneeled on the pontoon, waited.

The pig came around the end of the logs, stopped with its tusked snout pointed at the plane. It looked like a curious old man surprised by an intruder.

Jeb sighted, squeezed the trigger. The rifle bucked against his shoulder, and its sound filled his ears.

The pig flipped onto its back, jerked once, was still.

A scream erupted from the plane: Monti! “Where? Where are they?”

“It’s just a pig!” shouted Gettler. “Food!”

Jeb stood up, looked into the cabin. Monti sat stiffly upright, shivering. Her left hand was pressed against her cheek.

“I … I thought it was the Indians,” she quavered.

“Jeb shot a pig, Mother,” said David.

Gettler opened the right hand door, clambered out, went to the pig. He brought out his knife, began cutting off the hams.

David leaned down to Jeb. “Mr. Logan?”

“Yes?”

“Is it dangerous to shoot at jaguars and boa constrictors?”

“What?”

“Will they attack you if you shoot at them?”

“Not usually. Why?”

David lowered his voice, related Gettler’s story.

Jeb looked across at Gettler working over the pig, felt the weight of the rifle. He swallowed, glanced up at Monti.

She seemed completely hypnotized, all attention focused on the weapon in Jeb’s hands.

He wet his lips with his tongue, slowly worked the bolt. The empty casing clicked out, dropped into the river. Jeb glanced down at the gun, felt a wave of frustration. There were no more cartridges in the magazine. He shook his head, passed the useless weapon to Monti.

She looked into the empty magazine.

“Why’s he afraid to let us have a gun?” whispered David.

“I don’t know,” said Monti. “Now hush.”

“David, I have a job for you,” said Jeb.

“Yes, sir?”

“See these caps on the floats?” Jeb pointed down at a round lid near the front of the pontoon. “They unscrew. There’s a little pump in the luggage compartment. I want you to check the floats, and pump out any water in them.”

“Aren’t you going to do anything about the guns?” whispered Monti.

“What can I do?” asked Jeb. “Let’s be patient. Our chance will come.”

“But he may kill us all!”

“Not unless we excite him.”

“He’s crazy!”

Jeb nodded. “Yes. But I think we can keep him calm.”

“Do you hear that, David?” asked Monti.

“Yes, Mother.”

Jeb worked his way along the pontoon to the beach, collected driftwood, started a fire. He could hear David pumping out the floats. Presently, Monti and David joined him at the fire.

“There wasn’t very much water,” said David.

“How much?”

“About an inch.”

“In each one.”

“Yes.”

“Did you put the caps back on tightly?”

“Yes.”

Gettler came up with the bloody meat. “Not very well hung, this meat.” He grinned through his beard.

“Too bad we can’t smoke what we don’t eat,” said Jeb. “It won’t always be that easy to come by.”

“Aren’t there fruits and things we could pick?” asked Monti.

Jeb nodded toward the far shore about two hundred feet away. “That tree leaning over the water is papaya. There may be no Jivaro back in there watching us. Then again …” He left the thought hanging.

“How far d’you figure we’ve come?” asked Gettler.

Jeb looked upstream where the mist was beginning to lift. “Maybe a hundred and sixty miles from the rancho.”

“No farther?” asked Monti.

He shook his head. “The current averages three or four knots in the dry season. Figure it yourself.”

“Even counting the first night when you used the motor?” she asked.

Jeb nodded.

“When the rains start we’ll go faster,” said Gettler.

“We’ll be rescued before then,” she said.

Gettler looked at the sky: darker now in the west. The snow cone of Tusachilla appeared abnormally close in the clear air. A tuft of black smoke curled eastward from the volcano.

“Easterly wind,” said Jeb.

Gettler nodded, bent to cooking the meat.

“What’s that mean?” asked Monti.

“Rain before long,” said Jeb.

Gettler left the meat on a spit over the flames, straightened. “We’ll hit white water today.” He turned, studied the plane. Both pontoons trailed green reeds. Mud caked their tops. A length of vine hung from the left wing.

Jeb followed the direction of Gettler’s eyes.

The plane looked deceptively ready to fly, aluminum and paint still glistening along the sides. But the mud and vines were like symptoms of dissolution. And there were other signs: the dark bullet hole in the engine cowl, a smudge behind the cowl from oil smoke.

“Shall I fill the water bag?” asked David.

“And don’t forget the purification tablet,” said Gettler.

David went to the plane.

Gettler pulled a box of rifle cartridges from his jacket, jounced them in his hand, stared directly into Jeb’s eyes.

Jeb’s face darkened.

Gettler returned the cartridges to his pocket without smiling, turned away.

And Jeb felt that he had looked death directly in the face. He had never felt it so strongly: not even during the war.

Monti leaned against a log. The rifle shot that killed the pig had shocked her from a dream. Now, she remembered the dream: There had been an amorphous grey place full of frightening shadows. She had raced away from every hint of terror. And at every turn, Roger had appeared—eyes full of that maddening calm, voice pitched to that enraging reasonableness: “It’s time to forget me, Monti. You must forget me, Monti.”

Over and over and over and over and over …

“Meat’s ready,” said Getter.

Monti shook her head.

The sun lifted over the jungle, and they felt its first impact.

They ate quickly, cast off.

Almost immediately, the river took on a new character. The hills drew closer, bent down over them. A faster current tugged at the pontoons and the sea anchor that Jeb tossed into the flow. More lines of eddies trailed from the shores, curved on the dark surface of the water.

For a time, a band of long-tailed monkeys paced them, roaring and chittering through the trees along the left bank. The monkeys abandoned the game at a river bend.

“The rainy season’s overdue,” said Gettler.

“It’ll be hell in the rapids when they start,” said Jeb.

“What’s that?” asked David. He pointed downstream.

A column of smoke stood vertically out of the jungle: a grey exclamation point.

“Jivaro!” snapped Gettler.

“That smoke’s at least ten miles away,” said Jeb.

“Signal smoke,” said Gettler.

The column of smoke broke off, dissipated.

“Does that mean they’re going to attack?” asked Monti.

“It told those downstream where we are,” said Gettler. “They’re waiting for us.”

“The first rapids you talked about?” asked Jeb.

“Maybe.”

The river straightened, and the hills beside them dipped even lower. A thick twisting of hardwood trees along the shore gave way to lines of sago palms backed by rising waves of the overpowering jungle green. Only infrequently was the green broken by the smooth red-skinned trunks of guayavilla leaning over the water.

Around another bend, they surprised a long-legged red bird feeding in the shallows. It lifted on silent pinions, flew downstream.

Another bend—swifter current.

They heard the roar of rapids, felt another quickening of river flow even before they saw the white foam.

Quite suddenly, no more than half a mile downstream at the end of a straight sweep of current, they saw the snarling boil of foam, misting spume hurled into the air. The sound grew louder: a crashing, violent drumming without rhythm.

Jeb brought in the sea anchor, wedged it tightly against the strut, lashed it there, leaped back into the cabin, primed the motor.

Start! Please start! he prayed.

The current picked up more speed. They felt that they were hurtling toward the maelstrom.

He pulled the starter. The engine coughed, backfired. Again he pulled the starter. The motor caught, began to die. He nursed the throttle. A great banging, spitting roar came from the engine, drowning out the sound of the rapids.

“No sign of Indians!” shouted Gettler.

Smoke from burning oil fanned out behind the plane, began to fill the cabin. Jeb closed the vents. A line of foaming rocks broke the current.

To hell with everything! thought Jeb.

He pushed the throttle in to the limit, wondered if the crazily rocking motor would jerk from its mountings. But the little plane began to skim, and for a brief heart-skip they were airborne above the first rocks. Then the straining engine coughed twice. Water caught the floats. The river dipped down, roared and leaped, down, down through ever steepening banks. Jeb fought the controls. The plane lurched and twisted. Spray filled the air. Roaring of river and motor competed for domination.

Something wrenched at the right hand float. A tearing sound of tortured metal battered the air. The nose dipped, came up. They skimmed out of the gorge into a wide bend. The river flattened out in a slowly frothing boil as though in exhaustion from the rapids.

Jeb aimed for a white line of sand beach on the left, cut off the motor at the last possible moment. The right wing dropped—lower, lower and lower as the torn float drank up water. The left hand float grated on sand, spun the deeper float in a short arc.

The damaged pontoon gurgled, sighed out a burst of bubbles. Six inches of air remained between the tip of the right wing and the surface of the river.

Jeb took two deep, gulping breaths.

“Now, we find a dugout,” said Gettler.

“Maybe,” said Jeb.

Monti lifted her face from her hands. “I thought it was the end.”

“Were there Indians?” asked David.

Jeb looked back up the foaming steps of the rapids. “I don’t think so.”

“This was not the place,” said Gettler. “That means there is a better place downstream for an ambush.”

“Let’s have a look at the pontoon,” said Jeb.

“It’s done,” said Gettler. “Kaput.”

Jeb opened his door. Immediately, the sound of the brawling water grew louder. Insects began to invade the cabin. Jeb slipped down to the slanted top of the left float, studied the jungle beyond the beach: a confusion of interlaced branches, vines, creepers and tree ferns. A damp track at their left crossed the sand, disappeared at a dark hole in the undergrowth: game trail.

“There could be an army of Jivaro ten feet inside that jungle, and we couldn’t see them,” whispered Gettler.

“Game trail over there to the left,” said Jeb.

“I saw it,” said Gettler.

“What kind of game?” asked David.

“All kinds,” said Jeb. He sniffed the air.

A line of ripples moved upstream toward them, pushed by a wind out of a furnace. The ripples fanned out before the wind, grew as the wind grew. Then the wind died, and the air around them trembled in the heat.

Jeb took a deep breath. “We don’t solve anything just sitting here.” He scanned the river for piranha. The water ran as clear as a sheet of glass. Mica sparkled in the sand of the bottom. Reflections danced and shimmered on the metal underside of the wing. A pressure of heat radiated from the sand beach.

No sign of piranha. Jeb slid off into the water. It was warm. He splashed around beneath the tail, waded out to the damaged float. Another examination of the water. No flashing of deadly fish. He bent down, ran a hand along the outside of the float.

Just back of the leading edge his fingers encountered a jagged rip in the metal. He explored the break, straightened.

Gettler still sat in the plane, attention fixed on the wall of jungle beyond the sand.

He’s frightened silly! thought Jeb.

Monti opened her door, leaned out. “That water looks cool.”

“It’s warm.”

“Can we fix the float?”

“It’s only about a foot long, and maybe an inch wide in the worst spot.”

“What could we use to fix it?”

“I can see a gum tree in the forest there,” said Jeb. “Bark, gum and vines. We can pound the metal back into some kind of shape with a rock.”

“We must find a canoe,” said Gettler.

“You hunt for one while we’re fixing this!” snarled Jeb.

Gettler paled.

“How’ll we get that float out of the water?” asked Monti.

“Vines,” said Jeb. “Run them from the float around a good solid tree beyond the beach and back to the float. Put a strong limb between the vines, turn it. You twist the doubled vines.”

“Back in Montana we called that a Spanish Windlass,” she said.

“Some big leaves under the float will make it slide easier,” he said. “Just goes to show there’s a complete supply house and repair shop here if you only know how to use it.”

“Too bad we can’t fix the motor the same way,” said David.

Jeb sighed. “Yeah.”

“I say get out of here while we still have our heads,” said Gettler.

“Go ahead,” said Jeb.

“Is there danger from Indians?” asked David.

Gettler looked downstream to where the beach sand trailed off into a red clay bank. He seemed to be having trouble with his breathing.

“If they were going to attack, they’d have been on us before now,” said Jeb. “We’re sitting ducks.” He took a deep breath. “Hell! They may’ve quit a hundred miles back.”

“Not the Jivaro,” muttered Gettler.

“We’re wasting time,” said Monti. “Cut the vines and let’s get started.”

“Machete’s under your seat,” said Jeb. “Let’s have it.”

The sun climbed higher as they worked. Insects clung to every patch of exposed skin. The air took on the consistency of molten tar full of inflated tensions.

Slowly, with creakings and poppings, the damaged float came out of the water onto the sand. A rivulet ran out of the hole.

Gettler flopped down in the shade of the wing, cradled the rifle in his arms, studied the jungle. Earth and sky around them had sunken into a deep and sultry oppression.

He reflected the same mood.

“I feel a little dizzy,” said David.

“Get into the shade of the wing there,” said Jeb. “You’ve been working out here without your sunshade.”

“That leaf!”

“You should use it,” said Monti

“It won’t stay on!”

Jeb pulled one of the small canvas buckets from the survival kit, picked up the machete, crossed to Gettler. “Let’s have my revolver.”

Gettler glanced up at him. “Why?”

Jeb nodded toward the jungle. “I’m going in there to that gum tree. We can seal that float with gum and pita fiber.”

Gettler looked at the blue-grey bark of the tree towering out of the first screen of lianas. He frowned.

“The revolver,” said Jeb.

“You going to shoot the sap out of that tree?”

“No telling what’s back there,” said Jeb.

“Call me if you need help,” said Gettler. His eyes looked glassy, veiled.

“If I don’t come back, you’ll have to go in there,” said Jeb.

“Why?

“I don’t see any canoes around here.”

Gettler looked at the river. “We should’ve kept the one I got away in.”

“But we didn’t.”

“No gun,” said Gettler. “You won’t need it.” He began to shiver.

“Okay!” snapped Jeb.

“Be careful when you walk around any big trees,” said Gettler. “The Jivaro like to step from ambush and drive a spear up through a man’s guts.”

“Provided the man has guts,” said Jeb.

A wild flame lighted Gettler’s eyes. “Careful, Logan.”

“You may be a great jungle macho,” said Jeb. “But right now you need me.”

“Don’t count on it.”

“Before you get other ideas, Gettler, ask yourself if you’re ready to tramp off through that jungle.”

Gettler looked at the wall of green.

“You need me and you’re going to continue to need me,” said Jeb.

“Arrrrrgh!”

Jeb turned, hefted the machete, crossed to the dark hole of the trail. He felt his back tingling, dared not turn around.

I could kill him now, thought Gettler. But he could not lift the rifle.

Jeb left the beach and entered the jungle in one step. He found himself in an orchid-lined aisle with a path of grey mud laced by tiny roots beneath his feet. The damp gloom produced a first illusion of coolness that disappeared quickly. He moved through muggy shadows, searching for the bole of the gum tree.

There it is.

The tree stood six feet off the trail, but it took Jeb five minutes to reach it, hacking through a long-spined thorn bush. He chopped a V-shaped notch in the grey bark, propped the bucket in position with a limb. A narrow length of bark went into the base of the notch as a trough. A thin trickle of milk sap ran down the bark, dripped into the bucket.

Jeb returned to the trail.

Pita bark. Where the hell will I find it?

He wet his lips with his tongue, moved on up the trail.

Dirty son-of-a-bitch! Refusing to give me my gun!

The trail climbed steeply, dipped and leveled, and again climbed. The drumming of the rapids grew fainter, the air slightly drier. Around him the jungle was dappled by shafts of sunshine on pollen and dust.

A line of leaf-bearing ants crossed the trail ahead of him on a low vine. The insect caravan wound around a ridged root, struck off into the shadows.

High above him a squirrel monkey suddenly scolded, fell silent. The whistling of perdices partridges answered from the hill on the right.

The jungle returned to silence.

Jeb’s palm against the machete handle felt slippery with sweat. The rank odor of rotting vegetation crossed his nostrils. He moved forward. Only rare clumps of pale bushes and hanging vines now blocked the avenues between the trees. He stopped, looked around, started forward, withdrew his foot.

A single human footprint slowly filled with water inches away from his boot.

Not a minute old!

The footprint pointed right.

Perspiration flooded Jeb’s skin. He looked to the right, expected at any moment to feel the biting thrust of a spear. His back felt naked.

Only dappled green met his eyes.

His mind told him there were other colors present: pale flowers, grey bark, brown bark, red bark … and somewhere the copper skin of an Indian. But nothing detracted from the overpowering green: it drew all colors to itself and fused them.

Again he passed his gaze across the jungle: vines, scattered low bushes, ferns, a low clump of …

He saw the Indian.

Copper skin blended with shadows not fifteen feet off the trail. The native stood hidden from the waist down in ferns. He held a blowgun vertically at his left side.

A woman crouched behind him, and beside her a younger warrior, hardly more than a boy.

A curare gourd and bamboo tube of darts hung over the man’s right shoulder. Red string was twisted around his arm just below the shoulder. Red lines of achiote streaked his brown face in a pattern of whorls. Both man and boy carried fluffs of kapok behind each ear.

The woman was bent under a woven bark sack.

All wore plain bark breech-clouts.

Jeb recognized the painted symbols on the man: one of the Napo tribes. He stared into the ebony eyes beneath the flat line of bangs. They were cold and untamed eyes.

A family group, thought Jeb. Traders?

He nodded his head—a slow, dignified movement, shifted the machete to his left hand, lifted his right hand, palm out.

The man brought his right arm across his body, touched the red string on his upper arm.

Warding off the death finger.

During his first year in Milagro Jeb had taken a short course in Quechua, the language of the Incas that had become the universal tongue of the jungle Indians. Maria mixed Spanish and Quechua indiscriminately. Half the workmen of Milagro did the same.

Jeb dredged the words out of his memory, said: “Maim shamungui?” (“Where from?”)

The man turned his head to the right, indicated the hills above the river. Beyond the mountains.

Jeb focused on the curare gourd. They’ve probably been buying dart poison from the Jivaro witchmen. And at the same moment, he realized that the Indian had wanted to be discovered. Otherwise I wouldn’t have seen him. Why’d he want me to see him? Trade? Jeb motioned for the man to approach.

The Indian came up to the trail—moving almost without sound. Jeb felt in his pants pocket, extracted a clasp knife, passed it into a brown hand. The Indian gravely placed the knife in a monkey-skin pouch at his hip.

Jeb dredged up more of his Quechua. With much rolling of eyes and many gestures, he got across to the Indian that he wished to know if there were Jivaro nearby … and if the Jivaro were angry.

The man squatted, spat between his fingers for emphasis, drew a curved track in the mud with one finger. The river.

He indicated a straight section of channel downstream, held up two fingers. “Ishcai!” Two days. The brown hands came close together. Narrow channel. “Jacaré!” A place of rocks and foaming water.

“Ti coachat!” Many Jivaro.

Jeb nodded. “Ari.” Yes.

The native crossed his index fingers before his face, spat between them, said: “Huasi Huanui!”

Jeb recognized the crossed fingers and the words: House of the dead? He frowned. House of the dead? Then he understood: to this Indian, Jeb and his companions already were dead.

The Jivaro had spoken.

The man grinned, exposed a double line of teeth blackened from chewing sindi-muyu—the jungle fire seed. Again he pointed downstream, then touched the curare gourd at his shoulder.

“Jambai?” asked Jeb. Poison?

“Ari,” said the Indian. Yes. He held out both hands, fingers extended: Uncountable numbers of Jivaro with much poison!

“But we have guns,” said Jeb.

The Indian looked at Jeb’s waist, peered around. “You have no gun. Only the angry man has guns.”

Angry man? He knows about Gettler!

Unconsciously, Jeb hefted the machete.

The man looked at the blade, said: “Maná jambai.” No poison.

Jeb straightened, unwilling to break off the talk. “Would my new friend help me by leading the way to a fiber bark?”

“To repair the hole in the roaring bird that carries men?

He even knows about the damage to the plane!

Jeb nodded. “Ari.”

After a moment’s hesitation the Indian agreed. But he explained that this was only because no Jivaro were at present in the vicinity—the immediate vicinity. And he added as though it were a natural thing that the White man would readily understand: “The Jivaro witchmen have put the death finger on you and on any river tribesmen who try to befriend you. I, of course, am from beyond the mountains—and am not subject to the whims of the Jivaro.

“Why are the Jivaro angry?”

“Because of the White man who was killed.”

“What White man?”

“The gentle White man of the rancho. He was the friend of the Jivaro: their brother.”

“Who killed this brother of the Jivaro?”

The Indian stared at him, then: “The angry man—the one you saved.”

Gettler did kill Bannon!

Jeb looked up. The Indian woman and boy had moved closer. He returned his attention to the man. “I did not know.”

“Thus I told my companions.”

“Companions?”

“The ones who ran. They were afraid.”

Then there were others besides this family. Jeb studied the shadowed avenues of the jungle.

“I stayed because I wanted cigarillos,” said the Indian.

The Spanish word caught Jeb’s attention. This one’s had contact with civilization.

“I’m sorry, but I have no cigarettes.”

“The woman smokes.”

“She is the only one.” The woman! “She is the wife of the one who was slain,” said Jeb. “We did not know that the angry man killed her husband.”

“Then it is not magic that the boy has the face of the slain one!”

“He is their child,” said Jeb.

The Indian stood up. “The woman and boy are in danger?”

“Yes.”

“I will help.” The Indian turned, addressed himself in a chatter of words to the woman and boy. They turned, trotted off through the trees. The man turned back to Jeb. “You will need fiber bark? Vines?

Jeb nodded. The Jivaro are out for revenge! Gettler’s right: they won’t give up!

The Indian held out his hand for the machete, nodded off the trail to his left. “Bark there.”

Jeb relinquished the machete, watched the Indian go directly to a tree some thirty feet off the trail.

I’m a real babe in the woods, thought Jeb. I didn’t even see it.

The native worked methodically, stripping off shaggy layers of bark.

He’s a plantation Indian from the way he handles the machete, thought Jeb.

The Indian returned with a bundle of bark wrapped in vines. He returned the machete, hoisted the load to his head, moved down trail. The blowgun was carried loosely in his left hand.

Jeb followed. We’ve got to disarm Gettler, put him under control!

He slipped and sloshed down the muddy track. Perspiration soaked his shirt. It clung to his back, twisted beneath his armpits. The grey mud weighted his boots.

Gettler mustn’t guess that I know. Jeb glanced around. The gum tree ought to be close. There it is.

“Hoy!” called Jeb.

The Indian stopped, turned.

Jeb pointed to the bucket on the gum tree. It looked like an illustration out of the Air Force survival handbook.

The man nodded, retrieved the bucket.

Jeb hesitated, looked at the blowgun. We could kill Gettler from the screen of the jungle! But curare doesn’t kill instantly. Monti and the boy might get hurt. She could even think it was an Indian attack and kill herself! No. He chewed at his lip, waved for the Indian to go ahead.

The beach loomed up like a bright cave mouth at the end of the trail. Jeb fell farther behind, making heavy work of slogging through the mud. The Indian stepped from the trail into the sunlight.

There came the roar of a rifle. A bloody patch appeared as though by magic in the middle of the Indian’s back. He staggered backward.

Jeb screamed: “No! Wait!” even as the Indian collapsed.

In the taut silence that followed he heard Gettler shout: “Come on, you bastards! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you all!”

Monti screamed.

“No!” shouted Jeb. “That Indian’s helping me. It’s all right!” He disregarded his own safety, stumbled out onto the sand, knelt beside the fallen figure.

The Indian was dead.

Jeb looked up, saw Monti clutching Gettler’s rifle, struggling. Gettler hurled her away. His eyes looked wild, frightening.

“No!” screamed Monti. “It’s Jeb!”

Gettler quieted, glared at Jeb.

He would’ve killed me, too!

Monti was sobbing hysterically.

If it hadn’t been for her, Gettler would’ve killed me! Jeb looked down at the dead Indian. This is my fault. I should’ve thought. Christ!

A violent frustration welled up in Jeb. He lifted his head, looked across at the plane, at Gettler standing beside it, at Monti sitting in the sand recovering from her hysteria.

Where’s David?

Then he saw the boy in the front seat of the plane, staring wide-eyed at the body on the sand. David’s face radiated the vacuity of numbing fear.

Slowly, Jeb got to his feet, stepped around the Indian’s body, crossed to Gettler. The violence trembled in every nerve and muscle of Jeb’s body. He found it difficult to speak. “You just killed a friendly Indian!” he husked. “That Indian was …”

“There’s no such thing as a friendly one!” snarled Gettler.

“This one was helping to …”

“Are there any more of them back there?” He gestured with the rifle.

“Some who ran away … and this Indian’s wife and child.”

“You’re just like Bannon!” snapped Gettler. “Take up with every stinking native in the brush!” He took three quick, uneven breaths, backed toward the shelter of the plane.

“There’re no Jivaro here,” said Jeb.

“They’re all alike, I tell you!”

“The Jivaro are waiting for us two days downstream, Gettler.”

“How d’you know?”

Jeb hooked a thumb toward the body on the sand. “He told me.”

“Probably lying!”

“And maybe not.”

“Two days,” muttered Gettler. “Where?”

“Rapids.”

Monti stumbled to her feet, glared at Gettler. “You utter beast!”

Gettler ignored her. “Rapids. That’ll be the place they call ‘the cut’ …”

“You trigger-happy madman!” shouted Monti. She brushed a strand of hair off her forehead. “I hope they …”

“You wanted me to kill him!” snapped Gettler. “You thought it was an attack!”

“I thought you were jungle-savvy,” said Jeb. “Can’t you tell a Napo from a Jivaro?”

“They’re all alike,” said Gettler. “Treacherous, lying …”

“And deadly when wronged,” said Jeb.

Gettler stepped into the protection of the open door of the plane. “So fix this pontoon before some more of them show up!”

“We oughta just sit here and let them come and get you!” snarled Jeb.

The rifle centered on Jeb’s head. “Fix the pontoon.”

Monti touched Jeb’s arm. He shook her off.

“Kill me and you face them alone, Gettler!”

“They may blame all of us,” said Monti.

“Fix the pontoon,” repeated Gettler. “Don’t make trouble or …”

“You’ve made all the trouble I want for one day!” said Jeb.

A curious smile flitted across Gettler’s mouth. “So do what I say.” He frowned.

“First, you should know just what you’ve done,” said Jeb.

“Yes?”

“The Jivaro witchmen have put the death finger on anyone who helps us. All of the river tribes’ll hear how this Napo died. It’ll convince them all the curse is real. Any who might’ve been inclined to ignore the curse and help us sure as hell won’t ignore it now!”

“We don’t need help from these treacherous bastards,” growled Gettler. “Get busy on the float!”

Jeb returned to the sprawled body, recovered the fibers, vines and gum, carried them to the plane.

David slid down from the cabin. “Is that Indian dead, Mr. Logan?”

“Yes.”

“The dead ones are the only safe ones,” said Gettler. He climbed into the rear of the cabin, sat with the rifle across his knees.

Jeb found a rock, squatted by the damaged float, began pounding out the torn edges of the hole. It was slow work. Gum stuck to his hands and arms. Flies and sand accumulated on the gum.

The finished patch looked bulky—a thick scab of bark lashed with vines to the outboard edge of the pontoon. It dripped with sand-coated gum. Trapped insects buzzed in the sticky mess.

David collected sections of cane poles Jeb had cut.

“Put those behind the floats for rollers,” said Jeb.

He took the machete, crossed to the jungle edge, cut four long cane poles, returned to the plane.

Monti wiped sand from her hands. “What’re those?”

“To help guide us after we get going.”

She looked down at the pontoon. “Think that’ll hold?”

“It should.” He found a section of green leaf, wiped at the mess on his hands and arms, took up one of the poles.

“The rollers are ready!” called David.

“Get aboard,” said Jeb. “You, too, Monti.”

“What about him?” she asked. She looked at the body on the sand. “It seems so callous to … well just leave him there.”

Gettler leaned out the door. “What’s the delay?”

“There’s nothing we can do,” said Jeb. “Get aboard.”

“Shouldn’t I stay out here and help?” asked David.

Jeb looked at the plane. “Okay. You push on this side. It shouldn’t take much once we get it going on the rollers.”

“Yes, sir.”

Monti climbed into the plane.

Abruptly, Gettler said, “Wait!”

Jeb straightened. “Why?”

“What if it sinks?”

“You can wade ashore and build us a canoe,” said Jeb. “Sit down.” He turned to the boy. “Okay, David. On the count of three. Rock it onto the rollers.”

David bent to the float. “I’m ready.”

“One … two … THREE!”

The plane rocked back, moved about six inches.

“Wouldn’t it be easier if we got out?” asked Monti.

“No.” Jeb wiped his forehead, straightened his flying cap. “Again, David. One … two … THREE!”

The pontoons grated on sand. Slowly, the plane rocked back. It tipped down, gathered speed, splashed into the river.

Jeb caught the grapnel line, snubbed the plane up short. “Climb aboard, David.”

The boy jumped onto the float, made his way into the cabin. Jeb waded out to the float, studied it. He tapped the metal, rocked the plane.

“It is holding?” asked Monti.

“Seems to be.” Jeb unscrewed the cap on top of the float, felt inside. “It’s dry.” He replaced the cap.

“Aren’t we going to bury that dead man?” asked David.

“Hush.” said Monti.

“Let the ants do it,” said Gettler.

“Fine thanks for warning us about the Jivaro!” said Jeb. And he thought: When’ll I get a chance to tell Monti that our suspicions were right? That Gettler murdered her husband? And maybe it’d be better if she didn’t know.

“Shove off,” said Gettler.

Jeb collected the cane poles, wedged them against a strut, brought up the grapnel and put it on the left float. The current tugged at the plane. He leaped aboard, pushed off with one of the poles.

A line of vultures began settling to the beach behind them. Jeb heard the wings, looked back, shuddered. The vultures hopped toward the coppery body at the jungle edge. A bend in the river shut off the scene.

Jeb looked to the west. The sun hung low above the peaks.

“Another hour to sunset,” said Jeb. He felt suddenly weak, drained by his exertions. It seemed to take his last energy to climb into the cabin.

Alto cirrus clouds hung above the peaks. Sunset poured color through them until they became red waves in a sea of sky.

The plane swept around a sickle-shaped bend, drifted almost due north along a widening channel. Along the eastern shore the water became silver tinted with mauve, metallic and luminous.

A deep booming of jungle doves sounded from the hills.

Dusk siphoned in its flow of tiny insects. The whine of cicadas increased in the still air.

The sun dipped behind the peaks, rimmed them with fire that was quickly extinguished. The nightly patrol of bats flickered overhead—swooping and soaring. Noises of the evening birds gave way to night sounds; far off a jaguar’s coughing growl (followed by sudden stillness), the rustlings and quiverings, an unseen splash nearby.

An amber moon climbed over the jungle. The plane drifted down the moon path like a giant dragonfly crouched on the water. A great skeleton butterfly fluttered across the pale light, waved the filigree of its transparent wings briefly on the plane’s cowl, departed.

Gettler mumbled and growled to himself. Once he raised his voice: “Kill them! Kill them all!”

He felt dizzy, as though he were many persons at once. The river reminded him of a barge trip he had taken on the Rhine when he was twenty. He looked to the fuzzy spread of moonlit hills for the familiar outline of castles.

Part of him seemed to cling to the fabric in the ceiling of the plane’s cabin—peering down. This part of him whispered in his mind: “Tell them what’s wrong with you before it’s too late!”

Monti retreated into her corner. She could see the moon through the overhead curve of windshield. It was an alien moon—like none she had ever seen. The earth-lighted circle looked far too big, the melon slice of sun reflection far too bright. It was a Hollywood moon: unreal. It frightened her, made her feel small—dwindling away to nothing, a tiny spark lost in the infinity of the universe.

She pressed her eyes tightly closed.

I mustn’t think like that or I’ll go crazy! God! When will they find us?

David curled into his corner behind Jeb, studied the shadowy outline that was Gettler. The Aussie hat had been thrown back. Gettler’s head bulked thickly above the craggy nose and beard-softened curve of his chin.

He’s crazy, thought David. I should be afraid of him, but I’m not. I feel sorry for him. An adult thought burst into the child mind: I remind him of someone. That’s why he wants me to like him.

“Killers!” muttered Gettler.

“Was that Indian one of the ones who killed my dad?” asked David.

“No,” said Jeb.

“How d’you know?” roared Gettler. “You don’t know! They’re all killers!”

Silence pressurized the cabin. Jeb heard the cautious sound of Monti’s controlled breathing. Slowly, the pressure bled away.

David announced: “I’m going to sleep.” He twisted into a new position. His foot bumped Jeb’s back through the seat.

“Gettler?” said Jeb.

A grunt answered him.

“You know the jungle, Gettler,” said Jeb. “What’ll the Jivaro do? We should get ready for them.”

Gettler’s voice surprised him by coming out calm and remote. “If they’re at ‘the cut’ that’s a canyon. They may drop boulders … or they could run a net across the river to spill us into the rapids.”

“That last’s what I’m afraid of,” said Jeb.

“Are you sure this plane won’t fly?” asked Monti.

“Even if I got it off, it wouldn’t stay up,” said Jeb. “The motor’s sure to overheat.”

“I hope we don’t meet them in the dark,” she said.

Gettler chuckled softly. “The things we meet in the dark are always worse, eh?”

Jeb found himself puzzled by Gettler’s tone. It was though the man had been transformed into a pleasant stranger—someone entirely different from the wild-eyed killer. A word he only half understood popped into Jeb’s mind: schizophrenia—split personality.

“We’re always more afraid of what we can’t see or understand,” said Gettler.

Again he chuckled. By its very difference and tone of sanity the sound was frightening.

Monti sat up straight beside Jeb.

Gettler said: “I keep thinking of Cardinal Newman’s ‘terrible aboriginal calamity.’ That’s what we’re headed for down there: a meeting with original sin.”

David stirred, sat up. “I can’t get to sleep.”

“I keep listening for a plane,” said Monti. “Oh God! When will they come?”

“Keep your fingers crossed,” said Jeb.

“What were you talking about, Mr. Gettler?” asked David. “What calamity?”

“I’ve never prayed so hard for anything in my life,” said Monti.

“Well, son,” said Gettler, “you’ve asked a philosophical question about good and evil—original sin. That was the cardinal’s calamity.”

“What’s philosophy?” asked David.

“That’s the dreamers interpreting their dream,” murmured Gettler.

Monti leaned toward Jeb. “What’s he rattling on about?”

Jeb shrugged.

“Good and evil are part of the dream,” said Gettler.

“Two days,” muttered Jeb. “Jesus! If we only had the radio!”

“Good and evil are man-made opposites,” said Gettler.

David shut out the murmurous conversation in the front seats, listened to Gettler. The words falling from the man’s lips seemed to have special meaning—something that would suddenly fill out and answer every uncertainty.

“Men anchor their lives between good and evil,” said Gettler. “They try that way to stop all motion—to end the flow of life toward death—keep everything as it is. They don’t realize that when everything stops: that’s death.”

Monti began humming softly.

“Everything in the universe flows like this river,” said Gettler. “Everything changes constantly from one form into another. Nothing can stop this—nothing should stop it: no anchor, no philosophy, no man or god.”

Monti’s humming grew louder.

“Everything flows like a river,” said Gettler. “Nothing is static, nothing’s ever twice the same. Not good! Not evil! Even the Ten Commandments have their exceptions.”

“You mean the Bible?” asked David.

Gettler gripped David’s arm. “The good-and-evil book! The only thing a man has is his own ability to make decisions from moment to moment. Good and evil can only confuse him.”

Jeb heard this last, thought: What’s he feeding David?

Monti said: “Would it be better to anchor and wait for rescue?”

“We can’t be sure of rescue,” said Jeb. “We have to take our chances on the river. We have to!”

“Never let yourself be submerged in the herd,” said Gettler. His grip on David’s arm became painful. “You do and you have to accept the herd’s judgments. Be your own judge. Don’t lose any sleep over what the herd thinks!” He relaxed his grip.

Did that Indian tell me the truth? wondered Jeb. Yes. Christ! That’s a killer back there! I have to keep reminding myself.

Jeb turned, glanced back into the dark shadows.

Just go to sleep, Gettler. Let me get my hands on that revolver!

“Are you sure we shouldn’t wait?” asked Monti. “Somebody’s sure to miss us.”

“Who?”

“The people at Ramona.”

“They won’t even begin to ask questions for another week.”

“But what about the army when that radio station doesn’t answer?”

“They may think it’s a mechanical failure. Happens all the time. And what’s to connect us with the failure of a radio station?’

“But we know they’re downstream waiting for us!” She rubbed at her forehead. “They’re going to try and kill us!”

“That’s the problem,” said Jeb. “The river’s carrying us toward both danger and safety.”

“Somebody’s sure to come,” she said.

“Just like waiting for the Second Coming!” said Gettler.

“Take it easy, Monti,” said Jeb. “We’ll fight our way through all right.”

But he didn’t feel that confident.

Monti looked at Jeb. His angular features looked hard, almost metallic in the reflected moon glow. He’s so strong, she thought. And I’m so tired … She lowered her head onto Jeb’s lap like a small child seeking comfort, burrowed her left hand behind him, under his shirt, caressed his back.

Jeb stroked her hair. A fluttering aliveness pulsed within him … the delicate beginning movements of desire. He tried to force his attention onto the night around them, the dangers ahead.

Monti’s hand became quiet against his back, her breathing deepened. She relaxed into sleep.

She’s like a little girl, he thought.

The plane drifted down a lane of glittering water. A cold glow of fireflies danced in the dark shadows of the forest. A sense of eternal corruption came from the jungle.

It pressed in upon the tenuous moon path.

Gettler’s words came back to Jeb: “Everything in the universe flows like a river.”

And he thought, Maybe Gettler’s right. I exist through a flowing of moments … alive only in my own memory. Everything’s changing. You can’t say something eternally absolute at this moment and have it be true at the next heartbeat …

Introspection came hard to Jeb and brought feelings of anxiety that moved toward terror.

Time is on the jungle’s side, he thought. And he experienced an abrupt feeling of detachment, as though he had suddenly come upon himself like a reflection in a mirror … or heard about himself like an echo … and he was both the original voice and the echo—the substance and the reflection.

Jeb felt that he existed at this moment in an ultimate awakening where everything around him unfolded before an inner mind—and the only part of himself that he knew became a memory, like a perfume lingering behind a strange passion. He saw everything as related to totality, dancing and weaving in a thin plane of reality like a fabric coming off an endless loom.

Reality and illusion were through the same cloth.

And he knew that he would never again be the same.

It was a feverish sensation accompanied by an inner trembling.

The world around Jeb—the darkly flowing jungle—began to intrude. A wind arose, gave the plane an uneasy shifting motion. A curious damp nutrient in the wind fed Jeb’s awareness. He looked up. The stars were sharp points of light that stabbed through rushing clouds.

Something flickered like a firefly on the right bank.

And again. Red streamers of fire wavered in the forest: a bobbing, dancing lacery of light.

“Gettler!” hissed Jeb.

“Heh?”

“On the right bank.”

“Torches!”

Monti sat up. “Wha’s happening?”

“Torches along the right bank,” whispered Jeb.

“How far away are they?” asked David.

“A hundred yards at least,” said Gettler.

“Half that,” said Jeb.

“Do they see us?” asked Monti.

“Can’t miss us,” said Jeb.

“What’re they doing?” she asked.

“God knows.”

Something thudded against a wing. Again. A pellet-rattling of taps sounded along the fuselage.

“Darts!” said Gettler. “Start the motor and get us the hell out of here!”

Jeb primed the engine, snapped on the ignition, pulled the starter. It caught on the second revolution, coughed, belched orange flame around the cowling, settled into its off-beat banging. The plane surged down the dark water. Jeb snapped on the wing lights. They punched two round holes out of the nights, caught up a grey fog of insects.

“Turn off that light!” roared Gettler.

“Can’t!” shouted Jeb.

“Turn it off!”

“Shut up and leave me alone!”

They pounded around a slow bend into a wider stretch of water.

Jeb throttled back.

“I thought that Indian said two days downstream!” snarled Gettler.

“Those could’ve been Napos after revenge for the man you killed,” said Jeb.

“Wrong shore!” snapped Gettler.

“You can’t be sure.”

Another bend. The river grew even wider. Jeb shut off the motor, slapped the light switch. They plunged into darkness, coasting slower and slower.

“Why’re you stopping?” demanded Gettler.

“I’m not sure that patch will take this.” He looked at the right shore. “They couldn’t send a dart this far.” Jeb turned. “Check that float patch, Gettler.”

“Check it yourself!”

Jeb shrugged. “Excuse me, Monti.” He opened her door, climbed across her, down to the float, removed the cap by feel, probed inside.

“How is it?” whispered Monti.

“So far so good.”

He replaced the cap, climbed back into his seat.

“It’s awful dark,” whispered David.

“Going to rain,” said Jeb.

“Are we likely to run into rapids at night?” asked Monti.

“Any time—day or night,” said Jeb. “As long as we’re just drifting we can hear them in time—I hope.”

Jeb opened his door, slipped down to the pontoon. The fitful wind imparted a dipping-swaying motion to the plane. He gripped the strut, peered ahead, listened.

“What’re you doing?” whispered Gettler.

“Looking for a place to anchor.”

“Not yet!”

“It’s getting too dark.”

“We’re too close to them! They’ll …”

“They’ll expect us to drift all night. So we won’t.”

“Can’t they still see us?” asked Monti.

“Can you see either shore?” asked Jeb.

“No.”

A hissing sound intruded: the noise of the current soughing around an obstruction. Jeb saw a darker shadow against the blackness ahead. It drew nearer. There came the rhythmic lament of water against a broken limb.

Jeb freed the grapnel, tossed it into the dark shadow.

“What is it?” asked Gettler.

“A water soaked tree caught in shallows.”

“Did you hit it with the anchor?”

“Yes.”

Jeb held the line, felt the anchor catch, twist. The plane swung around downstream, snubbed up short at the end of the line. It began sawing back and forth in a slow, persistent pendulum.

“Where are we?” asked Monti.

Jeb climbed into the cabin, snicked his door shut. “Somewhere in midstream.”

“I’m dying for a smoke,” she said.

“No lights!” snapped Gettler.

“I know it!”

“I’ll take the first watch,” said Jeb. And he thought: Maybe Gettler’s tired enough to fall into a deep sleep. Let him do it just once! I’ll have my gun back!

Gettler turned uneasily. “I’m not sleepy.”

Son-of-a-bitch! thought Jeb.

“You get some rest,” said Gettler. “I’ll watch.”

If I argue he’ll get suspicious, thought Jeb. Well, let him get even more tired. I’ll have a better chance.

“Okay, Gettler.”

Jeb leaned against his door. He still felt feverish, strangely weak and light headed. I’d better take a pill in the morning.

Sleep invaded his mind like a rolling fog.

The plane sawed back and forth … back and forth.

Let him sleep, thought Gettler. He’s no danger to me when he’s asleep. The boy can take the watch when I get tired. He bent to peer at the luminous dial of his watch: eleven minutes to one.

Jeb awoke to rain sounds, and darkness slowly creeping into grey dawn. Light increased. Steel lines of the downpour slanted against the pale green jungle. It was a rain of monotonous violence. It thundered against the plane, pocked the river in countless tiny craters.

“This is the third day,” said David. “I’m keeping count.”

Monti looked out at the rain. “How long’s this going to last?”

“Four or five months,” said Gettler.

She sat upright. “Just like that … like that out there?”

“More or less. There may be a few breaks at first … and maybe not.”

Jeb looked up at the clouds hovering low above the trees that lined the shores.

“How could they see us down here?” demanded Monti. “I mean from a rescue plane?”

“They couldn’t,” said Jeb. He looked at the riverbank, realized that he could actually see the water rising against the gnarled roots. “But that’s not our first problem.”

Abruptly, the tree snag that held their anchor shifted, bumped a few feet downstream.

“What’s that?” demanded Monti.

“Our first problem,” said Jeb. “This river’s going to turn into a raging hell.” He clambered out, pulled in the line, released the grapnel. Rain felt warm and fresh against his face. He stood on the end of the pontoon enjoying the freshness. Shoreline twisted across his vision: greenery dimmed to pastel by the torrent.

Jeb returned to the cabin feeling refreshed and hungry. “Let’s try that fish line, Gettler. I feel lucky.”

“I don’t,” said Gettler.

“What do we have for bait?” asked Jeb.

“Rotten lizard guts,” said Gettler. “I wrapped them in an empty K-ration carton.” He turned around, groped in the luggage compartment.

“Is that what’s smelling up the cabin?” demanded Jeb.

Gettler handed him a reeking package.

Jeb nerved himself to bait the hook, tossed it into the mud yellow river. Dirty suds of foam swirled around the edges of the floats, were beaten flat by the rain when they strayed into the current.

Nothing struck the bait.

The morning wore on through slackening rain. A warm, misty feeling permeated the air. The mildew smell of the cabin grew stronger.

Clouds of gunmetal cotton lifted until they brushed the hilltops above the river. A beaded drapery of raindrops hung on every tree along the shores.

Jeb began to pull in his fish line to examine the bait, suddenly jerked the line, hauled it in frantically.

“Fish!” he shouted.

He lifted it out of the muddy current—a blue and silver flat-nosed catfish that flopped violently on the floor of the cabin where Jeb threw it.

Gettler dispatched the fish with a knife. “Clean it out there,” he said. “I’ll set up the pellet stove on the back of your seat to cook it.”

The fish tasted flat and faintly muddy, but they ate every morsel and wished for more.

A slack, barely moving stretch of river held them. It began to get warmer. Bees hummed about the plane, departed. The rain became an occasional random drop from the rising clouds.

Jeb climbed into the cabin, leaned back, drowsed.

A buzzing insect sound invaded his torpor. He brushed at his face, suddenly snapped upright: wide awake.

“What’s wrong?” asked Monti. “You …”

“Quiet!” He held up his hand, cocked his head to one side.

Gettler leaned over the back of Jeb’s seat. “Plane?”

“Yes, by God!”

Jeb lowered himself to the pontoon.

“Could it be more rapids?” asked Monti. “It sounds …”

“Gettler!” snapped Jeb. “In that slotted pocket under your seat—see if there’s a rocket flare!”

Gettler fumbled in the pocket. “They’d never see it.”

David scrambled out of the way.

“Are you sure it’s a plane?” demanded Monti.

“Sounds like one of the government amphibians from Quito,” said Jeb.

Gettler handed out a thin red tube about a foot long. “This it?”

Jeb grabbed it. “Yes!” He tore at the end wrapping.

“Are they hunting for us?” asked Monti. “Will they come down along the river?”

“No!” Jeb threw away the end wrapping. “Match? For Christ’s sake, somebody give me some fire!”

Monti brought out her cigarette lighter, leaned out, flicked it. Flame mounted on the third spin of the wheel. Jeb held a tiny grey fuse to the fire, saw it sputter, whirled away and scrambled out of the shelter of the wing. He steadied himself against the cowling, pointed the flare toward the clouds.

The motor sound grew louder: a pulsing roar.

“Phu-u-u-ust!”

A round red fireball hissed upward through the clouds. And another … another. Six in all.

“Please, God,” whispered Monti. “Please!”

The pulsating counterpoint of twin engines echoed along the hills. Jeb turned his head to follow the path of the unseen plane. The sound grew fainter upstream, blended with the soft river noises.

“They didn’t see it,” said Gettler.

“Clouds are too thick,” said Jeb.

“Won’t they come down and look for us?” pleaded Monti.

“They’re coming to investigate why the army radio doesn’t answer,” said Jeb. “And they won’t be able to make it until that overcast burns off.”

“Will it?” she asked. “I mean burn off? Will it?”

“Who knows?” Jeb stared up at the clouds. “It could clear upstream, stay cloudy here—or vice versa.”

“Won’t they miss us?” she asked.

“How? They believe at Ramona that you were coming for a week or more. My boys at Milagro know about the gas problem. They could figure I stayed over to bring you out.”

Monti wet her lips with her tongue, brushed a wisp of red hair back from her brows. “If that search plane gets down on the river, and sees the ruin of the army post, won’t they …”

“They may figure we got ours, too,” said Jeb. “Or they may not even think about us at all.”

“But they know about the rancho up there and …”

“I don’t think they’re going to get down through that overcast,” said Jeb.

“Then won’t they send a launch?” she demanded.

“Maybe.”

“They’ll search for us,” she said. “I know they will. They’ll miss me, and they’ll …”

“This is kind of pointless,” said Jeb. “The rainy season’s started. There may be speculation that we crashed somewhere—or that the Jivaro got us—but the weather won’t permit an aerial search.”

She shook her head. “Doesn’t the government care if …”

“This is another country,” said Jeb. He remembered his thought of the preceding night. “And time’s on the jungle’s side.”

Monti straightened, stared upstream at the cloud-capped hills. “Jeb, tell me the truth: What’re our chances?”

“I don’t know. If we don’t lose the plane and get stranded on …”

“I still say we’d be better off in a dugout,” said Gettler.

“How’d you like to’ve been in an open dugout last night when the darts started flying?” asked Jeb. He patted the fuselage. “She may not be much, but she’ll stop darts.”

Monti said: “Jeb, don’t let them capture me. I mean …” She swallowed. “Don’t let them take me alive.”

“Oh, stop being so damn melodramatic!” Jeb cleared his throat.

“Another hundred and fifty miles tells the tale,” said Gettler. “Then we hit Zaparo country.”

“If we get through that ambush downstream,” said Jeb.

“That stupid Indian was lying!”

“Why would he lie? And what the hell difference will it make when we reach Zaparo country? They’re scared witless of the Jivaro! Sure! And don’t forget the curse!”

“Arrrrrgh!” said Gettler. He opened the right hand door, spat over the side, sat back.

“Do they torture?” asked Monti.

“Shut up!” snarled Gettler.

Jeb pointed at the door beside Monti. “Keep yourself busy and you won’t have so much time to worry. You can start by getting down and checking that pontoon to see if our patch is leaking. You saw how David did it.”

“I’ll do it,” said David.

“Let me,” said Monti. “He’s right.”

She opened her door, slid down to the pontoon. Presently she straightened. “It’s dry.”

“Good. Make sure the cap’s put back tight.”

“Can I fish for awhile?” asked David.

“Go ahead,” said Jeb. “Drop the line out that door on your side.” He turned to Gettler. “Were there any more flares in that pocket?”

“No.”

“Sonofabitch!”

“Were there more?” asked Monti.

“Yes. They were probably pilfered to celebrate somebody’s saint’s day.” Jeb turned away, stared downstream.

“I think I hear rapids,” said David.

Jeb cocked his head. “No.” He looked back upstream. “It’s that plane coming back.”

“Maybe they saw the flare!” said Monti.

“No. They’re just going home. And they haven’t had time to land upstream.”

“Have they been all the way to the army post already?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“But we’ve been two days on …”

“Three days,” said Jeb.

“That’s what I meant. It couldn’t …”

“We made it that fast,” said Jeb.

Monti sat back.

The returning plane passed to the east of them. Its sounds disappeared.

Monti began to laugh almost hysterically.

“Stop that!” said Jeb.

She shook her head. “I flew over this jungle without understanding it. And there’s the story of my life: I flew over everything without understanding anything.”

A rock escarpment loomed downstream at a bend in the river. The black outline of it stood out sharply in the rain-cleared air.

“Lava rock,” said Jeb.

“I’m not getting any bites on this fish line,” said David.

“Maybe the bait’s gone,” said Jeb. “Take a look.”

David coiled in the line, held up an empty hook.

“Knock it off for awhile,” said Jeb. “The river’s too muddy.”

“I thought I’d at least catch a piranha,” said David. He wound the line on its stick.

“If you fell in they’d have you in a minute,” said Gettler. “But they’re never around when you want them.”

The plane drifted closer to the lava escarpment. Jeb stared at it. Clouds almost touched the rock. They lowered across the ebony face as he watched.

“You see something up there?” asked Gettler.

“I dunno. Did you?”

“Something moved, but the clouds covered it.”

“Could this be the place?” asked Monti. “I mean where that Indian said the ambush was?”

“I don’t think so,” said Jeb.

“Well, what moved?” she asked.

“Probably a tree,” said Jeb.

“Or Jivaro keeping track of us,” said Gettler.

“The river’s too wide along here for an ambush,” said Jeb.

The yelping cry of a toucan sounded from the jungle on their left.

“What was that?” demanded Monti.

Jeb told her.

“I noticed that all the birds went away when it began to rain,” said David.

“But the bugs didn’t,” said Monti. She scratched at a row of welts on her arms. “Don’t they ever leave?”

Jeb glanced around, experienced a feeling of surprise when he saw that he had been ignoring a cloud of mosquitoes that drifted with the plane.

“You’ll get used to them,” he said. “I hadn’t even noticed them until you mentioned it.”

Monti shuddered. “How can you get used to bugs?”

Gettler smiled to himself. He had been watching the mosquitoes. Their droning accompanied every movement of the plane—and they increased as the day wore on. Gettler studied the sound. The incessant humming seemed to come sometimes from inside his skull—echoing and throbbing.

One mosquito for every memory out of my past, he thought. The swarming presence of the dead. Noisy ghosts.

The cloud-filtered sun settled toward the hills. Darkness built up its hold on the river. Still a gauze curtain or mosquitoes hid the banks.

Then the clouds parted briefly in the west, and they saw the sky like a sheet of burnished turquoise that drifted swiftly into yellow, then a deep wine color as red as a bishop’s cloak. And the river surface became black and oily looking.

There came the soft muttering of wings as a flock of small birds fled over them in the gathering night.

Boiling clouds surged back across the red hem of sunset. They were dirty grey clouds, shading to black. A jagged fire plume of lightning etched itself against the black sky.

And the rain took up its endless stammering on the cabin top.

The group sat in the airplane cabin, secretively separate with their common fear.

Jeb groped on the floor, found the flashlight, probed the rain-crystal darkness.

“What’re you doing?” demanded Gettler.

“Looking for a place to tie up tonight.”

“Won’t the Indians see the light?” asked Monti.

“They’re huddled in their huts tonight,” said Jeb. “What’s that?”

“Looks like an island,” said Gettler. “The damn rain reflects the light so it’s hard to see.”

A misty, grey-green mounding appeared to drift toward them while they remained motionless.

“It’s an island,” said Jeb. “See? There’s current on the other side.”

A tangle of logs, darkly wet and dripping, came into the flashlight’s beam. Jeb loosed the grapnel, tossed it into the logs. There came the “chunk” of metal striking wood. He felt the grapnel bite into something, snapped off the light. The plane swung around into an eddy, hissed through reed grass, stopped.

A din of frogs arose around them: creaking, chirruping, croaking. The rain seemed to quicken its pace—subduing all other sounds.

Not even the faintest glow of moonlight penetrated the clouds. The four humans existed in a world of beating rain suspended between the frog sounds and the faint wash of the river beneath them.

“Don’t anybody talk about food,” said Jeb. He tightened his belt.

“God, no,” said Monti.

“We’ll have to make a real effort at hunting tomorrow,” said Jeb.

“While we’re being hunted,” said Gettler.

Monti began to shiver. “I’m … afraid …” she quavered.

Gettler cleared his throat. “Sorry I frightened you.” And again his voice was the voice of a stranger with the soft and strangely frightening tone of sanity. “You started to tell us about the movie world the other night. Maybe it’d help if you talked.”

“What’s there to tell about a job?” She sounded petulant.

“Tell us about the easy life: smooth things to feel all around you—never any rotten smells or sweaty, sticky clothes against your skin …”

“Where’d you ever hear that fairy story?” she asked.

“The movies I’ve seen all seem so clean and …”

“The audience just sees the polished surface on the product,” she said. “They should get a look at the strain and sweat.” She sighed. “Sometimes the lights are so hot you think you’re actually melting. I’ve worked one whole solid day just smoothing out one phrase in a new song … or getting one scene right.” Her voice became almost harsh: “Huh! No sweaty clothes!”

Gettler said, “ But aren’t there times when …”

“Oh, dry up!” she snapped. Then: “I’m sorry. It’s just that everything seems so hopeless tonight.”

Silence enclosed them.

Monti began to hum, and the throaty voice lifted softly in minor key:

“Sometimes ah feel like a motherless chile … Sometimes ah feel like a motherless chile …”

The beat of the rain carried the rhythm: an endless falling of tears.

“… a lo-o-o-ong wa-a-ay from home.”

She broke off with the curious unfinished lilting that was her trademark.

Gettler took a deep breath like the beginning of a sob.

“You are truly an artist,” he whispered.

“No.” She shook her head. “I’ve just got a good setting and the right mood music.”

“Unhappiness,” said Gettler. “It can be beautiful, too. Curious. I never thought of that before.”

“That’s what we like about the soul!” quipped Monti.

“Stop that!” said Gettler. “You’re trying to hide how you feel.”

“That’s what my psychoanalyst always said,” she agreed.

“I don’t care who knows how I feel,” he said. “You know what your song says to me? It says I was born alone … that I had to do it for myself. And I’ll die alone … for myself. Nothing can subtract from loneliness.”

“It’s just association,” said Monti. “Negro music equals Negro spirituals equals God equals the hereafter equals … What does it equal?”

“I’m not very religious,” said Jeb. “So I don’t know.”

“There’s God-consciousness in every song the Negroes ever created,” said Gettler. “Even the jazz.”

“Well, I’d rather sing a spiritual than go to church, all right,” said Monti. She sniffed.

“God probably appreciates your singing more than your church attendance anyway,” said Jeb. “I know I do.”

“Next thing we’ll be holding a prayer meeting,” said Monti. “Come to Jesus!”

“Nothing like having someone after your head to make you feel religious,” said Jeb. “That I agree.”

Gettler snorted. “Thou hast being, God!” And his voice had recovered all of its insane wildness. “The universe is God’s mistake!”

David stared into the darkness that spouted this wild voice. He felt suddenly alone, lost and numbed by terror.

“There wouldn’t be any God without Man!” snarled Gettler. “God wouldn’t know he existed if it weren’t for Man!”

“I wish the rain would stop,” said Monti.

Jeb sighed.

David tried to work saliva into his dry mouth. He found his voice: “Mr. Gettler, one of my teachers said that every human being has to look for his own religion.” He swallowed. “Isn’t that right?”

“If the rain would just stop long enough to let through a rescue plane,” said Monti.

“You’re not asking much,” said Jeb. “Only a miracle.”

“It’s a problem in courage, son,” murmured Gettler. “It doesn’t take any courage to look for something. But sometimes it takes the courage of the greatest hero to find what you’re looking for.”

“I don’t understand you,” said David.

Gettler patted his arm. “You will, son. You will.”

“But …”

“Take your mother’s song,” said Gettler. “A person cries out against life because it’s lonely, and because it’s separated from whatever created it. But no matter how much you hate life, you love it too. And you know that if you find … whatever It is … you may lose the thing you love. You’ll go back into the caldron for pieces to make something new.”

“We’ve been on this river a century,” said Monti.

“Will it hurt?” whispered David.

“Probably not,” said Gettler.

Jeb wondered at the quietness in Gettler’s voice.

Whenever he talks to David, thought Jeb.

A burst of rain hammered against the wings and cabin top, faded into the familiar muttering.

“Mother?” said David.

“Yes?”

“You haven’t sung my song for a long time.”

A deep warmth suddenly filled Monti’s voice. “So I haven’t.” She hummed softly, almost to herself, then:

“Come on along and listen to … the lullaby of Broadway …”

David sighed, settled back into the seat, let the music go all through him. “She used to sing me to sleep with that song,” he whispered. “When I was just a little kid.”

She sang softer and softer.

David’s breathing deepened.

The song trembled away into silence.

I almost scared the poor kid, thought Gettler. He reviled himself: And for no better reason than that I’m scared myself!

Monti leaned against Jeb’s shoulder. Her hair gave off a musk odor that filled his senses.

“Do you have a girlfriend back in Milagro, Jeb?” she asked.

He cleared his throat. A memory picture of Constancia Refugio became very vivid in his mind: lush figure in a tight bodice, doe-like brown eyes hiding a distant look of mysterious cunning, dark hair framing understated features—everything speaking of descent from a Moorish harem beauty.

“Well, do you?” asked Monti.

“I guess so.”

“What’s that mean?”

“There’s a girl.”

“What’s she like?”

He shrugged.

“Is she beautiful?” persisted Monti.

“Yes.”

“One of those dark, full-breasted types?”

“I guess you’d call her that.”

“Have you had her to bed yet?”

Gettler snorted.

And Jeb thought: Well, I guess the Bohemian types don’t think anything of that kind of talk, but …

“A gentleman,” said Monti. “He refuses to answer.”

“She’s the mayor’s daughter,” said Jeb. “A very old family in Ecuador.”

“Do you want to marry her?”

Again, he shrugged.

Monti straightened. “Have you ever been married, Jeb?”

“When I was a punk just out of college. It … it didn’t turn out very well.”

“Divorce?”

“Yes.”

“Well, don’t feel badly about it. Sometimes things just don’t jell, and sometimes …” She fell silent.

What was it with Roger? she asked herself. I don’t want to miss him. God knows everything wasn’t sweetness and light between us. She put her face in her hands. To hell with it! It’s past! Done! Finished! To hell with it!

“They’re very strict with their women down here,” said Jeb. “It reminds you of mid-Victorian customs that …”

“It’s a wonderful night to dig up the past,” said Monti. “Roll out the old dead bones! Line up the corpses!”

“You’re tired,” said Jeb. “Things’ll look better in the morning.”

“Now there’s a fancy platitude for you,” she said. “The countryside swarming with Indians trying to kill us, and you say …”

“Stow it!” he snapped.

David stirred restlessly.

“So I tried to pat you on the head and tell you we’ll do our best to get you through,” said Jeb. “So I haven’t learned how to use four-letter words in mixed company. Well, I’m doing my best to get us out of a mess!”

“Go ahead! Say it,” she said. “You warned me against coming.”

Gettler chuckled. “Is this the way you talked to your husband?”

“What’s it to you?”

“I wondered what chased him down here,” said Gettler.

Monti whirled, glared into the blackness. “What made an animal out of you, Gettler?”

“I was born that way. Same as every other animal.”

“Weren’t you ever human, even for a day or so?”

“I only pretended.”

“For whom? A woman?”

“Shut up!”

“What happened? She give you the old heave-ho?”

Gettler’s voice was like a tiger growl—deep and menacing: “Stop … pushing … me!”

“So you know what it is to lose someone!” she said.

“Shut up or I’ll kill you!”

Jeb grabbed Monti’s arm, pulled her around.

And now Gettler was certain about Monti’s voice. Even in anger, it carried the same throaty earthy quality as Gerda’s voice. It …

He retreated in terror.

I mustn’t think about Gerda!

Do I know what it is to lose someone?

Gettler felt that he swayed on a precipice of memory, that he might topple at any moment—head foremost into the jaws of chaos.

Gerda!

For one shattering instant he saw Gerda: dead and bloody—a naked, twisted corpse with the S.S. officer standing over her.

The muscles of his back quivered and tingled with the effort to reject the memory. He dug his fingernails into his cheeks, bit down on his lower lip to keep from crying out the way he had cried out beneath the lash.

“Animal,” said Monti. She pulled away from Jeb’s hand.

Gettler drew in a quavering breath, hissed: “Leave me alone! Leave me alone! Leave me alone!”

The darkness trembled with suppressed violence.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Monti.

And she couldn’t explain to herself why she’d said this. It was just that Gettler’s voice carried such desperation.

But to Gettler it was Gerda’s voice. He turned his face into the corner. Tears burned down his cheeks. He wrestled with an indigestible fragment of experience, seeing it for what it was: the incident of terror out of his past had broken off an entire layer of his being—and this insane fragment was his own enemy, the enemy of everyone.

Calmness took a long time returning to him, but then he felt cleansed, relaxed.

“The trouble,” whispered Gettler, “is that everybody’s afraid of everybody else. Cowardice makes us beasts.”

And that’s what killed you, Rog, he thought. Cowardice. And a Nazi sadist with a whip. A man you never knew.

“Maybe you’re right,” said Monti.

“I know I’m right,” said Gettler. “Cowardice killed …” He stopped, overcome by a feeling of confusion.

“Killed?” asked Monti. “Are you trying to tell me that Roger …”

“Oh, no … no,” said Gettler.

That was too close! he thought. Cunning swelled in him tensed his nerves. His lower lip trembled uncontrollably.

“Roger was one of the bravest men I ever knew,” he said. “Even when he was trapped.”

“What were you saying then?” she asked.

“I was only going to say that cowardice kills the human half of us.”

Jeb felt that he had missed part of the conversation. Monti had crowded Gettler almost to the point of … The point of what? A confession that he killed Roger Bannon?

Cowardice? Trapped?

And Jeb suddenly recalled a scene out of his childhood. He had been David’s age, just turned twelve. And with a new .22 rifle—a birthday rifle. Hunting quail along a fence line of his uncle’s ranch in Eastern Oregon. Two of his uncle’s mismatched brindle hounds had burst over a rise in pursuit of a scrawny bitch coyote. The coyote had seen the boy and swerved left only to be trapped in a fence corner.

In the corner, the animal that was a symbol of cowardice had turned and slashed the two dogs into bloody ribbons. And the child Jeb had watched in awe, allowing the coyote to escape.

Now—remembering that scene—Jeb felt that here encapsulated was a summary of all human problems: some people were hounds, and some were the pursued and the trapped.

“I will take the first watch,” said Gettler.

Is he coyote or hound? Jeb asked himself. He’s hound. As long as he holds the guns. Maybe tonight we can reverse our roles …

But sleep overcame him: a were-slumber peopled by animal-faced women who hurled poisoned spears at him. Jeb ran and dodged the whole night through. And he awoke at dawn as stiff and cramped as if the dream has been reality.

The sonofabitch! He let me sleep again!

Jeb straightened.

A restless drapery of fog cloaked the river.

David leaned forward. “This is the fourth day,” he whispered. “How far’ve we come?”

“Something over three hundred miles,” said Jeb. He looked at the altimeter: eighteen hundred and fifty feet.

“Have the Indians followed us for three hundred miles?” asked David.

“Yes.”

“Won’t they ever give up?”

Jeb chuckled. “They’ll give up.”

Gettler straightened. “Let’s get moving.”

Jeb nodded, looked out at the shrouded island. The river had risen in the night to cover everything but the tips of bushes and the matchstick pile of logs that held the grapnel. Flooded remnants of bushes and grass bent downstream, vibrated with the current. The plane rested solidly against one of the logs.

“What’re we waiting for?” asked Gettler.

“You’re awful damn anxious to head for …” Jeb nodded downstream. “Them.”

“We can’t run away from them,” said Gettler.

“We’re trapped, so we turn and fight,” said Jeb. “Okay.”

Monti stirred, rubbed her eyes. “I dreamed that …” She looked up at the fog, the ghost-smoke along the island. “A plane came in my dream.”

Jeb opened his door, slipped down to the float, wrenched the grapnel out of its log, pushed off. The current seized the plane. The river held a new feeling of power, a swifter flow.

“When did the rain stop?” asked Monti.

“Just before dawn,” said David.

“Will it clear today?” asked Monti. She looked up at the platinum-colored sky.

Jeb hung the grapnel on the strut, coiled the line. “ I dunno. What do you think, Gettler?”

“Maybe.”

“If it clears will a plane come and get us?” asked David.

“Quien sabe?” said Jeb.

“What’s that mean?” asked David.

“Who knows?” said Jeb. “That’s what it means.”

He tightened his belt another notch, found the fish line, baited the hook with a damp beetle he caught resting on the strut.

“I’m hungry,” said David.

Jeb tossed the hook into water that was dirty brown, turgid and roiling. The thought of a fish made him tremble: a fat, juicy, wriggling fish …

Flooded banks rushed past them, with the jungle beyond growing clearer as the fog lifted. The river lapped at gnarled, obscene roots.

“Is it going to clear?” demanded Monti.

A fat drop of rain splashed against the windshield in front of her. Another and another.

“That answer your question?” asked Jeb.

Monti leaned back, closed her eyes. Why? Oh, God! Why? She thought about the Indians downstream. Why can’t we wait? Just tie up and wait?

A barrage of rain whipped against the windshield. The plane turned, dipped and wavered.

Jeb tied the fish line to the strut, hastily re-rigged the sea anchor, threw it into the heaving current.

Another blast of wind and rain shook the plane. It slacked off, then came in stinging sheets that blotted all color from the banks, left the four humans drifting in a grey world. The wind died, but the rain still fell so thickly that it appeared to move about horizontally.

Jeb recovered the sea anchor, hung it on the strut.

There seemed no separation between wet and dry. Through the rain pall they saw a mottled granite shore pass silently like a surrealist backdrop.

Something tugged at the fish line.

Jeb jerked at the line.

“Have you got something?” asked Gettler.

“I dunno.”

Another jerk.

Violence exploded on the other end of the line. Jeb held it grimly, gained two feet, lost one foot, gained another two feet.

Monti watched him. She wet her lips with her tongue.

“Careful,” whispered Gettler. “Don’t lose it.”

“What’s he got?” asked David.

Gettler shook his head.

A green shape almost three feet long broached beside the pontoon, spattered water over Jeb, and sounded. The line burned through his fingers.

“It’s a palinche!” said Gettler.

“What’s a palinche?” asked Monti. “Is it good to eat?”

“It’s the native name for a kind of tarpon,” said Gettler.

“It’s boney but edible.”

Again, Jeb brought the fish alongside. It rolled. Abruptly, the water around the fish erupted to darting forms: piranha. The palinche threshed, tried to dive, but Jeb hoisted it out of the water. Two piranha fell from it. Others leaped vainly out of the river. One fell across the float, vibrated its tail against the metal, splashed back into the water.

Jeb dropped a ragged, tailless remnant of palinche onto the floor of the cabin. The piranha were gone before he could free the hook and drop it back into the water.

“They left us a little bit of it,” said Gettler.

He set up the pellet stove.

“Aren’t you going to try for piranha?” asked David.

“This is a meal,” said Gettler. “Leave the little cannibals alone.” He cut out a section of fish liver. “Save this for bait. We can make a good meal on what the bastards left us.”

They ate the fish half raw, searching out every crumb.

“I never thought I’d like the taste of mud,” said Monti.

“They do taste a little on the dirt side,” said Jeb.

“Delicious,” said Monti. “Catch another one.”

Jeb took the fish line. “I’ll …”

The plane lurched. He slipped and clutched at the seat in front of him.

“What the hell?”

“Shallows,” said Gettler. “We’re out of the channel.”

Jeb dropped the fish line onto the cabin floor, grabbed up a cane pole. Gettler swarmed down to the other float, took a pole.

The plane rocked and scraped, swung free in a new current.

Jeb looked around. The river appeared a mile wide, spotted with clumps of trees, floating islands of sedge, drifting logs.

“Do you want me to fish?” asked David.

“Leave it alone,” said Jeb. “We’re in trouble.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Monti.

“River’s over its banks,” said Gettler. “We’re liable to get hung up.”

Again the plane skidded across shallows.

Jeb felt every movement against the patched float as though a sore on his own body were being scraped. But the patch held.

They pushed and fended with the cane poles, found more deep water. The work with the poles became a steady thing, keeping the plane out of the random currents that coursed into the drowned jungle.

Once, they hung up tail first where the river poured between two trees. Another time, they bumped and thudded over a twisting, water-logged snag that paced them downstream—rolling and diving like a live thing.

And the rain poured endlessly out of a leaden sky. Birds and animals disappeared, but the insects remained, and even increased. They hovered under the wings, invaded the cabin.

Monti slapped at her arms, neck.

“These bugs are driving me crazy!”

“They’re working in relays now, said Jeb. “There’s a fresh crew out here under the wings waiting to get in at you.”

“It’s not funny!”

“Take it easy, Monti.”

She pressed her palms against her face. “I hate them! I hate them!”

In the middle of the afternoon the rain slackened, fell off to an occasional plopping drop that spattered against the river, thudded on the plane. Pale avenues of blue opened in the clouds.

“It’s clearing!” said Monti. “Oh, my God! It’s clearing!”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” said Jeb.

They poled the plane onto a sodden mud bank by an open savannah. Jeb stared across the rain-flattened grass at the oily green jungle wall some two hundred yards away.

“See anything?” asked Gettler.

“Something moved. Could’ve been a leaf shedding water … or an animal …”

“Or an Indian?”

“Dunno.”

Jeb leaned against the fuselage, closed his eyes. “David.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Watch the jungle.”

“Sure.”

Gettler crawled into the cabin, sprawled in the rear seat. “We’ve got to find a canoe,” he panted. “This thing’s too heavy. It’s a man-killer.”

Monti leaned out the door above Jeb. “Do you hear something?” she asked.

He brought his attention out of his weariness, opened his eyes, concentrated on listening. Above the dripping aftermath of rain he heard a faint roaring like a distant wind through trees.

“Is it rapids?” asked Monti.

“Sounds like it.”

Gettler aroused himself, leaned out the door on his side, cocked his head. “Yeah. Rapids.” He sat back, began checking the rifle.

“Is this the place?” whispered Monti.

“What place?” asked David. “You mean …”

“Hush!” she said.

“What do you think, Gettler?” asked Jeb.

“It’s probably the place.”

Monti stared at the jungle. “Jeb!” she hissed.

“Huh?”

“I saw something move … over by those trees.”

They focused their attention on the jungle.

“What’d it look like?” asked Gettler.

“Just movement. I couldn’t see what it was.”

“We’d better shove off,” said Jeb. “Gettler, come down and hold us with a pole until I get the motor started.”

“Wait,” said Gettler. He looked downstream.

“What for?” asked Jeb. “Time’s on their side.”

Gettler swallowed, shook his head. The immediacy of fear clogged his mind. Ahead, nauseous violence! The pendulum that ruled him hurtled far out into anger.

“Let ’em come!” He began to tremble. “I’ll cut their guts out!”

“I can hold the plane,” said Monti.

Jeb glanced at the jungle. “Okay.” He clambered into the seat as Monti slid down to the opposite float.

At that moment, a gap opened in the clouds. Sunshine hammered down upon them, set the world to steaming.

“The sun!” said Monti.

Jeb looked up at the blue avenue opening overhead.

Steam began to mist the river surface. It hovered in soft eiderdown patches whirling a few feet off the water. The interior of the plane began to fog. Vapor condensed on the windshield.

“A plane could see us now,” said David.

Jeb nodded, glanced again at the jungle. Something moved the tall grass halfway to the green wall of trees.

“Monti,” whispered Jeb. “Give a very gentle push and climb inside.”

“But you haven’t started the …”

“Do as I say!”

She leaned against the pole.

Immediately, bronzed figures leaped from the grass, charged toward the plane. A current gripped the floats, turned the plane. Darts thudded into the fuselage.

Gettler screamed, slammed open the door beside Jeb, began firing the rifle. David pulled his mother in the other door.

“I’m all right!” she shouted.

Jeb pulled the starter. The engine coughed twice, died. He pumped the primer, and again pulled the starter. And again the motor failed to start.

Gettler re-loaded the rifle.

A circling current whirled the plane around a bend. The sound of the rapids grew louder.

Again Jeb pulled the starter.

“Baby,” he prayed. “Come on, baby. You can do it.”

The motor suddenly caught, coughed and backfired, settled into its banging roar. Oil fumes began to choke the cabin.

“Close the doors!” shouted Jeb.

They were slammed.

“You okay, Monti?”

“Yes.” She began to shake.

“Fasten your belts.” He locked his with his left hand.

Another bend: and ahead—no more than a quarter of a mile—the flooding river plunged off between glassy walls of black rock. Water tumbled and leaped in crazy violence, like a wild thing trying to escape.

The plane skimmed across a glossy pool, and a slithering current shot them sideways—a hundred feet closer to the smooth black wall.

Spray filled the air.

And the vast pulsing roar of the chasm overcame all other sounds.

The plane shot over the brink of white foam.

Something geysered the water beside them. A staccato rattling shook the right wing: an insect sound beneath the overpowering thunder of water.

All in one flickering moment, Jeb saw the quick violent motion of Indians along the rim of the canyon. A line of boulders thundered down the rock walls above the plane. And it was like a slow-motion movie. Everything stretched out … everything except his own responses. He slammed his hand against the throttle. The motor banged and leaped as though it would break out of its mountings.

The plane slammed down against a curling wave, and a new current rushed them forward. River and straining motor combined. The little plane surged ahead in the plunging current … and they were airborne!

Jeb fought the controls in the raging air of the canyon. In three pulsing seconds they were out of it, and thundering over a line of trees … then back across the river channel. Another tree-spiked hill shot beneath them, and a long straight avenue of river opened out ahead. It looked like turbulent brown oil.

He became conscious of Gettler pounding his shoulder.

“Go, man! Look at us go!”

Monti was crying and laughing beside him.

“We made it!” she shouted. “Oh, thank God! We made it!”

But the controls felt heavy under Jeb’s hands. He saw downstream a great bend in the river—and lowering beyond that a wide, island-broken lake of flooded land. He eased back on the wheel, trying to gain more altitude. The plane began to stagger at the edge of stalling. He tipped the nose back down, inches below level flight, nursing it for distance.

“How long to Ramona?” shouted Monti.

Jeb shook his head. He glanced at the oil pressure gauge, the temperature. The temperature needle climbed inexorably toward the red zone. Oil pressure was falling away.

Gettler said: “Man! I thought you said this thing wouldn’t fly!”

“It’s not going to fly much longer,” said Jeb.

The river curved off to the right through more drowned land. A thin furrow of turbulent water marked the main channel. Jeb followed it.

The temperature needle hovered on the edge of the red.

He became conscious of a heavy smell of gasoline, looked left, then right, and fought down a surge of terror. A multi-barbed spear, its tip glistening with shards of aluminum, protruded through the wing. Gasoline whipped away from the spear hole in a spray.

Jeb yanked back on the throttle, cut off the motor.

A whistling sound filled the cabin.

“What’s wrong?” shouted Gettler.

Jeb pointed to the right, kept his attention on the river.

“Jesus!” whispered Gettler. “Skewered!”

The plane yawed sickeningly. Jeb fought the controls, brought the plane down in a splashing, rocking dead-stick landing.

An eddy turned the plane.

Monti spoke in a dried out voice: “How far’d we come?”

“Maybe ten miles,” said Jeb. He looked at the spear tip jutting from the wing, glanced up at the gauge on the wing tank. It read empty. A last few drops of gasoline dripped from the spear, made rainbow circles on the muddy river.

“No smoking, Monti,” said Jeb. He nodded towards the spear. “Right in the tank! The bastards!”

He looked at the gauge on the left wing tank: three quarters—twenty to twenty-five gallons.

“How much gas does that leave us?” asked Gettler.

Jeb told him, turned to David. “David, get down and check the patch on that float.”

“Yes, sir.” He crawled over Gettler’s knees.

Monti held the door handle. “What about Indians?”

“We’ve left them behind,” said Jeb.

“For a little while,” muttered Gettler.

Monti opened her door. David clambered down to the float.

“Will they try again?” she asked.

“As soon as they discover that we’re down,” said Gettler. “And they’ll be twice as mad because we escaped their ambush.”

Jeb nodded.

David leaned in the door. “It’s dry inside. I felt the patch under water, and it seems to be all right.”

“Once that gum sets it holds like iron,” said Jeb. “Okay, David. Put the cap back on tight and get in.”

David obeyed.

“What’ll they try next?” whispered Monti.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” said Jeb.

The current swept the plane across a flooded island.

“Here go the Volga boatmen,” said Jeb. He opened his door, slid down to the pontoon. The cane pole was gone, lost in the wild flight through the canyon.

Gettler went out the other door, stood on the opposite pontoon. He placed the rifle on the floor in the rear with the butt ready at hand.

“Is your pole gone, too?” asked Jeb.

“Yes.”

Gettler turned, stared at the spear tip.

Jeb reached for the machete under the front seat, hesitated. A rough, leaf-wrapped object about two inches long and an inch in diameter lay on the floor by the machete handle. Jeb glanced up. They were all looking at the spear. He palmed the object, slipped it into his pocket, slid out the machete.

“Look for a stand of caña brava,” said Jeb.

“Right.” Gettler nodded, studied the drowned shore.

Jeb took the machete in his left hand, slid his right into his pocket, fumbled off the leaf wrappings. The thing inside felt hard, glassy. He risked a glance at it in his cupped hand., jammed it quickly back into his pocket.

A raw emerald! And Christ! What a monster!

Jeb’s mind began to fill out details of his suspicions.

There’s why Bannon was murdered. They found a mine! Maybe one of the old Inca mines! And Gettler wants it all for himself!

The plane rounded another bend, twisted along an eddy toward a shallow mud bank. A line of cane trees screened the jungle beyond the mud.

Jeb knelt, paddled with the machete, saw Gettler crouch on the other pontoon, paddle with both hands.

A tongue of current pushed them onto the mud. The plane swung around with its tail pointing downstream. Jeb tossed the grapnel over the cowl, saw it catch in matted grass. He slid off the pontoon, slogged across to the canes.

Gettler stared at the jungle, one hand on the rifle butt.

Jeb cut four poles, passed them to Gettler, then stepped down and worked the spear out of the wing.

A short stream of gasoline flooded out behind the spear handle, dwindled to random droplets.

Behind two of the spear barbs a dark brown gum remained. Jeb touched it with his fingertip, tried to smell it, but was defeated by the overpowering odor of gasoline.

“Curare?” asked Gettler.

“Looks like it.”

“The sonsofbitches!” snarled Gettler.

“Is it really deadly?” asked Mont.

“An alkaloid,” said Gettler. “It paralyzes the muscles.”

“Isn’t there any cure?” she asked.

“A stuff called prostygmine helps,” he said. “Any in your kit, Logan?”

“Four ampoules,” said Jeb. He stared at the gummy substance on his finger, wiped it against his pants.

Monti shuddered.

“It kills by smothering,” said Gettler. “So artificial respiration helps. The Indians force down big doses of salt water, and that seems to …”

“Stop it!” she cried. “I don’t want to hear about it!”

Jeb recovered the grapnel, sloshed back to his float, clambered aboard, scraped the mud from his shoes. He wedged the spear against the strut beside a spare cane pole.

“Why’re you keeping that spear?” demanded Gettler. His eyes looked wary.

“It’s a weapon,” said Jeb. “We may need it.”

“It’s no good against a gun,” said Gettler. He leaned into a cane pole, pushed the plane off the mud.

I read you, thought Jeb. And his mind returned to the emerald in his pocket. What happened if Gettler misses this rock? He glanced across at the bulges in Gettler’s jacket. Maybe he has enough that he won’t miss this one. Would he kill us if he finds out I have the emerald?

Jeb pushed on his cane pole.

The plane moved toward mid-river. A whirling current caught the floats, swept the plane along on a brown tide.

Gettler rested.

What’ll it take to turn him into a raging killer? Jeb asked himself.

The uneasy truce between them filled Jeb with a sudden fearful anxiety.

We’ve got to get the guns away from him!

The plane coursed around another bend.

Downstream, on a flat elevation behind the left bank, a squat grouping of thatched huts huddled behind a thorn wall. Two lines of fire-blackened stumps reached out toward the jungle like rows of rotten teeth. No canoes lined the river bank. Nothing moved in the huts.

A dog yapped in the jungle behind the village, and was silenced in mid-yelp.

“Jivaro village,” said Jeb.

Gettler studied the scene. “Jivaro,” he agreed.

“Where are they?” asked Monti.

“The fighting men are all back at the canyon,” said Jeb.

“There’ll be nothing but women, children and old men here,” said Gettler.

“Where?” asked David.

“Hiding in the jungle back there.”

The plane drifted closer, and the pungent odor of freshly ground cassava root wafted across Jeb’s nose. It started a swift, stomach-gripping pang of hunger.

“Where’re their canoes?” asked Monti.

“Some of them are hidden,” said Gettler. “The others are upstream at the ambush.”

They drifted past the village, watched the blank doorways. A plantation of cassava and pineapple came in view below the village.

Gettler pointed, said: “Christ! Look at the pineapple!”

“Enough to last us a month,” said Jeb.

“Don’t I know it!” snapped Gettler. He lifted out the rifle with a sudden, violent anger, sent a bullet smashing into one of the huts. “That’ll teach you! You dirty bastards!”

Jeb felt a quick affinity with the gesture.

“Why don’t they come after us in their canoes?” asked David.

“They’re vulnerable on the open river where we can outshoot them,” said Jeb. “And as long as our motor holds out, we can outrun them.”

“But there’re so many of them.”

“They’re not the kind to commit suicide,” said Jeb.

David shook his head. “They have guns, too!”

“But they aren’t very good with them,” said Jeb. “It was a lucky fluke shot that got us.”

“What if they snagged us with something?” demanded Monti. “A net or something?”

Gettler’s voice arose in screaming fury: “Shut up!”

Monti fell silent.

Another bend hid the village.

Jeb could feel Gettler’s hysteria dissipate. “How about checking that pontoon again?” he asked.

Gettler nodded, bent over the cap. Presently, he stood up, said: “Still dry.”

“The sky’s clear,” said Monti. “Why doesn’t a rescue plane come?”

“They probably don’t know there’s anybody to rescue,” said Jeb. He pushed his cap back, wiped at his forehead. A sudden wave of nausea swept over him. The sun glare off the river hit him with what felt like an actual physical pressure. His head throbbed.

The plane floated through a great silence of trembling heat. A damp pressure of warmth and unnatural stillness enclosed Jeb. He shook his head against a momentary dizziness. And for a brief second he saw two shorelines, one above the other. It left him strangely out of breath. Another wave of dizziness passed over him. The river rose and fell nauseatingly before his eyes like waves of the sea.

Monti leaned out the door above him. “Jeb? Is something wrong? You look pale.”

“Just the heart,” he whispered.

“Maybe you’d better rest awhile.”

Gettler frowned across the cowling. “You sick, Logan?”

“The heat’s getting me.”

A brief compassion touched Gettler. “Then take a rest.”

And he snarled at himself: Sure! Let me do all the work! I’m the strength by which we survive!

The thought of resting caressed Jeb’s mind. He wedged the cane pole against the strut, dragged himself up into the seat. How good the seat back felt against his neck. An electric current of fatigue tingled through his body. The sensation drained away into sleep.

Monti studied Jeb’s face. A bristly matting of reddish beard softened the angular chin line. He breathed in a shallow, choppy rhythm. Perspiration dotted his forehead. He appeared almost drained of vitality.

She shook her head, turned away, and for the first time allowed herself to examine the possibility that there would be no rescue. The river stretched out endlessly in her mind: a track that carried them along curves of burning light and crawling darkness.

Her own words came back to her: “I flew over this jungle without understanding it.” And she thought: That’s the way it’s been with all my yesterdays. I flew over everything and never looked down.

The river and her own life underwent a subtle fusion in her thoughts. It was a decadent pilgrimage on a current that narrowed everything down to its one track. And she floated on it so carefully inert … so static, willing everything under the surface to remain undisturbed. But something was going on beneath her frozen surface, and the currents that boiled up to tear at her consciousness filled her with a mind-clotting dread.

We can’t possibly make it, she thought. There’s too much against us. We’re going to die.

She pressed the knuckles of her right hand against her teeth. The air around her throbbed with heat and fear. The river was a great serpent that would devour them.

Gettler leaned in, cleared his throat. “Is he sick?”

Monti shuddered, focused on the question. She put her hand on Jeb’s forehead. “He feels feverish.”

“Christ!”

Gettler withdrew, fended a log with the pole.

Let him die then! he thought. One less to feed. And I’ll have the woman to myself. He glanced at Monti. There was a female grace to her even in the repose of fatigue. Jeb beside her was drained out, sprawling like a sack.

The plane drifted past a long tendril of muddy land.

Gettler poled away from it.

Jeb climbed out of a black pit into semi-awareness. Faint sounds intruded: a splashing, the soft creak of metal, an unintelligible whisper. He hung suspended in a place that had no shape or size, no orientation, no relationship to himself. There was an odor of mildew.

Damn plane’s rotting apart under us!

Plane!

River!

He opened his eyes, and his first impression was of violent colors: sunset splashing across the peaks directly ahead. He lowered his gaze to the shoreline. It appeared blurred by grey fuzz.

I’m not awake yet.

Jeb shook his head. But the fuzz remained.

Can’t be rain.

He looked to the right. Gettler stood on the pontoon, a cane pole gripped loosely in his left hand. There was no fuzziness to Gettler’s outline … only the shore beyond.

“Are you awake?” asked Monti.

Jeb swallowed, spoke past a dry tongue: “Yes. How long have I been sleeping?”

“About three hours.” She pressed her hand against his forehead. “You had a fever, but you feel okay now … cooler.”

Jeb straightened against a pulling of torpor. Still that feeling of clarity and detail about everything except the shoreline.

“Can’t seem to make out the shore.”

“Ashes,” said Gettler. “Been falling all afternoon.”

“Fire?”

“Volcano,” said Gettler. “Caught a glimpse of it awhile ago.” He looked across the cowling. “Sky’s darker down there. Smoke.”

“Is it dangerous?” asked Monti.

“The river doesn’t go close enough to it,” said Jeb. He looked back at David. “In the medicine box … bottle of terramycin … give me two pills.”

David turned, dug behind the seat. Presently, he handed Jeb two tablets.

Jeb washed them down with a splash of warm water from the canvas bucket. He handed the bucket to Monti, leaned back, closed his eyes. I can’t get sick, he thought. I don’t dare!

He heard Monti drinking from the water bag, the gurgling slosh as she put the bag on the floor.

Gettler came along the float, leaned in the door. “Logan.”

Jeb opened his eyes, turned his head without raising it from the seat back. “Yeah?”

“How far d’you figure we’ve come?”

Jeb closed his eyes. The question seemed to have no reference to reality. A heavy weight just behind his eyes obstructed thought. He struggled against the weight without success, shook his head.

“The high water’s giving us a boost,” said Gettler.

He reached out with the pole, fended off a snag that turned in the brown current beside them. A root lifted, rolled, submerged.

“How far’ve we come from that village?” asked Jeb.

“Maybe twenty-five miles.”

It was an unintelligible figure … a zero added to zero.

“Don’t you have a map?” asked Gettler.

Map?

Jeb opened his eyes. “There’s a home-made one with the others in the seat pocket behind Monti. Not accurate except for some of the altitudes I recorded myself.”

“Over three hundred miles anyway,” said Gettler.

“Won’t the Indians from the village follow us by canoe?” asked Monti.

“They’re with us,” said Gettler. “Canoes or afoot.”

Jeb sniffed at the odor of mildew in the plane, the clinging sourness of perspiration. We’re starving, he thought. Got to find food.

“Will they come in the dark?” she asked.

“Probably not,” said Jeb. “Superstitious. Can’t see the death finger at night.”

“What’s the death finger?” asked David.

“They think death’s not natural,” said Gettler. “They think it comes only when a witch doctor points his finger at you.”

Jeb opened his eyes. The forest skyline was a blurred ridge against the saffron hem of sunset. The sky overhead was tawny with falling ashes. Darkness washed over them with an abrupt feeling of purity, dissipated as a wind arose to swirl ashes into the cabin.

Monti coughed at the touch of the sulphurous dust.

The moon came up to draw a yellow trail along the water. A rush of wind shook the plane, hummed through the trees. The wind increased, and they saw the air become clearer, the moonlight more whitely brilliant. The light spilled out over the dark forest and onto the river.

Jeb found the flashlight, directed it against the shore.

“What’re you doing?” demanded Gettler.

“Checking the height of the water. It’s up again.”

“More rain behind us,” said Gettler.

Jeb turned off the light.

Moonlight flooded over them: a milky, impersonal glow. And an enormous silence enclosed the drifting plane. It stretched from the silvered peaks ahead into every jungle shadow, reaching out in all directions as far as the mind could imagine.

Jeb leaned forward, looked up. The stillness spread straight up to the stars. He found the Southern Cross on their left, looked back to the moon.

Gettler came in from the pontoon, sank heavily onto the seat, grunted.

Again the silence enfolded them.

“A place like this could drive you crazy,” said Monti. “It makes you feel that … you don’t matter.”

“We have to solve the food problem,” said Gettler.

“Some kind of meat,” said Jeb.

“But how can you hunt?” asked Monti. “Isn’t it too dangerous … out there? I mean … with the Indians?”

“Just being here’s dangerous,” said Jeb.

“Just being alive is dangerous,” said Gettler. And again it was as though darkness temporarily erased his madness. The low voice carried a weary note of calmness.

But Monti was caught up in a new fear: What if something happened that left me alone here? If they go hunting … She could not even face the thought.

“The jungle terrifies me,” she said.

“The unknown,” murmured Gettler. “The jungle’s the omnipresent unknown that …”

“Oh, stop playing with words!” she snapped. “We know you’re educated.”

“That’s the difference between us and the savages,” said Gettler.

“Gosh, the moon’s bright,” said David.

“We’ve tangled ourselves in a snare of words,” said Gettler.

“He drives me nuts!” hissed Monti.

Jeb patted her arm.

“But the words are empty of everything except a kind of vacant ritual,” said Gettler. “They’re refined past all meaning. They’re like the finest pastry flour: capable of making a sickly sweet civilized cookie with no nourishment.”

“Words?” asked David.

“Yes, words.”

“Won’t anything shut him up?” whispered Monti.

“Then what are words?” asked David. “Shouldn’t we talk?”

“Filling David full of that crap!” hissed Monti.

“Words are actually little tags like they put on your luggage when you travel,” said Gettler. “They label something that’s moving … something that’s changing. They mark a position on a circle. They tell you where it starts, and where it must return.”

“Crap!” said Monti.

“Just another label,” chuckled Gettler.

“Don’t the Indians use words?” asked David.

“Yes, but they still know how to talk with their bodies. And they still read nature directly without man-made noise in the way.”

“Do they really cut off your head?” asked David.

Gettler choked on a gasping breath.

Christ! I’m talking like damned-good Bannon! he thought.

A nerve twitched at the corner of Gettler’s mouth. He chuckled: a cold sound. “See! It takes a child to cut through the sham. How simple the difference between savage and civilized: a matter of cutting off the head!”

“Will you shut up!” cried Monti. She pressed her hands against her mouth, stared at the moon trail ahead.

“They kill us and take our heads,” said Gettler. “They believe they subjugate our spirits that way. Do you …”

“Please!” said Monti.

“Knock it off,” said Jeb. “You’re frightening Monti.”

“But don’t you see it?” demanded Gettler. “Don’t you see the difference? The savage tries to conquer the spirits of the dead. Civilization tries to conquer the spirits of the living!”

“Knock it off, Gettler,” said Jeb. “You’re being morbid.”

“I’m being a realist!” barked Gettler. “The world’s not what our labels say it is! Nothing says what I am! Nor you!”

“Don’t you believe in anything?” demanded Monti.

“I believe in myself!”

Again silence blotted up their voices.

The plane turned slowly in an eddy.

The sonofabitch, thought Jeb. Scaring Monti. Mixing up that poor kid.

“Do you understand what I said, David?” asked Gettler.

“I don’t know, sir. You say things aren’t what we call them. That’s funny talk. I …” He fell silent.

“Go ahead,” said Gettler.

“Well … what am I, then?”

“Ahhh,” said Gettler. “What is the self? The eternal question.”

“I’m more interested in where we’re going to find food,” snapped Monti.

“The female nourishes,” said Gettler. “But David’s question fits our present situation, too. Here we are—isolated, lost in the omnipresent unknown that I …”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” said Monti. She turned sideways, pressed her cheek against the seat back.

“Where’s the flashlight?” asked Gettler.

“What do you want with it?” asked Jeb.

“I want to answer the boy’s question. Give it here.”

Jeb found the light, passed it back.

Gettler pressed the switch. Light stabbed the darkness.

“What am I doing, David?” asked Gettler.

“What am I doing, David?” mimicked Monti.

“You’re shining the flashlight,” said David.

“You’re shining the flashlight,” mimicked Monti.

Jeb pressed her arm for silence. Gettler’s actions and words suddenly fascinated him. A madman might just know! he thought.

“See how the light reaches out there,” said Gettler.

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s the self.”

“You mean like that light shining there?”

“Yes. The self’s a projection from something else. It has no other reality. The self’s an image … another symbol.”

He turned off the light.

“Crap,” said Monti. But she sounded defensive.

David spoke into the darkness: “Is God shining the light, Mr. Gettler?”

“Who knows?” said Gettler.

“Come to Jesus!” said Monti.

“Everyone strives for consciousness of God,” said Gettler. “And do you know what frightens me? I’m afraid I’ll see the hand on the light switch … and it’ll be my own hand.”

The plane drifted in and out of moon shadows. A darker shadow suddenly swept across the river. Jeb looked up to see shreds of sky torn out of rushing clouds.

“It’s getting cloudy,” he said.

A silver-rimmed thunderhead erased the moon. They heard the wind stirring in the jungle. The plane rocked, turned. Again the moon appeared.

“We’d better tie up for the night,” said Jeb. “That looks like an island ahead … that dark place.”

“The river’s full of islands in the wet season,” said Gettler.

Jeb opened his door, slid down to the pontoon. Gettler clambered down to the opposite pontoon. The plane drifted closer to the mound of darkness.

“Looks flooded,” said Gettler. He began poling toward the island as a current tugged them away.

Jeb readied the grapnel. His knees felt weak and trembling. He gripped the strut with his left hand. There came a soughing of water through bushes and grass. Jeb threw the grapnel into the shadows, felt it grab. The plane swung downstream, dragging and scratching through drowned bushes and grass, stirring up a fog of insects. Jeb ducked a reaching limb, prayed that the patched float would hold. He could see the darker shadows of the jungle shore close on the right. The other shore was farther away.

Jeb dragged himself back into the cabin, sprawled in the seat. The door remained open. He willed himself to pull it closed, and again sank back against the seat.

Gettler crawled into the rear, grunted as he settled himself comfortably.

“How’re you feeling, Jeb?” asked Monti.

“Weak as a kitten. I better take a couple more pills.”

She found the medicine, helped him with the water.

Gettler said: “I s’pose this means I’ll have to stand all the watches, too.”

David said: “I can …”

“I’m feeling weak, but I’m wide awake,” said Jeb. “I slept all afternoon.”

Gettler sighed, a heavy sound filled with weariness.

He’s tired, thought Jeb. He’ll probably sleep like a log, now that I’m too weak to jump him! A sense of impotence surged through him.

Wind and current tugged at the plane, set up an uneasy rocking motion that stopped when the wind died.

“All right,” said Gettler. “Take the first watch, Logan, but I’ll sleep lightly. Remember that.” He turned, grunted.

“Shall I stay awake, too?” asked David.

“No need,” said Jeb.

“Go to sleep, David,” said Monti.

David leaned back, closed his eyes. Why’s Gettler so afraid of everyone? he asked himself. He lied to me about why he’s holding onto all the guns. David opened his eyes, looked toward Gettler. But without the moon there was only a vague darkness without details. Should I try to get one of the guns? But what if he caught me again? David’s nose smarted at the memory of Gettler’s blow.

Gettler turned restlessly.

What a funny man, thought David. And he recalled the whispered conversation between his mother and Jeb Logan—their suspicions about Gettler. Aw, he wouldn’t really kill a friend! But another part of David’s mind argued: He’s crazy, though. And he did kill that Indian Jeb said was helping us!

David leaned forward, whispered: “Mother?”

Gettler snapped upright. “What’re y’doing?”

“I just wondered what time it was,” said David. He stared fearfully at the hulking shadow beside him.

“It’s night time,” said Gettler. “Go to sleep so you’ll be alert when it comes time for you to stand watch.”

“Try to sleep, David,” said Monti.

David retreated into his corner, closed his eyes. He sleeps too lightly! There’s nothing I can do.

Gettler settled back to his restless dozing.

David’s breathing deepened. He sank into a nightmare that jerked at his muscles: a spectral Gettler chased him through a black jungle, crying: “Help me! Help me!” And each time the dream-David stopped, hideous laughter filled his head, bullets crashed around him. And again he ran, sobbing, panting. It went on without end.

Monti leaned toward Jeb, put her head in his lap.

I need a man, she thought. I need his strength. And she laughed silently at herself. So I pick one who’s burned out by fever!

Jeb stroked her hair, almost a mindless reflex.

But there is strength in him, thought Monti. Man means strength. She lifted her left hand, caressed his neck.

Jeb’s fingertips touched her cheek.

Sex is like a drug, she thought. You should commune with your body … and the sound drowns out everything fearful. Your bodies say the darkness isn’t really there. Nothing can really hurt you. There’s no such thing as death!

She lifted her face, pulled his lips down to meet her own. Danger sweetened the kiss … drew it out, long and clinging.

I haven’t forgotten you, Roger, she thought. This man’s like the strong part of you I loved. And I need that now. Oh, God! How I need it!

Desire pumped strength into Jeb. He crushed her against him. And their danger became an academic thing to him … drawing far away into the warm night. He slipped his right hand beneath her shirt, caressed her back.

Monti found his hand, guided it up, pressed it against her breast.

Oh, God! if only we were alone! she thought.

Jeb kissed her neck, and his beard burned against her cheek, but she felt no pain. And again their lips clung.

Abruptly, a cold part of her mind leered up at her: But you aren’t alone! So you’d better stop while you can!

She pulled her lips away, whispered in Jeb’s ear: “They’ll hear us.” And even while she whispered she sensed her mind searching for words to deny reality, for excuses to prolong this moment.

Jeb’s hand fumbled across her breast. She pulled his hand away, kissed it, clung to it while she straightened and retreated into her corner. Jeb tried to follow, but she held him with a hand against his chest.

“Please,” she whispered. And then softer: “I’m sorry.”

Jeb swallowed, tried to quiet the panting swiftness of his breath.

David—in his nightmare—thrashed convulsively behind them. Gettler mumbled, turned.

It was like an icy shower to Jeb. Reason returned. The night and its peril flooded through his senses. He drew back, sneered at himself. Jesus Kee-rist! How’d I get sucked into that tornado?

Monti reached out, found Jeb’s hand, held it. He wanted to push her away, but couldn’t.

Okay, so I want her, he told himself. What’s abnormal about that?

Jeb turned the watch over to David at two a.m.

But even after that it was a long night for Jeb and Monti—their minds tormented by the dream that came from frustration.

Jeb awoke to the nervous voice of the jungle dawn. He listened to the twitterings and scrabblings, the sudden silences. His mind felt clear, tingling with awareness. Weakness still drenched his muscles, but it was weakness in retreat.

He straightened, looked out at the river, yellow with its burden of mud. The river in flood lost itself amidst vegetation on all sides, and there was no real shoreline. Jeb glanced upward. The night’s clouds were gone. An opalescent mist hung just above the water.

The sun climbed over the hills, bleached all color from the rim of the eastern horizon. The mist burned away.

Jeb glanced at Monti asleep in her corner. Blue shadows darkened the skin below her eyelids. Her cheeks were sunken, pale.

David coughed.

Gettler rumbled: “We better get moving.”

Monti awoke, rubbed her eyes, pushed the flame-colored hair away from her forehead. She caught Jeb’s gaze upon her, and for a moment their eyes locked.

“Day number five,” said David.

“How many more?” whispered Monti.

Jeb shook his head.

“Live them one at a time,” said Gettler. “It’s easier that way.”

Jeb opened his door, slid down onto the float. His knees felt rubbery from the fever, but his muscles obeyed his will.

Fungus blotches spread across the leaves of the drowned trees on the left. In the gloom beyond, Jeb discerned the fairy-lace foliage of a tree fern. He moved his attention to the right, pointed while trying to find his voice. A papaya drooped over the current, its limbs heavy with fruit.

“Papaya!” husked Gettler. He lowered himself out the door on the right, took up a pole.

Jeb loosed the grapnel from its bed in the flooded bushes.

They guided the plane across to the papaya, hunger lending a desperate strength to their muscles.

“Is it good to eat?” asked David.

“Yes,” said Monti.

The plane buried its nose in bushes beneath the papaya. Gettler grabbed a vine, held it. Jeb climbed onto the cowling, passed the fruit down to Monti. Limbs freed of their burden snapped out of reach.

“That’s all of it,” said Jeb.

Gettler released the vines, pushed off. The current caught them.

Jeb slid down and into the cabin.

They gorged on papaya. The fruit eased their hunger pangs, but there was no real satisfaction in it.

“We still need meat,” said Gettler. He studied the rushing shoreline.

A hissing eddy swirled them toward a wall of trees where yellow water foamed around submerged trunks. Jeb and Gettler scrambled down to the pontoons, fought the cane poles until the plane was back in the central current.

Again they drifted on open water—a wide, moving lake—but the swollen river stretched wild fingers out into the forest. They could only guess at the true channel, a precarious thread to civilization.

A stupor of heat settled over the plane as the sun climbed the sky. Heat shimmered off the river in coiling vibrations. Every air current carried its torturing stream of insects.

Monti wrapped her face in the silver scarf, and huddled in the front seat. David leaned across the seat back above her, staring downstream with a glassy-eyed expression, as though his mind had ceased all motion in the heat.

Gettler sat on the right hand pontoon, cane pole across his lap, the rifle butt ready at hand on the cabin floor above him. The small eyes glittered with a fearful alertness from beneath the brim of the Aussie hat.

Jeb on the left pontoon leaned against the strut in the glittering metal shadow of the wing, stared at the passing shore.

Time’s like this river, he thought. He felt the swelling pressure of this thought … and he had the idea that somewhere he had dived into Time, and had become trapped in Time’s current without the means to escape.

A half-drowned island split the flow ahead of them. Jeb and Gettler stirred to action, fought the plane into the left hand current. Their cane poles vibrated in the surging water. They came out below the island only to confront another division of the current. Now, they took the channel on the right, working with desperate speed as the river gained speed. They whirled past another island, rounded a sweeping bend. And the river widened, slowed.

But still vagrant currents poured off through walls of trees on every side.

Jeb saw the current ahead swelling across a submerged island: the waters pregnant with dipping bushes, grass and tangled flotsam. He leaned against the cane pole to change course, felt the blisters burning on his palms.

Then they were past the obstruction.

Jeb sighed with weariness.

Monti sat up, and suddenly spoke in a strange flat tone of fear: “Jeb …”

He looked in at her. She was staring at the floor, every muscle frozen, her attention hypnotically fixed.

Even before Jeb lowered his eyes he knew what he would see. There was an electric message in Monti’s attitude that said: “Snake!”

The half-opened door blocked Jeb’s view. He inched back along the pontoon, took a half breath, held it. The brown-hooded head of a fer-de-lance swayed not six inches from Monti’s leg. Its body lay coiled across the barrel of the rifle.

An essence of every story that Jeb had ever heard about this snake flashed through his mind: the bite was almost certain death.

“Don’t move!” whispered Jeb.

Gettler appeared beyond Monti. “Something wrong?”

“Snake,” breathed Jeb. He looked at the machete beneath the seats. The blade rested within an inch of the snake’s tail.

Gettler lowered his head, peered under Monti’s legs, drew in his breath. “Careful,” he whispered. “That’s a fer-de-lance—pit viper. Deadly.”

David stared across the seat back. “Can’t you shoot it?” he whispered.

Gettler moved slowly to one side. “I can only see part of it. There’s no room for a good shot.”

“I’ll try for the machete,” said Jeb. He spoke just above a whisper. “Whatever you do, Monti, don’t move or jerk away. Just keep your …”

“I think I’m going to faint,” she whispered. Her attention remained locked on the snake.

“No you’re not!” hissed Jeb. He moved his hand toward the machete.

The snake’s tongue vibrated toward Monti. It drew back an inch.

“If I had that little revolver I could shoot it from here,” whispered David.

Jeb hesitated, wet his lips with his tongue. Will Gettler trust the kid with a gun? And if he does …

“Are you sure you can shoot it from there?” asked Gettler.

“Yes, sir.”

Gettler reached across Monti’s shoulders with the twenty-two. “Here it is, son. Move slowly. Don’t attract its attention. Aim for the head.”

“Have you ever shot a gun like that, David?” whispered Jeb.

“Yes, sir.” David rested the gun barrel on the back of the seat beside his mother, put his tongue between his lips in concentration.

“Squeeze the trigger very slowly,” breathed Jeb.

The snake suddenly stretched upward. Its tongue flickered in blurring motion.

“David, wait!” hissed Jeb. “Let me get the machete. Then if you miss …”

“Hurry!” whispered David. “It looks like it’s going to bite!”

“Please do something,” prayed Monti.

She stared at the snake’s flickering tongue in complete fascination.

Jeb moved his right hand closer to the machete … slowly … slowly. His hand passed an invisible point where it came within striking range of the snake. He touched the machete handle, slipped his fingers around it. His gaze centered on the snake’s head. Gently … gently … he lifted the handle, then the blade.

The fer-de-lance turned, looked at the glinting metal. There was deadly grace in its movement. The tongue flickered. It swung around to face Jeb not two feet from him.

Jeb locked his muscles into immobility, felt cold perspiration on his forehead. And he thought: If it strikes it’ll get me right in the face! I won’t have time to move!

David said: “Mr. Logan, I’m going to shoot.”

The gun’s roar filled the cabin. The snake’s head smashed against the floor from the impact of the bullet. A thrashing, flailing violence exploded beneath Monti’s feet. She leaped onto the seat, then over it and into the rear.

Jeb lifted the machete, chopped twice at the writhing coils.

He stepped aside, pulled the snake into the river with the flat of the blade.

Piranha came to the blood. They surged half out of the water beneath the fuselage, tearing and cutting at the snake. Jeb tore his attention away from the water, looked into the cabin.

Monti hugged David. Hysterical sobs shook her. David glanced across her shoulder at Jeb, looked at the revolver in his hand. There was a question in the boy’s eyes.

Jeb’s attention shifted to Gettler.

The big man filled the opposite door. His bearded chin jutted toward David; the magnum revolver was held ready in his right hand.

“I’ll take the twenty-two now, David,” said Gettler. He reached toward it with his left hand.

David continued to stare at Jeb as though waiting for a signal.

The kid doesn’t have a chance, thought Jeb.

“Now!” snarled Gettler. A nerve twitched his check.

“Give him back the gun,” said Jeb.

A cloud seemed to pass across David’s eyes. He turned, handed the little pistol to Gettler.

“That was good shooting, son,” said Gettler. He slid the twenty-two into one of the bulging pockets of his jacket.

“Oh, David!” sobbed Monti.

“It’s all right, Mother.” David patted her shoulder. “The snake’s dead.”

“I was paralyzed,” she whispered. “I’ve never been so frightened.” She pulled away from David, slumped back in the seat beside him, put her hands over her eyes.

Gettler took up his cane pole, fended off a floating island of sedge. Every touch of the pole aroused a cloud of insects.

“Where’d you learn to shoot like that, David?” asked Jeb.

“My … Dad showed me. Then one of Mother’s bandleaders. He …”

“Howard,” said Monti. She lowered her hands.

“Yes,” said David. “He had this target range in his basement where …”

“I’d almost forgotten about that,” said Monti.

“They used to leave me … alone there … well, not alone exactly. They …”

“There was always someone around,” said Monti. “Julio never left the place.” She spoke defensively, then to Jeb: “Julio was Howard’s houseboy.”

“I see,” said Jeb, but he failed to understand her sudden defensive attitude.

“One night I shot up a whole case of ammunition,” said David. “Julio said I was even better than him.” He shrugged. “Heck, this was really an easy shot. So close. And I even had an arm rest.” He smiled.

And for one fleeting moment Jeb saw past the smile to the father, and realized that Roger Bannon’s quiet strength had been transmitted to this boy.

Jeb glanced at Monti, said: “You don’t have a thing to worry about with a man like this to protect you.”

A brief hint of a smile touched her lips. She took a quavering breath, patted David’s arm, then spoke abruptly: “Could there be another snake? I mean, how’d that one get in the plane?”

“They don’t often travel in pairs,” said Jeb.

“Wrong season,” said Gettler. He spoke without looking up from his pole.

“That one probably came aboard from those bushes back there where we got the fruit,” said Jeb. He pushed the machete back under the seat, looked lingeringly at the rifle on the floor. It was too far away and pointed the wrong direction. He took up his cane pole, studied the brown current around them.

The plane drifted almost in the center of a wide reach of water dotted by floating sedge islands, each with a hazy cover of insects. A petrified glaze of heat rebounded from the river, inflated the air beneath the wings and in the cabin. There was an immensity about the river in flood. It was a great broad surface glistening darkly in every open place—as flat and glassy as a pool of dirty oil. There might have been no current at all. The air felt muggy, stagnant—filled with droning insects, strange dank odors and the omnipresent smell of mildew.

A line of yellow bubbles and foam laced about the pontoons.

Jeb found the water bag on the floor of the cabin, drank, replaced the bag.

All around him the silence trembled in the heat.

Abruptly, the plane rocked. Gettler cursed, and the pontoon beneath him boomed like a drum as he stamped on it.

Jeb stooped, peered under the fuselage. “What’s wrong?”

“Piranha!” snapped Gettler. “I dipped my foot in the water to cool it.” He bent over his left foot, looked at it with something like astonishment. Blood dripped from a gash above his ankle, ran off the float into the river.

“Are you okay?” asked Jeb.

“David, get the first aid kit out of the back,” said Monti.

“Water’s all muddy,” said Gettler. “I had no idea they’d still be with us.”

“They must’ve been drifting along with us ever since we fed them the snake,” said Jeb.

“Here’s the first aid kit.” David handed it out the door.

“Need any help?” asked Monti.

“No.” Gettler pushed the kit aside. “Hold that thing there. I’m coming inside.” He climbed into the front, took the kit. “Burns like fire!”

The water beside Gettler’s float suddenly erupted as piranha arose to the dripping blood.

Jeb snatched the fish line from the floor of the cabin, tossed the bare hook into the boiling mass of fish. The hook was seized immediately. He jerked it back. A frenzied piranha—blunt headed and wild eyed—banged against the strut. Jeb grabbed the machete, dropped the fish onto the cabin floor, smashed it with the flat of the blade.

In the next few minutes he caught five fish; then the school vanished as abruptly as it had appeared.

Gettler finished dressing his wound. “Vicious little bastards! Saw them take an Indian once on the Urucú. Canoe tipped over. One yelp and he was gone. Nothing but a big red spot on the river and those fish flashing all over.”

Monti leaned across the seat back. “If you’ll clean them, I’ll set up the pellet stove and cook them.” She wet her lips with her tongue.

“Losing your squeamishness, I see,” said Gettler. He handed the first aid kit back to David, slid down to the float, began cleaning the fish.

Again the water boiled with piranha.

“They’re hungry,” said Gettler.

“So’m I,” said Monti, then: “David, help me with this damned stove. I can’t seem to get it going.”

“Use some of your lighter fluid,” said Jeb.

Presently, the smell of cooking fish was added to the other odors in the cabin. They ate every scrap of the meat, shared a papaya.

Gettler leaned back against the strut, belched. “River’s getting pretty damned high,” he said.

Jeb moved to the front of his pontoon, rested a hand on the cowling, stared ahead. About a half mile downstream the river split off between—he counted them—eight islands. Nine channels.

“Look down there,” said Jeb.

“I’ve been looking,” said Gettler.

Jeb swung up onto the cowling, scrambled onto the wing above the cabin, turned and looked downstream. The river spread in all directions. Little mounds of green were isolated in the water on every side.

“Which one’s the right channel?” asked Gettler.

Jeb shook his head. “Dunno. What’ll we do—go eeny, meeny, miney, moe?”

“Look behind us,” said Gettler.

Jeb turned, looked upstream.

Like a grey sheet hanging between the river and a low line of puffy clouds—a rain storm swept down upon them.

“Rain!” shouted Jeb.

He slid down to the float and underneath the wing, rigged the sea anchor, dropped it into the brown water.

The rain hurled itself upon them. Wind shook the plane, skidded it across the floating drag until it swung around pointing upstream.

Jeb crouched behind the open door, looked into the rear seat at David and Monti.

“What’d you see from up there on top?” asked David.

“It looks like a big lake with little islands all over it,” said Jeb. “Channels going every which way.”

“How do we know which one to take?” asked Monti.

Gettler leaned in the other door, said: “We don’t.”

And Jeb thought: Any one of those channels could be a dead end … trailing off into some swamp. And if the river falls, there we’d be: stranded.

“I think this is an area I’ve heard about,” said Gettler. “If I’m right there’s a swamp on our …” he paused, squinted in concentration “… on our right. Yes. It’d be on the left when you’re coming upstream.” And he spoke Jeb’s thought: “We could get lost and stranded out there real easy.”

The wind faded to a series of fretting gusts, died off to stillness that left only the stuttering chop of rain. Jeb straightened, looked around. The plane freed of the wind swung around to the pull of the drag anchor in the current. Again they faced downstream.

Gettler faced right. “There’s where we don’t want to go.”

Jeb took up his cane pole, began guiding the plane to the left. When the sea anchor interfered he lifted it from the river, hung it on the strut.

A drowned island came under the floats. Bushes dragged at the metal. The two men poled across the obstruction, holding steadily to the left through runneled currents flattened by the monotonous pocking of rainfall.

Jeb paused, listened to the drumming fall of water on the wings. A sodden depression of spirits touched all four in the plane. They drifted through a hissing ghost world saturated with warm, damp vapors.

An avenue of half submerged trees opened before the plane. The current furrowed over, quickened, hurled the plane through into a maze of narrow channels. No time for decisions. The swiftest current took them—and the men with the poles could only fend off bushes, trees. A tangled wall of vegetation loomed directly ahead. Brown water poured through, foaming around piles of debris, over logs caught in the matted growth. The plane swept headlong into the tangle, snagged, tore free. Vines caught at the wings, broke away, trailed in the water. They scraped and bumped their way into another open reach of boiling current that swept them inexorably toward a solid barricade of trees.

Jeb tore vines and bushes from the propeller, clambered into the cabin, primed the motor. It caught on the third roll of the starter, coughed and snorted, belched a thick stream of oily smoke. He swung the plane left, quartering against the current until they won their way around the trees into another channel.

The gauge on the wing tank wavered toward the half mark.

Jeb shut off the motor, returned to the pontoon.

The current slowed, but the maze of channels appeared endless.

What if Gettler had his directions wrong? Jeb asked himself.

And Gettler stared about with a worried frown, wrestling with the same doubt.

Again the plane swept toward a line of trees. This time they won around the obstruction with only the poles. Another dead end appeared. Green walls towered on three sides.

They leaned into the cane poles, thrusting the plane against the flow. A new channel opened before them only to run out in another dead end within twenty minutes.

Again, Jeb used the motor … and again they poled across the current. He lost track of direction and the number of blind channels they probed.

Late in the grey afternoon the rain slackened to a random dripping.

The two men worked like punch-weary fighters, nosed the plane into a grassy, log-mounded hummock: all that remained of an island. Insects clouded the air the moment the floats slipped into the flooded grass.

Jeb tossed the grapnel onto the hummock, leaned against the cowling, stared exhaustedly at the tangled pile of grey logs on the opposite end of the island. He felt too tired to slap at the insects settling on him.

Gettler took the rifle, jumped ashore, made his way toward the logs.

Monti slid down to the float beside Jeb. “You look bushed,” she said.

David leaned out the door. “Couldn’t I help with the poles?”

“You’re not heavy enough,” said Jeb.

“What’s he doing?” asked Monti. She nodded toward Gettler.

Jeb turned, looked down the island.

Gettler had taken off his hat, and was collecting something in it from the underside of a log.

“I dunno,” said Jeb.

Presently, Gettler returned, held out the hat. “Snails,” he said.

Monti shuddered convulsively, then: “How do we cook them?”

“Boil them,” said Gettler. He looked up at David. “Bring down some papaya and the little pan from the pellet stove.”

David turned to obey.

Jeb took the machete from the cabin, joined Gettler on the shore.

“I think there’s some dry rotten wood in those logs,” said Gettler.

Jeb nodded, pushed his way through a fog of insects across to the piled logs. The center of one gave up dry fuel for a fire. Jeb carried it back to Gettler. Monti joined them, contributed a splash of lighter fluid to start the blaze. David brought the fruit and pan.

“These are kind of dull eating,” said Gettler. He dumped the hatful of snails into the pan, held it over the flames.

Monti moved around into the smoke to escape the insects. “Who cares a long as its food?” she asked.

Jeb squatted in a sodden torpor, stirred only when Gettler handed him a leaf bearing four snails and a quarter of papaya.

They ate in a kind of despairing silence.

Gettler finished, stood up, looked downstream. “How far d’you figure we’ve come, Logan?”

“A little more’n a third of the way,” said Jeb.

“Christ!” Gettler looked back upstream. “We’ve got to find us a dugout. That metal monster will kill us if we have to horse it through many more days like this one.”

Jeb shook his head.

“Have we gotten away from the Indians?” asked David.

“Not a chance,” snarled Gettler. “They’re in canoes.”

Night fell across the island: a black pall, warm and dripping, and full of biting insects. A frog chorus swelled around the four humans. From somewhere came the delicate flower scent of orchids. A great crashing sound thumped the dark as a tree—undermined by the flood—toppled into the water.

The dying fire remained like a single orange eye.

Jeb suddenly recalled the crazy fallen look of the radio tower at the army post, and he wondered what it had looked like as it dropped.

Then he thought, In the long run, everything falls.

And he felt a terrible indrawing need to find some kind of happiness, to accumulate a few biting pleasures against the darkness. He looked up at the shadowy figure of Monti standing in the smoke.

“We’d better stay here for the night,” said Gettler.

Jeb nodded, turned his attention to the plane, saw it glinting red in the firelight. Shadows hid the slow deterioration of metal.

Quite abruptly, Jeb was shaken by a great affection for his plane. Despite its crippled and patched condition, it still contained the essence of a tremendous symbol: It stood for safety, for the gregarious security of the swarming civilization that had spawned it.

He spoke brusquely to cover the sudden emotion: “We should get back aboard. Douse the fire, David. Just scatter it with a stick. The rain’ll put it out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We need a canoe,” said Gettler.

And even though he knew that his own reaction was most likely foolish—that Gettler had logic on his side—Jeb shook his head. “I’m sticking with the plane.”

“Arrrrrgh!” snarled Gettler. He crossed to the plane, lifted his shadowy bulk onto the float and into the rear of the cabin.

Jeb hesitated, thinking: Is Gettler tired enough that he’ll dope off into a deep sleep? If we could only get the guns away from him!

Monti stepped close to Jeb. “He’s tired,” she whispered. “He’ll sleep. Maybe we could get the guns tonight …”

Jeb shook his head. “Sure he’s tired. But he’s living too close to the edge of panic. He’ll sleep on his hair trigger.”

“If he’d only get sick,” whispered Monti.

“Yeah.”

And Jeb wondered: Shall I tell her what I learned from that Indian? That Gettler did murder her husband?

David came up to them, and the moment was lost. “Is that scattered enough, sir?”

Jeb glanced back at the embers. “That’s fine, David.”

The boy threw a charred stick into the water, went across to the plane, climbed into the cabin beside Gettler.

I don’t dare tell her, thought Jeb. She tends to get hysterical, and she might give it away to Gettler that she knows. He’d kill us for sure.

“Don’t trust anyone,” she murmured. “Why doesn’t that beefy sonofabitch trust anyone? Does he think he’s kidding us—the way he’s sitting on the guns?”

“He’s …” Jeb shrugged. “… jungle happy.”

“He’s more dangerous than that snake,” said Monti. “I don’t know how, but he had something to do with Roger’s death.”

And again Jeb wondered: Confirm it or deny it?

He took a middle ground: “There could be other explanations for the way he’s acting.”

“Name one!”

“He’s nuts.”

“There we agree.”

“David has some kind of control over him,” said Jeb.

“I noticed.” Intuitively, she added: “He had a son once, Gettler did.” She shook her head. “Something terrible happened to that man somewhere, Jeb. There are moments when I almost … feel sorry for him.”

“He’s going to get curious at what we’re talking about,” said Jeb. “We’d better get inside.”

She stared pensively at the plane. “I suppose you’re right.”

Jeb looked down at the dim outline of her silhouetted against the last glow of the dying embers. “You’re still the best looking bug-chewed woman I’ve ever seen.”

“You’ve been in the jungle too long, man.” She gave a chopping, brittle laugh, rubbed the welts on her left arm. “They’re getting worse. Let’s go in.”

They crossed to the plane, clambered inside.

“Get everything all decided?” asked Gettler.

“We’re lost, aren’t we?” asked Monti.

“Everyone’s lost,” said Gettler. He sounded drunk.

“We’ve lost the main current in this flood,” said Jeb. “We could be way out in the middle of a swamp.”

“How far’ve we come today?” asked David.

“We’re no more’n twenty miles overland from where we stopped last night,” said Gettler.

“Thirty at least,” said Jeb.

“It’d been seventy-five miles if we had a canoe,” said Gettler.

“And we’d be out there in that rain,” said Jeb.

“You didn’t seem too anxious to come inside,” said Gettler.

“The bugs are better company!” snapped Monti.

“Perhaps I should come up front and change your mind about that,” said Gettler. “I grow on people.”

“No doubt!” she said. “Like a cancer.”

“The plane has its advantages,” said Jeb.

“And you’ve the blisters on your hands to prove it,” growled Gettler. “We need a canoe!”

Jeb stared out into the night. The last embers of their fire had died, leaving utter blackness. The rain had increased and its incessant rhythm mingled with the humming of insects, the washing swirl of the river against the floats, to create a womb-like somnolence within the plane. He inhaled deeply of crusting odors that surrounded them: rotting fruit, the musky creeping of mildew, perspiration, the smell of cooked fish—and a distant hint of perfume.

“Maybe we’ve lost the channel,” said Jeb. “But as long’s we float we’re pretty sure to find it again.”

“If the Jivaro don’t find us first,” said Gettler.

“This water all goes down to the Amazon,” said Jeb.

“Can they find us in the dark?” asked Monti.

Gettler made an odd whimpering sound, whispered: “They’re with us every minute … waiting.”

Jeb looked at the firefly lights of the instrument dials in front of him. “If we stick with the plane we’ll make it.”

“This is their country,” husked Gettler. “We don’t stand a chance!”

“For Christ’s sake! Stop it!” cried Monti.

“Sure,” said Gettler. “For Christ’s sake.”

Jeb slammed a palm against the control wheel in front of him. Metal creaked. “We can make it! I know we can!”

And Gettler laughed: a pure sound of enjoyment. “You know!”

“Yeah, I know!”

“Maybe a little of your blood will drift past Ramona,” said Gettler. “In a very diluted form.”

“Do you like to scare people?” demanded Monti.

Gettler sighed. “Okay, I’ll talk about knowing. The only way you know something is by experience. I’ve experienced the jungle … and I don’t trust any of it. I hate it!”

“Then why’d you stay?” asked Monti.

“Because it’s the only honest place left in the world.”

“No,” said Monti. “You’re lying.”

And Gettler chuckled. “Maybe you’re right, come to think of it.”

“I saw some fungus on one of those logs out there,” said Monti. “Suddenly the fungus flew away. It was a moth or a butterfly or something. Yesterday, there was a bug on the windshield that looked like a dead stick.”

“There’s deception here,” agreed Gettler. “Maybe deception’s the real key to survival.”

Monti said: “These damned philosophers and their phony pretentions!”

“I see lights out there!” hissed David.

“Fireflies,” said Jeb.

“Honest!” sneered Monti. “The world’s a jungle, yes. But one part’s no different from another.” She stretched.

“We just wander around until we find the brand of dishonesty that suits us.”

“Mr. Gettler,” said David. “The other night when you said I was like the light shining from the flashlight … Well, I’ve tried to understand that, but …”

“David! Drop that!” snapped Monti. “Christ! I won’t have you turning into one of these word-twisters, too!”

“Leave him be,” said Gettler. “He’s come upon the paradox of identity at an early age. That’s good.”

“Men!” said Monti. “It’s in their blood. I swear.”

The plane tugged abruptly at its mooring, turned, grazed some bushes.

“River’s rising again,” said Jeb.

Monti leaned against the seat close to Jeb. “Maybe they’ll send a boat up to look for us,” she whispered.

“Who?”

“Somebody’ll miss us. They’re sure to.”

“Mr. Gettler,” said David. “What’s a paradox?”

“Something that seems foolish, absurd, but which happens to be true nonetheless.”

“Listen to him!” whispered Monti.

Jeb touched her arm, patted it.

She put her hand in his, leaned her head against his shoulder.

David said: “But how can …”

“Look out there,” said Gettler. “What do you see?”

“Those fireflies.”

“No you don’t.”

“But I …”

“You think you see the fireflies,” said Gettler. “Think is the key word.”

Monti said: “I’d like to close my eyes and wake up to find this was just a horrible nightmare.”

Jeb squeezed her hand.

“What you actually see, son,” said Gettler, “is your own body responding to the light. It’s all inside you.”

“Or wouldn’t it be wonderful if this was actually some little river … in Georgia, say,” murmured Monti, “and damp here like it’d be in Georgia. We might just be drifting along a safe, clean little river.”

“We have only our senses,” said Gettler. “Nothing else. We just think we sense things outside us, but all the time we’re only feeling our own bodies.”

“And somewhere out there the Negroes’d be singing,” murmured Monti. She began humming to herself, low.

“The trouble,” said Gettler, “comes when we mistake this pattern of feeling things … we mistake that for ourselves … for our own identity. And we start acting like the things outside us were inside us.”

David suddenly had the sensation that he lived inside a thin and imperfect shell that was filled to the bursting point with confusion … but that if he gave everything just the right kind of a shake it’d all settle into something understandable and safe.

“How’d we get this way?” he asked.

“It’s the way we learn about words,” said Gettler. “That sets us into habits that fool us. We group things together for convenience: trees, birds, dogs, houses … Very useful. But that gets us into the habit of thinking that somehow these things are identical—something has to be the same for them to be called by the same label. See what I mean?”

“I think so.”

“Well, son, if you enter any problem with a preconceived idea of how to solve it … and the problem doesn’t happen to fit your idea, you may never solve it. You’ll see things that aren’t there … or not see things that are there—all because your mind is prepared for something different from the reality staring you in the face!”

Monti said: “Roger used to ramble on like that for hours. Drove me mad!” She pulled her hand out of Jeb’s, straightened.

Christ! What’s wrong with me? she asked herself. When I had a live husband I didn’t hesitate to enjoy whatever came along. Now that he’s dead I have to develop a moral compunction!

Her anger turned abruptly on Gettler. “Why’nt you shut up back there?”

“Leave us be,” said Gettler. He turned toward David in the darkness. “See what I mean, son?”

“You go to sleep, David!” barked Monti.

“Look,” snarled Gettler. “I leave you alone with the irresistible ladies’ man up there. You leave me alone with this boy who wants to learn something!”

“You don’t know anything he needs to know!”

Gettler lashed out, slammed the hinged back of the seat, hurled Monti forward. “Watch your tongue, woman!”

Jeb whirled, uncertain of what had happened, thinking that Gettler had hit Monti. “Just a damn minute!” he shouted.

“I’m all right,” said Monti.

There came the sharp click of a gun hammer being cocked.

Gettler said: “You’ve no refinement, Logan. A woman might think she prefers you to me.”

He’s going nuts! thought Monti.

“But give her five minutes with me, and she’d see how wrong she’d been,” said Gettler.

“Lay off that, Gettler,” said Logan. He tried to wet his lips with a dry tongue.

Gettler shifted his position, chuckled—an emotionless, deadly sound.

“No,” whispered Monti.

Gettler put out his left hand, touched Monti’s hair. She tried to pull away, but he clutched a lock of her hair, held her.

Monti gasped.

Jeb braced himself to leap over the seat at Gettler. If he’s going to kill us he’ll have to do it the hard way!

“Mr. Gettler, please don’t argue with her,” said David. “I still don’t understand what you’ve been explaining to me.”

Slowly, Gettler released Monti’s hair, sat back. Wildness drained out of him, and he thought: Now, why was I angry? What’d she say to make me angry? He couldn’t remember, and another thought arose in his mind: Her hair doesn’t feel like Gerda’s.

“I don’t understand how words can be the same as a problem,” said David.

Monti, held her breath, exhaled when Gettler spoke.

Gettler eased down the hammer on the revolver, said: “Our words are preconceived notions about the world … the universe. The problem is in understanding. Do you see that?”

“Ye-e-e-ess.”

“You sleep on it,” said Gettler.

Jeb silently turned around in his seat, faced forward. He felt that the crisis had not been solved—only extended.

Gettler patted David’s shoulder, “Maybe after you sleep on it, the whole thing’ll become clearer to you.”

That was too close! thought Monti. We’ve got to disarm him! We’ve just got to!

“G’night,” said David. And he thought: Why’d mother have to go and make him angry? He’s all right as long as he’s just talking. What harm can talking do?

He went to sleep to dream about a succession of words that weren’t exactly words: more like the irregularly shaped blocks the psychologist at the school had made him play with once. Only … he knew they were words, and he had to fit them into holes of peculiar shape. But none of the words would fit.

“Take the first watch, Logan,” whispered Gettler.

“Yes, sir,” said Jeb.

“I’ll be sleeping very lightly, in case you need anything,” said Gettler. And he chuckled softly—with only the faintest hint of madness.

The sonofabitch! thought Jeb.

He heard Gettler turn, settle himself for sleeping. Presently, there came the shallow, cat-rhythm sound of Gettler sleeping.

Jeb settled himself to staying awake. He sensed the tense, watchfulness of Monti beside him. The phosphorescent glow of instrument dials held a hypnotic fascination for Jeb. He found he could not look at them without having his eyelids droop. He forced his attention onto the surrounding darkness, listened to the monotonous drumming of rain against metal, the restless skirt-swishing of water beneath the floats.

Abruptly, Monti leaned across facing Jeb.

There came a momentary break in Gettler’s breathing, and the rhythm resumed.

She put her left hand behind Jeb’s neck, her lips found his. He pulled her against him with a rough strength, and for a long minute they were an island of isolated awareness in the sea of night. Monti pulled away, brushed her cheek against his beard, whispered: “Thank you.”

Jeb stroked her hair, acutely aware of the warm softness against him.

“I was so afraid,” she whispered.

“Shhhh,” he said.

And he thought: The poor kid. Nothing ever prepared her for an emergency like this. But something about that thought struck him wrong, and Jeb sensed that all the rest of them might die while Monti survived because of some mysterious strength a man couldn’t understand.

Monti shifted in his arms, cradled her head in Jeb’s lap.

He continued to stroke her hair, wide awake now in spite of his fatigue … keenly aware of every sound in the damp darkness: the slow sloshing of a limb in the current, the close drum of rain on the plane … and now the soft, even breathing of Monti as she slept.

Far off there came the soughing and rumbling of trees in the wind. The sound grew.

A new storm coming, he thought.

The wind was a live thing talking in the jungle—shuddering against the plane in a pellet-rattle of rain, hissing and whispering.

Jeb tried to put meaning into the wind sounds, aware that it was an insane thing to do, yet fascinated by the thought that the wind could talk. And it made the time pass quickly.

Gettler stirred, said: “I’ll take over, Logan.” He cleared his throat, and Monti moved restlessly in Jeb’s lap. “Any signs of trouble?”

“Nothing I could identify,” whispered Jeb. He glanced at his wristwatch. Midnight. And he thought: Gettler must have a built-in clock.

The weariness that had been building up in Jeb flooded over. He suddenly felt that nothing could be as important as sleep. He tipped his head against the seat back, and the dark overcame him.

Gettler rubbed his left elbow to restore circulation where he had been sleeping on it. The warm dampness of the night felt very familiar, as though this moment were the thing he knew best of everything in the universe. But it was tinged with melancholy: the inner balancing emotion that told him he had only a small part of control over a small part of his destiny. And he re-experienced a sense of regret, thought: I’m sorry, Rog. Sorry I killed you. But you shouldn’t have tried to play God!

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Framed