The Vivero Letter

I

My head hurt like hell. At first it was a distant throb, no worse than someone else’s hangover, but it grew in intensity until it felt as though someone was using my skull for a snare drum. When I moved something seemed to explode inside and everything went blank.

The next time I came round was better — but not much. I was able to lift my head this time but I couldn’t see. Just a lot of red lights which danced in front of my eyes. I leaned back and rubbed at them, and then was aware of someone groaning. It was some time before I could see properly and then everything was green instead of red — a dazzle of moving green something-or-other showing through the transparent canopy.

I heard the groan again and turned to see Harry Rider slumped forward in his seat, a trickle of blood oozing from the side of his mouth. I was very weak and couldn’t seem to move; besides which, my thought processes seemed to be all scrambled and I couldn’t put two consecutive thoughts together. All I managed to do was to flop my head to the other side and stare through the window.

I saw a frog! He was sitting on a broad leaf staring at me with beady and unwinking eyes, and was quite still except for the rapid pulsation of his throat. We looked at each other for a very long time, long enough for me to repeat to myself twice over that poem about the frog who would a-wooing go — Heigh Ho, says Rowley. After a while he blinked his eyes once, and that broke the spell, and I turned my head again to look at Harry.

He stirred slightly and moved his head. His face was very pale and the trickle of blood from his mouth disturbed me because it indicated an internal injury. Again I tried to move but I felt so damned weak. Come on, I said; don’t be so grey and dim. Bestir yourself, Wheale; act like a man who knows where he’s going!

I tried again and managed to sit up. As I did so the whole fabric of the cabin trembled alarmingly and swayed like a small boat in a swell. ‘Christ!’ I said aloud. ‘Where am I going?’ I looked at the frog. He was still there, but the leaf on which he sat was bobbing about. It didn’t seem to worry him, though, and he said nothing about it.

I spoke again, because the sound of my voice had comforted me. ‘You must be bloody mad,’ I said. ‘Expecting a frog to talk back! You’re delirious, Wheale; you’re concussed.’

‘Wha... wha...’ said Harry.

‘Wake up, Harry boy!’ I said. ‘Wake up, for Christ’s sake! I’m bloody lonely.’

Harry groaned again and his eye opened a crack. ‘Wa... wat...’

I leaned over and put my ear to his mouth. ‘What is it, Harry?’

‘Wa... ter,’ he breathed. ‘Water be... hind seat.’

I turned and felt for it, and again the helicopter trembled and shuddered. I found the water-bottle and held it to his lips, uncertain of whether I was doing right. If he had a busted gut the water wouldn’t do him any good at all.

But it seemed all right. He swallowed weakly and dribbled a bit, and a pink-tinged foam ran down his jaw. Then he came round fast, much faster than I had done. I took a sip of water myself, and that helped a lot. I offered Harry the bottle and he swilled out his mouth and spat. Two broken teeth clattered on the instrument panel. ‘Aagh!’ he said. ‘My mouth’s cut to bits.’

‘Thank God for that,’ I said. ‘I thought your ribs were driven into your lungs.’

He levered himself up, and then paused as the helicopter swayed. ‘What the hell!’

I suddenly realized where we were. ‘Take it easy,’ I said tightly. ‘I don’t think we’re at ground level. This is a case of “Rock-a-bye baby, on the tree top”.’ I stopped and said no more. I didn’t like the rest of that verse.

He froze in his seat and then sniffed. ‘A strong smell of gas. I don’t particularly like that.’

I said, ‘What happened — up there in the sky?’

‘I think we lost the rear rotor,’ he said. ‘When that happened the fuselage started to spin in the opposite direction to the main rotor. Thank God I was able to declutch and switch off.’

‘The trees must have sprung our landing,’ I said. ‘If we’d have hit solid ground we’d have cracked like an eggshell. As it is, we seem to be intact.’

‘I don’t understand it,’ he said. ‘Why should the rear rotor come off?’

‘Maybe a fatigue flaw in the metal,’ I said.

‘This is a new ship. It hasn’t had time to get fatigued.’

I said delicately, ‘I’d rather discuss this some other time. I propose to get the hell out of here. I wonder how far off the ground we are?’ I moved cautiously. ‘Stand by for sudden action.’

Carefully I pressed on the handle of the side door and heard the click as the catch opened. A little bit of pressure on the door swung it open about nine inches and then something stopped it, but it was enough open for me to look down. Directly below was a branch, and beyond that just a lot of leaves with no sign of the ground. I looked up and saw bits of blue sky framed between more leaves.

Fallon had wandered about in the forest for many years and, although he wasn’t a botanist, he’d taken an interest in it and on several occasions he had discussed it with me. From what he had told me and from what I was able to see I thought that we were about eighty feet up. The main run of rain forest is built in three levels, the specialists call them galleries; we had bust through the top level and got hooked up on the thicker second level.

‘Got any rope?’ I asked Harry.

‘There’s the winch cable.’

‘Can you unwind it all without too much moving about?’

‘I can try,’ he said.

There was a clutch on the winch drum which he was able to operate manually, and I helped him unreel the cable, coiling it as neatly as I could and putting it behind the front seat out of the way. Then I said, ‘Do you know where we are?’

‘Sure!’ He pulled out a clipboard to which was attached a map. ‘We’re about there. We hadn’t left the site more than ten minutes and we weren’t moving fast. We’re about ten miles from the camp. That’s going to be a hell of a walk.’

‘Do you have any kind of survival kit in here?’

He jerked his thumb. ‘Couple of machetes, first aid kit, two water-bottles — a few other bits and pieces.’

I took the water-bottle that was lying between the seats and shook it experimentally. ‘This one’s half empty — or half full — depending on the way you look at things. We’d better go easy on the water.’

‘I’ll get the rest of the stuff together,’ said Harry, and turned in his seat. The helicopter sagged and there was the rending cry of torn metal. He stopped instantly and looked at me with apprehensive eyes. There was a film of sweat on his upper lip. When nothing else happened he leaned over gently and stretched his hand for the machetes.

We got all we needed into the front, and I said, ‘The radio! Is it working?’

Harry put his hand out to a switch and then drew it back. ‘I don’t know that I want to try it,’ he said nervously. ‘Can’t you smell gas? If there’s a short in the transmitter, one spark might blow us sky high.’ We looked at each other in silence for some time, then he grinned weakly. ‘All right; I’ll try it.’

He snapped down the switch and listened in on an earphone. ‘It’s dead! No signal going out or coming in.’

‘We won’t have to worry any more about that, then.’ I opened the door as far as it would go, and looked down at the branch. It was about nine inches thick and looked very solid. ‘I’m getting out now. I want you to drop the cable to me when I shout.’

Squeezing out was not much of a problem for me, I’m fairly slim, and I eased myself down towards the branch. Even going as far as I could, my toes dangled in air six inches above it, and I’d have to drop the rest of the way. I let, go, hit the branch squarely with my feet, teetered sickeningly and then dropped forward, wrapping my arms about it and doing a fair imitation of a man on a greasy pole. When I got in an upright position astride the branch I was breathing heavily.

‘Okay — drop the cable.’

It snaked down and I grabbed it. Harry had tied the water bottles and the machetes on to the harness at the end. I left them where they were, for safety, and snapped the harness around the branch. ‘You can come out now,’ I yelled.

More cable was paid out and then Harry appeared. He had tied a loop of cable around his waist, and instead of coming down to the branch he began to climb up on top of the helicopter canopy. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I shouted.

‘I want to look at the tail assembly,’ he said, breathing heavily.

‘For Christ’s sake! You’ll have the whole bloody thing coming down.’

He ignored me and climbed on hands and knees towards the rear. As far as I could see, the only thing holding the helicopter in position was one of the wheels which was jammed into the crotch formed by a branch and the trunk of a tree and, even as I looked, I saw the wheel slipping forward infinitesimally slowly.

When I looked up Harry had vanished behind a screen of leaves. ‘It’s going!’ I yelled. ‘Come back!’

There was only silence. The helicopter lurched amid a crackle of snapping twigs, and a few leaves drifted down. I looked at the wheel and it had slipped forward even more. Another two inches and all support would be gone.

Harry came into view again, sliding head first back towards the canopy. He climbed down skilfully and let himself drop on to the branch. It whipped as his boots struck it, and I caught him around the waist. We’d have made a good circus turn between us.

He manoeuvred until he, too, was astride the branch facing me. I pointed to the wheel which had only an inch to go. His face tautened. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

We untied the machetes and water-bottles and put the sling around our shoulders, then hauled the rest of the winch cable out of the chopper. ‘How long is it?’

‘A hundred feet.’

‘It ought to be enough to reach the ground.’ I started to pay it out until it had all gone. I went first, going down hand over hand. It wasn’t so bad because there were plenty of branches lower down to help out. I had to stop a couple of times to disentangle the cable where it had caught up, and on one of those stops I waited for Harry.

He came down and rested on a branch, breathing heavily. ‘Imagine me making like Tarzan!’ he gasped. His face twisted in a spasm of pain.

‘What’s the matter?’

He rubbed his chest. ‘I think maybe I cracked a couple of ribs. I’ll be all right.’

I produced the half-empty water-bottle. ‘Take a good swallow. Half for you and half for me.’

He took it doubtfully. ‘I thought you said go easy on the water.’

‘There’s some more here.’ I jerked my thumb at the scum-covered pool in the recess of a rotting tree. ‘I don’t know how good it is, so I don’t want to mix it with what’s in the bottle. Besides, water does you more good in your stomach than in the bottle — that’s the latest theory.’

He nodded, and swallowed water convulsively, his Adam’s apple jerking up and down. He handed the bottle to me and I finished it. Then I dipped it into the murky pool to refill it. Tadpoles darted away under the surface; the tree frogs bred up here in the high forest galleries, and lived from birth to death without ever seeing ground. I rammed the cork home, and said, ‘I’ll have to be really thirsty before I’ll want to drink that. Are you ready?’

He nodded, so I grasped the cable and started down again, getting a hell of a fright when I startled a spider monkey who gave a squawk and made a twenty-foot leap to another tree, then turned and gibbered at me angrily. He was a lot more at home in the forest than I was, but he was built for it.

At last we reached bottom and stood in the humid greenness with firm ground underfoot. I looked up at the cable. Some Maya or chiclero would come along and wonder at it, and then find a use for it. Or maybe no human eyes would ever see it again. I said, ‘That was a damnfool stunt you pulled up there. What the devil were you doing?’

He looked up. ‘Let’s get out from under the chopper. It’s not too safe here.’

‘Which way?’

‘Any goddamn way,’ he said violently. ‘Just let’s get out from under, that’s all.’ He drew his machete and swung it viciously at the undergrowth and carved a passage through it. It wasn’t too bad — what Fallon would call a twenty-foot forest, perhaps, and we didn’t have to work very hard at it.

After going about two hundred yards Harry stopped and turned to me. ‘The chopper was sabotaged,’ he said expressionlessly.

‘What!’

‘You heard me. That crash was rigged. I wish I could get my hands on the bastard who did it.’

I stuck my machete in the earth so that it remained upright. ‘How do you know this?’

‘I did the day-to-day maintenance myself, and I knew every inch of that machine. Do you know how a helicopter works?’

‘Only vaguely,’ I said.

He squatted on his heels and drew a diagram in the humus with a twig. ‘There’s the big rotor on top that gives lift. Newton’s law says that for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction, so, if you didn’t stop it, the whole fuselage would rotate in the opposite direction to the rotor. The way you stop it is to put a little propeller at the back which pushes sideways. Got that?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘This helicopter had one engine which drove both rotors. The rear rotor is driven by a long shaft which runs the length of the fuselage — and there’s a universal coupling here. Do you remember that bang we heard just before the crash? I thought it was the rear rotor flying off. It wasn’t. It was this coupling giving way so that the shaft flailed clean through the side of the fuselage. Of course, the rear rotor stopped and we started to spin.’

I patted my pockets and found a half-empty packet of cigarettes. Harry took one, and said, ‘I had a look at that coupling. The retaining screws had been taken out.’

‘Are you sure about that? They couldn’t have broken out?’

He gave me a disgusted look. ‘Of course I’m goddamn sure.’

‘When did you last inspect that coupling?’

‘Two days ago. But the sabotage was done after that, because I was flying yesterday. My God, we were lucky to get ten minutes’ flying without those screws.’

There was a noise in the forest — a dull boom from overhead — and a bright glare reflected through the leaves. ‘There she goes,’ said Harry. ‘And we’re damned lucky not to be going with her.’

II

‘Ten miles,’ said Harry. ‘That’s a long way in the forest. How much water have we got?’

‘A quart of good, and a quart of doubtful.’

His lips tightened. ‘Not much for two men in this heat, and we can’t travel at night.’ He spread out his map on the ground, and took a small compass from his pocket. ‘It’s going to take us two days, and we can’t do it on two quarts of water.’ His finger traced a line on the map. ‘There’s another cenote — a small one — just here. It’s about three miles off the direct track, so we’ll have to make a dog-leg.’

‘How far from here is it?’

He spread his fingers on the map and estimated the distance.

‘About five miles.’

‘That’s it, then,’ I said. ‘It’s a full day’s journey. What time is it now?’

‘Eleven-thirty. We’d better get going; I’d like to make it before nightfall.’

The rest of that day was compounded of insects, snakes, sweat and a sore back. I did most of the machete work because Harry’s chest was becoming worse and every time he lifted an arm he winced with pain. But he carried both water-bottles and the spare machete, which left me unencumbered.

At first, it wasn’t too bad; more of a stroll through pleasant glades than anything else, with but the occasional tussle with the undergrowth. Harry navigated with the compass and we made good time. In the first hour we travelled nearly two miles, and my spirits rose. At this rate we’d be at the cenote by two in the afternoon.

But suddenly the forest closed in and we were fighting through a tangled mass of shrubbery. I don’t know why the forest changed like that; maybe it was a difference in the soil which encouraged the growth. But there it was, and it slowed us up painfully. The pain came not only from the knowledge that we wouldn’t get to water as quickly as we expected, but also very physically. Soon I was bleeding from a dozen cuts and scratches on my arms. Try as I would I couldn’t help it happening; the forest seemed imbued with a malevolent life of its own.

We had to stop frequently to rest. Harry started to become apologetic because he couldn’t take his turn with the machete, but I soon shut him up. ‘You concentrate on keeping us on course,’ I said. ‘How are we doing for water?’

He shook a bottle. ‘Just a swallow of the good stuff left.’ He thrust it at me. ‘You might as well have it.’

I uncorked the bottle, then paused. ‘What about you?’

He grinned. ‘You need it more. You’re doing all the sweating.’

It sounded reasonable but I didn’t like it. Harry was looking very drawn and his face had a greyish pallor under the dirt. ‘How are you doing?’

‘I’m okay,’ he said irritably. ‘Dr.ink the water.’

So I finished off the bottle, and said wearily, ‘How much further?’

‘About two miles.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s taken us three hours to do the last mile.’

I looked at the thick green tangle. This was Fallon’s four-foot forest, and it had been steadily getting worse. At this rate it would take us at least six hours to get to the cenote, and possibly longer. ‘Let’s get on with it,’ I said. ‘Give me your machete; this one is bloody blunt.’

An hour later Harry said, ‘Stop!’ The way he said it made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, and I stood quite still. ‘Easy now!’ he said. ‘Just step back — very quietly and very slowly.’

I took a step backwards, and then another. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Back a bit more,’ he said calmly. ‘Another couple of steps.’

So I went back, and said, ‘What the hell’s wrong?’

I heard the sigh of his pent-up breath expelled. ‘There’s nothing wrong — now,’ he said. ‘But look there — at the base of that tree.’

Then I saw it, just where I had been standing — a coiled-up horror with a fiat head and unwinking eyes. One more step and I’d have trodden on it.

‘That’s a bushmaster,’ said Harry. ‘And God help us if we get bitten by one of those.’

The snake reared its head, then slid into the undergrowth and vanished. I said, ‘What a hell of a place this is,’ and wiped the sweat from my forehead. There was a bit more wetness there than my exertions had called for.

‘We’ll take a rest,’ said Harry. ‘Have some water.’

I groped in my pocket. ‘I’ll have a cigarette instead.’

‘It’ll dry your throat,’ Harry warned.

‘It’ll calm my nerves,’ I retorted. I inspected the packet and found three left. ‘Have one?’

He shook his head. He held up a flat box. ‘This is a snakebite kit. I hope we don’t have to use it. The guy that gets bitten won’t be able to travel for a couple of days, serum or no serum.’

I nodded. Any hold-up could ruin us. He took a bottle from his pocket. ‘Let me put some more of this stuff on those scratches.’ Harry cleaned up the blood and disinfected the scratches while I finished the cigarette. Then again I hefted the machete but a little more wearily this time, and renewed the assault on the forest.

The palm of my hand was becoming sore and calloused because sweat made the skin soft and it rubbed away on the handle of the machete. This was blade work of a different order than I was used to; the machete was much heavier than any sporting sabre I had used in the salle d’armes, and although the technique was cruder more sheer muscle was needed, especially as the blade lost its edge. Besides, I had never fenced continually for hours at a time — a sabre bout is short, sharp and decisive.

We continued until it was too dark to see properly, and then found a place to rest for the night. Not that we got much rest. I didn’t feel like sleeping at ground level — there were too many creepie-crawlies — so we found a tree with out-spreading branches that were not too high, and climbed up. Harry looked inexpressibly weary. He folded his hands over his chest and, in the dimming light, again I saw a dark trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth.

‘You’re bleeding again,’ I said, worriedly.

He wiped his mouth, and said, ‘That’s nothing. Just the cuts in my mouth where the teeth broke.’ He lapsed into silence.

The forest at night was noisy. There were odd rustlings all about, and curious snufflings and snortings at the foot of the tree. Then the howler monkeys began their serenade and I awoke from a doze with a sense of shock, nearly falling out of the tree. It’s a fearsome sound, like a particularly noisy multiple murder, and it sets the nerves on edge. Fortunately, the howlers are harmless enough, despite their racket, and even they could not prevent me from falling asleep again.

As I dozed off I had a hazy recollection of hearing voices far away, dreamlike and inconsequential.

III

The next day was just a repetition. We breakfasted on the last of the water and I drank the noisome dregs with fervent appreciation. I was hungry, too, but there was nothing we could do about that. A man can go a long time without food, but water is essential, especially in tropic heat.

‘How far to the cenote?’ I asked.

Harry gropingly found his map. All his movements were slow and seemed to pain him. ‘I reckon we’re about here,’ he said croakingly. ‘Just another mile.’

‘Cheer up,’ I said. ‘We ought to make it in another three hours.’

He tried to smile and achieved a feeble grin. ‘I’ll be right behind you,’ he said.

So we set off again, but our pace was much slower. My cuts with the machete didn’t have the power behind them and it was a case of making two chops when only one had been necessary before. And I stopped sweating, which I knew was a bad sign.

Four hours later we were still not in sight of the cenote, and the bush was as thick as ever. Yet even though I was leading and doing the work I was still moving faster than Harry, who stopped often to rest. All the stuffing seemed to be knocked out of him, and I didn’t know what was the matter. I stopped and waited to let him catch up, and he came into view almost dropping with exhaustion and sagged to the ground at my feet.

I knelt beside him. ‘What’s wrong, Harry?’

‘I’m all right,’ he said with an attempt at force in his voice. ‘Don’t worry about me.’

‘I’m worried about both of us,’ I said. ‘We should have reached the cenote by now. Are you sure we’re heading the right way?’

He pulled the compass from his pocket ‘Yes; we’re all right.’ He rubbed his face. ‘Maybe we should veer a bit to the north.’

‘How far, Harry?’

‘Christ I don’t know! The cenote’s not very big. We could quite easily miss it.’

It dawned upon me that perhaps we were lost. I had been relying on Harry’s navigation, but perhaps he wasn’t in a fit state to make decisions. We could even have overshot the cenote for all I knew. I could see that it would be up to me to make the decisions in the future.

I made one. I said, ‘We’ll head due north for two hundred yards, then we’ll take up a track parallel to this one.’ I felt the edge of the machete; it was as dull as the edge of a poker and damned near useless for cutting anything. I exchanged it for the other, which wasn’t much better, and said, ‘Come on, Harry; we’ve got to find water.’

I carried the compass this time and changed direction sharply. After a hundred yards of hewing, much to my surprise I came to an open space, a sort of passage through the bush — a trail. I looked at it in astonishment and noted that it had been cut fairly recently because the slash marks were fresh.

I was about to step on to the trail when I heard voices and drew back cautiously. Two men passed within feet of me; both were dressed in dirty whites and floppy hats, and both carried rifles. They were speaking in Spanish, and I listened to the murmur of their voices fade away until all was quiet again.

Harry caught up with me, and I put my finger to my lips. ‘Chicleros,’ I said. ‘The cenote must be quite near.’

He leaned against a tree. ‘Perhaps they’ll help us,’ he said.

‘I wouldn’t bet on it. No one I ever heard has a good opinion of chicleros.’ I thought about it a bit ‘Look, Harry: you make yourself comfortable here, and I’ll follow those two lads. I’d like to know a bit more about them before disclosing myself.’

He let himself slip to a sitting position at the bottom of the tree. ‘That’s okay with me,’ he said tiredly. ‘I could do with a rest.’

So I left him and entered the trail. By God, it was a relief to be able to move freely. I went fast until I saw a disappearing flick of white ahead which was the hindermost of the chicleros, then I slowed down and kept a cautious distance. After I’d gone about a quarter of a mile I smelled wood smoke and heard more voices, so I struck off the trail, and found that the forest had thinned out and I could move quite easily and without using the machete.

Then, through the trees, I saw the dazzle of sun on water, and no Arab, coming across an oasis in the desert, could have been more cheered than I was. But I was still careful and didn’t burst into the clearing by the cenote; instead I sneaked up and hid behind the trunk of a tree and took a good look at the situation.

It was just as well I did because there were about twenty men camped there around a blue and yellow tent which looked incongruously out of place and seemed more suited to an English meadow. In front of the tent and sitting on a camp stool was Jack Gatt, engaged in pouring himself a drink. He measured a careful amount of whisky and then topped it with soda-water from a siphon. My throat tightened agonizingly as I watched him do it.

Immediately around Gatt and standing in a group were eight men listening attentively to what he was saying as he gestured at the map on the camp table. Four of them were obviously American from the intonation of their voices and from their clothing; the others were probably Mexican, although they could have come from any Central American country. To one side, and not taking part in Gatt’s conference, were about a dozen chicleros lounging by the edge of the cenote.

I withdrew from my position and circled about the cenote, then went in again to get a view from a different angle. I had to get at that water somehow, without drawing attention to myself, but I saw that anyone going to the cenote would inevitably be spotted. Fortunately, this cenote was different from the others I’d seen in that it wasn’t like a well, and the water was easily accessible. It was more like an ordinary pond than anything else.

I watched the men for a long time. They weren’t doing anything in particular; just sitting and lying about and talking casually. I had the idea they were waiting for something. Gatt, sitting with his men under the awning in front of his elegant tent, seemed quite out of place among these chicleros, although if Harris was to be believed, he was worse than any of them.

There was nothing I could do there and then, so I drew away and continued to make the full circle around the cenote and so back to the trail. Harry was asleep and moaning a little, and when I woke him up he gave a muffled shout.

‘Quiet, Harry!’ I said. ‘We’re in trouble.’

‘What is it?’ He looked around wildly.

‘I found the cenote. There’s a crowd of chicleros there — and Jack Gatt.’

‘Who the hell is Jack Gatt?’

Fallon, of course, hadn’t told him. After all, he was only a chopper jockey in Fallon’s employ and there was no reason why he should know about Gatt. I said, ‘Jack Gatt is big trouble.’

‘I’m thirsty,’ said Harry. ‘Can’t we go along there and get water?’

‘Not if you don’t want your throat cut.’ I said grimly. ‘Look, Harry: I think Gatt is ultimately responsible for the sabotage to the helicopter. Can you stick it out until nightfall?’

‘I reckon so. As long as I don’t have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.’

‘You won’t have to do that,’ I said. ‘You just lie here.’ I was becoming more and more worried about Harry. There was something wrong with him but I didn’t know what it was. I put my hand to his forehead and found it burning hot and very dry. ‘Take it easy,’ I said. ‘The time will soon pass.’

The afternoon burned away slowly. Harry fell asleep again or, at least, into a good imitation of sleep. He was feverish and moaned deliriously, which wasn’t at all a good sign for the future. I sat next to him and tried to hone the machetes with a pebble I picked up. It didn’t make much difference and I’d have given a lot for a proper whetstone.

Just before nightfall I woke Harry. ‘I’m going down to the cenote now. Give me the water-bottles.’ He leaned away from the tree and unslung them. ‘What else have you got that will hold water?’ I asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Yes, you have. Give me that bottle of disinfectant. I know it will only hold a couple of mouthfuls, but water is important right now.’

I slung the water-bottles over my shoulder and got ready to go. ‘Stay awake if you can, Harry,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be away, but I’ll make it as quick as I can.’

I wanted to get down to the cenote before nightfall. It was quicker moving when you could see where you were going, and I wanted to get into a good position while the light held. As I came out on to the trail I took a scrap of paper from my pocket and spiked it on a twig as an indication of where to find Harry.

The chicleros had lit a fire and were cooking their evening meal. I manoeuvred into a strategic place — as close to the water as I could get yet as far from the camp as possible. The fire was newly built and the leaping flames illuminated the whole of the cenote and I settled down to a long wait.

The fire burned down to a red glow and the men clustered around it, some cooking meat held on sticks, and others making some sort of flapjacks. Presently the scent of coffee drifted tantalizingly over the cenote and my stomach tightened convulsively. I hadn’t eaten for nearly two days and my guts were beginning to resent the fact.

I waited for three hours before the chicleros decided to turn in for the night although it was still quite early by city standards. Gatt, the city man, stayed up late, but he remained in his tent, no doubt under mosquito netting, and I could see the glow of a pressure lantern through the fabric. It was time to go.

I went on my belly like a snake, right to the water’s edge. I had already taken the corks from the bottles and held them in my teeth, and when I put the first bottle in the water it gurgled loudly. Just then the first howler monkey let loose his bloodcurdling cry, and I praised God for all his creations, however weird. I withdrew the bottle and put it to my lips and felt the blessed water at the back of my parched throat. I drank the full quart and no more, although it took a lot of willpower to refrain. I filled both bottles and corked them, and then washed out the disinfectant bottle and filled that.

Anyone with keen eyes could have seen me from the chiclero camp. The sky was clear and the moon was full, and a man, especially a moving man, would be easily spotted. But I managed to get back into the cover of the forest without any outcry, so probably the chicleros hadn’t a guard.

I found my way back to Harry without much difficulty and gave him a bottle of water which he drank thirstily. I had a problem — we had to get on the other side of the cenote under cover of darkness and that meant that Harry would have to move immediately, and I didn’t know if he was up to it. I waited until he had satisfied his thirst, and said, ‘We’ll have to move now. Are you fit?’

‘I’m okay, I guess,’ he said. ‘What’s the hurry?’

‘This cenote lies between us and Uaxuanoc and we want to get around it without being seen. I’ve discovered a trail on the other side which heads the right way. We’ll be able to make better time tomorrow.’

‘I’m ready,’ he said, and hoisted himself slowly to his feet. But he had to clutch the tree trunk for support and that I didn’t like. Still, he moved fast enough when we got going, and stuck close on my heels. I think the water had done him a lot of good.

I had a choice of making a wide sweep around the cenote and going through thick forest, or going straight down the trail and crawling around the chiclero camp. I chose the latter because it would be less strain on Harry, but I hoped he’d be able to keep quiet. We managed it without trouble — the dying embers of the camp fire gave good orientation — and I picked up the trail on the other side of the cenote. Once out of sight of the camp I checked the map and the compass and it seemed that the trail led pretty much in the direction of Uaxuanoc, which was all to the good.

After a mile of stumbling in the darkness Harry began to flag, so I made the decision to stop, and we pulled off the side of the trail and into the forest. I got Harry bedded down — he wasn’t in any shape to climb a tree — and said, ‘Have some more water.’

‘What about you?’

I thrust the bottle into his hands. ‘Fill up; I’m going back to get some more.’ It had to be done — if we didn’t get more water we’d never make it to Uaxuanoc, and since we only had the two bottles we might as well drink what we had.

I left him again and marked the place by thrusting a machete into the middle of the trail. Anyone moving along the trail would be certain of falling over it, including me. I didn’t think anyone else would be moving around at night. It took me an hour and a half to get to the cenote, fifteen minutes to fill up, and another hour to get back and bark my shins on that damned machete. I swore at it but at least I was certain that Harry hadn’t been discovered. He was asleep and I didn’t wake him, but dropped into an uneasy doze beside him.

Harry woke me at daybreak. He seemed cheerful enough but I felt as though I had been doped. My limbs were stiffened and I was one big ache from head to foot. I had never been a hearty camping type and this sleeping on the ground didn’t agree with me. Besides, I hadn’t had too much sleep at all and had been stumbling around in the forest for most of the hours of darkness.

I said, ‘We have a decision to make. We can stick to the forest, which is safer — but slow. Or we can go up that trail with the likelihood of meeting one of Gatt’s chicleros. What do you say, Harry?’

He was brighter this morning and not so disposed to mere acceptance. ‘Who is this guy, Gatt?’ he asked. ‘I’ve never heard of him before.’

‘It’s a bit too involved to go into right now, but as far as we’re concerned, he’s sudden death. From what I’ve seen, he’s allied himself with the chicleros.’

He shook his head. ‘Why should a guy I’ve never heard of want to kill me?’

‘He’s a big-time American gangster,’ I said. ‘He’s after the loot from Uaxuanoc. It’s a long story, but that’s the gist of it. There’s a lot of money involved, and I don’t think he’ll stop at much to get it. He certainly won’t stop short of killing us. In fact, he’s already had a damned good try at it. I can’t think of anyone else who’d sabotage your chopper.’

Harry grimaced. ‘I’ll take your word for it, but I hate like hell the idea of tackling the forest.’

So did I. An inspection of the map showed that we were a little more than five miles from Uaxuanoc. As we already knew, the forest in the immediate vicinity of Uaxuanoc was exceptionally thick and, in our present condition, it might take us two days to hack our way through. We couldn’t afford two days, not on our limited supply of water. True, we had filled ourselves up, but that would be soon expended in sweat, and we only had the two quarts’ reserve.

Then there was Harry. Whatever was wrong with him wasn’t getting any better. The trail was easy travelling and we could do at least a mile an hour, or even more. At that rate we could be in Uaxuanoc in about five hours. It was very tempting.

Against it was the fact that the trail existed in the first place. The only place Gatt could comfortably camp was at the cenote we had just left — he had to stick near a water supply. So it followed that if he were keeping an eye on Uaxuanoc then the trail must have been made by his chicleros, and the likelihood of bumping up against one was high. I didn’t know what would happen if we did, but all those I had seen were armed and, from Fallon’s account, they were quite prepared to use their weapons.

It was a hell of a decision to make, but finally I opted for the trail. The forest was impossible and we might not encounter a chiclero. Harry sighed in satisfaction and nodded his head in agreement. ‘Anything but the forest,’ he said.

We entered the trail cautiously, found nothing to worry us, and went along it away from Gatt’s camp. I kept my eyes down and found plenty of evidence that the trail was in frequent use. There were footprints on patches of soft earth; twice I found discarded cigarette butts, and once an empty corned beef can which had been casually tossed aside. All that was in the first hour.

It worried me very much, but what worried me even more was Harry’s slow pace. He started off chirpily enough, but he couldn’t keep it up, and he lagged behind more and more. And so I had to go along more slowly because I didn’t feel like getting too far ahead of him. It was evident that his condition was deteriorating very rapidly; his eyes were sunk deep into his head, and his face was white under the dark bristle of his beard. All his movements were slow and he kept one arm across his chest as he staggered along as though to stop himself from falling apart.

The trail was just as wide as was necessary for the passage of men in single file, otherwise I would have helped him along, but it was impossible for us to walk side by side and he had to make his own way, stumbling blindly behind me. In that first hour we only went about three-quarters of a mile and I began to get perturbed. It seemed that we would be a long time getting to Uaxuanoc by trail or forest.

It was because of our slowness that we were caught. I had expected to encounter a chiclero head on — one coming down the trail the other way — and I kept a very good lookout. Every time the trail bent in a blind corner I stopped to check the trail ahead and to confirm that we weren’t going to run into trouble.

We didn’t run into trouble — it caught up with us. I suppose a chiclero had left Gatt’s camp at daybreak just about the time we had set out on the trail. He wasn’t weak with hunger and sickness and so he made good time and came up on us from behind. I couldn’t blame Harry for not keeping a good watch on our back trail; he had enough difficulty in just putting one foot in front of the other. And so we were surprised.

There was a shout, ‘He, compañero!’ and then a startled oath as we turned round, which was accompanied by the ominous rattle of a rifle bolt. He wasn’t a very big man, but his rifle made him ten feet tall. He had put a bullet up the spout and was regarding us warily. I don’t think he knew who we were — all he knew was that we were strangers in a place where no strangers should be.

He rattled out a few words and brought the muzzle of the rifle to bear on us. ‘Aguarde acqui! Tenga cuidado!’

It all happened in a split second. Harry turned and cannoned into me. ‘Run!’ he said hoarsely, and I turned and took off up the trail. There was a shot which clipped a splinter from a tree and ricocheted across the trail in front, and a shout of warning.

I was suddenly aware that I could only hear the thud of my own boots and I turned to see Harry sprawled on the ground and the chiclero running up to him with upraised gun. Harry tried weakly to struggle to his feet but the chiclero stood over him and raised the rifle to ram the butt at his skull.

There wasn’t anything else I could do. I had the machete in my hand, so I threw it. If the machete had hit with the hilt or the flat of the blade, or even with that damned blunt edge, it would have served enough to knock the man off balance. But it struck point first, penetrating just under his rib cage, sinking in deep.

His mouth opened in surprise and he looked down at the broad blade protruding from his body with shock in his eyes. He made a choked sound which throttled off sharply and the upraised rifle slipped from his hands. Then his Knees buckled under him and he fell on top of Harry, arms outstretched and scrabbling at the rotting leaves on the ground.

I didn’t mean to kill him — but I did. When I ran back he was already dead and blood was spurting from the wound with the last dying beats of his heart, reddening Harry’s shirt. Then it stopped and there was just an oozing trickle. I rolled him away and bent down to help Harry. ‘Are you all right?’

Harry wrapped his arms about his chest. ‘Christ!’ he said. ‘I’m beat!’

I looked up and down the trail, wondering if anyone had heard the shot, then said, ‘Let’s get off this trail — quickly!’ I grabbed the machete which Harry had dropped and slashed at the bush by the side of the trail, penetrating about ten yards into the forest, then I helped Harry, and he collapsed helplessly on to the ground.

His mouth was opening and closing and I bent down to hear him whisper, ‘My chest — it hurts like hell!’

‘Take it easy,’ I said. ‘Have some water.’ I made him as comfortable as I could, then went back to the trail. The chiclero was indubitably dead and was lying in a puddle of rapidly clotting blood. I put my hand under his armpits and hauled the body off the trail and into cover, then went back and tried to disguise the evidence of death, scuffing up earth to cover the blood. Then I picked up the rifle and went back to Harry.

He was sitting with his back against a tree and his arms still hugged about his chest. He lifted lacklustre eyes, and said, ‘I think this is it.’

I hunkered down next to him. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘That fall — it’s finished me. You were right; I think my ribs have got into my lungs.’ A trickle of blood oozed from his mouth.

I said, ‘For Christ’s sake! Why didn’t you tell me? I thought you were just bleeding from the mouth.’

He gave a twisted grin. ‘Would it have made any difference?’

Probably it wouldn’t have made any difference. Even if I had known about it I couldn’t see that we could have done any different than we had. But Harry must have been in considerable pain marching through the forest with punctured lungs.

His breath came with a curious spasmodic whistling sound. ‘I don’t think I can make it to Uaxuanoc,’ he whispered. ‘You get out of here.’

‘Wait!’ I said, and went back to the body of the dead man. He was carrying a big water-bottle that held about a half-gallon, and he had a knapsack. I searched the pockets and came up with matches, cigarettes, a wicked-looking switch-blade knife and a few other odds and ends. The knapsack contained a few items of clothing, not very clean, three tins of bully beef, a round, flat loaf about the size of a dinner plate, and a hunk of dried beef.

I took all this stuff back to Harry. ‘We can eat now,’ I said.

He shook his head slowly. ‘I’m not hungry. Get out of here, will you? While you still have time.’

‘Don’t be a damned fool,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to leave you here.’

His head dropped on one side. ‘Please yourself,’ he said, and coughed convulsively, his face screwed up in agony.

It was then I realized he was dying. The flesh on his face had fallen in so that his head looked like a skull and, as he coughed, blood spurted from his mouth and stained the leaves at his side. I couldn’t just walk away and leave him, no matter what the danger from the chicleros, so I stayed at his side and tried to encourage him.

He would take no food or water and, for a time, he was delirious; but he rallied after about an hour and could speak rationally. He said, ‘You ever been in Tucson, Mr. Wheale?’

‘No, I haven’t,’ I said. ‘And my name is Jemmy.’

‘Are you likely to be in Tucson?’

I said, ‘Yes, Harry, I’ll be in Tucson.’

‘See my sister,’ he said. ‘Tell her why I’m not going back.’

‘I’ll do that,’ I said gently.

‘Never had a wife,’ he said. ‘Nor girl-friends — not seriously. Moved around too much, I guess. But me and my sister were real close.’

‘I’ll go and see her,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell her all about it.’

He nodded and closed his eyes, saying no more. After half an hour he had a coughing fit and a great gout of red blood poured from his mouth.

Ten minutes later he died.