The Cutthroat Cannibals (14 page)

But as Stone saw the flames of numerous torches bouncing through the woods only about fifty yards off, he suddenly decided
the tire yacht looked very inviting indeed, and he added his shoulder to the raft. Within seconds they had it into the water,
and the current caught it. Suddenly they were all scrambling around trying to get in, Excaliber making a flying leap from
the river’s edge and just barely catching its front paws on the rapidly departing tire boat. Stone reached around as he lay
on his chest half on and half off the thing, and managed to snag the bull terrier’s collar with one hand as it kicked away
in the water. He gave it a great heave and the animal sort of exploded from the water, landing on one of the tires where it
tried to get its balance on the inner rims of the thing.

Stone hoisted himself up just as the first of the Indian posse reached the shoreline. Arrows began flying through the air,
but the stiff wind above the river pulled them sharply to the side. He crawled ahead and saw that Cracking Elk was pulling
on a long, thick rope that led from one side of the river to the other. It was a ferryboat, Stone suddenly realized, feeling
a little dumb. Maybe they were going to get out of this damned thing after all. But even as he rose up on one knee and added
his strength to pulling the rope as it passed over the tire raft, so they slowly edged through the river, Stone glanced back
as he felt vibrations in the taut rope beneath his arms. The Atsana were chopping away at the thing attached to a tree on
the shore, slicing at it as if the rope had just killed their grandmothers. It took only seconds for the cable to be completely
severed.

“Shit!” Stone spat out at the aquamarine sky, shimmering like the shell of an oyster above them. For the ferry was already
ripping free of the loosened rope and joining the current. Within ten seconds they were moving along at twenty miles an hour
and Stone could see, as the craft began rocketing around every which way, that it wouldn’t be a hell of a long time before
the whole fucking
African Queen
started coming apart at the seams.

T
HEN they were in hell. A wet hell at that. For the huge tire raft was suddenly spinning around, rising ten, fifteen feet in
the air and then crashing down again like a surfboard caught in the undertow. When Stone’s head emerged from their first submarine
dive and he came up coughing, he looked around to see if Cracking Elk were still on for the ride. He saw the Indian at the
far end of the raft, his legs wrapped tight around a tire. The brave was grabbing hold of an arrow that was imbedded in his
shoulder. With an absolutely expressionless face he ripped the arrow out and threw it into the swirling waters. His head turned
forward and up just in time to catch Stone’s gaze. He let a smirk ripple across his upper lip as if to say, see how tough
the Indian is, white man, a hell of a lot tougher than you are, asshole.

But Stone wasn’t arguing, he was just trying to hang on for dear fucking life. He had gone white-water rafting once when about
sixteen. But this was different. Aside from the fact that the rafting trip had been for fun and they had all been decked out
in heavy life jackets and helmets, the waters had been nothing like this. What had been billed as a “rough water” adventure
was like a bathtub compared to the towering waves, the eddies and whirlpools sucking down whole trees into their dark innards.

Stone gripped his legs as hard as he could, as Cracking Elk had done, around a tire beneath him. The raft suddenly rose a
good twenty feet in the air, so that Stone could see the whole river ahead for nearly a mile, and then slammed back down into
foaming waters like a whale dropped from the sky. Stone could barely hang on even using every bit of his strength. He could
feel his whole backbone shake as if it was in a blender, and felt his teeth slam together and threaten to shatter like glass.
The pressures on the rising and falling raft were incredible—they must be hitting three and four g’s.

The tires strained and pulled at the half-rotted ropes that held them loosely together. Already some of the strands were unraveling,
and several of the tires on one end were starting to slap hard a few feet out from the rest of the raft. The thing wasn’t
going to last a hell of a long time. Not in these waters. After the fourth toss, Stone glanced around just behind him, fearing
the worst, but the damned dog was still there, as tenacious as ever, its own legs wrapped around a smaller tire like an octopus
trying to strangle a pig. The ride went on unabated for nearly ten minutes as they shot down the river. Stone could see the
granite mountains towering on each side of him, spinning around him, making him dizzy. The sun was risen fully now so he could
see more clearly. But the foam, the swirling drops and mist kept filling his eyes with water. Suddenly he saw that ahead about
a hundred feet the river was narrowing rapidly as the canyon walls pressed in closer from each side. A body of water that
had just been hundreds of yards wide was suddenly compressed to the space of about fifty feet, tight between the granite sluices
as if forming some kind of aqueduct.

They hit the rough water hard and Stone felt the raft suddenly tear ahead as if supercharged. They were shaken violently,
every bone in their bodies vibrating around as if trying to throw the muscles and flesh right off. Then they were accelerating
faster as if on a bobsled course hurtling down a hill at 200 mph. The rock walls reached out from both sides, jagged fingers
hoping to squeeze their skulls against its hardness.

Suddenly the tire raft slammed right into a boulder and the occupants of the vessel were tossed straight up in the air, all
ripped from their holding places. Yet as the currents had it, the raft dropped straight down and stayed absolutely motionless
for about three seconds as it just turned around like a slow record turntable. The three of them plopped back down on the
rubber and frantically searched for their little holding niches. The funnel effect of the pressing walls seemed to get tighter,
making the waters bubble violently as if they were being superheated from below. Just when Stone thought he couldn’t hang
on another second, just as his grip was slipping away from the wet tire surface, they were suddenly ejected out from between
two high rock walls with the striations of ten thousand generations of life cemented inside. The raft dropped about twenty
feet and suddenly they were back on a much wider river, the currents instantly dropping to an almost tropical lull.

The raft twisted around like a leaf on a pond as two of the tires broke free and headed their own way. The
Titanic
was going down. They were pushed in close to one shore by a current from the opposite side. Within a minute they were about
twenty yards off a sandy shore.

“We’re abandoning ship here,” the brave shouted from the other end of the raft, cupping his hands over his mouth so he could
be heard over the roar of the blasting funnel of white water just a hundred yards behind them.

“But what about the Atsana?” Stone screamed back, not wanting to end up in the hands of the chief, not after he’d seen what
the man could do to a buffalo’s head. It gave his own skull a headache just to think about it.

“They won’t go beyond those narrow canyon walls back there,” Cracking Elk reassured him. “It’s sacred ground. They think anyone
who comes here will die. They won’t follow, I’m sure of it.” The brave didn’t try to explain it all any further but suddenly
stood up, dove off into the calm waters, and began swimming over to the sand bank. Stone turned himself over and motioned
for the dog to follow him. Which was all well and good, except when he pushed himself off and started trying to swim, Stone
found himself sinking like a rock. The splinted leg acted like an anchor on him and even in the slow-moving waters it was
too much. The Indian, who had just been pulling himself up on shore, turned and saw Stone disappearing beneath the surface
only about twenty-five feet out.

He dove straight back into the water, and paddling like an Olympic prospect was at the drowning man’s side in seconds. Stone
felt a hand around his collar and suddenly he was being pulled backwards on the surface of the river. He took a few deep sputtering
breaths and felt himself being dragged up onto the sand. Cracking Elk collapsed on the shore beside him, gasping for breath
himself from the exertions. Stone, after coughing up, sat up and caught sight of the dog, bedraggled and pissed-off as hell,
crawling up onto the sand about fifty feet down. It looked like a sewer rat, with its fur all slicked down, ears back in defensive
mode. Life with the Chow Boy was daily taking a turn for the worse.

“Thanks,” Stone managed to sputter to the brave. The Indian wouldn’t utter a word or make the slightest expression as Stone
turned to him to express his gratitude. If anything the brave didn’t seem to like the idea that he had just saved Stone. Yet
he was his slave, bound to serve the man at every turn, a man whom he would just as soon have seen a moldering corpse in the
dirt. But then Stone wasn’t particular about who saved his ass. He’d already been rescued from the great beyond by whores,
prospectors, paraplegics, deaf mutes. A stonefaced Indian was just one addition to the club.

S
TONE’S splint arrangement had come completely undone in all the goings-on, and he spent about five minutes retying everything,
getting the sticks back in place. It seemed infected all around the break, though it was hard to tell for sure. Still he could
feel it mending, knitting together inside of him, strength slowly seeping back into the limb. But it would be weeks, maybe
months before it was fully functional. That was all he needed out here in the jungles of America, where the slightest indication
of weakness was usually rewarded by something snapping out from behind a bush to kill and/or eat the wounded thing which was
showing itself to be vulnerable. Stone wished he were carrying a fucking bazooka, instead of a piece of wood six feet long.

He wanted to rest up for a few more minutes but Cracking Elk was on his feet, walking impatiently in a tight circle in the
sand.

“Come on, come on, got to go. Go now!” He looked at Stone somewhat contemptuously, pulling his lips back as if it were difficult
for the Indian to even talk to the white man.

“I thought you said the rest of the tribe wouldn’t come in here because of bad medicine,” Stone said wearily, not wanting
to rise for at least a hundred years.

“Not tribe—other things. Very dangerous all through here. Other braves never return, all die.”

“Oh, it’s just superstition,” Stone said, trying to gain a few more minutes by moving his lips instead of his feet. “Just
propaganda to keep you all locked up there on that two-mile-long stretch of shoreline called home.”

“No, it’s more than that,” Cracking Elk said, not able to meet Stone’s eyes. “There is darkness, evil in these parts. We must
be careful. And we must”—he looked up at the heavens, judging the time from the color of the now misted and luminous sky—“make
good time. I want to be on higher ground downriver before dark. There are places we shouldn’t be caught out at night.” But
suddenly as if he’d already said too much Cracking Elk stopped talking, turned, and began walking slowly through the sand
along the river’s edge. There was a dark fire in his eyes—hate, murder. The brave’s whole life had been turned upsidedown
in twenty-four hours: from the top of the heap to a piece of useless garbage with not even a home or a people anymore. He
hated Stone more than he’d ever hated any man in his life. Yet the brave was bound to the laws of the Atsana that had been
laid down by the very animal gods themselves. He was Stone’s slave until he or the white man died. He would serve him, but
he would hate him every second of his servitude.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Stone mumbled, hobbling up onto one foot as he got his balance with a new makeshift crutch, a not
very straight piece of branch that had been washed up on the shore next to him in the sand. “I’m coming, I’m coming.” He stumbled
along like Tiny Tim in A
Christmas Carol
as the pit bull took up a miserable third place, just hoping a squirrel or some damn thing came scampering by so it could
take a nice bite and get rid of its foul mood. The animal wasn’t into diets.

The going was fairly easy at first, just sandy shoreline about twenty feet wide, almost white, clean looking, like something
you’d find at Miami Beach. Stone kept glancing over at the river, which roared alongside them, now stretched back out to a
width about a hundred feet of raging brown. The remains of whatever had gone through the rapids and rocks back there came
bobbing along—mostly animal and fish carcasses, all bloated with heads smashed in as their skulls had been pounded against
the rocks. Stone had just been close as a hair on an ant’s balls to that very fate himself.

But after about two miles the going got harder, with sharp little rocks like punji sticks all over the place. It was difficult
for all of them—the Indian in his moccassins, Stone with the crutch unable to get a good grip on the slippery stones, and
the pit bull with its slipping and sliding paws suited for many things but not clambering along on ten million wet and pointy
rocks. But soon Stone wished the rocks were back again as they came to bogs, soft mud that the feet sank into the moment they
were placed down. They sludged along keeping within grasp of each other just in case someone started actually going under.
And the legs of a goat poking up from the scum-covered mud off to one side as if the thing was frozen in an eternal kick of
rigor mortis were an indication that their concerns were justified.

But it was the dog who found the soft spot first. They both suddenly heard a terrible squealing behind them and turned to
see the pit bull going under fast. It had strayed too close to the departed goat and looked about to join it. Already the
animal was down to its chest, all four legs disappearing beneath the white sucking sand. The dog looked terrified, its ears
pointing straight up. And the sound it made was truly horrific.