It was obvious by how Carolyne and Charles looked about that neither had located Roy yet. Melanie was only certain he was very close; she was right.
“I heard gunshots.” Roy emerged from his crouch within a group of ferns not six feet from where Melanie had been seated before his announced presence had brought her to her feet. “I thought maybe you’d lucked out by bagging that rare bit of game. The idea of some fresh meat appealed to my meat-deprived taste buds.”
“We suspect two-legged quarry.” Charles replaced his pistol in its holster. “There’s been a bit of mischief, as Felix and our radio can bear witness.”
If he hadn’t already, Roy noticed Felix’s towel-draped head. Of the four, Felix had responded the last to Roy’s unexpected arrival; he sat, eyes closed, and his head against a tree root that conveniently bowed up though the soil.
“I’ve seen no one,” Roy admitted. His mental headcount was two short. He mentally went through the introductions of that morning. “Teddy and Gordon presently missing, right?”
“Both possible candidates for the gunfire,” Charles conceded. “Although, we presently lean toward Gordon who.…”
“You, personally, presently lean toward Gordon,” Melanie corrected. “I’m not putting any responsibility on anyone until I have more to go on.”
“We all need more input,” Carolyne agreed.
Charles wasn’t assuaged: “Gordon made a pass at Melanie just last night, and Teddy took exception. I used to wonder why, in all those adventure movies, there was always one attractive woman among all those virile men; it seemed to beg trouble, and this just proves my assumption right.” He realized his faux pas and diplomatically made amends: “This expedition, of course, comes complete with two ravishing beauties.”
“Charles, cut the crap!” Carolyne knew she wasn’t a beauty, ravishing or otherwise; nor had she ever been. Certainly, she didn’t look her best with her hair gone grey at its roots, clothes continually wet with the humidity and perspiration, bathing and toilet facilities next to nonexistent. Even Melanie, who had looked so good for so long, was beginning to go a little ripe around the edges; far less likely to spark unbridled lust in someone not hopelessly lost to the outside world for a very long time. Then, again, what did Carolyne know about men? Two husbands, and as many divorces later, still didn’t exactly make her an authority.
“Pubescent boys will be boys,” Charles concluded his summation.
“Not to where Gordon would endanger our lives and smash our radio,” Melanie defensively insisted.
Roy was getting the specifics piecemeal.
“Took off with our satellite gizmo, too,” Carolyne admitted.
“Wouldn’t have run across a stray radio or space gismo, lately, have you Roy?” Charles knew it unlikely. Roy, a prospector and geologist, traveled light in order to cover a wide range of rough terrain. It was because he considered even his damaged radio excess baggage, jettisoned, that he’d appeared earlier that morning to borrow the use of theirs.
“I can offer a quick run-through of the immediate area,” Roy volunteered, “if you’d like me to take a look.”
“Would you?” Melanie was quick to accept.
Carolyne was reluctant. “We’ve decided it’s best to stay put for the time being. Certainly, I wouldn’t want you hit by a bullet that didn’t even have your name on it.”
The pros and cons were temporarily made moot by Teddy’s call from a distance: “Hey, you guys, I’m coming in!”
Melanie would have rushed into the bush to meet him, but Roy, closest to her, put a cautionary hand on her shoulder.
Neither Roy, nor Carolyne, nor Charles took any chances; each had a pistol drawn. Even Felix drew his.
As was usually the case in the thick greenery, Teddy was heard long before he was seen. That he didn’t go out of his way to be stealthy was emphasized by his virtual stumble into the small clearing.
“Teddy!” Melanie was the only one with welcoming arms, not an aimed gun. She hugged him close, her cheek so tightly against her fiancé’s sweaty chest that she heard his runaway heartbeat and felt his rasping intakes of ragged breaths.
“Gordon is dead!” was what he said to them all by way of additional greeting.
CHAPTER TWO
“Gordon sneaked up on you, too, did he?” Charles’ mind’s eye had the scenario down pat. “Shot him before he knocked your brains out?”
Obviously, Teddy wasn’t following the projection as well as the others. “Shot who?”
“Shot Gordon?” Melanie put to him. The idea made her queasy. She didn’t want responsibility, and the tale, as conjured by Charles, painted her as some kind of femme fatale, right in the middle.
“You think I shot Gordon?” Teddy sounded incredulous.
“Didn’t you?” Charles held fast to his theory of an attractive woman, two jealous swains, and the passion-spawning isolation of the Amazon Basin.
“We heard three shots.” Carolyne blew a stray wisp of grey-rooted red hair out of her green eyes. “You did say Gordon was dead?” She didn’t trust her memory.
“He’s dead, all right, but I didn’t kill him. My gunshots were attempts to save him; I was just too late.”
“Take it from the top, why don’t you?” Melanie figured any reality was better than her uncle’s fanciful imagination.
“Jaguar got him,” Teddy obliged.
“Jaguar?” It was Carolyne’s turn at incredulity.
“Cat, big as a house.”
Carolyne had trouble buying it. It contradicted her theory of wildlife, that size, forced into deeper jungle by encroaching civilization.
“It had to have taken him unaware; I didn’t hear Gordon make a sound.” Teddy gave Melanie a comforting hug. “It was the animal growls that got my attention.”
Melanie shivered. Disappointed by a jungle so apparently sterile of fauna, she’d wished for one of the big cats, and here it was. It just went to prove that the bane of all wishing was the chance the wish might come true.
“Once I had the cat in sight, I saw it was mauling Gordon; I fired and scared it off. I may even have hit it. Whatever, it genuinely took off like a bat out of hell.”
“Horrible!” Melanie didn’t doubt.
“We’ve seen no previous sign of any big cats,” Carolyne complained. “We’ve seen no sufficient amount of smaller animals to support a carnivore.”
“Which might account for the animal attacking Gordon,” Felix, eyes shut, added his two cents.
Teddy noticed Felix for what seemed the first time. “What happened to you?”
“The same fate as happened to our radio.” Felix tried to open his eyes but decided against it. The pain was receding but had a long way to go.
“Someone sneaked up and laid poor Felix low,” Carolyne clarified. “Same person apparently smashed our radio and ran off with our SOS device.”
“Uncle Charles figures it was all part of Gordon’s plan to get back at you.”
“Get back at me?” Teddy answered his own question: “Because of our little to-do last night, you mean?”
“Seemed more than a little to-do to me,” Charles argued.
“You