by Bill Myers
“WHO’S THERE?”
Jamie quickly snapped off his light as another beam glanced off the wall beside us.
“Get down,” Jamie whispered.
We ducked as the light swept above us, barely missing our heads.
“I SAID, WHO’S THERE?” the gruff voice demanded.
“Over here!” Jamie whispered to me as he pointed to a nearby stalagmite. It was big enough for us to hide behind. We quietly moved to it and just in time.
The voice and light started to approach. “If there’s somebody in here, ya better come out!”
Then there was another voice: “What’s the problem, Hector?”
And a third: “Somebody gonna give me a hand with this animal?”
Great, I thought, just what we need, a bad guy convention.
The footsteps came closer . . . so did the light. The beam swept all around, barely missing us, as we scrunched closer to the cold stone.
“Just stay still,” Jamie whispered.
“I wasn’t planning on doing aerobics,” I mumbled.
The second voice entered the cave and turned on his flashlight. “I don’t see nothin’,” he said as he shot his beam all around the floor and back wall.
“I thought for sure I heard somethin’,” the first voice insisted. He came a couple of steps closer, still searching.
We gradually edged around the stone just to make sure he couldn’t see us. Everything was fine . . . well, except for my nose. It had started to tickle again. I took a quick gasp. Jamie spun around and glared at me. I tried to hold it back. My eyes started to water. My lip started to tremble. But there was no stopping it. Another sneeze was on its way.
“Ahhh . . .”
“Somebody give me a hand with this animal,” the third voice demanded from outside the cave.
“It’s heavy!”
“AHHH . . .” I could tell it was going to be a good one. “Grab your nose!” Jamie whispered.
I grabbed my nose. I figured I’d probably blow my brains through my ears when I sneezed, but no biggie. We were goners, anyway. Then suddenly, the urge passed, just like that. I couldn’t believe it. Grabbing my nose had actually stopped the sneeze!
“Come on!” the third voice repeated. “Now!”
“All right, all right . . .” the other two voices complained, “we’re coming, we’re coming.” They shuffled away from us and toward the opening.
Jamie and I exchanged grins. Sweet victory. I let go of my nose.
“AHHHH-CHOOOOOOO!”
It was the biggest sneeze in the history of the world.
Suddenly, both flashlights spun around and landed squarely on us.
“THERE THEY ARE!”
“RUN!” Jamie cried as he leaped to his feet.
He didn’t have to worry. I was right behind him.
The first man moved to block our path, but the cave floor was so slick that he immediately went crashing to the ground.
“My leg!” he screamed. “My leg!”
The second guy was not nearly as clumsy, but he was a whole lot uglier. He had a jagged scar from the side of his ear all the way down to his mouth. In a flash he reached out and grabbed Jamie.
“LET ME GO!” Jamie shouted. “LET ME GO!”
I raced at ol’ Scar Face with everything I had. Which, if you’re the world’s greatest wimp, really isn’t that much. But as the guy tried to snatch me with his free hand, he let go of Jamie just enough so the kid could stomp down on his foot with all his might!
“YEOW!” the man cried. He grabbed his foot. “OH, MY!” he screamed, hopping up and down. “WHAT A RATHER UNPLEASANT EXPERIENCE THIS HAS BECOME!” (Actually, that’s not really what he said, but since I’m a Christian, I probably shouldn’t use his real words.)
“STOP THEM!” the first man cried, as he scrambled to his feet, took a couple of hops, then slipped and fell again. “STOP THEM!”
We raced out of the cave and into the daylight. Two down, one to go. Unfortunately, the “one” was the size of a small house. In his arms was a dead leopard, which he quickly dropped so he could lunge at us.
Jamie faked to the left and spun to the right like an NFL pro. I, on the other hand, used all of my great athletic skill and coordination to run smack-dab into the big man’s arms.
“GOTCHA!” he cried.
“LET GO OF ME!” I cried. “LET GO OF ME!”
But it did no good. He just hung on tighter. “So you thought you’d steal our skins, did you?”
And then it happened—another sneeze started.
“Ahh . . .”
I looked up at him. He glared down at me with a hatred that said we’d probably never become best buddies.
“AHH . . .”
Now, normally, I know it’s polite to cover your mouth when you sneeze. But since, at the moment, both of my arms were kinda pinned to my side, there wasn’t much I could do.
“AHHHH-CHOOOO!!” I let go with the second biggest sneeze in recorded history (the biggest was back on page 32) . . . directly into the burly man’s face.
“AAAWWCK . . .” the big guy cried as he dropped me to wipe off his face.
That’s all it took. With a polite “Excuse me” (Mom always taught me to be polite), I raced after Jamie for all I was worth!
“STOP THEM! GET THOSE TWO ‘BLAN-KETY-BLANK’ BRATS!”
Neither Jamie nor I thought now was a good time to stop and tell them that there were children present and they should clean up their language. Especially since all three were considering even worse sins . . . like murder!
So we just kept running—ferns and vines flying in our faces. There were no paths where we were going. Come to think of it, where were we going?
I don’t suppose it mattered where we headed ’cause with every step Broken Leg, Scar Face, and Big Guy were gaining on us.
Then I saw it. Up ahead, through the bushes . . . the river.
Great, that meant Jamie knew a shortcut. He must be heading toward a bridge where we can cross the river and—
Suddenly, Jamie dropped out of sight. What on earth? When I finally saw the reason, it was too late. I also dropped.
“AUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhh . . . !”
KER-SPLASH!
So much for shortcuts and bridges.
Chapter 4
A Little River Cruise
I don’t know how long I was under water, but I guess it wasn’t long enough. ’Cause when I came back up, coughing and choking, the three men were standing high above us on the bank shouting and cursing. They were not wild about our unexpected visit and even less thrilled about our hasty exit. But it was the fact that we had seen their faces and could identify them that really ruined their day.
“YOU COME BACK HERE!” they screamed. “COME BACK HERE! WE CAN WORK THINGS OUT!”
Neither Jamie nor I thought we should take them up on the invitation. If they really wanted to talk, they could just jump in and join us for a swim. But for some reason they didn’t. Instead, they just walked along the bank shouting their lungs out as the current carried us downstream.
“I hope you can swim!” Jamie yelled over his shoulder to me.
“No need,” I called back. “My feet can touch the bottom.”
“Uh, I wouldn’t do that, Wally.”
“Why not?”
“Stingrays—they sleep on the bottom. They’re not real keen about getting stepped on.”
I pulled up my feet. “Is that why those guys didn’t jump in after us?”
“Nah,” Jamie said. “They’re just afraid of the piranha.”
“Piranha? What’s that?” Somehow I already suspected the worse.
“Man-eating fish.”
“MAN-EATING FISH!?”
“Yeah, but usually they just attack smaller animals.”
“USUALLY??”
“It’s the crocodiles we gotta watch out for.”
“CROCODILES!?” I was beginning to sound like an echo.
“I’d keep my eyes open for them,
if I were you.”
By now the current was moving so fast the guys on the bank couldn’t keep up. They did, however, manage to squeeze in a few last-minute threats, and plenty of cursing, before they turned and raced back into the jungle.
“That was a lot of fun,” I said scornfully as I rolled onto my back to float and rest a minute. I wasn’t the world’s greatest swimmer, but as long as I could float I did pretty good. “What’s next? Wrestling with gorillas? Outrunning lions?”
“Don’t be silly,” Jamie said, “we don’t have gorillas or lions in South America.”
If that was supposed to be comforting, it didn’t help.
We floated along for several minutes. The water wasn’t chilly. It was more like bath water. Actually, because of all the mud and stuff in it, it was more like soup. Heavy, brown, bean-with-bacon soup . . . with us as the bacon.
I was about to ask Jamie how much farther, when he pointed toward the shore. “Hey, check it out,” he said.
The high bank had dropped down to a little beach. A long, brown log rested on it. It was half in the water and half out. Without a word he started swimming toward it.
I followed. But as the water grew more shallow, I grew more nervous. The last thing I wanted to do was wake one of those stingray guys from its afternoon nap. (If they’re anything like Dad, they’d definitely wake up on the cranky side.)
“Don’t worry,” Jamie said, once again reading my mind. He rose to his feet. The water was about waist deep now. “Just shuffle your feet and splash around. They’ll hear you and take off.”
I got to my feet and did just that. Actually, a lot of ‘just that’—a whole lot.
“What are you doing?” Jamie asked laughing.
“I want them to think we’re a herd of elephants dropping by,” I said as I kept splashing and kicking.
“Elephants are in Africa and Asia.”
“All right, hippopotamuses.”
“Guess again.”
“Okay, okay, then a whole clan of polar bears that have come down from Alaska on their spring break so they can go back home and impress every-one with their cool tans.”
Jamie chuckled as we finally arrived at the log. But it wasn’t a log.
“It’s a canoe,” I cried.
“Yeah, a dugout,” Jamie answered as he looked inside. “The Indians burn and dig out the middle of these long logs to make them into dugouts.”
“No kidding.”
“Yeah, only this doesn’t belong to any Indian.”
“How can you tell?”
“Check out the duffel bag—and the radio.” He pointed to a nylon gym bag and walkie-talkie at the far end of the boat. “And look at these shoeprints along the beach. They’re exactly the same as in front of the cave.”
“You mean this belongs to those poacher guys?” I asked.
“I’d bet my life on it.”
I wished he hadn’t worded it that way. “Uh, listen, Jamie,” I said, glancing around nervously. “This has been a lot of fun and everything, but shouldn’t we, like, be getting back?”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“Good.” I started to slosh up onto the shore.
He grabbed my arm. “But I wouldn’t go that way.”
“Why not?”
“Those guys know the village is upriver. They know we’d have to cross past them to get back.”
I stopped. “You mean, they’ll be waiting for us?”
“Poaching’s a serious crime,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll do anything they can to stop us from telling the authorities.”
“Anything?”
Jamie nodded.
I swallowed hard. By anything I knew he wasn’t talking about just any ol’ anything. He was talking the big anything. The anything where you don’t exactly make it home in time for dinner—or for the rest of your life.
“Can’t we just keep going downriver till we get to civilization?” I asked.
Jamie shook his head. “There’s nothing for miles. And what tribes there are . . . well, they prefer to be left alone. They get kinda unpredictable toward outsiders.”
I swallowed again. Unpredictable sounded like a polite word for unfriendly . . . which sounded to me like another opportunity to become unalive.
“So,” Jamie sighed. “We can’t go downriver, and we can’t go upriver . . . at least by foot.” He glanced back at the dugout. I could see the idea forming.
“Oh, no,” I protested, “no way are we stealing their canoe!”
“Wally—”
“If we steal their canoe,” I argued, “they’ll be twice as mad.”
“So what are they going to do, kill us twice as many times?” he asked. “Don’t you see, if we take their dugout, we can paddle upstream. We can stay in the middle of the river so they won’t be able to get us.”
“They can swim,” I argued.
“And we can paddle,” he said as he started to climb in. “Come on.”
“Jamie . . .”
“Come on.”
I threw a look back into the jungle. I wasn’t crazy about ripping off their canoe, but I was even less crazy about them ripping off my life. “All right,” I said, climbing out of the water and into the dugout, “but if we die, you’re going to live to regret it.”
As I stepped into the dugout, it tipped violently to the left. “WHOA!” I shouted, trying to keep my balance. But it was too late: I went flying into the water with a loud
KER-SPLASH!
When I came up, Jamie was laughing. “These things are kinda tricky,” he explained. “You’ve got to be careful where you put your weight.”
I stood up and tried again. Carefully, I stepped inside the narrow little boat. It still tipped, but Jamie was inside leaning the other way to keep it steady.
“It’s probably best if you just sit down in the middle,” he explained. He pulled out a long pole lying inside the dugout. “I’ll do the pushing.”
I watched as he carefully dug the stick into the riverbed and pushed us off—all the time straddling the dugout with a foot on each edge, keeping perfect balance.
“Where are the paddles?” I asked.
“You’re looking at it,” he said, referring to his stick. “They use these poles to push them wherever they’re going.” He stuck the pole into the bottom of the river and pushed again . . . then again. Soon we were in the center of the river. I was kind of jealous to see how effortlessly Jamie kept his balance, while at the same time easily pushing us up the river.
“Where’d you learn that?” I asked.
“Kids out here can steer a dugout before they can run.” Jamie grinned. “You guys have your bicycles and skateboards; we have our dugouts.” Suddenly, Jamie’s grin disappeared.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, following his gaze. Then I saw them. Three men in a dugout coming toward us, fast. But they weren’t just any three men. They were our three men!
“I thought this was their dugout!” I cried.
“It is!” Jamie yelled as he quickly spun us around and started down the river. “Looks like they had two!”
“Where are we going?” I shouted. “You’re not taking us downriver!”
“I’m open to suggestions!” he yelled as he kept pushing and we began picking up speed.
I glanced over my shoulder. They were gaining on us. “But downriver,” I said, turning back to him, “you said there were unfriendly Indians downriver.”
“I didn’t say unfriendly.” Jamie kept pushing with his pole as the current swept us faster and faster. “I said ‘unpredictable’! People haven’t spent much time with them—we don’t know what they’re like.”
By now we’d made it into the swiftest part of the river. We began moving faster than Jamie could push. Now all he could do was steer. It was about that time I noticed a faint roar. But I didn’t have time to pay attention. I was too busy looking over my shoulder and praying.
“With any luck,” Jamie shouted, “those guys will chicken out and s
top following us.”
“Because of the Indians?” I asked.
“Well, partly, yeah.”
I hated to ask, but I knew I had to. “What’s the other reason?” I guess he didn’t hear me. He was concentrating pretty hard on steering us toward the bank. Also, the roar was getting louder. I tried again. “Why would they chicken out, Jamie? JAMIE?”
“Because of the water—!”
I couldn’t hear the last word. The roar was much louder now. “What?” I shouted. “Because of the what?”
“Because of the waterfall!”
“What waterfall?”
He pointed ahead. “That one!”
I craned my neck. There was no waterfall. There were a few rocks here and there. Granted, they looked kind of dangerous as we zipped past them, but I saw no waterfall.
I threw a questioning look at Jamie, then back at the river. Up ahead there were only rocks, river, sky and . . . wait a minute. There wasn’t supposed to be sky there. There was supposed to be river there. What happened to our river? Suddenly, it dawned on me: Jamie might have a point.
“JAMIE!” I shouted. “GET US OUT OF HERE!”
“I’M TRYING!” Jamie yelled as he kept pushing with his pole, struggling to guide us toward the bank. The roar was deafening now. I could see mist rising from the edge of the river just a dozen yards ahead of us.
I stuck my hand into the water and started paddling. “WHAT CAN I DO?” I cried. “WHAT CAN I DO?”
“PRAYING WOULD BE NICE!”
I looked back over my shoulder. The bad guys were making a beeline to the shore. They were going to be okay. I looked up ahead. We’d run out of water. We weren’t going to be okay. “Dear God,” I quickly mumbled as I took off my glasses and shoved them into my pants pocket. “I know You’re kinda busy these days with wars and famines and all, but if it’s not too much bother, would You mind, like, saving our liv—”
“HANG ON!” Jamie shouted.
Our dugout shot over the edge. For a moment we seemed to float in midair, you know, like in those cartoons. Like just before Wiley Coyote drops from the Roadrunner’s sight and gets smashed to smithereens.
Smashed to smithereens?!