"You think me still a child," she said in a low voice, cutting my speculations short. "Well, I am not a child. I have experienced much growing up in the past three months. And yesterday was my birthday. I now am eighteen, legally a woman."
"Happy birthday, Elicia," I said, smiling.
She frowned. "Make with jokes," she said, turning the frown to a womanly look of shrewd knowledge. "All right. Time will pass and you will learn the truth about me, about my womanliness."
She got up without another word and went to help Antonio search for lunch.
When we stopped for our evening break, Antonio and I searched for food while Elicia disappeared into the jungle. She had spent the afternoon trying to impress me with her womanliness. Each time I neared her on the trail, she lowered the bodice of her blouse to expose more of her ample breasts. She bumped against my hips with her wide hips. She carried more and more of our belongings, including all of Antonio's stolen firearms. Now, as we neared exhaustion and she was showing signs of weariness from all the extra effort, she had disappeared.
I found a narrow trail leading down to a grove of banana trees and followed it. I had picked a number of ripe bananas when I heard the splashing just beyond the grove and a wall of vines. I put down the bananas and went to investigate, the Volska rifle slung over my shoulder.
The splashing continued and, when I reached the wall of vines, I heard a low singing. It was Elicia. Her sweet, clear voice rose on the dark jungle air, singing an old Spanish love song:
I wondered if she knew that I was near, was listening, perhaps even peeking at her in the stream. No, I decided. She had no idea that I was near. Her singing was too soft, meant only for her ears. She wasn't putting out a mating call, not yet.
I turned away from the wall of vines, knowing what lovely sight and lovely activities lay beyond it. I had seen this girl in the nude, under extremely vicious circumstances. Seeing her in the nude here, in the stream, and knowing what was going on in her mind and her body, would have spurred me to foolish and damning actions. I may be a killer and an important government agent, but I am no heel. Not on purpose, anyway.
Dinner was a delight. Antonio had found all sorts of fruits and vegetables to add to my bananas. Elicia, however, was the most pleasant of all. She had bathed in the stream and had found orange blossoms to rub against her skin. She smelled good enough to eat, and I had the distinct feeling that she would be better than the fruits and vegetables we were eating. I had trouble keeping my eyes off her, but I decided to merely enjoy the fragrance and the nearness of her, and let it go there.
We rested only two hours after dinner and went on in full darkness. I lost my sense of direction and had no idea which side of Mount Toro we were on. Antonio seemed to know exactly where we were going and, in spite of Elicia's continued game of playing woman and bumping into me in the darkness, giving me the full benefit of her womanly fullness, we made good progress.
It was nearly midnight when Antonio stopped ahead of us on the trail and held up a hand for quiet. We hunched in the jungle, unable to see much more than our hands before our faces. I was about to ask Antonio why we were stopping when all hell seemed to break loose on the trail.
First came a high, discordant warbling, as though a thousand maniacs had just had their cages rattled. Next was a thundering and thrashing all around us, not unlike a stampede of heavy animals. Perhaps elephants or rhinoceroses. We were struggling to get our weapons lined up when lights appeared from all around us and the swarm descended.
Elicia let out a piercing scream. Antonio bellowed. I was opening my mouth to add to the general hubbub when strong hands grabbed my arms and pinned them behind me. I got out one yell before a rough cloth sack was yanked down over my head. I felt the cord being tied, a little too tight for comfort, around my neck. Other hands were on my legs and feet and torso. One probing hand even found the bandage over my wound and sent rivers of pain through my nervous system.
And then, as though a switch had been thrown, the jungle was silent. We were carried along the dark trail for the better part of an hour, circling around to cause us to lose our sense of direction, then dumped onto hard ground. When the sack was taken from my head, I found myself tied to Elicia and Antonio, side by side, in a thatched hut much like the one Pico had put me in. The ceiling, however, was considerably higher, and a bunch of half-naked Indians were standing around us in a circle. Flame torches were attached to hangers on the walls, well out from the flammable thatching.
From the circle of Indians stepped an enormously fat man with all sorts of flowered and feathered regalia adorning his body in strategic places. Most of him was exposed and he looked as though he had been wrapped in a macadam parking lot. I had never seen such expanses of human skin on one skeleton.
"I am Botussin," he said in a deep, rich voice with only a touch of growl in it. "I am chief of the Ninca." He motioned toward a tall, lithe brown man who was incredibly handsome, who wore a single eagle feather in his long hair and whose privates were covered by a soft lambskin pouch. "This is my son, Purano, heir to my throne. Now, you will provide us with your names and the reasons why you have invaded the Ninca lands, then you will be handed over to our spearchuckers, for execution. You talk now."
He pointed a fat finger at me. Frankly, I was getting a whole lot tired of being tied up and asked to spill my guts about who I was and what I was doing. I could feel Elicia's trembling body against me. Her fear helped me to keep a level head. This fat man meant business and I had damned well better take that business seriously. He couldn't have cared less about what I was tired of. But I really didn't know where to begin with Botussin, just how much I should tell him. For one thing, I didn't know the sentiments of the Ninca Indians in all that was happening in Nicarxa. Nobody had bothered to ask them — and that included our intelligence people whose information had caused me to be sent down here on this wild and woolly caper.
I decided to shorten the distance between what I wanted and what I hoped to get.
"We are here to learn about the cave that Ancio used more than thirty years ago," I said.
I couldn't have gotten more dramatic results if I had plucked a pubic hair out of one of their spearchuckers. That entire circle of half-naked brown men went almost white at the sound of Ancio's name. The chief himself staggered back and looked as though I'd just scored on his huge belly with a sledgehammer. Even the strong, silent son, Purano, appeared stunned, but he held his ground and glowered at me.
"How," the chief began, faltering, stuttering, "how you know of such things? How you know of sacrificial cave, of the devil Ancio?"
There was no reason not to tell him, since the whole country seemed to know of the hermit, Pico, so I told him the whole story, keeping it as short as possible because time was getting more precious by the minute. I down-played the impending war that Don Carlos Italla was plotting from his high place in the clouds and, of course, my role in trying to stop him. I didn't want to complicate the subject for the old chief. As it turned out, he was capable of digesting much more complicated concepts. He was obviously capable of digesting everything.