Red Jungle by Kent Harrington Page B

blue plastic of his poncho now.
    “He gets a finder’s fee,” Carl said.
    “How much? I want to know.”
    “Twenty percent,” Carl said, collecting the reins and leaning back. He kicked his horse; the animal started stepping forward carefully, its head down. “I have to take a shit,” Carl said. “Very badly.”
    “Go ahead,” Russell said and wheeled his horse upriver again. “Go ahead, nobody is watching as far as I can tell.”
    Mahler was standing in the river next to the bank. He had his machete out. He was using one of those fat-ended ones, heavy and wide in the front. He had tied his horse and the mule, which carried all their equipment, to a tree.
    “Here,” Mahler said. “I found this little creek. . . .” Like Russell, Mahler had worn a hat, but his was the military kind, a soft jungle hat. It was soaked from the rain.
    “It will take us a day to chop ten feet,” Russell said, looking at the solid wall of jungle.
    “Maybe. But I don’t think so. We go inside, we cut a path two-man wide. Leave the horses out here, see how it is.”
    Russell looked around. He saw the water from the creek rushing out from the jungle, pushing against Mahler’s pants leg. The river was very shallow here. But otherwise, from what he could see, there was nothing to distinguish this spot from any other along the river bank.
    “Wouldn’t there be more of a beach or something? I mean, if the Maya were going to develop something?” He had to hand it to Mahler, he could drink until late, stay up with the girl making love, he imagined, and now he looked fresh and strong here.
    Mahler started chopping into the bush. The machete made a pleasing sound as it struck wood, a metallic biting sound that Russell had always liked.
    “It was a thousand years ago…” Mahler said without turning around. “I found Bakta Halik, didn’t I?”
    “Yeah, that you did,” Russell said. He climbed off his horse, tied it next to Mahler’s, then pulled his machete out of the scabbard hanging from his saddle. He’d chosen a different style of machete; his was long and wicked-looking, and served as a weapon, because it was light, as well as for hacking bush. He’d had it sharpened by one of the men at the plantation. It was razor sharp, the dirty blade silver where it had been sharpened.
    Mahler stopped and turned. He had a .45 stuck in a clip-on holster in the small of his back. “We have some coffee first?” He took his thermos out of the pack on his horse.
    Carl rode up, his blond hair dark and plastered to his head from the rain. He looked miserable. Carl’s horse had settled down now. Russell waded through the water and took the horse’s halter.
    “Now what?” Carl asked
    “Get down,” Russell said.
    “I’ll get wet,” Carl said. Russell looked at the man, incredulous. “My feet. The water is cold.”
    “Get the fuck off the horse before I pull you off,” Russell said. Carl said something in German to Mahler.
    “He doesn’t want to get his feet wet. And he’s heard there are snakes in the water,” Mahler said in a monotone. He was carefully pouring coffee into the black top of a thermos. His backpack was slung on one shoulder, his machete driven into a tree limb right behind him.
    “Four Steppers?” Russell said. A black snake called cuatro pasos lived in Guatemalan rivers. As a boy with the cowboys on his mother’s cattle ranch, Russell often saw them when the cowboys were herding cattle across rivers. They were called “Four Steppers” because that’s how many steps you took, after being bitten, before you died. Russell had seen horses bitten and drop the rider, who’d been bitten too after he fell. The cowboys called that a “lucky shot.”
    “You’re a great big fat giant pussy, my friend,” Russell said in English. “Now get off that fucking horse.”
    “I can’t. I’m afraid.” Mahler stepped forward and handed Russell first the cup of coffee, then his backpack. He calmly walked up and pulled