Flame of Diablo (10 page)

may even learn to be a woman.'

The horses which Carlos had hired for

the trip might not be either beautiful or

particularly spirited, but they were

certainly sure-footed, and that was what

mattered in terrain like this, Rachel

decided as she drew rein and looked

around her.

They had been travelling since sunrise,

and already she could feel the protesting

ache from her unused muscles. But that

was all to the good, she told herself

emphatically.

While

she

could

concentrate

on

purely

physical

discomforts,

she

could

shut

the

emotional disturbance she had suffered

the previous night out of her mind. She

really needed to do that. She hadn't slept

too well the night before, and had risen

that morning feeling raw and heavy-

eyed.

She had half expected questions from

Senor Ramirez when she had gone down

to the vestibule to pay her bill, but he

had offered no comment, either on her

departure or her choice of travelling

companion. She'd intended to offer some

sharp criticism of the freedom with

which he handed out his pass key, but a

second thought convinced her it would

probably be best not to refer to it at all,

no matter what might be read into her

silence.

Carlos had warned her to bring as little

as possible, and she had chosen

carefully—jeans, and a matching blue

denim jacket, shirts and a couple of

changes of underwear, all of it now

tucked away into a saddlebag, and the

rest of her gear and her suitcase left back

at the hotel at Asuncion to be collected

on the return journey, she had told Senor

Ramirez, who had shrugged without

smiling, the silent gesture saying more

eloquently than any words that he was

not convinced there would be a return

journey. The memory of it chilled her

now in spite of the warmth of the sun on

her back.

And it was warm, far warmer than she'd

imagined

after

the

misty,

almost

springlike atmosphere of Bogota, but that

was hardly surprising, she supposed.

The wild road to Asuncion had wound

and lurched downwards all the way, and

they were descending still, although they

had left any semblance of a man-made

road far behind them. There were tracks,

showing that other people had passed

that way, which was an encouraging

sign, Rachel thought wryly. Uncharted

territory had no appeal for her. She was

not of the stuff of which pioneers were

made, and she hoped very much that they

would catch up with Mark soon before

this journey became any more of a

nightmare than it had proved so far.

She wondered idly how far they had

come already. She wasn't a very good

judge of distance, and they hadn't

seemed to be travelling in the same

direction for more than an hour at a time

since they'd set out. But Carlos seemed

to know where he was going, and what

he was about, and her only course was

to trust him. He seemed to have kept his

word over the supplies, and as far as she

could judge he hadn't rooked her either,

and why she should still have had a

vague, lingering uneasiness, she could

not have said, only that it was there like

the beginnings of a toothache and had

been ever since they had set off.

It was the sort of feeling that made her

want to ride with her chin on her

shoulder, looking back the way they had

come, which was nonsense. But even

this realisation didn't drive it away, and

she thought savagely that she knew

exactly whom she had to blame for

affecting her peace of mind like this.

They stopped on a small plateau where a

trickle of a waterfall emptied itself

endlessly into a small dark pool, and

there they rested and watered the horses,

and Carlos made a fire and heated their

midday meal, a tin of vegetable stew

followed by a tin of rice pudding.

Judging by the contents of the food pack,

Rachel realised ruefully that the majority

of their meals would probably follow

this pattern, and leave her with a chronic

digestive problem for the rest of her life.

But not all their meals would be camp

meals, she remembered. When she had

discussed the trip with Carlos in

Asuncion, he had assured her they would

use any facilities available along the

way. It had been a straw Rachel had

grasped at with open relief. She might

not know a great deal about South

America, but one aspect she was well

aware of was that it harboured several

varieties of snakes, all of them deadly,

and even the remotest prospect of an

encounter with one of them made her

flesh crawl.

The coffee which followed the meal was

palatable enough if rather too strong for

Rachel's taste. When she had finished

her tin mugful, she emptied the dregs and

lay back, her head pillowed on her

denim jacket, staring up at the hazy blue

of the sky, and the harsh sharply defined

lines of the great
cordillera,
its peaks

wreathed in cloud. It looked like the

lavish backdrop for some extravagantly

mounted fairytale, she decided, although

no stage designer of her acquaintance

would have dared incorporate such

exquisitely subtle shades of colouring

into what purported to be solid rock.

Against the sky, a bird was circling

slowly and purposefully, with deep

sweeps of its powerful wings. A condor,

she thought, the vulture of the Andes. She

had read once that that great wing span

was strong enough to sweep a horse and

rider from a rock ledge, and she

shivered at the thought, sitting up

abruptly. There was no fairytale about

those faraway heights, after all. There

was battle and murder and sudden death,

and all the things she least wanted to

think about.

It was almost a relief to be back in the

saddle once more, and heading down

into the valley. It was getting warmer all

the time, the air more humid, and the

landscape seemed to be changing before

her eyes, rocks and dust giving way to

lush undergrowth. Trees and ferns

reared on each side of the track, forming

almost solid walls of greenery on each

side which Rachel was glad they did not

have to penetrate. Flies buzzed and

lunged at her unprotected face, and she

brushed them away irritably with her

hand. In places the track became so

narrow that there was barely room even

for the horses to pass along it in single

file.

Rachel thought that there had to be a

better way to reach Diablo. She felt as if

she was being trapped in an everlasting

green tunnel. The quiet too was

oppressive. Apart from the muffled

sound of their horses' hooves on the

trodden floor, there was only the

occasional harsh cry of an unknown bird

or vague rustlings in the undergrowth,

revealing the presence of some unseen

animal, to break the silence.

Her only consolation was that Carlos

seemed to be finding the journey equally

trying. His plump form swayed from

side to side as his horse plodded ahead,

and his shoulders looked bowed with

weariness.

Rachel wished she had insisted that they

travelled by whatever passed for a road

in this region, even if it had meant the

trip would take longer, and that she had

not stipulated that she needed to reach

Diablo urgently.

She moved her shoulders wearily under

her thin shirt, feeling a trickle of sweat

run down between her shoulder blades

as she did so. She was looking forward

to reaching the
finca
where they would

spend the night. From what she had

heard, she gathered that the sanitary

arrangements at such places could be

primitive, but surely there would at least

be a tub and some water so that she

could have a bath. Perhaps you never

realised how beguiling the ordinary

comforts of life could seem until you

were separated from them for a time, she

thought.

But there was no sign of habitation

anywhere round as far as she could see,

no telltale drift of smoke, and if any eyes

watched them pass from behind the tall

waving green fronds, then they were not

human eyes, and Rachel was angry at the

wave of unease which washed over her

at the thought. She was tired, that was

all. It was proving to be a long day in the

saddle with only that one break at noon

— and she hadn't slept well the previous

night either. Her mouth tightened in

irritation. Wasn't it enough that she was

out here on this forest path surrounded

by predators? Did she really have to be

reminded of that other black-clad, one-

eyed predator back in Asuncion waiting

to draw gullible tourists into his net?—

and there would be plenty who would be

quite willing to be so drawn, she found

herself thinking with an odd bitterness.

The woman from the States who had

come back simply to be alone with him

for a while would not be the only one by

any means. For a moment or two she

found herself brooding on the thought,

then she gave herself a little shake of

irritation. What on earth was the matter

with her? she scolded herself. So he'd

kissed her. It had been a gesture, that

was all, to appease his male vanity, and

the fact that she had succumbed to his

kiss in a moment of weakness altered

nothing. If he kept any kind of record of

his adventures, she would be marked

down as the one that got away. It was an

amusing thought, yet it was not capable

of bringing even a glimmer of a reluctant

smile to her lips.

She didn't want to laugh about it, she

told herself vehemently. She just wanted

to drive the whole incident from her

mind. Vitas de Mendoza had no place

there, or shouldn't have anyway. She had

too much else to think about and worry

over. For one thing, she had no idea how

her grandfather was. For all she knew

the improvement in his condition which

had so encouraged her before she left for

Bogota might have been a temporary

thing.

It was ludicrous to think that she had

envisaged being on her way back to

England by now with Mark safely in

tow. And at the back of her mind all the

time was the nagging fear that this

preposterous journey she had embarked

on might be a wild goose chase after all,

that saner counsels might have prevailed

with Mark and he might have abandoned

all idea of going anywhere near the

Diablo mine. He might well be a

thousand miles away at this moment

while she was being bitten alive by

insects and frightened out of her wits

every time the bushes rustled. People

who said that the world of the theatre

was a jungle had obviously never

experienced the real thing, she decided

ruefully.

It was getting late, she realised

suddenly. It was no cooler, but the sun

was dipping down over the trees. She

stared round in vain for some sign of life

—a coffee or banana plantation, or a

forestry service
cabana,
but there was

nothing, and the forest was forbidding

enough in daytime. If darkness fell

before they reached their destination, she

would probably end up a gibbering

lunatic.

In the distance she could hear a familiar

sound—the lap of running water. Her

tired

sticky

body

tensed

with

anticipation and she leaned forward in

the saddle, trying to peer through the