Dance of the Dwarfs by Geoffrey Household

where one could hardly distinguish plant from mineral. I unslung my rifle, which left me only one hand to climb with—and that got fiercely bitten by ants. However, they seemed to be the only inhabitants.
    The top was just too low to allow me my view over the trees, but was open, desolate and no doubt a landmark which could be glimpsed from many points in the forest. Facing east was a great sloping slab of rock which I should probably have seen if I had climbed the low cliff at the upper end of the glade. I stripped off moss and cleared the cracks, leaving a whitish patch the size of a billiard table. There I laid out and firmly anchored my square of green nylon, spreading the presents on it. The patch of color could, of course, attract monkeys who would scatter the lot; but I had neither heard nor seen any monkeys since entering the forest when a band out on an egg-stealing expedition was raising hell among the birds.
    The whole place was singularly lifeless, with not even a lizard. The only animal material at all was the point of an antler which I found when scraping earth from the slab. It was worn very smooth. Polished by man? Weatherworn? Or passed through the stomach of scavenger or jaguar?
    I am used to desolation and normally excited by it, but there on the rocks I was not. That low plateau was somehow menacing. I felt that I was watched. Any of Joaquín’s duendes could have had it all his own way if he had stuck up his sabre-toothed head from a hole or hidden behind a pinnacle. I do not think that human beings would choose to live in such a tangle of primeval litter when there is shelter on the forest floor, less risk of basking snakes and less annoyance of ants. All the same I have to return to explore further and to see what, if anything, I have attracted. The ridge continues to the southwest, and must be the only landmark between the llano and the Guaviare.
    It was now after two and time to turn back. By following the contours I found the head of the long glade without difficulty, and was able to make for the smaller, well-like glade on a compass course. There I allowed Tesoro to graze a little—though he seemed more interested in staying close to me—while I searched on foot for the gap we must have made on our outward journey. I could not find it. We had pushed through giant ferns for the last few yards and the fronds had sprung back into position.
    However, it did not matter where we left the glade; so when I spotted a break on the southern side—more a marked difference of foliage than a gap—I decided to try it. A fallen tree had brought the lianas down with it, and a palisade of saplings was growing through the debris. I knew that this mess was not as formidable as it looked, that it would not continue far and that I could easily cut a passage through which to lead Tesoro back into the darkness of the trees.
    Once across the fallen trunk I saw to my right the clean cut stalk of a cedar sapling and then a dozen other neat cuts which could only have been made by a machete in experienced hands. It was a thousand to one that I was on the track of Pedro. No one else could have been there so recently.
    For a moment I could not believe in the coincidence, but then I saw that there wasn’t any. He had entered the forest where I had, and both of us had then taken the easiest route, always going round obstructions rather than over or through them—he, because he wanted to put distance quickly between himself and the llaneros; I, because I wanted to ride as far as possible in a day without much caring where. He had observed the change of vegetation which promised sunlight and more open country and somewhere had forced his way into the glade, no doubt hoping that he was going to find parkland as far as the Guaviare.
    When he was at last in the well of grass, he had looked for a possible path to the south and had seen, just as I had, the hopeful break. He cut his way out on a more