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  “My God, where is Teddy?” Melanie managed to deliver with the same emotional emphasis of a scream.

  Her answer was a distinct gunshot.

  “From somewhere near the river,” Charles isolated. He may have some diminished capacities, but his hearing was still good enough.

  Two more shots confirmed.

  “Could be a hunter,” Melanie ventured. Immediately, she argued against it, “Hunting what, though? Hunting where? Far away?”

  “Not far.” Charles had a more experienced ear. “You don’t need much jungle to muffle a sound.” He drew his revolver and checked its load. He’d fought his share of enemies in hostile environments like this one, and he knew the procedure.

  “This isn’t happening,” Melanie decided.

  “Oh, but it is, my dear,” Carolyne disagreed. She, like Charles, had been in predicaments where the only thing between her and safety had been a firearm and her ability to use it with precision. “The worst thing we can do is pretend it’s otherwise.”

  Three to one, they voted to stay put; Melanie was odd-man (woman) out; even Felix, still doubled over with pain, cast his vote with the majority. Concerned for Teddy’s welfare, Melanie was distraught by the decision. When Charles proceeded to make something to eat, his main concern apparently his belly, rather than Teddy’s well-being, Melanie was made more upset.

  Carolyne took it upon herself to explain how the combined voice of experience was preferable to the lone, illogical, but natural, contrary response of Melanie. Firstly, Charles was less callous than he seemed by his concern over whether to serve beef or lamb stew. “The last thing we want is to lower our energy levels,” said Carolyne. “After a morning of expending calories, we have to restock or risk performing at less than optimum when the very best is exactly what’s most demanded of us. We’ve food available, and it behooves us to take advantage of that good fortune. The absence of facts, regarding the real state of our situation, can’t assure us indefinite access to provisions.”

  “Whoever was here, for some reason, didn’t bother scrapping our food supply,” Melanie reminded.

  Carolyne was patient; after all, this sort of thing was new to Melanie, while Carolyne had successfully endured the mutiny of her bearers in the Gobi, as well as assassins in India who had intended an international incident by taking out the English/American botany team at Tumkur. “Maybe, whoever didn’t, because we interrupted him before he finished,” Carolyne suggested. “Maybe, he wasn’t clever enough to see how stealing our food could be as debilitating as smashing our radio. Maybe, a lot of things. If he left us food, he can’t be counted upon to be so obliging within the next hour, day, even week.”

  “Week?” Melanie shouldn’t have been surprised. Without communications to the outside, they were at least that long of a forced march from the Georni Ranch.

  “Now, as to our lopsided vote to stick here,” said Carolyne, “rather than launch an immediate search for Felix’s assailant, or Teddy, or for the source of the gunfire down by the river. It’s a question of not having the faintest notion of the exact whereabouts of any of those. It’s a big jungle, out there, my dear. Look how unsuccessful our concentrated efforts to locate even one Lygodium cornelius, a jungle plant, when any search for Teddy and Gordon would best be accomplished in just that same way: splitting the area into sections, one for each searcher. Except, as individuals, we’re more vulnerable than as a group.” She held up her hand to delay interruption. “We can’t know the assailant will be any the less vindictive to you, or to me, than he was to Felix, and we shouldn’t chance that will be the case. Teddy and Gordon, out there somewhere, know exactly where we are and the way to get to us.”

  “What if Teddy is injured?” Melanie asked, although she still refused to believe Gordon responsible. “What if Gordon is hurt? What if either of them fired those shots to get our attention?”

  “Then, get our attention they did,” Carolyne reminded. “However, their logical follow-up would be more gunfire, in an established rhythm, to indicate shots less likely aimed at an enemy and more likely a signal for help. What have three, erratic shots told us but that someone was off in the direction of the river with a gun? Is he there now? Is he injured, or is his intent to injure? We don’t know, and it’s preferable we do know. Our best bet is to wait until we have a better grasp of our situation. Until then, I suggest, you check your weapon to make sure it’s operational.”

  “I could never shoot anyone,” Melanie prophesied.

  Carolyne’s smile made redundant her, “You may be surprised by what you can do, my dear, if put to the test.” She went to soak a towel for Felix; it was a chore originally assigned Charles, then Melanie, but forgotten by both. If you want something done.…

  They were joined as Melanie, surprised by how hungry she’d been, contemplated seconds from the stew pot. It was a good thing the new arrival wasn’t the enemy, with full intent to do bodily harm, because, although he remained concealed, he was within easy striking distance of one and all when he requested, “Permission to join the party?” His voice was so near that Melanie dropped her mess kit in surprise. Still concealed, he filled in more pertinent details: “Roy Lendum, here. Remember me from this morning? I introduced myself, and you were kind enough to let me use your radio to relay a message via the Georni Ranch.”

  It was obvious by how Carolyne and Charles looked about that neither had located Roy yet. Melanie was only certain he was very close; she was right.

  “I heard gunshots.” Roy emerged from his crouch within a group of ferns not six feet from where Melanie had been seated before his announced presence had brought her to her feet. “I thought maybe you’d lucked out by bagging that rare bit of game. The idea of some fresh meat appealed to my meat-deprived taste buds.”

  “We suspect two-legged quarry.” Charles replaced his pistol in its holster. “There’s been a bit of mischief, as Felix and our radio can bear witness.”

  If he hadn’t already, Roy noticed Felix’s towel-draped head. Of the four, Felix had responded the last to Roy’s unexpected arrival; he sat, eyes closed, and his head against a tree root that conveniently bowed up though the soil.

  “I’ve seen no one,” Roy admitted. His mental headcount was two short. He mentally went through the introductions of that morning. “Teddy and Gordon presently missing, right?”

  “Both possible candidates for the gunfire,” Charles conceded. “Although, we presently lean toward Gordon who.…”

  “You, personally, presently lean toward Gordon,” Melanie corrected. “I’m not putting any responsibility on anyone until I have more to go on.”

  “We all need more input,” Carolyne agreed.

  Charles wasn’t assuaged: “Gordon made a pass at Melanie just last night, and Teddy took exception. I used to wonder why, in all those adventure movies, there was always one attractive woman among all those virile men; it seemed to beg trouble, and this just proves my assumption right.” He realized his faux pas and diplomatically made amends: “This expedition, of course, comes complete with two ravishing beauties.”

  “Charles, cut the crap!” Carolyne knew she wasn’t a beauty, ravishing or otherwise; nor had she ever been. Certainly, she didn’t look her best with her hair gone grey at its roots, clothes continually wet with the humidity and perspiration, bathing and toilet facilities next to nonexistent. Even Melanie, who had looked so good for so long, was beginning to go a little ripe around the edges; far less likely to spark unbridled lust in someone not hopelessly lost to the outside world for a very long time. Then, again, what did Carolyne know about men? Two husbands, and as many divorces later, still didn’t exactly make her an authority.

  “Pubescent boys will be boys,” Charles concluded his summation.

  “Not to where Gordon would endanger our lives and smash our radio,” Melanie defensively insisted.

  Roy was getting the specifics piecemeal.

  “Took off with our satellite gizmo, too,” Carolyne admitted.
/>   “Wouldn’t have run across a stray radio or space gismo, lately, have you Roy?” Charles knew it unlikely. Roy, a prospector and geologist, traveled light in order to cover a wide range of rough terrain. It was because he considered even his damaged radio excess baggage, jettisoned, that he’d appeared earlier that morning to borrow the use of theirs.

  “I can offer a quick run-through of the immediate area,” Roy volunteered, “if you’d like me to take a look.”

  “Would you?” Melanie was quick to accept.

  Carolyne was reluctant. “We’ve decided it’s best to stay put for the time being. Certainly, I wouldn’t want you hit by a bullet that didn’t even have your name on it.”

  The pros and cons were temporarily made moot by Teddy’s call from a distance: “Hey, you guys, I’m coming in!”

  Melanie would have rushed into the bush to meet him, but Roy, closest to her, put a cautionary hand on her shoulder.

  Neither Roy, nor Carolyne, nor Charles took any chances; each had a pistol drawn. Even Felix drew his.

  As was usually the case in the thick greenery, Teddy was heard long before he was seen. That he didn’t go out of his way to be stealthy was emphasized by his virtual stumble into the small clearing.

  “Teddy!” Melanie was the only one with welcoming arms, not an aimed gun. She hugged him close, her cheek so tightly against her fiancé’s sweaty chest that she heard his runaway heartbeat and felt his rasping intakes of ragged breaths.

  “Gordon is dead!” was what he said to them all by way of additional greeting.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Gordon sneaked up on you, too, did he?” Charles’ mind’s eye had the scenario down pat. “Shot him before he knocked your brains out?”

  Obviously, Teddy wasn’t following the projection as well as the others. “Shot who?”

  “Shot Gordon?” Melanie put to him. The idea made her queasy. She didn’t want responsibility, and the tale, as conjured by Charles, painted her as some kind of femme fatale, right in the middle.

  “You think I shot Gordon?” Teddy sounded incredulous.

  “Didn’t you?” Charles held fast to his theory of an attractive woman, two jealous swains, and the passion-spawning isolation of the Amazon Basin.

  “We heard three shots.” Carolyne blew a stray wisp of grey-rooted red hair out of her green eyes. “You did say Gordon was dead?” She didn’t trust her memory.

  “He’s dead, all right, but I didn’t kill him. My gunshots were attempts to save him; I was just too late.”

  “Take it from the top, why don’t you?” Melanie figured any reality was better than her uncle’s fanciful imagination.

  “Jaguar got him,” Teddy obliged.

  “Jaguar?” It was Carolyne’s turn at incredulity.

  “Cat, big as a house.”

  Carolyne had trouble buying it. It contradicted her theory of wildlife, that size, forced into deeper jungle by encroaching civilization.

  “It had to have taken him unaware; I didn’t hear Gordon make a sound.” Teddy gave Melanie a comforting hug. “It was the animal growls that got my attention.”

  Melanie shivered. Disappointed by a jungle so apparently sterile of fauna, she’d wished for one of the big cats, and here it was. It just went to prove that the bane of all wishing was the chance the wish might come true.

  “Once I had the cat in sight, I saw it was mauling Gordon; I fired and scared it off. I may even have hit it. Whatever, it genuinely took off like a bat out of hell.”

  “Horrible!” Melanie didn’t doubt.

  “We’ve seen no previous sign of any big cats,” Carolyne complained. “We’ve seen no sufficient amount of smaller animals to support a carnivore.”

  “Which might account for the animal attacking Gordon,” Felix, eyes shut, added his two cents.

  Teddy noticed Felix for what seemed the first time. “What happened to you?”

  “The same fate as happened to our radio.” Felix tried to open his eyes but decided against it. The pain was receding but had a long way to go.

  “Someone sneaked up and laid poor Felix low,” Carolyne clarified. “Same person apparently smashed our radio and ran off with our SOS device.”

  “Uncle Charles figures it was all part of Gordon’s plan to get back at you.”

  “Get back at me?” Teddy answered his own question: “Because of our little to-do last night, you mean?”

  “Seemed more than a little to-do to me,” Charles argued.

  “You think I’d blow Gordon away for his wanting to kiss Melanie? Lighten up, Charles!”

  “I see it as a spontaneous reaction to Gordon coming at you with a club.”

  “What club? There was no club.”

  “I keep trying to tell him that the thing with Gordon was no big deal.” Melanie couldn’t believe her uncle kept trying to make it something more than it was.

  “Oh, it was a big enough deal, all right,” Teddy disagreed with Melanie. “It just wasn’t so big that I’d kill the guy over it.”

  “You sound more magnanimous in retrospect.” Charles held firmly to his way of seeing things.

  “With time to think it over, I figure I might have tried a kiss from Melanie, too, in Gordon’s shoes,” admitted Teddy, an accusatory glance in Melanie’s direction.

  “Where’s Gordon now?” Carolyne brought the conversation back to where she wanted it.

  “That way,” Teddy said, his arm movement encompassing a lot of the surrounding jungle. He narrowed it down: “Not far from the river. I was going to bury the poor bastard, but there are only a couple feet of topsoil.”

  “We better move fast,” Carolyne took charge. “If a big cat is hungry enough to attack a man, your shots won’t scare him far, especially if he’s now wounded.”

  Melanie released her hold on Teddy. “I’ll get my camera.”

  “God, Melanie!” Teddy was aghast.

  Carolyne was less shocked. “It’s best to have a record, Teddy. It’ll be at least a week before we get out with the bad news, longer before anybody gets back here. A lot can happen to a body in that time, considering this environment.”

  “It’s not something Melanie should even see,” Teddy insisted.

  Once again, Carolyne argued Melanie’s case. “It’s something none of us should see, but that doesn’t mean we won’t later be asked questions whose answers will be better accompanied with substantiation. Melanie knows photography better than the lot of us.”

  “It’s okay, Teddy.” Melanie was less certain than she sounded, but she went for her camera nevertheless.

  Teddy continued to object: “It just, somehow, seems macabre to photograph the corpse.”

  “The police do it all of the time,” Melanie reminded, camera in hand. “My college photography class had one of the cameramen who do that sort of thing come around to guest-lecture.”

  “From whom you gleaned enough insight to handle this?” Teddy didn’t make it a statement.

  Melanie was piqued. She wasn’t a child but a grown woman good at her chosen hobby. Carolyne had had no trouble seeing that, so what was Teddy’s problem? “I’m doing this as much for you as for anyone, you know?” Melanie said. His look said he didn’t follow that, so she spelled it out. “You think Uncle Charles has given up on his version of the story, especially when he’s had a few drinks? Without the very best photographic record of this, do you really want to tell the authorities that a jaguar killed the man you assaulted, and it did so at a spot that probably hasn’t seen another jaguar in years?”

  “Look, Melanie,” Teddy was conciliatory; “while I’ll concede that pictures are a great idea, I’d just prefer it if I took them. Or, how about Felix? He has a camera.”

  “Felix is staying right here with his headache,” said Felix. “If whoever wants to finish me off, the way I feel, he’s welcome to me.”

  “Shouldn’t someone stay with you?” Carolyne suggested.

  “If anyone had really wanted me dead, I’d likely be dead,”
Felix said and rubbed the bump on his head.

  “Nevertheless.…” Carolyne was prepared to argue the point.

  “No baby-sitter required!” Felix insisted.

  Meanwhile, Melanie had conflicting emotions: appreciation of her fiancé’s concern, loathing of his assumption that he, Felix, or both, were better prepared to photograph death than was she, a woman. It was a streak of male chauvinism she’d recognized in him before; not appreciated.

  “It’s a matter of depth perception, clarity of focus, perspective,” Melanie reminded. “There are certain learned techniques of photography that make me the obvious best choice. For instance, consider the scratch marks on the victim.”

  “What about the scratch marks?” Teddy asked.

  “Has anyone else, here, realized that something like, say, a tube of lipstick, laid out beside them, can help immeasurably in later determining how long and wide the marks are, or, more importantly, how far apart they are, for comparisons, should the jaguar claim another victim?”

  “I never realized you were such a forensics expert,” Teddy said and didn’t sound all that impressed with his discovery.

  * * * *

  “How much farther?” Charles complained.

  Teddy’s answer: “Closer than Melanie or you should find yourselves wishing.”

  Melanie was no longer even vaguely flattered by Teddy’s protective attitude. She found it condescending. When was the last time, not counting this one, that he had seen a jaguar-ravaged body? Had he been made dysfunctional by the experience?

  Actually, he had looked in quite a state when he’d stumbled into camp; that memory made her less critical.

  As predicted, the scene wasn’t pretty. Melanie got ill before, during, and after photographing it; she wasn’t alone if green faces and gagging reflexes were any indication. It was only her inherent need to do the job right that provided the impetus she needed to see her through it.

  “How many pictures did you take?” Carolyne held Melanie’s head while the young women dry-heaved for not the first time.

  “A twelve-picture digital chip’s worth.” Melanie accepted another wet-wipe and wondered how Carolyne kept producing them from a seemingly endless supply. The taste in her mouth wasn’t to be believed; Carolyne offered a breath mint.