Anaconda Ambush Page 5

  I pointed up the track. ‘It’s just around the next corner. But they’re not very friendly. I think they thought I was a prospector.’

  Henry raised his eyebrows. ‘Want to know something funny, Sam? When we first found your footprints, we thought you were a prospector, too!’

  Both men laughed, and so did I. But I wasn’t laughing inside. Because technically I was a prospector, and there was a big lump of gold in my pocket to prove it.

  ‘Let’s pay your friends a little visit,’ said Bernard, hitching his huge pack a little higher on his back as he started to move past me.

  ‘I don’t think you should,’ I said.

  He turned on me, his eyes like chips of ice. ‘Ve are not asking your permission, kid,’ he snapped. ‘Vot ve do is no business of yours.’

  Henry patted me on the shoulder. ‘Go back and find your famous uncle. I’m sure he’s worried about you.’

  ‘But it’s a long way back to the river. What if I meet a jaguar?’

  ‘Chances of that are fairly slim,’ he said. ‘Jaguars are as rare as hen’s teeth and generally they keep away from humans.’

  I could hardly believe my ears. He and Bernard seemed like educated men, yet they were leaving me to fend for myself in the Amazon jungle.

  ‘You aren’t really butterfly collectors, are you?’ I said.

  Before Henry or Bernard could answer, a small brown figure came running around the corner from the direction of the village. It was Gabriel. He had put on a pair of baggy shorts and carried a water gourd and a woven basket. He came skidding to a stop when he saw the three of us blocking the track.

  ‘Hello there!’ Henry said loudly. ‘Do you speak English?’

  Gabriel shifted nervously from one bare foot to the other. ‘Are you Sam’s uncle?’

  ‘No, I’m his friend.’

  ‘They aren’t my friends,’ I butted in. ‘Don’t listen to him.’

  Henry’s elbow dug me in the ribs. ‘Shut your mouth!’ he hissed. To Gabriel, he said, ‘Look, sonny, I’ve got something for you.’

  From a side pocket of his pack, he withdrew a small hand-held computer game. It was bright yellow, about the size of a mobile phone, and when Henry flicked a switch it came to life with a jingling electronic tune.

  ‘Would you like this?’ he asked, holding it up for Gabriel to see.

  The boy nodded.

  I should have said something. Should have told Gabriel that the game’s cheap batteries would be dead after he’d played it for a few hours. Should have said that it wasn’t a gift, it was a bribe – Henry wanted something from Gabriel in return for the game. But the look in the boy’s big brown eyes told me I’d be wasting my time. He lived in an isolated village where they didn’t have electricity or TVs or even running water, so a hand-held computer game would seem like something from an eight-year-old’s wildest dream.

  Dropping the water gourd and basket in the middle of the track, Gabriel came shyly forward. Henry placed the twenty-first-century toy in his small, outstretched hand.

  ‘It’s yours to keep, sonny. Want me to show you how it works?’

  While Henry taught Gabriel how to play the computer game, Bernard opened his own pack and pulled out an array of items. There was a plastic doll, a cheap glass necklace, half a dozen Chupa Chups and a pair of red-framed sunglasses. He placed everything on a square of bright cloth in the middle of the track.

  ‘Vot is your name, little boy?’ he asked, smiling like a car salesman in a TV ad.

  ‘Gabriel.’

  ‘Gabriel, do you think your parents and family vould like zese gifts?’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘Very good.’ Bernard gathered the cloth by its four corners, bundling everything inside, and handed it to Gabriel. ‘Go to your village and give zese nice gifts to your family. Tell anyone who vants more good things to come here where ve are vaiting.’

  Gabriel’s smile stretched from ear to ear. It must have seemed like winning a lottery. Clutching the computer game in one hand and the bundle of goodies in the other, he went scampering away.

  ‘The Indians don’t need your gifts,’ I said to Bernard and Henry. ‘They’ve got everything they need right here in the jungle.’

  Bernard turned to me. ‘You are still here, troublemaker? Go back to your uncle now, or ve might get rough on you.’

  And he tapped the butt of his pistol to show that he meant it.

  16

  GARIMPEIRO!

  Taking the water gourd and the basket that Gabriel had brought for me, I left the two white men and headed down the track. But only until I was out of sight. It was a long way to the river and I was scared of getting lost. But more scared of meeting the puma again, or a jaguar, or another peccary stampede. All I had to protect myself was Uncle Shaun’s folding scalpel. Its blade was only two centimetres long. Ducking into the green tangle of vegetation beside the track, I doubled back until I had a clear view of Henry and Bernard through a tiny gap in the undergrowth. Even though I didn’t like them – and they didn’t like me – it felt safer to be near other humans. I had a vague plan of following them after they’d finished their business with Gabriel’s people, waiting until they’d set up camp, then stealing one of their pistols after they fell asleep. With a pistol I could defend myself against jaguars and pumas, and I could fire shots into the air to attract Uncle Shaun’s attention when I reached the river.

  I sat down on a mossy log and spied on Henry and Bernard. While I waited for something to happen, I drank half the water from the gourd Gabriel had brought for me, then looked in the basket to see what food he’d packed. There was a big tapioca-bread pancake, two cooked plantains (like little green bananas) wrapped in a big floppy leaf, and a black potato-like vegetable that was burnt on the outside but tasted like boiled egg. Yum! I was so hungry I ate everything.

  There was still no sign of the Indians, so I took the opportunity to check out the vampire bat bites on my hand and leg. The bleeding had stopped and both wounds looked clean. But just to be on the safe side I gave them another wash with the disinfectant from my pocket before putting on fresh dressings. I was covered in mosquito bites, so I swallowed an anti-malaria pill and quickly returned everything to my pockets, except the scalpel.

  There were voices approaching. About twenty Yanomami men came walking in single file down the track from the village. First in line was the old man who’d waved his stick at me. He wore the red-framed sunglasses and carried his stick. It looked different up close – more like a ceremonial club. Nearly a metre long, it had a bunch of red and yellow feathers on one end, and a rock the size of a lemon attached to the other end with twine. Gabriel’s father came next, wearing the glass necklace and sucking a Chupa Chup. Several other men were sucking Chupa Chups, too. I spotted Gabriel right at the back, so engrossed in his computer game that he was barely looking where he was going.

  The Indians stopped a few metres from Henry and Bernard.

  ‘Greetings, my friends,’ Henry said loudly.

  None of the Indians said a thing. They didn’t understand English.

  Henry spotted Gabriel and called him to the front of the group. ‘Tell them what I’m saying, kid,’ he said. ‘They can have one gift each.’

  While Gabriel translated, Bernard began lifting more cheap gifts from his pack and holding them up so the Indians could see. There was more glass jewellery, a New York Knicks baseball cap, a set of gel pens and a blue plastic watch. The old man pointed his stick at the watch and spoke to Gabriel.

  ‘He want that thing,’ the boy said.

  Henry shook his head. ‘Only one gift each. Grandad already has the sunglasses. But tell him he can have the watch, too, if he brings something for me.’

  Gabriel and the old man had a short conversation in Yanomami.

  ‘He say what thing you want?’ Gabriel asked.

  Henry nodded to Bernard, who unzipped one of the pack’s inner pockets and lifted out a small drawstring bag. He tossed it to Henry, who loos
ened the top and tipped half a dozen small pebbles into his hand. One of the pebbles was speckled with flecks of gold, another flashed red like a ruby.

  ‘Any man who can bring us rocks like these,’ Henry said, holding up one of the glistening pebbles, ‘can have many gifts.’

  All at once it became clear to me what Henry and Bernard were doing in that remote corner of the Amazon jungle. They had come to trade their trashy ‘gifts’ with the Indians in exchange for gold and jewels.

  They were prospectors.

  The old man must have worked it out, too. Pointing the ceremonial club at Bernard’s chest, he began speaking really fast – too fast for Gabriel to translate. But there was one word I understood – garimpeiro – and the old man repeated it several times.

  Henry spoke to Bernard out of the side of his mouth. ‘Give Grandad the watch before he blows a gasket.’

  Bernard held out the watch, but the old man waved it away. He whipped off the red-framed sunglasses and threw them on the ground at Bernard’s feet. He was still talking flat out.

  ‘You must go from our land,’ Gabriel translated.

  ‘Tell him we have travelled from far away to bring him these gifts,’ said Henry.

  ‘He say garimpeiro bring bad luck to our people. Many white men will follow your footsteps. They will chop down trees and build roads and dig holes in the earth. They will destroy our home.’

  Bernard leaned sideways and spoke softy to Henry. I couldn’t hear what he said, but I saw Henry’s eyes suddenly fix on the rock tied to the end of the old man’s club. Without realising it, the Indian had stepped into a narrow shaft of sunlight that filtered down through the trees. And a transformation had occurred. The rock was dazzling! Lit up from inside, it shot out a thousand beams of rainbow light like a miniature laser show.

  There’s only one stone that can sparkle like that – a diamond.

  Henry wet his lips. ‘Tell the old man,’ he said to Gabriel, ‘that if he gives us one thing, we will give him all our gifts. Then we will go away and never come back.’

  ‘What thing?’ Gabriel asked.

  ‘His stick.’

  ‘He will not give that,’ said Gabriel, solemnly shaking his head. ‘It belonged to his father, and to his father before him, and every father come before.’

  ‘Just tell him what I said,’ Henry snapped.

  When Gabriel translated what Henry wanted, the old man very nearly did burst a gasket. He started shouting at the two prospectors, and all the other men began shouting, too.

  BANG!

  Henry’s pistol was pointing straight up at the sky. A whisp of blue smoke curled out of its barrel.

  The Indians fell silent. It was probably the first time many of them had heard a firearm. Pistols are loud. Even my ears were ringing, and I was thirty metres away.

  ‘Tell the old man to give us the stick,’ Henry said.

  But still the old man refused to give it up.

  Bernard drew his pistol and aimed it at the ground, just a few centimetres from the old man’s bare feet. BANG! An explosion of dirt and leaves sprayed up into the Indian’s startled face. He looked down, wide-eyed, at the small round hole in the middle of the track.

  ‘Tell him,’ Bernard said to Gabriel, ‘zat ze next hole vill be in his foot.’

  This time the old man saw sense. The garimpeiros’ weapons were too loud and dangerous. Scowling, he handed the ceremonial club to Henry.

  ‘Sank you,’ said Bernard. He waved his pistol menacingly at the Indians. ‘Everyone go back to your village now. Except you,’ he said, grabbing Gabriel by the arm.

  ‘What do you want the kid for?’ Henry asked.

  ‘For insurance,’ said Bernard. He smiled at Gabriel. ‘Tell zem no one vill be following us. If anyone follows, a bad thing vill happen to you.’

  When Gabriel translated Bernard’s threat to the grimfaced Indians, the boy’s father stepped to the front of the group and dropped the glass necklace in the middle of the track. Several of the other men threw their Chupa Chups on the ground. I was glad none of them had brought weapons with them. They looked angry enough to start a war. But their blowguns would have been no match for the garimpeiros’ pistols.

  ‘Go!’ Bernard barked, firing another shot into the air.

  One by one, the Indians turned and disappeared up the track towards their village. Gabriel’s father was the last to go. Just before he turned away, his sharp hunter’s gaze shifted from the two white men who held his son hostage to the dense wall of jungle beside the track. For a moment he looked right at me.

  And gave a tiny nod.

  17

  A DEAL

  I didn’t know what the nod meant. Was Gabriel’s father simply letting me know that he’d seen me? Or was he passing on a message? Save my son.

  Whether or not that’s what he wanted, I was going to try. He and Gabriel had saved me. And it was my boot prints that had led the two garimpeiros to their village.

  As soon as the Indians had gone, Henry used a pocket knife to cut the bindings that secured the massive diamond to the end of the club. He held it up to the light.

  ‘You beautiful, beautiful thing!’ he said in a soft, awed voice. He sounded like Smeagol in Lord of the Rings.

  ‘Did you see ze look in zeir eyes ven I fire my gun?’ laughed Bernard as he hoisted the heavy pack back onto his shoulders.

  It was the look in Gabriel’s eyes that he should have been noticing. They darted from side to side. He was about to make a break for it.

  ‘Oh no, you don’t!’ said Henry, putting his foot out.

  Gabriel tripped and went sprawling on the ground.

  Bernard dragged him roughly to his feet and thrust his pistol between the boy’s skinny shoulder blades. ‘Stay in front of me vere I can see you,’ he ordered.

  They disappeared down the narrow track – Henry leading, then Gabriel, then Bernard holding his pistol. I waited about half a minute, then I crept out of the jungle and set off after them.

  So far I had no plan other than to follow the two white men and their young Yanomami hostage. I knew where they were headed. The Matatoro River was the only way in and out of that isolated corner of the Amazon Basin. They must have a boat. It would be back at the river, pulled up on the bank or tied to a tree. As soon as they reached it, the prospectors-turned-diamond-thieves would set off downstream. I wasn’t worried about them getting away with the diamond – it was only a rock – but I was very worried about Gabriel. Henry and Bernard were ruthless men. Unconsciously, I quickened my pace. It was a mistake. Because when I walked around the next corner, I nearly ran into them.

  Bernard spun around and pointed the pistol straight at me. ‘Vell, vell, vell, look who is here,’ he said.

  ‘H-hi!’ I stammered, lowering the scalpel.

  Henry put a big hand on Gabriel’s shoulder so he wouldn’t try anything while Bernard’s back was turned. ‘We thought you’d gone on ahead of us, Sam.’

  My brain was racing. ‘I needed a drink,’ I said. ‘There’s a creek back there – just off to the side where you can’t see it from the track.’

  As soon as I said it, I remembered I was carrying Gabriel’s water gourd in my left hand – a dead giveaway that I was lying.

  Henry’s eyes moved from the water gourd to the scalpel. ‘And what’s the knife for?’

  ‘In case of jaguars.’

  ‘Or in case you meet any big nasty men who you sink are not butterfly collectors?’ suggested Bernard.

  It was pointless pretending any longer. We all knew what was going on. ‘I’ll do a deal,’ I said.

  ‘You’re in no position to do a deal,’ said Henry.

  ‘I could make you rich.’

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Burrowing into one of my pockets, I pulled out the big lump of gold.

  ‘Let me see zat,’ snapped Bernard

  I tossed it to him. ‘There’s lots more where that came from.’

  The t
all prospector bounced the gold in the palm of his hand, feeling the weight of it. ‘Vere did you get zis?’

  ‘I can show you,’ I said. ‘But there are three conditions.’

  Bernard tossed the gold to Henry. ‘As ve said, troublemaker, you are in no position for making deals.’

  But I was watching Henry. The greedy, Smeagol-look was back in his eyes as he examined the gold.

  ‘I can make you the richest men in the world,’ I said. ‘What you’re holding is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s lots more where it came from – tonnes and tonnes of gold.’

  Henry gave a little laugh. ‘You’re exaggerating.’

  ‘I’m not. See its flat edges? They were made by a tomahawk. I had to chop it out of a gold nugget as big as a house.’

  Henry and Bernard exchanged doubtful looks. But they were prospectors – no prospector could turn down a chance to get his hands on so much gold.

  ‘What are your conditions?’ asked Henry.

  I caught Gabriel’s eye. He looked as scared as a deer. ‘First, I want you to let Gabriel go.’

  ‘You sink ve are fools?’ Bernard sneered. ‘If ve don’t haff a hostage, the Indians vill come after us.’

  ‘Not if you give Gabriel the diamond to take back to them.’

  ‘Give him the diamond?!’ the two prospectors cried together.

  ‘That’s my second condition,’ I said. ‘The diamond belongs to Gabriel’s people. If you give it back, they’ll have no reason to come after us.’

  Henry shook his head. ‘You’re asking us to give away a diamond that’s worth at least a million dollars.’

  ‘I’m asking you to give it back,’ I corrected him. ‘And what’s a million dollars in comparison to a gold nugget as big as a house?’

  The two prospectors exchanged another look.

  ‘Vot is your third condition?’ Bernard asked.

  ‘That we be partners.’

  Bernard raised one eyebrow. ‘You are forgetting who has ze guns.’

  ‘And you’re forgetting who knows where the gold is,’ I reminded him. ‘I found it, so it’s only fair that I get a share of the profits.’