TROUBLE IN MAYAPAN - part 3

A Norreys Jewel Adventure

By Andre Norton

 

From Sword in Sheath page 16

 

Return to - Part 2

9. In the Night a Beast with Topaz Eyes.
10. An Aquamarine Set in Stone.
11. Blood Like Garnets on the Rock.

12. "Mountains? Sky-set Amethysts."
13. Second Appearance of a Jade Jaguar.
14. “Would you Beg Carnelians or A Python?”
15. A Bullet of Steel--A Spear Point of Quartz.
16. “These Are My Black Pearls of Great Price.”
17. Topaz Fire and---Death.
18. Final Appearance of a Jade Jaguar.

 

Continued from Part 2

 

9: In the Night a Beast with Topaz Eyes.

     It was after their first wilderness meal that Norgate demonstrated the fine art of washing for diamonds. Not that the thin gravel of the river shore contained any treasure to reward his efforts---not even a flake of gold to color the sand. The pilot shrugged at this negative beginning and actually laughed.

     “What's so funny about this?” demanded Peter. Tall tales of diamond finds had colored all his thoughts about this river land. And now there wasn't even a trace of anything except broken bits of stone which he might have picked up along any creek back home.

     “This is flood country,” Norgate pointed out the obvious. “To get diamonds you have to have a basin of gravel where they can get caught among the stones and held while the water goes through---”

     Kane nodded. “It works like a sieve. But here the water sweeps through and rolls the stuff along-- there're no catch basins unless they're out in midstream where we're not equipped to hunt for them.”

     “But where do they wash from-- the diamonds?”

     “There,” Norgate answered Peter, “you have one of the prime mysteries of the backcountry. The stones the porkknockers `make’ and bring into the diamond shops are free stuff, loose in the gravel beds of streams. Somewhere back there, may be in those missing mountains of ours, storms tear them loose from their native clay and carrying them along towards the sea. Who can tell how long it takes a stone to come within the reach of civilization? A rock picked up last week might have started on its way before Richard the Lion Heart ruled England. And so far nobody's stumbled on the source or the stuff.”

     “Well,” Kane had been examining the gravel for himself while Norgate spoke--- “here's a little item I would like to know the source of---”

     He was holding out a curious shaped piece of rusty metal.

     “I’ll be---!” Norgate snatched at the find. “Forceps---! But what in the name of Itzmauri are these doing here?”

     “Any doctors missing?” Kane hunched forward, turning his find over with delicate touches of his finger tips---having refused to yield it to the pilot.

     “None I ever heard of-- In fact the only doctors to go back country are the mission head at Chan Chal and the government man on tour. Wait!” He settled back on his heels and frowned out at the innocent amphibian. “There was some sort of a time scientist brought in by the Import people last year, He went up river to their experimental rubber station and didn’t come down again. But I don't think he was a doctor-- he-- Yes, he was the one Piast said was crazy about bugs-- went around babbling about giant ants-- sounded like something out of H. G. Wells brighter opuses, I thought.”

     “Ants,” Kane attempted to move the rusted clamps. Red dust smeared his fingers. “why ants?”

     “Well, they're supposed to grow them large down here-- two or three inches long and poisonous to. One of the favorite tall tales of the porkknockers is of the `four-sting ant‘. Let him bite you four times and your six feet under the next day.”

     “Anybody ever seen them?” asked Peter.

     “Not that I know of, they may have regular colonies and we wouldn't know. Makes you think of that old story about the ant army in Brazil, you know the one where they started on the march to take over the country and did pretty well at it. Now if some guy could train a battalion of four-stingers and set them going---”

     “Yeah,” Kane was rolling the forceps carefully in a handkerchief. “Well, let's hope that that clever thought remains only in the pages of some of their fantasy stuff Peter laps up. Intelligent ants might be a little hard to cope with right now-- along with other little problems of the world. I don’t know how you feel about it but I would suggest we withdraw to the plane, this insect life is a little hungry---”

   Gnats and midges were ruling the air now to a degree Peter had not thought possible. He spat disgustedly and tried to keep from inhaling a few of the twilight wanderers. Already the faint hooting of owls had broken the chorus of the cicadas. Jungle life of the day had gone into its night-time hiding but the rulers of the dark world had not yet sauntered. Only bats swooped low into the free food supply of insects.

     Peter followed the others into the pilot's compartment of the plane and watched the night take over the jungle. The plane swayed lazily at its shore anchored moorings as a round of white silver arose high above the wall of trees and set a pallid trail across the river.

     “It gets you,” Norgate spoke softly, as if he were afraid of sound of his own voice. “I'm supposed to have a heritage of jungle blood. I'm not at home here-- not ever. It-- this---” he waved his hand vaguely towards the nearest shore--- “is not for us. Even the lndios do not go everywhere there. They have their taboos. Parts of this country were not meant for man-- unless the old ones were able to tame it in ways we have forgotten. They knew things-- those old ones---” his words trailed away.

     Kane lit a cigarette, the tiny red coal making a point of living fire in the dusk of the cabin.

     “Who'll take the first watch?” he asked casually enough.

     Peter glanced at the fringe of the moon struck shore line. “Watch against what? Norgate’s ants?” His chuckle broke through his effort to muffle it.

     “For that-- this wise guy,” Norgate rounded on him, “And it's no joke, fella. If those mooring lines break we'll find ourselves in a nice jam. Also these Indios back there-- wild ones-- who might like to do a little investigating. For all we know they may have been watching us ever since arrived-- one doesn’t see the forest Indies unless they wish it.”

     Kane switched on one of the small battery lights and pulled into view the automatic rifle which had been his particular charge since they had left Maya City.

     “Freeze on to this, Kid. And keep your eyes on the shore and those lines. This is no country for a crack up.” His words showed no more emotion than if he had been urging Peter to watch the traffic lights in distant New York, but the boy had lost all desire to laugh at guard duty. The very matter-of-course way with which Kane accepted the necessity for the chore was convincing of the need for it.

     So as the other two rolled up and were snoring gently some moments later back in the packed belly of the plane, Peter sat in the pilot’s seat, the rifle heavy across his knees and looked out upon the river night. Black shadows that were bats flipped out across the path of the moon after vague fluttering things which might have been moths, but moths larger than he had ever seen before. And there were sounds out of the night, more scarifying to the nerves than the hoot of the owls---shrieks and screams of terror and agony. The jungle hunters were abroad.

     But the newness wore away and he found himself blinking, fighting off drowsiness. But the illuminated dial of his watch he still had an hour to go before he could crawl back and arouse Norgate to take his place. He wondered suddenly if ants worked at night. Norgate's vague tales of monster insects were intriguing---ants setting out to conquer the world. Why, they could take over a whole jungle such as this one before anyone in civilization would guess the menace. Trained ants---

     His hands lying loosely on the rifle suddenly gripped fast and hard. Something had stirred that bush on the edge of the gravel strip. If he had not been staring at it so closely he would never have seen. But now---yes, there was a long shadow, black against the gravel, and it moved towards the water. It might be an animal on four feet, or a man creeping----

     With a tight rein on his nerves he raised the rifle, inch by inch. The shadow had not moved, it was a fixed part of the dark, fastened to the scrap of beach as if it grew there rightfully. Only it didn't. Peter cradled the rifle across his arm and reached out with his right hand for something which Kane had left on the other seat. His fingers closed about the smooth cool metal of the flashlight and he swung it around pressing the button as he did so.

     A beam of blinding white light out into the wild pattern of leaves and something dark and shiny which flashed back into the maw of the jungle, but not to flee utterly away for as Peter's finger slipped from the button he saw the gleam of two great topaz eyes turning toward him, without fear, menacingly. Then they were gone and the gravel was bare of the mysterious intruder.

     A black jaguar---common enough---Peter found himself repeating that thought aloud in a whisper. Only he has seen one of the giant perfect cats and the fluid glance of its movements had enchanted him to the point of standing entranced before its narrow cage. And this thing with all its swiftness of flight had lacked something---something the jungle beast has had. Nonsense, he had frightened off a jaguar, something harmless enough when faced by an armed man. He'd let Norgate's wonder tales ride his imagination until he had really begun seeing things---.

     The thing did not return to the gravel spit by the hour when he thankfully aroused his relief and he did not mention it to Norgate---. He had no intention of showing his greenness to an old jungle hand like the pilot. But the unwinking topaz eyes followed him through his sleep and he dosed and slept in short snatches only, being aware of Kane going to take Norgates place on guard and sitting up thankfully when the first gray of true dawn cut through the cabin.

    Kane stuck a tosseled red head around the end of the cockpit door and whistled through twisted lips.

     “Rise and shine you lubbers!” he half snarled.

     Peter writhed out of his blanket and rubbed his eyes with his hands, Norgate's movements were much more leisurely.

     “You can bring me a cup of coffee,” announced the pilot languidly. “And not more than two lumps of sugar---”

     Kane spat noisily into the river outside, and began rummaging through his duffle bag.

     “Keep right on dreaming,” he urged, “who are we to break rudely into your plans for the morning? Only what a guy eats on this trip he does a little work for-- remember?”

     Peter ran his tongue over his lips and ventured a question of his own.

     “Everybody have a quiet night?”

     Kane had been massaging a bristly chin with the flat of his hand. Over his fingers his green eyes suddenly focused on the younger man.

     “How about it?” he repeated to Norgate, “you have any fun and games, chum?”

     The pilot shook his head. “Nothing at all. And you, my friend?”

     “All quiet on the Potomac. And you, Lord? Repel any invasions in force?”

     Peter forced a little ashamed laugh. “I repelled a jaguar-- with my little flashlight, I did it---”

     “Jaguars, is it?” Norgate commented after Peter had told his adventure. “They are bold-- when hungry. Let's hope our furred friend got his stomach filled elsewhere and isn't hanging around waiting for a handout.”

     But when Kane stepped on to the beach scrap he stopped short and stood staring at the ground before him. As Peter splashed in to join him he asked “This where your visitor crawled about last night?”

     “I think so-- why?”

     “He left his calling card, all right. And his signature is a little off the beam.”

     There was a print in the moist soil just within the pocket sized clearing they had hacked out the previous day. But in spite of being deep the print was oddly blurred.

     “Do you think our four-footed friend was wearing moccasins?” Kane was measuring the print with a forefinger being careful not to touch it.

     “Looks that way, doesn't it,” agreed Norgate. “At any rate he didn't leave a good honest jaguar print. Unless he had a crippled forepaw-- Let's see if we can find any more of his tracks---”

     But there were no more, unless some very vague smears across a fallen log might have been left by their visitor. Kane began stacking the driftwood for a fire.

     “I'm no Indian tracker and am not going to crawl around on my stomach in that mud pancake hunting for something which may never have been there in the first place. How about a cup of coffee?”

     Norgate turned away from the fringe of the jungle. “I'll buy that. But I will also suggest that we wing out of here. If our friend was not four-footed, but a biped we may have more like him back again. So it's best to do a little traveling.”

     “Which way?” Peter passed around the tin cups. “I mean-- where do we go from here?”

     “Up river, I'd say,” Kane’s voice was muffled by food. “What about the gas, Norgate?”

     “I can give you about three hours flying time, inland. Then Back to Maya City if I don't want to do some tramping---”

     “Hmm. Then suppose we follow the river up. If your mountains are back there the river may have its head waters in them. And high ground is mining ground---”

     “Look,” Norgate was pointing to the water. The dark flood was showing streams of light across its rippleless surface.

     “Flooding---” Kane interrupted what they saw. “Then up-stream---”

     “Up stream maybe we can’t land,” Norgate answered. “I can give you three hours air borne and then we are at the margin of safety.”

     “Fair enough, I have a hunch about this affair.” Kane shrugged and kicked gravel over their smoldering fire.

     The water was rising. Peter could see that it had inched up over the bar and the plane was moving in its grip. They threw off the mooring and Norgate brought them into midstream taking off almost sluggishly into the morning. Again, the thick green was a puff below them as they followed a zig-zag course using the river as a guide south-west.

     For the first time Peter realized just what they were up against. If Romanes had staked out a temporary camp, or even a mining claim somewhere along the stream below there was very little chance of sighting it from the air. Only a village clearing would be printed large enough across that living map for them to sight from above. It was worse than shifting a hay stack straw by straw to locate a missing needle.

     Kane had his map out and was marking a pencil line across its clean surface to put in the twists of the lost river.

     “I don't see how we're ever going to find anything!” Peter burst out.

     “There's just one chance,” Kane said slowly. “Those animal images your brother sold to Piast, they came from an unknown source. And that source might have been Romanes. I'm gambling that his strike was somewhere near ruins, ruins where such things could be grubbed out. And ruins can be sighted from a plane. There're a lot of ifs and ands in that, but it’s the only clue we have now and we’ve got to play it. From now on we keep a look out for ruins. There were plenty of cities in Yucatan which were first located from the air---”

     “Navy below---” Norgate’s call brought them both to him. He jerked a thumb earthwards and they caught a glimpse of what he had seen just before the plane was out of range.

     A handful of brown wooden splinters rode the rising waters of the Rio Jaguar---splinters which bore, each one of them, a full complement of small doll figures.

     “Downstream---” Norgate commented slowly.

     “Yeah,” Kane bit off the word. “Reception party-for travelers, eh!”

     “Might be, brother, might be. Good thing these Johnnies haven't taken to the air yet----”

     “Listen,” Kane squinted at the sunlit world below. “Suppose we try a swing to the south? Out of the river land for awhile. This river has been flooding for a good many years and if the up-country men ever did any building it wasn't along a stream which could tear their towns apart once a year of so.”

     Norgate consulted the instruments on the panel before him.

     “One quarter hour, fella, fifteen minutes---”

     “Okay. Take her in-- south----”

     They made a slow swing to the right. Peter wanted to ask what ruins should look like-- when viewed from above. But Kane and Norgate were so intent upon the scene below that he hesitated. It was Kane who spoke first.

     “There,” his voice was flat and a little thin, “are your mountains, Norgate.”

     Against the green of the jungle lay a bluish band, a band which faded out into the sky above. Only a blue band with no rocky slopes or snow frosted peaks showing-----

     Norgate's breath hissed noisily through his teeth. “So that tale was true! But look at the mists! No place for the airborne there----

     “How big are they?” Peter ventured to ask.

     “Anything up to a spur of the Andes can be hiding back there,” Kane did not take his eyes from the strip of blue. “Can't take her in, then?” he asked the pilot.

     “Not while I'm in my right mind! I don’t want to be a condor luncheon yet awhile. Air currents and mist-- whew-- nastiest combination there is.”

     But the nose of the amphibian kept pointed toward the purple shadow of the unknown range. Then rain tapped again at the silver sides of the plane. Norgate grinned ruefully.

     “That tears it boys-- right down the middle. This is no country to be fog bound in. We'll have to turn tail to the river and ride her in.”

     But Kane was staring away through the beat of the falling water.

     “Listen, try one circle to the right-- just one! I caught a glimpse of something---”

     Norgate hesitated. The sharp line of strain was marked above his nose again. He looked at the dials before him and then glanced up at the drumming rain. Reluctantly his hands moved. The plane slipped---right and down.

     Curls of the jungle fog were beginning to show, but more slowly than they had along the San Filipe. They might have a minute or two to sight whatever Kane had noted.

     “What did you see?” Peter-demanded.

     There was nothing but masses of green with the white fog boiling up out of it---nothing in the way of stone buildings---ruins of the jungle---nothing.

     “So----” Norgate's voice went up the scale of pure excitement.

The Amphibian spiraled downward and then Peter caught sight of what the others had seen---a break in that eternal green. They flashed out over water---not the dusky brown water of the river reaches but clear water, cupped by rocky walls---the water of a lake!

 

10: An Aquamarine Set in Stone.

     “Any port in a storm---” Norgate said. “Get back in your stalls, fella here's where we hit water again---”

     “Good surface---” Kane looked at the green-blue surface below dubiously.

     “It had better be! With that much we can't stay upstairs and there isn’t time to beat it back to the river before it closes in. So-- hold on to your seats, my hearties, and pray that there are no booby traps waiting for us.”

     Peter crawled hurriedly back into his seat and took the grip the pilot recommended. He was almost glad when the shock of surfacing came rocking him loose and banging him against the dunaged with a force to set him gasping. Now clouds of white sprayed out across the window and then began to die. He lost no time in joining the others in the cockpit, Norgate was beaming on the world.

     “Nothing to it,” he repeated over and over. “Luck sure is riding our tail this trip. Any special spot on shore you have a hankering to land, Columbus? Say the word and we'll taxi over, gentle like.”

     Kane was un-slinging a pair of powerful binoculars. “Suppose you give the old man a chance to get an eyeful first,” he suggested. “then if I bring you in on a headhunter's doorstep, it'll be my fault and not yours.”

     “Just so. We'll do a little putt-putting around while you play lookout. How about a nice perch on a wing, now?”

     “Just what I was thinking, myself.” Kane calmly edged out onto the wing surface and began a detailed study of the shoreline, seemingly impervious to the rain which plastered his clothes to flesh within seconds. After a space too long to suit his impatient companions he scrambled back to drop over them both.

     “Near the head is something-- partly in the water. It may be only a rock escarpment or the debris from an old landslip, but it has suggestive outlines. Take it easy through, there may be stuff under water.

     “Are you telling me? I take you half way maybe-- the rest you walk! Think I want the feet pulled off the old girl now?”

     Not until days later did Peter come to know the lengthy chance Norgate took as he walked the amphibian across the waters of that off-the-map lake. A sunken log, an unseen shoal---one of half a hundred traps might have ripped the pontoons of the frail craft and wrecked them utterly. But, as Norgate had pointed out so jubilantly, from the moment they touched the waters luck herself seemed to have taken her place among them and they were able to anchor the plane to the shore at a reasonable distance from the grayish protrudence Kane had guided them too.

     One never knew real rain, Peter decided shivering with the flail of the water about his shoulders, until one was caught in this overflow. It stung the eyes, flooded the nostrils, set you gasping for breath, beat with a steady rhythm on your body. Yet Kane had wallowed ashore through it all and was advancing, rifle in hand towards the patch of gray. Peter pulled himself through the sticky mud and water grasping at vines and branches to get purchase through the thick fly trap glue which seemed to mark the meeting place of land and water in this new world.

     Then his boots scrapped on something harder and he barked one shin painfully against a sharp edged block of stone. Vines and the thousand and one scouts of the jungle had done their best in a skirmish to hide the firmer footing. He could see Kane swinging a jungle knife in one hand and fending off streamers of vegetation with the rifle in the other as he fought his way forward. And the passage of the larger man opened a path for Peter. He came up breathless, his ribs aching with the effort of climbing up and down the fallen ranks of stone to find Kane in a sort of clearing on a mound. Not four feet before the other's muddy boots was a drop clean and clear to the lake, Peter skidded forward to look down at the rain peeked water. But it was something very different which caught his full attention.

     Stones, huge stones, dressed roughly and fitted together with a skill which kept all but the smallest of wind born seeds from taking refuge in the dark crack lines. They were standing on the top of a manmade immense. And now that he knew that it was easier to mark the lines below, running out into the depths of the lake---almost like the markings of an ancient dock.

     Peter twisted around to look at the land behind him. The lumps of tumbled stone which broke the regular pattern of the forest were not natural. Kane prodded the nearest with his toe.

     “New York maybe-- a thousand years from now,” his voice was almost harsh through the rain. “This was a port of some kind-- and an important place.”

     “But---” it was Norgate's faint drawl which answered him, “a very singular one. Piast would go quietly mad here---” With a sharp tug he pulled away a whole section of vines and attendant creepers and bared another, almost buried portion of a titanic, brutally plain wall. “This stuff,” the pilot tried to fit the point of a small stick into right angled line of meeting between two stones, “Is new---”

     “Rather well worn for new---”commented Kane.

     “I mean-- it's new to me. I've seen Mayan stuff and the Temple of the Sun in Mexico. And I saw Machu Pikachu too once-- This is a little like that. Only no carvings-- at least we haven’t seen any. No Feathered Serpents, or Sun Gods or whatnot leering at us. Yet the guys who built here had a lot of practice and were no backwoods hillbillies. I’ll bet this was a fort of some kind.”

     “Natural position for one,” agreed Kane. He had slung the rifle and brought out the binoculars again, “Hmm----” He stopped the slow sweep across the horizon facing north---- “There's your outlet-- and I’ll bet the first emerald we kick up the head waters of the Rio Jaguar.”

     Norgate was engaged in the very childish occupation of tossing bits of stick down into the water, watching them float out of sight with the grace attention of one studying a weather report.

     “Stiffish current and right inshore too,” he commented. “Listen!”

     All Peter could hear was the steady hiss of the rain, and then---as he strained to catch any sound above or below it---a dull roar---almost like the roll of very distant thunder except that it was continuous.

     “Falls!” Kane nodded. “Up in your mountains somewhere. And that water has the right fleck of ice in it.”

   Norgate lost interest in the water below and was pushing back into the green draped ruins. Some minutes after he disappeared into their shadow, he let out a shout which brought Peter sliding towards his place of disappearance and made Kane restore his binocular and follow, A little precipitately.

     They were fronted by a dark hole in the masonry, it might once have been a wide low doorway but now within they could see the flash of the small pencil light Norgate always carried at his belt.

     “Come right in,” the pilot's voice boomed hollowly out at them. “I've found the Ritz-Carleton of this part of the woods. Don't step on any snakes----”

     Peter stopped short, almost in mid-step but Kane banged into him and sent him over the threshold into a shot of cave of tumbled masonry. The walls were damp and green with moss and the whole space smelled of old, old nastiness but it was out of the constant rain fall. Norgate was kicking at a pile of matted stuff in the far corner and in the light he thru upon it Peter saw the gray white of bones.

     “Larder-- or ex-larder of one of our four-footed friends,” the pilot was holding his nose with an exaggerated gesture of disgust. “Don’t think he ever heard of the deep freeze.”

     Kane sniffed too--- “Or of lavender between the bed sheets,” he added. “is the jaguar still looking upon this as a happy home?”

     “I think not. The stink is a little too old. Maybe just his summer home by the sea or something of the sort. But with a little cleaning up this might be a cozy enough hole.”

     “I've seen worse,” agreed Kane. “Carting all that stuff up here will be a good job.”

Norgate grinned. “Just flex all your muscles and think of your doughty pioneer ancestors. In twenty-four hours you won't know the place.”

     “That,” Kane poked an intrusive vine out of the doorway, “is what I am afraid of. Well, what's got to be done, has got to be done. Shall we start bending the weary backs?”

     With mattocks they cleared away the underbrush which had managed to find a precarious life among the stones. Norgate and Kane swung together, the rhythm of the steady rise and fall of the blades making a click-clack pattern. Peter found himself detailed to the messy job of housecleaning within the den itself. Brooms were improvised and he loaded the smelly underbrush on a branch drag and pulled it far enough away to be out of nose reach.

     Hot and tired and thoroughly disenchanted he was grubbing around on the floor when Kane looked him on in.

     “How goes it, my good man? Found any pay dirt yet?”

     “I've found dirt and plenty of it!” Peter snapped. “A little warm water and some strong soap---”

     “Ah-- there you speak of the delights of civilization. And we no longer are within the reaches of civilization-----” he stopped as Norgate pushed past him and dumped a very wet armload of heavy branches on the floor.

     Peter flared up. “Look here-- I just got the last of that stuff out and now you come in and---”

     “This is different,” the pilot was busy shedding handfuls of the leaves from the wispy fronds and throwing them helter-skelter on the floor. “The Indios speak of this, the smell of the crushed leaves-- it keeps away snakes and bugs.”

     He bore down with his heel on some of the scattered leaves and an odd, rather pungent and aromatic scent was wafted through the general odor of damp and decay.

     “The good old rushes on the floor our Norman ancestors knew,” Kane observed admiringly. “very effective. And where do we hang the armor, my good man?”

     “Around our middles until we know who the neighbors are! I have no great desire to wake up some fine morning and find my only head in the shrinking pot to be sold to some tourist for half price---”

     “Are there really headhunters here?” Peter tried to pry the truth out of their nonsense.

     “There are a hefty lot of them not two hundred miles away-- across the Brazilian border. And borders mean nothing to that crowd. Any number of them may be roosting around watching us right now.”

Leaving that cheerful thought to chew on, let's get the stuff stowed,” Kane started for the rough hole in the brush which marked the path they had torn.

     “Are we going to stay here?” demanded Peter following, close behind him.

     “That is the general idea. This is a good place for a base camp with landing for the plane. We'll unpack and play house while Norgate goes home for another load.”

     Peter held his arm up to protect his face from whipping branches. It sounded so very simple. But-- he glanced at the wild tangle of stone and growing stuff. A whole army could be hanging around behind that stuff watching them. And once Norgate took off again they would be on their own against the whole of this wilderness.

     Packing the supplies ashore from the plane and then up the steep slope to their chosen fortress was no simple matter. Within the next two hours Peter came to look back at his task of room cleaning as a pleasant and profitable job. But he set his teeth and plodded on with his share or more than his share if he could make it. He might be green but he was determined to pull his weight with the others.

     The light brandage of their first hours in the new land was markedly absent and Kane's grunts had an explosive character which argued ill for the amount of temper behind them. Norgate just held his tongue and pushed, pulled or carried as the circumstances demanded.

     Once the stuff was up they could pull it under shelter and take a breather while Norgate coaxed a small fire into being and set the coffeepot over the puny flame. With the fire, small as it was, and the piles of supplies about them, the stone walled cave took on a different air altogether. If the jaguar would just remember now that he didn’t live here anymore----

     “Right smart bit of work,” Norgate looked about him admiringly. “You boys will be right at home now---”

     “Sure.” Kane was prying a lid from a can. “And how soon can we expect you back?”

     Norgate held up his fingers. “One day to go. Two days for the rest of the supplies. One day to return. And another for good margin.”

     Well, we'll keep our idle hands out of trouble while you're gone. A little look-see around the lake will do no harm. And some testing for stones---”

     “Then-- when I return-- up to the mountains!”

     “By plane? I thought you said---” began Peter.

     “I did,” Norgate interrupted, “and I repeat it. That country is not for the bird man would want to keep healthy. No, the water that fills this lake comes from up there and the best way to travel in this country is along the streams. We shall find the one which will lead us. How Piast will green with envy when I tell him that you two are roosting right in the center of a lost city! That I will certainly do.”

     Under Kane's direction they stored the boxes and bags in a regular pile against but not touching the back wall of the half room they had cleared. Peter noted that those holding the trade goods were placed on top, within easy reaching distance. He knew the procedure one followed in new country, dealing with forest tribes who had not before contacted traders. How one selected a place some distance from the camp and put there a selection of trade goods, leaving it strictly alone. Then, if within a day or two, the trade goods vanished and some native goods were left in its place, the trader would know that his presence was welcome and business could commence. But if the goods remained, firmly rejected by the unseen watchers of the camp, there was no use in trying further. The wisest and safest thing to do was to put that place miles behind as quickly as possible.

     But in this jumble of ruins how could one know if there were any natives lurking. What good would it do to put out on one of these rocks a few yards of print cloth, a handful of glass beads and a knife or two?

   “You have Downes’ lucky piece about you?” Norgate asked casually.

     Peter's fingers pulled the top button of his shirt out of its hole and fished up a piece of stout cord on which swung the jade disc the old soldier of fortune had given him.

     “Unhuh. Well, just keep that close, son,” advised the pilot. “if it did come from up in this country it might be a passport to some of the inhabitants. Now, just as soon as I shovel in the grub, I'm for a little shut-eye. I'm not used to doubling for a pack mule and I have a big day before me tomorrow.”

   Kane sprayed the D.T. around their apartment, built up the fire and settled himself just within the doorway with the rifle across his knees while the other two crawled into blankets which in the damp did not seem superfluous. The scent from the crushed leaves w s strong in Peter's nostrils as he squirmed about hunting a soft spot where there was none.

     Either the scent or that too hard bed kept him awake in spite of the weariness in his back and shoulders and the ach in his legs. He was, he decided, too tired to sleep. Kane was a motionless projection of the wall, a guardian carved and set there by the men who had raised these giant walls.

     Through half closed eyes Peter traced by the flickering firelight the blocks of stone above his head. He knew a little of stories of this continent---the authorities said that these people had had no wheels, no form of machinery as known to modern man. How had they been able to man-handle such unwieldy blocks into place, to cut and set them so perfectly than even the jungle had not yet buried them? He soothed the jade disc with his thumb. Wasn't jade supposed to be one of the hardest of all stones? And yet they had fashioned this delicate carving with the same apparent ease as they had built these walls. He was sure that both were the work of the same people. Had the animals come from here too? The animals which Piast had puzzled over because of their lack of resemblance to any catalogued form of South American art?

    What sort of men had last lived in this room? Kane said it might have been part of a fort protecting a port. Dark skinned warriors wearing fantastic headdresses in the form of animal heads or crowns of brilliant feathers---armored officers with jade plugs in their ear lobes and collar necklaces of gold---traders------

     The fire light was a red and yellow tapestry through which brown men moved, long lines carrying packages wrapped in braided fibers. There was a hustles, a sort of panicky hurry-----

    A tall man with a grinning spirit jaguars head mounted on a skull cap helmet stood there urging them on. He had a fresh gash still gaping rawly on his fore-arm, the spear he leaned upon was splintered at the top of the heft, he shouted at the line of bearers.

     The last of the laden men passed down a slope, and were gone. Then the officer with the jaguar helmet turned and started straight into the broken room where Peter lay. In his dark face his yellow brown eyes were set at a strangely familiar angle, his beak nose jutted proudly over a mouth which was thin and tightly set with pain. There was something broken, haunting in that last long look towards the firelight-----

     Then he turned, the spotted cloak of Jaguar hide swung wide across his shoulders He limped, leaning heavily on the spear, limbed out of the fire into the dark. Peter's fingers cramped hard about the carving above his heart. The warrior in the jaguar skin had worn its twin, swinging free from his collar of twisted gold.

     “---Sleeping beauty----”

     Peter blinked smarting eyes and found himself staring up into Kane's shadowy face. He pulled himself reluctantly from the blankets and took the rifle the other pushed at him.

     “Keep the fire burning, for Pete’s sake!” the other hissed. “And let Norgate sleep He'll need the rest if he's to take that spin tomorrow. Rouse me out at four and don't be afraid to yell this time if you see any eyes leering at our in the night. That jaguar might just be hanging around—“

     The whisper died away as Kane settled himself into the hollow on the other side of the fire. Peter crawled to the vantage point where the other had been on guard. Beyond the circle of the flame light was only the heavy dark. But the rain was over and out on the lake he could see the silver plane set by the moon. He turned the wood Kane had brought out to dry and settled himself down to wait.

     There were all the sounds of the night he had heard on his last spell of guard duty along the river. And above them, heavy and continuous, that far away sullen roar which the others had said meant a falls back in the mountain country. Something small scuttled across the rocks just beyond eye-sight he pulled the rifle up on his knee and instinctively looked for the gleam of eyes which might be there. But this time no topaz globe hung in the shadows of the night.

     Right here had marched that long line of bearers with the burdens. And just there had stood the helmeted officer------. Peter grinned at his own imagining. Sure, it all might have happened just like that, a rear guard maybe leaving a fort for the last time. But who would ever know whether it was true? With this sort of background a guy could dream up any sort of a weird picture and make it seem real.

 

11: Blood Like Garnets on the Rock.

     Peter sauntered back and forth on the bluff above the lake. Down the expanse of water the amphibian was taking off, morning sun flicked from its wings. When the plane was safely airborne both the watchers gave a half-sigh of relief. Then it was gone and Peter could hear Kane crashing back from his lakeside vantage point. For four---maybe five days---they were left to the jungle alone.

     “Suppose,” Kane came out into the ragged clearing they had hacked before their temporary home, “we get this into some sort of order and swing hammocks-- by the feel of my backbone we should have done that last night. And, fella, how about the atabrine this morning?”

     Peter made a hideous face and obediently rummaged in the small pouch on his gun belt for the pill. He surveyed his hands after he gulped down the precautionary pill, “How long before I start turning yellow?”

     “Soon enough. And don‘t forget that stuff again. Fever---” Kane broke off abruptly. “Come and give me a hand with this box.”

     But housekeeping , no matter how elaborate, can only take so much time. And once their quarters were snug Peter dared to suggest the plan which had been at the back of his mind all morning.

     “What's the chances of our going up to the end of the lake and trying to find that river from the mountains-----?”

     “Hmmm,” Kane was unpacking one of the boxes, laying out carefully on the rock about him a selection of gaudy trade goods, strips of cotton cloth, a handful or two of brightly colored glass beads, two knives, a small hatchet. “Just in case we have visitors----”He muttered. “Let's put them here.”

     With a sweep of his arm he cleaned off the top of one of the fallen blocks of dressed stone and spread out the array in what he appeared to think a tempting array.

     “But just in case they try to pry into other realms----”

     He turned to frown at the doorway.

     “Couldn't we push some of those stones across it and wall it up? Then-- then---” Peter jerked the cord holding the demon face in jade from about this neck, “Hang this on the barrier. That might make it taboo----”

     “I'd forgotten you had that little trinket. Well, Downes knows more about this country than the rest of us and he seemed to think it of some use. Yes, we might try that---”

     They walled up the room in the rumble, at the expense of sever bruised fingers, hung the pendant in place so that it showed prominently, and hung themselves about with canteens, rifles, and other supplies----

     “What the well dressed explorer will wear,” commented Peter. “I feel like a bulldozer, just push me at the jungle and the thing will give way in utter defeat and discouragement---”.

     “If you can think of anything we can get along without---” laughed Kane, “you'll win a free trip to Maya City, all expenses paid. A week end by the beautiful mysterious southern waters-------”

     “I’m right by some mysterious waters now-- and I'll probably be heartily tired of them-- before I see the last of them!”

     Jungle travel was snail-wise business as Peter discovered. Once they left the comparative open spaces around the ruins of the old fort or city they were reduced to hacking a path, tramping in the heart of this was, Peter thought, a little like walking the bottom of the sea, green and dank and silent with all life high over one's head near the crowns of the towering Mora trees or lapped around the massive reaches of the occasional greenheart. Rope tree, the verdant murderers of the tropics, twisted and bound their vegetable captives and were themselves laced and tagged with orchids, mosses and air living ferns. And underfoot was a squishy, mired footing of humus and mud through which they slipped and slid until their clothing was plastered to their panting heaving bodies. It was too lush, too alive. Peter leaned against a root to recover his breath after being tripped by some unseen trap in that moveable flooring. Man was never intended to fight all this rash and alien life.

     “Creek---” Kane's call, curiously deadened by the tree walls, floated back, brought Peter to his feet again and sent him on.

     So they came out through the brush they slashed to give him foothold, to the edge of a stream of brilliant water which plunged furiously over rocks and curled over pools floored in bluish sand.

     “Look!” Kane pointed to the ground a foot or so beyond their stand.

     A column of large red-brown ants was moving with mechanical precision toward the water. They were the largest ants Peter had ever seen, maybe three-quarters of an inch long, and they didn’t look friendly.

     Some distance down the stream a fallen tree had spanned the water making a log bridge which both of them eyed warily. Green and slippery moss grew healthily along its surface, and there was a shine to its decaying bark which did not argue for security of footing. But Peter, with Kane behind him, pushed towards it.

     “Oh, no,” Peter twitched back from the upended roots which marked the end of the log on this shore. “I'm not proud-- or in a hurry-- let's let them have it all to their little selves-- considering the size of the jaws most of them have----”

     For the other travelers had found that convenience before them, marching readily across the pulpy rotten wood were the front ranks of the ant army which seemed to reach back and back as far as eye or imagination could reach.

     “Then we'll wait the rest of the day probably. We were never meant to do this the easy way,” commented Kane. “I think a little hopping from stone to stone seems to be indicated. As you say, who are we to interrupt the necessary travel of our little insect friends?”

     Gingerly they got down to the edge of the water and measured with their eyes the stones which might or might not be used to ford. All of them had a wet and sort of soapy look, Peter decided, a nasty soapy look.

     “Look out for snakes,” Peter drew back a half extended foot at that warning from his companion. With all the draping of vines and such how did one recognize a snake before it bit one?

     Kane was shifting his equipment around his body, testing each fastening. Then he jumped to the first of the water washed rocks he had selected. For a two-long second he teetered, and then he caught his balance and was upright. Peter swallowed.

     Either the second stone Kane landed upon was more secure or he had mastered the art of hopping for he made it with rock stability. And it wasn't until he made the last leap toward the opposite shore that he almost came to grief. The slippery bank gave under his boots and with a wild yell he caught frantically at the bushes, shedding leaves off the twigs. But that saved him from falling back into the stream. Peter watched him pull himself panting up the bank.

     “All right, but watch that first stone, it moves!” Kane shouted.

     “Oh it does, does it?” muttered Peter, eyeing the stone in question warily. “And what if it dumps me right into the drink?”

     He gathered his feet under him and jumped, hoping for the best. The stone moved all right, the darn thing must have been swung on a pivot. One leg went thigh deep into water a great deal cooler than the air and Peter frantically scrabble forward to the bank feeling the investigating nose of a water snake or a razor toothed pariah in every ripple that touched his flesh. He clawed his way up the mud slide which was the bank on the far-side, to the merry laughter of the first voyager.

     “Such grace, such utter dignity of movement,” Kane managed to get out between laughs. “If I'd only had a movie camera----”

     “You'd made your fortune, I suppose,” snapped Peter shaking first one dripping leg and then the other.

     “Sure-- introduce a rival for that idol of the silver screen Donald Duck-- only you didn't quake loud enough when you went under the first time. All right, relax-- we're in no particular hurry.” Kane was consulting a small compass and seemingly checking its points with various trees about them. He pocketed the guide with a shrug of relief.

     “We’re still heading southwest okay. Ready to go again?”

     Peter pulled at the dank clothing which clung with the tenacity of iron glue to his itching skin. Something like a small darkish sausage was fastened to his wrist. He shuddered and tried to flip it loose without touching its slimy length but the feeding leech was well anchored. Kane moved to his rescue, putting the flaming end of the cigarette he has just lit to the end of the repulsive body. It curled, twisted and fell off. Peter dabbed at the spot of blood on his skin.

     “You've got to expect those, and black flies, and diaggas-- they’re all in a day's work,” Kane pointed out. “Only watch out for infection-- that’s what puts a man out of business.”

     Peter was hurriedly inspecting all the parts of him which he could conviently or inconviently see. His visitors might have had kinfolk also hungry. But to his relief the leech must have been a solitary bachelor.

     The struggle with the jungle on this side of the stream was bad as it had been on the other. Peter wondered at the men who had courage not only to invade this fastness but also to attempt to build stone cities in its very heart. Fighting vegetation and the enervating heat of this green core was hard enough without trying to do heavy labor he mentioned this aloud and Kane agreed.

     “They either went in for slave labor on a big scale or else the climate was different then. Climate does change over a period of centuries. Look at our own up north-- we don't have those winters our grandparents talk about-- heavy snowfalls are more of a rarity than the accepted thing. Maybe this part of the world was much less dank when our fort holders did their building hereabouts. I only wish that it had been the custom to build a few roads in this general direction-- we could do with one-- or even the remains of one.”

     “Maybe they did all their traveling by water,” suggested Peter--- “if you have to swim-- it's easier to do it in liquid.” He hated the squishy feeling in his boots, the ooze between his toes when he set down a foot firmly.

     “Well, if Norgate brings back the goods, we can try it by boat too. Wait----” Kane froze and Peter put out a hand to keep from bumping into him. There was movement in a tree top just ahead, shaking of the branches which had no bearing on wind movements. Peter wondered how long it would take a python to go into action and whether the jaguar of the ruins was as far from its former home as they had hoped.

     The crack of Kane's rifle was magnified and echoed in the vine walled tunnel. Leaves shook and tore, fluttering earthward a something thrashed convulsively overhead. Then it bumped down, plopping with an unpleasant sound on the black earth at their feet.

     “Monkey----”

     “Red howler,” Kane particularized. “Supper.”

     Peter's mouth twisted. The long legged and armed body even with its coat of reddish hair looked at little too human for his taste. In spite of himself he could not pick it up as casually as Kane was doing. And at the sight of the limp black hands he hurriedly looked straight ahead.

     “Yeah,” Kane had caught his grimace, “it doesn't look like food. But it's about the best the jungle can give us and we'll have to go easy on the supplies until we see Norgate again----”

     Peter guessed what his companion meant. Should the pilot run into trouble on the trip they might be marooned here. And jungle travel was a gamble in which death held most of the aces already. He forced himself to accept Kane's idea of provisions as calmly as he could.

     “Another hour maybe,” the other was saying. “And then back we go, I don't want to be caught away from our base tonight. It is a poor thing but our own----”

     However it was less than an hour before they came to the natural barrier which ended for the time their efforts at exploration. As if some giant had swung a machete with as much force as all three of them had done the day before, the land was suddenly cut away almost under their feet and they found themselves standing on the edge of an almost perpendicular wall looking down into a mottled brownish green cup from which the rising air brought the stench of rotting vegetation and stagnate water.

     “Swamp?” ventured Peter. Kane nodded.

     “Death trap---” he amplified. “That's one place we won’t stick our noses into today. Looks like a back drop for the coal age. Maybe this is Norgate's `Lost World’-- all it needs is a dinosaur down front.”

     As far as Peter could see there was no way through this the bog. And yet it was a comparatively narrow ribbon since they could sight from where they stood another cliff beyond which must mark the rising of land again. It was as if they stood on the banks of a river which split the jungle in to.

     “It isn't very wide,” he pointed out.

     “Uh-- huh,” Kane answered absently. He was using the binoculars, trying them first to the east and then to the west. “not wide, but bet its plenty deep. So-- that's the way it is!” He focused on some point to their right and then passed the glasses to the eager Peter. “Take a look see and you can guess pretty well what happens here----”

     There was a distant flash of blue, Peter turned the glasses towards it and made out the shore of open water---the lake. But they were farther from it than he had thought---their journey had carried them at an angle away from the water. We could see only a bit of that, and he couldn't guess what Kane meant. Passing the glasses back, he said as much.

     “This is the overflow,” the other pointed out patiently. “storms in the mountains during the rainy seasons, melting snow-- anything starts a big flood coming down into the lake-- too big a flood to crowd out through the mouth of the river to the south. So what happens? The lake rises until the excess water is high enough to lap in here, a natural low strip of country. Once it gets in here there is no outlet for it, it stays-- and stinks-- until it can work into the mud. So we have a swamp. By the looks of it, the water hasn't come in for some time now. Ugh, good place to keep away from.”

     Another puff of air had brought the full breath of the pollution below up to their wrinkling nostrils. Peter was glad to follow as Kane turned back to retrace their path.

     “We can only get around that by taking to the lake---” he suggested.

     “You think so. There is probably and end farther in but he don't want to get out into the jungle too far. If Norgate gets back on time we can take to the water easily. He's to bring up a couple of life rafts-- the collapsible ones-- war surplus.”

     Trailing themselves by the broken and slashed foliage they had left on their outward trip they headed back towards the ruined fort and the return trip seemed twice as long as the first one. To Peter's amusement the ant army was still very much in possession of the tree bridge and Kan explained that such a trek might go on for hours.

     “Ants are really the lords of this jungle country,” he commented. “Even a jaguar will avoid an ant army on the march and they can clear a strip of country of every living thing in an hour or two-- if they really get down to business. They’re dangerous. If you have ever noticed-- man may feel momentary fear of some of the warm blooded animals-- when they endanger his own existence but he does not have any horror of them or feel any repugnance towards them. “

     “We hate snakes and crawling things,” Peter pointed out.

     “Yes, because they are alien to us. We can imagine animals having about the same thoughts and reactions as we do because they are our kin. But we cannot put ourselves into a snakes skin or think a lizards thoughts. And the same is true of insects. Man has an odd feeling of uneasiness when he seriously watches wasps, or ants, or any other of the bugs that seem to live according to intelligent plan. We instinctively know deep in our minds that should it come to an out-and-out contest between our races-- the victor might not be to the human one. Efficient and cold-blooded organization-- such as they show to a high degree is both devilish and dangerous to a race whose power rests in the individual rather than in the race as a whole.”

     “The Empire of the Ants,” quoted Peter, “that did give me the cold chills when I read it.”

     “Because it might so easily be true. If they only never develop to the place where they realized their power----”

     “You make me want to go back and plant a grenade under that tree trunk.” commented Peter.

     Kane laughed. “No, it's not that bad yet--but give them a million years or so----”

     “Well, I won’t be around to worry about it then.”

     “That's one way of looking at the problem,” agreed Kane. “Here’s home, sweet, home, welcome mat out and all.”

     They came out of the matt of the inner jungle to the broken spaces where the ruins still fought the green advance. Peter thought longing of the crisp cool of lake water and of plunging below its surface to wash from his sweat soaked body the touch of the muggy wilderness: But before he could put that wish into words they clambered up the rise to the base they had guarded and Kane stopped, a single breath hissing between his teeth. Peter edged past his shoulder until he too saw that greeting-- or was it a warning?

     The flat stone where they had left the trade offerings was not bare but it was not the lengths of cotton which made a pool of raw color on its surface. Blood congealed into sticky blobs and clots drawing the offensive attention of feasting insects, were dark garnet settings on the gray stone. And in the midst of the red-black stuff were the dabbled feathers of a bird, the ripped remnants of which were set out as a sacrifice.

     Kane moved forward to hand examine more closely the beastly sight. Peter noticed that he did not touch even a single feather but looked from the stone to the surrounding ground, getting down on hands and knees to pull aside the plants which hid part of the base of the block.

   “What is it?”

     “Trade goods are gone,” Kane pointed out. “No marks around either-- unless it needs a better trailer than I to pick them out. We've had visitors the two-legged class.”

     “But why the fresh meat?” queried Peter, pointing to the exceeding dead offering. “If they meant it in payment wouldn’t they have left it in better condition?”

     Kane sat back on his heels. “One would think so. This looks more to me like a sacrifice than a barter.”

     “Do you suppose it's the old white god gag which has been going around since Cortez landed?” Peter shed most of his jungle equipment and sank down on a convenient niche in the ruins.

     “If that is so, it means we've been under observation for awhile, maybe from the first,” Kane blew a smoke ring and watched it dissolve slowly. “Which thought leaves me slightly uneasy---”

     Peter turned his head to survey as much of the jungle's edge as he could without rising. The thought left him more than slightly uneasy. He didn’t care for it at all.

     “Did they do any raiding?” To change the subject Peter pulled himself to his aching feet and made for the barrier they had erected to close in their chosen quarters. But even as he raised his hand to try the solidity of that stone wall he saw it.

     The jade plaque which had swung almost forgotten about his neck still hung there. But its perfect cool green was dabbed over with black slickness and below it on the ruble, wherever a smooth surface offered itself, were oddly shaped marks drawn in the same disgusting ink.