Dance of the Dwarfs by Geoffrey Household Page B

around the skeleton had been disturbed by kites and lizards feeding on the flesh. None of the larger carnivores had found the body and cracked the bones, which suggested that there were few of them about.
    I had nothing to bury him with, and it was of course impossible to carry back the dry bones on Tesoro. So I had to turn away and leave him under the protection of the little cross which he carried on a thin gold chain round his neck. I blazed trees at intervals on the random route I took back to the llano and made notes of compass bearings wherever obstructions compelled me to diverge from an easterly course. I could not record distances accurately, but I think I shall be able to lead an official inquirer—if there ever is one—to the body.
    I hit the llano some two or three miles south of my point of entry and had no exceptional difficulty in getting myself and Tesoro out to the light. Till it was close on sunset I worked away with the machete, cutting and widening a new passage which should be easily recognizable even after a month.
    At the estancia all was quiet and there was a rich smell of stew. Chucha admitted that she and Mario had been anxious until they saw me crossing the creek with no shadows following. I told them that nothing could be emptier than this last, lost tail end of the forests of the Amazon Basin—no game, no dwarfs and no duendes.
    I did not mention Pedro, for fear of starting up the oppression of the blank spot. I should have had Mario building walls as fast as a Roman infantryman and Chucha putting on a face like the Mater Dolorosa every time I visited the trees. Teresa is the only matter-of-fact one of the lot. She assumes that my learning is so profound and mysterious that I must know what I am doing.
    I wish I did know. I have a strong presentiment that I ought to take the three horses and Chucha and cross the llanos to the River Vichada. But I cannot leave Mario and Teresa without some protection—if only pseudo-aristocratic insolence—against these brutes of guerrilleros. They might come back and cut the throats of the family as pointlessly as they blew Pedro’s brains out.
    What a curious thing presentiment is! I felt no fear whatever, only pity and anger, when I found Pedro’s body, although in the gloom of the trees it should have had the crude effect of some dangling oddment in a ghost train. Yet on the rocky plateau, where there was sunlight and not a damn thing to be afraid of, it was an effort to control imagination. In both cases Tesoro’s reaction was the same as my own.
    [ April 20, Wednesday ]
    Today I rode to Santa Eulalia to buy beef. It is not always easy to find unless some llanero has driven home a beast on the previous night for local consumption. The only refrigerator for many hundreds of miles is mine, and meat will not keep in this climate. It is well hung—to say the least—by the time I unload it at the estancia.
    I was lucky and got the sirloin and ribs of a heifer. But what a waste! I shall have to throw half of it away, for my refrigerator is small. Those pygmies could have meat for the asking if only there were some way of communicating with them.
    I did nothing about Pedro’s wife. God knows if I am right! I have two reasons for allowing her to go on hoping. I feel that the body should not be disturbed until someone in an official position turns up to view it. And if I say that I found him murdered I shall start a flaming argument among the llaneros, very likely to make another widow.
    Perhaps my real objection is cowardly and selfish. Since nothing would induce the valiants of Santa Eulalia to fetch that body out of the forest—they dread touching the defunct anyway—I should have to do it myself. I don’t mind tumbling poor Pedro into a sack, but my life and work could then become complicated if the National Liberation Army suspected that I had killed him and all the llaneros were convinced that the duendes