"We should all get to sleep," Kelly finally said, pushing to her feet. "We have another long day tomorrow:'
With murmured assents and a few groans, the party dispersed to their separate hammocks. When returning from the latrine, Nate found Professor Kouwe smoking near his hammock.
"Professor," Nate said, sensing Kouwe wanted to speak to him in private.
"Walk with me a moment. Before the Rangers activate the motion sensors:" The shaman led the way a short distance into the forest.
Nate followed. "What is it?"
Kouwe simply continued until they were deep within the jungle's gloom. The camp's two fires were only greenish glows through the bushes. He finally stopped, puffing deeply on his pipe.
"Why did you bring me out here?"
Kouwe flicked on a small flashlight.
Nate stared around. The jungle ahead was clear of all but a few trees: short breadfruit palms, oranges, figs. Bushes and low plants covered the forest floor, unnaturally dense. Nate realized what he was seeing. It was the abandoned Indian garden. He even spotted a pair of bamboo poles, staked among the plantings and burned at the top. Normally these torches were filled with tok-tok powder and lit during harvest times as a smoky repellent against hungry insects. Without a doubt, Indians had once labored here.
Nate had seen other such cultivations during his journeys in the Amazon, but now, here at night, with the patch overgrown and gone wild, it had a haunted feeling to it. He could almost sense the eyes of the Indian dead watching him.
"We're being tracked," Kouwe said.
The words startled Nate. "What are you talking about?"
Kouwe led Nate into the garden. He pointed his flashlight toward a passion fruit tree and pulled down one of the lower branches. "It's been picked bare:" Kouwe turned to him. "I'd say about the same time as when we were hauling and securing the boats. Several of the plucked stems were still moist with sap:'
"And you noticed this?"
"I was watching for it," Kouwe said. "The past two mornings, when I've gone off to gather fruit for the day's journey, I noticed some places that I'd walked the night before had been disturbed. Broken branches, a hogplum tree half empty of its fruit:"
"It could be jungle animals, foraging during the night:"
Kouwe nodded. "I thought so at first, too. So I kept silent. I could find no footprints or definite proof. But now the regularity of these occurrences has convinced me otherwise. Someone is tracking us:"
Who.
"Most likely Indians. These are their forests. They would know how to follow without being seen:"
"The Yanomamo:"
"Most likely," Kouwe said.
Nate heard the doubt in the professor's voice. "Who else could it be?"
Kouwe's eyes narrowed. "I don't know. But it strikes me as odd that they would not be more
careful. A true tracker would not let his presence be known. It's almost too sloppy for an Indian:"
"But you're an Indian. No white man would've noticed these clues, not even the Army Rangers:"
"Maybe:" Kouwe sounded unconvinced.
"We should alert Captain Waxman."
"That's why I pulled you aside first. Should we?"
"What do you mean?"
"If they are Indians, I don't think we should force the issue by having an Army Ranger team beating the bushes in search of them. The Indians, or whoever is out there, would simply vanish. If we wish to contact them, maybe we should let them come to us. Let them grow accustomed to our strangeness. Let them make the first move rather than the other way around:'
Nate's first instinct was to argue against such caution. He was anxious to forge ahead, to find answers to his father's disappearance after so many years. Patience was hard to swallow. The wet season would begin soon. The rains would start again, washing away all hopes of tracking Gerald Clark's trail.
But then again, as he had been reminded today by the caiman's attack, the Amazon was king. It had to be taken at its own pace. To fight, to thrash, only invited defeat. The best way to survive was to flow with the current.
"I think it's best if we wait a few more days," Kouwe continued. "First to see if I'm correct. Maybe you're right. Maybe it's just jungle animals. But if I'm right, I'd like to give the Indians a chance to come out on their own, rather than scare them away or force them here at gunpoint. Either way, we'd get no information:"
Nate finally conceded, but with a condition. "We'll give it another two days. Then we tell someone:"
Kouwe nodded and flicked off his flashlight. "We should be getting to bed:"
The pair hiked the short distance back to the glowing campfires. Nate pondered the shaman's words and insight. He remembered the way Kouwe's eyes had narrowed, questioning if it was Indians out there. Who else could it be?
Arriving back at the site, Nate found most of the camp already retired to their hammocks. A few soldiers patrolled the perimeter. Kouwe wished him good night and strode to his own mosquito-netted hammock. As Nate kicked out of his boots, he heard a mumbled moan from Frank O'Brien in a nearby hammock. After today's tragedy, Nate expected everyone would have troubled dreams.