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At the mine entrance, the air around Sergio Celini and the guard who had
accompanied Mulrooney into the mine shaft was thick with flying arrows and
spears.
Celini wheeled, screaming as he fired his rifle, the rock and dirt near Fred
powdering. And then he was up and running, an arrow embedded in the stock of
his rifle as he cut laterally from the mine entrance and toward the jungle.
The guard with the submachine gun was up, running after him.
Fred reached to the ground now, picking up a spear that was taller than she
was.
"Run?" Mulrooney asked hopefully.
"Fred Me-em-ef run!" The Greek girl started after Celini and the guard,
Mulrooney right behind her, running, clutching the pistol in her right hand,
holding on to her purse with her left.
She heard sounds inhuman sounds and she looked toward the house. It was in
flames, and running from the jungle were men, nearly naked, red bands around
their heads, white necklaces that looked like they were made of teeth around
their necks, muscles rippling under cocoa-colored skin glistening with sweat.
The fronts of their bodies were painted with red designs. Spears were held
high in their hands. Arrows filled the air.
As she looked back, perhaps a half dozen of them stopped and raised long
skinny poles at least twice the length of the men holding them to their
mouths. Blowguns, Mulrooney realized.
"Hey Fred!"
Mulrooney threw herself into a run, wishing she were wearing track shoes
rather than the heavy boots Culhane had insisted she have. Suddenly Fred
turned, her right arm hauling back, the spear sailing from her hand.
Mulrooney's eyes felt as if they were popping from their sockets. The spear
passed over Mulrooney's head and Mulrooney followed its path. One of the
Uruente warriors had been less than a dozen yards behind her and the spear was
in his chest now.
"Hey, Fred, way to go!"
And Mulrooney ran for her life, Fred waiting for her, wresting a spear from
the ground that had been hurled at her, then running. To Mulrooney, she didn't
even look as though she were breathing hard.
Chapter Twenty-One
The bandits had taken pot shots at them from the riverbank until the boat had
gotten out of range. Culhane, Santini, the American engineer and the Japanese
had helped the captain of the boat and three of his crew members, and Helene
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Chavez and Magdelena had cared for a crewman with a bleeding shoulder wound.
Magdelena de Cunha sat with Culhane for a time while Culhane manned the
tiller, the putting of the engine so incessant it was almost hypnotizing. She
thanked him again for saving her life, and apologized for kissing him. He told
her he had been happy to save her life and that it was a good kiss and no
apology was needed. He thanked her.
Since reuniting with Fanny Mulrooney, Culhane had discovered something else
that was almost equally disturbing as the truism that if women were expected
to be faithful, men were, too. It was that a man and a woman could actually
speak as friends and be friends.
And Culhane and Magdelena spoke as friends. She told him apologetically that
she read very little in English and had never read his books, or even heard of
them. And then she had told him about herself. She was a lawyer who worked for
the Brazilian government. She had been assigned to travel upriver and go out
to the new mining sites where the American engineer and the Japanese were
bound for, to determine if fair labor practices were being adhered to
concerning the employment of Indians.
Culhane stood now in the prow of the riverboat, the boat really a huge rowboat
in terms of design, with a cabin built over the center section, and small
living quarters for the captain and storage for goods being shipped upriver
beneath the deck planks. But this trip there was much cargo and the boat
traveled low in the water, the captain had explained supplies for the mission
of Father Santini donated by Senhor Scott Palmer. Some of the larger items
were lashed down and stored on deck.
He watched across the bow as the riverboat glided noisily, sluggishly toward
the bank.
Unlike the previous river station where rowboats had been necessary to get
back and forth to shore, a well-built floating dock was available, and the
riverboat aimed toward it.
Santini stood beside Culhane, the suitcases between them. Culhane held his
rifle over his shoulder, the chamber empty, the screw set to fire when the
lever was worked.
Santini held the forward mooring line, the Japanese held the aft line, and the
captain was at the tiller and the controls for the engine. On the dock Culhane
saw a familiar face. For a moment it brought a smile to his lips. But the face
was alone. It was Sebastiao, but Fanny Mulrooney was not with him.
* * *
"Why did you let her go, Sebastiao?"
"She told me that she would be safe, Josh Culhane."
"I don't give a shit what she told you," Culhane snarled, walking away along
the dock. He turned around, glaring at Sebastiao. "Where is she?"
"There is a problem, senhor..."
"What! You don't know where she is?"
"The one-legged man in the bar, senhor, he knows where she is. He knows this
man Sergio Celini." Sebastiao spat into the water.
"Let's go talk to him." Culhane picked up his rifle and thumbed his hat back
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up from his forehead. He started past Sebastiao, but Sebastiao wasn't coming.
Culhane stopped. "There's something else you haven't told me," Culhane
murmured without looking at Sebastiao.
"The Uruentes. When I arrived here last night there was much talk of them.
They kill they fight now."
"The headhunters?"
"Sim, senhor. They are killers they fight like demons!"
"Fanny M.F., I mean she's in Uruente country?"
"Sim. I found two dead men without heads on my way between the house of
Celini and the river station here."
"The Bronco gassed up and ready?" Culhane looked at it parked on the far side
of the dirt street that ran parallel to the floating dock.
"Sim."
"Supplies?"
"Sim."
"Come on we're going to go see this one-legged man." Culhane pulled his
Stetson low over his eyes and shifted the rifle back into his right hand as he
walked.
He crossed the dirt street. There was only one building large enough to be a
bar, and he aimed himself toward it, backing off the set screw on the rifle as
he walked. He might need the dramatic effect of working the lever but might
not need to fire. He wanted information, not a fight, but life was rarely that
easy, Culhane thought, mounting the single low wooden step, then the plank
sidewalk. He glanced back once. Sebastiao was behind him, the flap of his
holster open, his face grim.
Culhane pushed through the bat-wing doors and stepped inside. It was indeed
the bar. He squinted his eyes, adjusting to the vastly lower light. The street
was bright, the bar in semidarkness.
The doors opened and closed behind him. Sebastiao. "I am here, senhor."
Culhane nodded. "You know this one-legged guy?"
"Não."
"Know what he looks like except for the leg?"
"Não."
Culhane nodded again. Perhaps twenty men and two women patronized the bar,
some leaning along the rail, others sitting at the small dingy tables. "I'm
looking for the one-legged man," he announced in a loud voice.
No one turned around. "Sebastiao tell them in Portuguese."
Sebastiao said that the American was looking for the one-legged man to ask him
an important question.
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